@Krellin - There may have been a time when that was true (marriage and the benefit to society), but as I have pointed out several times, that is bullshit nowadays. The benefits to society are extensive in marriage and not just between one man and one woman. When societies mambers are happy, tyhey are more productive and when being with the one you love and having your government recognize that relationship as a caring and dedicated one makes one happy, then the fucking government shouldeither get with it, or stop trying to define it altogether. you like to refer to the constitution. How about the phrase "all men are created equal"? Either we start accepting alternative realationships, or we revoke all the amendments that gave women the vote and blacks freedom from slavery. After all, the consitution was written by white men in a time when blacks were slaves and women considered to stupid to make decisions on their own. *All* of mankind is equal and *all* loving, committed relationships should eithe rbe recognized, or none of them.

Good for you man. I'm far to weak to turn the other cheek. And I'm always amused by idiots ranting.

OK, Draug -- I get it. So, then we should eliminate the laws against polygamy -- because those are purely based upon religious principles and therefore have no reason to be embedded in our laws. We should also really drop the prohibition on smoking pot, because it's clearly less dangerous than alcohol. And since realistically kids are having sex as young as 12 in modern times, then realistically we really need to drop all this prohibition about underage sex. After all, kids should learn from experience so as to better enjoy there inescapable teen sex life.

already....time to leave work. It's been fun guys, gals and transgendered friends!

Well krellin, since you're obviously interested in continuing the discussion in a civil manner, I'm game. The purpose of the government is the welfare of its citizens. To me, an important part of welfare is equality. It is also important to me that government bases its decisions on informed opinion. Equality in this case means that the government can't continue to grant an important institution like marriage only to heterosexuals. It's an idealogical standpoint more than anything else. If there was any proof that gender-neutral marriage would harm the citizens, it's the duty of government to stop it. But there is none. Show me some and I'll reconsider.

Krellin - You sound like a believer in seperate but equal. The USSC has already declared that a null and void proposition. Children are not of the age of responsibility therefore they have no legal obligations and, as such, no legal priviledges. They are treated equal in that we can't sue children for breach of contract because they legally cannot enter into a contract.

As far as pot smoking, I consider it to be akin to tobacco and alcohol, yes. I personally don't partake of pot. I have no desire to. But when treated as a semi-controlled substance along the lines of alcohol, I see no problems with it should someone else choose to partake.

As Vaft points out, there is no proof (nor even concrete evidence) that gender-neutral marriage is harmful to a child in the household any more than there is proof that not having natural parent's present is harmful. Hell, in some cases, the adoptive parents give the kids more than the natural parents ever could. If you want to argue nature versus nurture: nurture wins over nature because the nurturing parents *want* the child to be happy and healthy and thos esmae kids are normally not even wanted by the natural parents.

I'd just like to point out for the record that at least here in Michigan homosexual individuals and couples can and do adopt children. As an adoptive father myself, I'm aware of several other local adoptive families, and there are no real stipulations beyond the social workers making sure that you don't have a significant criminal record, your home is considered acceptably fit (safe, with running water and power, etc), and you have ability to provide for children both financially and physically. A single person can adopt as easily as a married person.

There are some hurdles for homosexuals who adopt, although not immediately. Only one of the parents can legally be the adoptive parent, given the way the law works. There was a situation several years ago where a homosexual man adopted several kids over the course of 20 years and raised them with the assistance of his partner. Then, said adoptive father unexpectedly passed away, and his partner, who had been assisting in raising all the kids from the beginning, was unable to get the state to recognize his ties to the children, so they were all kicked back into the system. Whereas, had they been able to marry, that would have saved an awful lot of effort from the state, since they wouldn't have had to find temporary or new permanent homes for said children.

What a load of crap, vaft.

(The argument you present from the book, "Sex at Dawn," that is. I don't know about the rest of what you've said).

Which part of it, semck?

This has been a fascinating read. Vaftrudner, your points are really quite interesting. Also interesting is how ignorant so many viewpoints can be. krellin a lot of times you mkae good arguments but here you make yourself sound like a ignorant asshole. I don; understand how or why people can keep justifying homosexuality as wrong in any way.

@Vaft,

All of it. Let's analyze just a few of the ways.

What, if you boil it down, is the relevance that the facts you present (assuming them all to be true, which is dubious) would have? You say it is not to argue that polyamory is RIGHT, just NATURAL. OK, let's play with that.

So you're saying that it is our nature to have trouble being monogamous....

