By Lindsay Beyerstein
Social conservative NYT columnist Ross Douthat admits that he's uncomfortable discussing gay marriage in public because he opposes it for no good reason:
The question came from Christopher Glazek, a fact-checker at The New Yorker,
who wanted to know whether Mr. Douthat and Mr. Salam believed that
former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who has apologized on behalf of his
party for the Southern Strategy, should also apologize for the
Republican party's gay politics.At first Mr. Douthat seemed unable to get a sentence out without
interrupting himself and starting over. Then he explained: "I am
someone opposed to gay marriage who is deeply uncomfortable arguing the
issue in public."Mr. Douthat indicated that he opposes gay marriage because of his
religious beliefs, but that he does not like debating the issue in
those terms. At one point he said that, sometimes, he feels like he
should either change his mind, or simply resolve never to address the
question in public. [NY Obs]
It's understandable that Douthat doesn't like debating the issue in terms of his religious beliefs. Because he always loses to the opponent who says: "Who cares about your religion, Ross? We're talking about the criteria for civil marriage, here."
Ross said he doesn't even bother with the standard secular argument against gay marriage because nobody ever takes takes it seriously:
He added: "The secular arguments against gay marriage, when they aren't
just based on bigotry or custom, tend to be abstract in ways that don't
find purchase in American political discourse. I say, ‘Institutional
support for reproduction,' you say, ‘I love my boyfriend and I want to
marry him.' Who wins that debate? You win that debate." [NY Obs]
Ross says the notion doesn't "get traction" because it's too "abstract." Notice how the pundit speak absolves him from coming right out and saying that this argument is bunk. He says he doesn't make the case because nobody will listen, not because it's a crazy idea.
Actually, nobody takes the marriage/reproduction argument seriously because any undergraduate can debunk it. It's not abstract at all. Even Ross thinks that sterile opposite-sex couples should be allowed to get married and I'm sure he's aware that some same-sex couples raise children. So, the question is why straight childless couples have more rights than their gay counterparts. If reproductive support is so important, we have a moral obligation to support the children of gay and straight families equally by letting their parents get married.
It's obvious why Ross is uncomfortable talking about gay marriage in public. He wants the state to impose his religion on other people, but he doesn't want to look like a theocrat in front of the liberal cultural elite.
Actually, even the argument that Christianity requires denial of the right to civil marriage for same-sex couples is fairly easily debunked, if you know your Bible.
See also God needs Proposition 8 like God needs a starship.
It continues to astonish me that this guy has an opinion column and is taken seriously.
“The secular arguments against gay marriage, when they aren’t just based on bigotry or custom, tend to be abstract in ways that don’t find purchase in American political discourse.”
This is the strangest I’ve seen from him yet. “I’m not really a religious bigot, all appearances to the contrary, but my thoughts are so subtle and profound that I can’t share them with you.” And “find purchase in American discourse”? Does anybody edit him? It reads like a gentleman’s magazine, circa 1910.
I see now that he said it, not wrote it. That’s even worse.
For religious reasons, Douthat should be arguing against the legality cousin-marriage and interfaith marriages in which the children are not raised Catholic. Yet he only opposes the legalization of gay marriage.
It’s obvious why Ross is uncomfortable talking about gay marriage in public. He wants the state to impose his religion on other people, but he doesn’t want to look like a theocrat in front of the liberal cultural elite.
Beg to differ, Lindsay: while RD is obviously uncomfortable discussing the issue of gay marriage, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is for the reason you cite. Even if it IS a religious thing with Ross, advocacy for “theocracy” doesn’t seem to be part of his argument: ISTM that it is more of a personal thing with him. Not that that excuses the fundamental inanity and weasel-wiggling: Douthat sounds like he’s merely trying to cast a “moral” cloak over his own opposition – which doesn’t, of course, work very well here since the rest of his commentary seems to devoted to demolishing “conventional” anti-gay-marriage arguments.
Really: This is best the NYT could some up with as a conservative Op-Edder?
Douthat’s uncomfortable because he knows that he opposes gay marriage and that he has no publicly defensible reason for doing so.
He admitted that his opposition to gay marriage is purely religious. Yet he’s talking about what the civil law should be. If he knows that there’s no secular argument against gay marriage, but he still wants the state to continue enforcing a religious prejudice, he’s being theocratic.
He doesn’t have the guts to come right out and say that civil society should ban gay marriage because his religion says so. But he knows that the secular arguments against gay marriage are transparently bogus and not the sort of thing sophisticated people repeat to each other.
My sense is it would be another matter if he made the argument in an op-ed, but, TBF, Ross was responding to a question — and seemed reluctant to give it, at that*.
His conclusion “I am someone opposed to gay marriage who is deeply uncomfortable arguing the issue in public” seems the best you could hope for from a guy who can’t bring himself to support marriage rights for same-sex couples out of religious reasons**.
*I’m inferring from his false starts.
**TBC, there’s no contradiction between saying an instinct is “bigoted” and saying it’s religious — to deny this is to redefine religion as something we would rather it be than what it is in practice.
he doesn’t want to look like a theocrat in front of the
liberal cultural elitemirrorI’m not sure there’s any evidence that he cares at all what the ‘liberal cultural elite’ — whatever that even means — thinks.
If he lived in a country that didn’t institutionalize patriarchy and bigotry under the guise of “free speech” Douthat would prosecuted for hate crimes.
I disagree completely with his position, but Id much rather live in a place where he’s allowed to articulate it.
“I disagree completely with his position, but Id much rather live in a place where he’s allowed to articulate it.”
I basically agree — though I wouldn’t go so far as to say he “articulated” anything*.
*or, given the position, that he even could
Douthat should come out of the closet and realise that to keep church and state separate – and this time, it’s for the sake of the church, not the state – marriage should be split into a practical/legal bit and … whatever we should call the rest. The latter should get to keep the name “marriage”.
It should be no business of the state to determine if a multiple-wives marriage is a real marriage, or multiple husbands, or remarriage, or same-sex, or time-limited/what have you. The state should concern itself with economic matters, biological parentage, guardianship, and leave the rest to civil society (where the churches live).
I wonder what policies Douthat supports on the grounds that there should be “institutional support for reproduction?”
Guaranteed pre-natal care? Expanded maternity/paternity leave? etc.
Harald: Douthat should come out of the closet and realise that to keep church and state separate – and this time, it’s for the sake of the church, not the state – marriage should be split into a practical/legal bit and … whatever we should call the rest. The latter should get to keep the name “marriage”.
No, Harald. Why does this silly, silly idea come up every time civil marriage is discussed?
Marriage is already split into a “practical/legal bit” and a “religious bit”. It has been for centuries, and for centuries, churches have coped just fine with the fact that religion doesn’t marry people legally, and that people can get legally married who aren’t allowed to get religiously married.
It should be no business of the state to determine if a multiple-wives marriage is a real marriage, or multiple husbands, or remarriage, or same-sex, or time-limited/what have you.
Define “real marriage”. The state can and does and must: legislation about civil marriage is persnickety and detailed. A church, on the other hand, can afford to be foggy and vague – Quakers, for example, do not permit just anyone to get married in a Friends Meeting: the couple must be either members of the Religious Society of Friends or at least regular attenders, but who is and is not a “regular attender” is up to the Monthly Meeting that determines whether a couple are ready for marriage. After all, Quakers believe sincerely that marriage is the Lord’s work and we are but witnesses, unlike the blatant hypocrites who think that marriage is for government regulation but Christians should get to say who is allowed to marry.
The hypocrisy of churches and church members claiming that they have a problem with same-sex couples having a religious marriage is blatant:
Same-sex couples have been wed with a religious ceremony that was not legally binding since long before any country offered civil rights to same-sex couples. Yet it was only when the marriages of same-sex couples were recognized by civil law, that some Christians who define their faith by who they think their God says they should hate, put up any protest.
After all, Quakers believe sincerely that marriage is the Lord’s work and we are but witnesses,
Yes, we do. Nice summary of that.
I think there’s a third option that you’re not exploring: that his religion forbids such relationships, but that perhaps he draws the line at foisting his personal religion on others.
That’s pretty much the way I think. I don’t have any reason for assigning that viewpoint to Douthat, but nor do I have any reason for concluding that he doesn’t think that way.
I agree, Slarti, that Douthat wants to be silent on the issue because he can only justify his opposition to SSM religiously, which he knows is not a defensible argument in civil American debate (I’m making an assumption here, please disabuse me if I’m wrong) . I appreciate him sparing us that.
However, he would VOTE (I presume) in opposition to SSM legalization, and I think that anyone who votes his religious views into law (for no other reason than the belief that his religion is true) is still guilty of “foisting his personal religion on others.” That’s why I think the onus is still on Douthat (who has a pulpit) to defend his position.
Given our political system, I’m trying to figure out whether I prefer to go up against Douthat-style embarrassed bigots or the more typical proud bigots.
“A society that allows pornography, misogyny, and homophobia is not a free society.”
News to me*.
“Douthat is voicing bigotry without any substantive content; he might as well just write, ‘burn all the faggots.’”
Am I alone in thinking this is a little hyperbolic? And in the very next sentence…
“He’s contributing nothing to civil discourse…”
And there are times like this where he does so without any apparent sense of irony.
*(and if a “free” society forbids the first one, I’d rather have tyranny, thank you very much)
Also, I think Julian made the best point in the thread thus far. Of course, it’s one I agree with, so…
I don’t think that their democracies are any more “real” than ours. I simply think that their experience with the entire continent collapsing into a war which killed tens of millions of people colors their experience about what what counts as free speech and what counts as incitement. I can imagine they have good reason to err on the side of caution, but I think we do just fine with our “outdated mode of 19th century liberalism.” In any case, it is always best to err on the side of such a form of liberalism, however outdated it may be.
What Douthat is doing is morphing from his preconceived position of no gay marriage to supporting the issue. It is seldom an immediate epiphany. Older people, like myself, grew up when outlawing even being gay was the norm. Change doesn’t always come as fast as people would like. It is useful, as RD moves down the road, to be called out in this fashion. Hopefully, he will read this post and the comment thread.
Ms. Hoss, OTOH, points up what is scariest about the extreme left (with corollaries on the right). Prosecute someone for saying something? In the name her or others being free of subjectively distasteful viewpoints? Cheers to Carlton for being the first to call her out.
“I think being protected from hatred… based on race, gender, religion and sexual orientation is a basic human right.”
There are several possible objections this, but here’s one: why should it only be based on those things? Why not how much money you make? Or why should you be more subject to hate for pursuit of public service (e.g. politics)?
(tbc)
Jennifer, I guess I just don’t think that the United States changed in any appreciable way for the worse because of its commitment to free speech. I do think, on the other hand, that Europe views itself on a precarious balance between cooperation and all-out nationalist war. In short, we have plenty of other mechanisms for preventing our society from collapsing even if we allow a few demagogues to say stupid things, and we generally trust those mechanisms and realize that there is limited damage that can be done via demagoguery alone: namely, a democratic system of government that ensures everyone’s rights. Plus, we can easily see a situation is which the cure would be worse than the disease. In Europe, the disease was so bad that they have a higher tolerance for what sort of legal punishments they are willing to mete out for anything they feel might serve to prevent it.
Seems to me if “hate speech” is legal–or at least protected–then kicking a hate-speaker’s ass otta be legal, too.
mebbe that’s just me
Seems to me if “hate speech” is legal–or at least protected–then kicking a hate-speaker’s ass otta be legal, too.
That sounds like a reasonable compromise to me. Jennifer is right that the U.S. tolerance for speech seems bizarre to the rest of the world.
I meant “hate speech.” I’m not against speech per se.
i’m gonna go ahead and agree with McKinneyTexas.
RD has no confidence in the arguments he’s using to justify his position, but he just hasn’t given up on them yet.
that’s an interesting place to be, actually. when rationales are that flimsy, you can often knock them over accidentally; one day, something emotionally jarring, but seemingly unrelated, will happen and the next time you visit the subject you’ll discover that those old beliefs no longer stand. they were stomped into dust while you were dealing with that other issue.
The problem with ‘hate speech’ is its inherent subjectivity. Threatening to kick someone’s ass would be ‘hate speech’ in many quarters.
As for US democracy somehow being out of step with the rest of the world’s democracies, (1) we invented democracy, at least in its modern form, and (2) we have a constitution and a history accompanying that constitution that abhors limitations on speech, second-wave feminism notwithstanding.
However, he would VOTE (I presume) in opposition to SSM legalization
I don’t know that I’d venture a presumption in this regard, but I haven’t made any kind of study of Ross Douthat. It’s certainly plausible that he might vote his preferences, but people have been known to abstain from voting to impose their religious/ethical preferences on others.
You might think of such abstinence as all too rare, and I’d probably agree with you if you did.
“Jennifer, I guess I just don’t think that the United States changed in any appreciable way for the worse because of its commitment to free speech.”
Agreed.
“I also think that if you’d ever been the victim of sexual assault, you might not find the objectification and degradation of women so amusing. Pornography has a social cost.”
Alas, I fully confess, my opinion of pornography is shaped by my personal experience of being a heterosexual male. My physical need for regular* sexual release cannot be met without self-stimulation.
This is better aided by sensational stimuli; thus the appearance of women (and, sometimes, men with them) doing things which would offend others, especially those of the opposite sex. But that’s the thing — they don’t need to experience it, just me, and those who would also enjoy it.
For society to ban materials that aid myself in this process is to restrict the way I use my body in a way that concerns only myself. It is thus a less free society, and if “freedom” is defined so that my body is not my own, then it is meaningless word.**
As to the claim that pornography harms women — are we talking about the particular women who appear in porn because they enjoy it***?
Or are we talking “women in general” — the idea that, if only that porn wasn’t out there, women could be treated much more respectably.
Since I know you’re not making the BS argument that pornography causes sexual assault, I can only assume you’re referring to how it offends people (then don’t watch it) or how it will make people less respectful of women.
And finally — FWIW, there’s plenty of porn in Europe too. A lot of it better — but more “degrading” — than what we yankees would think to film and market.
*Not that frequent, mind you…
**TBC, I do not intend to claim that my experiences are comparable in the level of suffering or loss to personhood involved as anything else — I am invoking a principle, which, of course, can have different levels of enforcement or violation. If offense is still taken, I apologize.
***At least what I watch is done by solid professionals; the more famous ones will tell you plenty about how much they love what they do. “Rape porn”, at least the “authentic” kind, is a whole other matter…
I’d chastise you for your intolerance, but doing so might seem to be intolerant.
I can’t win.
Since I know you’re not making the BS argument that pornography causes sexual assault,
depends on what’s meant by that. As the court that ruled the MacKinnon-Dworkin ordinances unconstitutional said
‘(we accept the premises of this legislation.) Depictions of subordination tend to perpetuate subordination. The subordinate status of women in turn leads to affront and lower pay at work, insult and injury at home, battery and rape on the streets. [note 2] In the language of the legislature, “pornography is central in creating and maintaining sex as a basis of discrimination. Pornography is a systematic practice of exploitation and subordination based on sex which differentially harms women. The bigotry and contempt it produces, with the acts of aggression it fosters, harm women’s opportunities for equality and rights [of all kinds].” Indianapolis Code § 16-1(a)(2). ‘(but it’s speech…)
(Hudnut. Text at http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/hudnut.html)
Jennifer, it seems, is accusing RD of “hate speech” although I don’t see where it comes off that way by a long shot. I would be curious to see how objecting to same sex marriage is somehow synonymous with hate.
