ICB, argue the point which is gay marriage and how it affects society. Fact that as soon as gay marriages were legalised out-of-wedlock births increased from 11% to 31% is not disposable. You can argue all you want about your stats and stuff, but it doesnt change a tada. Moral decline is not like economy, jobs, etc. Moral decline is strongly tied to psychology. Human mind is a very complex mechanism, and you never know how it's going to react to certain changes - like legal gay marriages. Try using logic, Blue. It does connect the two things, and often it connects things much more complicated than this.
Correlation doesnt have to mean causation. But most of the times, it does.
The arguemtn ICB was makign was that if you are going to use statistics, you have to know something about how they were collected and how to interpret, otherwise they are just numbers.
Point being, divorce rates, illegitimate births, legalized gay marriage etc. are related somehow, but more research must be done to see what causes the other.
I personally think legalized homosexual marriage is a symptom of moral decline, not a cause of it.
I think this post is under the wrong subheading, "Civil Rights." It should be called "special rights for homosexuals." or "Pro family legislation."
No one is debating whether or not homosexuals shouldn't have the same civil rights as anyone else. Yes, they deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They shouldnt be fired from their jobs, etc.
But to demand the states legitimize their homosexual coupling is another story.
The reason why they are so frightened of the FMA is because they know that if the Congress passed this, and the people of each state had the opportunity to vote on it, the FMA would win and their attempt at legitimate marriage would end.
Again, homosexuals cry "They hate us", whenever someone doesnt condone their sin.
The arguemtn ICB was makign was that if you are going to use statistics, you have to know something about how they were collected and how to interpret, otherwise they are just numbers.
Point being, divorce rates, illegitimate births, legalized gay marriage etc. are related somehow, but more research must be done to see what causes the other.
Yes, but i tend to believe that all that is related and the stats we are talking about should be an alarm for other countries.
I personally think legalized homosexual marriage is a symptom of moral decline, not a cause of it.
The issue itself is a symptom, but the legalisation is more of an another level, or moral barrier, mankind broke in it's desire for changes, IMO.
MrJukoVette said this in post #46 :
ICB, argue the point which is gay marriage and how it affects society. Fact that as soon as gay marriages were legalised out-of-wedlock births increased from 11% to 31% is not disposable. You can argue all you want about your stats and stuff, but it doesnt change a tada. Moral decline is not like economy, jobs, etc. Moral decline is strongly tied to psychology. Human mind is a very complex mechanism, and you never know how it's going to react to certain changes - like legal gay marriages. Try using logic, Blue. It does connect the two things, and often it connects things much more complicated than this.
Correlation doesnt have to mean causation. But most of the times, it does.
quote:
MrJukoVette said this in post #49 : Dekka00 said this in post #47 :
The argument ICB was making was that if you are going to use statistics, you have to know something about how they were collected and how to interpret, otherwise they are just numbers.
Point being, divorce rates, illegitimate births, legalized gay marriage etc. are related somehow, but more research must be done to see what causes the other.
Yes, but i tend to believe that all that is related and the stats we are talking about should be an alarm for other countries.
I personally think legalized homosexual marriage is a symptom of moral decline, not a cause of it.
The issue itself is a symptom, but the legalisation is more of an another level, or moral barrier, mankind broke in it's desire for changes, IMO.
MrJukoVette, before I can address any other aspect of the gay marriage issue, I must finish the discussion of this particular point. Your usage of statistics is incorrect as is your statement:
"Correlation doesn't have to mean causation. But most of the times, it does."
No, the statement is completely incorrect. As stated repeatedly, there is always a chance of a lurking variable, and this variable can be the reason for the correlation, thus the assumption that one causes the other is incorrect. In addition, you could correlate many other variables against out-of-wedlock births and most of those correlations would not mean causation. Thus, the idea that, "most of the time it does," with regard to correlation means causation is incorrect. Look at the example given from the Intro Stats text.
You had three comparisons that showed a correlation for increased life expectancy: doctors per person, TVs per person, and standard of living. Only one of the variables chosen dealt with health (i.e. doctors per person). Life expectancy is a health related variable too. TVs per person and standard of living, which is defined as the level of material well-being of an individual or group, are not health related variables. The immediate conclusion that was made is that the number of doctors/person increased the life expectancy; I could easily come to this logical conclusion. First, they're both variables related to health. In addition, I can easily assume that life expectancy will increase by adding more doctors because the more doctors/patient, the better the individual care, and the higher the resultant life expectancy can be. But what's wrong with this assumption?
