Monday 9 July 2007

Pic of the day: An example of marriage without at least 40% male representation. In a fantasy world such as The Sims 2 this works quite fine. I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on the real world, much less on marriage and children.

"Gender quota in marriage"

I saw a funny piece in the newspaper today. To understand it, you almost have to know about a revolutionary project by the Norwegian government: To ensure that the board of directors in all publicly listed corporations has at least 40% of each gender. Incredible as this may sound to foreigners, this was actually begun by the previous, center- conservative government, but it is of course forcefully followed up by the current mostly Social Democrat government. Soon, companies that fail to have 40% representation of each gender may be forcibly dissolved. Of course, several reasons are given for this blatant attack on basic freedoms. Basically, you get the impression that today's businesses are simply not as good as they could have been if both men and women have been given equal representation. As usual, it is assured that the government and bureaucrats know better than those who actually have to earn the money.

The stroke of genius was for a member of the Christian Democrats to pick up those same arguments and place them in a different context. Socialists are of course in favor of gay marriages. I guess even they must offer some freedom and some rights to some people, even if those people are very few and rarely need those rights. As it stands today, homosexual couples can register a "partnership" that gives the same rights and obligations as a marriage in all economic matters. There are still some corners of life where they are not equal: They cannot adopt children as a couple, and since the registration of partnership is not a wedding, churches are neither required nor allowed to perform it. (Although churches that want to be seen as progressive are free to have a ritual blessing the homosexual union, but this has no official significance.) So the leftmost faction of the ruling coalition wants gay and lesbian marriages that are indistinguishable from mixed-gender marriage, to the point where nobody will ever need to know the genders of those involved.

Now, you may have different opinions on the topic of gay and lesbian marriages. But it certainly seems ridiculous to insist that the input of both men and women is urgently needed to run any and all sorts of corporation, but absolutely irrelevant to raising any kind of child.

***

In real life, of course, single parents are not uncommon, nor have they been absent at any time in history. It was harder in the bad old days, where hunger was a constant threat to most families. But even today, it must be hard to find time for both a job and raising children. You'd think that having two mothers would be at least no worse than just one, if you don't see your father anyway. Whether two fathers is better than one may be more contested, but I think most would say yes, unless they have extremely low opinions of fathers and of men in general. (And if so, they are probably feminists and very much in favor of random-gender marriage.)

While conservatives are generally in favor of traditional marriage, they have not gone very far to encourage it. Even during conservative governments here in Norway, the tax rules for couples with children have favored divorce. Even though we know that human males are 8 times more likely to commit crimes of violence against stepchildren than their own offspring, we still have laws that financially reward couples who divorce and where the mother takes the children with her to live with a man that is not their father. With this kind of history, conservatives don't have much authority to start worrying now about the dangers of gay adoption, much less lesbian.

But at least they can mock the socialists. That's a fun hobby that never gets old!