Cleek wrote: “that’s an interesting place to be, actually. when rationales are that flimsy, you can often knock them over accidentally; one day, something emotionally jarring, but seemingly unrelated, will happen and the next time you visit the subject you’ll discover that those old beliefs no longer stand. they were stomped into dust while you were dealing with that other issue.”
Fully agree because I have been there during my journey from anti-choice regarding abortion to pro choice. It really snuck up on me and I was actually surprised when one day I just started arguing the pro-choice side. I think that this type of thing happens frequently when one is basing one’s former argument on a religious point of view. It is not that the religious belief necessarily changes, but rather that one is able to declare that basing something only on that point of view is being “superior” and dismissing other solely for that reason.
Frankly, I’m all in with Molly Ivins. People are free to spout all manner of madness and hate, and I’m free to call them assholes and refuse to have anything to do with them.
And to judge them! Because, that way, I feel better about myself.
Fair enough, Judith — but my understanding is the footnote (note 2) better illustrates the consensus:
“MacKinnon’s article collects empirical work that supports this proposition. The social science studies are very difficult to interpret, however, and they conflict. Because much of the effect of speech comes through a process of socialization, it is difficult to measure incremental benefits and injuries caused by particular speech. Several psychologists have found, for example, that those who see violent, sexually explicit films tend to have more violent thoughts. But how often does this lead to actual violence? National commissions on obscenity here, in the United Kingdom, and in Canada have found that it is not possible to demonstrate a direct link between obscenity and rape or exhibitionism.”
(emphasis mine)
What would keep hate speech laws from becoming just another tool of the patriarchy to maintain itself by shutting down dissent?
The problem with ‘hate speech’ is its inherent subjectivity. Threatening to kick someone’s ass would be ‘hate speech’ in many quarters.
As I understand it, hate speech laws generally apply in conjunction with a crime. That is, if you beat the daylights out of someone because you think they’re gay and then scream “that’s what all gays get here”, you have committed a crime against the victim as well as a crime against every other gay person in the area since you have threatened them. Not only have you threatened them, but you’ve backed up that threat by actually beating the daylights out of someone you thought was gay.
I assume you agree that beating people to within an inch of their life is wrong. Do you believe that screaming “that’s what gays get” while beating someone up is wrong also? Or do you think that this just shouldn’t be a crime? And do you think that determining subjectivity in this case is actually difficult?
John Miller: I would be curious to see how objecting to same sex marriage is somehow synonymous with hate.
There is no reason for objecting to same-sex marriage but homophobia. Some homophobes are mentally ill, true, but most are just plain hateful. If someone objects to a same-sex couple getting married, it’s pretty much synonymous with saying they hate gays.
McKinneyTexas: we invented democracy, at least in its modern form
Well, in the form that was modern in 1776. It’s hardly a matter for national pride that you’re still using the beta version when all the other democracies have long since upgraded to a version that actually works.
What Hogan said.
“There is no reason for objecting to same-sex marriage but homophobia. Some homophobes are mentally ill, true, but most are just plain hateful.”
I think most are just homo sapiens — they grew up believing that homosexuality is a sin and/or a mental illness. They can’t bring themselves to understand that something they were brought up to believe was so wrong.
It doesn’t follow that they “hate” homosexuals, as such (even if they have a deep instinctual antipathy toward the thought of homosexual sex). But it does mean that their abilities to relate to LGBT persons as equal persons is seriously hindered.
In short, most SSM opponents don’t have their heels dug in as deep as many here think; with some basic information (“No, legalized gay marriage will not lead to homosexuality being taught in school”), their opposition softens considerably.
I do not agree that objection to SSM is synonymous with hate. What about the rest of the spectrum of animus? Dislike, fear, mild revulsion. It dilutes the meaning of “hate” and people who seriously do hate, to conflate whiners like Ross Douthat with the World Church of The Creator. There are a lot of people who oppose SSM, and I would agree that they are small-minded, hypocritical, ignorant, and so forth, but I am reluctant to so cavalierly extend “hate” to describe them. It’s a serious word, and in the context of hate crimes, a serious allegation, and I think we should have a higher standard for applying it.
The United States definitely suffers from some problems of having adopted standards too early. One could call American democracy the “Minitel” of democratic governance. On the other hand, like Intel and its inefficient 8086 processor architecture, it’s been impressive how the USA has managed to make the system endure over the centuries.
“all the other democracies have long since upgraded to a version that actually works”
Oh please. Politics in every other democracy are just as stupid as in the US, each in their own unique way. Some places what looks like happy consensus really consists of a self-dealing supermajority stifling the political wishes of a minority; proportional-representation systems tend to be a mess of unstable coalition governments; parliamentary systems mean a party can rule with a meager plurality of the vote (as we are about to see in Britain, where the Conservatives are likely to take power despite the majority of the population supporting the other two left-liberal parties).
American democracy is stupid in its own set of ways and I’m not saying it couldn’t learn something, but the idea that everyone else has an obviously-better system that the Americans are too stupid to adopt is just mindless oneupmanship.
As for hate speech, you all have been successfully trolled by Jennifer Hoss and her claim that this would be considered hate speech in other democracies. If there is a country on Earth in which arguing against same-sex marriage is considered hate speech I would like to hear which one.
There are left-wing trolls as well as right-wing. Best to keep that in mind.
Back to Douthat:
“The secular arguments against gay marriage…tend to be abstract”
Which is the entire problem, as anyone with an ounce of empathy would appreciate. When the best argument you can make is one that is “abstract” and you meet someone for whom it is a matter of practical reality, you ought to recognize that your abstract concerns are meaningless to them, and in the interests of “do unto others” you should probably get out of their way.
Turbulence–anytime someone is threatened with having their ass kicked because of something they said or something they might wish to say, the threat is ‘hate speech’. Or, at least it proves my point that ‘hate speech’ is highly subjective. The idea of content police–can’t outlaw ‘hate speech’ without having an enforcement mechanism–strikes me as repugnant.
Jes–there are objections to same sex marriage that are not the product of homophobia. For one, marriage historically and traditionally has been only between a man and a woman. For another, marriage historically and traditionally connotes more than a mere civil joining. To many, it is a sacrament. As a matter of civil law, a union with all of the civil rights of a married couple may be fine with some who still see marriage as a sacramental act and wish to reserve that for its historic and traditional role. You do not find either of these compelling–I don’t either, particularly in the first example. But, they are both objections and neither are homophobic.
What Jacob Davies said.
I happen to think that some of the discussion on here is not tremendously well thought out. Before going into more detail, let me say two things: first, I am not a Christian, but grew up in a church family, and know various strands of Christian theology reasonably well, second, I strongly support gay marriage, and know of no coherent, fact-based philosophical argument against it.
However, I would have to point out that a case can be made from the Bible against gay sex, rights and marriage. I don’t personally agree with it, and it seems to me to run counter to much of what Jesus appears to be saying, but there are passages that can be taken as condemning homosexuality. If, like Douthat, you are a conservative Catholic, those passages, combined with millenia of Catholic teaching on sexuality, may seem more persuasive to you, regardless of your personal feelings and intuitions. It may be that Douthat feels uncomfortable trying to articulate a defense of ideas that he himself does not fully share, but which he feels bound to agree with as part of the teaching of his church. This is, admittedly a charitable reading, but I would suggest that a little charity from those who are so quick to condemn Douthat in the name of their own understanding of the Bible and Christianity would not go amiss. If nothing else, it would give them some sort of legitimacy when demanding that Douthat show them tolerance.
On the subject of homosexuality and the Bible, the following might be useful, for those wanting to think through the issues:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/homglance.htm
In the Western world. Maybe. It’s a rather limited argument.
And, actually, I’m OK with labelling things hate speech. I’m not OK with legal penalties for it, though; I’m strictly for social and cultural penalties.
Gwan–where, outside the West, have same sex marriages been a traditional aspect of society?
It seems to me that the argument from “tradition” is weak for several reasons:
1) much of what we call “tradition” is actually not traditional at all, but a more recent invention (eg. Highland tartans – invented, essentially in the 19th century)
2) all traditions, even when venerable, had to begin somewhere. What was their basis – and would we uphold it today? In other words, there was a point when traditions were new, and had to be defended or endorsed. Just because that endorsement happened a long time ago does not make it valid for all time.
3) Even if we grant that a given tradition is old, age is not guarantee of the tradition being just, prudent or even sensible. We do not follow the divorce procedure of the Code of Hammurabi, for example. Nor, if you want a more tangible example, do we start fires with flints. Why not? Because we found something better. Why should we not look for something better than a “traditional” understanding of marriage?
“For society to ban materials that aid myself in this process is to restrict the way I use my body in a way that concerns only myself. It is thus a less free society…”
Wondering what Point thinks then of Texas?
‘That sounds like a reasonable compromise to me. Jennifer is right that the U.S. tolerance for speech seems bizarre to the rest of the world.’
It comes out this way because much of the rest of the world thinks of themselves collectively as free societies whereas the United States is a society composed of free individuals. It’s a real difference and it’s a big deal to those in the US who believe the Constitution and, in particular, the Bill of Rights mean what they say about the rights of individuals. The Constitution can be amended, of course, if the American people decide to agree with the rest of the world and become a collective ‘free society’, whatever that is.
I’m opposed to laws against hate speech unless it is directly linked to violence or threats of violence. It’s not hard to find examples of speech that some consider hateful and others consider truthful. Right now Judge Goldstone is being called a “self-hating Jew”. People who say that probably think he’s guilty of hate speech. I think people who accuse him of such things are guilty of hate speech. I don’t think either viewpoint should be criminalized, though some people on each side claim the other side is justifying atrocities. (I happen to think it’s the critics of Judge Goldstone who are apologists for war crimes, but again, I don’t want to criminalize this.)
“I’m opposed to laws against hate speech unless it is directly linked to violence or threats of violence”
I should say “imminent threats of violence”. It’s hard to draw the line. During the Gulf War I saw some stupid woman wearing a T shirt that said “I’d walk a mile to smoke a camel” and there was a picture of an Arab on top of that animal with a bullseye superimposed. Racist hate speech. A lot of what is said during wartime is pure hate speech.
I meant we should criminalize speech when someone is talking to a group of people and inciting a mob to go lynch someone at that instant. But take it to a larger level and you’d have to start locking up a fair number of politicians and political commentators, not to mention T shirt wearers. Or maybe send them all to re-education camps. The problem is real, but the solution –criminalizing the speech–isn’t going to work.
Poor Douthat. How distressing he obviously finds it trying to reconcile an ethical sense with being a bigot.
A society that allows pornography, misogyny, and homophobia is not a free society. Douthat is voicing bigotry without any substantive content; he might as well just write, “burn all the faggots.” He’s contributing nothing to civil discourse, and the victims of his hatred should not be without redress.
I think the proposed cure is worse that the disease; once this principle is accepted I worry that it would be far too easy to use those tools against those with whom one merely disagrees, rather than finding morally reprehensible.
In fact, Id say that you’ve gone this far already- Douthat is not calling for murder, merely questioning homosexual marriage. Now I think he’s very wrong, calling for second-class status for certain citizens to enforce his religious views. But that is not violence nor a call to violence.
I think being protected from hatred and discrimination based on race, gender, religion and sexual orientation is a basic human right. And free societies, by definition, protect human rights.
I think that being free to speak your mind is a basic human right. As with all rights, this right comes into conflict with other rights and people can disagree about how those conflicts ought to be resolved.
But, personally, I think respecting the rights of the victims is more important.
Undestand that those who advocate for free speech do not do so beceause they enjoy watching the KKK march through a black neighborhood. We do it because the alternative seems very dangerous. You, in fact, seem very dangerous- “a society that allows pornography… is not a free society”- so you would set yourself up as the arbiter of acceptable and unacceptable erotica? Shall you also rule on whether certain fashions are acceptable or (in your opinion) degrading? Shall you decide which consensual encounters are morally uplifting and which are unfit for a civilized society?
I find myself in the rather odd position of agreeing fully with something McKinneyTexas said. I am dealing with the cognitive dissonance as I type.
But he is correct. Not everybody who is against SSM is homphobic and hates gays. Not everybody who is against abortion rights hates women. Not everybody who was against the war in Iraq was a traitor. Not everybody who was for the war in Iraq was a bloodthirsty racist anti-Muslim.
There are probably some who would fall into those categories, but I would posit that in each of those examples the “are nots” outnumbers the “are.”
When our country outlaws hate speech we will be in big trouble. And GOB, the founding fathers did indeed cherish individual rights. But they also believed greatly in societal rights and the need for the government to be there for all the people in the country.
Thought I’d help Carleton Wu out by adding a little note to his final point, just to be thorough:
If you’re going to say “No, these standards would be chosen by the majority of people”, then you need to explain why this principle doesn’t apply to our current consensus against these prohibitions in the first place.
The problem with laws criminalizing “hate speech” is that they only work in the benevolent dictatorship of the philospher kings. In America, we have elections, and the good guys sometimes lose. Even when the good guys win, there are a lot of people out there who think they are the good guys, not us–and we want to resolve our differences with these people nonviolently, if possible.
The way to deal with hateful arguments is to out-argue the other side–as Jesurgislac showed in the first comment in this thread. Criminalize hateful arguments–invoke the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence to suppress them–and you take the contest out of the realm of civil debate and into the realm of violence. Those armed with the truth ought not to fear debate.
If we had laws criminalizing “hate speech” in this country back in the 50’s and 60’s, then all of the civil rights leaders of that era would have gone to jail for “hate speech”. That’s the kind of result you get when you let those in charge of the government determine what speech is or is not permitted.
There are people in this country who believe that advocating legal same sex marriage is hate speech against Christianity. There are people in this country who believe Justice Sotomayor was committing “hate speech” by talking about wise Latinas. Not too long ago, they and their allies controlled all three branches of the federal government.
Freedom of speech protects us as well as them.
McKinney: there are objections to same sex marriage that are not the product of homophobia.
Name one. No one has come up with any yet/
For one, marriage historically and traditionally has been only between a man and a woman.
But the only people who justify denying access to civil marriage for same-sex couples with the rationale “you weren’t allowed to do it before, and we don’t want you doing it now”… are homophobes. (Historically and traditionally, marriage is a relationship in which a woman is given by her father to her husband, and she is not allowed either to choose or divorce the man her father chose for her. Is this a valid reason for denying women the right to choose husbands and decide to divorce?)
For another, marriage historically and traditionally connotes more than a mere civil joining. To many, it is a sacrament.
But the only religious people who think that’s a valid reason for denying same-sex couples access to the sacrament of marriage… are homophobes.
As a matter of civil law, a union with all of the civil rights of a married couple may be fine with some who still see marriage as a sacramental act and wish to reserve that for its historic and traditional role.
Only if they’re homophobes who think that lesbian and gay people aren’t entitled to the same sacraments as straight people are.
You do not find either of these compelling–I don’t either, particularly in the first example. But, they are both objections and neither are homophobic.
Of course they are homophobic. I’ve just explained how.
John Miller: Not everybody who is against SSM is homphobic and hates gays.
Some people may be against same-sex marriage in a vague haven’t-thought-it-through kind of way. Politicians and their religious equivalents may find it necessary to be publicly against same-sex marriage because they need homophobic votes.
But there’s no justification for opposing same-sex marriage that isn’t sourced, and directly, in homophobia.
Not everybody who is against abortion rights hates women.
Again, some people claim to be against a woman’s right to decide for herself what to do when she’s pregnant because they haven’t ever thought it through. I would say those people don’t hate women, they’ve just… never been faced with that kind of decision, nor ever thought or cared about a woman who has. But someone who has thought it through, and concluded that a woman ought not to be allowed to decide for herself – that a pregnant woman must be forced against her will to do what an outsider has decided is the right thing – either hates women, or regards women as so subhuman that it’s hard to distinguish this from human hatred.
