In the event that Julia Gillard lasts as PM until December, she’ll presumably be faced with a resolution making equal marriage rights part of Labor policy. Gillard’s handling of this issue is emblematic of her disastrous leadership in general – simultaneously unprincipled, unconvincing and politically unsuccessful.
Unlike our PM, I’m just old enough to remember when the phrase “living in sin” could be used with a straight face to describe living arrangements like hers. So, I find it hard to believe that her stated opposition to equal marriage rights is sincere (unlike with Kevin Rudd). Rather it’s the result of the kind of political calculation standard on the right wing of the Labor Party (see also Kristina Kenneally), in which the ‘real’ Labor voter is typecast as an aspirational bogan[1] whose views on social issues are unchanged since the 1950s. The key text here is Michael Thompson’s Labor without Class. There’s no evidence for this – views on social issues in Australia are largely uncorrelated with social class.
Allowing that some Labor voters are socially conservative, Gillard’s strategy is still politically stupid. Given the desperate state of the polls, she can’t hope to win by caution on an issue like this. It’s probably too late now, but a strong stand in favor of equal marriage rights might have done something to stop the drift of Labor voters off to the Greens, independents or the kind of apathy that makes it easy to shift to the Liberals, given an attractive promise or two.
fn1. To be boringly clear, I don’t use or endorse the term “bogan” to describe anybody. But the stereotypical image of a bogan coincides perfectly with the Labor Right view of Labor voters.
John Quiggin 
A lot of the pleas about the King’s peace were a way of getting things out of local courts and into the royal courts. If you alleged something was done against the King’s peace you could go to a royal court instead of a local court controlled by some lord. So you get slightly weird claims like the 1348 Humber Ferry case where it was said that a ferrymaster losing the plaintiff’s horse overboard was done ‘by force of arms and against the peace of Our Lord the King’. It was as much plaintiffs trying to get into royal courts as the elite trying to pre-empt local actions.
@Chris Warren: Thompson doesn’t say that economic rationalism wasn’t a problem, he says it was a good thing, and that Labor needs to combine economic rationalism with the social conservatism he imputes to the working class. That’s exactly the package now being espoused by Keneally, and in Gillard’s Chifley lecture. As I said at the time, if that’s what you want, John Howard offers a much better version of the product.
My understanding is that the anti gay marriage policy is less about gays and more to do with discrimination – which ties in with current fears of muslims and asylum seekers and the govt’s ability to hook into these fears and show that they are up to defending the country, or giving an impression of.
I overlooked this thread whilst concentrating on the Wegman thread, a true”bad” I’ve just rectified.
All I can say is that the thread starter expresses ideas and feelings very, very close to my own heart also.
@rog
I suspect it’s due to polling. JQ offered crude poll figures earlier but what these don’t reveal is whether it is a vote switching issue for those in the polls. As an example I support same sex marriage but it isn’t top of my list in terms of who I will vote for. However one of my neighbour does not support same sex marriage and his comments suggest it is top of his list. I’d say Labor is being poll driven on this issue.
dear Alan
i single out the feudal institution of marriage for disapprobation because it enters the present era fatefully burdened with the baggage of organised religion’s baleful influence. that’s all. while i have no great problem with civil unions, or people calling them marriages, i do have serious problems with superstitious reactionaries who strive, not only to uphold their stone age morality for themselves & their flocks, but seek also to impose it on other citizens through the tool of state recognition of marriage.
so, if the state’s going to be involved in defining marriage, i’d like for it to boldly get on with legislating the terms of it (like same sex recognition) on its terms & without fear of or deference to the sensibilities of clergy & their blowhards. if churches don’t like that then tough, roll them & get on with it!