Wow, really Sherlock? I guess nobody knew that before now, huh? Probably all the literature from time immemorial that explicitly made this very point in every possible way was just playing, and they actually meant that it was totally easy, given our natures, to be monogamous. Man, thank God for modern science to give us these incredible insights.

OK so, sarcasm aside, that's obviously not a new insight, so you must mean something more -- that this somehow legitimizes a non-monogamous lifestyle, or de-legitimizes society's decision to de-legitimize a polygamous one. But here, it simply fails. It's "natural" -- so what? Lots of things are natural that we're very happy to have done away with or outlawed: rape, violence of men against women, violence of men against men, theft, and murder all have deep-seated roots in our natures too, and you can do the same evo-pscyh analysis to explain them. So should we look at those as OK, too?

No? Then what relevance does any of this have?

"This is why people cheat, and why people have ludicrous jealousy when their partners are sexually interested in others, because they assume that their cultural view of relationships is true."

Ah! There it is! Because something opposite may be "natural," my cultural view of a relationship is not "true." BS! If I want somebody to be devoted only to me, then that's what I want, and there's no true or false to it. Is a woman's desire not to be raped also "not true" because you can give an evolutionary psychology explanation for why rape happens? What people assume in relationships is that they want their partner to be monogamous; that their partner, being human, will be tempted to have sex with others; but that they require/desire a level of commitment that will entail those temptations being resisted. That is perfectly true, perfectly valid, and good, and nothing in your analysis (or summarized analysis) even vaguely hints otherwise. You're drawing absurd conclusions.

OK, so it's irrelevant. Is it even valid anyway? No. First of all, what's so special about the hunter-gatherer groups of which the authors speak? Maybe they did live like that (though see below), but what impact does that have on us today? Maybe we're evolving to be less like that. Maybe we have been for a decently long time now. It would seem so. Is that bad? Is it something we should reverse? Maybe the species will survive better if we become more monogamous. Pressure has favored that for the last several millenia, for sure.

Finally, there's the question of whether the book is actually even right in what it describes. There's no reason you should take my word for that, so I'll leave you with the review from the journal "Evolutionary Psychology":

www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP09325335.pdf

@ semck - I don't want to put words in vaftruders mouth. I certainly didn't read his argument as saying that monogamy was a bad thing, or that your desire for monogamy was "not true". It's just not an inborn biological impulse. It's a socially constructed idea. If the parameters of your relationships are such that you and your partner expect exclusivity and mutual fidelity, that's great. If you have a different arrangement, that's OK too, because none of these ideas are cast in stone BIOLOGICALLY speaking.

Also sorry I spelled your name wrong Vaftrudner. Even though I have krellin muted so I have no idea what he was yelling at you, I know what he's like, and you handled his bullshit with aplomb. Well done.

What has happened to this thread...
http://wtfcontent.com/img/131392980710.jpg

@Mafia,

"I certainly didn't read his argument as saying that monogamy was a bad thing, or that your desire for monogamy was "not true"."

Really? Please, interpret the following for me, then:

"This is why people cheat, and why people have ludicrous jealousy when their partners are sexually interested in others, because they assume that their cultural view of relationships is true."

As for the rest of your post -- seems reasonable (of course I disagree to some extent, but it seems reasonable), but I don't really agree that's where he was going. I also fail to see (still) what the point is, or what the biology supposedly adds to the discussion. I think we've known for thousands of years that monogamy wasn't cast in stone biologically speaking. I can give you some ancient references on this if you desire.

semck83, thanks for the link to the article. I really didn't know the number of errors in the book. But if you reread what I wrote, I do not claim that it is true but a theory that I cite from the book. I specifically said that there's nothing wrong with monogamous relationships, and that I'm not arguing for anything. My point was that we're not hardwired to be sexually monogamous, and the book has many examples of societies that are not, even if it paints a naïve picture and ignores other examples. You also seem to assume that I'm confusing social/emotional monogamy with sexual monogamy - I should have been clearer, I specifically meant sexual monogamy. I'd love to read more on the subject if you have tips.

To be honest, the part about "kids having sex as young as 12" is not exactly new.
In medieval times it was okay to marry at 12. Then some philosophers came along and said hm that's not good, let's make it higher"

@Vaft,

Well, now you're making me feel like a heel, being all polite when I was aggressive. :-P

Anyway, you said you were not arguing for anything, but pardon me if I'm dubious. You're suggesting it because you think it is a revolutionary, revelatory book -- you say as much. You say the thing I quoted above, about people assuming their view of relationships is true, and jealousy being "ludicrous." You're drawing a lot of conclusions, and my point is just that drawing these kinds of conclusions from this kind of work doesn't stand up.

