A fuller response to "if gay marriage hurts yours..." #tcot @CorieWhalen @stackiii @peterflom @dmataconis

See the rest at Redstate.

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In Defense of Marriage and Logic

I despise illogical argument, and I love my wife.  But just as much, I love my culture, that sum of received practice, belief, and wisdom I have come to share, or to believe I share, with those around me.

So my hair stands on end when libertarian Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway (and dozens of others, apparently) retweet self-described liberal statistician Peter Flom:

If gay marriage threatens your marriage, you haven’t got much of a marriage.

That little line, destined to become a liberal talking point, encapsulates at least two logical fallacies.

First, no one I’m aware of is arguing that their own marriage will be harmed by allowing people who are unqualified to marry to do so.  Straw man arguments are often appealing to those already convinced, but merely draw ire from those who disagree.

Second, it exhibits the Fallacy of Division, in which the parts of a thing are conflated with the whole. It is not the case that two unqualified individuals marrying harms my marriage in any appreciable way, nor do they even harm marriage itself.  But in the aggregate, the change to the structure of the institution is profound. Read more at www.redstate.com

 

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