Peter Ferguson, who calls himself ‘Humanisticus’, has replied once again on polygamy and same-sex marriage, and asked the Iona Institute a few questions. I’ll do my best to answer them here, and I think it might be wise to leave our blogathon at that. In truth, these points have been dealt with in numerous previous blogs on this website, but it won’t hurt to answer them in one place and save Humanisticus a bit of Googling.

If marriage is primarily about children then why doesn’t Iona argue that infertile couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry. What reason can Iona give that denies same-sex couples marriage rights that doesn’t apply to infertile couples?

I reject the frame here. It’s not about “marriage rights” it’s about what form of marriage best serves the common good. While not every man and woman will have a child, only a man and a woman can. So we give special status and a set of social expectations to that particularly kind relationship, hoping to incentivise as many women and men as possible to stay together and commit to raising children.

What is Ferguson’s definition of marriage? Is it completely elastic? What purpose does he think traditional marriage serves? What qualifies him to knock down Chesterton’s Fence?

What parenting attributes are specific to men and women? Aside from the ability to breastfeed, what do women possess that is vital to child rearing that men don’t? And vice-versa?

See Gender and Parenthood by W. Bradford Wilcox and Kathleen Kovner Kline, which does a good job of summarising much of the research in this area. I’m leery of essentialising, but, again, a man and a woman are required to bring every child into the world – the burden of proof is on those who argue against the proposal that a child should be raised, where possible, by their natural parents. Chesterton’s Fence applies here too – the evidence seems so far to suggest that children do best when raised by their own biological parents. We may not be able to exhaustively explain why that is, but to ignore it would be reckless.

Would Conroy oppose legislation of polygamy even if there were no negative consequences? If so, why?

I suspect Ferguson may have misunderstood my point. I argued that he would probably end up supporting polygamy even if the evidence suggested that it was worse for children in the aggregate than traditional marriage, because it would of course be impossible to prove that it was worse in every case, or that the harms weren’t due to society’s ‘polygamophobia’ rather than polygamy itself. It would thus be difficult for him to justify withholding “marriage rights” from polygamous couples, if “marriage rights” were the lens through which he saw the institution of marriage.

But no, if there were “no negative consequences”, I would not oppose polgamy. I would, in fact, not oppose anything that had no negative consequences. Next question?

As many studies on LGBT parenting meet the highest standards required of psychological research, on what basis does Iona reject them? And if they do reject them due to some apparent “flaw”, does Iona reject the entire field of psychology as they use the same methodology?

This just begs the question. Do the studies Ferguson cites meet the highest standards required of psychological research? They don’t. They are simply not representative, being based in all cases upon small and/or self-selecting and/or otherwise flawed samples. We have, in all fairness, been over this – Iona’s Director David Quinn has already debated the evidence with Ferguson in Village Magazine. I’d strongly recommend reading the articles and making up your mind for yourself.

The declaration by psychiatrist Michael Lamb that Ferguson cites, saying that studies “meet the highest standards required of psychological research” is just that, a declaration. Scientific studies that hope to draw broad conclusions about large populations need, in relative terms, large sample sizes. A study without a representative sample is… not representative, and appeals to peer-reviewed journals and psychological associations are just arguments from authority. Again, the American Psychological Association labelled homosexuality a mental illness until 1973. Then, as now, scientific bodies can be subject to ideological fashions, and to pressures to come up with the ‘right’ conclusion.

This was what I was referring to when I said that Ferguson didn’t think sample sizes mattered all that much in psychological research, which he took exception to, calling it “a blatant and rather insidious distortion of what I actually stated.” I’d like to apologise if I misunderstood him.

Note, however, that I haven’t accused Ferguson of bad faith at any point, and that ‘insidious’ is therefore somewhat melodramatic. It’s one of the things that most perplexes me about a lot of debates on social issues – it seems to be genuinely difficult for many people to believe that their opponents might simply be wrong, as opposed to ignorant, evil or indeed ‘insidious’.

Would Conroy still oppose marriage equality even if he accepted there were no ill effects on children?

See the question on polygamy. Again, I think Ferguson may be in danger of excluding some things from the category of “ill effects”. A weakening of the societal association between “marriage” and “raising your own children”, or between “marriage” and “providing a child with a mother and a father” is already happening and is already having ill effects. I’d invite him to read gay marriage campaigner Dr. Jay Michaelson’s recent essay in The Daily Beast for some of the ways in which marriage could change after the introduction of same-sex marriage, and to read this old but still very releveant essay by Megan McArdle on the ‘law of unintended consequences’ and how it applies to this debate. (I don’t share all of McArdle’s libertarian leanings by any means, but I am thankfully still capable of appreciating a good line of argument from someone with whom I have substantial ideological differences).