To quote Doctor George Tiller, murdered by a man who couldn’t tolerate the idea that women get to choose, “Trust women.”
Mock Turtle skrev :
> I … know of no coherent, fact-based
> philosophical argument against [gay marriage].
> However … a case can be made from the Bible against
> gay sex, rights and marriage.
Mostly from Leviticus, right?
And so when I meet Christians who oppose gay legitimacy, and who also eschew all pork and shellfish, who would never combine beef and butter, who wear only clothing made from a single kind of fabric, and who have no tattoos or piercings, I can respect them for so consistently following the ancient Hebrew laws.
Otherwise, I smell bigotry carefully rationalized.
Your mileage may vary.
Point: …even if they have a deep instinctual antipathy toward the thought of homosexual sex…
I had a friend once who was going through the process of realizing that there were gay people in her world, in her church, among her friends (e.g. me).
She said to me one day that when she saw the openly gay couple who came to our church, she couldn’t help but think of gay sex, and it was icky.
But the interesting thing came next. She was self-aware enough to think the next thought, which was that it had then occurred to her that she didn’t automatically think of sex when she saw straight people, but if she chose to think of it, it was just as icky.
So the distinction wasn’t which kind of sex she was thinking about (more on that in a moment), it was which people made her “instinctually” think of sex. It was gay people who had that effect on her, because she hadn’t thought she knew any, but now she did, and she was just getting used to it. And like many people, once she got used to it, it was just no big deal any more, and it wasn’t all about sex any more either.
Furthermore, though the tally of certain body parts in the room is different, straight people (collectively) do pretty much all the same stuff gay people do.
So, as a 12-year-old boy said in a diversity film I once watched, “What’s the big whup?”
McKinney: there are objections to same sex marriage that are not the product of homophobia.
Name one. No one has come up with any yet/
The only one I can think of is opposition to same-sex marriage in the context of opposition to all marriage. I haven’t heard much from people taking that position, though, particularly not when discussing same-sex marriage.
McKinneyTexas: For one, marriage historically and traditionally has been only between a man and a woman.
gwangung: In the Western world. Maybe. It’s a rather limited argument.
McKinneyTexas: Gwan–where, outside the West, have same sex marriages been a traditional aspect of society?
McKinney, your original statement said “a man and a woman.” I can’t speak for what gwangung was thinking, but one obvious counter to your statement as written is that marriage has not been historically and traditionally between “only a man and a woman” in places where polygamy was/is traditional.
Living in Maine, where we are on our fifth or sixth statewide referendum about gay-related issues since 1995, I can tell you that the yammering about how marriage has been defined as “one man and one woman” for “thousands of years,” and how God made “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” has gotten far beyond tiresome.
My favorite riposte to the latter stupidity: “Last I heard, God made everyone.”
…one of these things is not like the other. I leave it to the alert reader to evaluate.
Note that I don’t think it’s possible or a worthwhile use of time to debate the point with someone who genuinely believes that pornography belongs in the same category as misogyny or homophobia–but I do think ridiculous beliefs like this should be held up for public ridicule.
Okay, back to downloading porn.
Carleton Wu to Jennifer Hoss:
What Carleton said.
Combining the thread on “Just tax” with this one, we can conclude:
Brett:fairness::Jennifer:freedom.
But — though they can claim the power to define terms for the rest of us til they’re blue in the face, the rest of us still get to form our own opinions on the subjects at hand. And, since we’re in the US, we get to express them, too.
It seems to me that the discussion fails because the question is wrong. The real question is “should marriage be inflicted on everyone equally?”
I think it is unlikely that there would be a whole lot of religous people people arguing for a carve out favorable to same sex relationships.
It’s true that US legal standards concerning hate speech are highly unusual among rich democracies; most such countries are far more restrictive. But, more to the point of the thread’s original subject–is there any place in the world where arguing against legal same-sex marriage (without making some additional hateful point about gay people) is actually prosecutable hate speech?
Most of Europe still prohibits same-sex marriage, so I particularly doubt that arguing against same-sex marriage would be illegal in those countries.
Outlawing same-sex marriage makes no sense to me. But, based on recent history, it seems to me that attempts to make a rational case against SSM fall apart of their own accord so readily that this is exactly the kind of situation where a free marketplace of ideas actually works.
The only one I can think of is opposition to same-sex marriage in the context of opposition to all marriage. I haven’t heard much from people taking that position, though, particularly not when discussing same-sex marriage.
Interestingly, the one place I have heard those arguments is from some leftist gay men and women, who think their GLBT peers should have more important issues on their minds and agendas than pursuing and being absorbed into another patriarchal capitalist bourgeoise activity.
Janie (9:26)
That’s also a very good point — though I think it’s sad that so many people, even without malice, don’t have the self-awareness, or the comfort with sexuality to have such self-awareness on the subject.
“The only one I can think of is opposition to same-sex marriage in the context of opposition to all marriage.”
“Interestingly, the one place I have heard those arguments is from some leftist gay men and women…”
And the GOP — don’t forget about them! 😉
McKinneyTexas states:
marriage historically and traditionally has been only between a man and a woman.
This is not true. Marriage has historically and traditionally been an arrangement between two *families*, or between two *men* — the husband and the wife’s previous owner (father, brother, etc.).
Traditional marriage is between one human being (male) with full or potentially full legal status in that society, and one partial human being (normally female) with limited or incomplete status and rights.
1 marriage = 1.5 human beings, legally speaking.
Once women have the same other legal rights as men: to own property, to go to court, to vote, to run for office, etc., then 1 marriage = 2 human beings, and traditional marriage is *already* dead.
SSM is, IMHO, the final proof that women have full legal rights: that every human is valued equally, even in marriage, and things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. M+F marriages and M+M or F+F marriages can only be equal if women are legally equal to men, and *that* IMHO is the true stumbling block to SSM, though it’s buried so deeply that most of the people are motivated by it can’t even express it.
Been reading over the thread — and maybe this is silly, but I got a warm feeling seeing how much consensus there is for free speech — in, yes, protecting unpopular and even hateful speech.
I say this in all earnestness — it’s making me a little more proud of my country.
Doctor Science’s comment reminds me of some time I spent last spring in the Law Library at the Maine State House, reading old statutes relating both to marriage directly, and to gender roles in relation to other things.
My photocopies aren’t well organized, but this one is I think from 1821:
On the brighter side, Maine allowed interracial marriage (by removing the explicit prohibition of blacks and whites marrying each other) as early as 1883. It wasn’t the first state to do so, but it was one of the earlier ones.
Thank you, Harald Korneliussen, and thank you, Phil. And Jesurgilsac, we’ve been over this before and it’s pointless to do it again, but you’re right that historically (and in some parts of the world now) women have been treated as property in marriage, the main purpose of marriage being to trace a man’s genetic lineage through children in order to establish legal (property) rights and obligations. It had nothing to do with love, and the institution has outlived its usefulness. It should be kept in churches where it belongs, and those of us who have more enlightened views of love partnerships (including the right to make contingency plans for dissolution) should be left alone. Marriage as a legal institution is nothing but a regulation of people’s sex lives by the state, or a presumption that relationships based on sexual commitment are more honorable or worthy than other relationships. If there is any argument for allowing the state to “recognize” or “solemnize” a personal romantic commitment, I’d like to know what it is.
Doctor Science: and *that* IMHO is the true stumbling block to SSM, though it’s buried so deeply that most of the people are motivated by it can’t even express it.
I think that’s mostly right. But the last six months in Maine have provided plenty of evidence that though the women-as-property element of people’s resistance to SSM is deeply buried, the fretting about gender roles isn’t. A lot of it is pretty much off in la-la land, like this letter from today’s Kennebec Journal (the Augusta paper):
I particularly like the assertion that “those who are not gay” are “still the clear majority in Maine.” 😉
More depressing, because it was from a source you would hope had more sense, last spring we had a professor of Constitutional Law moaning thusly.
My reply followed. (My research in the Law Library, mentioned above, was largely inspired by my great desire to show that professors of Constitution Law should do their homework.)
“SSM is, IMHO, the final proof that women have full legal rights: that every human is valued equally, even in marriage, and things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.”
This makes perfect sense. Though I would add that, since SSM opponents have no coherent argument left, and even if they made an express patriarchal argument, it would have no legal weight, that this proof is already here — states have already begun legalization, and SSM has acquired a sense of historical inevitability.
It’s the sort of thing that makes you feel good about where we are and where we’re headed, even as it makes you less complacent.
Realized I had a weird phrase in my last post:
Janie’s rebuttal to Reisert actually illustrates what “not having any legal weight” looks like; my hats off to her. 😉
“If there is any argument for allowing the state to “recognize” or “solemnize” a personal romantic commitment, I’d like to know what it is.”
I would think the state had a interest in tracking the children born of those commitments, for various obvious reasons.
Jesurgislac: “But there’s no justification for opposing same-sex marriage that isn’t sourced, and directly, in homophobia.”
You can repeat that ad-infinitum, and you’ll still be wrong.
We have a mixed crowd of regulars in my neighborhood L.A. Dive Bar, ethnically mixed, racially mixed, and sexual orientation mixed. One of the gay men, in his 60s, a published poet, actor (with billings in at least 30 flms and tv shows) singer-songwriter (performs regularly in So Cal restaurants and bars), a regular contributor to the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and various annaul Aids Walks (I know all this because when he was incapacitated in the hospital for a few weeks last year I picked up his mail for him, half of it proselytizing letters for contributions) — is against gay marriage.
Is he homophobic too?
Thanks, Point. 😉
There was a lot more that could have been said in response to Reisert, but at the time I was saving my quota of letters to the editor for the months to come and thus trying to address only the most important points. (Letters have both a word limit and a frequency limit — <= 300 words, <= 1 letter every 2 weeks.) I have written letters and op-eds in the KJ now and then over the years, for a long time as one of the very few people (early on probably the only one) to write as an openly gay person. One of the really wonderful things about the last few months, especially once fall started and the referendum campaign got under way, has been to see letters in the paper almost every day on the subject of same-sex marriage. Wonderful, thoughtful points are being made every day and by many people, straight and gay, and that's new, and even if the vote goes the wrong way this time, we're not going back to the old world, where people were in the closet and the subject wasn't considered fit for the local daily paper. (Someday it will once again not be fodder for the local daily paper, because no one will care. We're not there yet.) Of course, the converse is that the other folks are writing to the paper every day too. Some of it is appalling, and it can wear me down, but it doesn't make me question the First Amendment one little bit. That the "No on 1" folks (no meaning let's not veto the new law) talk about families and children and commitment, while the "Yes" people rant about imaginary disasters like "the very real possibility of removing the gender of the children born alive" (?!?) is pretty good evidence that like Ross Douthat, they got nuthin'.
hairshirthedonist: The only one I can think of is opposition to same-sex marriage in the context of opposition to all marriage. I haven’t heard much from people taking that position, though, particularly not when discussing same-sex marriage.
Fair point, if applied equally all round.
However, in general, people who oppose marriage, and who therefore don’t ever intend to marry, but don’t in general insist on imposing their views on the whole population any more than most religious people think that their religious beliefs should be imposed by law on people who don’t share them. They might not ever join in a campaign for civil marriage, but they won’t oppose one.
Then there’s people who claim to oppose civil marriage for all, but who only ever crawl out of the woodwork and say so when the ban on civil marriage for same-sex couples is under discussion – they argue that first of all, same-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry, and then there should be some kind of legislation (hand-waved) that will ban civil marriage altogether. That the “and then” is just not going to happen – banning civil marriage would be the most hugely unpopular move any government could make – leaves the ban only on civil marriage for same-sex couples. Which is obvious enough to be their probable goal in the first place.
Sapient: If there is any argument for allowing the state to “recognize” or “solemnize” a personal romantic commitment, I’d like to know what it is.
To avoid nasty little bigots who think it’s their role to police other people’s sex lives, allowing this to happen. Or indeed this.
You can argue, for the first example, that the hospital staff who wanted Lisa Pond to die alone, separated from her wife and their children, might have done so in any case faced with a valid marriage certificate rather than durable powers of attorney: but in fact the marriage certificate itself brings with it the force of law that says a wife or husband is the legal next of kin, and – in the experience of people who have lived with both – is far harder for even the most vicious bigot to oppose.
True, all that Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond had was a love partnership of 18 years and four children. You with your “more enlightened view” might feel the hospital was right to treat it as less honorable or worthy than Lisa Pond’s relationship with her own family (as soon as Lisa Pond’s sister arrived, Janice Langbehn was let in to be with her partner: sadly, this was after Janice had died).
Equally, for the other example, Earl Meadows’s cousins might have tried to grab the ranch where their cousin had lived for 25 years with his life partner Sam Beaumont even if Meadows and Beaumont had been married: dirty little crooked people who are creepy enough to try to invalidate their cousin’s will because it’s short one witness signature would probably have tried it on anyway. And you, with your “enlightened views” may feel that Sam Beaumont had no right to suppose that just because he and Earl Meadows had lived and loved together on that ranch for quarter of a century, he had any right to suppose it would continue to be his after his life partner’s death.
Lacking your enlightened views on how love and committment are unimportant, I want same-sex couples to have the same right to legal civil marriage as mixed-sex couples to do.
sadly, this was after Lisa had died).
Sorry, Janice. Commenting pre-coffee. 🙁
There is a non-homophobic argument against (as a part) SSM. Infertility of one partner has been for a very long time a reason for divorce that even the RCC accepted. Some more radical theologians inside the church even demanded it in order to free the non-infertile partner for a procreating relationship. This implies that a marriage not producing children within a certain time period is/was considered invalid. Btw, the church until far into the 20th century was very critical of infertile people having sex at all and that included post-menopausal women. In particular the German RCC section during the Third Reich opposed forced sterilization not because of the eugenic goals (which the church supported) but because sterilized people could still have sex. The proposed moral alternative was the gender-separated KZ. The RCC has shifted only recently (in the 70ies or 80ies) from refusing known infertiles a wedding in church to known impotents (i.e. before: No childbearing capacity => no wedding; now: no intercourse capacity => no wedding).
Thus, if marriage is understood as a granted privilege for the purpose of procreation (and there are seculars that think that should be the case), then denying SSM is a logical conclusion without homophobia necessarily implied. But it would imply that couples that can’t or want to have children should not be granted the perks that marriage brings with it (taxes etc.).
Personally, I find gay sex (and many other extremly common sexual practices) disgusting but that’s just me and I have no right to impose my personal taste on others on that. Also I think that many types of pornography are both disgusting and demeaning but, except in extreme cases*, banning it would not be practicable.
*true child porn definitely, porn with non-voluntary participants too (fake involuntary may be a border case).
A special case would be hate-porn that is not meant to work as a masturbation aid but to incite hatred against certain groups (like graphically depicting Jews, blacks or Asians as sex monsters)
Hartmut: Thus, if marriage is understood as a granted privilege for the purpose of procreation (and there are seculars that think that should be the case), then denying SSM is a logical conclusion without homophobia necessarily implied.
Yes, if those seculars argue with equal vehemence that no woman should be allowed to get married past menopause or after a tubal ligation, and no man should be allowed to get married if he has a vasectomy.
I know of no seculars who do. None. Indeed, people who make this apparently-secular argument why same-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry invariably come up with some quite twisted justifications why marriage isn’t allowed to same-sex couples, even where they have children, but can be allowed to mixed-sex couples, even where they have neither the intention nor the ability to have children.
