Iowa Supreme Court Unanimously Strikes Down Gay Marriage Ban

I guess this comment belongs here instead. Iowa hasn't thought this through apparently. Are they going to see a ballot initiative where voters stand off with judiciary over the matter of having a norm to shoot for? We need to think rationally, on both sides of this issue, utilizing science to understand human sexuality in order to
1. Understand that sexual preference is fixated and cannot be changed and therefore compassion should be shown in compensatory legislation for deviants and
2. That sexual preference is learned around adolescence by classical conditioning as well as social influences and therefore measures should be taken to protect (or affect, depending on your agenda) future generations from an increase in the deviant-sexual population.

Social conservatives are continuing to fight this issue because we realize that sexuality is learned around the first few orgasms with classical conditioning. And that this conditioning is influenced by contemporary social mores. There is an excellent study done that illustrates that here: http://www-psychology.concordia.ca/fac/pfaus/Pf...

Also there is an entire industry, the artificial insemination industry in agriculture that recognizes, indeed banks on the fact that as mammals mature around puberty their sexual preference can be easily trained to same-sexed animals or inanimate objects. And once this association is made with orgasm, the animal will often only prefer that stimuli to acheive climax from then on, even when before training it preferred the opposite gender.

Human behavioralists may refuse to look at this longstanding industry's findings in favor of political correctness, but that doesn't lessen truth's impact on human society. If you accept that sexual preference is fixated around puberty, and that social mores at the time can affect partner selection, you have to accept that normalizing homosexuality or other deviant sexuality via society's stamp of "marriage", will set up conditions for increases in the homosexual population of humans over time. For some this isn't a problem at all. In the majority of the voting public, this is a problem. We are a democracy and hence the reason I said, "The People have spoken". For indeed they have in CA at least and should have a chance to do so across the nation on the matter.

All that aside there then is the sticky wicket of setting precident for polygamy; which is a reality once deviants acheive the stamp of "normalcy" [in marriage] via "love" between adults being the qualifier. The number "two" will cease to have meaning then and will be arbitrary, just as deviants are arguing at this very moment that the word "marriage" is arbitrary and therefore every adult "pair" who wants it should have it.

"marriage" really has no meaning other than a goal for society to shoot for. Of course there will always be exceptions and we should show compassion to those fixated in puberty towards deviant sexuality...because after that crucial period, evidence shows they really do not have a choice. But to set those deviations as normal sets up a whole host of social problems outlined above and the word "normal" ceases to have meaning.

There are many other ripples in the pond normalizing deviant sexuality will cause. What will we tell our youth is "normal bodily function" when it comes to gross exceptions in the reproductive organs? Will it be OK to smoke? Any teenager worth his rebellious salt will see the flaw in an argument that says "misusing the body's normal functions to acheive momentary pleasure like smoking does is wrong". Get it? If you dont' get it, you shouldn't be weighing in on the matter.

It's helpful to understand that humans are primates, that we are malleable learners and our fixations are postponed until adolescence is done. Any undue influence, like normalized deviant sexuality, on fledgling adolesecents has no other predicted outcome but an increase in the deviant sexual population. If the majority of People are OK with that then fine. If not, we should preserve the conservative description of marriage as the goal to shoot for.

"sexuality is learned around the first few orgasms with classical conditioning"

Good thing that this isn't actually the case, or we'd have been doomed a long time ago as pretty much every single man would be unable to be attracted to anyone but himself. Also, I know you're the expert of gaydom, but you do know that the stereotype that many gay men (and women with guys too, but to a lesser extent, especially because of the higher prevalence of bisexuality) tried to be with women first is dead on, right?

Also I'm not sure that pointing out humans are primates helps your cause. All other primates are either "polygamous" with dominant males having harems, or else "polyamorous" with no attention paid to gender or relationship hierarchies at all. So pretty much the old school Mormons/Biblical Kings/Caliphate rulers along with the Free Love movement were the closest to reflecting our primate heritage.

Now if we were all descendants of swans or a variety of other bird species, then that idea of marriage as being "natural" would be more appropriate...well except for the fact that birds have some of the highest rates of homosexual behavior in general and same-sex pair bonding in particular.

Fortunately though we're humans, which means that not only can all our behavior only be explained in terms of instinct, but that we recognize things like fundamental rights. And really, I have no idea how anyone can think it's not a fundamental human right to have the legal protections necessary to be with the love of your life.

mikkel -- Thanks for tackling that big block of crazy by Silhouette! Too much effort for me. My favorite bit of cookoo is the whole teens-will-want-to-smoke-if-gays-can-marry argument.