Does life expectancy have anything to do with the number of doctors alone? Doesn't technology play a great role in the ability to fight and cure disease? The number of televisions could fit this bill; more TVs, more technology, higher life expectancies. Again what is wrong with this assumption? The problem with the assumption is that the amount of TVs/person and doctors/person has a great relation to the standard of living, this is a variable not related to health, it is related to material wealth. However, the amount of material wealth most likely is the driving force behind the longer life expectancies.
More material wealth could buy and fund technologies for medicine, and as a rich country, result in the increased number of TVs in a household. Likewise, the technology and wealth could allow for the building of facilities to teach doctors, thus giving rise to doctors with sufficient background knowledge to help more people. The country with the lower standard of living may not be able to fund enough medical schools and hospitals, so the number of doctors they output won't mean longer lives for people. And as a poorer country, you would see less people with multiple TVs. This poor country could have the highest doctor/person variable in the world, and still have the lowest life expectancy. Why? The lurking variable.
I have laid out the reason why you can't say the variables chosen can just logically lead to the conclusion. I just wrote out two logical conclusions using the data of correlation, one using only the health variable, the other using the non-health variable. You would probably agree that the second explanation is better than the case with just doctors. Is my reasoning correct all of a sudden? No. I have to prove my logic so that I can say that a higher standard of living contributes to (not necessarily causes) a longer life expectancy. I need to provide more studies, comparative variables, surveys, etc. before my "logical conclusion" can even be considered as a worthwhile conclusion.
But this brings me to another problem in your analysis, your conclusion that gay marriage causes more out-of-wedlock births. This conclusion can't be made even if it is logical (I don't consider the conclusion logical at all in my opinion). I went and looked back at the article again, and I was incorrect in the correlation. Stanley Kurtz, seems to point to the idea that out-of-wedlock births is related to cohabitation, and that cohabitation is related to the passage of gay marriage. The problem is Kurtz gives no reason for anyone to make the connection between cohabitation and gay marriage besides the fact that he believes the practices are immoral. He doesn't even give the data for the "increasing" cohabitation numbers (or are they rates?) that he claims.
quote:
Stanley Kurtz wrote in No Explanation: Gay Marriage has sent the Netherlands the way of Scandinavia:
Advocacy of same-sex marriage encouraged erstwhile Dutch traditionalists to reconsider the idea that marriage has anything intrinsic to do with raising children. Not surprisingly, this "family diversity" ideal took hold. Dutch parents have begun to cohabit in ever-increasing numbers, leading to a dramatic rise in out-of-wedlock births. Since cohabiting parents break up at two to three times the rate of married parents, we can expect a significant increase in children living with solo mothers in fatherless homes.
Notice the omission of numbers and sources regarding the break up of couples that cohabited. What is a cohabited parent? That's a vague statement. Are cohabited parents a couple that had children together, or can I include a couple with children from a previous relationship? But I'm not really going to knock this statement. I will knock the fact that he gave absolutely no data for the rate or numbers for cohabitation before and after the passage of gay marriage. He just said "ever-increasing," why leave the variable you're using so open to a lurking variable? Because it seems he just wants to prove his point, not analyze the statistics.
You cannot accept his variable as a reason to think gay marriage has even caused out-of-wedlock births to increase. If the rate of cohabitation was increasing at a steady rate before and after the passage of gay marriage, then you can't come to the conclusion that one effects the other because there is no relation between the two events using statistics. All we got was an "ever-increasing number." If the rate remained the same, the numbers would still be ever-increasing. If the rate was increasing significantly, then the number would still be ever-increasing.
All that you can conclude about the rate of out-of-wedlock births is that it is statistically significant. You want to start figuring out the reason why this rate is so high now. Right? Kurtz indicated that cohabitation may play a role in these rates. But is gay marriage the only conclusion that can be drawn as a cause? Absolutely not. If there was a boom in teen pregnancy, the out-of-wedlock births would increase dramatically and this would have nothing to do with cohabitation (you could probably make some other connection to this variable, but it wouldn't be an adult male and female that just choose to live together that have kids). Maybe there was a change in the approach to sex education. They used to hand out condoms regularly, now they don't thus the teen pregnancy rate rises because young people are too embarassed to buy condoms in the store. A logical conclusion? Yes. But I have to prove that conclusion by providing supporting statistics and studies. I can't just make the conclusion (remember it is logical) and base the connection on morals.
