The Wheels They Are A-Spinnin’
has been making the rounds as of late.
Can you make a male baby sitter pay child support?
I’m a single mom going to college with my sister. We currently rent an apartment together. A couple weeks ago, I asked my neighbor, a trustworthy guy, if he could watch the kids for two hours while I went to class and my sister wasn’t home, and he agreed. If he babysits and doesn’t accept pay, can I sue him for child support because he took on a fatherly role?? I’m sure I can convince a court that he accepted a fatherly role.
By way of disclaimer, I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this question. But it does serve to illustrate something the Ruth Institute has been saying for a while: once you remove sex from procreation (and nothing ruins procreation quite like sex, right?) troubles begins to happen. I have long wondered whether men could somehow be saddled with parental obligations for children not their own merely for interacting with a woman’s children. Evidently, so has this questioner.
Now, I doubt that simple favors will ever result in parental obligations being assigned by courts. But I have little doubt that litigation posing that very question (or one like it) will one day be done. It’s just what we need. The woman’s question is not very far out of line considering the reasoning that courts use to assign parental rights and obligations in, ahem, certain other situations.
Guys, I have another important point to mention to just to you. Serving a woman, being “nice” to her is not a tactic that will win you a woman’s heart. It’s the old story of the pretty lady who ignores the clumsy advances of her friendly neighbor and runs off with the leader of the motorcycle gang or something. This woman’s love was not won by the neighbor’s kindly gesture. Her greed, however, was. A double disincentive to the “win her over by being nice” strategy that has failed so consistently in the past.
As a side note, could you imagine the outrage if a man asked the equivalent question? That his female neighbor babysits for him gratis. She, thereby, performs a maternal role to his children. Could he, therefore, make her sleep with him. After all, mommies do traditionally sleep with daddies…
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This is weird even this this website.
Well, Sean, I’m a pretty weird guy.
Of course, being a weird guy, I did say something like this in a previous post. See:
There I wrote: https://ruthblog.org/2010/02/11/dr-j-v-katherine-franke-the-debate/
“Essentialist notions provide the citizens with the clearest and most obvious grounds for determining what conduct will result in them being granted parental rights (or saddled with parental responsibilities). Any other way of ruling on the issue would leave a citizen puzzled as to exactly what type of conduct would lead to the above legal result. As a result, were we to abandon essentialist notions, the result would be an increase in confusion as to rights and responsibilities and a greater resort to the courts to determine them. Court interventions into family matters are not painless for anybody but the lawyers and judges involved.
Prof. Franke advocates a “subtle” and “nuanced” approach to apportioning parental rights. Were such an approach to be fully in place, a citizen, in many circumstances, could only be sure if his conduct affects his parental status by resort to the courts. This approach, as Dr. J herself has said, is one that only a lawyer could love.”
Arlemagne, what do these kinds of issues have to do with same-sex marriage?
Read the blog post I linked to in my previous comment.
Sean, it’s also worthwhile to mention that this blog is not really about same sex marriage. It’s about real marriage. In our need to protect real marriage, we have to defend it from same sex marriage among other assaults.
How does same-sex marriage threaten “real” marriage? Letting same-sex couples marry in no way threatens opposite-sex couples: I highly doubt same-sex marriage will lead to the elimination of opposite-sex marriage, any more than granting women the right to vote eliminated men’s right to vote.
I would think divorce would be a greater threat, yet there doesn’t seem to be an mention of the practice on this website, which claims to favor “one man, one woman, for life.” In my opinion, changing marriage from “a lifelong commitment” to a “so long as I am happy with the arrangement” commitment is far more threatening to the idea of marriage than simply admitting same-sex couples to the club.
This serves as an example of human stupidity and nothing else.
I don’t know, this seems a bit paranoid. This is kinda like me posting Roissy’s articles on how women are always turned on by abusers back during the Rihanna/Chris Brown domestic abuse thing, and then claiming women should be afraid every single man would start punching them. It’s a paranoid stretch at the least.
The clash is between the gaycentric SSM idea and the societal significance of the marriage idea. This is not about extending marriage but eliminating the special reason for its special status — in the law, traditions, and customs of our civilization.
If not for the divorce revolution, and its adverse influence on the influence and standing of marriage, the SSM idea would have been stillborn. The SSM idea builds on that adverse influence; it does zilch to help marriage recover from the beating it has taken due in the wake of the rise in divorce.
