Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: thedoc on 06/08/2015 21:50:02
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Sophia asked the Naked Scientists:
In science, what are the negative effects of same-sex marriage?
What do you think?
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Male-male: no reproductive capacity, so no problem
Female-female: reproduction will involve an unrelated third party, so no problem.
Everything else depends on whether you consider sociology to be a science
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A little less tax will be paid, as the same-sex couples who marry will be entitled to married-persons tax-breaks.
[ if you consider economics to be a science ]
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Some people will be happier- this generally makes people healthier so there will be less tax spent on halthcare.
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"By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."
_Socrates
"Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? I'm a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe."
_ Alexis Zorba (the Greek)
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Negative effects of same sex marriage vs what? You need to have two things to compare. Married homosexual couple vs unmarried homosexual couple? Married homosexual couple vs married heterosexual couple? A homosexual person in a homosexual marriage vs a heterosexual marriage? etc.
I am unaware of any studies showing any harm to children of, neighbors of, or families of married homosexual couples.
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I am unaware of any studies...
It is hard to study something which has been illegal, or at least not officially recognized in most jurisdictions.
And that is a dilemma - how would a rational person decide whether something should be legal without any evidence?
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Oh Pish! Men have been "adopting" other men and spinsters have been living together all along. If there were any unique physical problem it would have become apparent long ago.
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studies...
I recall that one UK politician with a science background was promoting official studies into proposed legislative changes. His idea was that the results of the study would be analysed, and the potential programme tweaked or cancelled based on the results.
This idea was not popular in Parliament, because a politician wants to be seen as a leader, with infallible knowledge of what is best for everyone. The worst possible outcome for a politician would be publishing official results showing that his policy was wrong! (Or, possibly worse, the lobby groups which contributed to his election campaign may not get what they paid for...)
No wonder we have:
the law is a ass—a idiot
In the case of "same sex marriage", would that trial be couched in terms of a "trial marriage"?
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It is possible to form an estimated cohort of gay couples by using a kind of Aristotle's "Lesbian Rule" (Ahem!) and sieving the census data.
Let..(using an SQL query)
secret_gay_marraiges = SELECT(same sex couples with same address AND age > 30 years old).
Then you would do a retro statistical analysis to rule out the null hypothesis that there is no difference in mortality/morbidity compared to heterosexual unions.
The analsis might miss by a few factors - such as lavender marriage frequent among members of parliament, high court justices, and etc.- but it would give you an initial estimate to hang your hat on.
You could then tighten it up by an anonymous survey of the identified cohort perhaps using ANOVA(analysis of variance)