Kurtz just comes to a conclusion on the reason for cohabitation. He uses this one assumption without giving a reason to why this should even be the primary assumption. He just states an assumption, and we as the reader should accept it. You can't do that if you're going to provide an analysis of statistics.
The number of out-of-wedlock births (or is this rate?) went up from 11% to 31%. What was the rate of change in this time? What was the rate of change before the passage of gay marriage? The number of out-of-wedlock births was said to be low. So by the percentage, I assume he means raw number (again, does he mean rates?). But using the percentage of a dataset alone tells us nothing. I don't know the full details of this study (references would be nice), but using data that just looks at raw numbers can be a deceptive ploy used to suggest a conclusion that in fact the data does not support.
Watch this fictitious example: 5-year study
Number of suicides (success/attempt)
Year One: 2/20 - 10%
Year Two: 5/33 - 15.1%
Year Three: 10/50 - 20%
Year Four: 20/80 - 25%
Year Five: 40/133 - 30%
If you look at the number of suicides, it increases from 10% to 30% in five years. If you look at the rate of suicide, it remains steady at 5%/year. The number of suicides seems to balloon! The rates remain the same. Is this of statistical significance? Of course you can make the case for this; more people are attempting to commit suicide, but why? You have to do a more in-depth analysis. You can't just use the raw data I provided to come to any conclusion. Likewise you can't use the number of out-of-wedlock births to come to a conclusion. We weren't given a rate (in my opinion I believe it was omitted) and we have no information about the breakdown of these numbers.
Did you notice these articles never gave a conclusion of this Netherlands study? Was the Netherlands study even about the effects of gay marriage or was it just yearly statistics taken for the country? None of the researchers conclusions were stated, thus no conclusion is ever really provided for all the data. We're not given anything, we get the author's assumptions. However, in just taking the author's assumptions, we are not given a full scope of the statistics quoted. In fact, the data is very incomplete; you can't accept any assumptions they provide without first giving a reference or reasoing for this assumption, that provides support.
I will state again, you cannot come to the conclusion you made based on the numbers given just because you record a certain increase after the passage of gay marriage.
Should I keep going and give a more thorough explanation, or are you starting to see what I mean about your statistics being wrong? Help me out here, because I don't know what you're not understanding.
I have much more to write, but that will happen much later.
Last edited by Inner City Blues on 07-18-2004 at 08:44 AM |
sowhatsthetruth said this in post #48 : I think this post is under the wrong subheading, "Civil Rights." It should be called "special rights for homosexuals." or "Pro family legislation."
No one is debating whether or not homosexuals shouldn't have the same civil rights as anyone else. Yes, they deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They shouldnt be fired from their jobs, etc.
But to demand the states legitimize their homosexual coupling is another story.
The reason why they are so frightened of the FMA is because they know that if the Congress passed this, and the people of each state had the opportunity to vote on it, the FMA would win and their attempt at legitimate marriage would end.
Again, homosexuals cry "They hate us", whenever someone doesnt condone their sin.
Although the person writing this above quote claims to have me on her ignore list, I will still reply so that other people that wish to continue this discussion can get more food for thought.
I want to make this clear, this debate is about the ability of the government to pass a law against gay marriage. I am arguing that it is not Constitutional. Based on the Ninth Amendment, you can't deny a group rights just because it is not expressly given in the law. I see many support homosexuals' rights to hospital vistations, adoption, not be discriminated against at work, etc. The solution seems to be civil unions. Civil unions, however, don't provide the federal benefits (e.g. tax benefits) that heterosexual civil marriages provide. As a result, we create a "separate but equal" paradigm. However, due to the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" is unconstitutional, civil unions are wrong to institute. In order to give homosexual couples the same rights afforded heterosexual couples, gay marriage fits. Is gay marriage the only solution? Not at all, but banning gay marriage would be unconstitutional.
Someone stated that the government should not be involved with social issues, but I believe they should. Not necessarily all social issues, but the ones that become increasingly important. If I find that crime rates are increasing in the country, and the recidivism rates for prisons are increasing, I think something needs to be done to address the problem. The approach I may take is a social issue approach. Perhaps a large portion of the crimes happen in inner city and rural areas with high unemployment. If I try to put more job training programs in the prison system and these communities, it may lower the rates that we previously saw were increasing. Social issue addressed; positive result for non-social issue.
Let's clear up some things.
I looked thru my posts and NOWHERE did I quote scripture in this thread. Only thing close was when I mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah.
