From the pro-gay marriage perspective, this is a really stupid idea. From their press release: "The time has come for these conservatives to be dosed with their own medicine." How will it be a case of conservatives getting a dose of their own medicine when the measure goes down 96%-4%, even assuming they get the number of signatures required to put it in the ballot? At best they can make a "conservatives are hypocrites" argument, but that can countered with a simple argument that the state would have do a ton of privacy-invading to determine which heterosexual couples can or cannot procreate, whereas with current science we know that all homosexual couples cannot. And even if they persuade more people that conservatives are hypocrites than the number who will be pissed off about this stunt, so what? In the end they still don't get to marry.
Meanwhile, they're just re-enforcing the idea that their marriage rights are something that can be voted on and voted away. Many proponents of this initiative will think that it makes the opposite point, but I don't think ordinary citizens will see it that way. I can't predict the reactions from ordinary citizens better than anyone else, but my opinion is that far more people will look at this and think "gay people needs to stop badgering us" than "now I know how it feels to have my rights denied".
This is like the conservative bake sale, except that that was a one-joke stunt that didn't harm or inconvience anybody whereas this has the potential to drag on for months and involves the state.
This wouldn't involve any privacy-invading; all you'd have to do would be to produce a birth certificate (already a matter of public record) within three years of the marriage. But I agree that it has major counterproductive potential.
I'm confused as to how this is like the conservative bake sale, given that the people who are putting forward this bit of political theater are saying "we are LIKE the people who feel insulted by this," whereas conservative bake sales implying that African American students are unworthy of admission to the college usually are staffed by non-blacks. This is a significant difference: gay people are saying "Hey, our rights are being denied supposedly on the basis that we don't procreate together; how would you feel if your rights were denied on that basis?" It's quite different to try to tell a group of people that they actually are like you and therefore should take your side, than to tell a group of people that they are unlike and lesser than you.
I think the point of affirmative action bake sales is that it is university admissions departments who are telling a group of people that they are unlike and lesser than the rest.
asg,
Do the bake sale organizers ask the people to whom they sell what their SAT scores and GPAs were, and whether their parents are wealthy donors to the university, or do they assume based on skin color that all the black students got in on affirmative action and all white students got in on merit? (And that Asian students got in on overwhelming mindbending awesomeness.)
counterproductive course of action. doesn't prove any real point other than reinforcing a general misunderstanding of jurisprudence on the matter which itself misunderstands the role of child-birthing/rearing in religion and society.
PG, the analogy is of an interest group taking their opponents' stated position to its absurd extreme to show how wrong it is.
Truly, things like this give me hope that my great, great, great grandchildren 10 times removed will no longer deal with the marriage contract.
Hei Lun,
I understand why you made the analogy; I'm pointing out how these would differ in being "counterproductive." (Well, I suppose if you're the conservative group and you don't worry about getting black students on your side, it's not counterproductive.)
Childless straights are sought as the allies of gays in the fight against a procreation-centric framing of marriage; gay people are saying "Look, if this is what gives people the right to marriage, you're in trouble too." There's no similar strategic move with the affirmative action bake sales; they are intended to be a metaphor of college admissions, one in which all blacks bring less value than all whites. Unless the bake sales are meant to make explicit to black students "As long as there's affirmative action, all of us (white students) view all of your (black students') accomplishments with suspicion," and thus get black students to oppose aff. action as being against their interests. But even then, it doesn't exactly put the conservative students and African Americans on the same side against a third party, as the claimed similarity between gays and childless straights vis a vis procreation-centric marriage proponents does.
I agree that that my analogy isn't exactly, uh, analogous, but would you agree that in any case this particular tactic by the pro-gay marriage side is nonetheless counterproductive? From the perspective of the gays, they're trying to get childless straights onto the same boat. From the perspective of the childless straights, the gays are trying to yank them off the boat and into the ocean.
The procreation rationale for state legislatures annoys me too, as a currently-childless straight who plans to adopt any children she does raise,, so I'm not so bothered by getting pulled into the ocean, I guess. I already know I'm a second-class adult if I don't have kids. (Though I'm also a lot more OK with that, given that I don't think the robot will be around to wipe my butt, than many childless adults are.)
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