but, if the state won’t stand up to organised religion on issues like same sex recognition, then maybe it should get out of the business of defining marriage & simply register what it wants to for the purposes it requires. register the marriages performed by churches according to the exclusive reactionary rites & beliefs they hold; register the marriages performed by non-church organisations according to the rites & beliefs they hold; and register the relationships of those who commit to each other with no rites at all & beliefs idiosyncratic to them. issue certificates of recognition to all who apply, who will call them marriages, or not, as they please, anyway.
in any case, the state should not tolerate churches dictating the terms according to which it relates to citizens regarding their interpersonal relationships. the continuing postponement of this sensible development is due more to the fear politicians have of organised religion’s reaction that any thing else. the community at large seems more ready & willing to move with it. the state doesn’t dictate to churches how to define the marriages they perform, that’s church business & churches shouldn’t dictate to the state what it ought to recognise as marriage, that’s state business. this isn’t happening and that’s the nub of my gripe & the stimulus of my hyperbolic essays.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
@John Quiggin
Thompson specifically said that it was not economic rationalism that drove the working class from ALP branches. He definitely seems to support economic rationalism, but this is not the main theme of his essay. Instead he wants to ensure the ALP represents policies derived from working class concerns and protect this policy basis from those like Lindsay Tanner. But this cannot be labelled “social conservativism” (or rednecks in some other peoples views). The same concerns emanate from Left unions.
Many people have regularly noted that ALP policy is (supposedly) the same as Liberal policy. This is the old story of tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, and Howard and Abbott often pose as friends of the workers. But this is not Thompson’s project.
It is a misunderstanding of Thompson (and Gillard) to suggest that their agendas are better versioned by John Howard.
Thompson and others (Andrew Scott) have pointed to the real problem for labor but in different ways – gentrification, modernisation, Blairite Third Way, Whitlam and etc. They imply that the ALP needs to re-orient itself to working class concerns.
This is not a rightwing agenda – it was the Left national secretary of the CFMEU, who expressed the problems with the ALP performance most clearly;
– worker’s wage restraint
– tariff reductions
– deregulation
– privatisation
– labour market reforms.
He suggested that the ALP politicians were completely out of touch with working people and their families.
Except for economic rationalism, it appears that both Left and Right unions are saying the same thing. The takeover by other (advantaged) social strata is destroying the ALP project.
This is a more sophisticated position than making some “political calculation”;
This is not occurring. It may be possible for unions such as the CFMEU to endorse equal marriage rights, but would they bother? Wouldn’t they feel that there were more important issues to get fixed first and that there has been a lot of failure in the past, false promises, well before equal marriage rights came on the agenda?
Every child has 2 biological parents, a male and a female.
How many ‘parents’ does a gay marriage child have? Is it really necessary to confuse children from day one?
If the legal minds are so removed from the biological realities that a ‘gay marriage’ is desirable on equity grounds in law, then I suggest a new vocabulary should be developed to allow children to understand from day one the difference between biology and legal matters.
For example
Current New
Parents Procreators
Marriage Legal union (of which marriage between a man and a woman is one of several special cases)
It seems to me, our PM has a clear mind on this topic because she does not confuse changes in moral norms over time with legal nomenclature that affects third parties for which the State has some responsibilities, namely children.
Ernestine, a child with gay parents still has two biological parents, as does incidentally, a child with a single parent, a child with no parents, a child with divorced parents, a child with parents and step-parents… In the end, your reference to biology is insufficient grounds on which to oppose gay marriage.
As to the slippery slope leading to polygamy, why not accept that as well? Any agreement between any number of consenting adults, with full mental capacity, regardless of gender, should be accepted. I think that most people who are worried about polygamy are worried about gender inequality and issues of consent, but if these are eliminated, then there is not necessarily a problem.
“… legal minds are so removed from … realities…”
There, fixed! (Just couldn’t resist playing with that quote!)
Children may not be living with both biological parents for a variety of reasons. It is really quite difficult to see how it benefits any child not to have their parents’ relationship recognised by the law.
@Chris Warren
Thompson explicitly endorses the policies you identify as the problem. His analysis is exactly the opposite of Andrew Scott’s.