I think that you have read my posts in other parts of this forum and tried to accuse me of trying to prove things by scripture. This isnt the time or place for that, you already know my stance on homosexuality.
Now that this is straight I will move on.
My stance on marriage period is this:
Government whether it be local, state, or federal has no business meddling in a marriage. Someone should be able to go to their synagogue, church, mosque, medicine man whatever without having to apply for a marriage license. What does this license allow me that I couldnt have in my marriage vows? Again, government has no business meddling in my wills, benefits, etc within a marriage.
So, we have an intrusive form of state government that issues licences. So where do we go within this structure?
I hope you are aware that we have at our core constitutional republic the separation of powers. Legislative branch makes laws, judicial branch enforces laws, and executive is administrative.
The issue of the FMA has at its root trying to take back the power of legislation from activist courts.
Even Arnold Schwarzeneggar who is from Europe understands this. So we had judges and courts in San Francisco issuing marriage licences when this was illegal. His stance was...lets put it thru the proper venue within the legislative branch of state government.
And in massachusettes, a couple of judges in an activist court, who are not appointed by the people, forced his will upon the people by changing the laws within his courts. You know that is about absurd as me committing murder getting an activist judge who felt sorry for me and declaring homicide unconstitutional.
So, with the FMA, Congress sought to allow the people to decide how they wanted this issue to be handled. Instead of a minority of unelected appointed judges to decide the fate of an entire nation.
What is unconstitutional is courts making laws when their sole job is to enforce laws.
sowhatsthetruth said this in post #52 :
Inner City Blue,
Let's clear up some things.
I looked thru my posts and NOWHERE did I quote scripture in this thread. Only thing close was when I mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah.
I think that you have read my posts in other parts of this forum and tried to accuse me of trying to prove things by scripture. This isnt the time or place for that, you already know my stance on homosexuality.
Now that this is straight I will move on.
My stance on marriage period is this:
Government whether it be local, state, or federal has no business meddling in a marriage. Someone should be able to go to their synagogue, church, mosque, medicine man whatever without having to apply for a marriage license. What does this license allow me that I couldnt have in my marriage vows? Again, government has no business meddling in my wills, benefits, etc within a marriage.
So, we have an intrusive form of state government that issues licences. So where do we go within this structure?
I hope you are aware that we have at our core constitutional republic the separation of powers. Legislative branch makes laws, judicial branch enforces laws, and executive is administrative.
The issue of the FMA has at its root trying to take back the power of legislation from activist courts.
Even Arnold Schwarzeneggar who is from Europe understands this. So we had judges and courts in San Francisco issuing marriage licences when this was illegal. His stance was...lets put it thru the proper venue within the legislative branch of state government.
And in massachusettes, a couple of judges in an activist court, who are not appointed by the people, forced his will upon the people by changing the laws within his courts. You know that is about absurd as me committing murder getting an activist judge who felt sorry for me and declaring homicide unconstitutional.
So, with the FMA, Congress sought to allow the people to decide how they wanted this issue to be handled. Instead of a minority of unelected appointed judges to decide the fate of an entire nation.
What is unconstitutional is courts making laws when their sole job is to enforce laws.
Got it?
Maybe I am wrong. Perhaps the reason people are arguing against gay marriage has nothing to do with their feelings towards gay people or their religious convictions. I think I am now convinced that the reason your arguments seem so weak is because you have no understanding of the role government and the courts play regarding the law.
Can I just start this paragraph off by saying you're wrong. The Supreme Court is not there for the express purpose of enforcing the laws. It never has. I could tell what their role is off the top of my head, but I like to say things with corroborating support. According to Scholastic, Inc. (it's one of the educational book companies), in their adaptation of The Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court (1989), the Role of the Supreme Court is as follows:
quote:
The Supreme Court has a special role to play in the United States system of government. The Constitution gives it the power to check, if necessary, the actions of the President and Congress.
It can tell a President that his actions are not allowed by the Constitution. It can tell Congress that a law it passed violated the U.S. Constitution and is, therefore, no longer a law. It can also tell the government of a state that one of its laws breaks a rule in the Constitution.
Thus to quote you:
quote:
sowhatsthetruth said this in post #52 :
I hope you are aware that we have at our core constitutional republic the separation of powers. Legislative branch makes laws, judicial branch enforces laws, and executive is administrative.
The role of the Supreme Court is not just to enforce the law. Its role also includes upholding the Constituion, where they can declare legislation no longer a law if they find it violates the Constituion.
