By Edward
It’s a heartening photograph in these troubling times. At a table, come together Sheik Abed es- Salem Menasra, deputy mufti of Jerusalem; the Rev. Michel Sabbagh, the Latin patriarch; the Rev. Aris Shirvanian, the Armenian patriarch; Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi; and Rabbi Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi.
Or it would be heartening, if what brought them together was to offer some positive message of peace or hope. Instead, what brought them and other religious leaders together was a message of hate:
This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem.
—Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheikThey are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable.
—Shlomo Amar, Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi
In case you haven’t guessed yet, they’re talking about gays. That’s right, these men of God, who can’t see past their own prejudices to come together to stop terrorism or poverty or war, can be united to speak out about a 10-day conference/festival (called WorldPride) to be held in Jerusalem that focuses on tolerance and diversity. Their comments get worse:
We can’t permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty.
—Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheikThis is not the homo land, this is the Holy Land.
—Rabbi Yehuda Levin
The leaders came together with via a concerted effort by American Evangelical pastor, Rev. Leo Giovinetti, from San Diego:
California Pastor Leo Giovinetti, representing a coalition of U.S. Christian leaders, appeared at a press briefing together with former Tourism Minister Benny Elon and other Knesset members from various political parties.
"Millions of people around the world pray for the peace of Jerusalem and are heart-broken by misguided attempts to divide, inflame and sow disunity," Pastor Giovinetti said.
The organization that hosts WorldPride is indeed making a political statement by having it in Jerusalem, but it’s not the message Giovenetti wants folks to believe it is:
Jerusalem WorldPride 2005 will gather people from all over the world to bring a message that is needed throughout the Middle East and beyond: that human rights transcend cultural and ethnic boundaries, that our differences can be respected peacefully, and that love knows no borders. There is no better place in the world than Jerusalem to make that statement, and perhaps no city that needs to hear it more.
And, not all religious leaders in Israel are against the festival:
Organizers of the gay pride event, Jerusalem WorldPride 2005, said that 75 non-Orthodox rabbis had signed a statement of support for the event, and that Christian and Muslim leaders as well as Israeli politicians were expected to announce their support soon. They said they were dismayed to see that what united their opponents was their objection to homosexuality.
"That is something new I’ve never witnessed before, such an attempt to globalize bigotry," said Hagai El-Ad, the executive director of Jerusalem Open House, a gay and lesbian group that is the host for the festival. "It’s quite sad and ironic that these religious figures are coming together around such a negative message."
Personally, I think the choice of Jerusalem is inspired. The folks who look at WorldPride’s choice of locations (the last one was held in Rome) and feel such provocation is unseemly or anti-religious could stand to brush up on their Martin Luther King. Just as King used "creative tension" in opening opportunities and promoting equal rights (this is a good overview), WorldPride is hoping to use it to open minds and promote tolerance. Indeed, King famously chose Good Friday "because of its symbolic significance" for a March in Birmingham, knowing that such "direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue."
The whites who opposed King and his movement had no more moral claim to the symbolism of Good Friday than he did. Likewise, as a gay Christian, I feel I have as much claim to the symbolism of Jerusalem as any other Christian, regardless of their intolerance. Things will only get better when we insist they do. And in many ways, getting better they are:
Annual marches by homosexuals have become routine in Tel Aviv, a secular coastal city. For the past three years, gay parades have also been staged in Jerusalem. Religious groups have complained, but the police have issued permits for the events, which have been held without any serious incidents.
As I said earlier today, I pray for the Pope to have a quiet passing because I won’t sink down to his level.
IIJM, or is there more that just a little irony contained in this statement:
“Millions of people around the world pray for the peace of Jerusalem and are heart-broken by misguided attempts to divide, inflame and sow disunity,” Pastor Giovinetti said.”?
And, erm… exactly WHO is it that is “sowing disunity” here? Irony? Chutzpa might be a more appropriate term!
Edward, *hugs*.
As I said earlier today, I pray for the Pope to have a quiet passing because I won’t sink down to his level.
I prefer calling a spade a spade. Anyone capable of saying, in all seriousness, that gay marriages are “part of a new ideology of evil that is insidiously threatening society”, is a waste of air and biological matter that I won’t be sorry to see go.
When you’re in a position of such enormous influence, you carry a responsibility to carefully measure your words and actions. Hundreds of millions of people look to you for guidance on how to live their lives. To take that power and use it to promote bigotry and hatred–to call the union of two people in a lifelong commitment to love “evil”–is evil itself.
One of my fellow posters at Liberal Street Fight agrees with you Catsy:
I’ll never forget watching coverage of the “Holy Father” giving one of his speeches in Africa, in a country wracked by hunger and disease, and this odious relic of the dark ages, bedecked in finery, telling them that salvation required them to not use birth control, and that suffering was redemptive and a gift from God….I hope his God showers that gift on him in abundance…
as i said before, i just don’t wish go there although i definitely share your anger.
and italics off.
Yikes
Wishing death on your political opponents.
Especially people as revered as Pope John Paul the II.
Jeeeshhhh. Get a grip.
Relax – not everyone shares your morbid “worldview” – get used to it!
They missed a church!
Holiness Codes & Holy Homosexuals: Interpreting Gay & Lesbian Christian Subculture
Fitz: Wishing death on your political opponents.
John Paul II is a man who has done much evil in his tenure as Pope. I wouldn’t wish him dead, but I’m hardly sorry to see him go: we can always hope the next Pope will do less evil, and may even change some of the evil policies set and maintained in JPII’s tenure.
Your “fellow posters at Liberal Street Fight” is a fool, wilfred. Lack of birth control did not cause any nation to be “wracked by hunger and disease,” nor will its availability alleviate either problem.
But what do I know? I’ve only been across that benighted continent a few times….
On the broader question, anyone who thinks the Pope’s opposition to homosexual marriage outweighs his role in bringing down Communism or protecting human life via his staunch and consistent opposition to abortion, the death penalty, war, “euthanasia,” et al., is guilty of a skewed moral perspective indeed.
The Pope’s position on birth control has certainly fueled the ravages of AIDS in Africa – with plenty of help from the US.
The papacy itself is an institution that right-thinking people ought to repudiate. It is time for ecumenical Christianity to throw orthodoxy to the winds – and the Augustines and Jeromes of the church along with it.
This is about the Pope now?
OK.
I have a great deal of admiration for this Pope, although I’m dumbfounded on how he can get it so entirely wrong when it comes to homosexuality. Surely he has gay friends/acquaintances. Doesn’t he respect them and wish them well?
Jes, as a lapsed Catholic I wish it were going to happen. Sadly, this Pope so packed the college of Cardinals with ultra conservatives that there is zero chance of that happening.
Edward: Doesn’t he respect them and wish them well?
Possibly he thinks he does. But I fear this is the well-known fallacy of “Love the sinner, hate the sin”. George W. Bush probably claims to believe that, too.
Tacitus: protecting human life via his staunch and consistent opposition to abortion,
And how many women have died as a result of this “staunch and consistent” opposition? I don’t suppose the Pope either knows or cares.
Wilfred: Sadly, this Pope so packed the college of Cardinals with ultra conservatives that there is zero chance of that happening.
Not zero chance. Unexpected Popes have been elected in the past. I agree with you that there’s not much of a chance.
Okay ObWi posters: You let Tacitus back on this site after the most egregious posting violations i’ve ever seen, returning after his banning that day to insult myself and another poster. And in my first dealing with him since he violates posting rules by name calling to my fellow LSF poster.
Enough. At what point is anyone here supposed to take your posting rules seriously? What a joke. Obviously his mea culpas were worthless, the proof is above.
is this about the Pope now?
I thought it was ok to bring in the Pope because of the section of your NY Times Link:
One day later, however, Pope John Paul II appeared on a balcony over St. Peter’s Square and delivered a message expressing his “bitterness” that the gay festival had gone forward, calling it an “offense to the Christian values of a city that is so dear to the hearts of Catholics across the world.”
Wilfred-
Come on! You don’t seriously expect Republicans to frequent a site where they would be held to a standard of civil behavior?
You would do away with Obsidian Wings if you did that.
Wilfred: Suggest you e-mail the kitten whenever you think Tacitus has broken the posting rules, not start a metafight on whatever thread it happens on.
Frank: Suggest you not break the posting rules yourself. There’s no reason to associate all Republicans with Tacitus.
*pause*
Me: Suggest I stay out of it.
Yes, the current Pope selects the cardinals that choose his successor. However, one reason you can’t expect established church doctrine (on any matter and certainly not the sexual ethic) to change is that the Catholic Church is a global Church. Most of its outstanding growth is in Africa, South America, Asia, ect. What they call the “global south” made up of what they call “traditional societies”
“Pope will do less evil, and may even change some of the evil policies set and maintained in JPII’s tenure”.
There not “policies” (much less evil ones) and their rooted in scripture tradition and reason. This is doctrine and it cannot be changed even by the Pope (any Pope) when it is rooted in scripture and natural law.
Oh – the Catholic Church is not against birth control, it is opposed to Artificial birth control.
And why no discussion of the other 6 or so faiths represented at this conference who also hold the same line on the permissibility of homosexual sex?
Is it not religion in general that sets itself against the current culturkamph?
Odd. On Talk of the Nation last night I heard Jeffrey Sachs talking about the causes of extreme poverty, and specifically in Africa.
Sachs mentioned that the lack of reliable health care led families to have as many children as possible, so that some would survive to adulthood. One fix is to reduce child mortality and concurrently provide family planning services. Birth rates plummet, freeing up the women to engage in economically useful activities, like making textiles, instead of being pregnant all their lives.
Oh, and young women then have time to get educated instead of taking care of their dying siblings, empowering them to be able to require that their partners use condoms thereby reducing AIDs.
Hmm, Tacitus oversimplifying things and being rude at the same time? Couldn’t happen here.
Jes, backchanneling is not my thing. I’d prefer this all out in the open and not played out in the backroom. I thought all this blogging was for more tansparency and less old style politics that both sides claim to despise.
Much as might I disagree with him on many issues, I have a lot of respect for the Pope as well as for Christianity’s contributions to world culture over the centuries. I’d dearly like to take an enlightened “live and let live” attitude toward religion. Hijinks like these, however, have me muttering “écrasez l’infâme” under my breath.
This part of the story, at least, is heartening:
Meanwhile in my state, the legislature is discussing a constitutional amemdment banning Gay marriages. The money graf says:
We’re not just in the business of denying marriage to gays, in other words, we’re gonna make sure none of those married out-of-state gays try to come here, either.
What amazing new levels of pettiness.
Honestly, after looking at the picture, I assumed the one thing they agreed on was the importance of absurd head coverings.
This sort of thing always reminds me of the limits of empathy. I can only wonder, as flip as it might sound, “So what’s that like? Being the sort-of person against whom divided groups can unify in hatred? What’s that like?” Kind-of how there is a little part of me that is dismissive of claims of subtle racism, as I am too well placed in God’s Crayon Box to have to experience — much less worry about — that sort of thing.
This gives me a barely perceptible sinking feeling.
I sort of wish I was right about the hat thing. We’d all be a little better off.
Its not the PEOPLE who are being baned Paul.
Its the recognition of their marriages in S.C.
I’d prefer this all out in the open and not played out in the backroom.
That’s as may be, but the owners of this establishment have requested that we not do our own finger-pointing (except for comments such as Jes’s, directed at members of our own ‘team’ and intended to head off a fight).
IF: “So what’s that like? Being the sort-of person against whom divided groups can unify in hatred? What’s that like?”
It’s kind of scary and kind of weird. I mean, these people don’t even know me – why would they hate me? (I can totally understand someone hating me once they get to know me *grin*, but just deciding sight unseen that I’m “very ugly and very nasty”, that I make cities “dirty”… it’s almost too weird to be scary.
It becomes scarier than weird when people like that have real power over me. Fortunately, this bunch of People In Silly Hats don’t.
Obviously Fitz no one is attempting to invalidate or prohibit your relationship. How lovely of you to attempt to validate the attacks on others.
Odd, it seemed that he only insulted someone who, so far, hasn’t appeared here. Maybe you could be more specific in your accusation?
Prohibit a relationship” – well no
invalidate – well yes-sorta
If not extending marital rights to same sex couple is a invalidating them a married – then YES, myself (and many more) oppose such measures
Remember! If your against two brothers getting married, it doesn’t make you against brotherhood -It makes you for marriage!
Edward, the Pope may indeed. I do. It doesn’t follow that either of us agree with your preferred position on particular issues.
wilfred, one assumes the posting rules don’t protect your absent internet friends from calumny. In any case, on a thread where someone I like and respect — the Pope, natch — is being slandered, I find your griping risible. Don’t run behind the teacher.
The Pope’s position on birth control has certainly fueled the ravages of AIDS in Africa – with plenty of help from the US.
Ignorant nonsense on two major counts:
First, there is simply no meaningful data suggesting that Catholic opposition to birth control has been a major factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. There is anecdotal evidence that some men have used it as an excuse to eschew condoms, but no epidemiological data has established this as a significant factor in its spread. There is, let us add, meaningful data that a major component of the Church’s advocacy on sexual morality — namely, abstinence — is effective when advanced in the much-ballyhooed “ABC” public health combination.
Second, the suggestion that the United States has done anything but help alleviate the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa is profoundly wrong. While there is ample reason to critique various aspects of our HIV/AIDS policy there (even I am reexamining my opposition to some generics), this does not obscure the fact that the United States is the single most generous anti-AIDS entity in the world — ever. For which you may thank George W. Bush. Not that most here will.
It is time for ecumenical Christianity to throw orthodoxy to the winds….
One might even think that a prerequisite of ecumenical Christianity.
And how many women have died as a result of this “staunch and consistent” opposition? I don’t suppose the Pope either knows or cares.
Jesurgislac is welcome to provide the data he coyly hints at — as well as the secret behind reading Karol Wotyla’s mind.
Francis has listened to a single radio program with a single subject-matter expert and drawn some rather sweeping conclusions. I’ve been to the continent in question three times and work in public health. No disrespect to Dr Sachs, but I feel free in saying that his dumbed-down model (hint: most parents don’t determine their childbearing according to calculations of child mortality) is neither the whole story nor the last word.
Jes is female, Tac. Not that it’s relevant, but irrelevance is my specialty.
Thanks, Slarti. In that case, my best wishes that the Pope does not kill her.
At this point the most enduring intellectual gratification I have received in reading this Blog/comments – is the link to Tacitus Blog
Tacitus, if you had read the above discussion with Jes and Ken you would know running to the teacher was precisely what I wasn’t doing but name calling is exactly what you were doing so don’t obfuscate. You can’t be Harry when you’re actions are Draco.
I’m sorry, but there is simply no way to deny the problem of overpopulation, and there is no way to deny that lack of birth control contributes to overpopulation. Of course it is not ALL the Pope’s fault. The responisbiity rests with everyone who interferes with the spread of contraceptive information to anyone who wants or needs the information.
So, Wilfred, you’ve made a charge, and I’ve invited you to support it. Got anything more detailed?
You can’t be Harry when you’re actions are Draco.
Huh. Figures.
I’m sorry, but there is simply no way to deny the problem of overpopulation….
It’s actually quite easy to deny it. The problem in Africa is not “overpopulation” — places like Zimbabwe and Ethiopia which suffer chronic famine do so because of misgovernance, not because of too many people on the land. Paging Sen.
Its not the PEOPLE who are being baned …
Its the recognition of their marriages
Perhaps. But since I can’t imagine any already married gay man or woman sacrificing their marriage for the delights of my state–trust me–it’s the next best thing to banning them outright. Since this state already complains of having trouble attracting high-paying industries maybe it’s not in our interest (besides the pettiness) to unnecessarily exclude anyone. But perhaps you, like our legislators, think that keeping TEH GAYS out of the treehouse is worth the cost. “Too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum,” as James Petigru once said of my state.
Personally I’m not going to condemn Tacitus for noting foolishness, and especially not at the request of a person whose apparent idea of reasoned communication is to start the comments by praying for the Pope’s death in response to a post which so far as I can tell is principally aimed at Muslim and Jewish leaders.
Lilly, there are any number of ways to deny the problem of overpopulation. The birth rates in the west are actually below replacement levels. As the birthrates of the third worl are declining. (as their economies and overall health increase, women have less children
Most of the Scholarship bemoaning a population Bomb was done in the early 1970’s and was debunked by reality. Modern day demographers talk about the population dearth.
As far as artificial birth control goes, it severs the link between sex and procreation and creates an overall moral atmosphere of wanton sexuality. (as it has done here in the U.S.)
This creates a myriad of social problems as well as doing nothing to bring down overall birth rates.