“Except for economic rationalism, it appears that both Left and Right unions are saying the same thing. ”
So, they agree on economic policy, except as regards economic policy. I guess that’s about right.
Does the obvious have to be stated?
The problem is semantic. The term economic rationalism is”over determined”, that is it means diffferent things to different people and has taken on a life of its own in a field of its own, subject to it.
Everyone doffs their lid to its (ideological, in many people’s view) sanctity as a reference point as determined by discourse and events. In short it’s a sacred cow, like Anzac Day once was.
Some here will rejoice at the aspects inherent in an interpretation of “economic rationalism” that is a rational distribution of material thru economic goods and bads within a field also subject to chance and ethics, or are ethics and economics irreconcilable?
What’s problematic about economic rationalism is its cooption, a term, for different reasons by different speople or sets of people.
A dry would sneer at “special pleading” in cases when someone working near a problematic coalface like refugees, indigenes, Horn of Africa etc, would see it as an exculpatory device to wealthy segments of the world from our level up, for not being rapind enough in responding to situation involving gross threat to human life and much consequent suffering (and wonder from there wha thas caused a purported blindsiding (perception, mental incapacity and so on).
@John Quiggin
Scott and Thompson are not opposites when it comes to opposing the takeover of the ALP.
Scott and Thompson are different when it come to economic rationalism, and the Left opposes the things I mentioned while the Right supports them. This is where they can be termed opposites.
Where do you see any basis for:
Huh??? I never said this.
A fair reading of my post above would only allow this agreement to extend to:
and clearly not to the economic and industrial policies criticised by the CFMEU (and the AMWU long-run criticism of tariff/free trade).
As to “agreeing on economic policy, except as regards to economic policy”, this is completely wrong. Thompson supports economic rationalism, Scott takes an opposite view seeing it as leading to supporter alienation. Phil Cleary’s win in Wills by-election as an example of traditional labor fighting-off modernised, gentrified, “Blairite New” labor.
The drift to these new modernised, gentrified policies was inveterate. In the 1990’s the ALP national office even arranged to have the name “New Labor” registered in Australia as an alternative electoral name for the ALP.
So in terms of the ALP’s relationship to its traditional base [“aspirational bogans” by the Right, “workers and their families” by the Left], Scott and Thompson are clearly not saying opposite things. Cleary identified precisely the same drift of ALP away from traditional labor supporters in the Wills by-election. The Cleary victory shows that the Scott-Thompson common stance is based on hard reality.
Presumably all of Scott, Thompson, CFMEU, AMWU, Tanner and Latham, would agree that even ALP voting bogans do not have views on social issues are:
NB – This does not mean:
Thompson is certainly willing to go along with some of Scott’s criticisms, for example at page 69 of Labor without class.
“As to “agreeing on economic policy, except as regards to economic policy”, this is completely wrong. Thompson supports economic rationalism, Scott takes an opposite view seeing it as leading to supporter alienation … Scott and Thompson are clearly not saying opposite things.”
Way to contradict yourself in three sentences!
What does polygamy have to do with marriage equality? How would same sex marriage steepen the slippery slope in a way that opposite sex marriage does not?
JC, it seems to me you have missed my point. Apologies if I have not been clear. I am asking for a nomenclature which allows the distinction between biological and social relationships such that equality in law (social rights) for various accepted social relationships are possible.
Alan, it seems to me you are against ‘gay marriage’ because you write: “Children may not be living with both biological parents for a variety of reasons. It is really quite difficult to see how it benefits any child not to have their parents’ relationship recognised by the law. In the alternative, I say language may be able to affect social relationships but not biological relationships. To confuse the two cannot benefit children’s mental development.
The contradiction was only introduced by the deletion of the following sentence:
Once this is reinstated, the “contradiction” disappears.
Scott and Thompson pursue different lines w.r.t. economic policy, BUT NOT in terms of the ALP’s relationship to its traditional base.
