Thank you for the detailed response and the chance to reflect on these ideas regarding some fairly difficult topics. > "Like I say, I'm not trying to partition between the acceptability of all marriages, merely giving a simple rational argument for why it is easy to distinguish the morality of first order incest from homosexual relationships." > Okay, but why? You're saying you're not trying to make a comprehensive case for what the structure of marriage should be, but rather come up with some relevant distinction between homosexual and incestuous relationships in order to justify the first and not the second. But why would I find that persuasive when the reason I raised the question of incest was just to get at the underlying question of what marriage is? Maybe I am not remembering this correctly, but I believe that you were the one who was asking Jaxon to try to distinguish between the appropriateness of incest and homosexuality. That was the primary reason to offer the distinction. Even outside a complete model for marriage, I think that distinction is still fairly valid? Regardless, if your purpose in doing so was to simply get a person to advance their model of marriage, then that has also been accomplished, since I advance my thoughts [here](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/musings-on-same-sex-marriage/) with the "modules" of marriage. > As far as my views on incest, church teaching is enough for me, same as with homosexuality. That may be fine for your own internal compass, but if you are interested in having an influence on discussions of public policy, then you of course need some rationale to support your stance that extends beyond that. You do give reasons below, so you seem to appreciate that idea already. > That said, I think church teachings are fundamentally reasonable. The main function of the incest taboo is to preserve the innocence of family relationships. Where do you find this written or explained in LDS or related literature? And what is unique or beneficial to maintaining "innocence" of family relationships? I lean towards agreeing with this idea, but I would love to hear a more robust defense of it. Here are some thought experiments to try and articulate my concerns with that as a primary justification. Imagine that a brother with an infant died and the child was then raised by his sibling. That would mean that two 1st cousins were raised in the same household, by the same set parents, essentially as brother and sister. But, upon reaching adulthood, many states would have no objection with their marriage, right? Or consider the case of children raised on close proximity. There's certainly an innocence in their childhood friendship, but that relationship can then morph into a sexual relationship as they are older, right? In other words, what function does preserving "innocence of family relationships" serve, specifically, once we rule out (or forbid) child sexuality? Again, I think there's something to the idea of "innocence of family relationships" but I wonder if it can be subsumed into other concerns. These are the 2 that stand out to me: 1. Concerns about sexual activity of minors, generally. They are not fully developed, they lack the ability to genuinely consider long-term consequences and sex is rife with those, they are prone to undue influence, etc. They can't really consent to sex in a meaningful way. Parent-child incest runs afoul of all these issues. 1. Concerns about health of offspring (and the burden on parents and the society of conceiving a child likely to have major genetic defects). > Similarly, the homosexuality taboo preserved the innocence of close male friendships, which unfortunately have become rarer in our society in the last few decades as the taboo has gone away. This is interesting to consider. First, it is not at all clear to me that close male friendships have become rarer in our society today. Further, it is not at all clear to me that decreases of the homosexuality taboo have been causative in that decline (if we assume a decline). I have 5 male children ranging from the ages of 21 to 11. They seem to have plenty of close male friendships and even though many of their friends identify as bisexual, homosexual, or non-binary, etc. that does not seem to impeded the closeness of those friendships? Also, society has also increased awareness of the importance of consent around sexual advances, so I think that perhaps that negates the concern somewhat? I've been very close friends with two guys who are bisexual, but they know I am not interested in them sexually, so it hasn't been an issue in my limited experience. Anyway, it's an interesting idea, but I would love to see it better substantiated before assuming the condition or the cause. > As far as the essay about marriage, I commend you for making a real attempt to deal with the arguments on the traditional side. Thank you. Just to note, most of those thoughts were derived while I was a believing, Latter-day Saint struggling to make sense of prop 8 and the Church's position on SSM. Hence, it was very natural for me to want to find a robust intellectual defense for the Church's position that could survive scrutiny, and I did so from the perspective that the Church was correct on the issue. > "The government has an interest in supporting parents in their child-rearing duties regardless of the other two modules. This is why the government offers support to both single mothers and adoptive couples—from a government perspective it makes sense to support any parent / legal guardian!" > Agreed, but this seems to be an argument for supporting parents rather than giving them marriage licenses. Certainly we don't give marriage licenses to single moms. Yes, that's correct. I think as a society we have already moved beyond the point where we consider the parenting module of marriage essential. I think it's appropriate (and most practical) to deal with those two concerns (parenting vs. committed companionship) separately. I view marriage licenses as the state simplifying contracts between committed partners (for purposes of property and insurance, etc). I think a valid criticism is why the state should give any preference to romantic relationships over other types of relationships. IOW, I think an argument could be made that the state, at this point, should get out of endorsing marriages altogether. > "unequal treatment of homosexuals to deny them participation in the institution" > I don't think this is the case. The law never mentioned attraction or the contemporary concept of orientation, and one was never tested for being gay before getting a marriage license. Homosexuals could always marry someone of the opposite sex, and, on the other