It’s a homophobic argument, not-too-thinly-veiled. If you can find an example of someone who argues as vehemently that no woman past the menopause ought to be allowed to marry, then you may have a case that it is technically in that instance not a homophobic argument.
true child porn definitely
Pornography made with minor children is in fact evidence of child abuse and/or statutory rape – I don’t want to get involved in the pornography argument, since as you say it doesn’t matter how personally distasteful I may find certain varieties of human sexual practice: providing no one is involved except consenting adults it’s no one’s business but their own. But abuse or rape of children is another matter: “porn” which makes use of children is evidence of a crime being committed, and ought to be treated as such, not as any example of “extreme pornography”.
…One of the gay men, in his 60s, a published poet, actor (with billings in at least 30 flms and tv shows) singer-songwriter (performs regularly in So Cal restaurants and bars), a regular contributor to the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and various annaul Aids Walks (I know all this because when he was incapacitated in the hospital for a few weeks last year I picked up his mail for him, half of it proselytizing letters for contributions) — is against gay marriage.
Is he homophobic too?
Maybe or maybe not. But he can hold a position that is (perhaps necessarily) rooted in homophobia regardless. I haven’t given it enough thought to be as certain as Jes is that all opposition to SSM is necessarily rooted in homophobia, but your example doesn’t disprove Jes’ argument. This man may engage in twisted logic that allows him to hold contradictory positions in his head such that he may not be homophobic, per se, and still take a position that is rooted in homophobia.
In the end, it probably doesn’t so much matter what intricacies are going on in people’s heads. What does matter is what they are doing and what effect they are having on the world around them.
@JanieM 12:19am:
I read that particular bit of inanity elsewhere, and found it just so – sadly – typical of so many anti-SSM “arguments”. When faced with a paucity of supportive evidence or logic in any of the the three legs of Douthat’s Tripod (bigotry, custom and religion), the anti-marriage crowd is pretty muched forced to have to rely on (the equally evidence-and-logic-defective) device of apocalyptic speculation; usually of the simpleminded “Gay marriage will destroy families – if you don’t want to destroy YOUR family, vote Yes/No on Prop Q” variety.
“Arguments” like the KJ LTE you cite make extraordinarily little sense, of course, looked at logically. If anything, gays in Maine (or anywhere) who want a formal recognized [state] marriage are looking to tie themselves even more firmly into traditional family structures, rather than demolishing them (which accounts, I think from some of the SSM opposition in some gay circles).
But since – at least IMHO – the quibbles over gay marriage are mainly a blind for the real issue at stake (toleration of homosexuality), it’s not surprising that so many arguments veer off into space rather than face the point that it’s Leg 1 of the Tripod that is the main driver.
Complete agreement w/ Jes (have I ever said that before?) about “child porn”. It is evidence of crime – it DEMANDS action – and all adult parties should be pursued, apprehended and prosecuted.
Jes, I could name a few theologians that still hold the position of the only moral sex being the procreating one (although the church itself dropped it officially). In their case it is clearly not anti-homo but anti-sex in general. As far as seculars go, those described above see it as a fiscal case.
In Germany it is still a crime to marry just for the perks* and there have been cases where couples that were married on paper but lived separate lives before and after the wedding were prosecuted for tax evasion and the like. It would therefore be legally possible to narrow the definition of marriage to ‘child-producing/rearing coupling’. On the other hand our Supreme Court just this week decided that same sex couples in civil unions can’t have disadvantages compared to married opposite sex couples (and marriage is protected yb the German constitution).
You are of course right that most opponents are homophobe (in both senses: fearing/loathing homo-sex and hating gays/lesbians) but you are wrong that all are.
A last remark on pornography. There was recently the legal problem of virtual kiddie porn, i.e. CGI porn not involving any meatspace child. Can and/or should that be punished the same way as real child porn? Does it depend on the realism of the images?
*or as in the US to just get a foreigner our equivalent of the green card.
to avoid nasty little bigots …
That’s not an argument in favor of marriage generally; it’s an argument against discriminatory marriage laws (and I fully agree that marriage laws shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of sexual preference). I’m wondering why you think though that any person has to die alone when there might be a caring person who could be a companion and assistant? What about single people – should they have to die alone even if they have a friend who could be available?
Lacking your enlightened views on how love and committment are unimportant, I want same-sex couples to have the same right to legal civil marriage as mixed-sex couples to do.
I actually believe that love and commitment are very important. I just don’t see why people need legal preferential treatment based on their love and commitment, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual. Any legal issues that arise in relationships can be addressed through contract law.
No one has made a persuasive argument in favor of marriage. It made sense when men wanted to stake a claim to women’s bodies and the fruit of women’s wombs, but it makes no sense now. (As to the idea that marriage is necessary to “track” children, since 40% of children are born to unmarried women, I fail to see how this is an effective “tracking” method.)
Every time we talk of gay marriage, along comes someone who says that the whole idea of state-sanctioned marriage is bad.
The parallel to public swimming pools in the South back in the 60’s is . . . disturbing. When the courts started holding that public swimming pools could not be racially segregated, local governments started abolishing public swimming pools.
I don’t mean to impugn the motives of anyone posting here, but it’s frustrating when a demand for equal rights is met with a suggestion that no one ought to have those rights.
The point of demanding equal marriage rights lies rather more in the equality part than the marriage part. If only heteros were allowed to wear Mohawk haircuts, I’d fight for my right to wear a Mowhawk haircut, however bad an idea me wearing a Mohawk haircut might be. 🙂
Douthat is confused, but Beyerstein may be even more so.
Religious fundamentalists, which apparently includes Douthat, say that God forbade homosexuality (which is what the Bible says) and that is that. Many gays do not want to abandon religion or even the Bible, so they want to change the stance of official religion to acceptance of homosexuality. Should being gay require renouncing Judaism, Christianity or Islam? If not, the acceptance of gays requires more than civil rights. Those who claim to believe literally in the Bible understand this.
If maximal reproduction is desired, then obviously homosexuality is to be discouraged as it it involves abstinence from reproduction. (Of course the Catholic church and other religions which encourage or require celibate priesthood and orders have a strangely contradictory policy on reproduction). If sexuality is largely arbitrary and is culturally determined, as some extremists who are generally classified as “liberal” argue, then raising of children by homosexuals would obviously not be good for reproductive rate. (Some of these “liberals” should make up their minds whether behavior is culturally determined, as they argue for many sexual characteristics, or hereditary, as they argue for homosexuality – as should some conservatives who take the opposite positions).
I would think the state had a interest in tracking the children born of those commitments, for various obvious reasons.
There is a risk to leaving your argument within the “various obvious reasons” bit- I have no idea what you mean. Genetic heritage? Inheritance?
Is he homophobic too?
1)You’re right, it’s impossible for homosexuals to have any amount of self-loathing or self-hate.
2)I would hope by now you would not bother presenting unverifiable anecdotes as data.
rea, me too – I totally support equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. Likewise, I support equal opportunity for gay people to get Mohawks. What I don’t understand is why people who choose to get Mohawks would get any legal advantages over those who don’t choose to do so, including bald people who can’t get a Mohawk. Similarly, I don’t understand why people have legal advantages for getting married when there are people who, for whatever reason (choice or not), can’t or don’t choose to get married. Despite everyone thinking that this view is a guerrilla attempt to oppose same-sex marriage, it’s not. There are unmarried people who would like to have the option to have health benefits, to not die alone, etc.
Oh, and as to why I (and maybe other people) “crawl out of the wordwork” when another aspect of the institution of marriage is discussed to air my belief that marriage is an obsolete civil institution, it’s because I don’t have the time or energy to organize a movement around every single injustice that exists in the world. Anti-discrimination against the lgbt community is, conveniently, already an organized movement that I can support without devoting myself to a full-time crusade. I don’t care enough about my beliefs about marriage to organize a movement. I do care enough to state my opinion.
It’s a simple question, do you want this kind of bigoted “speech” in your society or not? I don’t. Europe doesn’t. Canada doesn’t. Australia doesn’t. America does.
Interesting: “In France, the actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot was fined $23,000 for criticizing a Muslim ceremony involving the slaughter of sheep.” ABA Journal. Ugly outcome, in my opinion. Speech needs to be protected. Videos? Not so much.
Jennifer, it doesn’t look like the Canadian case law supports the argument you’re making.
First, Canada’s Criminal Code.
Section 318: “Every one who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.” There’s nothing in Douthat’s column which approaches advocacy of genocide.
Section 319(1): “Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of . . . an indictable offence”. There’s also no reasonable reading of Douthat’s column that is “likely” to lead to a breach of the peace.
Section 319(2): “Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty of . . . an indictable offence.”
I’ll provisionally accept that Douthat’s prior writing “wilfully promotes hatred,” as its purpose is to frustrate civil equality for gays. But unfortunately for your thesis there’s a carve-out “if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true.” There’s a similar carve-out for topics of a religious nature.
Second: the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Section 13 imposes civil (NOT criminal) penalties to someone who repeatedly communicates “any matter that is likely to expose a [protected group] to hatred or contempt” by means of the Internet (oddly it doesn’t affect broadcast media).
In other words, you can try to sue Douthat for posting bigotry on the Internet (although in this instance it was a talk), but he’s not a thought-criminal.
I don’t have access to actual case law under the Canadian Human Rights Act, but from Wikipedia it looks like the standard is a lot higher than what Douthat actually said in this instance, which is that the arguments against gay marriage boil down to bigotry, tradition, or attenuated public-policy BS and that in the end gays will be able to marry.
Would you care to explain why you think viewing pornography should carry criminal and/or civil penalties? What about the imbibing of spiritous liquors, which is the cause of considerable social harm against women?
Sapient: I’m wondering why you think though that any person has to die alone when there might be a caring person who could be a companion and assistant?
You need to address that question to the staff at Jackson Memorial Hospital, not to me. They’re the ones who were arguing that a person ought to die alone, not me.
That’s not rhetorical advice, either. Please, do contact Jackson Memorial Hospital and ask them why they feel a person ought to die alone when their partner and children are waiting outside the ICU. Their public relations/media number is 305-585-7213.
I actually believe that love and commitment are very important. I just don’t see why people need legal preferential treatment based on their love and commitment, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual.
Neither did the staff at Jackson Memorial Hospital. If you share their views that strongly, you can always call them up and tell them how much you approve of their not giving Janice legal preferential treatment based on her love and committment to Lisa.
No one has made a persuasive argument in favor of marriage.
If you find it unpersuasive that Janice Langbehn wanted to be with Lisa Pond as she lay dying, then I fear there’s no hope for you. What, by the way, does this have to do with “men wanting to stake a claim to women’s bodies and the fruit of women’s wombs”?
Similarly, I don’t understand why people have legal advantages for getting married when there are people who, for whatever reason (choice or not), can’t or don’t choose to get married
Is that a good reason for opposing GLBT people having the same right to get legally married as any heterosexual person? If, as you say, you “totally support equal marriage rights for same-sex couples”…?
Better to level up than level down, always. Giving better access to rights for unmarried couples is a goal worth fighting for. Presenting your case as being in opposition to equal civil rights for all regardless of sexual orientation is strategically stupid, aside from anything else.
A society that allows pornography, blasphemy, and public indecency is not a free society. Richard Dawkins, for instance, is voicing bigotry without any substantive content; he might as well just write, “burn all the Christians.” He’s contributing nothing to civil discourse, and the victims of his hatred should not be without redress.
Just saying.
Hartmut: You are of course right that most opponents are homophobe (in both senses: fearing/loathing homo-sex and hating gays/lesbians) but you are wrong that all are.
Considered as a hypothetical argument without relation to practical reality: I suppose it’s theoretically possible.
But in the real world, no. Religious figures may adopt publicly homophobic views because their church requires it of them: politicians may promote homophobic views which they do not actually believe: but all opposition to equal access to civil marriage for same-sex couples is homophobic.
skeptonomist’s comment illustrates this perfectly…
skeptonomist: Religious fundamentalists, which apparently includes Douthat, say that God forbade homosexuality (which is what the Bible says) and that is that.
God also forbids McDonalds, and that is that. No Christian should work there, eat there, or allow others to work or eat there without protest: it’s an abomination. That’s what the Bible says.
If maximal reproduction is desired, then obviously homosexuality is to be discouraged as it it involves abstinence from reproduction.
One: in a world of 6.7 billion human beings, maximal reproduction is obviously not desirable. Two: homosexuality does not involve abstinence from reproduction: many lesbians and gay men have children.
Sapient: Anti-discrimination against the lgbt community is, conveniently, already an organized movement that I can support without devoting myself to a full-time crusade.
Wait, what? You think your arguments that same-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry because marriage is fundamentally discriminatory are somehow “support”?
No, we weigh our priorities differently. We are looking at the same set of facts, but the conclusion you have drawn from them requires a considerable leap and simplistic reasoning.
European countries, with a long history of total war rooted in nationalism or hatred of the Other, have made the decision that the benefits of free speech are outweighed by the dangers of incitement and hateful words. Moreover, the concept of free speech as a fundamental right to be guarded is not rooted so deeply in Europe as it is in America. This is a cultural difference.
The United States has, since the Civil War, largely avoided the horrors of war on our own continent. Free speech is among the most fundamental of our Constitutional rights, and we have as a society long recognized that while there are inherently harmful or illegitimate ways in which speech can be used (which ought not to be protected speech), any such exceptions carved out of this right should be rigorously scrutinized. The good that comes from protecting free speech requires, in our culture, that we allow speech that we do not like–because when you allow the State to begin defining what is and is not okay to say, you make it acceptable for a different administration or legislature to decide that /your/ speech is not okay.
Jennifer Hoss: “It’s a simple question, do you want this kind of bigoted “speech” in your society or not? I don’t. Europe doesn’t. Canada doesn’t. Australia doesn’t. America does.”
The technical term for this is “arguing by making stuff up”.
You’re wasting your time trying to have a serious discussion with someone who is making claims that are totally detached from reality. She’s a troll. Get over it.
I don’t know if Jennifer Hoss is a troll, but on the whole, I’d rather argue with Hartmut.
Wait, what? You think your arguments that same-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry because marriage is fundamentally discriminatory are somehow “support”?
Jesurgilsac’s posts suggest that she’s either being purposefully obtuse, or simply misread my post. Yes, I support marriage equality. But, if there were a convenient and realistic opportunity to oppose marriage as a civil institution, I would be in favor of getting rid of it as being obsolete and inherently discriminatory. I certainly oppose the bigotry apparent from the stories in the links provided. The first situation was an instance of bigotry overriding a legal right; the second was a case of legal bungling (a problem that marriage equality doesn’t automatically solve).
By the way, I agree that it is bad strategy to oppose marriage generally in jurisdictions that are fighting for marriage equality. Once marriage equality is attained, however, it might become more obvious to everyone how problematic it is as an institution that discriminates against people who, by choice or circumstance, cannot make a life commitment to a sexual partner (whether because they can’t make a commitment or they don’t have a partner).
Carleton Wu: “There is a risk to leaving your argument within the “various obvious reasons” bit- I have no idea what you mean. Genetic heritage? Inheritance?”
Yes, those are two. Other ‘paternity’ issues as well. Here in CA a Certificate Of Live Birth is required to be prepared by all Hospitals, which includes info about the mother and father’s birthplace and address, etc, to make it easier to collect child support if one or the other skips out on the kid. They also try to collect voluntary info about age of parents, race, etc, and other medical and social information, especially about the child, for various scientific and governmental follow-up studies, including benefits from the State Dept of Heath, and Services, and Medicade… and so forth.
“1)You’re right, it’s impossible for homosexuals to have any amount of self-loathing or self-hate.”
Carleton, Carleton, Carleton — just when I was gaining respect for you for your eloquent freedom of speech comments above, you have to slip back into your quibbling mode.
