Foolish HR.Follow

The irony here is that it was the creation of state marriage statuses, and benefits, which required state issued licenses to qualify for them, which created the problem you're talking about. In the absence of such government meddling, anyone would be free to marry anyone without restriction. But by providing us with benefits, and then attaching strings to them, the government can exert control over us.

If there's one thing I've been extremely consistent about with regard to the SSM issue it's my opinion that legal marriage statuses exist not as a benefit, but as a means of control. The benefits they grant are not the end goal of marriage from the state's perspective, but the leverage used to impose that control. Enter into this defined legally binding status, and you get this set of benefits. That's about control. Which is why I've always found the whole SSM fight absurdly funny. So, right now you're free to enter into any type of relationship you want, and no one in the government is pressuring you, or trying to use incentives to get you to do what they want you to do, and you're going to fight hard for the "right" to lose that freedom and enter the ranks of those who's relationships are controlled? Ok... Good job not grasping the concept of "freedom".

Government cheese always comes with strings attached. Always.

Edited, Jun 21st 2016 6:25pm by gbaji

The real irony is that I've suggested getting rid of all the benefits and you've thrown a temper tantrum against the idea. Also ironic in that it's religion that's exerting control over this, not "government." The only consistency to your arguments has been that you're singularly against SSM.

But you still have that "freedom". If you don't care about government sanction and want to use some "We're deciding that we're married" definition then, right now, you can do that. I can do it. Same-sex couples can do it. I can do it with a tree. I can do it with a cat or a car or my family members. There is literally nothing taking away the same "freedom" you had to say "I'm married!" (and having no one take you seriously) that you had a year or a decade or a century ago. Even legally, it's not an issue for you and some random yahoo to just say you're married to one another unless you're trying to defraud someone by collecting some sort of benefit without being legally wed.

So how did anyone lose freedom?

And I've answered this question many times as well. Because providing benefits to "people who are raising children" will encourage single motherhood rather than discouraging it. Providing benefits to "people who get married", then more people get married. Thus increasing the odds that out of that set, if any of them produce children, those children will be born to a married couple. The objective here is to minimize the amount of public cost while maximizing the social results. By far the best outcomes both socially and economically occur when children are born to a couple who are married at the time of birth. Ergo, by incentivizing people to marry, we incentivize that outcome, and at far less cost than paying for the cost of children born to unwed mothers after the fact.

You consistently fail to understand how opportunity costs work and how they influence people's decisions. The mere existence of a benefit provided for a given status will influence people's decisions with regard to attempting to qualify for that status. So the fact that a SS couple can now qualify for state benefits if they enter into a state issued marriage contract will increase their odds of making that choice rather than some other one they might have otherwise made.

Your argument is like saying that just because the ball park hands you a free hot dog voucher as part of the price of your ticket doesn't mean you have to eat a hot dog while there. Sure. Technically true, but most people will realize that the cost of the ticket includes that "free" hot dog, right? And will thus conclude that they're missing out if the don't take advantage of it. Or they might realize that in order for the park to provide free hot dogs to everyone who enters, they'll have to charge more for other food items to make up the difference. Which makes your decision to toss the voucher in the trash and go pay full price for a hoagie a bit tougher to make.

Or, just to include some cross thread shenanigans, if a school offers free food, but it comes with a tiny portion of stuff you want, and a huge helping of limp carrot sticks and tofu, even though you'd really really rather buy a cheeseburger and fries, you have to weigh the fact that your tuition/taxes/whatever already paid for the "free" food, and that the cost of the other stuff you want may be higher as a cost offset, when making a choice for lunch. Which is precisely the point of these sorts of things. The government's objective here isn't to provide you with free stuff, but to use the free stuff as a means of influencing your decisions. In the case of marriage benefits, it's about influencing your relationship decisions. In the case of free lunch programs, its about controlling what the kids eat. In the case of affirmative action biases in college admissions, it's about affecting the ratio of students of different races to one that those running the programs think is more appropriate. It's *always* about control though. Always.

