The whole Chick-fil-A controversy reminds me of a period of time in recent American history when a segment of our society that tried to assert what it believed to be its civil rights and dignity was brutally repressed, particularly in a certain section of the country.
I refer, of course, to African-Americans which is certainly not what they were called back then.
Recently, I loaned our copy of The Help to my young teenage son to watch. He told me later that he enjoyed the movie but was appalled that black people were actually treated that way. I was dismayed, but not surprised I suppose, that he knew so little about what things were like back then.
My son has probably never even heard the word nigger. The thought that a black person was forced to use separation public washrooms, was expected to sit at the back of the bus, was expected to remember her place, was expected to accept second-class citizenship and (perhaps most of all) was expected not get uppity and aspire to being treated equally all of this was beyond the pale of my sons comprehension.
I gave him a very brief history of what it was like, what I remember watching on the news growing up in the 60s. What I didnt go into was the way segregation was viewed by society at large, particularly in the South, which is also the bastion of Chick-fil-A. How in those days, sermons were preached in many pulpits about the propriety of keeping things the way God intended them to be. How those who were trying to change things were called agitators and were routinely intimidated, beaten or even murdered. How most people were simply part of the silent majority who didnt commit acts of violence but who nevertheless to one degree or another agreed with those of their ilk who were committing acts of violence, whether government-sanctioned (e.g., police) or acts of vigilantism.
What I think he would have had the most trouble comprehending, however, is the concept that African-Americans were expected to just accept the order of things as dictated by the racist white majority. Blacks were expected to see themselves as inferior, because of course they were. No amount of agitation could change the religiously-sanctioned (and even promoted) view that blacks were inferior to whites and needed to be treated so. What really enraged certain segments of the white population in the South (as well as elsewhere in the country) was when blacks simply refused to accept this status-quo. How dare they be so uppity!
So, here we are in 2012, and the same thing is going on only this time, its the gays that are being uppity. Certain segments of the population, i.e., those represented by the people that stood in line at Chick-fil-A restaurants around the country a couple of days ago, are perhaps willing at least publicly to accept the existence of homosexuals, but they are enraged that gays presume to aspire to the same degree of civic equality as heterosexuals. They insist that gays accept second-class status and are infuriated when we refuse to do so.
To me, thats what this Chick-fil-A thing is all about. Dignity. Vast swaths of our society expect us to accept their world-view, their beliefs about ourselves and their views as to what we are entitled in the way of civil rights. The fact that we refuse to do so makes some of them practically foam at the mouth.
I wonder, will my grandson, 40 years from now, express incredulity that a minority in our society was discriminated against, suffered acts of violence and was expected to know their place and keep it? Will he find it difficult to comprehend that religious organizations actively participated in this discrimination and fostered this intolerance and hate? Will he wonder why a majority of society simply accepted this situation as being part of the natural order of things?
I hope so.
* Invictus Pilgrim blogs atBeyond-the-Closet-Door.blogspot.com, where the above post was published last Friday.
This sounds so familiar – I guess some things never change. Although I am glad that the younger generation is starting to empathize with gays more – it gives me hope that things will get better.
This visible part of the problem is horrifying enough, but try reading Anne Moody’s “Coming of Age in Mississippi” to get a more complete picture. People put up with an amazing level of humiliation and degradation because if you stepped out of line, or looked the wrong way at the wrong person, some whites might literally kill you without any fear of punishment. Plus, most black people were economically dependent on white employers, hence feared losing their livelihood over as simple an act as registering to vote.
I completely agree that the attitude is the same:
Gay people are lucky that homosexuality cuts across all segments of society, including at the highest levels of power and privilege. It makes it somewhat easier to find a critical mass of people who can and will stand up and say “I refuse to be treated as a second-class citizen” — which is what it takes to make things change.
I think it’s pretty insulting to the black civil rights movement to assert that gays today are facing anywhere even remotely close to the scope, depth, nature and intensity of discrimination that blacks were facing in the 1960s.
@3 Even if the degree is different, the sentiments have the same roots. I think it is instructive to compare and contrast the different types of obstacles that different marginalized groups face.
Believing that one type of discrimination can’t be compared to another can lead to a dangerous complacency. We see this in the comparison between the North and the South of the US. The disenfranchisement black people face isn’t the same in the two regions, but that doesn’t mean that mean that Northerners can complacently rest on their laurels, having conquered their own racism…
Not really.
A black wife and a white wife are interchangeable.
A male wife and a female wife are not.
Dang, hit post too quick.
The point I was making is not just one of scope. The fundamental nature of the discrimination is different. For one thing, being black is just something you fundamentally are.
Homosexual sex and marriage – like heterosexual sex and marriage is simply something you DO voluntarily.
And it’s quite clear that allowing interracial marriage didn’t try to redefine the entire premise of marriage the way gay marriage is attempting.