hand, heterosexuals couldn't get a marriage license with someone of the same sex. There seems to be an implicit assumption here that marriage serves or should serve to formalize and actualize one's attraction/orientation. That's a strong assumption. I think, practically speaking, that marriage serves to formalize ones *committed relationship* which involves things like shared property and an environment that may be appropriate to parenting. At least in the west, it's widely regarded that romantic/sexual attraction is one major component of a committed relationship. I think that a state endorsement of a committed relationship probably oversteps the state's concern, so my preference at this point would be for the state to manage committed relationships with a few basic contracts or templates that fit the most common arrangements for property. > "In one sense, the legal battle over SSM was lost decades before the issue was fought in the courts and at election booths because marriage had already been defined societally primarily in terms of “committed companionship”" > Yes, I think that's true. No-fault divorce was a big mistake! I think that depends on how one views the modules of marriage. If a couple has no children, for instance, then what is the real disadvantage of them divorcing because their tastes have changed? I agree that stable relationships are important to raising children, but we are raising children to what end? People change and why must a committed companionship last an entire lifetime? I do think there's additional moral concern when children exist, but I'm just not sure *requiring* people to remain in marriages they have no interest in is the optimal approach. I also don't think that most people divorce for capricious reasons. To be clear, on a personal level, even though my wife and I left the LDS Church about 5 years ago, we still remain a faithful, committed couple who has never cheated on one another (and likely never will), so I'm talking about these things in the abstract. My relationship is solid and my wife and I are a good match for one another, but that's not always the case (e.g., homosexuals encouraged to marry heterosexually). > "Our species will continue to value the intersection between committed companionship, parenting, and sexual reproduction with or without state sanction because there are deep biological drivers which incentivize it." > I think this is false. Our biological disposition is toward high-status males having lots of female partners and low-status males having none. What is your evidence that this is the only or primary disposition? One theory of human evolution is that we have essentially been domesticating ourselves by killing the alpha-males. So, maybe your characterization is an over-simplification. Ultimately, I would argue that this is merely one of our dispositions. Human sexuality is very complex, but it's somewhat monogam-ish, and there are lots of distinct evolutionary changes which encourage committed companionship (for instance, the human female organism suppresses almost all of its outward signals of ovulation compared with other primates). And it is thought that grandparent involvement (which only occurs in situations of some committment) played a significant role in human development. Finally, there are multiple human hormones, like Oxytocin, which encourage bonding and caring for young. > Marriage was a revolutionary and egalitarian social technology requiring cultural enforcement, and the decline of marriage has led to an enormous number of children in the US growing up without both parents. Maybe egalitarian on some level for men, but not at all egalitarian for most women, I think? It can be argued that they lost big in this arrangement, as discussed [here](http://web.archive.org/web/20210417181419/http://w3.salemstate.edu/~hbenne/pdfs/patriarchy_creation.pdf). I agree that marriage played a role in the agricultural revolution and in building modern society. But once the collection of property becomes an afterthought, the way in which we marry and raise children does not necessarily have to follow the same arc as it did previously? I still think marriage is a good institution, on the whole, and we should encourage it. Lots of our society still values committed companionship and paired parenting, though. I would argue that the failure of marriage is simply a symptom of the failure of our economic systems to address the needs of the socioeconomically disadvantaged. > "On the flipside, the question asked by homosexuals about older couples who marry beyond the years of fertility is completely valid when viewed through this lens—why should they be priviledged over a homosexual couple, when there is no expectation of children? Why would the state care about sanctioning that union?" > Several reasons. First, because all married couples become old and infertile eventually. It would require saying that a couple could remain married but couldn't get remarried after a certain age if they had gotten divorced. So why should the state be involved in sanctioning marriages between infertile couples? What is the purpose of that? Why does the state care that it has the "form" of marriage if the essence of what the state is concerned with is not present? > But more importantly, it's because husband + wife is the form of marriage. You can't in practice cut more finely without excluding households who might be able to bear children. And cutting more coarsely adds no households who might produce children. There is no question about women with hysterectomies producing children (they can't, 100%). Also, with in vitro fertilization, homosexual couples *can*, more or less, bear children which are genetically at least related to one of the couple, and that genetic relationship is exactly as complete as the analogous situationa where one heterosexual partner is infertile and they do in vitro with a donor. On these grounds, then, you can't really exclude homosexual couples, I think. > In any case, this sort of question crops up under any understanding of marriage. For example, if marriage serves the purpose of joining together people who love each other, what about couples who marry but don't love each other? Does this mean marriage isn't actually about love? If it's about commitment, what about people who never intended to stick it out, but get married anyway? Does this prove marriage isn't about commitment? I acknowledge it's super messy. That's why I ultimately think the state shouldn't be involved in marriage in the first place. They can and should support parents. They can and should make laws against other kinds of immoral/harmful behavior. Our ancestors did just fine for hundreds of thousands of years without state sanctioned