Stop with the self-loathing self-hat3 shtick. Its so retro: Jews who criticize Israeli polices against Palestinians are Jew-Self-Haters; Gays who criticize gay-marriage are self-loathing self-hating homophobes. Blah Blah Blah.
2)I would hope by now you would not bother presenting unverifiable anecdotes as data.
Boy, are you going to hate my comment following this one.
Sapient, if you think that this or this should have been read as a clear support of marriage equality, then you are an extraordinarily bad communicator, and should just take responsibility for your own failing, rather than trying to ad hom your way out.
As rea noted, it’s perfectly predictable that whenever the discussion of equal marriage / bans on same-sex couples having access to civil marriage come up, someone will show up to argue that all government/legal support of marriage is bad, just as the response of Southern towns to de-segregation of public swimming pools was to close public swimming pools.
If you weren’t aware before that attacking the principle of civil marriage in a discussion about bans on GLBT access to civil marriage makes you look like one of those covert bigots who’d rather no one had marriage than share it with gays, you are now.
Suggest that in future, when sharing your views that there ought to be no such thing as civil marriage, you make yourself clearer from the start.
Once marriage equality is attained, however, it might become more obvious to everyone how problematic it is as an institution that discriminates against people who, by choice or circumstance, cannot make a life commitment to a sexual partner (whether because they can’t make a commitment or they don’t have a partner).
Well, see, that’s your strategic problem right there. There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t both support access to civil marriage for all, regardless of sexual orientation, and support the rights of people living in relationships outside marriage. The two don’t contradict each other: you just have to accentuate the positive, civil rights you’d like people to have, rather than attacking civil rights people already have.
No government will ever pass legislation banning civil marriage: trying to promote rights for unmarried people in the context of an attack on the right to civil marriage is counterproductive to an extreme.
hairshirthedonist: “This man may engage in twisted logic that allows him to hold contradictory positions in his head such that he may not be homophobic, per se, and still take a position that is rooted in homophobia.”
The word ‘homophobia’ has a clearly specific meaning (from Websters online): Prejudice against (fear or dislike of) homosexual people and homosexuality.
But Jesurgslac expands the meaning to use it as a political pejorative to disparage any kind of opposition to homosexuality whatsoever.
It’s the same kind of narrow minded technique of wide-brush accusation used by the red-baiters during the McCarthy era to brand anyone who disagreed with the excesses of Republican-style capitalism as COMMIES.
And his negative position on gay marriage isn’t based on twisted logic. He says here in California he has all the legal rights he needs. If he wants to leave his worldly belongings to a male partner, he can go online and download a will, which would cost a whole lot less than a marriage license. If he wants a male partner to be able to visit him in a hospital emergency room and decide to pull the plug or not, he doesn’t need gay marriage to do it, just a witnessed Advanced Directive Form (in fact, my wife and I are designated as the decision makers, neither of us married to him). And for financial advantage on state or federal tax forms to file jointly, he’s only earned a modest living during his lifetime (Momma, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Actors)so it’s a non-issue for him.
He also has a symbolic justification for his opposition to gay marriage. He thinks the marriage ceremony has an important specific pre-religious historic connotation: it’s a celebration of the joining together of the masculine and feminine principle: a fundamental yin-yang melding that precedes the Judeo-Christian-Islamic era, and the Greco-Roman era, and as important to human symbology as other continuum opposites, like the seasons of the year, or energy and matter (he was into Taoism and Buddhism for a while, so maybe that’s where these observations are coming from).
He also says if gays and lesbians need a symbol of commitment instead of usurping the yin-yang male-female term ‘marriage’ they should come up with another descriptive for their union, something that celebrates the uniqueness of a male-male or female-female ongoing relationship, and that way avoid antagonizing heterosexuals who feel the use of the term gay marriage is undermining an important cultural rite of passage.
Most of the above is paraphrased from a phone conversation I had with him last night, but I think I’ve transcribed his ideas accurately.
(And Carleton, that’s not a paraphrasing of data, but of opinion…)
Brief note:
Y’all are being (have been?) successfully trolled by Jennifer Hoss. (I make no claim that the poster actully goes by the name “Jennifer Hoss” or is associated with the facebook page linked to the poster’s name.)
Jennifer, if you want to continue to participate on this site, you’ll need to provide some support for your claim that Douthat’s confused statements would be prosecuted as “hate speech” in, say, the UK. Or Italy. Or France. (Did I miss the Pope being led away in irons?) I’d also like to see some support for your claim that the UK, Italy, or France treats “ordinary” pornography — let’s exclude stuff like 2 girls 1 cup, snuff films, and like — as hate speech. Possibly you can explain how all the papers who still publish Page 3 Girls escape prosecution.
And, purely for curiousity’s sake, I’d like to hear your thoughts regarding whether your proposed ban on pornography should extend to gay porn.
Until then: you’re trolling this thread. Come back when you have something to contribute.
Joel Hanes, if you look through the thread, you’ll find that I posted a link to a site which lists the various passages (no, not just Leviticus) that seem to have a bearing on homosexuality and, by extension, gay marriage. You might also note that I have expressed myself as strongly in favor of gay marriage.
.
That said, I think Beyerstein is constructing a false and pernicious dichotomy. Not all opposition to gay marriage is necessarily the product of bigotry. There are people who feel compelled to oppose it for religious reasons (not hatred) and some who oppose it on the grounds of tradition. I don’t find their views persuasive, but they are not necessarily bigots, nor rationalizing bigotry. It’s awfully easy to denounce people who disagree with you as bigots, or, flipping it around “liberal extremists”. I find neither denunciation honest and I wish that Beyerstein would not use it on this or any other issue. This sort of crude and hateful demagoguery contributes nothing to political and social debate on any issue, whether it comes from the left or the right.
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One final point – it’s always easy to scare up one case of undeniable bigotry, point to it, and then claim: see, everyone who disagrees with me on gay issues is a bigot or a homophobe, or rationalizing homophobia. This is not true and says something worrying about the person using such tactics.
“There was recently the legal problem of virtual kiddie porn, i.e. CGI porn not involving any meatspace child. Can and/or should that be punished the same way as real child porn? Does it depend on the realism of the images?”
Short answer — no, and no. Better to give the fellas a harmless outlet.
Jesurgislac, neither of the comments that I wrote oppose marriage equality; they call into question the current usefulness of marriage as an institution. Through all of these discussions, no one has given any valid support for the idea that the state should be sponsoring marriage as a social institution. My only concession is that, sure, it still exists, it will exist for a little while longer, so while it exists it shouldn’t be discriminatory. (And, yes, its purpose was, formerly (and not that long ago), to place a stamp of “legitimate” lineage on the issue of a woman. The kids were presumed to be the husband’s whether he fathered them or not. That’s not an institution I’m dying to buy into.)
“My only concession is that, sure, it still exists, it will exist for a little while longer, so while it exists it shouldn’t be discriminatory.”
Just TBAC — is this the same thing as saying “I support legal Same Sex Marriage”?
gotta give props to JJ: he finally posted something I find interesting.
For myself, I am not a fan of “marriage” per se: a sectarian ritual that confers civil, legal status? Holy Church-State confusion, Batman!
I prefer a baseline of civil partnership, striped of religious tests, for EVERYBODY – much as (I understand) they have in Britain – (as long as they’re all human and old enough for informed consent). This would be the SOLE CONVEYOR of legal status/spousal rights/privileges/obligations/whatever.
Once done, garnish liberally with the symbolic ritual gestures of your choice. Just wanna get to the church on time? Yay for you, but no legal status conveyed thereby.
MockTurtle: Not all opposition to gay marriage is necessarily the product of bigotry. There are people who feel compelled to oppose it for religious reasons (not hatred) and some who oppose it on the grounds of tradition.
Both the argument from religion (“it’s not me that hates queers, it’s God”) and the argument from tradition (“we’ve always discriminated against you people, and we always shall”) are in fact sourced from homophobic bigotry. For a more detailed rebuttal of the various claims to oppose same-sex marriage for some other reason than homophobia, see The basics: why it’s necessary to support equal marriage.
That bigots are not able to identify themselves as bigots is a truism: if you’re aware that your views are sourced in bigotry, that’s your first step away from being a bigot.
Sapient: Jesurgislac, neither of the comments that I wrote oppose marriage equality
Neither of the comments you wrote support marriage equality either. That was my point.
Through all of these discussions, no one has given any valid support for the idea that the state should be sponsoring marriage as a social institution.
Well, as I said: if you think that after reading about Janice Langhelm and Lisa Pond, there’s no hope for you.
chmood: I prefer a baseline of civil partnership, striped of religious tests, for EVERYBODY – much as (I understand) they have in Britain – (as long as they’re all human and old enough for informed consent). This would be the SOLE CONVEYOR of legal status/spousal rights/privileges/obligations/whatever.
No, that’s not what we have in Britain.
Civil partnership is a legal relationship specifically set up by the UK government to be “separate but almost equal”. Civil partnership gives almost all the legal rights of marriage, and a same-sex couple who have a legally-recognized partnership from elsewhere will be recognized in the UK as having a civil partnership, not a marriage. (The most discriminatory difference is that the pension and insurance companies won the argument that they do not have to treat civil partner as legally identical to spouse in legal agreements made before December 2005.)
Civil marriage in the UK is stripped of religious tests – a couple can decide to have as secular or religious a ceremony as they choose.
Civil partnership is required by law to be non-religious: a couple are neither allowed to have any religious element in their legal ceremony, nor are they allowed to have a religious ceremony in the same building as their legal ceremony.
What we have in Britain is far better than, nationally, you have in the US: but, in the individual states in which the ban on same-sex couples marrying legally has been lifted, for those states what you have is better than what we have in the UK.
Not to beat a dead horse, but I’m a Canadian, and there’s simply no way that Douthat’s comments would be prosecuted criminally here, they probably wouldn’t even get a private complaint to a human rights commission (which is a kind of special civil court that can impose fines or issue injunctions, but not much else). I’m not sure, but I don’t believe the hate speech law has been used for anything but advocating genocide, and now that I think of it I’m not certain that anyone’s actually been convicted under it. I doubt that it would stand up to a constitutional challenge if someone were prosecuted for ordinary bigotry.
I don’t know about other countries, but it’s worth noting that while most places are ahead of the US on gay rights, gay marriage is in no sense universal in the way that the abolition of the death penalty is in the rest of the liberal democracies. It would be pretty ludicrous to suggest that it would be criminal to say you were against gay marriage in Britain, France, Italy or Germany. None of those countries have gay marriage (though all but Italy have a civil unions law of some sort) so you would be prosecuted for saying that you agree with the law.
Well, as I said: if you think that after reading about Janice Langhelm and Lisa Pond, there’s no hope for you.
That’s a sad story indeed, but not persuasive that the state should sponsor marriage generally. It is persuasive that marriage, if it exists, should be nondiscriminatory. Of course, if everyone could participate in domestic partnerships, or could appoint designated medical companions/representatives, that would be better, in that everyone, single, married, gay, straight, etc., would have the opportunity to be with their loved ones in the circumstances described.
Point, I would support a marriage equality referendum in my state (although it won’t happen here anytime soon, unfortunately). I would strongly support a referendum abolishing marriage in favor of an easy-access, nondiscriminatory system where people could designate a medical agent, and make a simple will.
Sapient: I would strongly support a referendum abolishing marriage in favor of an easy-access, nondiscriminatory system where people could designate a medical agent, and make a simple will.
It’s always stupid and counterproductive to argue in favor of levelling down – removing civil rights from some rather than extending equal civil rights to all.
It’s really very stupid and always damaging when people try to argue that civil marriage should be abolished in a discussion about access by same-sex couples to civil marriage.
So the only question for you to answer, Sapient, is: are you so foolishly naive you’re serious about your notion that people would agree to being forcibly divorced: or is this just an attack on access to civil marriage by the back door, closing down an institution rather than letting queers have access to it?
Seriously, Sapient: what you’re proposing (a referendum abolishing marriage) is the direct equivalent of GLBT voters in California last year voting Yes on Proposition 8.
I concede it’s just possible that someone who’s never in their life been directly involved in any kind of political activism, and has no notion what it’s like to be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation (or gender identity, or race, etc) – your classic sheltered ignorant straight white well-off young man – might make the argument you’re making in a naively innocent kind of way.
But it’s such nonsense you really would have to be that young, that sheltered, that ignorantly naive, to take it seriously: the idea that people would vote to have their marriage taken away from them, forcibly divorced by law.
Which is why, when it’s proposed in a discussion about the ban on same-sex couples marrying, it usually comes across as opposition to same-sex marriage. Because in practical terms, that’s what it is.
Marriage is only a civil right in that encompasses the right to love, associate, have sex with another consenting adult, reproduce, live with others, make personal commitments. Although there may be other civil rights presumed by the word “marriage”, what right exists in marriage that couldn’t just as easily protected without calling it “marriage”? I’m in favor of extending rights that are presumed by “marriage” to everyone without having to come as a package involving finding a lover.
Yes, those are two. Other ‘paternity’ issues as well. Here in CA a Certificate Of Live Birth is required to be prepared by all Hospitals, which includes info about the mother and father’s birthplace and address, etc, to make it easier to collect child support if one or the other skips out on the kid.
So what you’re saying is that, we don’t need marriage for heteros because we’ve alreay got systems in place to deal with eg child support issues. Which makes sense- any argument that marriage is needed to deal with offspring issues has to cope with the fact that we handle a large number of children born to unmarried women without a serious problem today.
That seems to be the opposite of your initial point, but so be it.
Carleton, Carleton, Carleton — just when I was gaining respect for you for your eloquent freedom of speech comments above, you have to slip back into your quibbling mode.
Stop with the self-loathing self-hat3 shtick. Its so retro: Jews who criticize Israeli polices against Palestinians are Jew-Self-Haters; Gays who criticize gay-marriage are self-loathing self-hating homophobes. Blah Blah Blah.
I’m not attempting to invalidate his position based on his orientation, just pointing out that yes, it is possible to be both eg Jewish and anti-Semitic. It is wrong to claim that “X said Y, and X is Jewish, ergo Y cannot be an anti-Semitic statement.”
A white supremacist might claim that he is not a racist- after all, every position he holds (no miscegenation, separation of the races) can be found to have been said at one time by a black person. This is the argument you are making, and it is rubbish.
(And Carleton, that’s not a paraphrasing of data, but of opinion…)
Again, you miss my point. If your arguments have merit, they have merit. Thinking that they have more merit coming from the mouth of your friend is a similar mistake to an ad hominem. Even if they did, no one else has any way of verifying your friend’s existence or whether he would think your interpretation of his statements is sound, etc.
So I find that whole part of the discussion pointless.
Nobody would be “divorced”. People already married could be presumed to continue to have the rights and duties that marriage entails. And anyone forward would then be free to contract for those duties and rights, have a ceremony, and publicly proclaim themselves married (reading the “bans of marriage” if you will). But two sisters, or three friends, or whoever, could also contract for similar rights and duties, and they wouldn’t have to call themselves married in order to have those rights and duties.
I guess it would be nice of me to assume you’re naive, sheltered, and ignorant, Sapient, but unfortunately that makes you just not worth talking to. Feel free to join the discussion when you’re adult enough to think about how the real world works.
The religious oriented seem to be a little late to the party in their defense of the secular aspect of marriage as a morality issue instead of a legal or civil rights issue. With divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births at record levels and and with solid legal foundations to protect the children of this situations, it seems that religious moral issues are not for the state but for the religion to address with it adherents.