I thought it was ok to bring in the Pope because of the section of your NY Times Link:
It is perfectly OK wilfred. I was using that observation solely as transition.
I too thought about commenting on the headgear in the photo, but decided their rhetoric was infinitely more silly.
Edward, the Pope may indeed. I do. It doesn’t follow that either of us agree with your preferred position on particular issues.
Disagreeing is certainly something friends/good acquaintances can do and expect to keep their relationship intact. Calling someone “evil” is not.
Its not the PEOPLE who are being baned Paul.
Its the recognition of their marriages in S.C.
That is a distinction without a difference, Fitz.
At this point the most enduring intellectual gratification I have received in reading this Blog/comments – is the link to Tacitus Blog.
Tacitus is a great blog. I enjoy it myself. I encourage you to spend time there. I suspect you’ll learn a great deal. When you do, please come back and reassess what you’re reading here. I suspect you’ll be surprised at what you don’t currently understand. Just sayin…
Huh. Figures.
Cultural elitism! Impressive. You might make a good liberal yet, Tac. ;p
as their economies and overall health increase, women have less children
How exactly do they accompish that? By having sex less often or some other way?
Paul. First off a gay couple (if the legislature passes that bill- and it will) will sacrifice the legal rights of marriage if they move to S.C. If this is enough to mean that they also will sacrifice their relationship seems spurious.
Secondly- your State is not “unnecessarily” excluding anyone – what they are doing is preserving the traditional definition of marriage (and therefore the institution itself)
Thirdly – the only state in the union that presently permits gay “marriage” is Massachusetts. (Something unlikely to stand – I predict)
Finally – If all that can be said in opposition to this bill, is that industries will have a hard time attracting business, well hell, that’s totally lame.
Think of the myriad of states that also have such amendments currently – and all those states that have simple laws.
I love the Carolinas . – I vacation in Hilton Head and Charleston is supposed to be a booming area. I thought the economy was excellent down there.
Calling someone “evil” is not.
Though I understand you disagree, I strongly suspect that the Pope differentiates between condemning an act or institution, and condemning a person.
Fitz,
I guarantee you, if the Massachusetts law does not stand, your idyllic picture of things will be very rudely shaken.
Sebastian: a person whose apparent idea of reasoned communication is to start the comments by praying for the Pope’s death
Be fair. Praying for someone who is dying to have a quiet passing is rather different from praying for their death. (I think it was rather a threadjack too, but let’s not accuse Wilfred of something he didn’t actually do.)
I actually think the Pope’s opposition to same-sex marriage, though it may affect me more directly, is less evil than his opposition to the use of condoms for prevention of disease, and his opposition to safe legal abortion. So far, his opposition to same-sex marriage hasn’t killed anyone.
Opposing safe legal abortions kills women. Opposing use of condoms to protect against the HIV virus kills men, women, and children. The current Pope has done both. I see no reason to celebrate such a life.
I love the Carolinas
<PeeWee>Well, then why don’t you marry them!</PeeWee>
Felixrayman: How exactly do they accompish that? By having sex less often or some other way?
The more educated a woman is, the fewer children she is likely to have. This is a rule of thumb in developing countries as well as in richer ones. Usually, this means she’s more likely to have access to contraception and/or safe legal abortion – and less likely to be forced not to use it. It’s partly a matter of economic independence, but not wholly. (This is a summary of an essay I read on this matter when working at Oxfam, years ago. Sorry no cite.)
Edward
Why it’s a huge difference (as big a difference as it comes)
If the PEOPLE are being banned than they would not be let into the state, or rounded up, arrested.. exedra
Whereas not recognizing same-sex marriages is simply not recognizing same-sex marriages.
(Im making a comment on the over inflated hyper bowl on the left that always seeks to paint defense of traditional marriage norms/laws as some kind of insidious plot to dehumanize gays – a tactic Paul is wont to use)
as their economies and overall health increase, women have less children
How exactly do they accompish that? By having sex less often or some other way?
Felixrayman
As someone stated above- women have children more often if the economy is poor – (kinda a social security measure)
Barring artificial birth control – less children are produced by: yes, less sex overall and less sex during periods of peek ovulation. (a few days a month)
This natural process is something women in the third world are acutely aware of as an inexpensive, unobtrusive, and always obtainable way to both have more or less children (i.e. – control the # of births)
Thanks, Fitz, for your cogent observation that
“As far as artificial birth control goes, it severs the link between sex and procreation and creates an overall moral atmosphere of wanton sexuality. (as it has done here in the U.S.)”
So then, presumably the only thing we need do to “improve” the “moral atmosphere” in the nation is to, what? Ban all “artificial” birth control? Why stop there? Maybe we should criminalize non-marital sexual activity? Stigmatize bastardy, like in the “good old days” (maybe a red “B” tattooed on their foreheads might be useful)? – or maybe, enact draconian
laws to violently punish sexual “transgressors” (public executions might be cool: worked like a charm for the Taliban)?
“This creates a myriad of social problems as well as doing nothing to bring down overall birth rates.”
Unless I am wildly mistaken, the overall US birth rate is just 2.1 per couple (just barely over replacement), which figure is skewed (in the US) by the presence of a large percentage of high-birthrate immigrant families in the social mix (and how many couples do YOU know who have three or more kids?) – the “natural” US birthrate is, today, just at “replacement” levels (still higher than most European countries, though).
“Thirdly – the only state in the union that presently permits gay “marriage” is Massachusetts. (Something unlikely to stand – I predict)”
I predict you’re wrong. And I’ve lived here for five years.
I predict our divorce rate will stay much, much lower than South Carolina’s too. I predict that New York will join us in offering gay marriage sometime during Eliot Spitzer’s governorship.
“severs the link between sex and procreation and creates an overall moral atmosphere of wanton sexuality”
I don’t know exactly what an overall atmosphere of “moral atmosphere of wanton sexuality” is, but if it involves infidelity I know many, many, many couples that seem to be miraculously immune from this.
For opponents of gay marriage and of anti-discrimination laws, I have a question. The Board of Immigration Appeals has held, starting in United States v. Tobo-Alfonso, that a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of sexual orientation is grounds for asylum. In order to reach this result, they had to find, and did find, that sexual orientation was an immutable characteristic–a characteristic that either cannot be changed, or is so fundamental to the identity that one should not be required to change it.
Were they wrong?
less children are produced by: yes, less sex overall and less sex during periods of peek ovulation
Let’s see, so we are relying on the rhythm method. You know what you call people who do that? Parents.
The real world answer is that as societies grow wealthier, women are able to restrict the number of children they have through birth control and abortion. Neither the pope nor fundamentalists be they Muslim or Christian may like it, but that’s the way it goes.
As far as artificial birth control goes, it severs the link between sex and procreation and creates an overall moral atmosphere of wanton sexuality
I hear that women past childbearing years have sex also. Isn’t that wicked?
Opposing safe legal abortions kills women.
As evidence for which you cite….a pro-abortion advocacy group of “Catholics.” Convincing, that. Got a meaningful source? And on a broader scope, if I oppose act X, does it reasonably follow that the effect of my opposition upon the quality of act X is my moral responsibility? For example, are those who criminalize drugs morally responsible for deaths from drug use? Are those who make handguns illegal morally responsible for the deaths of the resultant defenseless citizens? I would say the thread of responsibility in both cases is thin indeed. (Neither of these, by the bye, are positions I hold.) Furthermore, you predictably fail to note that the Catholic Church typically does a great deal to provide abortion alternatives and reduce the demand for abortion, including foster care, prenatal care, adoption services, and various forms of pro-family advocacy (which, in the Church’s view, includes promotion of a mild socialism you ought to approve of). When I was in government, my Combined Federal Campaign donation went to the Arlington, VA, diocese’s program to provide single mothers who might otherwise choose abortion with basic care and support. These things — directly reflective of the Pope’s views — radically alter your own hate-filled assessment of the man.
Your assessment of this issue is sadly simplistic — and hence mostly wrong.
Opposing use of condoms to protect against the HIV virus kills men, women, and children.
Again, you have no data. None.
(Im making a comment on the over inflated hyper bowl on the left that always seeks to paint defense of traditional marriage norms/laws as some kind of insidious plot to dehumanize gays – a tactic Paul is wont to use)
What you’re doing, to be extremely clear about it, in putting quotes around “marriage” (and hence dismissing it as it’s currently defined in the state of Massachusetts) is insulting the people who have been LEGALLY married under that law. As a gay man, I find that beyond offensive. Consider someone putting your “marriage” in quotes for a moment and you’ll understand why.
Katherine is right, though, all indications are that it will stand and New York will join Mass.
Opposing use of condoms to protect against the HIV virus kills men, women, and children.
Again, you have no data. None.
Is there data to the contrary? That opposing use of condoms lowers the spread of AIDS?
Katharine-
I predict you’re wrong. And I’ve lived here for five years.
I predict that New York will join us in offering gay marriage sometime during Eliot Spitzer’s governorship.
How exactly (legally speaking) will N.Y. “join you in offering” gay marriage under whoever is Governor.
And how do you see the judicially imposed same sex marriage remaining the law of the land in Massachusetts. If it was such a great idea, why did you not vote on it yourself through your legislature?
Im serious- how do you see it playing out?
“”United States v. Tobo-Alfonso, that a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of sexual orientation is grounds for asylum. In order to reach this result, they had to find, and did find, that sexual orientation was an immutable characteristic–a characteristic that either cannot be changed, or is so fundamental to the identity that one should not be required to change it.””
Yes I am against such a determination (initially – although I am not versed in the case law)
Why? Because I am not convinced that homosexuality is “immutable”.
There is no societal or scientific consensus on this being the case.
A fact denoted by you, (and/or the court) when you stated—–
“”a characteristic that either cannot be changed, or is so fundamental to the identity that one should not be required to change it.””
Thanks
“the over inflated hyper bowl on the left”
Cool! Like the Super Bowl, only more so, I assume.
The real world answer is that as societies grow wealthier, women are able to restrict the number of children they have through birth control and abortion.
Er, no. The real real world answer is that women primarily restrict the number of children they have through birth control and economic empowerment. (If the latter needs explanation, suffice it to say that a woman who is not materially beholden to a man has far more bargaining power when it comes to her sexual relations.) Abortion is a factor, yes, but not nearly the factor that those two are.
Okay, backing off from a barney with Tacitus out of respect for ObWing:
Edward: Katherine is right, though, all indications are that it will stand and New York will join Mass.
*nods* The trend in Western Europe and North America is culturally very much towards same-sex marriage: I was sorting through some library books not long ago at work, and observed to a colleague that it was interesting that a book on international same-sex marriage/civil partnership legislation, published only five years ago, was already significantly out-of-date.
It’s a snowball effect. The more countries make the legislative change, the more countries see that there is no reason not to make the legislative change. The difficulty with the US is the political power of the religious right, which got the so-called “Defense of Marriage” legislation into federal law, and which is encouraging the spread of so many anti-gay initiatives in state law.
It’s really a question of how long it will take the US to realize that it must repeal this generation’s equivalent of Prohibition. I suppose if anyone could persuade the Mafia to get involved in promoting gay marriage, this might speed it along…. 😉
To which I would add: conscious control of number of children is a fine and dandy thing, but it is not an absolute good. It must be balanced against the cost, which is — in this case — killing.
“This is not the homo land, this is the Holy Land.”
What a jackass.
I think for the first time in my life, I’m actually afraid to ask.
Whatever a “barney” is, Jesurgislac, don’t let consideration for me get in your way.
Edward
You should not be so over-emotional; you know perfectly well that this forced debate has only begun.
The only people to decisively weigh in on the issue thus far are:
1. – 5 judges from Mass.
2 – The Mass. Legislature – In the first step of an amendment process.
3 – a boot load of the American people through their respective legislatures.
Which means we are still waiting on the Federal District Court, The Supreme Court of the U.S. and the will of the American people (as expressed through the U.S. Congress)
By putting marriage in quotes I am not trying to offend – I actually find it offensive when I see the word gay & marriage linked like that. It is an affront to marriages all over the world and an obvious and open attempt to change the well established definition of a word. {I consider this to be deeply subversive of a crucially important – they MOST important social institution of civilization}
Whatever a “barney” is, Jesurgislac, don’t let consideration for me get in your way.
A barney is a disagreement or argument, Slarti. Learn English already 🙂
Fitz- Why? Because I am not convinced that homosexuality is “immutable”.
There is no societal or scientific consensus on this being the case.
A fact denoted by you, (and/or the court) when you stated—–
“”a characteristic that either cannot be changed, or is so fundamental to the identity that one should not be required to change it.””
That was an either/or statement. Even if we grant that no consensus exists, are you then disagreeing with the assertion that it is ‘so fundamental to the identity’ as well? Or are you simply stating that socially constructed identities do not matter?
slarti: don’t let consideration for me get in your way.
Never! 😉
A barney is a disagreement or argument
That would explain why I find that purple dinosaur so disagreeable…
Tacitus is “married”?
Wilfred is a man?
and now a “boot load”…
“A fact denoted by you, (and/or the court) when you stated—–
“”a characteristic that either cannot be changed, or is so fundamental to the identity that one should not be required to change it.””
No, that wasn’t written for this case. It’s actually originally more about religion and political opinion than sexual orientation.
I am quite convinced that sexual orientation is immutable, and I think you are quite wrong about scientific consensus. (There’s not a pseudoscientic consensus but what else is new. Note that genetic and immutable are not synonomous.) Sexual & romantic behavior is not immutable, but as I’ve said about 500 times, the person you spend your life with is as fundamental to your identity as the God you pray to. In my case, and for many people I know, it is more fundamental.
But Fitz is honest and consistent: if a society wants to murder, torture, rape or imprison someone for being gay–and yes, this happens, every day it happens–our asylum laws offer that person no refuge.
I’m curious as to whether some others can stomach that.
I’ve gotta go now, but I’m ending with two Thomas Jefferson quotes:
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
“Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.”
I am well aware that Jefferson didn’t apply this good sense to sexual orientation, that he favored castration and mutilation as punishments for sodomy. But that’s Jefferson for you–the slaveowning author of the Declaration of Independence. As I’ve also said about 500 times, I prefer to keep to his ideals and not his many failures to live up to them.
Deploy the smokescreen.
Okay, backing off from a barney with Tacitus out of respect for ObWing….
Eh. Surely you can defend your arguments, such as they are, and continue to respect ObWi. Do try.
Yes I am against such a determination (initially – although I am not versed in the case law)
Why? Because I am not convinced that homosexuality is “immutable”.
Fitz,
Some context for your comments.
My partner is in the US on just such a determination. His saftey, indeed, his life, is infinitely more important than your opinion on the matter to me AND, fortunately, to the US State Department.
It is an affront to marriages all over the world and an obvious and open attempt to change the well established definition of a word.
No more than the Emancipation Proclamation was an attempt to change the established definition of the word “all” (as in “All men are created equal).
Fitz: It is an affront to marriages all over the world
See marriage legislation in the state of Massachusetts, Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada, and upcoming legislation in Spain. It cannot be an affront to marriage where it is marriage, after all. 😉
and an obvious and open attempt to change the well established definition of a word
Believe it or not, I don’t think changing the dictionary definition is what motivates most people who want to get married and can’t. In any case, the dictionary definition has already been changed.
nous_athanatos |
I’m not prepared to concede either That
#1: its immutable (assuming biological determination)
or #2. Its fundamental to identity
Some may make it #2, but either way- its bad immigration law and worse federal precedent
(and therefore should not stand)
Tacitus: Surely you can defend your arguments, such as they are, and continue to respect ObWi.
Oh, I can. But I’m not sure that I can get into an argument with you and both of us remain as civil as the posting rules require. I’ll leave your arguments, such as they are, to be shredded by others, not by me.
“By putting marriage in quotes I am not trying to offend – I actually find it offensive when I see the word gay & marriage linked like that. It is an affront to marriages all over the world and an obvious and open attempt to change the well established definition of a word”
And I find I consider it an affront to my marriage to have it used by cynical politicians and their supporters to attack my friends. If you think gay marriage insults or threatens your marriage, fine–I can’t imagine why or how, but fine. But please leave mine out of it.
I’m not prepared to concede either That
#1: its immutable (assuming biological determination)
or #2. Its fundamental to identity
Hmm. I assume, then, that you carefully considered the pros and cons of being homosexual before selecting your current sexual orientation? Or that you would be same person if you had chosen differently?
Jesurgislac
In Mass. and Canada – it is not legislation but imposed by the courts.
In the Netherlands Belgium and Spain- It is not marriage but differing forms of civil unions (albeit adopted legitimately through the legislature)
The effects of those unions on the overall health of traditional marriage is also starting to show up.