I think this is just one of those things I find most strange about the liberal mindset. You guys seem to actually honestly believe that the government's interest in these things is to make your lives better. But that's not true at all. They want to make your lives be the way they think your life should be. Period. They think they know better than you what relationships you should have, what foods you should eat, what kind of transportation you should use, what kind of leisure activities you should engage in, etc. The "government" doesn't care about you. It really doesn't. Not as an individual, at least. It does care that you do things that it wants you to do, and that you don't do things it doesn't want you to do. That is the nature of governing.

Shocking to me that more people don't realize this.

Edited, Jun 22nd 2016 6:36pm by gbaji

But they don't have to, right? They do, in fact, have the exact same ability to just say "Tra-la-la! We're MARRIED!" as they did a couple years ago? And, since they were already being burdened with whatever minor contributions they made towards other people's state benefits, they haven't lost anything there either.

A year ago, they paid the same ticket price but got zero hot dog vouchers while the guy in front of them got one for wearing the right color shirt.

So, if anything, they actually have MORE options now? Huh. Fascinating. Tell me more about how this means they're being oppressed by the state...

The mere existence of an alternative which provides them benefits which their other choices do not will influence their choice though.



He had to wear a specific color shirt though, right? A color that they could have chosen to wear, but they hate that color (let's say red). Now, the ballpark is saying that people who wear green shirts can get the free hot dog to. Of course, "they" previously were free to wear green, or yellow, or orange,or even a whole rainbow of colors if they wanted. But green is a color they are ok with, so they're at least willing to wear it to get a free hot dog. Surely you can see how this will reduce the likelihood of that person wearing any other colors though, which they previously might have worn.



No. You actually have fewer. You now have to wear a green shirt to get the free hot dog. Previously, since you hated red and would not wear it, the issue of the free hot dog didn't affect your shirt color choice. Now, by expanding the free hot dog to people wearing green shirts, it does. I mean you could still choose not to wear green, but now the opportunity cost is such that you probably will. The value of the free hot dog was not previously sufficient to make you wear the hated color red versus any of a rainbow of other colors you like. But since you like all the other colors equally well, the value of a hot dog for wearing green absolutely will influence your choice.


Ok. Not remotely a prefect analogy, but hopefully sufficient to make the point. A gay person was previously "free" to choose to enter into any of an nearly infinite variety of relationships, with any level of legal contract he/she wanted. Because, assuming that person would never choose to marry someone of the same sex, the issue of marriage benefits didn't affect their choice of relationship type. Now that they've been granted the benefits of marriage, but only if they enter into a specifically defined relationship, with a specific set of contractual obligations, property sharing, power sharing, responsibility sharing, etc, the existence of that status now influences their choices. It will compel them to enter into just that sort of relationship, with that exact contract. Which may or may not be what they want.

Sure. They can choose not to marry, but so could many heterosexuals too (like myself). But just as hetero partnerships, upon reaching a certain level of relationship tend to naturally gravitate towards legally defined marriages as "that next step", so now will gay couples. Because they're going to feel like that's what they're supposed to do. They'll feel pressure to "tie the knot" by their friends. Just as opposite sex couples have for a long time. The difference is that there's no actual social need for them to do so. It's completely artificial. They could have "tied the knot" by entering into whatever social/legal arrangement they wanted before, but now to "tie the knot" means "enter into a legally defined state licensed marriage".

So yeah, that's a reduction of freedom, not a gain.

Edited, Jun 22nd 2016 7:30pm by gbaji

You calling it "Name-calling" does not make it any less true, Banky.

Doesn't make it true either. What it does do, is make it meaningless. If you have an actual point to make, then make it. But so far, all I've seen you do is do very poorly at playing word games. You basically just repeated what I said, just with slightly different wording, and are trying to insist they're completely different. OMG! Last week you said that the sun was hot, and today you said it has a high temperature. That's totally contradictory. You're a lying liar!!!

Seriously. That's how dumb your argument sounds to me.

It's entirely possible. But then your definition is saying that homosexuals were better off when they were denied the ability to legally marry and compares being a homosexual to not wanting to wear a green shirt so... I guess I'm okay with that?

Using this logic, why didn't all them folks that wanted to get Ghey Married just marry like straight folks did, and get all of that sweet sweet government cheese? I mean, surely they could see that the "Choice" they wanted to make didn't have a benefit!