Once the deleted words are reinstated – it all becomes clear.
@Ernestine Gross
I would hope that the relationship Julia Gillard has, would also have equality in law (it may have already).
This is consistent with your point – isn’t it?
I completely agree with John’s opening post. Julia Gillard has never outlined any philosophical or ethical basis for her opposition to same-sex marriage, and it is difficult to imagine how, as an atheist, she could have any for the position that she asserts (but does not explain or argue for) on this issue. Apart from anything else, this stance feeds into voter perceptions of the current Prime Minister and the contemporary ALP as a conviction-free zone.
FWIW I also think John has the better of the argument with Chris Warren about the respective views of Andrew Scott and Michael Thompson.
Yes, Chris Warren. it is consistent with my point.
Paul Norton, in the alternative, Julia Gillard assumes the public is as clear thinking as she on this matter. I have no evidence to the contrary.
Julia Gillard lives an honest life in public without imposing anything on other people. The same is true for P. Wong. Both do not ask for the majority of people to participate in a ‘communications-postmodernist-politiclly-correct’ verbal obfuscation exercise. They have my full respect on this matter – as all other same-sex couples who, in one way or another, live an honest life.
.
@Paul Norton
So I assume you have not read (for example) page 69 of Thompson? This does not mean they agree on the cause (they and Cleary all notice) or the solution. I doubt whether either understand the real causes or the real solutions.
Anyway – presumably you would support moving the Left generally away from its traditional base to some new – fangled, modernist, post-industrial, stream of graduate consciousness, where there are many “sites of struggle” and no policy primacy for working people and their families?.
But isn’t this welfare state illusion really funded by OECD exploitation of the rest of the world, by population increase, by passing-off environment catastrophe to future generations, and by mounting per capita debt (internal and external)? In other words, supported by contradictions that are not sustainable?
The argument about gay marriage being a slippery slope to path to other forms of marriage would carry more weight if it were taken to its logical conclusion. Polygamy is not the only other form of marriage. Less well known is polyandry. Perhaps these forms also deserve discussion if only to end the rorting of the system now where those in multiple partner marriages are able to claim family support payments for the second, third, fourth etc partner as single parents. The state subsidises those relationships and those making the decision to enter into these illegal arrangements are not forced to face the economic reality
of providing for their families.
I don’t see why gay people shouldn’t be allowed to marry if that is what they want. Personally I can’t understand why they would want to but have no objection if it is seen as confirming the relationship. I wonder why Julia Gillard would take the same viewpoint as it could confirm in people’s minds that she really isn’t to be trusted. Also as it is currently not a point of difference with the Liberal Party why would she create one.She has enough bad press as it is.
There’s nothing inherent about a multi-partner marriage that requires that there be only one of a particular gender. A marriage of three women; or one of two women and two men; are both possible, but neither would conventionally be described as either “polygamy” or “polyandry”. I think it’s more useful to talk of polyamorous marriage or group marriage.
Reacting to Heinlein, it might be worth considering the consequences of a marriage that never ends via the ongoing addition of new partners as old ones die. I think it would be unreasonable to require that a multiple marriage take place at one instant, as that would require dissolution and re-marriage every time the makeup of the marriage changed. The financial consequences would likely be more problematic than the legal ones.
IME children deal quite well with living in a household containing multiple adults. Even when those adults are in intimate relationships. This might even be the historical norm.
Ernestine, I do not understand you at #17. Lots of children live apart from both biological parents. I doubt they call the parents they live with Non-Bio-Mum or Non-Bio-Dad. You may (I am honestly unsure) be trying to construct some inherently and aprioristically beneficial relationship between biological parent and child, but the law does not recognise that in cases of adoption or abuse. I repeat, what is the benefit to the child of gay parents for the law to deny recognition to their parents’ relationship?