@3 It’s still legal in the US to discriminate against gays in many ways–in many places, they can be fired or evicted just for being gay, and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell hasn’t been gone for long. We call the form of murder that gays are the target of “hate crimes” instead of “lynchings,” but it doesn’t change the fact that in the same way some people were killed for being black and uppity or black and in the wrong place at the wrong time, people are killed for being gay and uppity or gay and in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’re even attacked for being gay in their own homes.
http://www.examiner.com/article/attackers-carve-dyke-on-ne-lesbian-woman-stomach-burn-her-home
But I understand that it’s necessary for all but the most unapologetic bigots who want to discriminate against the LGBT community to tell themselves and others that their own form of bigotry is not “anywhere even remotely close to the scope, depth, nature and intensity of discrimination that blacks were facing in the 1960s. “
Yes, and no one is denying the discrimination.
It’s just not even in the ballpark of the Civil Rights movement.
Nor is it something that needs to be solved by redefining what marriage is.
Is this the thing you didn’t mean to say by hitting post too quick?
lol, I don’t know what your marriage is like, but my French husband is not interchangeable with, say, a Swedish husband, or even another French husband or, really, any other possible husband on the planet…
Har, har Chanson.
Well, hope the meaning was somewhat clear just the same.
OK, please indulge me, but your comment reminded me of this amusing Onion article. 😉
@7 Holly, thank you for so eloquently addressing Seth’s comments.
I wasn’t surprised that someone one make the comments that Seth has. His attitude proves my point: HE (and others) (who are not gay and therefore do not face discrimination; I also assume Seth is not an African-American) decide what discrimination is and is not, and the uppity gays are supposed to accept his/their judgment of what they (the gays) face in varying degrees in their respective individual and community lives.
Secondly, I was not surprised that someone would leap headlong to the conclusion that I am saying that discrimination that gays face in this country today (let alone in countries where they can be imprisoned or even killed) is the same in “scope, depth, nature and intensity … that blacks were facing in the 1960s.” Nowhere in my piece did I make this assertion.
What I did assert is that there are certain similarities in mind-set of the ruling majority toward the minority which is experiencing discrimination. What I focused on was the attitude by the majority that the minority should calmly accept the way they are being treated and should, ideally, see themselves as the majority sees them. When the blacks started refusing to accept the white majority’s view of them, the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s was born.
My central point was phrased as follows: “[The majority, in this case referring to the Chick-fil-A lovers] are enraged that gays presume to aspire to the same degree of civic equality as heterosexuals. They insist that gays accept second-class status and are infuriated when we refuse to do so.”
Once again, Seth, you have proved my point when you wrote the following: “Being black is just something you fundamentally are. Homosexual sex and marriage like heterosexual sex and marriage is simply something you DO voluntarily.”
I’ve got news for you Seth – and for the millions of other Americans, including members of the LDS Church who believe as do you: being homosexual IS SOMETHING “YOU FUNDAMENTALLY ARE.” Believing that it (and all the “behaviors” flowing from it) is a CHOICE is the heart and soul of the discrimination and prejudice that you evidence.
Fortunately, our judiciary is leading the way, just as it did at the outset of the civil rights movement (e.g., Brown v. Board of Education). Just last week, DOMA was ruled unconstitutional in the latest in a string of cases decided across the country and at both the district and appellate level. In the Pedersen case, Judge Vanessa Bryant – a Bush appointee, a woman, an African-American and a practicing Christian – ruled, among other things, that sexual orientation is immutable and that it “should be considered a defining characteristic fundamental to one’s identity much like race, ethnicity or gender”.
So, despite the personal opinions and beliefs of people such as you, Seth, gay marriage is going to happen, it IS happening. And in due course, in due time, all of the legalized discrimination that occurs against members of the LGBT community, as Holly has pointed out, will be swept away.
Thus, 40 years down the road, I hope my grandson will look back at incidents such as the Chick-fil-A appreciation day and all the hateful, homophobic attitudes represented thereby, and wonder how that could have happened in America.
@3 – Chanson, thank you as well for your observations. I think your comment about complacency is accurate, albeit graciously generous. 😉
Chanson, I’ll have to read that article to my wife tonight. Sorry for getting a bit too conceptual on you.
Invictus, I’m already ahead of that objection of yours.
I’ve heard the “homosexuality is what you ARE” concept repeatedly.
Which is why I avoided the issue of homosexuality and specifically talked about homosexual SEX, and MARRIAGE.
Once you acknowledge the distinction, we can move on.
And you can save the triumphalist rhetoric of “it’s going to happen – get used to it” for someone who cares Invictus.
I’m sure when Chairman Mao’s street thugs were rampaging through the streets of Shanghai vandalizing houses and beating Christian nuns, they were also delightedly shouting about how history was on their side.
Having history on your side doesn’t make you automatically right. Nor is taking a cue out of Stephen Sondheim’s nihilistic little ditty “Someone Is On Your Side” work as a substitute for actually having a convincing argument.
@ 15: Your position is the equivalent of saying blacks should not have been granted access to housing, employment, etc., because of who they were. Americans are discriminated against every day because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. I don’t think those who discriminate against them ever get around to asking whether they actually give sexual expression to their identity.
I do not acknowledge the distinction at all. Sexuality and the choice of one’s companion are fundamental manifestations of one’s sexual identity. Once again, this is an example of the majority trying to tell the gays to take what they (the majority) hand them and be happy with it.