Come on, look at the Civil Rights era. There were many laws that were passed in states (e.g. seperate but equal, antimiscegenation laws) that were later removed because they were found to be unconstitutional. When cases like Brown v. Board of Education reached the Supreme Court, they just didn't enforce segregation (it was law), they said the laws were unconstitutional, thus you couldn't have segregation. In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the antimiscegenation law in Virginia was unconstitutional. As a result, 16 states which still had antimiscegenation laws on their books were forced to erase them. The Supreme Court just didn't enforce the law.
Perhaps the lower courts have to enforce the laws, but the Supreme Court is there for interpretation of the law. If the law violates the Constitution, then they can say that law is not a law and uphold that it cannot be implemented or enforced.
You talk about the judges in Massachusetts not being chosen by the people, so what? The position of a judge is not an elected position. Is that your problem then? Because then your problem isn't gay marriage, it's the foundation which this country was built on. The president or governor appoints a judge, the Congress approves, the judge serves.
Moving right along, your marriage vows aren't recognized by the state. You need to apply for the license so that the state can recognize the marriage. I could exchange vows with anybody, should the state just recognize that marriage based on the fact that we exchanged vows? No, they need something in writing, because then they can't classify you. When your spouse is in the hospital, the hospital needs to know that you're legally part of the family. You don't have that if you just exchanged vows, the marriage license provides the supporting information that proves the union. Or maybe you're suggesting that the state should just accept applications of marriage vows from the church, temple, mosque, etc.? What if I'm an atheist and I have no religion? How will my marriage be recognized? The marriage license is there so that people across the board can apply to have their union recognized by the state.
I'm sorry, but when I read, "Sodom and Gomorrah is not a place where I would choose to raise my children," and subsequent statements and signatures referencing the Bible, how can I not think part of your statements are using Scripture? But I guess that's not an issue...
I have stated what the problem with the law is if gay marriage is banned (i.e. couples can't even make a decision about the other in the hospital and other benefits). People seem to favor civil unions, but that is seperate but equal (which in previous Supreme Court cases were deemed unconstitutional). Thus gay marriage seems to be the solution. Is that the only solution? Not necessarily, but to ban it is unconstituional.
And here's another thing. You claimed to be a lesbian. Do you think that you recruited gay people? And your statement where you said you met 100's of gay people and 90% of them said they were molested, that statement can't prove anything unless this was an experiment you ran. For all I know, perhaps the reason why it seems like so many of the homosexuals you met have been molested is because of your personality. Your personality may attract those particular type of homosexuals who are trusting of you and you rapport. As a result, a lot of the gay people you meet may seem to have been molested. Hey, I've met a lot of gay people who haven't been molested, but that doesn't mean that most gay people haven't been molested.
I could say I've met 100's of people who have earned my trust and they are all going to vote for the Green Party in the next election. That doesn't all of a sudden mean that the Green Party should expect a boom in their votes. Perhaps my personality opens me up to friends and different people that hold my same views. But this is starting to slip into a statistics argument.
Bottom Line: Banning gay marriage or creating civil unions are unconstitutional.
MrJukoVette said this in post #46 : ICB, argue the point which is gay marriage and how it affects society. Fact that as soon as gay marriages were legalised out-of-wedlock births increased from 11% to 31% is not disposable. You can argue all you want about your stats and stuff, but it doesnt change a tada. Moral decline is not like economy, jobs, etc. Moral decline is strongly tied to psychology. Human mind is a very complex mechanism, and you never know how it's going to react to certain changes - like legal gay marriages. Try using logic, Blue. It does connect the two things, and often it connects things much more complicated than this.
Correlation doesnt have to mean causation. But most of the times, it does.
Here is another statistic so it must be true. During the same period of time out of wedlock marraiges in the United States increased.
I suppose you support invading their country and changing their constitution to stop their gay marraiges since it created the United States out of wedlock births.
Saying gay marraige increases out of wedlock births is stupid. If gays can marry then there would be more wedlock and fewer out of wedlock births. The only way to increase out of wedlock births is to reduce the rate of marraige or increase the age of marraige to after child bearing. The decreasing marraige rate would be the causal factor.
The only possible reason for leaving out such facts that could create a logical connection between allowing more people to marry and increasing out of wedlock births would be that the facts would destroy the argument.
Wow... if that's the case, Dekka... I would be a mother so many times over, I don't think that the world would appreciate the increase of the population!!!!
:::>^..^<::: ~*~The Journey is more important than the end or the start~*~ :::>^..^<:::
07-17-2004 04:58 PM