@Chris Warren
As I’m sure you’re aware, Thompson acknowledge his debt to PP McGuinness who took the identical line about the chattering classes and so on. You can find exactly the same stuff from Imre Saluszinsky, Keith Windschuttle and son
If you think that McGuinness was the last true representative of working class Labor, I guess I’m not going to be able to dissuade you.
weel.
all the to and fro about god and procreation and sexual mores to one side.
marraige is a contract recognising property and kinship status.
no?
when maiden auntie and unmarried uncle (so to speak)turn up their toes,their property is inherited by their family or according to their will.
if they are married their spouse is their inheritor.
the rellies don’t get a look in.
(unless they have been extemely nice)
@John Quiggin
Yes – the Rightwing and even One Nation, appear to agree with the Left on this issue, plus even the Catholic and DLP.
But, that does not make them the last true representative of the working class.
I would grab this little bit of unity, foster it and go with it. But not expect broader agreement or policy convergence.
mat
What you put forward is a common misconception but it simply ain’t true.
In some states the rellies can and do contest the will on the grounds that unmarried auntie’s 30 year relationship had no legal effect. Equally it can be the case that the rellies seize control not only of any property but even of the funeral itself. It is not completely unknown for the hospital or nursing home to take directions from the said rellies and exclude the surviving nonspouse. The experience with civil unions in other countries has not been happy and the civilly united are often treated as though the statutory provisions for their rights did not exist.
‘We’re married’ is easier for an institution to understand than ‘We’re civilly united’. Luckily there is not a third option of ‘We’re contractually united according to the privatised feudal marriage practices that existed before the Marriage Act 1753’.
That dangerous radical David Cameron recognised these problems with civil unions (which for greater clarity, I repeat do not exist in Australia) in his speech announcing his government will bring in a marriage equality bill. Oddly enough in France where the pacte de solidarité civile has given rise to an actual verb ‘se pacser’ the disparity between marriage and civil union is said to be much less.
Further to John Q @28, Scott and Thompson themselves are in no doubt about the extent of their disagreement with one another. Each is scathing and dismissive of the other’s work. I have also had a personal communication with Andrew Scott in which he explained the nature and extent of his disagreement with the Thompson/New City/Brompton Report perspective.
It is true that Scott and Thompson agree that the working class (called by whatever title) is a political subject and constituency that should be central to the Labor project – but the Communists (at least until the 1970s) and the Groupers also agreed on that point. The stubborn fact is that Scott and Thompson hold diametrically opposed views about what the interests and values of that class are, and about what policy directions Labor should pursue to retain/regain its support.
My last comment crossed with Chris Warren @30.
@Paul Norton
Yes – Scott and Thompson agree on the capture of the ALP argument but disagree on other issues. As I said earlier, Thompson misunderstands the relevance of economic rationalism (and underlying influences) as does most of the Right.
The communists and Groupers agreed on the point of recognising the primacy of labour politics. But for Communists it led to policy based on class struggle leading to socialism – for Groupers it led to policy based on class collaboration leading to welfare state capitalism.
Naturally capitalism was very grateful for the latter. The communists will probably be proved right – depending on whether the 100 trillion of dollars being invented today, plus an emergency Tobin-like tax, stabilises the global economy (I think not).
Thompson’s views should be criticised – but carefully. They cannot be associated with Gillard.
Alan, I don’t know how to respond to your post @27. I assume at least part of the difficulty is due to different approaches to try to make sense out of the ‘gay marriage’ debate.
For example, you say that children, who in law are children to non-biological parents (due to adoption), may not call their parents Non-bio-Dad and Non-bio-Mum. Based on my observations, I’d concur. But, I have also observed that children of biological parents who are married don’t call their parents ‘Dad’ and ‘Mum’ but call them by their first names. There are limits to the usefulness of trying to infer a concept, useful for any branch or organised knowledge in society, from the spoken word. The spoken word tends to be contextual.