This is the argument that says, “Ok, ok, so you ‘struggle with same sex attraction’; just don’t ever “act” upon it. Don’t fall in love, don’t express your innate sexuality in any way that I/we consider inappropriate. Because, all this nicey-nice aside, homosexuality is fundamentally impure and unnatural.” This is the argument that says, as I wrote in my piece, “Ok, so we’ll accept that you’re gay, but don’t expect us to grant you the same civil rights that heterosexuals enjoy; don’t expect us to extend to you the same anti-discrimination legal protections that we enjoy; and certainly don’t expect us to ever give legitimacy to your love and your sexual identity by granting full legal recognition of your marriage.
Altering your words somewhat, once you acknowledge the FALSE distinction, we can move on.
@16 I’m not going to bother responding to this rant.
It’s fine if you don’t respond. I’m sure the debate could have done without your “suck it up – loooser” attempt as well.
And although I realize teenage and college campus hormones may temporarily cause people to lose their heads over this a bit –
No – sexual acts are not a fundamental characteristic of who you are.
Incidentally, I am offering homosexuals all the same civil rights heterosexuals have.
It’s called Civil Unions.
Seth, was there a point in which civil unions weren’t on the table for you either? If so, what made you change your mind?
Edit: Does it have to do with what you said here, that civil unions offer rights, but prevent gay marriage from happening? I think that bus has come and gone, particularly in my home state (WA), where civil unions are merely a step on the way to gay marriage.
Alan, my progression of opinion went like so:
1. ignorant of the issue and pretty much saying “let them do whatever they want – what’s the harm?” I had this take as an undergrad fresh off my mission and prior to Prop 8.
2. Right before Prop 8, I proposed civil unions as a compromise position that both the Church and gays could live with – basically making sure to give gay couples all the protection and treatment they fairly need in society as a matter of fairness. You can read a blog post I did at Nine Moons right before the Prop 8 vote here:
http://www.nine-moons.com/?p=813
I was still ambivalent about gay marriage, but it really wasn’t something I was much concerned about. Back then I was just proposing it as a compromise.
3. I got more and more enthusiastic about the idea of civil unions as a way to protect gays’ place in society and ensure fairness. At this point the Prop 8 vote hit and then the backlash started in. I was completely appalled at the rather vicious and undemocratic behavior (a lot of which seemed to be fueled more by opportunism and good old fashioned anti-Mormonism rather than really giving a toss about the gays one way or the other). For the first time EVER in my life I saw small time private citizens targeted for harassment and public abuse for donating to a political campaign. It was an unprecedented piece of douchebaggery that seemed to pretty much go applauded on all sides. More and more, I was souring on the pro-gay marriage movement.
Keep in mind, at this point I was equally mad at the LDS Church for how poorly they handled the Prop 8 thing. I didn’t agree with their strategy of protecting the family, I felt they had unfairly put all the burden on the members, while providing them with almost zero support. It seemed almost criminally irresponsible to me.
But at the same time, I was seeing some pretty unhinged speech against Mormons. Not just LDS Inc., but private Mormons. I was treated to blog posts with people bragging about how they were going to gang-rape the next Mormon missionaries who showed up on their doorstep (to almost universal cheering from the comments sections). The rhetoric was just so utterly one-sided. No attempt whatever to understand the other side. Gradually, after trying to debate as a moderate on the issue and repeatedly getting the sort of hateful responses I’d expect on a neo-nazi forum, I started to sour on the pro-gay marriage movement.
Maybe if I’d dealt with more people like you Alan, things would have been different.
Unfortunately, the people I encountered on the pro side tended to be not so civil. I couldn’t believe how polarized and unbending the online world had gotten (and I’m under no illusions that the anti gay marriage side is not just as bad).
The more I debated the issue, the less and less compelling the arguments became.
At this point, I’m still pro-civil unions. But I’m completely over the idea of gay marriage ever being a good idea or warranted as a solution to the problem we face with homosexuality.
@6
“Homosexual sex and marriage like heterosexual sex and marriage is simply something you DO voluntarily.” – so is Mormonism. Imagine a situation where Mormons could be arbitrary fired, denied housing, asked to leave businesses, refused service, etc.
@19
Fine, the government ought to, if it is to be involved in a private contract at all, perform the civil unions (which must be open to the public) and churches can do their voodoo and call it marriage, the everlasting covenant, spirtual wifery, etc. However no church (or government) ought to be able to prevent another church from performing a wedding and the participants from calling themselves married, agreed?
Daylan, none of those issues – being fired, evicted, refused service, etc. have anything to do with the issue of gay marriage.
I’m in favor of all sorts of anti-discrimination laws.
Just not gay marriage. Because I don’t consider denial of gay marriage to be discrimination in the first place. Unlike firing a gay person – which I emphatically DO consider to be reprehensible discrimination.
Also, if you follow the link I provided to the article I wrote in the summer before the Prop 8 vote, I proposed exactly that.
To get government OUT of the marriage license business altogether and have civil unions for everyone.
I still think this may be the best practical solution to the problem available.
However, lately I have come to feel that it is right and proper for the government to favor marriage between male and female – because the relation between genders is something that society needs to treat specially.
However, as a practical matter, I’m still willing to consider settling for a comprehensive civil union code for everyone.