The effects of those unions on the overall health of traditional marriage is also starting to show up.
cite?
If you desire to know more about why marriage law has maintained its traditional meaning within the law- and its practical effects, well do your own research
but here is some help
The Rutgers University (the marriage project)
Scholars like Barbara Defoe Whitehead , Maggie Gallagher, Thomas Sowell and Midge Decker. Excellent work has been done by Stanley Kurtz on the devastating effects civil unions have had on Scandinavia in particular and the Netherlands in general. (along with regional support by local sociologists)
Philosophers like Roger Scruton and Michael Levin have defended traditional sexual morality in terms of a quasi-Kantian ethics and evolutionary psychology, respectively, rather than by appeal to any religious tradition or authority. (if that’s not your bag)
The effects of Divorce, Cohabitation, illegitimacy – are as close as next door, or even better, any American inner city.
However most of you seem either ignorant or obtuse (willfully ignorant) as to traditionalists arguments concerning family formation. So I offer this brief synopsis-
“”campaign by secular elites for homosexual marriage, traditional marriage is demeaned and comes to be perceived as just one more sexual arrangement among others. The symbolic link between marriage, procreation, and family is broken, and there is a rapid and persistent decline in heterosexual marriages. Families are begun by cohabiting couples, who break up significantly more often than married couples, leaving children in one-parent families. The evidence has long been clear that children raised in such families are much more likely to engage in crime, use drugs, and form unstable relationships of their own. These are pathologies that affect everyone in a community.
Homosexual marriage would prove harmful to individuals in other ways as well. By equating heterosexuality and homosexuality, by removing the last vestiges of moral stigma from same-sex couplings, such marriages will lead to an increase in the number of homosexuals. Particularly vulnerable will be young men and women who, as yet uncertain of and confused by their sexuality, may more easily be led into a homosexual life. Despite their use of the word “gay,” for many homosexuals life is anything but gay. Both physical and psychological disorders are far more prevalent among homosexual men than among heterosexual men. Attempted suicide rates, even in countries that are homosexual-friendly, are three to four times as high for homosexuals. Though it is frequently asserted by activists that high levels of internal distress in homosexual populations are caused by social disapproval, psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover has shown that no studies support this theory. Compassion, if nothing else, should urge us to avoid the consequences of making homosexuality seem a normal and acceptable choice for the young.
There is, finally, very real uncertainty about the forms of sexual arrangements that will follow from homosexual marriage. To quote William Bennett: “Say what they will, there are no principled grounds on which advocates of same-sex marriage can oppose the marriage of two consenting brothers. Nor can they (persuasively) explain why we ought to deny a marriage license to three men who want to marry. Or to a man who wants a consensual polygamous arrangement. Or to a father to his adult daughter.” Many consider such hypotheticals ridiculous, claiming that no one would want to be in a group marriage. The fact is that some people do, and they are urging that it be accepted. There is a movement for polyamory—sexual arrangements, including marriage, among three or more persons. The outlandishness of such notions is no guarantee that they will not become serious possibilities or actualities in the not-too-distant future. Ten years ago, the idea of a marriage between two men seemed preposterous, not something we needed to concern ourselves with. With same-sex marriage a line is being crossed, and no other line to separate moral and immoral consensual sex will hold. “”
Oh, I can.
Indeed, certainly! Do it.
But I’m not sure that I can get into an argument with you and both of us remain as civil as the posting rules require.
I believe in you. I think you can.
I’ll leave your arguments, such as they are, to be shredded by others, not by me.
We both know that’s not going to happen, ma’am. Take the lonely lead for truth, here.
The effects of those unions on the overall health of traditional marriage is also starting to show up.
cite?
My wife has been pretty cranky lately, and we all know I’m so gosh darn sweet and charming it just can’t be me…
Goodness gracious, Fitz. Well, that certainly explains why here in Canada we’re being rounded up by the authorities and forced into polygamous marriages with sheep and furniture. I’d noticed the collapse of the family some time ago and the accompanying riots in the streets, but hadn’t connected the dots. It probably all started with Trudeau, who said “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” That certainly lead to tolerance of all kinds of bedroom hanky-panky.
I suggest that you outlaw divorce as well as preventing same-gender marriages. Slippery slope, my friends.
Fitz, forgive me for saying so, but the stuff you posted is some of the most ridiculous crap I’ve ever seen.
It’s compassionate in in a wholly Christian way to condemn gay relationships so that we don’t afflict our children with the scourge of homosexuality? I seem to remember something about a mote and a plank I read somewhere…oh yeah, those were Jesus’s words!
Approving of gay marriage might lead to more homosexuality? Egads! What on earth will we do then? I hope your basement is stocked with 55-gallon drums of water and canned food in preparation…
I also love the way that ployamory and gay marriage are conflated. Not to mention the way that all the ills caused by one-parent families and sinful cohabitation are obliquely attached to gay marriage as well. Who writes this stuff? Can you provide a link so I can go read it when I’m in need of a high-quality guffaw?
Seriously, if you want to hold your beliefs, go right ahead. But if you want to have a frank discussion about them, please find bases for them that aren’t completely ridiculous.
Despite their use of the word “gay,” for many homosexuals life is anything but gay.
I’d like to just state for the record that I campaigned for the word “blithe.”
Now, to mount a (partial) defense of Fitz, here, the contention that private morality is a matter of public interest is hardly novel or indefensible. To take a cue from double-plus-ungood, the liberalization of divorce laws (particularly in the form of no-fault divorce, which yes, I know Reagan helped pioneer) has had a demonstrably corrosive effect upon society which are only becoming clear a generation on.
Fitz, those aren’t scholars, they are hacks. Look up what Maggie Gallagher’s been up to lately, for starters.
Fitz,
You’re delightfully anachronistic, whether you realize it or not, but if, as you say, the debate has just begun, you’re not doing your side any favors with this nonsense.
If you desire to know more about why marriage law has maintained its traditional meaning within the law- and its practical effects, well do your own research
I cite my arguments dude. It’s considered both a courtesy and a path toward credibilty.
By the way, the Scandanavian reports (watch closely…this is how one cites something) have been explained here, by Republicans, no less, who note that “Some FMA supporters have distorted and misinterpreted statistics from Scandinavia in an attempt to bolster their position.”:
Fitz,
Remember! If your against two brothers getting married, it doesn’t make you against brotherhood -It makes you for marriage!
Umm, how do you figure? It seems to me that makes you against marriage for brothers, which is a form of “against marriage”. How do you get from that to “for marriage”? I’m always confused by the opponents of gay marriage who insist that they’re protecting marriage. This seems to presume some sort of threat to marriage is posed by allowing homosexuals to marry. What is the nature of this threat? Is marriage like an exclusive country club, and once they allow the riff-raff in there’s no point in belonging anymore?
…the liberalization of divorce laws (particularly in the form of no-fault divorce, which yes, I know Reagan helped pioneer) has had a demonstrably corrosive effect upon society which are only becoming clear a generation on.
Yes, there’s nothing quite as beneficial to society as forcing dysfunctional couples to live together. What could be healthier? They may hate each other, but surely the children would benefit. After all, even a miserable marriage could be a good example of what to avoid.
Tac, a cite, please, on all the evidence of the corrosive effects of no-fault divorce…
There is, let us add, meaningful data that a major component of the Church’s advocacy on sexual morality — namely, abstinence — is effective when advanced in the much-ballyhooed “ABC” public health combination.
I thought I had seen recently that, within the context of the much-ballyhooed “ABC” public health combination, that the real data reflected that most people were avoiding the “A” while eagerly embracing “B” and “C.” Did I imagine that, or did anyone else see it, or am I misremembering . . .? (Or some combination thereof?)
I actually find it offensive when I see the word gay & marriage linked like that. It is an affront to marriages all over the world and an obvious and open attempt to change the well established definition of a word.
1. My wife and I will be married 14 years in July. I’ll thank you to refrain from being so arrogant as to lecture us on what will and what won’t damage our marriage. We’ve been quite successful at it, and quite supportive of our gay friends who seek the same joy, without the intrusive stupidity of self-regarding moral busybodies.
2. If you want language to be static, unchanging and defined by authority, join L’Academie Francaise, kiddo.
3. “Great scholar Thomas Sowell?” >>snort<< The Kurtz thing has been well-examined elsewhere online, too. Google it up. 4. There is no such thing as "immoral consensual sex." Immoral sex is not consensual, and consensual sex is not immoral.
Responses to (what I find to be perfectly reasonable arguments)center around the idea that—
“If homosexuality is more acceptable then more people will turn homosexual?””
And then go on to ignore the most precinct part of the paragraph.
“”Particularly vulnerable will be young men and women who, as yet uncertain of and confused by their sexuality, may more easily be led into a homosexual life.””
Well the answer to the question is yes –
Q. -Why would someone seemingly willingly allow themselves to be drawn into the gay lifestyle?
A- Well, loneliness, a sense of belonging, wounded masculinity/femininity, and above all (for young men especially) easy access to sex.
Of coarse one of the most troublesome and underreported reasons is one that emerges from nearly all the literature on the subject, is this: homosexual men are significantly more likely—some researchers would say, much more likely—than heterosexual men to have been sexually abused or exploited as children and adolescents. According to a 1998 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Abused adolescents, particularly those victimized by males, were up to seven times more likely to self-identify as gay or bisexual than peers who have not been abused.”
Human sexuality is a delicate thing – A simplistic and naïve dichotomy of “your born straight or your born gay” cut & dry analysis, bemoans the real life complexity of life in this modern (overly sexed & sexually confused/confusing) world.
The choices individuals make have a lot to do with the overall moral environment they are cast into, and the expectations that engenders.
Surely – you must be aware of a strain of scholarship that runs contrary to your impulses.
You may consider it “ridiculous crap”
However…. Even as the celebrations of gay rights roar on, reality glowers in the corner like an unwanted guest. For the argument that homosexuality is “virtually normal” is bemoaned as a matter of established fact. By “fact” I mean by the most secular sources imaginable: social science, medical science, psychological studies, and more—including sources overtly friendly to the normalization of gay rights.
I’m afraid that 30 years of experience with fatherless families, divorce and the effect therein, have led mainstream thought as well as scholarship to be well weary of further manipulations of traditional family forms.
Just because you have dismissed the trend as counter to your agenda, does not cause it to go away. Why did the democratic party not enthusiastically embrace the SSM agenda? Why did the American people overwhelmingly reject it? Why are men of the left already calling it a “debacle”? It may stroke your ego and feed your narcissism to believe that its all just an irrational animus, pure bigotry and “homophobia”: but I suspect it is simple a long overdo defense of traditional- biologically rooted – family forms.
It’s funny, you know. Despite the fact that gays can legally marry in most of Canada, I haven’t noticed any signs of impending social doom: heterosexual couples appear to be continuing to marry, despite the arguments that the marriages of gay couples somehow harms the marriages of straight couples.
Anecdote it may be, but I notice that although my roommate’s father is now married to his (male) partner, her mother continues to be married happily to her stepfather, and she is in a committed straight relationship; my own parents and grandparents are still married, I personally am slowly working on my boyfriend via the traditional route to his heart (i.e., the stomach)… what effects on the health of “traditional” marriages are you talking about, Fitz? Aside from benefits and respect now extended to people who formerly didn’t have it, I can’t say I see any difference in society.
They may hate each other, but surely the children would benefit.
Er, there’s actually studies that support precisely that. And Lord knows, I admit to a prejudice here, because I know the difference firsthand.
There are, I note, plenty of liberals, and even Canadians, who think that with a 50% failure rate, the bar to divorce might be set a little low. I don’t really see this as a left/right issue.
“Attempted suicide rates, even in countries that are homosexual-friendly, are three to four times as high for homosexuals. Though it is frequently asserted by activists that high levels of internal distress in homosexual populations are caused by social disapproval, psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover has shown that no studies support this theory. Compassion, if nothing else, should urge us to avoid the consequences of making homosexuality seem a normal and acceptable choice for the young.”
Of all the lousy forms of pseudoscience, argument by assertion, and plain old prejudice used to justify discrimination against gay people, this has got to be the worst.
(Satinover is up to his neck in the “ex-gay” movement. He also wrote Cracking the Bible Code, which some might find relevant in assessing his scientific credibility:
)
Tac, what do you think about the asylum law question?
Oh no! If we allow gay marriage, our society will soon be in as poor shape as…as…as…the Netherlands! The horror…….the horror…
What a howl. I’m sticking around for this one because I figure pretty soon Fritz or someone is going to bust out singing, “Every sperm is sacred….”.
homosexual men are significantly more likely—some researchers would say, much more likely—than heterosexual men to have been sexually abused or exploited as children and adolescents.
OK, any more nonsense like that and I’m cutting you off. This has left moonbat territory and entered tin-foil-hat land. Bring it down a notch Fitz.
Tac, what do you think about the asylum law question?
I haven’t paid enough attention to it to have anything informed to say. I suppose as a rule of thumb, if sending someone back to X-istan is going to demonstrably result in his death or mutilation, we probably ought not do it.
“Tac, what do you think about the asylum law question?”
I’m not Tacitus, but I think that the immutability question and the definition of marriage question are not synonymous. I think being gay is likely immutable (at least for most people) and that marriage means between a man and woman unless we make a specific effort to redefine it.
Genetic and immutable are not synonymous.
Fitz, you can get your panties in a bunch if you want when someone questions your (ridiculous-sounding and unsourced) sources. Or you can find some information (not words, but actual information) that supports your cause. Or, you can stop posting to boards like this if you don’t want to do the homework.
Otherwise, get used to people not agreeing with you and ridiculing your positions on issues such as this.
if sending someone back to X-istan is going to demonstrably result in his death or mutilation, we probably ought not do it
Understatment of the day.
It is an affront to marriages all over the world and an obvious and open attempt to change the well established definition of a word.
Hey, uhm, Fitz, are you sure about that?
(Also good, if equally dry and footnoted in the extreme, is this.
Ed & Co.
The Log cabin Republicans
Come on, I mean really.
Yes: a statistical correlation does not necessarily denote a connection. Grand.
Rates of new marriages have gone down precipitously in Scandinavia.
Social Science will not come upon an agreement for another 10 or 20 years.
I for one (and many, many others) don’t want the experiment to find out.
The key phrase is “will further undermine traditional family forms”
By? “establishing in law the standard that “all family forms are inherently equal”
When no fault divorce was introduced an often herd argument was
“How does someone else getting a divorce effect your Marriage?”
We will fight this, I will fight it my entire life.
And you people will be obtuse your entire lives.
So be it.
People who find their marriages threatened by homosexuals need to start working on their weak relationships.
Federalizing your fears of gays will not keep your marraige strong.
The Log cabin Republicans
Come on, I mean really.
Well, at least it’s a real cite, as opposed to your imaginary ones.
Seriously…if you want to learn how to provide a link, I’ll be happy to show you. It’s not helping your argument that you’re not providing links.
And you people will be obtuse your entire lives.
As long as I can be both obtuse AND married to the man I choose, so be it.
Sebastian–they’re not synonymous. But if sexual orientation is immutable, and being gay does not harm people, then discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is immoral.
Which leaves you with the question of whether banning gay marriage discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. To me, leaving aside Loving for a moment, the answer to that question is whether banning communion wafers or matzoh or yarmulkes or the hijab discriminates on the basis of religion.
But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. What I’m wondering is exactly where the source of the disagreement is. It is exceedingly difficult to pin down supporters of the various marriage amendments on this question.
To take a cue from double-plus-ungood, the liberalization of divorce laws (particularly in the form of no-fault divorce, which yes, I know Reagan helped pioneer) has had a demonstrably corrosive effect upon society which are only becoming clear a generation on.
Well, since you keep demanding them, cite? None exists for this prejudicial blather, except for numeous trips across Africa perhaps?
I suggest you educate youirself about what marriage was like in the good old days — we are now plagued by a high rate of divorce, instead of a high rate of preserved but phony marriages. People who spent their lives dealing with this problem decided that there was no social good in forcing people to stay married when their marriage had failed.
You need to come up with some other solution for high divorce rates than a moralizing heavy-handedness.
Edward
According to a 1998 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association- they were “tinfoil hats” their “moonbats”
None exists for this prejudicial blather, except for numeous trips across Africa perhaps?
Paper towel please! I’ve just spewed all over my desk.
Er, there’s actually studies that support precisely that.
Cite?
And Lord knows, I admit to a prejudice here, because I know the difference firsthand.