By the way, the rise in divorce has led to increased sex segration and decreased responsible procreation; and SSMers love to point to these (and other) anti-marriage trends as somehow incontestably buttressing their demand for merging nonmarriage (at least the gaycentric subset) with marriage.
I think the clash is between the straightcentric idea of marriage (that is, you must be an opposite-sex couple who can reproduce or at least look like it can reproduce) and the changing nature of marriage and the American family, as well as increasing social acceptance of (gasp!) gay people.
True, straight people are responsible for changing marriage (lifelong commitment to a “so long as I’m happy” commitment, for example) and re-fashioning its form to better fit same-sex couples. I’m sure gay people everywhere are grateful.
@Sean
Sean: You touched on something close to my heart when you said, “I would think divorce would be a greater threat….[T]his website…claims to favor “one man, one woman, for life.” In my opinion, changing marriage from “a lifelong commitment” to a “so long as I am happy with the arrangement” commitment is far more threatening to the idea of marriage…”
What first drew me to be involved with the Ruth Institute was its work with traditional marriage. They encouraged married people to avoid divorce, and helped give them the tools and motivation to do so. They also promoted marriage to younger people as an attractive and healthy alternative to shacking up or sleeping around. The Ruth Institute still does this, but lately it has been overshadowed by the Prop 8 court decisions and resulting debate.
Thank you for helping me remember that I agreed to be a guest blogger with the intention of focusing on “divorce prevention”. I’ve got to get back to work on that.
The SSM campaign has been sucking the oxygen out of the room, but marriage defenders have been working for marriage long before the courtcentric SSM project was launched.
* * *
Sean just confirmed the gaycentric emphasis of the SSM idea. Of course, he hoped to justify that emphasis by pretending that there is a straight bookend to his favored identity group. The man-woman basis of marriage does not include a straight criterion for eligibility nor a gay criterion for ineligiblity. No one need show up with a membership card for this or that identity group. The SSM idea pretends that these criteria exist and then SSMers pretend that to solution to act as if these criteria should continue to exist so that society can be organized by their prioritization of the socio-political gay-straight dichotomy. But that is a nonmarriage purpose. And, given the SSM idea’s profound flaws, imposing such a non-marriage purpose is explicitly an anti-marriage project.
Typpo correction: “The SSM idea pretends that these criteria already exist’ and then SSMers pretend that the solution created by these nonexisting criteria is for us to act as if these criteria should continue to exist so that society can be organized by their (the SSMers’) prioritization of the socio-political gay-straight dichotomy.”
In other words, the SSM idea is about pressing identity politics into societal regard for this foundational social institution. Identity politics is not what the man-woman basis of marriage is all about. But it is what the SSM idea is all about — given the gaycentric emphasis of its proponents. Yet, shorn of that emphasis, this SSM idea is applicable to the vast range of nonmarriage scenarios. Protecting and encouraging the societal recognition that marriage and nonmarriage are different — due to what marriage actually is — is good for society because sex integration and responsible procreation — seperately but especially as a combination — are very good for society. The supremacy of identity politics, not so much.
Sorry for adding another typo: “SSMers pretend that the solution to the perceived problem, a problem they say was created by these nonexisting criteria, is for us to act as if these criteria should continue to exist so that society can be organized by …”
Chairm just confirmed the straightcentric emphasis of the OSM idea. Then something about bookends. Then something about how men marrying women has nothing to do with their being straight, even though it would appear that that’s the case most of the time.
The OSM idea is profoundly flawed: that only straight relationships are worth legalizing. Why is it flawed? Because gay couples want to marry for the very same reason straight couples want to marry.
Even so, there’s no particular reason to come up with one particular reason to marry. Couples marry for many different reasons: security, companionship, a desire to share resources, etc. Both gay and straight couples are motivated by these reasons.
If there were a good reason to prohibit same-sex marriage, I’d like to hear it. Even if straight couples married for different reasons than straight couples, so what? Who’s to say there’s a “right” reason to marry?
Could everybody PLEASE stop using the suffix “-centric?”
@Arlemagne1
Could everybody PLEASE stop using the suffix “-centric?”
Why should we feel obliged to conform to your anti-centric-centric world view?
(Sorry… I’ll get my coat…)