Seth@24- There we go. Make civil union available to everyone. Remove the legal and government sanctioned status of marriage and make it strictly a religious ceremony/status. That way, everyone is on equal footing legally. If gay people want to still get married, then they just need to find and attend a church that sanctions such marriages and get married, if not they still have the same legal rights as any other civil union, and marriage is merely symbolic anyway. I actually like that idea.
Chris, I repeat – I’m willing to live with that.
But my experience has been that the pro-gay marriage movement is not in the mood to compromise about much of anything at the moment.
Their current stance seems to be:
We want “marriage,” not civil unions, we are GOING to redefine this social concept, and there is nothing you can do to stop us, history is on our side, so suck it up losers.
I don’t think they’re showing much sign of compromising on this.
Seth, if there were enough heterosexual Christians interested in taking “marriage” out of the civil code and that was the direction this conversation was going nationally, then personally, I’d be okay with marriage being a non-civil code concept. But as it stands, the main argument I’ve been hearing from those opposed to gay marriage is that “marriage is between a man and a woman [ultimately because God says so], and the government should keep that true for everyone.” But it’s simply not the case with 6 states that allow same-sex couples to wed. So, the “civil union” argument has come and gone (at least from where I’m standing on the West coast). At this point, I don’t think it’s a lack of compromise so much as the terms of the debate.
Unfortunately Alan, I have to agree with you that the other side (the “Christian Right”) is just as uncooperative and intransigent.
But it’s not uniformly negative – after all James Dobson from Focus on the Family was willing to advocate for the civil union option here in Colorado a few years ago. Sure, he did it opportunistically as a way to keep gays out of marriage by offering CU as an appeasement. But still, it indicates there might still be a way to sell it.
“I gave him a very brief history of what it was like, what I remember watching on the news growing up in the 60s. What I didnt go into was the way segregation was viewed by society at large, particularly in the South, which is also the bastion of Chick-fil-A.”
I wonder why you refrained from a more complete view of how the African-American community was treated by society at large but especially in the South, home of the bisquit bigots chic-fil-a family, particularly, since efforts at disenfranchisement of minority is once again a growing problem?
I think the comparison with Chick-fil-A supporters and images of angry whites watching the end of school segregation is utterly ridiculous.
A CfA exec said she supports traditional marriage.
Out of this, the pro-gay media completely wets themselves and tries to paint it as a case of blantant bigotry. Two mayors of major cities make outrageous statements about how they are going to unconstitutionally discriminate against the business in zoning and Time magazine blatantly fanboys all over the mayors – while news reporters who are supposed to be acting like unbiased professionals start tweeting like they’re standard fare idiots in the Huffington Post’s comments section.
In BACKLASH against a blatant case of government discrimination and media demonization and bias, people line up to buy chicken sandwiches.
No – it ain’t even remotely similar to the aftermath of Brown vs. Board of Education.
Drawing the comparison at all is an insult the first black kids entering those segregated schools.
Oddly enough, so are voting, riding in the front of the bus, eating in restaurants, drinking at water fountains, going to school, being within the city limits after sunset, buying or renting a home, applying for a job, and every other aspect of daily life that was regulated by Jim Crow. Not one of those laws made it illegal to be black; they made it illegal to be black and do certain other (“voluntary”) things.
Yeah, and oddly enough Kuri, having homosexual sex is allowed in the USA and not illegal or prohibited.
Imagine that.
My point is that (non-violent, legal or quasi-legal) discrimination against people very rarely acts in terms of what those people are. Instead, it acts in terms of what they are combined with what they want to do. So saying that same-sex marriage is somehow different from historic discrimination against blacks because it’s “voluntary” is rather a silly argument, frankly. Everything blacks were prevented from doing under Jim Crow was “voluntary” too. The voluntary nature of marriage is obviously not the question.
@30
Well, that little error shows just how closely Seth pays attention to the news he consumes. The name of the person in question was Dan Cathy, not Cathy Dan or some such thing, and he was and is a he.
@32
it’s illegal as of LESS THAN A DECADE AGO. Google Lawrence v. Texas. Before that, as late as 1986, the Supreme Court had ruled that states did have the right to criminalize gay sex. Google Bowers v. Hardwick. And ever anxious to be in sync with the most backwards parts of the planet, the Texas GOP made criminalizing sodomy part of its 2010 platform.
Which makes the comparison to the civil rights movement all the more apt, since the struggle was against the states’ attempts to limit activitiies black people were legally entitled to: to vote, use public transportation, use drinking fountains, etc. “Oh,” the south said, “they can do those things. Just not the same way as whites. The races (or orientations) are separate–separate but equal in all fundamental ways.”
That argument didn’t hold then and it’s not going to hold now.
Though of course you’re not making the argument that gays should be separate but equal. You’re arguing that it’s OK to discriminate against them in the realm of marriage because marriage is this special status thing that society has an obligation to protect.
Of course, that argument was applied to sex–even sex between fully consenting adults–as the Court’s justification for allowing the criminalization of gay sex in 1986.
To people who are living the present, the argument sounds as prurient and silly when applied to marriage as it does applied to sex.
and for a bit more perspective on the whole behavior thing: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150352177136275&set=a.180479986274.135777.177486166274&type=1&theater
Fair point Kuri. But it also renders the common protest among the gay movement of “this is just who I am” beside the point as well.