Anecdotal. And me too. I suffered through years of a childhood in a household where the adult relationship can only be described as zombie-like. And while I’ve had several long-term common-law relationships and have children, I’ve never married simply because of divorce laws. Familial obligations are still applicable, as a year of cohabitation automatically bestows marriage-like status on you in Canada. All children are doing great, thank you, and much better than when the relationship had devolved into tatters.
There are, I note, plenty of liberals, and even Canadians, who think that with a 50% failure rate, the bar to divorce might be set a little low. I don’t really see this as a left/right issue.
Nor do I. But I’m mystified as to why you think that forcing unhappy couples together makes a better society. Marriages may well fail more often because it is an archaic arrangemnt, and we have less reasons to form the socio-economic bonding units that we were forced to in the past. One might also suggest that children in single-parent families have more problems because one of the parents fails to live up to their obligations, both familial and economic. Wouldn’t fixing that problem be more beneficial than simply making it more difficult and costly to end the relationship?
Ci
According to a 1998 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association- they were “tinfoil hats” their “moonbats”
Without providing us the cite, from which folks have been known to leave out important bits of conflicting information, you have no credibility Fitz. If that report is not online, then, in this forum it’s no more convincing than your opinion.
Sorry, but that’s how this game is played.
whoops, sorry, I read right past this:
“I haven’t paid enough attention to it to have anything informed to say. I suppose as a rule of thumb, if sending someone back to X-istan is going to demonstrably result in his death or mutilation, we probably ought not do it.”
The thing is, that’s not what our asylum laws say. If someone’s going to starve to death or be murdered in a war but it’s not on account of race, religion, ethnicity, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, our asylum laws offer him no protection. And whether someone is a member of a “particular social group” depends in large part on whether he’s going to be persecuted on account of an immutable characteristic. So if immigration judges accepted the views of the Christian right, the Catholic Church, etc. etc. on whether homosexuality is immutable, instead of the views of “liberal elites” and “secular humanists” etc., they would have no choice but to consign people to be mutilated or killed on account of their sexual orientation. To do otherwise would be, in the popular political formulation, to grant “special rights” to gay people.
Yes Ed -I’m a bit strapped for time but I’ll try and find that particular link for you. (if it exists)
What surprises me is that the entire defense of SSM seems to be predicated on the idea that no overall marriage environment exists. At that the introduction of SSM will have no effect at all. (some, early on were even claiming it would help save marriage as ian institution)
Katharine.
You never answered my question.
As far as asylum laws go…its my understanding that any number of groups could apply for asylum and are under threat of violence every day.
These groups would include gays, women, ethnic and religious minorities in any country that has harsh abusive laws and policies affecting these groups.
No – it is my understanding that tre federal government only grants asylum to specific groups at specific times that are fleeing specific regimes..
And this is an attempt to undermine those regimes (Cuba ect)
Kathrine…Get what Im saying?
“Which leaves you with the question of whether banning gay marriage discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.”
First, you are prejudging the argument by formulating it as ‘banning’ and then defining ‘marriage’ as definitionaly easy to accommodate ‘gay’. The definition of marriage can certainly change, but it is a change not a hitherto unnoticed thing that everyone should have always understood. The normal understanding of the word ‘marriage’ simply does not include same-sex unions. If I report a marriage between Cris and Pat it is perfectly ok to infer that one is a man and the other a woman despite the fact that the two people who got married have non-gendered names. That is because ‘marriage’ implies a man and woman. The definition of marriage can definitely be changed. But including gay unions in the definition of marriage is an expansion or change of the term. The fact that such unions are not currently a part of the term is not ‘banning’ anything, it is acknowledging the reality of actual usage both in law and in most social settings.
I’m all for changing the idea of marriage to include gay marriage (note that I have to include the preface ‘gay’ to make it clear what I am talking about). I think it is the right thing to do. But it is a change, it isn’t the enshrinement of already understood values, it is the ratification of a new value.
You understand the distinction between ‘banning’ and a rule of general applicability just fine in the 1st Amendment context where you advocate forcing people to go against their religious beliefs on the pain of losing their jobs. Religious freedom is explictly protected by the constitution. Gender protections aren’t.
No – it is my understanding that tre federal government only grants asylum to specific groups at specific times that are fleeing specific regimes..And this is an attempt to undermine those regimes (Cuba ect)
Wow, that’s just so wrong it makes my head hurt. Asylum is available to anyone, from any country, who can demonstrate a “reasonable possibility that in the country of proposed removal the individual will be: (1) persecuted on account of his or her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, or (2) tortured, as defined in the Convention Against Torture and as modified by the United States law.” (cite) In practice, this requires an elaborate procedure, culminating in a hearing before an asylum officer, etc., etc. Now, this officer is an actual human, who may be influenced by the political winds to favor or disfavor one country or another, but this is miles away from your apparent belief that the asylum system is an explicitly geopolitical tool to be wielded against “specific regimes” at “specific times.”
What surprises me is that the entire defense of SSM seems to be predicated on the idea that no overall marriage environment exists. At that the introduction of SSM will have no effect at all. (some, early on were even claiming it would help save marriage as ian institution)
I believe the argument is more along the lines that in absence of evidence that changing the law so that the responsibilities and benefits marriage offers couples who choose it is extended to gay couples willing to make that commitment and take on those responsibilities would in anyway impact (other than to increase their overall community support network of married friends) the lives of heterosexual couples, that to deny those responsibilities and benefits to gay couples is to treat them unfarily as second-class citizens.
Katherine,
Totally agree with you. Congrads
Hey – Im wrong, Thanks st. Better to be informed than not.
You learn something new every day.
He also wrote Cracking the Bible Code, which some might find relevant in assessing his scientific credibility:
Mmmmmm – esoteric weirdness! Well, at the risk of shredding my already minimal credibility…
I decided to test my faith and the codes a while back to see what, if anything, the Ultimate Author had to say about me. I ran my (real) name through a Bible, er, decryption program a came up with a few hits. I’ve only checked out the two with the lowest skip values for terms preceding and following my name and came up with some…ah…interesting long-results. The first was so unnerving that I didn’t check the second until much, much later.
The first one came out with:
“Woe [Brian Alexander] as HIV/AIDS is a gift of fiery evil you will have a husband of ash.”
Since the ex (at the time) had died of AIDS and was cremated shortly before I ran the matrix, I was very, very unnerved.
Me being me, I got curious later and checked out the next “hit”. What I got was:
“[Brian Alexander] a boastful and arrogant fag.”
I stopped looking after that.
Sebastian, I am formulating it as banning because there are a bunch of state laws that explicitly ban gay marriage being discussed. Not that I think it affects the legal outcome at all–a hyperformalist may think that a law that says “marriage shall consist of the union of two adults of the same race” is not a “ban on miscegenation” and does not discriminate on the basis of race, but I am not a hyperformalist, and I think such a law does discriminate on the basis of race, just as a ban on communion wafers or matzoh discriminates on the basis of religion, just as denying you or Edward any meaningful chance of marriage discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.
I know that as a matter of 14th amendment case law you disagree. And? I have had the 14th amendment argument enough times with you and I’m not trying to have it again. I am arguing policy and morality here, not constitutional law. The implications for constituional law are obvious, but I am not making a constitutional argument at the moment. If you don’t think the federal marriage amendment & the various state amendments wrongfully discriminate as a matter of policy or morality, then why do you oppose them?
And, NONE of this deals with the specific question I asked. You’re the one who brought up this whole line of issues, in an effort to excuse your political allies from answering a clear question.
Fitz–no, that is simnply not what asylum law does. It’s a common criticism of U.S. asylum law, that it’s used to score political points against regimes we don’t like and with exile communities we do like–and indeed, that’s really the only explanation for the different treatment of say, Haitian and Cuban asylum seekers. But that’s not what the law is supposed to do and not what the asylum laws themselve say and not how the immigration courts are supposed to enforce them.
“If I report a marriage between Cris and Pat it is perfectly ok to infer that one is a man and the other a woman despite the fact that the two people who got married have non-gendered names. That is because ‘marriage’ implies a man and woman.”
No, it really doesn’t. And as evidence I need only point out that in assuming Cris and Pat were male and female, it is entirely possible that your interlocutor would have been factually incorrect. How embarassing! Hope it doesn’t happen. ‘ok’ness follows only if you believe that it’s ok to make an assumption that will be sometimes wrong, which I guess depends on your appreciation of precision and rightness and so on, and really has nothing to do with state marriage between people of the same gender.
Citizen once implied “white man” as surely as marriage implied “opposite sex” until a few years ago. There was a time when “citizen” had implied “white man” for the entire history of this country. For that whole time, the implication was discriminatory, irrational and unfair. (It wasn’t always unconstitutional, but that’s because the Constitution didn’t always prohibit discrimination.)
If we agree with the first part of this (the private can be made a matter of public action when the private has public effects), then the question is where society draws the line between public and private. If making divorce more difficult is good because it helps the children caught in the bad relationship to be better adults (I think there is good, but not perfect, science behind this) which in turn helps overall society, then what else can society do to the family in the name of helping society? Make sure someone in the family has a real job (reduces family money stress)? Health care? Education (we already do that)? What else?
In other words, if you are going to fiddle with private relations (divorce laws, gay marriage?) in the name of improving society, what private issues are so personal that they don’t have an effect on the family, and hence are publicly debateable?
Isn’t it just some arbitrary line?
B Alexander,
I’m not familiar with the that…is it online?
First, there is simply no meaningful data suggesting that Catholic opposition to birth control has been a major factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
This is a bizarre argument. What we know is that condom use is extremely effective in preventing HIV transmission.
We further know that the Church opposes the use of condoms under any circumstances.
So you seem to be saying that Church policy is defensible because it is ineffective.
Is it unfair to criticize a would-be assassin if he misses his target?
Bernard, I leave it to you to argue that condemning someone for effect Y of act X in the absence of evidence that effect Y is even occurring is reasonable or just. I further leave it to you to demonstrate that the reason effect Y is not occurring is because act X is not being undertaken. You’ll get this somehow. And in the process, you might note that you’re defending an argument that was not actually being made in the exchange in question.
Let me know if this needs further clarification.
On the subject of marriage and divorce, I’m not going to provide any cites, because I’m lazy and there’s other things to do. You may feel free to investigate yourselves, or more likely, be lazy in turn and declare illusory victory. I note, though, that my original point is well made: individual morality is a matter of the public interest. Those arguing that society is better off with loosened divorce restrictions implicitly accept this point. So, thanks.
Finally, where has Jesurgislac scurried off to?
“The implications for constituional law are obvious, but I am not making a constitutional argument at the moment. If you don’t think the federal marriage amendment & the various state amendments wrongfully discriminate as a matter of policy or morality, then why do you oppose them?”
I support changing the definition of marriage to include gay marriages as an affirmative political act of the body politic. I don not support pretending that the definition has always been the same and getting the change by subverting the rule of law or stretching methods of interpretation beyond reasonable bounds.
In a democratic republic there are legitimate ways to get what you want and illegitimate ways to get what you want. I am proposing that we use the legitimate ways instead of subverting the process to get what we want.
“Citizen once implied “white man” as surely as marriage implied “opposite sex” until a few years ago.”
First of all that isn’t strictly accurate. Second there are Constitutional Amendments on point which cleared things like that up. Legitimate methods vs. illegitimate. Going through the process vs. smashing the process to get what you want.
Katherine, whether you or st is correct here, I think we basically agree on what ought to be (is?) the case.
baltar:
….what else can society do to the family in the name of helping society?
A just question.
Isn’t it just some arbitrary line?
I don’t think so, no. There’s a difference between arbiting the existence and definition of social structures and arbiting the quality of those structures. This isn’t arbitrary, necessarily — the state is far better equipped to do the former, give that it’s more easily defined. That being said, you might well argue that a state-run orphanage is an example of the latter. I suppose my preference would be to minimize those instances, recognizing that it’s not a good idea to eradicate them entirely.
You may feel free to investigate yourselves, or more likely, be lazy in turn and declare illusory victory.
I win!
I note, though, that my original point is well made: individual morality is a matter of the public interest. Those arguing that society is better off with loosened divorce restrictions implicitly accept this point.
I, on the other hand, note that state meddling with private matters in order to improve society is not usually argued for those with a conservative political outlook.
Finally, where has Jesurgislac scurried off to?
As Jes is English, I assume she’s gone to sleep, as it’s rather late there.
…argued for BY those with a conservative etc.
individual morality is a matter of the public interest
I think a more accurate statement would be that individual morality can be a matter of the public interest, if it is shown that the purportedly immoral individual behavior has an invidious aggregate social effect. Surely you would not argue that every moral principle deserves social protection enshrined in law? What about the Christian moral strictures against accumulation of wealth (eye of a needle, and all that)? In order to actually carry force, your argument must turn on an assertion that marriage, specifically male-female marriage, (a) is critically important to the public weal, and (b) will be materially damaged by the allowance of gay marriage. Waving your hands lazily from your imperial daybed and declaring divorce to be a civil ill does nothing to prove either of these propositions.
But, no doubt, I am merely declaring illusory victory.
….state meddling with private matters in order to improve society is not usually argued for those with a conservative political outlook.
Au contraire, the libertarian Republicans notwithstanding.
As Jes is English, I assume she’s gone to sleep, as it’s rather late there..
Perhaps, but that’s not why she’s vanished from this thread.
Finally, where has Jesurgislac scurried off to?
Stop harassing Jes. She said she didn’t want to continue the debate. You’re running risk of treading on Gary Farber’s territory here (only GF can hound someone to answer their questions…sorry, but he got the patent).
On the subject of marriage and divorce, I’m not going to provide any cites, because I’m lazy and there’s other things to do. You may feel free to investigate yourselves, or more likely, be lazy in turn and declare illusory victory.
I’ve already investigated (and cited) one report debunking the misrepresentation by some in Congress of the Scandavian studies. So your side is actually two behind here. Not that we’re keeping score or anything. ;-p
I think a more accurate statement would be that individual morality can be a matter of the public interest, if it is shown that the purportedly immoral individual behavior has an invidious aggregate social effect.
Yes, that’s a far better phrasing that captures my meaning exactly. Many thanks.
Umm, just in case that some youngsters might be reading this blog:
I hereby request that the powers that be at ObWi state clearly that condoms are rather effective in preventing STD (including AIDS) and unwanted pregnancies and thus should always be used during intercourse and without any feelings of guilt or shame, no matter what some unreasonable ideologues might say. Anything else is simply irresponsible. Thank you.
Stop harassing Jes. She said she didn’t want to continue the debate.
Yep — per SOP. The ol’ cut-and-run. But okay.
So your side is actually two behind here.
Um….okay. Am I participating in the XXXtreme death match with Fitz? No?
So, Fitz: now that you have expended so many pixels on telling us why allowing same-sex couples the fundamental legal recognitions (whether called “marriage”, or not) that “traditional” (two-sex) marriages would be so existentially awful and destructive to our society: can you perhaps make some sort of reasoned argument therefore (and not by just quoting somebody else’s unattributed cliche-fest)?
Oh, and just to make it a real exercise, can you do so without resorting to any of the three basic fallback positions such arguments tend to drift towards, to wit:
1. Fags are icky and disgusting.
2. God will be pissed at us.
3. It’s bad for the kids.
Note: I have specified reasoned.
Bernard, I leave it to you to argue that condemning someone for effect Y of act X in the absence of evidence that effect Y is even occurring is reasonable or just.
You are ignoring his point. Is it or is it not fair to condemn an assassin who misses his target because of the effects of his acts were he successful in carrying them out? If you reject the formulation above, you implicitly argue that it is not. I think that is an absurd conclusion to reach, but there you are.
Tacitus, where do I get one of those imperial daybeds? Also, do peeled grapes and someone to feed them to me come with the daybed? How about the air of faux intellectual superiority that reeks of insecurity? Does that come with it too?
You probably shouldn’t post (inconclusive) things (you wish were proven true) that you don’t feel like defending, then proclaim dismissively that those who questioned you can claim some illusory victory…just sayin…
I would amend it to say: “Individual morality can be a matter of the public interest, if and only if it is shown that the purportedly immoral individual behavior has a demonstrably harmful aggregate social effect, and the social cost of leaving that behavior untouched outweighs the cost of doing something about it.”
and thus should always be used during intercourse
Wouldn’t that mean…the end of the human race?
Fitz, I’m just having a tough time seeing where the rest of us are required to reinforce your perceived gender norms.
(immense amount of snark deleted)
What puzzles me about the folks complaining about the “decline of marriage” is the relative lack of statistics they have. We don’t have that many years’ worth of divorce numbers to talk about–and we have almost no information on how many people abandoned partners and families before divorce became widely available. It was common enough to become a cliche in popular music and literature, though, so some significant number of people must have been using extralegal means to get out of a marriage.