Anyway, yay Iowa! (I get more and more embarrassed of my state, California...)

Yeah, human behavior is overrated. We all are in such command of our primal urges and any one of us at any time can overcome conditioned-learning. We're so powerful in that way!

Who cares about a little scientific study that proves otherwise, or an industry that relies on learned sexual-preference or the ability to teach deviations? We have political-correctness to get us through any controversial situation.

I'm so glad we understand our sexual natures so very very well!

A great ruling, I had planned to post on it but am more than happy to join David in praising it.

I will possibly post a quasi legal analysis once I finish reading it.

Though I do find it amazing how these rulings give us a peek into the homophobia and hate that tends to bubble up in response.

"Yeah human behavior is overrated". Huh? Evidently you are the queen (king?) of the behavior of everyone else, and everyone's behavior is exactly like yours. "Who cares about a little scientific study..." NOT ME!!! Sorry to break it to you, but I don't care what your study says, to the point of not even bothering to read it -- the lived experiences of actual gay people matter more to me than whatever it says.

Also, whether being gay is a choice, or a learned behavior, or genetically predisposed, or coming from whatever scientifically proven source you can come up with -- I don't really think that has anything to do with this discussion. There's nothing that says that if it's a choice, gay people shouldn't have rights, and if it's not, then they should. We know darn well that religion is a choice, yet we cannot discriminate because of religion.

And really, I have no idea how anyone can think it's not a fundamental human right to have the legal protections necessary to be with the love of your life.


Since the secular idea of marriage is no longer the same as the religious one, I agree that the legal protections should be the same for hetero and homosexual couples. Marriage used to be legally protected because it was closely associated with procreation, but now that's really not so, and thus there's really no basis for giving legal rights to one group but not the other. That's why to me it makes the most sense to get the state out of the marriage business altogether and call all civil marriages what they really are (civil unions) and open them up to both sorts of couples.

I guess I'll be the first here to ask though about the slippery slope. I'm not going to bring up nonsense like bestiality, but what about polygamy? It seems like sexual mores are changing rapidly enough that non-monogamous sexual relationships aren't stigmatized much anymore, so what would be the legal basis of denying a contractual union between more than two parties? Or, if someone wants to defend polygamous unions, make your case and explain how to handle the complexities of property rights, inheritance, 'next of kin', etc.

I skimmed most of it and well...

It was many pages talking about how animals develop sexual responses. Even discounting the differences in people (no estrus cycle, limited role of pheremones, more social behavior, etc. Trying to say what humans are like based on animal behavior never works completely anyway) I couldn't find any mention of same-sex behavior. Not one. So somehow you took an entire paper where the focus was on how a few animals find mates (with a few hypotheses about trying to optimize both genetic variance and successful breeding strategies) and came out with "you turn gay through imprinting."

The only parts it said about humans were two fold: one saying that paraphilias may be related to imprinting and trauma -- which btw all psychologists have long thought and there are some people that have pathological fixations on reliving trauma scenarios, including yes, some people that seek same sex situations...of course there are also those that abuse opposite sex people for the same reason -- and the conclusion "By not having to vie for a few partners that possess a narrow range of desired features, human sexual behavior is free to vary, with humans free to discover their own optimal modes of sexual attraction and expression."

So yes, I think I will not accept that a little scientific "study" (actually review paper) that was about how animals select mates based on chemical and physical features to prevent inbreeding but maintain social group cohesion "proves" that gays are gay because of classical conditioning. Because that's actually science!

Also what is science is all the studies showing that there are scent differences between straights and gays (for both men and women) and there are brain feature differences, and correlation between birth order and sexual preference, and several other markers. None of that is explained by classical conditioning.

CS, I appreciate your sentiments in this. I think you hit upon the crux of the issue, property rights.

All the other issues fall by the wayside, social norms change and with them, what is acceptable. Polygamy certainly makes a more complex discussion of who owns what, but only if the union is dissolved. Is anyone out there really against one or ten wives showing up at the emergency room to see to a loved one's health? Can't a wage earner list any number of "dependents" under his health care plan without everyone's morals getting bent out of shape?

What two or more adults do behind closed doors is nobody's business. It's time to bring real world relationships into the legal sunlight. It should be self-evident that those who choose "abnormal" relationships are no different than any of our more mundane unions. Property rights and access to love ones when they need us most is the only moral issue to be considered.