Who you are isn’t the question. The question is what you want to do and how that should be dealt with.
If what you want to do is something we agree is worthwhile (like visiting your sick partner in the hospital) then we all can agree you should be allowed to do it and not prevented from doing it. If it is something that falls within the ambit of things we consider human rights (like voting) then we all can agree you ought to be able to demand it from government.
Which makes the question of the actions gays are demanding/requesting more complex than in Brown vs. Board of Education.
Just about all the rights the gay movement is demanding here are satisfied by civil union laws (or reforming these laws or instituting them where necessary). The only way marriage even becomes something needed in the case of gay couples is if you can argue that it is the only or even the best way for gays to secure things they ought to be able to demand from government.
Not only that – but you need to argue that government cannot provide incentives or increased convenience for certain things to other classes without equally incentivize-ing gays.
In the case of gay marriage, you have to argue that male-female unions are no more deserving of incentives than male-male unions, or female-female unions.
I would simply state that the inherent biological inequality of men and women is one of the most crucial and volatile imbalances in our society. And it is crucial that this relationship be regulated and properly taken care of. As such, the government has more of an inherent interest in the regulation and management of male-female unions than it does in the regulation and management of same sex unions. Same sex unions simply don’t have the same things at stake and the same imbalances – and they never will.
This translates into a coherent argument for keeping heterosexual marriage and leaving homosexual unions at the civil union status. They simply don’t have enough compelling claim on the government to demand the same support. Especially not when all the rights gays ought to have can be obtained via civil unions. It’s not analogous to ending segregation because the actual differences between a white man and a black man (or between women) were artificial and largely made-up.
The differences between homosexuality and heterosexuality are not contrived, and they are not made up.
That said, I repeat, I’m willing to compromise by removing government from the marriage license business. I consider the trade off of losing government encouragement of what I see as something rather important in exchange for the benefit of putting the equality argument to bed for good, as worth it in this case. More importantly, taking government out of the marriage license business may be the only way to preserve the right of religions to promote the sort of society their social consciences demand.
This argument might hold up if marriage law had traditionally been used to protect women and promote their rights. Whereas instead, for most of human history, marriage law has been used to strip women of their rights, properties, identities, and even their legal existence, as in coverture. Marriage was, in fact, one of the primary ways to oppress women.
This makes Seth’s opposition to divorce all the more interesting. Here he asserts that heterosexual marriage is fundamentally unequal, and if he’s honest, he’ll admit that women typically get the short end of the stick. But he also asserts that straight marriage should still be encouraged (even though “inequality” is built into it, apparently) and that ending straight marriages should be discouraged. http://mainstreetplaza.com/2012/06/27/put-on-your-own-oxygen-mask-first/
Interesting also that he thinks sex is something too potent to engage in unless you’re safely and monogamously married–provided you’re straight. But if you’re gay, marriage is something too important for society to let you do it–so you have to settle for cohabitating, which he says only “selfish” “jerks” engage in.
So at the root, Seth feels entitled to deny people in gay relationships the right to be anything but selfish jerks.
Nice.
Holly, this objection is largely irrelevant.
Marriage laws even in medieval Europe were considered to be offering protection to both women and men by those who drafted them.
You and I may agree that they were deeply flawed in how they did it – but that doesn’t remove the fact that protection is what they were attempting. You’re also ignoring that marriage historically has also oppressed men as well as women. Not in the same way – or to the same degree, but it still did.
@38 is complete and utter nonsense. Of course it matters if attempts to protect someone one were both completely flawed in conception and inadequate or detrimental in execution.
You could argue that the constitution’s framing of black people as 3/5 of a white person were attempts to assert their basic personhood and not make them a completely separate species. Doesn’t change the fact that it was fundamentally degrading and a stain on our history.
The same goes for marriage law.
Oh, do tell.
If marriage was so oppressive, then we probably would be better off to get rid of it and just have people cohabitate, wouldn’t we?
My son cleaned his room incorrectly last night.
So I guess we should abolish cleaning rooms in my house. Obviously, it’s a flawed institution, and if done wrong once, that automatically means it cannot be improved and will always be wrong.
Of course, the point is – if marriage is flawed improve it. If it’s not adequately taking care of the imbalance between the sexes, then reform it.
The correct response is not to say “oh it was horrible in the past – which means it always will be horrible.”
Which brings up an interesting question Holly.
If marriage is always a flawed tool of oppression, why are you so keen to put gays in it? Do you have a grudge against them or something?
@29 In response to this comment, I would simply suggest that you go back and re-read the piece, particularly the third and fourth paragraphs.
@ 30 – You have used the word debate several times during the course of this discussion, but I see little evidence of any debate. But, in point of fact, the purpose of my piece was not to launch a debate on same-sex marriage. In fact, marriage wasnt even mentioned in my piece. It was only after you brought it up that I responded.
Let me review. The main point of my piece was to say that there are certain similarities between the civil rights movement of the 50s-60s and the way members of the LGBT community are treated today by certain segments of the population IN THAT in both cases, the majority was incensed that the minority would DARE assert its rights and view itself in a positive, affirmative way contrary to the views of the majority. THIS was the point of my post. And, as I have mentioned several times already, you have abundantly proved my point.