You are ignoring his point.
No, I’m ignoring his irrelevant hypothetical.
Thicker skin, hc. My suggestion: declare victory and believe it.
….we have almost no information on how many people abandoned partners and families before divorce became widely available.
I am fairly sure we do have some data on the relative existence of out of wedlock partnerings and families.
No, I’m ignoring his irrelevant hypothetical.
The ol cut-and-run redux.
But seriously, no, you are ignoring his point. The consequences of your assumptions are absurd. Thus your argument is invalid. You can address that point or decide not to, but it stands.
I am fairly sure we do have some data on the relative existence of out of wedlock partnerings and families
Children born out of wedlock and children abandoned by a parent are not the same set of children.
Tacitus,
I leave it to you to argue that condemning someone for effect Y of act X in the absence of evidence that effect Y is even occurring is reasonable or just.
Please read again. I made no claim about effect Y, or Z, for that matter. I merely point out that it is reasonable to criticize someone for advocating X if the likely consequence of X, effect Y, would be undesirable. It is no excuse that the advocacy was unsuccessful. If I urge people to take up heroin use it is quite reasonable to condemn me for doing so, even if I win no converts.
“Katherine, whether you or st is correct here, I think we basically agree on what ought to be (is?) the case.”
I’m not really disagreeing with st–we just cross-posted.
The thing is, if it’s immutable and it’s therefore illegitimate for the government to require you to change it to avoid persecution, it strongly suggests to me that it’s not a sin. The Vatican’s position, I think, is that homosexuality is a mortal sin. Meaning you can be sent to hell for it. Which is supposed to be a worse torment than anything mankind can dream up, and which is eternal. If it’s illegitimate for Fidel Castro to say “stop being gay, or be celibate, or have a false and loveless heterosexual marriage, or I can throw you into a brutal forced labor camp,”; if it’s illegitimate for the Taliban or Egypt or Hizbellah to say “stop being gay, or be celibate, or have a false and loveless heterosexual marriage, or we can torture you and kill you”, then it seems to me that it would also be illegitimate for God to say “stop being gay, or be celibate, or have a false and loveless heterosexual marriage, or I will send you to hell for all eternity.” In a way it’s worse: Castro and Mullah Omar and Hizbellah didn’t make you gay; God did.
So the Catholic teaching on this subject is completely at odds with my understanding of a just and loving God. And “love the sinner, hate the sin” doesn’t really do a thing about it.
(I’m not getting into a personal attack on Pope John Paul II in his final days–he’s done an awful lot of good, as well as some bad; I’m not in any position to weigh them; I just hope it’s the better part of his legacy that endures.)
As far as AIDS and Africa, I think allowing condoms in addition to monogamy and abstinence as a means of preventing AIDS is totally consistent with Humanae Vitae or whatever encyclical it was called–the church allows hysterectomies to treat uterine cancer, yes?–but the African bishops and the Vatican seem to have decided that they promote promiscuity & have opposed them & given inaccurate information about their effectiveness. I can’t say the magnitude of the effect this has had, but it can only have been harmful. It does not seem to have occured to them that many faithful married woman may need condoms to protect themselves from AIDS.
AIDS, Africa and the Catholic Church
“Vatican: Condoms Don’t Stop Aids” link
If the Guardian is unacceptable, here’s a PBS story that points out (a)80% of south africans are christian (percentage catholic not mentioned); (b) 20% of the population of one region is HIV-positive and (c) the Church remains staunchly opposed to condoms in public health messages to young people. link
Having the Catholic Church lie about the effectivess of condoms really doesn’t help your argument, Tacitus.
The consequences of your assumptions are absurd. Thus your argument is invalid.
Even accepting, for argument’s sake, the first sentence, the second does not logically follow from it.
Children born out of wedlock and children abandoned by a parent are not the same set of children.
Okay….
….it is reasonable to criticize someone for advocating X if the likely consequence of X, effect Y, would be undesirable.
In itself, not unreasonable (although still a different argument than the one you were implicitly defending). However, when applied to the actual context in question, it’s not a particularly valid critique. If we accept that the Catholic Church puts forth a range of teachings (A, B, C, n….), and that the aggregate effect of following all those teachings is to dramatically retard the propagation of HIV/AIDS (I assume this is indisputable, but I trust you’ll let me know if not), even as the discrete effect of one of those teachings in isolation is to abet the spread of that disease, then to justly condemn for the intent — to say nothing of the actual effect — of that one teaching requires that you demonstrate that it does exist in de facto isolation: ie, that a person who adheres to the no-birth-control stricture primarily because of the Church simultaneously ignores most of the other strictures on sexual behavior such as abstinence, marital fidelity, et al.
I find this immensely unlikely.
“I, on the other hand, note that state meddling with private matters in order to improve society is not usually argued for those with a conservative political outlook.”
Sadly, no. The word you’re looking for is ‘libertarian’.
“Individual morality”
I would amend it to say “Individual morality, even if it can be conclusively demonstrated to have a harmful social impact, is not the province of the state so long as it does not result in a direct violation of the limited rights and liberties guaranteed by the state, and that furthermore the employ of the state to regulate moral behavior outside of that scope is tyrannical and antithetical to the principles of our nation.”
The ease with which people who are deeply unhappy being married to each other can divorce go their separate ways is not a problem, it is a solution. An increase in the rate at which they are doing so is indicative not of a general increase in dysfunctional relationships, but rather of the fact that people have the ability to end those relationships instead of being trapped in them.
Take away at-will, no-fault divorces, and you will simply band-aid the problem, not fix it. People will still end up in dead-end or broken marriages, and marry the wrong person when they’re young and hormonal. They’ll just no longer have the option of doing the best thing they could do for themselves and their children: recognizing that you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole, and moving on.
ie, that a person who adheres to the no-birth-control stricture primarily because of the Church simultaneously ignores most of the other strictures on sexual behavior such as abstinence, marital fidelity, et al.
I find this immensely unlikely.
You must not know that many Catholic teenagers.
“that a person who adheres to the no-birth-control stricture primarily because of the Church simultaneously ignores most of the other strictures on sexual behavior such as abstinence, marital fidelity, et al.”
What if you’ve got a husband that’s ignoring the strictures on fidelity and abstinence, using the Church teaching on birth control or statements on condom failure because he doesn’t feel like using a condom, and a wife who is either convinced by these argument, or not convinced but lacks the power to insist otherwise? I don’t think that’s at all unlikely.
The thing is, if it’s immutable and it’s therefore illegitimate for the government to require you to change it to avoid persecution, it strongly suggests to me that it’s not a sin.
The first postulation is your assumption here — it doesn’t inherently follow from our agreement on the asylum question. As for the nature of sin and Catholic doctrine, I’ll beg off that one.
Francis, I trust you read your second link through, yes?
THe comments on divorce raise an interesting issue. Assuming that it’s true that a high rate of divorce has a corrosive effect on society, is there a remedy? Is the remedy consonant with modern views of liberty?
Certainly states could eliminate no-fault divorces. So, for the good of “society” as a whole, we are going to trap women and men in unhappy marriages?
I think it’s a very odd notion that people who voluntarily seek state approval of their most intimate relationships suddenly have to make an affirmative showing to dissolve that relationship.
yes, it’s for the children! Gag. I thought the defining principle of conservatism was that the state does Not know better. Seems to me that the parents, even if estranged, are better placed to decide how to raise the kids. Even if a family court is needed to set the rules, I still don’t see why the default presumption should be that the parents are forced to stay together.
Three things for Catsy: First, my memories of being a Catholic teenager are fairly strong; second, using Church teaching as an excuse for an act isn’t the same thing as doing it because of the Church; third, your conflation of what’s best for you and best for the children is hardly an automatic thing.
Actually, point two is my response to Katherine as well.
I thought the defining principle of conservatism was that the state does Not know better.
Not quite. There are varying brands of conservatism, though.
It’s not the same thing, but the excuse might be the decisive factor in an argument. He could tell himself, “I sinned through infidelity, but I won’t add to it with another sin.” Or you could have a faithful wife who doesn’t use a condom because she is following the church teaching & gets AIDS as a result. Or you could have a government not distribute condoms because they don’t want to cross the local archbishop. Or you could have people believe the statement that condoms don’t prevent AIDS transmission, and figure that whether it’s more moral or not to have sex without condoms, it’s definitely less fun, and it doesn’t prevent AIDS anyway so why not. etc. etc.
Tacitus at 6:55 pm. Yes, I did. My own view of the Catholic Church is a little more complicated than that articulated by many liberals, including those found on this thread. It is undeniable that the Pope helped immensely in the fall of the Soviet Union. Catholic Charities provides a tremendous number of services that would otherwise come out of taxpayer dollars.
ABC programs apparently work, although I’ll defer to your expertise. But it seems to me that the Catholic Church is not just arguing in favor of A only, but actively arguing against the C. If A only, or AB only programs aren’t nearly as successful as ABC programs (which is my understanding), the Church is being counterproductive.
Having been involved in the Op. Rescue counter-protests in LA in the early 90s, I strongly agree with Bill Clinton: abortion should be safe, legal and rare. I believe that the Church is very wrong on this issue.
Finally, too many of my Catholic friends have expressed the view that the Church teaches, in ways both subtle and not so subtle, that women should be subservient to men. The Church is wrong on this issue, too.
So, the Church does tremendous good, and significant harm, in my view.
Since that last comment was primarily snark, let me now address the substance of Tac’s absurd claims regarding the consequences of the Catholic Church’s teachings about abstinence and birth control.
At a minimum, more than half of all teenagers nationwide will be sexually active by the time they’re 18. You can reduce those numbers somewhat by teaching them to abstain, but you cannot fight teenage curiosity and hormones: the majority of them will experiment. And when they do, the deliberate decision NOT to teach them about birth control will mean that more of them will not use it.
This is, of course, what the Catholic Church wants. Based on one of their many bizarre doctrines–this one having the essential practical purpose of “out-breeding” their ideological competitors–they would prefer that nobody be using any method of contraception, even if that method would dramatically reduce the rates of teen pregnancy, the spread of STDs, and the demand for the abortion of unplanned pregnancies.
It is the moral equivalent of leaving a gun within sight and reach of a child the entire time they’re growing up, but not putting a lock on it, teaching them about gun safety, or doing anything except telling them very firmly to Just Abstain From Touching It.
In response to Katherine’s senario up thread: that’s my mom’s family. My grandmother, good Catholic that she was, stayed married to a philandering bum who showed up annually to impregnate her, but otherwise showed no interest in his family of eight children. That’s why my mom is not a Catholic.
I’m not sure a case can be made that the decay or break down of marriage is undermining society or whatever it’s supposed to be doing. Most of the children I have encountered over the years suffer from an absence of parenting by parents who are right there in the house. The problem is that the parents are only home to sleep. In order to pay basic survival bills they work three, four jobs. They live in a state of chronic economic crisis. They have to move frequently. They are exhausted and worried. If people really want to support families, a good start would be to address the lack of living wage jobs provided by our economy.
“The first postulation is your assumption here — it doesn’t inherently follow from our agreement on the asylum question.”
Well, yes, it does, if you accept the judges’ reasoning. If you don’t accept the judges’ reasoning, they are legally prohibited from coming to the desired result. (Actually, they’re still allowed to grant withholding or deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture, if the person is going to be tortured by the state. But that’s not the same thing as asylum, and it doesn’t apply to someone who will be persecuted but not tortured, or tortured by a non-state actor with no attempt or ability of the state to protect them.)
Do you accept the judges’ reasoning or not? Can sexual orientation be changed, or is it so fundamental to the identity that the state cannot legitimately require you to change it? If neither, you have to either send people back to their persecutors, or make a bad faith legal ruling that violates your oath of office. I’m sure you don’t approve of Castro’s treatment of homosexuals, but that’s not the question I’m asking. The question is, what should the judges in that case have done? What would you do in their place?
I thought you agreed with me that they did the right thing but I seemingly overinterpreted your answer.
If people really want to support families, a good start would be to address the lack of living wage jobs provided by our economy.
Give this woman a gold star.
Seriously, Katherine, I wasn’t kidding you — I’ve paid zero attention to this part of the discussion, and I’m not going back to rectify that now. I don’t think you should send folks off to die. If the law hinders that, then the law is wrong.
(Against my better judgment, here –) Even if sexuality is mutable, I don’t see why, logically, that negates a defense. After all, one can change one’s political opinions too, but that’s still a valid reason for challenging a deportation, yes?
Catsy:
Based on one of their many bizarre doctrines–this one having the essential practical purpose of “out-breeding” their ideological competitors….
You’re deep into Jack Chick territory now. No reason to engage here.
Tac, if by “thicker skin” you mean stop calling out a rude person and don’t ask questions about specious claims, I’m off to the hide store.
Have a good time digging yourself deeper into a hole. By all means, keep supporting the active suppression of condom use as a great societal virtue, even if the use of condoms would reduce AIDS infection in Africa dramatically. Boy, you ARE going to have fun in grad school.
If people really want to support families, a good start would be to address the lack of living wage jobs provided by our economy.
Well I “really” want to support families.
You sound like your questioning the sincerity of conviction of those who claim to be against family breakdown.
I do support a living wage (although I prefer the term family wage)
And so does the Catholic Church (consistently & persistently)
“Even if sexuality is mutable, I don’t see why, logically, that negates a defense. After all, one can change one’s political opinions too, but that’s still a valid reason for challenging a deportation, yes?”
Yes, and this applies equally to religion, but:
1) Political opinion and religion are specifically listed in the Refugee Convention as a grounds for refugee status and by U.S. statutes as a ground for asylum.
2) Political opinion and religion are both considered so fundamental to your identity that the state cannot legitimately force you to change them.
I think I actually said this upthread but: I think
a) sexual orientation is immutable (not genetic, immutable. They’re related but not synonymous)
b) given (a), forming same sex relationship(s) is so fundamental to your identity that the state cannot legitimately forbid it. If you can’t stop being gay, it’s not legitimate for the state to force you into a loveless marriage or to be celibate.
I don’t just rattle on about asylum law because it’s what I know–I rattle on it because it’s easier to recognize wrongs when they’re done in their most extreme forms, and when they’re done by your enemies rather than by you.
Most Americans seem to have a strong intuition that it’s wrong to torture or kill or rape or imprison people for being gay & it’s wrong of us to send people back to that fate. You seem to share that intuition. Maybe in your case it’s because you believe that no one should ever be tortured, raped, or executed; or because it is an excessive punishment for homosexuality. Maybe you would feel the same way about political asylum someone who had committed a real crime like theft or selling drugs and was going to receive an excessive sentence. But for most people, I think it’s more than that, and while maybe it’s only flaming liberals who see it as exactly analagous to religion or political opinion, I think many people have an intuition that it’s at least on a spectrum between religion/political opinion and theft.
Do you think it’s unchangeable, or so fundamental to the identity that it’s illegitimate for the state to change it? Or not? A lot rides on that question, and I honestly don’t know what your answer is.
Even if a family court is needed to set the rules, I still don’t see why the default presumption should be that the parents are forced to stay together.
Even then, they did not stay together — they just stayed married (usually out of spite by one partner, which hardly makes it more likely that the marriage wwill then work). Legal coercion is a rather weak tool to preserve or restore marriages on the rocks.
I wasn’t questioning anyone’s sincerity, although I can see why it seemed that way. By “really” I meant “real, actually effective”.
Childhood is pretty stressful, at least in my part of America. Divorce isn’t the biggest stressor and might sometimes be a relief. Constant anxiety and instability are the stressors. It is stressful for a sixth frader to come home afer school to a empty house and be responsible for younger sibblings until mom and dad get home late in the evening from their swing shift jobs, jobs they had to take because they bcause they ave no alternative. It is stressful to be constantly moving everytime the rent goes up. It is stressful to live in a family that can’t afford a telephone or get the car fixed. It is stressful to go to school sick because the hear isn’t on at home and there isn’t any food in the frig anyway.
Fitz,
I do support a living wage (although I prefer the term family wage)
Just curious. What do you think the “living wage” should be?
Oh – the wage would vary according to the region. Generally speaking I think that a standard of living of around $30,000 a year for a family of four should be a minimum we set for ourselves both through business, unionization, and government regulation.
As a family first conservative/ traditional values supporter and Catholic, I believe there are any number of things the government and all aspects of are culture should do to uphold and support the natural family
You’re deep into Jack Chick territory now. No reason to engage here.
Notice Tac’s repeated MO: when confronted by an argument he cannot refute, pretend the substance of the argument does not exist and seize on any element of snark, anything that can be used to erect an ad hominem defense based on delegitimizing the opponent, and declare victory.