CS, I for one think that benefits should move to a "needs based" test. I don't see why taxes for married people are different than for non married people, etc. If people have children, then I'm all for extra benefits and legalese, but that's because a kid is involved.

Let's say that they do go to the civil union model, how do you treat the legal stuff you bring up? I think that there should be a lot more options afforded to everyone to set those up and have them be more respected. That is really what this comes down to, is that our inheritance laws etc. are built on an idealized and largely obsolete social structure (it should be noted that those laws didn't even really affect most people until the last hundred years or so because most people had so little property that it didn't matter).

So I think that civil unions should merely afford a default legal arrangement. If people want to change it, or don't ever enter a union, or enter a non-monogamous union then those should be respected from a legal perspective once they have set it up. I mean that's how (in theory) wills already work, so I'm not sure what the big deal is.

One thing that bothers me just as much as not allowing gay marriage is the lack of legal respect for people that aren't in marriages in general. For people that aren't married (or are a widower), it can be very frustrating and scary if something happens and there is no one with the magical "family" tag around. When I had appendicitis I was lucky that a) my hospital was rather laid back and b) that I knew several doctors that worked there. If it was like some of the stories I've heard and I wasn't allowed to have had my roommate be there, not only would I have been lonely (god forbid if there had been a life threatening complication and I would have had to worry about not seeing any familiar faces) but also communication with other people in my life would have been really hard.

Similarly I read this tale from a woman who said that she met the love of her life but they never got married, and when he had cancer she found it nearly impossible to get in to see him or take care of his legal arrangements as they would only interact with his ex-wife with whom he had a huge falling out with...even though he had designated her as his beneficiary and everything!

So from a legal perspective, if people don't a have partner (or have one but would like a different person to handle it...I mean I've had several friends tell me that they would designate me to handle their stuff because they would trust me and wouldn't want to add the extra burden to their spouses) or have 5 partners and want to set up one or more people that will be their representative in whatever way, that should be respected and it should be way easier than it is now. I don't see why it should matter if they are officially romantically involved.

So from a legal perspective, if people don't a have partner and want to set up one or more people that will be their representative in whatever way, that should be respected and it should be way easier than it is now. I don't see why it should matter if they are officially romantically involved.


I completely agree, in fact it seems very wrong to me for the government to be involved at all in sanctioning certain kinds of romantic relationships but not others. And yet I can see potential problems with having a 'default' agreement because those who don't fall under that category could also claim that they're discriminated against if their contract is more difficult to set up than is the standard model, no? I mean, that's not much different from how it is now, because I don't think there's anything legally stopping gay couples from setting up contracts that outine their wishes on inheritance (wills) and setting up medical wills which designate who can visit, who gets to make decisions if one is incapacitated, etc. And so, why is it that equal protection is still seen as being denied since those gay couples don't have access to the standard model contract we call a marriage?

I mean, as far as taxes, you actually get penalized for being married, so I don't see what the big deal is, really. Get a lawyer and draw up the paperwork you need to get the same protection of legal rights. Is there something I'm missing?

(As an aside, I agree with you on the tax situation regarding kids- in fact I think the deductions should be a lot higher for kids instead of paying higher taxes and then having people of lower income have to get EITC or SCHIP insurance or what have you- just make the exemptions high enough to actually reflect the costs of caring for kids because that's a responsibility that parents bear so that society won't have to.)

Polygamy certainly makes a more complex discussion of who owns what, but only if the union is dissolved. Is anyone out there really against one or ten wives showing up at the emergency room to see to a loved one's health? Can't a wage earner list any number of "dependents" under his health care plan without everyone's morals getting bent out of shape?

I think it would be very problematic in terms of visitation, since hospitals wouldn't necessarily be able to accomodate the larger numbers of visitors when there's a serious health crisis, so who decides who is 'spouse #1" or whatever?

And in terms of health care plan dependents- I don't know, it seems that between multiple spouses and the potential for very large numbers of children, the person's income might not support the number of dependents claimed so who would decide where to cut that off? I realize that even monogamous couples sometimes have large numbers of children, but there's a biological constraint on that so that it doesn't happen very often and thus doesn't strain the system overall.

Regarding dissolution- all of these contracts have to be dissolvable in a fairly straightforward manner since divorce is now so common. And then there's the disposition of property after death as well.

While there is technically nothing stopping people from setting up all that legalese, it is highly dependent on jurisdiction. I've read examples of couples that spent thousands of dollars setting up wills, power of atty, etc and then finding out when they moved (or even on vacation!) that none of it was enforceable. Similarly, once things go from theory into practice, they can quickly fall apart as there is so much legacy law written for blood relatives. Countless lawsuits over wills come to mind.