I realize there was much acrimony in California between supporters and opponents of the constitutional change related to same sex marriage. Much of this was between LDS adherents who opposed same sex marriage and those who support same sex marriage.
The irony here is that nothing the LDS people say or do is likely to have a major effect on secular based moral behavior and the LDS religion seems to me to have the perfect solution in their temple marriage ordinances in which their religious authorities are the sole arbiters of qualifications of couples to receive the temple marriage rites. This does not solve the issue for other religions but it might show a direction.
Just for the record, GOB, the US divorce rate is actually down somewhat from its peak in 1981 during the glorious reign of eternal leader Ronald Reagan — who, you might remember, was himself the only president ever to have been divorced.
Not all opposition to gay marriage is necessarily the product of bigotry. There are people who feel compelled to oppose it for religious reasons (not hatred) and some who oppose it on the grounds of tradition. I don’t find their views persuasive, but they are not necessarily bigots, nor rationalizing bigotry.
If someone wants to keep me in a position of second-class citizenship because I violate their religious beliefs, then it is irrelevant to me whether they think they hate me or not. My second-class citizenship is second-class either way, and I’m long beyond giving a d*mn about their tender hurt feelings at being so misunderstood.
If it walks like a duck….
Not all opposition to gay marriage is necessarily the product of bigotry. There are people who feel compelled to oppose it for religious reasons (not hatred) and some who oppose it on the grounds of tradition. I don’t find their views persuasive, but they are not necessarily bigots, nor rationalizing bigotry.
If someone wants to keep me in a position of second-class citizenship because I violate their religious beliefs, then it is irrelevant to me whether they think they hate me or not. My second-class citizenship is second-class either way, and I’m long beyond giving a d*mn about their tender hurt feelings at being so misunderstood.
If it walks like a duck….
Posted by: JanieM
Second-class citizenship? Just a little precious, don’t you think? And what’s the difference between your hatred of those who disagree with you and the alleged hatred of anti-gay bigots? It’s much too easy to scapegoat a group by using your tactics, and it’s not a liberal or intelligent way to behave. What next – loyalty tests on gay marriage?
Re jaswant @ 8:22:
Not the least bit precious. Just a fact.
You can assume my hatred all you want; that doesn’t make that a fact.
As for your actual question, the difference between me and them is that they are first-class citizens and I am not, and they want it to stay that way and I don’t. A further difference between us is that I don’t want two tiers of citizenship (I don’t want their position to be worsened) and they do (they want my position to remain disadvantaged compared to theirs). Or in other words, they wish me ill, and I don’t wish them ill.
And this is not only the first but the last round of any exchange between you and me. I haven’t got the time or energy to waste.
JanieM, thanks for confirming my point about your hatred and fear of anyone who disagrees with you. You haven’t shown that you are a second-class citizen, instead, you’ve just repeated a catchphrase. Your whole attitude shrieks rage and hate. Don’t get me wrong – I support gay marriage, I just don’t see how you can justify demanding tolerance while hating on other people.
“ You haven’t shown that you are a second-class citizen, instead, you’ve just repeated a catchphrase. Your whole attitude shrieks rage and hate.”
At the risk of FTT —
Not only does the second sentence not follow from the first, but if the first is false, then the second makes no sense.
So unless I’m missing how SSMC’s being barred from enjoying the civil liberties of all other marriages doesn’t fall under the category of second class citizenship — well, I think Janie takes this part of the thread.
I won’t speculate beyond that.
JanieM: . . . Or in other words, they wish me ill, and I don’t wish them ill.
jaswant: Your whole attitude shrieks rage and hate.
1. Read for comprehension next time instead of picking a target and stupidly launching broadsides, because you can’t assume that the rest of us aren’t paying attention.
2. Maybe next, you can explain how liberals are the real racists. That’s always a fun one.
How much of this, do you think, is blind tribalism? He can offer no logical support for his position (for, indeed, there is none to be offered); yet he hews to it anyways, because he plays for the red team and it’s a cultural signifier.
It would take actual courage to break with his cultural group, and he doesn’t feel it’s worth the effort. It looks like rank moral cowardice.
Sapient: Nobody would be “divorced”. People already married could be presumed to continue to have the rights and duties that marriage entails. And anyone forward would then be free to contract for those duties and rights, have a ceremony, and publicly proclaim themselves married (reading the “bans of marriage” if you will). But two sisters, or three friends, or whoever, could also contract for similar rights and duties, and they wouldn’t have to call themselves married in order to have those rights and duties.
In other words, you would ideally like to more or less fulfill the paranoid apocalyptic scenarios of the anti-marriage-equality crowd (stopping short of unions between dogs and box turtles) by eliminating civil marriage altogether while letting siblings and polys get civil-unioned but until you can do so, go marriage equality! Rah, rah, rah!
Taking you at your word that you support marriage equality, can you really not see why this is unhelpful?
jaswant: JanieM, thanks for confirming my point about your hatred and fear of anyone who disagrees with you. You haven’t shown that you are a second-class citizen, instead, you’ve just repeated a catchphrase. Your whole attitude shrieks rage and hate. Don’t get me wrong – I support gay marriage, I just don’t see how you can justify demanding tolerance while hating on other people.
You are clearly concerned.
“In other words, you would ideally like to more or less fulfill the paranoid apocalyptic scenarios of the anti-marriage-equality crowd (stopping short of unions between dogs and box turtles) by eliminating civil marriage altogether while letting siblings and polys get civil-unioned but until you can do so, go marriage equality! Rah, rah, rah!”
I actually have no problem with that.
Perhaps we should make this our default position, neuter that argument, and get gay marriage as the compromise position.
I don’t know if Jennifer Hoss is a troll, but on the whole, I’d rather argue with Hartmut.
Thanks, I love to play the Devil’s advocate. Just a few days ago I argued how modern biology/genetics could/would be used to support St.Thomas Aquinas’* position that women are failed males 😉
—
In Germany (and even more in Austria) there is a double standard about who can spew hateful speech without facing legal consequences. If you are a RCC archbishop, you can say things in public with impunity that, if the law was applied to the letter, would send anyone else to prison for years. You may be condemned in the court of public opinion but not in the legal one.
Imo Douthat would not face legal consequences over here since he seems not to call for violence or to personally insult living or dead people.
*there are few guys** I despise more than him (St.John Chrysostomos comes close though).
**at least among those already dead for awhile
He doesn’t have to give a reason — it’s his opinion, he’s an opinion columnist.
But here’s one difference with gay marriage: no parent wants to see little Johnny grow up and ‘marry’ another man. The idea of two men ‘marrying’ each other is absolutely and quite obviously absurd, and one big reason some people fall all over themselves to support it is that they don’t want to be called a “bigot”, or worse, because they don’t know how to react, and no teflon coating is thick enough to deflect the stigma of that charge. Which is exactly what you’re seeing here — name-calling, ad hominem. Support for gay ‘marriage’ is nothing but a piety contest in front of the temple of political correctness. Other than that, as an issue it has zero importance for society. Zero.
eh: But here’s ….. Zero.
Meh.
reply to point @4.36. Many thanks. Yes, I agree the paragraph you quote represents the consensus and also reflects ‘reality’, probably. (As it says and also implies, proving a causal link is formidably difficult, because of the nature of socialization and ‘speech’. ) Really I simply wanted to oppose, strongly, the assertion that the notion of a causal link between pornography and rape is “BS”. I admit I also like quoting that part of Hudnut…
Judith is referring to Point’s comment here.
thank you, jesurgislac.
Taking you at your word that you support marriage equality, can you really not see why this is unhelpful?
I guess you didn’t read the whole thread, where I conceded that, at this particular time, since there is considerable hope for marriage equality, and since marriage equality might further the cause of societal acceptance of gay life generally, championing the idea of abolishing civil marriage might not be helpful.
On the other hand, no one has answered the question of why society should bestow special benefits to lovers who make a formal commitment to each other. The religious right at least has an answer for that – they want to regulate certain sexual activity to certain people, making all other sex either sinful or illegal. I reject the notion that any sexual relationship should receive preferred legal status, or that the state has any business regulating people’s sex lives. That’s apparently a view that’s naive and unconscionable to many of the people who comment here.
On the other hand, no one has answered the question of why society should bestow special benefits to lovers who make a formal commitment to each other.
I answered your question, Sapient, with examples of what happens when such benefits are denied.
The fact that you evidently didn’t like my answer and don’t want to think about it, does not alter tne fact that you got an answer.
So don’t try that rhetoric of “no one answered the question” on me. You can honestly say that no one gave you an answer that you wanted to think about, because it’s evident you don’t like to think about the real-world consequences of your beliefs. But you got an answer.
“real-world” consequences
The examples that Jesurgislac pointed to are situations where people either ignored someone’s rights based on bigotry (which could happen no matter whether marriage existed or not, in that a wife’s rights could also be ignored by a bigot), or because someone screwed up a will (a problem that marriage doesn’t solve). I fail to see how either of these examples justify marriage as a legal institution. But obviously, I have no idea what happens in the “real world” where marriage miraculously cures bigotry and legal malpractice.
@eh:
no parent wants to see little Johnny grow up and ‘marry’ another man.
I agree entirely. If my son turns out to be gay, I don’t want him to ‘marry’ another man.
If he does turn out to be gay, and he finds a man who wants to commit to him for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do them part, I want him to marry him. No scare quotes, no strangers in the situation saying that this is a piety test. If he’s gay, I want his wedding day to be as apolitical, as personal and non-notable, as if he’s straight.
If my daughter turns out to be a lesbian, same deal.
Other than that, as an issue it has zero importance for society. Zero.
Well, I certainly don’t think it’s going to have the destructive impact that many opponents of gay marriage do. But no extension of our ideals of liberty and justice for all can really be said to have zero importance.
And it’ll certainly have importance for the gay people who will be able to marry, and for their families. That counts for a lot, too.
Good points, evilrooster, but seriously — DNFTT!
Also, Judith, I’m glad to offer the quote — from my reading of the decision, my sense is that the footnote completely contradicts the section it refers to; plus, in the quarter of a century since the decision, the footnote has only been further validated as significant supporting evidence of a casual link has failed to materialize.
That said, “BS” was probably too strong a phrase, at least for that point of the conversation. So I take your point entirely.
‘Just for the record, GOB, the US divorce rate is actually down somewhat from its peak in 1981 during the glorious reign of eternal leader Ronald Reagan — who, you might remember, was himself the only president ever to have been divorced.’
Thanks. I’m not doing any research, but just some observations that might explain a slight reversal. More people are deciding not to tie the knot at all since they judge no benefit to themselves (and this is foremost in our modern era, IMHO). Many who get married decide to have dogs or cats instead of children and this removes stress from the marriage institution as a whole. And, of course, there is a lot more tolerance of errant behaviors than there was generally in most of the 20th century.
I know my family history in almost all lines going back 3 centuries and find no divorces until the mid-20th century. That’s why I have concluded that traditional marriage has lost most of its moral and religious foundations and is now almost solely legal. Secular marriage as an institution should be abandoned by religious institutions and replaced by a rite that is religious only and not subject to being co-opted by those outside the religious community.
“Many who get married decide to have dogs or cats instead of children…”
Oh come, come now — you’re saying felines have conspired with canines to depopulate the human race, enslave those who remain, and take control of your societies resources to dominate the earth?
Seriously, who told you that — I mean, meow.
@Point:
Yeah, I know. Sigh. But I thought one answer might short-circuit the “nobody can answer my stunningly insightful comment” followup.
I know my family history in almost all lines going back 3 centuries and find no divorces until the mid-20th century.
Wow, you find no divorces during a period of time when divorce was, for all practical purposes, illegal? Remarkable! The mind boggles!
Many who get married decide to have dogs or cats instead of children and this removes stress from the marriage institution as a whole.
Dueling anecdotes time! Yaaaaaaaaaay! Among my peers who are roughly my age plus or minus a few years, and who have been married around the same length of time (18 years), my wife and I, and one other couple, are the ONLY ones who do not have children. This is counting among, say 20 couples. Two out of twenty couples, in their 30s or 40s, married more than ten years, without children. So, take your “observations” and believe whatever you want.
Secular marriage as an institution should be abandoned by religious institutions and replaced by a rite that is religious only and not subject to being co-opted by those outside the religious community.
First of all, you might want to actually discover some things about the history of marriage in Western cultures, because you appear to have some things exactly ass-backwards here regarding just who had the power to do what, and at what times.
Second of all, if religions want some private “marriage” ceremony that has nothing to do with the law, that’s fine by me, but unless participants also get married in a civil ceremony, they have to file their taxes as single people and get none — N-O-N-E — of the legal benefits that accrue to legally married couples. That OK with you?
Em, there was a change in church attitude at least over here. In the past civil and religious marriage were independent or even mutually exclusive (since churches refused to marry people that married secularly before). Now you can’t marry in one of the major churches without providing your secular marriage certificate first.
Israel is an extreme case where there is no local civil marriage at all (so secular couples have to travel abroad for that).
And Phil, I do not know from where GOB’s family lines originate. Some of the countries of origin might have had legal divorce.
Carleton Wu: “So what you’re saying is that, we don’t need marriage for heteros because we’ve alreay got systems in place to deal with eg child support issues.”
I wasn’t saying anything about not needing marriage for heteros. Where’d that come from? I was responding to a question asking if there was any argument for allowing the state to recognize or solemnize a personal romantic commitment, and I simply indicated there was, if children resulted from that commitment (romantic or not), so that those childrens’ interests were protected…
“I’m not attempting to invalidate his position based on his orientation, just pointing out that yes, it is possible to be both eg Jewish and anti-Semitic.”
Again, you’re out somewhere past Pluto. It being ‘possible’ and being ‘certain’ are two different kettles of diversion. It’s possible Obama is an Al-Qaeda mole. If he decides not to send additional troops to Afghanistan, will the assertion that he’s a self-hating Christian-American spy be taken seriously by anyone whose IQ is higher than their belt size? Jesurgislac keeps reasserting anyone who opposes gay marriage, no matter what the professed reason, is homophobic (hates gays, etc).
And so, yes, it’s possible for gays to be homophobic, but its asinine to dismiss any and every gay person who’s anti gay marriage as homophobic. Or any or all straight persons as well who are anti-gay marriage. I know a number of 60s and 70s liberal activists who fought to overturn sodomy laws, but have reservations about legalizing gay marriage. Have they morphed into mindless homophobes following irrational impulses, like pod persons in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
“Again, you miss my point. If your arguments have merit, they have merit. Thinking that they have more merit coming from the mouth of your friend is a similar mistake to an ad hominem. Even if they did, no one else has any way of verifying your friend’s existence or whether he would think your interpretation of his statements is sound, etc.
So I find that whole part of the discussion pointless.”
Your point is pointless, Carleton. If my friend doesn’t exist, and I made him up (next time I see him I’m telling him he’s only a figment of my imagination and order him to pay for my bar drinks) then, as you said, invented or not if words have merit, they have merit. Or are you suggesting the utterances of Hamlet would have more ontological significance in a philosophic discussion if they were spoken by someone named Harold who showed a state driver’s license to verify his existence?
And, yes, you’re slightly, partially, nearly correct that a counter-argument about labeling a homosexual homophobic might have more merit coming from the mouth of a gay man (that would be a non-fallacious inverse ad hominen testimonium exception to your ad hominem objection) then from the mouth of the Catholic Bishop of Boston, you’re right.
Other than that, thanks for the input.
JJ
eh: “But here’s one difference with gay marriage: no parent wants to see little Johnny grow up and ‘marry’ another man. The idea of two men ‘marrying’ each other”
Scientists are in the process of searching for a gay-gene (numerous genetic studies underway at institutions worldwide). If in the near future it becomes feasible to alter that gene, so that parents have a ‘gay choice’ or a ‘straight choice’ for their unborn child, one wonders what percentage of parents would opt for the latter?