Thanks for the reminder of how little we were missing during your banning.
In itself, not unreasonable (although still a different argument than the one you were implicitly defending).
I don’t know what argument you think I was implicitly defending. I was making a simple point.
If we accept that the Catholic Church puts forth a range of teachings (A, B, C, n….), and that the aggregate effect of following all those teachings is to dramatically retard the propagation of HIV/AIDS (I assume this is indisputable, but I trust you’ll let me know if not), even as the discrete effect of one of those teachings in isolation is to abet the spread of that disease, then to justly condemn for the intent — to say nothing of the actual effect — of that one teaching requires that you demonstrate that it does exist in de facto isolation: ie, that a person who adheres to the no-birth-control stricture primarily because of the Church simultaneously ignores most of the other strictures on sexual behavior such as abstinence, marital fidelity, et al.
It does not require that at all. Bad advice is bad advice, even if mixed with good advice. Is the effect widespread? You claim we don’t know. OK. Is it nonexistent? Unlikely.
And of course this ignores the effect of Church policies on non-Catholics through attempts to influence public education programs and the like, not to mention the sort of silliness Edward linked to.
By all means, keep supporting the active suppression of condom use as a great societal virtue….
I don’t. Have fun at the hide store.
Do you think it’s unchangeable….
I doubt it’s 100% unchangeable. But that doesn’t affect my feeling about the asylum question.
Katherine: back when I was very seriously Christian, it always seemed to me that given the rather tiny number of condemnations of homosexuality in the bible, especially if you don’t count the ones that are part of the Law that Christ came to supersede, and if you also consider the claim that it is better to marry than to burn, you could have a fairly strong Christian case for gay marriage of a sort implied by what you said. I never really followed through on it at the time, partly because gay marriage was not then on the horizon politically, and also because it wasn’t an issue for me personally. But I was always perplexed by some Christians’ focus on the sexual sins, as opposed to others that seemed to me obviously worse, like pride, anger, envy, and the like; I could never see any doctrinal justification for this. I tended to think that it had something to do with the fact that it’s easier to not engage in homosexual conduct through an act of will than it is to root out anger or pride, and thus focussing on homosexuality as a sort of exemplary sin allowed people to feel virtuous much more easily than a focus on (what I took to be) the more central sins. It always completely puzzled me.
….when confronted by an argument he cannot refute….
It — the contention that the Church seeks to “outbreed” its “competitors” — is not an argument any more than “the Pope is an alien” is an argument. It’s no more refutable, either. It’s just nuts.
Bad advice is bad advice, even if mixed with good advice.
It’s not a grab bag. It’s part of a coherent whole, and not separable from the Church’s point of view. That coherent whole is beneficial to those threatened by HIV/AIDS.
Is it nonexistent? Unlikely.
I think my prior answer stands.
And of course this ignores the effect of Church policies on non-Catholics….
Again, data, please.
I think you seriously misuderstand the Church’s teaching, how they interact- and what the prevailing law should be on any country or polity.
Also – I believe you misunderstand the power of the Church in the third world. When we advocate a policy down their, its local Bishops getting together with local Catholics to influence goverment in this or that manner.
Not unlike Rick Santorum and Pro-Lifers hopeing to effect society in this or that way
Fitz,
Oh – the wage would vary according to the region. Generally speaking I think that a standard of living of around $30,000 a year for a family of four should be a minimum we set for ourselves both through business, unionization, and government regulation.
Sounds like socialism to me.
It — the contention that the Church seeks to “outbreed” its “competitors” — is not an argument any more than “the Pope is an alien” is an argument. It’s no more refutable, either. It’s just nuts.
How nice that you think so. I will spare you a memetics discussion, and use simple sentences so that there’s no misunderstanding. People make babies and raise children. Raising children with a religion makes them more likely to be that religion. Religions tend to encourage this because it increases their numbers. Catholicism is practically the apotheosis of this trait.
However, that is only tangentially related to the subject, as you well know. It simply needed explaining. But again, I thank you for illustrating the exact behavior I was just calling you out on. To wit:
Catsy: Notice Tac’s repeated MO: when confronted by an argument he cannot refute, pretend the substance of the argument does not exist and seize on any element of snark, anything that can be used to erect an ad hominem defense based on delegitimizing the opponent, and declare victory.
And what just happened here? I made a number of points about the percentage of teenagers who are sexually active, their certainty of doing so despite abstinence “education”, and the irresponsibility of letting half of all teenagers try sex without being properly educated about condoms and birth control simply because of a doctrinal opposition to birth control in any form. I argued, and rightly I believe, that it is morally equivalent to leaving a gun where a child can get at it without teaching them about gun safety or doing anything except telling them it’s forbidden.
Tac, however–twice!–completely ignores the parts of my argument which refute his, instead seizing on the one thing he thinks he can safely dismiss as loony. He does this regularly: rather than engage on the merits of an argument, he condescends and dismisses the other person as a nut. Admittedly, in this case I share responsibility, because I allowed my contempt for doctrinal religion to seep through into snark, and gave him an opening to exercise this highly sophisticated but intellectually bankrupt trolling technique.
But it’s still trolling. And given the way any thread in which Tacitus participates inevitably slides into ad hominem dysfunction, I’m rather looking forward to sometime again having a Tacitus-free zone so that people who are interested in discussing issues without a veneer of elitist contempt for everyone on the other side of the aisle can do so without him pissing in the pool.
I will spare you a memetics discussion….
Thanks. Consider extending the favor to other areas. And best of luck with managing the obsession. To say nothing of the nutball theorizing.
Oh, for what it’s worth: all your points were addressed elsewhere. Just not to you.
I tended to think that it had something to do with the fact that it’s easier to not engage in homosexual conduct through an act of will than it is to root out anger or pride, and thus focussing on homosexuality as a sort of exemplary sin allowed people to feel virtuous much more easily than a focus on (what I took to be) the more central sins. It always completely puzzled me.
Sounds to me like you solved the puzzle. For most people avoiding this “sin” doesn’t even require an act of will. Virtue on the cheap. What could be better?
The idea that people should be forced to stay in unhappy marriages “for the sake of the children” is batty.
You think the kids are unaware of what’s going on between their parents? You think it’s good for kids to grow up in an atmosphere of mutual indifference/contempt/outright hatred? For them to figure out, very early on, how to play Mom and Dad off against each other? For them to get dumped with relatives every time things get too awful at home – or, better yet, be audiences for shrieking, abusive, foul-mouthed slanging matches? For them to be told, in so many words, that they’re the only reason Mom or Dad is sticking around and, yes, that means the fighting and abuse are their fault?
What the hell kind of “for the children’s sake” are you anti-divorce people talking about?
What the hell kind of “for the children’s sake” are you anti-divorce people talking about?
The kind where “for the children’s sake” can be more accurately translated as “our religious doctrine forbids it”. This is a really great smokescreen that can be used to attack pornography, gay marriage, rock music, or any other bogeyman du jour, regardless of the facts involved.
Catsy, you got some problems with religion, man.
….an atmosphere of mutual indifference/contempt/outright hatred….
Let me assure you, Casey, that many kids prefer that about a thousand percent to having the home ripped apart. I did.
given the way any thread in which Tacitus participates inevitably slides into ad hominem dysfunction
Happens on his own blog, too.
But what do I know? I’ve only been across that benighted continent a few times….
Let me assure you, Casey, that many kids prefer that about a thousand percent to having the home ripped apart. I did.
You want anecdata? Let me oblige.
The divorce question really isn’t simple. “For the sake of the children” has its drawbacks and in some cases just is not possible but it’s not worthy of mockery, nor is it appropriate to dismiss an individual’s memories of his or her own parents’ divorce as completely irrelevant. (Everyone takes Edward and Sebastian and Jes seriously when they talk about whether they chose their sexual orientation, and me and Gary seriously when they talk about dying loved ones and their feeding tubes, I hope. I don’t see why Tac doesn’t deserve the same respect. I have some experience in the area of divorce myself but as my parents both sometimes read this, I’m so not getting into it.) There are decent arguments against no fault, but the alternatives strike me as quite possibly worse. The legal means of proving fault strikes me as possibly creating a f*cking nightmare. A compromise I suppose would be to require a period of separation before a no-fault divorce, but a lot of states already do that. I’m not sure there’s any appreciable effect on the divorce rate.
I simply don’t trust Tony Perkins to write decent divorce laws. Nor the Catholic Church–either the inflexible Vatican school or the annullment-happy American school.
One change I would support, is that in many places the best interests of minor children is one of a dozen or more factors to be considered in a multi-factor balancing test by judges making divorce settlements. I think it should be the single most important factor. One of my professors was part of a task force that lobbied the state legislature for this, to no avail–the divorce lawyers don’t like it.
The people who would divorce their spouses, when gay couples are allowed to marry, are people who probably should not have been married in the first place.
Catsy, you got some problems with religion, man.
Considering that on the balance, it’s responsible for the most destructive, backwards, and irrational motivations of mankind? Yeah. Just a few. Your perceptiveness is noted.
Let me assure you, Casey, that many kids prefer that about a thousand percent to having the home ripped apart. I did.
And let me assure you, Tac, that many kids prefer their life after their parents’ divorce about a thousand percent to being emotionally ripped apart by living in a household with parents who didn’t want to live together.
Tac writes:
Normally Obsidian Wings has a strict civility policy. As does the Pope, FWIW.
Well, by all means, let’s make divorce policy based on what Tacitus might have preferred when he was a child. I assume these “many kids” are either in his breast pocket or a forthcoming cite.
Had my parents stayed married, I almost certainly would have been completely incapable of maintaining a healthy adult relationship after their example.
NB: How funny to see one conservative attacking another as a socialist merely for believing that jobs should pay enough for people to actually live on. Utterly priceless. What good is partisanism if you can’t eat your own, right?
I don’t see why Tac doesn’t deserve the same respect.
While I appreciate it, Katherine, you’re spitting into the wind. The obsessives are, well, obsessive. Viz.:
Well, by all means, let’s make divorce policy based on what Tacitus might have preferred when he was a child.
Phil, Catsy and Duncan owe themselves a more thorough reading: if a person — Casey in this case — makes an assertion for all instances of X, then a single counterexample is sufficient to negate that assertion. Which was here provided: it’s not true that all, nor even most, children are better off with unhappy parents separating. Are some? Yes. Is a blanket statement on the subject warranted? No. Thanks for participating, guys.
Catsy then goes on to opine:
[Religion is] responsible for the most destructive, backwards, and irrational motivations of mankind.
Which causes one to wonder why the single most murderous ideology in history — communism — was avowedly atheist and anti-religious. One further wonders what role nationalism (a killer indeed in its time) might have to play in his world-view. One thing’s for sure: the lethal effects of religion (pace Wilberforce, eh, Catsy?) are certainly valid reason for those Catholics to breed like rabbits.
…unless you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of African wives who can’t demand condoms or divorce from her HIV-positive, prostitute-patronizing husband.
Funny enough, Lindsay, but your comment, if you include the quote, is nicely — and tightly! — self-refuting.
Said policy applies only to those posting here, so far.
And it’s not like she was concerned about the Pope. Feh.
I’d also point out that a great deal of…how did that go? Oh, yes, incivility. Yes, quite a lot of that was directed in Tacitus’ direction until he began posting here more frequently. Me, I’d just as soon we dispensed with all of it, but just try to get people to stop smoking.
So you’re saying that a coherent moral policy may condemn defenseless innocents to a horrible death because of the non-compliance of the guilty?
Phil: I thought I had seen recently that, within the context of the much-ballyhooed “ABC” public health combination, that the real data reflected that most people were avoiding the “A” while eagerly embracing “B” and “C.” Did I imagine that, or did anyone else see it, or am I misremembering . . .? (Or some combination thereof?)
You’re correct, or at least close enough; I’ll try and track down a reference over the weekend. I know Jeanne at Body & Soul had a lengthy post about it a few weeks ago; you might want to start there if you feel like you can’t wait 🙂
Tacitus: Could you please stop trying to pick fights with Jes when she’s bowing out of the debate with you? It’s crass, childish, and not particularly productive.
Edward said: I have a great deal of admiration for this Pope, although I’m dumbfounded on how he can get it so entirely wrong when it comes to homosexuality. Surely he has gay friends/acquaintances. Doesn’t he respect them and wish them well?
I say:
Well, first of all, I have to expect that it’s quite likely the Pope doesn’t, in fact, know anyone who admits to being gay. Well, more precisely, that he doesn’t have anything resembling regular contact with anyone who is an out of the closet gay. Several reasons for this:
1. He grew up in a time in which gay people generally hid their gayness from everyone around him.
2. He’s been a celibate priest for what…sixty years? In a church which has long condemned homosexual behavior. His most regular social contacts have been with people with reason to hide being gay. I’m not sure if he was ever a regular parish priest, but if he was, that was in the period in which no one would admit to being gay.
3. It is to be noted that it is in his pontificate in which the Church has moved in at least a little more progressive direction with regard to homosexuality by urging a distinction between the act and the state of desiring the act (so to speak). It’s a baby step, but a step nonetheless. Not that Homosexuals want to be seen as being in a state similar to alcoholism, but it’s better than being viewed as inherently sinful just for their instincts. Hopefully, we’ll eventually manage to move on to thinking it’s not a problem at all (which, unfortunately, will likely take WAY TOO LONG, but that’s another point…)
So it’s not for the sake of civility that OW forbids comments of the form “Democrats are X” or “Republicans believe that Y” even if X and Y appear in the parties’ respective party platforms?
At a minimum, more than half of all teenagers nationwide will be sexually active by the time they’re 18. You can reduce those numbers somewhat by teaching them to abstain, but you cannot fight teenage curiosity and hormones: the majority of them will experiment. And when they do, the deliberate decision NOT to teach them about birth control will mean that more of them will not use it.
See, for example, The Education of Shelby Knox.
Katherine said: The thing is, if it’s immutable and it’s therefore illegitimate for the government to require you to change it to avoid persecution, it strongly suggests to me that it’s not a sin.
The current Catholic position on Homosexuality essentially views it as similar to Alcoholism–something which may drive you into sinful behavior, but itself acting as a hampering factor on your freedom to avoid a particular sinful behavior rather than being a sinful state, per se (Gluttony through excess alcohol consumption, plus any other sins from getting drunk in the case of Alcoholism, homosexual acts in the case of homosexuality). IE, it’s more of a disorder than a state of sin as it was viewed before. Being a disorder, you can’t expect the state itself to be persecuted; one would hope for finding a treatment, instead.
That’s the Church’s position. I myself can’t view homosexuality as a sin either, but I think the current Catholic position is reasonably logically consistent with how various other conditions which may rob people of some degree of their free will are generally treated.
Slarti, the word you seek is “hypocrisy.” In seriousness, you and Katherine are saints, but you really aren’t going to stop the leaks in this particular dike. Thanks for trying, though.
Dear Anarch: No.
Lindsay, this isn’t terribly difficult: it makes little sense to denounce a policy by reason of the people who aren’t following it.
It’s for the sake of civility that remarks specific to others posting here must show restraint. Tacitus didn’t refer to anyone posting here, unless I’m badly mistaken.
I’m been lurking here because I haven’t really been able to formulate my thoughts about how growing up in a religion inflected by polygamy makes me see this debate in a totally different way than do many of the conservatives here. This might be a longish post. Go ahead and skip it if you like.
Data points:
Every month I get a newsletter from either the Joseph Smith Jr. Family group or the Joseph F. Smith Family group. They invite me to send them money and to organize myself according to the wife I am descended from. In the Joseph F. Smith newsletter, photographs of the five wives are prominently featured; they are all lovely, though of course I think my great-great grandmother the prettiest.
The name passed down to sons in this part of my family reflects an old Mormon tradition: the last name is the father’s last name, the middle name is the mother’s last name (for identification purposes). My mother, one of my sisters, and many of my cousins still have names that reflect the older Mormon tradition of not giving middle names to girl children, in the expectation of their marrying.
Plural Marriage in Mormon thinking came out of a theological conundrum, as well, of course, as from some personal idiosyncracies on Joseph Smith’s part and from cultural tendencies. The theological conundrum hasn’t been solved, however. In the Mormon theology, a marriage is eternal. If a partner dies, how eternal is the second marriage? And if a second marriage is eternal and co-existing in the afterlife, why should it not be so in the material life? (Mormon apologists tend to argue that there was a social need to “attach” single women to households at this time.) To my knowledge, while the here-and-now practice of polygamy (and I think plural spouses is limited to men both now and in eternity) has been officially outlawed, the after-life implications remain rather open.
Anyway.