You write: “I repeat, what is the benefit to the child of gay parents for the law to deny recognition to their parents’ relationship?” I don’t understand your sentence. But then I don’t believe in miraculous conception either.
Ernestine, you are not failing to understand. You are choosing an indirect rhetoric for denying the validity either of all parenting except by the biological parents or of all parenting by gay parents. Talk of miraculous conception is cute, but intellectually evasive.
Alan, good luck in your type of ‘intellectual’ life.
Fran Barlow @ #20 said:
Again, you are missing my point or don’t really care about points as such, just chanting ideological slogans. I am not against gay marriage, quite the opposite. The more likely gay men are to enter into legitimate marriage the less likely they will be to engage in promiscuous sodomy. It is society’s role to protect people from their more reckless impulses. I speak with feeling, having spent the better part of my life living off the Upper Esplanade, Oxford Street, Darlinghurst Rd and Campbell Parade .
What I object to is the ideological justification of gay marriage on egalitarian, rather than utilitarian, grounds. Gay marriage will avoid self- and social harm and perhaps glean of some benefits (tasteful gentrification, the patter of tiny IVF feet, the maintenance of long-term primary carer relationships etc).
More generally, this kind of ideological argument is an instance of “rationalism in politics”, pushing for political change using sloganeering based on abstract ideological principle, rather than rectifying an anomaly and/or patching up an institution fallen into disrepair or just plain old cost/benefit. And applying ideological principles to hard cases or far-out examples (such as gay marriage) is rationalism squared.
Slippery slopes do exist. We just spent the past generation sliding down one, with results that speak for themselves in certain unmentionable departments of culture. (Hint: Lady Chatterley’s Lover) Obviously the more arguments for a specific social policy change are based on grand ideological principle, the more likely that other less savoury social policy changes are to hitch their wagon to the purported juggernaut of History. ie slide down the slippery slope carved out by the ideologues.
Polygamy is a case in point. It is an evolutionary adaptation to extreme sexual dimorphism and/or grotesque sex ratio imbalances, favoured by reactionary Alpha-males. Polygamy is to sexual reproduction as plutocracy is to social production.
We already have de facto forms of polygamy where immigration scammers force foreign prostitutes in sex-slave trafficking. The de jure form will not be much better.
It is the product of an alien culture and should properly be the object of xenophobic scorn.
Fortunately the Catholic Church fought against both forms of Alpha-male uber-domination for more than a millennia. The anthropological equity of the monogamous family is the basis of an egalitarian society, not fatuous ideological sloganeering.
Thus it is not surprising that post-modern liberals are prepared to give polygamy a fair hearing or at least consider it. As usual their moral compass points them in exactly the wrong direction, “the great reversal” as Stove calls it.
Pr Q said:
Pr Q has empirically false views about the inverted politics of the Culture War. The reference to “aspirational bogan” social views “unchanged since the 1950s” is a straw-man version of a straw man.
Views on social issues are “positively” correlated with age: the older one is, generally speaking, the wiser. There are anomalies in this general rule. Some baby boomers have never grown up. And adolescents are surprisingly conservative on some social issues, perhaps because they have seen at first hand the result of parental indulgence with rampant liberalism. They also like the Queen who is obviously represents a kind of meta-Nanna harkening to a period when moral codes were more firmly enforced. The Ice Storm is the definitive text.
The psephological data verifies the reality of working class conservative populism. Invariably working class, less formally educated and poorer voters tend to have more conservative (less liberal) social views than owning class, higher-educated and richer voters. This goes for both aspects of the Culture War: multi-cultural diversity and sub-cultural perversity. I invite Pr Q to test this hypothesis by visiting any building site in Australia and airing his extreme cultural liberalism in the crib room, if he dares.
Thats why the political stereotypes of Doctor’s Wives (liberal upper class) and Working Class Battlers (conservative lower class) have more than a grain of truth. And of course liberals ad nauseum admonitions to stop “playing politics” with cultural issues, that is keep the working class from having its populist views represented by its democratic representatives, is a back-handed acknowledgement of this.