And if that technology does become available, would gay communities world-wide align with their present religious enemies to prevent parents from exercising that kind of ‘Godlike’ prerogative?
I feel a little ungracious saying this, point, but feel I must; the footnote certainly stands in apparent contradiction to the paragraph, and if I’d been writing the piece, I wouldn’t have put it there. (I don’t mean I’d have tried to conceal the findings.) Certainly, the footnote runs counter to the majority opinion’s ‘feel’.
But the studies do not refute, or even, really, convincingly rebut, the paragraph as a whole. How can we operationalize “Depictions of subordination tend to perpetuate subordination” etc.? How can we properly research a postulated connection between pornography and rape when the connection lies — when the thesis is properly argued — at the level of socialization and the subconscious? In that event, would rapes of men and women that (apparently) are not connected to consumption of pornography by the rapist(s) count as a refutation of the thesis? Otoh, is MacKinnon’s acknowledgement that some men are sickened by pornography evidence against her larger argument?)
Would I ban pornography? Probably not. Would I defend the Ordinances were the trafficking clause deleted? Probably. But I am uncomfortably aware that I support UK hate speech laws as — as I am convinced they are — additions to, in the spirit of, our “(falsely) shouting fire in a crowded theatre” Public Order Acts.
Anyway. This is not an attempt at a threadjack.
Phil: “my wife and I, and one other couple, are the ONLY ones who do not have children.”
What, your genes are not moving onward into future generations?
Why does the day suddenly seem so much brighter? 🙂
“Two out of twenty couples, in their 30s or 40s, married more than ten years, without children”
Well, those numbers are atypical:
And of course, the number of children per family has been dropping for generations. Good new on some levels, and bad news on others…
“but unless participants also get married in a civil ceremony, they have to file their taxes as single people and get none — N-O-N-E — of the legal benefits that accrue to legally married couples. “
The only real benefit I can think of is spousal Social Security benefits if one spouse dies. Sometimes filing joint returns is financially beneficial, sometimes not.
What other legal benefits accrue to legally married couples that unmarried people can’t get otherwise?
What, your genes are not moving onward into future generations?
Why does the day suddenly seem so much brighter? 🙂
Jay, that was profoundly juvenile and entirely gratuitous.
He doesn’t have to give a reason — it’s his opinion, he’s an opinion columnist.
Does the audience for Op-Ed columns have such low standards?
“I feel a little ungracious saying this, point, but feel I must…”
No worries! It’s actually a very interesting point…
“How can we operationalize “Depictions of subordination tend to perpetuate subordination” etc.? How can we properly research a postulated connection between pornography and rape when the connection lies — when the thesis is properly argued — at the level of socialization and the subconscious? In that event, would rapes of men and women that (apparently) are not connected to consumption of pornography by the rapist(s) count as a refutation of the thesis?”
This is a way of thinking on it that hadn’t struck me*, but it makes the point, more strongly, that the argument is BS — not because of a lack of supporting evidence (that would make the nominer a little strong, as I conceded), but because the claim of causality is unfalsifiable!
And such a social postulation** has no claim to merit when it cannot be supported or unproven by research.
“Anyway. This is not an attempt at a threadjack.”
Oh… well, it was a fun discussion.
*at least on this thread
**that is to say, one of cause and effect
“He doesn’t have to give a reason — it’s his opinion, he’s an opinion columnist.”
Well, if he gives that opinion in an opinion column, he would be expected to defend it.*
“Does the audience for Op-Ed columns have such low standards?”
That’s nothing — you should see what WaPo drags up…
*Of course, I’ve only glanced at his NYT page, so…
What other legal benefits accrue to legally married couples that unmarried people can’t get otherwise?
Gee, I don’t know, how about bringing a foreigner into the country to marry? (Or a foreigner you’re already married to, for that matter.) That one affected me personally.
The notion that people can cobble together the legal benefits of marriage from scratch is so detached from reality that I hesitate to wade in. But unlike some of the flaming nonsense that gets spewed, it sounds so plausible and reasonable that it’s important to point out that it is in fact nonsense.
Here’s some info, from here:
(Don’t know how to make the bullets come through, sorry. But the gist should be clear.)
Sure, people can get some of these otherwise (except in Virginia, where it is illegal, last I heard, to try to mimic marriage by making contracts), but trying to get any significant number of them, much less to get them honored, is not practically possible, even if you had a fortune and years to spend on it.
Jay, your gay friend can choose whatever he wants for himself, but he has no right to choose for me; and since the right to marry isn’t the obligation to marry, no one is forcing him to partake.
“This is a way of thinking on it that hadn’t struck me*, but it makes the point, more strongly, that the argument is BS… because the claim of causality is unfalsifiable! And such a social postulation** has no claim to merit when it cannot be supported or unproven by research.”
Does that include people like Douthat invoking God’s commandments to justify denying civil rights to the LGBT community?
Sapient: But obviously, I have no idea what happens in the “real world”
Quite.
Sapient, the reason that married couples get many rights is that they also assume certain responsibilities.
Of course it’s important to recognize that people’s relationships are more complicated than “marriage or nothing”, and to respect people’s direct wishes; if you fill out a medical power of attorney, a hospital should not have the right to disregard that because the person you gave it to is “only” your girlfriend.
But saying that civil marriage is obsolete is like saying that written contracts are obsolete because people make oral agreements all the time.
Phil: “my wife and I, and one other couple, are the ONLY ones who do not have children.”
What, your genes are not moving onward into future generations?
Why does the day suddenly seem so much brighter? 🙂
Hey Jay, why don’t you go fuck yourself? All the smiley faces in the world aside, should I ever have the utter misfortune to meet you in person . . . well, I hope you like the taste of teeth, because you’re going to be swallowing several.
Me: Taking you at your word that you support marriage equality, can you really not see why this is unhelpful?
Sapient: I guess you didn’t read the whole thread, where I conceded that, at this particular time, since there is considerable hope for marriage equality, and since marriage equality might further the cause of societal acceptance of gay life generally, championing the idea of abolishing civil marriage might not be helpful.
I could have been a little clearer, I think. What I meant to ask was if you don’t see how unhelpful it is to even raise this issue in a discussion of marriage equality, whether you are actively trying to push this down-with-marriage thing or not. Of course marriage equality advocates are going to want nothing to do with you, because 1) they typically believe marriage is beneficial to society and 2) they are busy enough knocking down the ridiculous caricatures their opponents have been coming up with without folks like you bringing those caricatures to life.
JJ is being a troll, which is nothing new. DNFTT.
Sapient is being an idiot, at kindest: last time we discussed this Sapient wasn’t even aware that other countries in the world had been recognizing same-sex marriage from 2001 onwards. It would appear Sapient has not taken any time to become better informed in the last year….
Of course marriage equality advocates are going to want nothing to do with you …
Interesting that most of my friends are gay and all of my friends are in favor of marriage equality (because I don’t hang with bigots). It’s only on this discussion site that the thought police have deemed it “ unhelpful to even raise this issue in a discussion of marriage equality.”
Jesurgislac points to a very long and antagonistic thread where this issue was discussed until everyone was thoroughly bored. I became very angry during that discussion because it seemed (as it’s beginning to seem now) that the comments in my direction were ad hominem. I’m not sure what specifically Jesurgislac is talking about as to my knowledge of other countries’ laws – I freely admit to not knowing everything. I don’t care to reread the entire thread to refresh my memory.
But I will mention that my own work, for many years, dealt with digesting various laws of the United States, and when the issue of same-sex marriage was first discussed in the ‘nineties, it first came up as a possibility in Hawaii. (I remember being very excited at the prospect and being laughed at by my colleagues, some of whom would have welcomed it.) At that time, because it seemed so unrealistic, I was free to think about the idea of same-sex marriage as a possibility among other possible changes in the marriage laws that would be helpful not only to gay people, but to everyone. It was interesting (before “helpfulness” became a necessary component imposed by thought police) to imagine what might be the best solution to the fact that marriage is problematic in a number of ways.
This was about 15 years ago, when the possibility of re-imagining “marriage” seemed as valid as any other option. It strikes me as intellectually valid to ask why, as JanieM lists, there are 1100 – 1400 rights that most people don’t even know about, that they receive as a result of a formalized sexual relationship. What about people who love another person but who, for logistical reasons, find it impossible to live with that person? Why should they be denied the 1100 – 1400 rights? What about lonelyhearts – why should they be denied the 1100 – 1400 rights? What about divorce people – what do they do about their lost 1100 – 1400 rights (most of which they didn’t know they had)? There isn’t anything wrong with society deciding to bestow those rights, but shouldn’t we reexamine the whole thing?
I don’t have a personal stake in this, by the way. I’m just fascinated. And, aside from working my ass off for candidates who support gay rights, I don’t care if every thought I express is “helpful”.
“Does that include people like Douthat invoking God’s commandments to justify denying civil rights to the LGBT community?”
I’m thinking “yes” — if you don’t have a secular argument for banning SSM, than saying your religion commands it, as a policy argument, is BS.
An original thought, I know… 😉
I’m not sure what specifically Jesurgislac is talking about as to my knowledge of other countries’ laws
You asked what made me think other countries would recognize gay “marriage”, and I listed for you (some of) the multiple countries that already did (that was last year: there are even more now).
There isn’t anything wrong with society deciding to bestow those rights, but shouldn’t we reexamine the whole thing?
Yet every time this discussion has come up, you’ve begun your participation in the discussion with an attack on anyone being allowed to get married. Which, as was pointed out to you in the previous thread I linked to as well as this one, is a standard response from people who are anti same-sex couples being able to get married: frame their opposition as an attack on the legal right to marriage.
You don’t act interested in “examining” marriage: you promote an unrealistic and foolish idea that the government should abolish marriage – in this thread, that people would vote to be divorced by fiat.
In this and the previous thread you seemed to start out angry and unwilling to comprehend that people want to get married. That your loathing of marriage (it came across as active, angry loathing in previous thread) somehow gave you the right to argue that no one should be allowed to get married.
I have discussions on a repeating basis with a couple of people I know and love who think that they have a brilliant idea when they propose that there should be “civil unions” sanctioned by the government for couples who want them, and that “marriage” should be left entirely to the churches.
This seemed like a good idea to me too, the first time I heard it — kind of like a pony for everyone seems like a good idea, until you remember reality. But as part of a discussion of same-sex marriage it’s a disaster, as Jes keeps trying to explain.
The reason is that lgbt people are actually seeking two things in the quest for the right to get married: equality, and marriage. Abolishing marriage and replacing it with some other kind of partnership might solve the equality problem, but it’s a disastrous thing to bring up politically, and it also just flat out flies in the face of the fact that, as Jes says, people want to get married. The people who already have the right to get married mostly want to get married, and a lot of the people who don’t now have the right also want to.
To in any way couple a discussion of same-sex marriage with a discussion of abolishing marriage raises — for almost everyone, but especially for people who oppose SSM in the first place — the fearful possibility that instead of taking imaginary things away from them (like the right to be called a “husband”), SSM would actually take something real and precious away from them: marriage.
If you knew my current nerdy almost 60-year-old self, you would be hard put to it to believe that I’ve led a profoundly unconventional life in relation to relationships. As a matter of human possibility, I’ve thought about and to some extent experienced all kinds of things that might come under the kinds of headings Sapient is talking about. But when I was doing that, I was living in a little bubble that had virtually no connection with what most people think, want, and do. So I don’t in any way disagree that it’s interesting to think about other ways of structuring relationships in the abstract. But in practice, it’s never going to happen, or if it does it’s never going to happen in one big leap, and as Jes and I and others have said again and again, coupling that exploration with the very alive issue of SSM only hurts that cause.
I have said before and will probably say again that the change in my lifetime in the way lgbt people live and are treated is stunning. When I was growing up Catholic in the Midwest, I literally did not know there were such people. I was in my early twenties before I discovered them by discovering that I myself was one of them. When I first wrote a newspaper column in which I said openly that I was gay (1992), there was a hard decision to be made about publishing it because there was a real concern about violence (and I had little kids at the time).
Now we are on the verge — in Maine, where I live, and if the vote on Question 1 goes the right way on Nov. 3 — of having legalized same-sex marriage. One of the sweetest things I’ve seen in a very long time is the way it has dawned on people that after living their whole lives thinking that they would never be able to get married, going to other people’s weddings and assuming that they would never have the chance to be in that position themselves — now, there is a law that says they will be able to. The dawning is sudden for some, gradual for others. There is talk of ceremonies and wedding cakes and rings. There is sweetness.
People want to get married.
Of course, we all know that the sweetness may turn bitter again for a while, because these people that we are not supposed to call bigots are trying to make sure the law never goes into effect. (The Diocese of Portland alone has given more than half a million dollars in hopes of invalidating the law, never mind that dozens of its churches have been closed, parishes are being consolidated, and the scandal of abuse and the covering-up of abuse is nowhere near finished playing out.)
And even if we win marriage in Maine, we still haven’t got those 1100 Federal benefits, and if my fine lovely Irishwoman was still in my life I still wouldn’t be able to bring her over here to live with me. It’s too late for us anyhow, and my friends may still have to postpone their weddings, but the time is coming, because people want to get married.
I’m glad JamieM thoroughly answered Sapient’s question, “why get married?” The flip side is, “why does the state give so many, many benefits to married people?”
Because marriage is a commitment to take care of each other, directly and personally. Marriage makes the legal system, the health care system, the child-rearing system, etc., *simpler*. It bundles up an enormous variety of rights in one plate, but it also bundles up a enormous number of *responsibilities*.
In other words, we support marriages because without them, we’d need *even more* lawyers.
Thanks, JanieM, for recognizing that my views are stated in good faith. And I agree (and have said) that, as a strategy at this time (since things are happening the way they are), marriage equality is a more realistic fight than rethinking marriage. Eventually, though, for the sake of all people who are marginalized by “marriage”, I hope that people reflect on what might be wrong with it. I guess my disappointment lies in the fact that my gay friends have been role models in creating a new paradigm. Good for everyone if a new paradigm can be explored out of creativity rather than necessity. I hope it happens someday.
I think Sapient’s last point is the perfect way to close the whole “marriage paradigm” section of the thread — a section that, for my money, Janie “wins”.
Janie:
I have discussions on a repeating basis with a couple of people I know and love who think that they have a brilliant idea when they propose that there should be “civil unions” sanctioned by the government for couples who want them, and that “marriage” should be left entirely to the churches.
And I, as a civilly-married person of long standing, am deeply afronted by this idea, which I too have encountered numerous times. Can you explain to me why it seems so obvious and “reasonable” to so many people to decide that maybe 1/3 of American marriages don’t count? What is it, about *my* 20+ year heterosexual marriage, that doesn’t seem quite “real enough” to fit the definition of marriage?
Doctor Science — The people who have talked up this idea to me aren’t saying that only people who don’t want to get married in church should have civil unions. They are saying that the civil institution (government-sanctioned, with legal benefits and responsibilities) should be a “civil union,” and the thing that people do in church (involving whatever religious benefits and responsibilities any given church blesses) should be a “marriage.”
In other words, if you wanted the legal stuff you’d have to enter into a civil union, and if you wanted the religious stuff you’d get married in a church. A lot of people would obviously do both, and probably very few would do the marriage without the civil union. Though as to the latter, I have seen one writer (a pastor, I believe) say that he thinks the churches should unhook themselves from the state, and pastors/ministers should stop officiating over the legal side of marriage. This idea seems about as likely to take hold as the civil-unions-for-everyone idea, but people can dream, I suppose.