The mainstream church officially repudiated plural marriage in 1890. An undercurrent continued the practice, and gradually, practitioners became ostracized. But the traces of the practice remain. The one man, one woman concept of marriage rings extremely false to me: the usual soundbite of “this is an institution that has remained constant for 2000 years” just isn’t true for me.
The LDS church has come out strongly against gay sex in general, and gay marriage in particular. (I note in passing that a general directive from Utah for California churches to advocate that its churches advise members to vote for Proposition 22, which legally defined marriage as the union solely of a man and a woman, resulted in the suicide of one desperate, young Mormon, who had been taught that only those desires sanctified by marriage were legitimate. One of my cousins went to church with Stuart Matis and remembers him as sincere and devout.) The church has good theological reasons to want to limit marriage to the union of men and women, but these reasons are theological reasons, relating to the metaphysics of gender and the power-relations of “legitimacy.”
The LDS church already conducts its marriages within the privacy of its temples–my mother and father, sister and myself, were not eligible to attend the temple marriage of my oldest sister. Marriage is theologically central to the Mormon–and, probably other Christian–traditions, but the state doesn’t necessarily have to get involved. The state seal on a Mormon marriage is an afterthought; the theological importance is contained entirely within the religious ceremony. Given the Mormon tradition of resistance to statist definitions of what marriage should be (it took three acts of Congress and the threat of invasion to force a convenient revelation against polygamy), the church’s recent position on legal marriage is somewhat ironic.
hilzoy, if you don’t mind my asking, what kind of Christianity were you raised in?
Oh, and anyone who is interested in the bizarre legal questions that arise from the Congress’s targeting Utah’s polygamy could start with this rather pro-Mormon Wikipedia entry.
Tac, I was just matching anecdote for anecdote; my comment concerning making policy based on your childhood preferences stems from the fact that you at least appear to be insinuating in the direction of a policy preference, given your comments to double-plus-ungood, based on — as so far offered — little more than your personal experience. If you aren’t insinuating in such a direction, then I’ve misread you. If you are, you’re going to have to offer more than poorly-explicated anecdotes about your own family.
Rest assured, Phil, that you’ll know when I want to engage full-bore on something. Until then, shooting from the hip is serving no purpose.
Tragic anecdote, though.
Which causes one to wonder why the single most murderous ideology in history
That would be the 14th century precursor to mercantilism but I’ll let it slide. As far as “communism” goes – and I will assume you are simply being imprecise and talking about the totalitarian flavor – there is an isomorphism between totalitarian communism and extreme fundamentalist religion. Soviet communism merely directed the blind faith, dogmatism, fanaticism and demand for total allegiance of the latter and redirected it in service of the former. You should be able to see why many rational people distrust them both.
No, this is really difficult. How can any coherent set of principles result in innocent people being morally obliged to passively submit to their own grotesque deaths because of other people’s transgressions?
The Catholic Church teaches a reverence for life, but it doesn’t proscribe self-defense in the face of unjust aggression. By your logic, everyone would be theologically obliged to abstain from deadly force even in self defense–because what policy is judged by the consequences of obeying it even when other people aren’t?
“The current Catholic position on Homosexuality essentially views it as similar to Alcoholism–something which may drive you into sinful behavior, but itself acting as a hampering factor on your freedom to avoid a particular sinful behavior rather than being a sinful state, per se (Gluttony through excess alcohol consumption, plus any other sins from getting drunk in the case of Alcoholism, homosexual acts in the case of homosexuality).”
I sort of get this, but first, alcoholism harms others. Second, not drinking does not deprive you of an essential part of your life. I could stop drinking tomorrow and miss it occasionally but live a completely full, happy life. Celibacy, and the lack of any romantic relationship, of a family, of children, of all these other things that most of us take for granted, is a completely different story. I realize some priests choose it themselves, but it is something that can only legitimately be chosen freely. And there are compensations for priests, by all accounts. It’s a freely chosen sacrifice, and you get something in return. (And I believe the Vatican’s official position is that gay people shouldn’t be allowed to become priests–vowing celibacy isn’t enough to completely remove the taint, apparently.) In this case–it’s nothing but a sentence and a threat: wander the earth alone, give up what most people take for granted, or I will send you to hell to face eternal torments.
Once again, I wonder why people who describe an infinitely good, infinitely loving God, believe that this is consistent with a God that treats human beings less like a loving parent than like a cruel dictator.
Felix, surely as a longtime communist apologist you know as well as I that the very worst communists weren’t Soviets at all.
Lindsay, you don’t appear to know a great deal about the Catholic Church. See the Catechism, part three, section two, chapter two, article five, 2263-2267. Or just go here.
Ugh. As so often in this debate, we have here the liberal finger-wagging “premarital sex is a regrettable inevitability” position vs. the conservative finger-wagging “premarital sex is a terrible and preventable sin” position. Bloody Puritans.
Premarital sex is in fact an immense social *good*, one of the greatest in human life. Not only does it bring tremendous pleasure to billions of people, it has numerous positive collateral effects, such as the ability to gauge one’s sexual compatibility with a prospective lifepartner before committing permanently. A sane modern society would encourage it, not hem-and-haw or call down fire and brimstone.
It is, moreover, one of the great wonders of the modern world that we have a battery of highly effective technological means by which the unfortunate risks that attach to premarital sex in the wild can be, and in many places are, immensely reduced. (Compare the teen pregnancy and STD rates in the Netherlands to those in more “traditional” societies). The evil and immoral ones out there are those who would deny people this liberating technology, and its immense concomitant pleasures, in order to gratify their cramped, ludicrous, obsolete superstitions.
Felix, surely as a longtime communist apologist
At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency? Have you no shame left?
As far as I’m concerned, the idea that condoms should not be used, even if they might save a life, because they encourage promiscuity, is basically an argument that it is best that sinners’ bodies–and the bodies of their innocent spouses-suffer in preventable ways so that they can be used as cautionary tales. It’s not so very different from arguing that penicillin encourages promiscuity–better that people get advanced syphillis and pelvic inflammatory disease to discourage promiscuity in others.
This is basically using people as if they are lab rats or health class dioramas. It seems to directly contradict the spirit of this passage:
“Research or experimentation on the human being cannot legitimate acts that are in themselves contrary to the dignity of persons and to the moral law. The subjects’ potential consent does not justify such acts. Experimentation on human beings is not morally legitimate if it exposes the subject’s life or physical and psychological integrity to disproportionate or avoidable risks.”
Jackmormon — very interesting comment. (I knew someone once whose mother became someone’s nth wife the year before plural marriage was outlawed, and continued to consider herself married to him out of devoutness; he would show up about once a year, impregnate her, and vanish again, and finally abandoned the whole family because he suddenly realized that plural marriage was wrong. Oops. He finally left the church when, after a series of horrible catastrophes, the last being the death of one of his kids in a car crash, an elder came by and urged him to reflect on what he had done to bring God’s punishment on his family. I should perhaps add that he was an immensely decent person, the last person on earth you’d think that a just and loving God could possibly be angry at. This anecdote not meant to prove or illustrate anything beyond itself; it’s just that conversations with this person are among my main sources of knowledge about plural marriage and its history.)
I wasn’t brought up in any kind of Christianity; when I converted, at 13, I had to get myself baptized, so total was my parents’ nonengagement with any form of organized religion. At the time, I would have said: I found what seemed to me to be a proof of it, and couldn’t figure out a way around it until I was sort of beyond the need for proofs anyways; and that would have been true. Now I would add: when I was 13 I had this little problem. I have these really wonderful parents. They are two of the most decent people I have ever known, and interesting, kind, and funny to boot. Plus, they have a very clear sense of where their lives leave off and their kids’ lives begin, and so never had expectations of us beyond wanting us to be decent and happy, and to do something worthwhile with our lives.
Thus my problem: how to rebel against them? I could have started knocking over convenience stores, or become a drug addict, or something, but I didn’t want to do any of those things, since, annoyingly, all the things that would have sent my parents round the bend were really and truly either immoral or stupid. Christianity was in a way a perfect solution: it allowed me to focus on the question, what does God want me to do?, and thereby to figure out what I thought was right, and to give it a basis that had nothing to do with them. (Also, to set aside altogether the question, what were the other kids in school doing? — lucky, since I had no clue how to be popular, and this way I could just not bother trying.) Plus, I turned out to love medieval theology.
At first my parents thought it was a welcome, stabilizing sort of thing; eventually, it did get to my Mom a bit, since she has an enlightenment bluestocking streak. One of my favorite Mom moments was when we were arguing about faith (the idea that Abraham had done the right thing in being willing to slaughter Isaac was sort of a problem for her), and she, in a moment of frustration, sort of sputtered: “But, Hilary, as Voltaire once said, he who can make you believe an absurdity can make you commit an atrocity!!” I love my Mom.
I lost my faith when I was 22 or so, but that’s another story.
See the Catechism, part three, section two, chapter two, article five, 2263-2267.
Okay, what am I missing here? Having read that, it accords perfectly with what Lindsay’s saying (that “[t]he Catholic Church teaches a reverence for life, but it doesn’t proscribe self-defense in the face of unjust aggression”).
Also, if enough of us ask nicely, will you *please* tone things down?
“Ugh. As so often in this debate, we have here the liberal finger-wagging “premarital sex is a regrettable inevitability” position vs. the conservative finger-wagging “premarital sex is a terrible and preventable sin” position. Bloody Puritans.”
“Regrettable inevitability” is really, really not my position & I hope I haven’t given that impression. I’m all for monogamy and all for marriage and all for waiting till you’re ready, but that’s not the same thing as being all for waiting until your wedding night.
I’m pretty dubious about abstinence education but if ABC works in Uganda and is saving lives, it works & is saving lives & we should support it.
Katherine: apologies for my misinterpretation. I will now go to bed before casting more aspersions.
Also, if enough of us ask nicely, will you *please* tone things down?
Unfortunately, some of us are on a divine mission. (Details to follow – brass-footed courier on his way)
if ABC works in Uganda and is saving lives, it works & is saving lives & we should support it.
It does. The C component is utterly opposed by the Catholic Church. The number of lives saved is reduced. A small price to pay for the intellelectual fulfillment of the worthy.
I did not expect such a stirring defense of Unilateral Disarmament or Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy.
You know, given these examples, I think it makes a great deal of sense to ridicule a policy by reason of the consequences of lack of enforcement. (Extra credit: can someone Google for how many states besides California still require a Wasserman [syphilis] test for a marriage license? That suggests an earlier “moral policy” based on heads-in-sand had unacceptable consequences for unprotected victims.)
Wow, go away for a bit and the whole place goes to hell. I actually have a question about the topic of the post. What exactly is the Judaic position(s) on homosexuality? I understand that the Reconstructionist Judaism branch (not sure what the appropriate word is here) allows same sex marriages. What is the percentage breakdowns of the various Jewish branchs in Israel? Do the various branches accept the guidance/order/whatever of the 2 patriarchs?
liberal japonicus: What exactly is the Judaic position(s) on homosexuality? I understand that the Reconstructionist Judaism branch (not sure what the appropriate word is here) allows same sex marriages.
I don’t know a lot about Conservative Judaism, so you’ll excuse me if I leave them out of the question.
Orthodox Jews cite the ruling against male-male sex in the Mosaic Law, and consider homosexuality to be an abomination. (In this, at least they’re consistent, unlike the numerous Christians who have tried to cite a couple of passages from Leviticus at me without considering that they themselves don’t keep a kosher kitchen or indeed any of the other 362 commandments.) I may disagree with their translation, but I cannot fault their consistency.
Reform Jews believe that Mosaic/Talmudic law needs to be reinterpreted for the modern day, and – reasonably enough – many consider that the law against male-male sex was written for a society/culture so alien to us now that it is no longer relevant. Just as Reform Jews feel free to switch on and off electric lights on the Sabbath (which is, so rabbis determined, the equivalent of kindling a fire) so do they decline to penalize two men (or two women) for forming a relationship with each other.
So long as they’re both Jewish, of course. You can more easily find a Reform Jewish rabbi willing to join two nice Jewish boys in a committment ceremony than you would find any rabbi willing to join one Jew and one gentile. I have a close friend who was contemplating becoming a rabbi: he gave the idea up not because he was gay – he’d moved away from Orthodox Judaism because he couldn’t stand it’s homophobia – but because his partner and the love of his life isn’t Jewish.
(Incidentally, before he met his current partner/the love of his life, he was in a long-term relationship with a man who was and is a complete mistake: a perfect example of how it would be a terrible thing for two people to be permanently locked into marriage with each other just because they fell for each other when they were much younger and less able to pick good partners.)
Hilzoy,
Thanks for the response. What an interesting trajectory! Your anecdote about your friend’s dad seems typical of twentieth-century plural marriages. The institution and supporting culture have dissolved.
I’d comment further, but I’ve got to run.
For many years now, and often inadvertently, secular as well as religious researchers have been amassing facts that, properly understood, bolster the case for the traditional family and against its adversaries and would-be imitators. Some of that evidence, such as the harm to children of the fatherless household, is already widely acknowledged by mainstream writers and readers. Some of it, particularly evidence pertaining to the dark side of homosexuality, remains virtually taboo. When all of it is put together, however, this evidence shows that empirical fact is on the side of the traditional family.
do not mean that heterosexual family formation, as practiced, is healthy. Far from it. Abortion, divorce, illegitimacy, pornography, sterilization—these and other plagues on the natural family continue apace. Underlying and sustaining all these separate attacks on the natural family is the fact that contraceptive sex, the deliberate plan to thwart participation in the natural family, is not only widespread but also almost universally accepted in the United States and elsewhere. Considered phenomenologically, the present and future of the natural family in America—for that matter, in much of the world—looks grim indeed.
At the same time, the news isn’t all bad. We should recognize one real and important victory for the traditionalist side: there has been a sea change in the way our secular cultural elites now write and talk about nontraditional heterosexual households. Members of this elite may live in such households; they may personally feel such households to be morally equivalent, perhaps even superior, to traditional households; but as a rule they no longer offer full-throated public endorsements of the broken hearth.
That is a major transformation in public life. Only twenty-five years ago, not only the acceptance but the active ideological defense of such households was the intellectual norm among secular educated people. Divorce, it was commonly argued then, is not only a human right but actually better for the child. One parent was said to be at least as good as two. Certain extreme instantiations of the antitraditional household, such as communes and “swinging,” were actively defended by mainstream voices and celebrated in stylish mainstream books and magazines. Just two-and-a-half decades ago, in other words, arguments for experimental family life were all on the offensive. Today, by contrast, they are all playing defense. Whether they like it or not, whether they begrudge the fact or not, most people in the public square today have been brought around to recognizing the truth of this proposition: the traditional family, despite its problems, is nonetheless the best arrangement yet contrived for raising children—if only by default.
How did this remarkable shift in secular opinion come about? The answer, in large part, is that the change has been caused by the steady—and ultimately unavoidable—accumulation of empirical evidence testifying to the connections between broken homes and child problems. To cite just a few examples, it was due to the groundbreaking work of Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1964 on the Negro family; the critical research of psychologist Judith Wallerstein over several decades on the deleterious effects of divorce on children; Barbara Defoe Whitehead’s famous 1993 Atlantic Monthly piece (followed by a book) entitled “Dan Quayle was Right”; David Blankenhorn’s 1994 book, Fatherless America; James Q. Wilson’s The Marriage Problem; Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher’s The Case for Marriage; and many other revisionist articles and books that have followed their lead. These and other writers made the case for the traditional family on largely secular grounds; and in so doing, they have remade the way secular people think about it.
still haven’t figured out how to make a link Fitz?
type in this formula
<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/006092683X/qid=1112371424/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-4761034-7946238?v=glance&s=books&n=507846″>Fatherless America</a>
it will look like this when you post it
Fatherless America
The problem with your thinking about this is the fallacy that by denying people access to anything other than a traditional one-woman/one-man marriage and no divorce option you’ll essentially ensure more happy healthy families. It’s a totalitarian approach that is doomed to fail. It sure as hell isn’t going to make gay people straight.
I’m all for societal incentives to encourage people to mate for life, especially where children are involved, but I’m not at all for discrimination against people who are not heterosexual or a life-sentence for people who made a horrible choice in their decision to get married.
Truth of the matter is, we’ve tried it your way, and it didn’t work. Let’s try it my way and see if that’s better.
Fitz:
Is “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy” part of the dark side of homosexuality? If so, I have to agree, it presents problems in my home life. The little woman gets some strange ideas from that show, and it might lead to violence.
Actually showing where it’s all put together is more what I’m looking for; do you expect anyone here to take your word for it?
If so, I have to agree, it presents problems in my home life.
Hell, it presents problems in my home life…no one can be that neat and tidy who doesn’t have a maid.