We saw a massive example of this in the Republican referendum, where the No vote was consistently stronger in the poorer electorates. But this same working class populism crops up in other Culture War issues, most obviously people-smuggling. Katharine Betts work, based on the Australian Electoral Study, investigating the Great Divide between the New Class cosmopolitan liberals and Old Class nativist conservatives, is pretty conclusive.
More generally, the relationship between social class and partisan alignment is a lot more complex than crude Marxists would have us think. For sure the upper-status tend to vote Right-wing and lower-status vote Left-wing. But there results are inverted when their is a disparity between education and remuneration. Upper-status education/lower-status remuneration generates far Left-liberal views ie indie luvvies. Whilst lower-status education/higher-status remuneration generates far-Right-conservative views ie cashed-up “bogans”.
Successful actor liberals (lower status education combined with upper status remuneration are a bizarre exception.
I don’t understand the irrational fear some people seem to have about polygamous marriage. Let’s look at the issues logically.
1. It’s a vanishingly small phenomenon even on a world wide basis.
2. Full emancipation and economic equality for women would make it even rarer.
3. “De-mythification” of the religions that support it would again make it even rarer.
4. More equity in economic outcomes would do the same thing.
5. Studies I have read would indicate it is scarcely workable and precious little fun for anyone unless there is considerable wealth invololved.
Jack S. says, “It is an evolutionary adaptation to extreme sexual dimorphism and/or grotesque sex ratio imbalances, favoured by reactionary Alpha-males. Polygamy is to sexual reproduction as plutocracy is to social production.” This sort of reasoning is barking up the wrong tree. Conflating biology and political economy sheds no light on the issue.
“According to Daly and Wilson, “The sexes differ more in human beings than in monogamous mammals, but much less than in extremely polygamous mammals.”[35] One proposed explanation is that human sexuality has developed more in common with its close relative the bonobo, who have similar sexual dimorphism and which are polygynandrous and use recreational sex to reinforce social bonds and reduce aggression.[36]” – Wikipedia.
Thus the biological data would suggest that the expression in human society (much monogamy, some polygamy, some polyandry and some polygynandrous behaviour) is in the range of what is to be expected when we take both biology and variance in enculturation into account.
The thing to remember is that humans are animals (and more particularly mammals) and there is nothing special about humans that sets them apart from all other animals in a general sense. In the particular sense, human intelligence and enculturation levels are remarkable but that’s about it.
“polygynandrous”
I learnt a new word today.
Jack S says;
“Views on social issues are “positively” correlated with age: the older one is, generally speaking, the wiser. There are anomalies in this general rule. Some baby boomers have never grown up.”
I suspect what Jack means is that other old conservatives generally agree with him so they are wiser just as he believes he is wiser. I can think of no other constuction for this assertion. So far as I know, it is true that people become more politically conservative as they grow older. Whether this equates to wisdom is debateable. It might also equate to ossification of views, entrenchment of prejudice and inability to perceive and learn new things. It certianly equates to self-interest as the successful or relatively susccesful seek to preserve the status quo favourable to them.
For my own part, I have no time for the Wayne Goss types who say “if you aren’t left when you are young you don’t have a heart and if you aren’t conservative when you are old you don’t have a brain.” Rather, I respect those thinkers who became more and more left as they grew older; thinkers like Milton and Tolstoy to name a couple. People whose intelligence and humanity is great enough to resist the all-too-common drift to conservative self-interest and heartless selfishness with age and to actively move the other way.
psephological
I learnt a new word today.
It seems pretty simple to me, if 2 people love each other and committ to respecting and honouring each other, if they agree and want to………get married, or live in sin, together as a couple, with all the full legal protections that legalised marriage brings.