Also, those things don't apply to tons of tax code, property and benefits laws. Oh, and the biggest one of all is immigration.

I've read examples of couples that spent thousands of dollars setting up wills, power of atty, etc and then finding out when they moved (or even on vacation!) that none of it was enforceable. Similarly, once things go from theory into practice, they can quickly fall apart as there is so much legacy law written for blood relatives. Countless lawsuits over wills come to mind.

Well, that seems odd and that seems to be where the focus should be, on fixing the jurisdictional problems of contracts such as those.

I do seem to recall that my parents had to change their wills in light of LA law being much different than the rest of the states for marriage and inheritance- something about their state laws being based on Napoleonic Code. So it seems like there might even be common ground between proponents of traditional marriage, and those seeking less conventional arrangements, in fixing some of the legal interstate snafus.

Good thing that this isn't actually the case, or we'd have been doomed a long time ago as pretty much every single man would be unable to be attracted to anyone but himself.

This is funny. :-)

I laughed.

In fact, I guffawed. :-)

Social conservatives are continuing to fight this issue because we realize that sexuality is learned around the first few orgasms with classical conditioning.

This is such baloney. First of all, a person's sense of sexual attraction starts way before adolescence. It's not thought of in sexual terms, but you know you are drawn to the opposite sex or to the same sex in a way that is different and special, even though you may not be able to articulate what that means. It's difficult to describe such an inchoate feeling in words -- and heterosexual people, like me, really never have to try. But, for example, one gay man I worked with many years ago and was friendly with at the time told me that he knew there was a difference in the way he felt about males as opposed to the way he felt about females from almost his earliest memories. He said, from around age 4. That doesn't mean he was "sexually" attracted to men, or to anyone, at that age. He didn't understand what it meant. It just felt different. Like I said, it's hard to put into words, but I certainly know that I felt emotionally drawn to men -- even though I also obviously had girls and women in my life that I loved -- long, long before I even knew the word "orgasm" much less had experienced one.

Also, how does your argument about protecting children and adolescents from being "influenced" by "sexual deviants" stand up to the fact that homosexuality exists in every socioeconomic and political grouping? Dick Cheney has two daughters, one is straight and one is gay. Did he expose his gay daughter to "sexual deviants" but not his straight daughter? Phyllis Schlafly has a gay son. Candace Gingrich -- Newt Gingrich's sister -- is gay. Alan Keyes's daughter is gay (and he disowned her for it when she came out -- lovely parent there, eh?). I think one of Barry Goldwater's children is gay. I have no doubt there are many others I just don't know about. And so you're saying all these *extremely* right-wing and in some cases homophobic parents exposed their children to "sexual deviants" and helped to "make" their children homosexual?

I thought Mikkel's comment was really funny too.

And I think that the refutation of the study Sil presented is correct, although I wouldn't be so dismissive of the general idea that conditioning is PART of it all. It's just that it's much more complex than that.

One reason the 'choice' thing comes into play is that some gay activist groups have compared their struggle to that of blacks- and there is a slight distinction in that homosexuality isn't by default a condition of one's identity by birth- and the science isn't completely settled on that.

But as someone else in this thread noted- whether or not its a choice really isn't relevant to civil rights and equal protection under the law.

I think that Kathy's last paragraph is true, but then again, I don't think that those who argue that homosexuality is a choice are necessarily saying that parents expose their kids- it's the culture at large that does that. And on that point, I think it's correct to say that our parents are certainly not necessarily the greatest environmental factor in our sexual development- in fact it's often quite the opposite, that sexual identities develop during the period of adolescent rebellion.

So, I just wanted to interject that point because although I don't agree with Silhouette's assertions, I think to some extent Kathy's arguments against them aren't the right ones to refute the general point.

CStan: Have you seen the Beyond Marriage manifesto (I also commented on it here)? The basics of it are that already, we have many types of relationships that we intensely value and might want to link into social and governmental recognition of support that fall outside of 1/1 heterosexual marriage (gay marriage, children caring for aging parents, two elderly persons who want "companionship", mixed and blended families). So the argument is that, instead of trying to expand marriage, we should try and expand the types of relationships which can gain access to social approval and benefits.

I think I saw that a while back but had forgotten about it, David- thanks for bringing it up. I agree, and again, I think that finding common ground with traditionalists and religious conservatives, based on the need for legal constructs for all kinds of relationships, would better serve the interests of gay union activists.