You immediately latched on to the subject of same-sex marriage, when it wasnt mentioned in my piece. You have made it abundantly clear that you are opposed to same-sex marriage, but you to use your words are offering homosexuals all the same rights heterosexuals have. Its called Civil Unions.
Aside from the substantive issues I take with this statement [which are many], how dare you presume to offer other citizens of the United States what you deign to offer them. This is precisely the attitude of majority to which I have been referring. The majority decides what the minority is entitled to, and they [the minority] should be grateful for your benevolence. The crux of the black civil rights movement was African-Americans standing up and saying, No, thank you, I am not dependent on you white folks for my rights.
You also seem to have a fixation with homosexual sex, in that you have mentioned it several times in your comments. Anti-discrimination laws, in the relatively few states where they exist, focus on discrimination based on sexual orientation, not with whom and how certain individuals have sex.
This fixation on sex is another way in which the majority seeks to control the debate by de-humanizing homosexuals. Your own words: homosexual sex is allowed in the USA and not illegal or prohibited [emphasis added]. This is apparently yet another way in which homosexuals should be beholden to the majority, in that, lordy be, they dont have to worry about being arrested and put in jail for expressing themselves sexually with a consenting partner.
You have also mentioned Brown v. Board of Education a couple of times since I first brought it up. You completely ignored the context in which I mentioned it, which was that in the civil rights movement of 50-60 years ago, the courts were in the vanguard of doing away with discrimination. Period. True statement. Today, the courts are also in the vanguard of doing away with discrimination in our legal systems against members of the LGBT community. True statement.
And why is this so? Because our Founders and the philosophers who inspired them – realized that there was such a thing as the tyranny of the majority. As Holly would say, Google it.
Which brings me to the points you raise in #36. You are entitled to your opinions and views, obviously. But growing segments of American society, as well as a growing number of Federal courts, are beginning to see these points as specious arguments. Im going to leave it to Holly or someone else to speak to your whole male-female regulation argument (which I see she has done while Ive been writing this).
Ill simply say that it is apparent that you have no grasp of what marriage means to gay people, on any level, be it emotionally, spiritually, legally or any other basis. You presume. You decide what they should and shouldnt have. Which again is precisely the point of my piece.
Finally, I have to address your assertion about Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-fil-A. Obviously, Cathy is entitled to be just as big a bigot as hed like to be. He has proven that with the contributions he has made to anti-gay groups. See, e.g., here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_controversy.
But the hypocrisy in certain quarters of the traditional marriage movement is stunning. Sure, NOW and Million Moms and who knows how many other organizations can call for boycotts of Starbucks and threaten to fight them in foreign countries. They can call for a boycott of JC Penny because OMG they hired a spokesperson for their company who happens to be a lesbian. They can call for a boycott of Amazon and Microsoft because those companies founders have contributed to the effort for marriage equality in Washington. They can call for a boycott of General Mills because they dont think that company is bigoted and discriminating enough.
But, the minute that the gays object loudly to Cathys statements and a number of allies agree, the Christian ultra-right-wing yells What about freedom of speech? What about freedom of religion? As I say, the hypocrisy is stunning, but not surprising.
Which gets back to the fundamental point of my piece, which is that the majority becomes incensed when the minority doesnt view themselves as the majority does, and heaven help them if the minority actually tries to assert its rights.
@40: It’s good to know that you think that a small child cleaning his room is an apt comparison for attempts by those in power to craft law to “protect” large segments of society. It helps people understand how to read your comments, and also how to assess what type of legal advice you offer in your professional capacity.
One way to reform it is to let gay couples marry. We straight people might learn something about equality and fairness by seeing how they conduct marriages.
Did I argue that marriage is always a flawed tool of oppression, Seth? Did I? Or did I suggest that it had historically been used by men to oppress women?
Yeah, the latter–that’s what I did.
And that problem goes away if men marry men and women marry women. Doesn’t it, now?
You were the one who said marriage historically also oppressed men. I think you have no real support for that assertion. We’ll see if you manage to provide any.
“Just about.” Your own words seem to be rebutting your argument.
I’m sorry, but WTF are you talking about? “Biological inequality”? Like what, men on average are bigger and stronger than women, therefore no gay marriage? Huh?
You have that exactly backwards both legally and (imo) morally. Non-discrimination (i.e., equal rights) is the default position. It is a compelling claim in itself. You need a compelling reasonto discriminate, not to not discriminate. And so far, no one seems to have come up with one, in or out of the courts.
I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean, but I honestly don’t see any significant differences between homosexual and heterosexual relationships and marriages other than the risk of unintended pregnancies.
Kuri, the physical strength inequality wasn’t the main thing I had in mind. There are also emotional differences and differences in perspective that are just as important as that. However, the big one is the biology of child-rearing. Women get stuck with the baby, and the men have no inherent biological reason to stick around (well, a bit – but it’s pretty weak).
You see this abundantly today with the sexual revolution and the “freedom” it supposedly offers. Largely the freedom it offered was one-sided in the favor of the guys – who decided they had even less reason to stick around and care for the kids than they historically had when restrictive marriage traditions were in place.