You say, for example, that your point is not that we're not hardwired to be sexually monogamous. I say again -- we know. We've always known. At least, we're not totally hardwired for that. And partially we are. And it doesn't matter either way. We're hardwired for lots of good behaviors and lots of bad ones. There has to be more than what we're hard wired to do in determining our decisions.

Anyway, thanks for the reasonable response. You asked for tips on further reading -- I've read stuff about this in the past, but nothing is coming to mind off hand, I fear. I'll let you know if I remember something good. :-)

"This is why people cheat, and why people have ludicrous jealousy when their partners are sexually interested in others, because they assume that their cultural view of relationships is true." - People cheat and feel jealousy because humans do not biologically mate for life, however, people believe that they do. Seems like a pretty straightforward statement to me. I guess the question is what does Vaftrudner mean by "cultural view of relationships". I took this statement to refer to the belief that monogamy is biologically natural in humans.

Anyway, yeah I do agree with semck on one thing though Vaftrudner, you should take any evo-psych with a grain of salt. A lot of evo-psych is pretty spurious, and just an attempt to justify and legitimize racist, sexist or otherwise kinda shitty beliefs.

semck83, yes, I did put a lot of my own values into that statement, and I strive to be careful not to argue one form of human behaviour over another but sometimes I do, by being unclear or by being overzealous. I called the book "brilliant", not revolutionary or revelatory, and I guess that I approached it uncritically because it felt personally healing for me. I'm not an anthropologist though and should be more careful so thanks for calling me out. I do find jealousy ludicrous when someone is not actually cheating. If my boyfriend or girlfriend notices someone else and finds them sexually attractive, why the hell would I be threatened? I'm happy as long as they are sexual with me, and don't screw around without asking me first. I've also been in open relationships without any problems. Of course, that's just me. What I do find offensive is when people assume that their cultural idea of relationships is "true", and what I mean by that, to clarify, is that it's "right, natural, the way we should be and fuck everyone else".

@Vaft,

Thanks for the clarification on jealousy.

Also, I must say I have no problem with saying and believing that monogamy is the way things should be. I certainly would never ban alternatives, but I do think it's the best way, and that biological arguments are no more relevant here than they would be to my belief that rape is wrong.

@Mafia, "People cheat and feel jealousy because humans do not biologically mate for life, however, people believe that they do." Umm, sure they do. Or do you mean they don't biologically HAVE to? In which case, again, that's kind of obvious, but I guess there might be people who don't think so.

I mean, many humans actually do mate for life, biologically speaking. I mean the drive to get married and get into a monogamous relationship is not a biological instinct. And I think you're underestimating the number of people who do believe it is.

Well, Mafia, it depends what you mean. As that review (and many other articles) suggest, it probably IS a biological drive. It's just that cheating, etc., are as well.

I suspect you know what I mean at this point, and are just being difficult.

Well, I don't know. I kind of feel like I could say the same. I think the large number of people you're referring to only believe it in the sense that they think it is a biological drive, and biologically fulfilling, which is true. I'd be surprised if most of them thought that there was no tendency to cheat, etc. But maybe we really just disagree. Certainly I have no intention of doing hard empirical work on the point. :-)

Especially since you don't really think empiricism works anyway.

Oh wait, no, that's not it is it. My bad.

@semck - If monogamy were a biological drive, then there would be no cheating. Multiple sex partners is the biological drive which is why we cheat. The biological drive overrides the socialogical one. I.e. the id overrides the ego and superego. But there are examples of monogamous animlas in the animal kingdom. The Canada Goose is one good example. They are monogamous by nature and, once mated, don't cheat. Period. But this comes with the draw back of when one goose's mate dies, the other will hang around the cody commonly until it dies and it will never mate again. The drive is so strong it isn't even serial monogamy.

So you can't have it both ways: biological drive to mongamy and the urge to look for strange somewhere else. Biology (the id) overrides the ego so the cheating must be the id, not the monogamy.

Draug, of course you can have contradictory biological drives. The urge for laziness and the urge for food, just for example.

There's plenty of evidence that the desire for a monomagous relationship is rooted in biology, just as there's plenty of evidence that the urge to cheat is. Of course we do not have the drive to perfect monogamy like the Canada Goose.