Your right Ed – this whole link thing is way to much for me. (seriously) I guess you just have to take my word for it.
We have tried it your way (the anti-traditionalist) for 40 years – and the effects are 50% divorce rates and 70% illegitimacy rates and so forth.
My entire point is that the worldview of the sexual revolution is being vigorously called into question. And that this questioning is now a matter of widely accepted understanding.
Forget whether you agree on the thesis and evidence – would you agree that the critique itself is widespread and understood as stated above?
no one can be that neat and tidy
Yes, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. Just try to find something you need, when it’s been placed God knows where, for the sake of looking “tidy”.
I have conducted an exhaustive, years-long, detailed survey, albeit with a very small sample size, on whether contraception helps or harms relationships, encourages promiscuity, and infidelity, etc. etc.
I am happy to report:
–100% of subjects say it was very, very good for their marriage & allowed them to give more of themselves to the other.
–100% of subjects have never cheated on their partner and have never wanted to
–100% of subjects have only slept with one person ever
–50% of subjects have only kissed or had any sexual relationship whatsoever in any form with one person ever.
–100% of subjects plan to have children one day
–100% of subjects say that they idea that they’re going to hell for this would be offensive if it weren’t so silly.
–100% of subjects would respectfully request that those who disagree mind their own business.
Fitz, if you are going to quote stuff, please indicate that it is a quotation (at minimum, put it in quotation marks) and attribute, please. It took me a moment to realize that the above was a cut and paste from this commentary. Now I see that you have been peppering your other comments here with other peoples’ writing without giving them credit. It is very important that you clearly indicate when you are using someone else’s words. It doesn’t have to involve a hyperlink, but that is all the better (here is an html reference if you would like to learn to do this).
In any case, Ms. Eberstadt’s piece seems to boil down to the same logically-challenged argument of:
dysfunctional heterosexual marriages + the inherent ickiness of homosexuality = gay marriage is a bad idea
She points out that gays have higher rates of chemical dependency, depression, and suicide than the population at large, then dismisses the root causes of those elevated rates, preferring to fall back on the idea that gays are just plain rotten to the core. In short, she’s an idiot.
We have tried it your way (the anti-traditionalist) for 40 years – and the effects are 50% divorce rates and 70% illegitimacy rates and so forth.
My way?
We haven’t tried it my way. My way is to strengthen marriage by offering it to more people.
But you’re confusing cause and effect here. Rejection of the traditionalist way is what caused the sexual revolution. People had tried the traditionalist way for hundreds of years and it lead to the anger and frustration that brought about the Sexual Reovlution (SR).
You can argue that the SR was prompted by selfishness (and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree), but it was also equally prompted by centuries of abuse against individuals, especially women.
You want to revert to the old way, but aren’t offering any solutions to the problems that brought about the new way. In fact, again, your entire approach seems anti-individual and totalitarian.
Coming from a “broken home” myself, I’m all for any rational idea to help make families stronger. I think those ideas must be inclusive, not exclusive, though. Otherwise, you’re not going to solve the issues that broke up families in the first place.
Those marriages that work best are the ones with two people who choose to be together because they like and love each other. Strong healthy marriages between people who adore each other are the best way to promote “marriage” overall, not stuffy tired discriminatory ideas about what a traditional marriage should be.
You’ve got a gift, Katherine.
8]
Damn, Edward. Just…damn. That’s a powerful statement for just one sentence.
Edward,
Damn…..
You are SO right….
Gromit (wrote)
She points out that gays have higher rates of chemical dependency, depression, and suicide than the population at large, then dismisses the root causes of those elevated rates, preferring to fall back on the idea that gays are just plain rotten to the core. In short, she’s an idiot.
She doesn’t strike me as an “idiot”
Nor does she not address your root cause (homophobia I suppose)
But a let her speak for herself
None of that evidence, of course, will surprise those who actually minister to homosexual persons from a traditionalist perspective. But this same evidence is almost entirely unknown, because culturally verboten, throughout the secular world, and particularly among our secular elites; it is as studiously ignored in our own time as, say, evidence about family breakdown was in the early 1960s.
One problem from which homosexuals suffer in disproportionate numbers is chemical addiction—alcoholism and the related abuse of licit or illicit drugs. This propensity to addiction, while endemic to all of modern society, is ubiquitously documented to be worse among lesbians and gays. Virtually every study one can find on the subject confirms it. As the Gay Community News notes, “The statistics do point to the gay community, particularly gay men, as being most at risk of becoming alcoholics.” Their observation is confirmed by numerous other sources, including a prominent gay website (glbthealth.org), which admits the fact that “alcohol, drug, and tobacco use all occur at significantly higher rates in the GLBT community than in the general population.” Gay Alcoholics Anonymous groups abound in many localities—an interesting detail, given the numerically small proportion represented by the gay population. Numerous sources also report higher levels of illicit drug use and addiction among gays. Consider as emblematic the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy, which devoted an entire recent issue to the subject of addictions in the gay and lesbian community.
Another problem also widespread in modern society, and also afflicting gay men and women disproportionately, is the cluster of mental disorders known generally as “depression.” These problems also appear at significantly higher rates in the homosexual than the heterosexual population. Here is a representative quote from a recent article in Archives of Sexual Behavior—no socially conservative rag, that—summarizing what other studies also conclude: “The levels of depression and anxiety in our homosexual subjects, whether HIV positive or HIV negative, are substantially higher than those found in representative general population samples.”
These higher rates of mental affliction correlate with another widely agreed upon fact: that suicide is far more likely among homosexuals than among heterosexuals. In a famous study published in 1978, for example, researchers Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg found that 18 percent of white homosexual males reported at least one suicide attempt (as opposed to three percent of white heterosexual males). Remember that Bell and Weinberg, like the other sources I quote, were overtly sympathetic to the normalization of homosexuality. Here as elsewhere in the pro-gay literature, however, the facts about gay suicide quietly contradict the “virtually normal” polemics that typically accompany them.
More recently, attention to the population of underage boys self-identifying as “gay” has produced evidence of the same tragic pattern. Allow me to quote from a recent letter in the Wall Street Journal: “Nearly one-third of gay teens drop out of school annually, three times the national average. Gay and lesbian youth are three times more likely to attempt suicide than other youth.” The authors of this letter, incidentally, do not work for the Family Research Council; they are founders of the Harvey Milk School for gay teenagers in New York City.
Another distinguishing characteristic of homosexuality that emerges from nearly all the literature on the subject, and what I believe to be the most underexamined fact of all, is this: homosexual men are significantly more likely—some researchers would say, much more likely—than heterosexual men to have been sexually abused or exploited as children and adolescents. According to a 1998 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Abused adolescents, particularly those victimized by males, were up to seven times more likely to self-identify as gay or bisexual than peers who have not been abused.”
The gay activist response to such problematic evidence is familiar enough: that what “drives” gay men and boys to such behaviors is “homophobia,” or the refusal of society to accept them as they are. And herein, I believe, lies the hidden weakness of gay activism today, and by extension the eventual fate of the gay antitraditional household. For the closer society moves to the moral-equivalent view of homosexuality, the harder it becomes to blame the endemic problems of gay men on the “homophobic” rest of the world.
Sooner or later, someone is going to ask why, if being gay is cause for celebration, gay boys and men continue to kill themselves at significantly higher rates than do heterosexuals. Sooner or later, someone is going to wonder why, despite society’s open arms, virtually every study of gay mental health shows higher rates of depression, alcoholism, sexual addiction, sexually transmitted diseases, and the rest.
This is the evidence ignored by, for example, judges who place children in gay-headed households. It is also the evidence ignored by everyone who argues that homosexuality has nothing to do with sex scandals involving young boys. It is also the evidence that will not go away. The empirical reality of much of gay life contradicts the rhetoric of virtual normality; and eventually, it seems safe to predict, the twain shall meet.
When that happens, the advocates of the homosexual antitraditional household will find themselves on the intellectual defensive—as the advocates of the heterosexual antitraditional household are today. This does not mean that gay men and women will wear lavender letters on their sleeves and be thrust from the public square back into the closet, any more than divorced or unwed people are ostracized today. But it does mean that today’s euphoria over the antitraditional homosexual household will someday seem as antiquated, and as problematic for the children of those households, as does the hippie bliss of yesterday.”””
Edward, you took the words out of my mouth, only you made them better.
Fitz,
you’re breaking the following posting rule:
You’re full of interesting, fun-to-argue-with ideas. If you’d link to your sources and quote appropriately, you’d bring a great deal to the debate.
Please make the effort.
Yes, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. Just try to find something you need, when it’s been placed God knows where, for the sake of looking “tidy”.
been there…done that…
but the other half is lurking, so I can’t go into details.
😉
Ed.
Why would your “offering it to more people” theory of strengthening marriage not apply to groups of two or more people? (in whatever combination)
And what evidence do you have to suppose that this will some how strengthen the institution?
Have you ever heard the philosophical axiom -“If its everything, its nothing”
P.S. Sorry Ed – I’ll figure out the link thing eventually.
Why would your “offering it to more people” theory of strengthening marriage not apply to groups of two or more people? (in whatever combination)
Or box turtles even?
Have you ever heard the philosophical axiom -“If its everything, its nothing”
Fitz, marriage has continually evolved to catch up to contemporary notions of equality. From the earliest days when it signified a political exchange, to the polygamy still considered “holy” and appropriate, from the days when a woman was her husband’s “property” to the idea that a failed marriage need not be a life-sentence of misery and abuse, from the arranged weddings still widely practiced throughout the world to the idea that a marriage stands the best chance of success when it’s between two people who dearly love each other, it continues to evolve and change.
This “tradition” you cling to is a fallacy.
The Supreme Court has ruled that gay sex is none of the state’s business. That was the last constitutional argument against gay marriage in many people’s opinion. That decision is the result of a societal change of opinion concerning what homosexuality is and what homosexual relationships are. Continuing to deny gays the benefits and responsibilities of legal marriage when they’re living up to every other aspect of such a personal committment to one person is unfair.
I’m not interested in a menage-a-trois or relationship with a box turtle. You’ll have to ask someone who is to answer that for you.
You simply skirted my question
Fitz, one could write a similar polemic about how African-Americans have higher rates of imprisonment, unemployment, chemical dependence, and HIV/AIDS infection than the population at large, and then arrive at a similarly brain-dead conclusion that African-Americans should be barred from marriage, adoption, and other cultural institutions using Ms. Eberstadt’s jaw-droppingly bad logic.
Sorry, but based on this piece she’s an idiot and a bigot. And she does dismiss the root causes in the text you quoted:
She is somewhat ambiguous as to whether she is talking about the present or the future, but she is either blind to the still-rampant homophobia in American culture (of which her writing is but a tiny component), or she is assuming without reason that when gays and lesbians finally achieve full acceptance in society they will still suffer from higher suicide rates, drug addiction, depression, etc. Either way, she is arguing facts not in evidence.
What, your question preferred trousers?
You yourself have been avoiding actually linking the data you claim support your point. So, pot, kettle.
You simply skirted my question
Your question is a red herring founded in a non sequitor. Skirting it is much more polite than ruthlessly mocking it, which is what it deserves.
sequitur, Edward.
Sorry, pet peeve of mine.
To tie up two threads into a gordian knot (there’s a matrimony pun there), Fitz’s notion (I really don’t know what is his and what is quoted) that homosexuals are responsible for the problems we find in family structure, I point to Kevin Drum’s observation that no pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions of Viagra. When I go back to the states and see how much unadulterated sex is used to sell things, I am embarassed. There is probably some psychological defense involved in living in Japan, because I can say well, it’s not my country.
As for offering marriage to more people in order to strengthen it, rather than invoking Gresham’s law, one should look at it like public ownership. It’s a common observation that people don’t trash places where they’ve made an investment, and if homosexuals have the opportunity to be married, then the institution becomes stronger. Fitz is a newbie, so I’m not sure where he stands on other issues, but many conservatives feel that private ownership is a key point in supporting civil society. Ironically, Fitz’s argument seems to be that homosexuals can’t be trusted with marriage and it would lose its value if homosexuals were allowed to participate.
I would also note that in a 1991 Johns Hopkins study, they discovered that male lawyers were 2 times more likely than the general population to commit suicide. Perhaps we should examine the suitability of lawyers for the sacrament of marriage. I never did trust those guys anyway…
sequitur, Edward.
When WILL typepad offer a spell checker?
Underlying and sustaining all these separate attacks on the natural family is the fact that contraceptive sex, the deliberate plan to thwart participation in the natural family . . .
Oh, lord. There almost literally is not a way to formulate a response to this, because the person who wrote it is quite certainly clinically insane.
Edward: When WILL typepad offer a spell checker?
Mac OS X has a built-in spell-checker that will check as you type. Don’t know about Windows, though. But I’m certain there must be third-party add-ons available.
Slarti: Sorry, pet peeve of mine.
You keep pet peeves? What do you feed them on? Mine are generally adjectivorus.
Linkfest – Special “Mopping Up Operation” Edition
Stuff I’m just too far behind to blog about myself, so check out these posts from other fine bloggers.
—Tim Worstall sees past the
Phil:: I thought I had seen recently that, within the context of the much-ballyhooed “ABC” public health combination, that the real data reflected that most people were avoiding the “A” while eagerly embracing “B” and “C.” Did I imagine that, or did anyone else see it, or am I misremembering . . .? (Or some combination thereof?)
OK, lessee. A thirty-second Google search has yielded this SF gate article which, although not what I remembered, is close enough. [Here is another, more link-heavy, version of the same story.] Money grafs:
One of the co-authors of the study is Dr Ronald Gray who is a colleague of hilzoy (so perhaps she can get the synopsis from him?). Based on his list of publications, I’m guessing that the origin of the study is:
The talk itself was given on Wednesday, 25th February at the CROI (12th Conference on Retroviral and Opportunistic Infections) which abstract may be found here. Those with readier access to the appropriate journal(s) should feel free to correct any mistakes made by the journalists or myself.
Long story short, incidentally: Abstinence and Be Faithful, not so much. Condom use, hell yes. Result? Staggering drop in HIV infections. Interpret as you will.
When I married my husband almost 10 years ago we didn’t do it to legitimize sex or have children in wedlock. To quote from my spouses description on our weddingpage: “The real reason was that when you are so enormously in love and so very certain that you are going to spend the rest of your lives together, getting married is the biggest, most public way of declaring your enduring love for each other. Romance is strong stuff, be warned.”
I know plenty of gay people. The ones who got married are the ones who felt exactly like that. I don’t think allowing more people to marry the love of their life had a negative effect on the institution of marriage. My grandmother remarried when she was 74. She didn’t do it to legitimize sex of have kids in wedlock either ;-).
As for the effect of legalizing marriage and the effect in the Netherlands: number of marriages on the whole go down slightly, number of registered partnerships go up slightly, thus leading to more or less stable numbers of formalized relationships the past 3 years (gay marriage was introduced in 2001, formalized partnership was introduced earlier).
Our divorce rate is going down (and has always been lower than marriage endings due to death of a spouse). In 1950 3 per 1000 couples got a divorce, it peaked in 2000 with 9.8, 2002 was 9.4 and 2003 had 8.9 per 1000 couples divorced.
Average number of years married at time of divorce for the same years: 1950=11.2 yrs, 2000=12.9 yrs, 2002=13.6 yrs, 2003=13.6 yrs.
Test divorce (I think that is seperation in English): 1950=0.8 per 10.000 inhabitants, 2000=0.2, 2002=0.2, 2003=0.1
When I first read the Times’ article I laughed at the depraved lunacy of the clerics’ comments. They were patently absurd. A group of religious leaders whose religions agree on pretty much nothing except their utter hatred for homosexuals. It’s a laughingstock really. How are they supposed to convince us of the spiritual or moral clarity of their message about this festival when they themselves are bigots being led by a former Las Vegas band leader who believes that his life is fit for a major Hollywood biopic??
And as Jew, I’m especially outraged by Rev. Giovinetti’s hijacking of this issue for his own political/moral/religious circus parade. Boy, if you thought Terri Schiavo was a circus just wait till you see what Giovinetti & his evangelical friends have in store for Jerusalem.
It reminds me of the opening line of Jeremiah with its allegoriacal reference to the city, Jerusalem: “How she sits widowed and forlorn.” Precisely, how the city will be if Giovinetti is allowed to bring his acolytes to make a spectacle of himself come August.
I’ve written more on this subject at my blog (click on my name link).
Jerusalem’s WorldPride Festival Provokes Religious Circus
Back in my Seminary days (Jewish Theological Seminary that is), I learned that Talmudic rabbis strictly forbade Jews from attending the Roman theaters and circuses.