That is a continuing societal imbalance that deserves additional care from our society that gays don’t really need.
And Kuri, non-discrimination is only the government default in cases on Constitutional rights.
In all other instances – discrimination is actually the default position.
Does a government contractor who submits a higher bid on a highway project have an equal right to get the project than a contractor who submits a lower bid?
Does a non-student have an equal right to claim the education exemptions on his tax returns as a student does?
Likewise, same sex couples don’t have the right to all the same government concern that different sex couples do. The only way they would is if marriage was a constitutionally established right.
Which it isn’t. Nor should it be.
Incidentally Invictus, if you think I’m threadjacking, I’ll stop if you want. It’s your thread and your rules as far as I’m concerned.
That’s pretty weak sauce. There’s no reason to think that letting gays marry will erode child-support laws.
It doesn’t just erode child support laws.
Child support laws only come into play when the paradigm is broken in the first place.
And as someone who actually deals with women entitled to child support, I can tell you that non-payment of child support is common as dirt. It’s a horrible ad hoc replacement for true child care and family structure. It doesn’t work, more often than not, and the system is already extremely overburdened with enforcement demands.
In any case, child support laws are only the symptom anyway. I’m talking about undermining the fundamental premise of the social contract between genders in society. There’s no way anyone here can predict just how far the shockwaves from that will go.
Equal treatment under the law is constitutional right under the 14th Amendment. And the instances you cite are cases of “rational discrimination,” which is allowable under the Constitution. And you ignored the moral dimension of discrimination.
Yes Kuri.
However the assumption of rational discrimination tends to be pretty strong in constitutional history. Enough to where I think calling it the default isn’t much of a stretch at all.
Except that you specifically are able to predict that even when “the paradigm is broken” anyway, these unpredictable shock waves will go at least far enough that gay marriage should be illegal. And that’s your “coherent argument.” Got it.
So now you’re trying to shift the argument from whether non-discrimination is the default under the law to whether the rationality of discrimination is the presumption under the law? I’ll give you credit for subtlety on that one, since it would probably take a constitutional scholar to answer the question. I think that’s just a diversion though, and moot anyway since Prop 8 and DOMA are both being challenged in the courts on equal-protection grounds, which will require proof of their supposed rationality.
Precisely how does a social contract between two men or two women erode the social contract between a man and a woman? Never mind predicting what the shockwaves are; just explain the process by which the erosion happens in the first place.
I think this is another of those statements you can’t provide any support or explanation for.
I should start keeping track of how many of those you make per thread.
It solidifies further and further an assumption that marriage is primarily about personal romantic needs rather than about responsibility for creating or contributing anything to society. We’ve been going down that path for quite some time with extremely negative results. This is just another big redefining push in that direction.
It’s been fascinating to me over the past few years to see how arguments against gay marriage always dissolve into incoherence, ending up resting on premises like “I predict unpredictable shock waves in vaguely related aspects of society, although I can’t (or can’t be bothered to) explain why they will occur.” As I’ve said before, that’s why I changed my views and came to favor marriage equality: there’s no rational basis for this prejudice.
Likewise Kuri, I changed my opinion about gay marriage over the years when I realized that most of the arguments in favor of it were premised on assuming it was a good thing without further comment, backed up with fatalism about how screwed up human relationships are anyway (so what’s the harm?), and reinforced with smug contempt that didn’t even bother to try and make itself convincing to anyone who wasn’t already on board.
Guilty on two out of three. Absent solid evidence indicating otherwise, I readily assume that not discriminating against people is a good thing. And I confess to not being a stranger to smug contempt regarding arguments that dissolve into incoherent silliness at the slightest push.
But I’m not a fatalist about human relationships being screwed up. I merely recognize that every “human relationship” based argument I’ve heard against gay marriage seems to apply at least equally well (and certainly in far greater numbers) to straight marriage and/or seems to be based in fantasy.
Seriously, I’ve just never heard of a single argument against gay marriage — in courts, in old media, on the internet, or IRL — that will stand up to even slight rational inquiry. (Well, except “Because God says so!” and “Ick!” which are unanswerable in their own ways, but hardly seem like sound bases for public policy.) This is almost unique, in my experience. Most current political arguments I disagree with seem to have at least some merits, some coherence, some basis in rational thought. Arguments against gay marriage seem to have none. (Sometimes I actually find myself wishing that they did, so at least there would be something substantive to grapple with. But there’s no there there.)
And that’s why I can only conclude that those arguments are based on nothing more than prejudice. And, because I assume that non-discrimination (except when there is a rational basis for discrimination) is good, I support gay marriage.
Seth @ 57:
Invictus explained at length @42 that a civil right to gay marriage is not premised on whether you or anyone else who disagrees with it are convinced anything good will come from it. The “good” has already been determined/demonstrated/lived by the minority in question. The convincing of the majority to codify it into law is an unfortunate aspect of secular states (see Marx’s “On the Jewish Question”) that puts additional burden on the minority. This aspect doesn’t HAVE to be the case…sometimes a government will step in and protect citizens/grant rights regardless of what the majority thinks or does (e.g, Judge Walker’s ruling with Prop 8), but usually the government waits for public opinion to catch up. E.g., by the time the Supreme Court got rid of anti-miscegenation laws, most states had already done so.