PM Gillard in my mind at least, acts largely as Pr Q has described. How can she personally not realise that anybody with half a brain can simply see that legalising same sex marrige is just the right thing to do. She should care less if they are left, right, middle or armchaired and residing in Wanguri; just get on and take a clear principled stand on doing the right thing.
Does it mean the same thing as “promiscuous”?
The Wikipedia entry on polygynandry has “multiple issues” so it is probably not a good guide.
“Polygynandry occurs when two or more males have an exclusive relationship with two or more females. The numbers of males and females need not be equal, and in vertebrate species studied so far, the number of males is usually lower.” – Wikipedia.
Then the example on Bonobos would seem to contradict this definition.
“In bonobos society polygynandry is commonplace. Every female may be approached by and copulate with any male with the exception of her adult sons.”
BBC Nature online says,
“Polygynandrous describes a multi-male, multi-female polygamous mating system, such as that seen in lions and bonobos. Females are usually more numerous than the males and mating occurs only within the group. The advantage of this form of polygamy is greater genetic diversity, less need for males to compete with each other and greater protection for the young.”
This is a multi-mating system which is confined to the “pride”, “troop” or group and which has an evolutionary, survival, adaptationary “logic” to it. Thus it would not (in my opinion) equate to “promiscuous”. “Promiscuous” as a word for a mating sytem may be used with some precision or it may simply be used in common parlance as a moralistic statement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mating_system
When it comes to sexual behaviour (including homosexuality) it is best to be realistic rather than moralistic.
“Homosexual behavior in animals refers to the documented evidence of homosexual and bisexual behavior in non-human species. Such behaviors include sex, courtship, affection, pair bonding, and parenting among same sex animals. A 1999 review by researcher Bruce Bagemihl shows that homosexual behavior has been observed in close to 1,500 species, ranging from primates to gut worms, and is well documented for 500 of them.[1][2] Animal sexual behavior takes many different forms, even within the same species. The motivations for and implications of these behaviors have yet to be fully understood, since most species have yet to be fully studied.[3] According to Bagemihl, “the animal kingdom [does] it with much greater sexual diversity — including homosexual, bisexual and nonreproductive sex — than the scientific community and society at large have previously been willing to accept.”[4] “- Wikipedia.
Once again, there is nothing special about humans. Their range of behaviours simply mirrors much of the rest of the animal kingdom. Viewed in this light, these things are neither right nor wrong, they are simply empirical facts.
As (by my definition above) any animal behaviour is “simply a fact”, this raises issues for the development of a moral philosophy. After all, in this sense killing and violence are also just simply “facts”. Without getting too wordy, I think the moral line is that if (any) human behaviour is consenual and non-harming then it is morally acceptable. Of course, it would take a book length treatise to tease out this topic properly and a blog aint a book.
polyandry……one wife has multiple husbands.
polygamy……one husband has multiple wives.
monogamy….one wife has one husband who has one wife.
the last (imo) is the easiest on the nerves as far as family negotiations and inheritance issues are concerned.
it’s hard enough already with children who are adept at playing one parent off against the other,without introducing multiple mums or dads into the equation.
ant that doesn’t even include the in-laws.
heh.
@may
You left out one option;
“Never marry my friend…”, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky to his friend Pierre Bezukhov.
The full quote (though I am not sure without checking if this quote is from the novel War and Peace or a somewhat amended speech from the BBC series);
“Never, never marry, my friend. That’s my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot…”
@Tolstoy
Admirable as Prince Andrei’s sentiments may or not be, neither Tolstoy nor his character advocate blanket legislation, as opposed to personal choice. In any case, Prince Andrei later grows up and marries, as does Pierre.
The interesting question, accepting the analysis, is: Who is there to replace Julia Gillard?
In the spirit of the times, I would like to take the opportunity to make the off Broadway comment, in relation to Ikonoclast’s observation that Milton and Tolstoy are a couple. I have no objection to their marriage. As it is in Heaven, right!
Does this thread intend to get any sillier?