marriage. Standard contracts, as a matter of convenience for dealing with property, should/could be generated and one of those could be something that looks like what we call "marriage". > Finally, ignoring the legal question for a minute and looking at church teaching, a husband and wife can be together in eternity and have eternal increase even if they get married when old, so sealing such couples makes sense. I wrote an article that has bearing on this topic (more or less) a few years ago: [Funeral Thought: Is There Such a Thing as a Counterfeit Marriage?](https://affirmation.org/funeral-thought-is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-counterfeit-marriage/). The Church endorses and blesses non-sealing marriages for companionship for time alone. Secondly, I fail to see any reason why two males or two females, who are omnipotent, could not also have eternal increase. I'm a biochemist and could easily conceive of how this could be accomplished at the genetic or molecular level, so two omniscient/omnipotent beings I'm sure could address this issue. I understand that the current Church does not see it as viable, but I am not aware that they have ever received clear and distinct relevation on the topic, either. > "Although we like to think of the word “marriage” in a lofty, idyllic sense, the fact is that the Christian God appears to have condoned a wide variety of couplings in the past." > Each example in the meme is either a husband-wife marriage or one man in multiple husband-wife marriages. Sure, but that doesn't address the fact that the *purposes* and *arrangements* are multitudinous. One key issue at stake, IMHO, is that homosexuals come from the womb with that disposition and it's not likely to change for a huge fraction of them. That's something the LDS church [has conceded](https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/lds-statements-on-cause-and-cure-for-homosexuality/). LDS theology does not really address this in a satisfying way, and I would argue that nobody has received direct revelation on the topic despite attempts to retrofit the family proclamation as revelation. > "One way to view marriage is through the lens of patriarchal systems which were a response to an awareness of paternity combined with relatively sedentary lifestyles resulting in a desire to protect the accumulation of land and property:" > Yes, and in particular, marriage served to recognize a husband as the legitimate father of his wife's children (for inheritance and other purposes). This also had the effect of inducing a man to stay with his children and their mother. These are still important purposes. Maybe that's the best reason for the state to, perhaps, sanction marriage. But this also applies similarly (though not precisely) to a homosexual couple who marry. Marriage implies a committed relationship and potentially a desire to co-parent. Those basic precursors are also found among many homosexual couples, so I don't see a good reason to exclude them. > "The New Testament Jesus himself never condemned homosexual marriage." > No, and he also never condemned polyamorous "marriages" (where more than two people are in one marriage), or single-person "marriages". Therefore, what? We know Jesus had strict views on divorce and adultery and had a traditional understanding of marriage, quoting Genesis, "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?" Do you suspect that Jesus secretly had the view of twenty-first century Westerners that two men could form a marriage? No, because I don't believe he really considered the issue at all (I do not consider him a deity). The point is merely that since he didn't condemn it, there's room for Christians, broadly speaking, to consider it. > Also, what is your own answer to this question you posed: "why should two homosexuals living under the same roof together in a committed relationship be given any more tax breaks and/or responsibilities than two sisters who have committed to one another that they will live together and share their property til the end of their life (but who are not sexually active) and want to raise adopted children together?" How would you answer the question? My answer is that the state should offer a range of contracts for committed companions to deal with things like property. And then, the state should do what it can to support all children (like what it already does). Perhaps "marriage" should be retained for those relationships that are both romantic and committed in nature with the idea that those are most likely to result in robust co-parenting modules? But I also think a solution should not discriminate against the sisters from that example. And, if the state were to get out of the "marriage" business altogether then religious and other institutions could still ratify them all they like. It can be argued that early LDS leaders did not view state sanction of their marraiges as very important (they proceeded without the state and the vast majority of their early marriages were without a marriage license at all). > Are you in favor of giving marriage licenses to any groups of adults who intend to raise children together? No, I think that would dilute the meaning/purpose of the term too much. I do think the state could create other kinds of arrangements or contracts to deal with recognition in other cases. I'm probably socially conservative in the extent to which I'm personally willing to see the term "marriage" applied. I just think committed homosexual couples who want to marry are "close enough" in the ways that matter today. The state recognizes and sanctions a variety of organizational structures for purposes of business or charity, so this gives some precendent for thinking about more plurality than just "marriage" or not? > If so, would you only give marriage licenses to groups, like homosexual couples, who intend to raise children, or could they get a marriage license even if they had no such intention? The way we commonly think about marriage is a committed (usually sexual/romantic) relationship that might be suitable for raising children. Given that we don't deny licenses for heterosexual couples who have no intention of bearing children (or perhaps who cannot), then it doesn't make sense to me to deny them to homosexual couples on those grounds, also. On some level though, it's merely academic because the number and level of benefits and responsibilities between couples is dwarfed by the benefits and responsibilities expected of parents in our society. From that perspective, the focus on a marriage license is shortsighted since it's by far the least important component of state input. --- Thanks for considering, and I welcome any thoughts you might have in pushback.