Dim Post on Interracial Marriage

Danyl must be confused. He thinks that marriage between the races is just like the simulation of marriage between two people of the same sex, and arguments against simulation must be wrong if you can replace "gay" "with inter-racial" and end up looking like a "vile racist".

Inspired by this op-ed on Stuff by Otago Law Professor Rex Ahdar, Mclauchlan’s law states that if you make an argument against gay marriage and look like a vile racist if you replace the words ‘gay’ with ‘inter-racial’ then it’s not a valid argument.

States recognise marriage; they do not invent it.
Gay  Interracial marriage proponents will argue that defines marriage so as to exclude
gay interracial couples, a neat trick that fools no- one.
Not so. Recall their key claim:
gay interracial couples deserve equal legal recognition.
That is an empty argument. To insist upon equality is to require that “like things be treated alike”.
Gay Inter-racial couples should not be permitted to marry because they lack the essential traits that constitute true (conjugal) marriage.
We may treat
gay interracial couples the same as
heterosexual homogeneous couples when it comes to property division, pensions, inheritance and so on, but not when it comes to marriage.

I'm not sure Danyl actually understands what marriage is, despite being married himself, which could be a problem for his wife.  Except, here I think Danyl is showing a character trait that he just can't quite help - smart-arse-itis.

Anyway, I told him it was a stupid argument, that "Interracial marriage has always existed, while as same-sex marriage is an invention that is meaningless."

I am in an interracial marriage to a man that is the product of an interracial marriage several times up the line. Yet each marriage was able to produce children, a sign I think as to whether or not marriage is possible between races. It obviously is and New Zealand is full of mixed race people to prove it.

Race is irrelevant to marriage, unless racists want to make it so, and I truly doubt those that argue that banning interracial marriage is like banning same-sex marriage really believe their own rhetoric. They must know that creating a thing called same-sex marriage is a fundamentally different concept than men and women coming together to create a family. It's just a convenient argument to confuse the slow of mind which the clever, and the not so, use for effect.

Ryan T. Anderson explains it better:

Supporters of redefinition use the following analogy: Laws defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman are unjust—fail to treat people equally—exactly like laws that prevented interracial marriage. Yet such appeals beg the question of what is essential to marriage. They assume exactly what is in dispute: that gender is as irrelevant as race in state recognition of marriage. However, race has nothing to with marriage, and racist laws kept the races apart. Marriage has everything to do with men and women, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers and children, and that is why principle-based policy has defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Marriage must be color-blind, but it cannot be gender-blind. The color of two people’s skin has nothing to do with what kind of marital bond they have. However, the sexual difference between a man and a woman is central to what marriage is. Men and women regardless of their race can unite in marriage, and children regardless of their race need moms and dads. To acknowledge such facts requires an understanding of what, at an essential level, makes a marriage.

Just being a smart arse and substituting inter-racial for gay doesn't quite cut it when the argument is padded out a bit. But I don't expect a lot of his readers to keep up with that. They're still stuck on race and gender (sex) being kind of the same thing. Does that mean you could be "shot gun wedding"ed to a person of the same sex? I don't think they'd accept that as a real marriage - do you?

Related links: Marriage: What It Is, Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It ~ Ryan T. Anderson
Mclauchlan’s law of anti marriage equality arguments ~ Dim Post