My friends who like the civil-unions-for-everyone idea believe (quite mistakenly, I am always assuring them) that this would solve the problem of people who feel that letting gay people get married would contaminate the pool, so to speak. Judging by what happened last spring in Maine, this is dead wrong. At the time when the marriage bill was introduced, another legislator introduced a “civil unions for gays” bill. Both sides said they didn’t want it. The lgbt people have gone being settling for second-class citizenship, and the other folks were by this time also quite open about the fact that they don’t want gay people to get any kind of legal recognition, no matter what it’s called.
I’m not pushing this idea; I don’t believe in it myself. I’m just saying that the version of it my friends are attached to isn’t about some marriages not “counting” — it’s about relabeling the civil institution to have a different name from the religious one. These are people who do want gays to have equality, and they want gay people’s unions to “count” as much as straight people’s, and they think the equality problem could be solved this way while satisfying the religious people who want nothing to do with SSM.
And by the way, one of the friends who is attached to the civil unions for everyone idea has been married close to 30 years herself. She doesn’t mind that her partnership would be re-labeled; it’s the reality of it that matters to her, not the label.
I might also add that none of the people who have talked about this idea to me are gay, and only one has never been married himself. (He’s young…give him time.)
Me: Of course marriage equality advocates are going to want nothing to do with you …
Salient: Interesting that most of my friends are gay and all of my friends are in favor of marriage equality (because I don’t hang with bigots). It’s only on this discussion site that the thought police have deemed it ” unhelpful to even raise this issue in a discussion of marriage equality.”
Setting aside the “thought police” silliness, I can see that again I’m not doing a good job of communicating since I didn’t mean to suggest they would shun you socially, just that they probably wouldn’t have much patience for engaging your “well, marriage stinks anyway” talk in a serious discussion of the topic.
Anyway, my original comment was predicated on the assumption that you were coming at this discussion from the perspective of someone looking to contribute constructively to the cause of marriage equality. If “helpfulness” isn’t really a priority for you, then that answers my question.
Anyway, JanieM and Dr. Science (She knows more than you do!) have already stated more clearly and forcefully than I my feelings on this matter.
Sapient: Thanks, JanieM, for recognizing that my views are stated in good faith.
No thanks for me? I think your views are stated in good faith – I just think you’re sheltered, naive, ignorant, and a bit stupid. That’s how I manage to believe that you are stating this absurd idea in good faith. Of course, it makes you look like one of those people who attack lifting the ban on same-sex marriage, but if this bothers you, just quit doing it.
JanieM: My friends who like the civil-unions-for-everyone idea believe (quite mistakenly, I am always assuring them) that this would solve the problem of people who feel that letting gay people get married would contaminate the pool, so to speak.
This got proved not so with civil partnerships in the UK – Tony Blair (being Episcopalian-going-on-Catholic) took seriously the religious argument that it was just marriage they objected to gay people having, and instead of simply deleting one line in the 1975 Marriage Act which restricted marriage to a man and a woman, had the telephone-directory-length legislation that set up 99%-legally-equal civil partnerships, which it was not allowed for same-sex couples to celebrate at a religious ceremony.
The response, from the religious people who had objected to marriage for gays, was that this was exactly the same rights as legal marriage, therefore marriage in all but name, and so they were going to object to it too. And did. And have. From a Cardinal who preached a sermon against civil partnership on New Year’s Day 2006, to a Christian registrar who argued that it was incompatible with her religion to perform secular civil partnership ceremonies. Last year I wrote a post on examples that a website iprotectmarriage had come up with, on why Prop8 had to pass, they’re trying to protect marriage with this dreck. At least one of the examples was from a state where same-sex couples marrying had been banned: a human resources administrator had been fired for explicitly and publicly arguing that she thought her employer’s equal HR policies were wrong and shouldn’t be implemented.
While these people are willing to argue, superficially like Sapient, that they think marriage for gay people is bad and gay people shouldn’t even want it, what they fundamentally oppose is human and civil rights for GLBT people. And they’ll get very, very angry (again, very like Sapient) when anyone points out that wanting these human rights is just basic normal humanity. Because (just like Sapient) they believe they have a right to impose their beliefs on everyone else.
JanieM: I have said before and will probably say again that the change in my lifetime in the way lgbt people live and are treated is stunning.
I said that to Sapient too, the last time we discussed it, offering examples from my own lifetime. (It’s the comment at 02:38 on this page.) He was neither interested nor comprehending then: I don’t suppose a year has made any difference to his determination not to pay attention to anything people might say to him about how GLBT feel. It can’t, after all, be as important as his own angry and negative feelings about marriage, which he’s going to share regardless.
Sapient: Good for everyone if a new paradigm can be explored out of creativity rather than necessity. I hope it happens someday.
Really? Well, then why don’t you do something positive about that “hope” – beginning by making a resolution to yourself that for the future, you’ll always argue for levelling up – for providing other options as well as marriage, rather than just launching a nasty and aggressive and counter-productive attack on wanting to get married. You might even find your gay friends are willing to talk to you about that.
Questions about whether marriage should be recognized as a legal institution *at all* are best left to the late-night bull sessions in the lounge of your college dorm. On the other hand, I suppose it’s fair to argue that the comments section of a blog is the closest equivalent we have to that.
Calling other commenters stupid is not allowed, Jesurgislac.
Fair enough.
Sapient, I apologize for calling you stupid.
I think your method of promoting your view that there should be an alternate option to marriage for people to register a legally recognised relationship has, on this and previous thread, been appallingly stupid. And I’m sure you’re smart enough to realize this and not do it again.
…right?
Slarti,
While you’re at it, anything to say to Jay Jerome for his comment on October 25 at 3:25?
Phil: “my wife and I, and one other couple, are the ONLY ones who do not have children.”
What, your genes are not moving onward into future generations?
Why does the day suddenly seem so much brighter? 🙂
In Slarti’s defense, Nombrilisme Vide had posted.
For my part, one criticism of each seems like enough — anything more threatens a hijacked thread, or worse, FTT.
Is Nombrilisme Vide a moderator?
There is a distinction between the disapprobation of the community (an important matter in its own right) and the warning of a moderator. And that particular sort of snideness, which keeps the letter of the posting rules while riling up other people, was the topic of moderatorial discussion last week. Are things completely all better now?
Note also that Jes has acknowledged Slartibartfast, while Jay has not paid any visible heed to NV.
Of course, I’m not as clear on the community standards as you are, but it doesn’t seem equivalent to me.
Don’t bust Slarti’s chops over it on my account, evilrooster. All it will result in is another comment from Jay along the lines of, “But what about when X said Y to me? Huh? What about that?”
See, for all Jay knows, my wife is or I am infertile, or we tried to have a child and miscarried, or any one of a dozen other possibilities; but, not knowing whether any of those are true or not, he decided to show his ass once again by making a mouthy comment that would get his clock cleaned were he to do it in person.
One day, he’ll say something like that to someone who is in a position to do something about it, and it will provide a much more valuable lesson than anything Slarti can accomplish from where he’s sitting.
Don’t bust Slarti’s chops over it on my account, evilrooster.
So you’re OK with it; will the next person be? Or do you think that kind of behavior will magically stop, unprompted, before it drags the discussion back into fury and swearing?
All it will result in is another comment from Jay along the lines of, “But what about when X said Y to me? Huh? What about that?”
If anyone is rules-lawyering to that extent, then we really do need a moderator to step in and lay down one of those “spirit of the law” smackdowns.
Srsly. This is the stuff that drags a community down, knowing that the only thing that could stop verbal abuse is the impossible smack in the chops.
Like I said before, that’s not community. We can, and should, expect better of each other. And if someone’s not making that basic standard of civility, call in the mods.
no one has answered the question of why society should bestow special benefits to lovers who make a formal commitment to each other.
The common argument is that it helps to encourage stable relationships between couples, which is useful for lots of reasons — child rearing, management of common property, clarity of who can legally speak for others, and many more.
Virtually none of these are unique to heterosexual couples.
I know my family history in almost all lines going back 3 centuries and find no divorces until the mid-20th century. That’s why I have concluded that traditional marriage has lost most of its moral and religious foundations and is now almost solely legal.
That’s a not-unreasonable conclusion to draw from your family history.
My own family history going back about 150 years includes a woman who was married five times and raised not only her kids but some of the neighbors when their marriages blew up, a woman who took her kids, left her husband, and ran shady rooming houses for working men (she later married one of the working men, a guy about 25 years her junior), a guy who was estranged from his sick wife because he was shagging her nurse and who then, after he was mustered out of the civil war, headed west and was never heard from again, and a somewhat scandalous divorce that involved the kidnapping of the couple’s son (my great-grandfather).
There was also the great-grandfather who ran away from the Italian army and toured Europe as a circus strong man, but that example’s not really on topic.
That’s the stuff I know about.
Marriage has been lots of different things over the millenia. Lots of different civic and religious institutions have grown up around the human phenomenon of marriage. Some are still practiced, many are not.
IMO the moral and religious foundations of marriage are the same as they have always been. Humans, whether hetero or homosexual, are inclined to bond together in pairs. Human understanding of what is good and worthwhile tends to support that inclination, and human institutions emerge and evolve to give that understanding a concrete embodiment in real, historical contexts.
The question is not “should gays be allowed to marry”. Gay people have always married. They just haven’t had their marriages recognized and affirmed by everybody else.
I’ve read thousands of words of argument back and forth on the question, and I’m still waiting for anyone to give me one good reason why that should be so.
“Note also that Jes has acknowledged Slartibartfast, while Jay has not paid any visible heed to NV.”
Fair point.
“There is a distinction between the disapprobation of the community (an important matter in its own right) and the warning of a moderator.”
My concern is that the former could hijack the thread, and turn the entire discussion into a single guy feeling compelled to defend his ass-ery, while space keeps getting bogged down with repeated points of order.
Not that this might not be needed on occasion, but if a warning does the job, it’s probably better, IMHO, to leave it at that.
Hey, I’m all for minimum levels of force necessary.
But I’m not for letting someone go on winding up other people and damaging every conversation he participates in because no one will take the time or effort to address a problem. The choice is not one thread diverted or none; it’s one diverted explicitly or many derailed because nothing has been done.
A stitch in time saves nine and all that.
russell: There was also the great-grandfather who ran away from the Italian army and toured Europe as a circus strong man, but that example’s not really on topic.
…would have been if it had been “great-grandfather who …. married a circus strong man” (which was how I originally read it, heh).
My family history includes one set of grandparents who wed before WWI and were happily married till my grandfather died in the early 1970s, and one set of grandparents who wed a few years before WWII and divorced just about the time I was born, having stayed together for 20+ years “for the sake of the children”.
This discussion thread has been fascinating, but I’d just like to point out this from the article quoted in the original post:
The question came from Christopher Glazek, a fact-checker at The New Yorker, who wanted to know whether Mr. Douthat and Mr. Salam believed that former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who has apologized on behalf of his party for the Southern Strategy, should also apologize for the Republican party’s gay politics.
The question that Douthat avoided wasn’t actually about SSM. It had to do with decades of anti-gay bigotry on the part of the Republican party and whether or not Douthat believed the ex-RNC chair should apologize for it as Mehlman had done for the Southern Strategy.
It’s about the generalized and institutional anti-gay bigotry on the part of the GOP’s leadership. SSM opposition is one of many symptoms of that. That Douthat avoided the question by leaping into a mealy-mouthed non-defense of his own anti-SSM position demonstrates this.
I’ll give him points for a most successful change of topic, though. We’re not talking about how the GOP has consistently demonized, for cynical political gain, an entire class of American citizens as evil, anti-God, anti-family perverts; instead, we’re debating the ramifications of one specific policy issue albeit a related one.
Even Beyerstein’s original post here is about his own personal bigotry and his failure to make an argument. She doesn’t address the issue that Douthat successfully avoided, that of the Republican Party’s culpability in perpetuating hatred for electoral ends.
Nicely done, Ross.
evil rooster
I certainly take your point — and I think to best leave it at that. Otherwise the thread may lose coherence.
AndYnot
That’s actually a great point — I’m wondering how it took so long to come up in the thread. (Kicking myself too, FWIW)
AndYnot? – Very good point. I presumed, since Lindsay had not quoted the question, that the question had been a simple one about the ban on civil marriage for same-sex couples – but you’re dead right, both about Douthat’s deflection from the real issue – the homophobia that the Republican party have cynically raised and used as an electoral tactic, and about Lindsay’s bland acceptance of that deflection.
Wow.
Okay, let’s talk about that – Lindsay, if you follow the comments threads past the first page: Why did you accept Douthat’s deflection?
Remember, toward the beginning of the thread, I (among others) said that this statement would require some level of justification if he made this statement in an op-ed?
Well, I’ve enjoyed discussing, but it’s still my general sense of this — and that’s why I thought you guys would like to know Ross actually upped the crazy on the opinion page of the New York Times.
To be accurate, I think this is the Pope upping the crazy: I do believe Ross Douthat is just reporting what that mad old ex-Nazi is actually doing.
Sorry — TBC, I should have directed readers’ attention to the end of the article. I’ll quote the section here in full (emphasis mine):
“Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts.In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, increasingly the real heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan.
Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.
By contrast, the Church of England’s leadership has opted for conciliation (some would say appeasement), with the Archbishop of Canterbury going so far as to speculate about the inevitability of some kind of sharia law in Britain.
There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.
This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.”
TBC, this is relevant because, while I’m of the opinion that Ross (personally) owes no explanation for his (personal) opposition to SSM because of something he said off-hand, he does owe readers of this column some clarification as to what, exactly, makes Christianity and Islam “foes” (at the very least*).
*He might offer further explanation for how saying Islam is “incompatible” with “the Western way of reason” makes any sense, etc.
crap
a
…oh. Yeah. That is Douthat upping the crazy.
(I’d already heard about the Pope’s invitation from various sources, most of them muttering things about a Pope ignoring such issues as transubstantiation, which most of them – Anglicans or Catholics – think is more important than such temporal stuff as how much to hate gays or women or whether priests should/can/will get married.)
It’s relevant too in that the original question Douthat was asked had to do with the GOP’s Southern Strategy of appealing to bigots in the more liberal party and giving them a home in theirs. Apparently Benedict XVI is adopting the same strategy.
From what I read in todays’s papers the RCC’s current objective is to kill the Anglican church by bribing all the bigots* in the CoE to change sides (even allowing convert priests and bishops to keep their wives). That clearly takes precedence over fighting the ‘enemy’**.
—
As I have repeatedly stated, I do not think that now-pope ex-Grand Inquisitor Ratzinger is or was a Nazi (membership in the Hitler Youth was mandatory during the war and even before that not being a member carried significant risks). That does not change my very low personal opinion of the the guy’s character. He’s the ecclesiastic equivalent of a neocon, starting far left then jumping all the way to the far right.
*i.e. those that are ‘uncomfortable’ with female or gay clerics. I am surprised how openly stated that is.
**that dirty work is mainly left to local bishops that are not often reprimanded for ‘speaking ill’ of people of different faith.
Well, looks like the thread petered out… Maybe this Douthat column (or the Vatican decision that inspired it) will be the subject for a future thread… (?)
Looks like Maine is full of ‘bigots’. News to them probably.
eh: Looks like Maine is full of ‘bigots’.
Well. Only 54%. Enough to take away equal rights from a minority group.
News to them probably.
Yeah: I read a lot of Mainers and New Englanders, and they’re surprised/disappointed this morning to find so many of their neighbors hate the American principle of liberty and justice for all so much.
Well. Only 54%.
Not to speak of non-voters.