What makes convincing the majority difficult here is the discrimination against gay relationships as “inherently lesser.” It seems folks like you make the requirement for a “good marriage” to be the “ability to procreate via only the two people in the marriage,” and then you illogically attach a bunch of other concepts/events/threads to that, as if those things are de facto part of reproductive capacity, and they aren’t.
@55:
I think you need to think outside your box about the ways that people create and contribute to society. Marriage is not the only place from which to do this, and you haven’t really established how the ability to procreate via only the two people in the marriage means inherently that a mother/father dyad are “responsible” or that a gay couple are being “selfish,” much less, childless. Really, how do gay couples raising kids fit into your schema of gay marriage furthering the assumption of “marriage as primarily about personal romantic needs” — when actually, a lot of the gay couples taking gay marriage to the courts have children and are arguing for federal rights with regards to those children…?
Seems like you’ve been reading or at least heavily influenced by the likes of Boyd Packer who says homosexuality is “basically selfishness in a subtle form.” And you can’t see passed that.
Alan, I haven’t read anything from Packer on homosexuality, nor do I really remember anything Kimball said about it in his book either.
The selfishness impression came entirely from repeat exposure to advocates for the institution.
Let’s be clear, I don’t consider these relationships worthless. I don’t even question the love behind them. But the rhetoric pushing this issue is so relentlessly self-centered, personal romance-focused, and obsessed with personal rights without much consideration for any impact beyond that, that the conclusions were hard to escape.
I’ve absorbed, read, and paid attention to very little of what the General Authorities have said about homosexuality. My opinions came entirely from exposure to advocates for the issue.
No one here has argued this except you. I have repeatedly stated that I think happy, stable marriages are a good thing [both for individuals and for society], therefore we should favor policies that promote happy, stable marriages. Gay marriage does this.
Or at least repeat exposure to your own invented straw gay-marriage-advocate. If you have heard or read the positions of real-life gay marriage advocates, I’m not convinced that you listened to them.
I was thinking as I drifted off to sleep last night about Chanson’s point elsewhere that defenders of traditional marriage don’t really seem to think much of it. And then Seth goes and makes points like this:
In other words, marriage functions primarily about enforcing restrictions on men who don’t want to fulfill obligations to the women they knock up and the kids they conceive.
It’s about getting recalcitrant men to pay a debt.
Never mind that men can and have always abandoned their wives and children; that before things like garnering wages for child support, women with husbands or baby daddies who didn’t want to pay it were in much worse shape than they are now; and that in the olden days (i.e., 50 years ago), fathers of bastards had no legal obligation to them, whereas they do now. These were all huge societal problems.
Never mind as well the fact that even today, most of the men I know in unhappy relationships still feel enormous obligation to their children. Their children are a primary concern in how to navigate the relationship.
Seth not only doesn’t think much of marriage, he doesn’t think much of men.
Not necessarily. The gay couples I know who have been married feel that their marriages and their families DO contribute something to society. YOU are the one who argues that gay marriage contributes nothing to society.
This is breathtaking. the man seems downright proud to live in a bubble of ignorance. He can claim on another thread that “faith is all you need. For all sorts of things” and then claim here that he has “Ive absorbed, read, and paid attention to very little of what the General Authorities have said about homosexuality.”
When actually he makes abundantly clear in nearly every statement he writes that whether or not he has READ anything a single GA has written on any topic, he has absorbed their basic ideas on most topics of concern to Mormons.
Speaking of reading. where does the reference to “anything Kimball said about it in his book either” come from? I went back through the thread. Seth’s is the first reference to Kimball, and there’s no reference to “The Miracle of Forgiveness” anywhere, except for Seth’s untitled one. So clearly Seth remembers enough about the book to know that people invoke it as an example of GA homophobia, even if he didn’t notice all the nastiness when he read it himself.
First of all, I don’t believe you; second of all, even if this were accurate, so what?
People have the right in this country to do what they want in personal matters in all sorts of ways. The closing banquet at Sunstone discussed the lawsuits involved in various minorities establishing their rights to follow their conscience–for instance, Jehovah’s Witnesses securing the right to refrain from saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Doesn’t matter if anyone else thinks it’s selfish or bad for society or “obsessed with personal rights without much consideration for any impact beyond that”–in fact, plenty of people did think that. They still have the right to follow their own wants and desires in the matter. Muslims have the right to build mosques. Doesn’t matter if anyone else thinks it’s selfish or bad for society or “obsessed with personal rights without much consideration for any impact beyond that”–in fact, plenty of people do think that. They still have the right to follow their own wants and desires in the matter.
And there is no legal justification for treating gay marriage any differently, which of course the LGBT community has to be smart enough to know.
Given that you claim to be good at ignoring major discussions going on around you, like the one among GAs about the evils of homosexuality that practically everyone else over the age of six and involved in Mormonism has managed to pick up on, you need to consider the very real possibility that you are paying attention only to the arguments that people know will win in court, and completely ignoring, as Alan points out, the larger context in which gay couples create their unions and live their lives.
Just in case anyone was wondering what I meant by “incoherent silliness” (besides “I predict predictably bad unpredictable consequences!”), I don’t want to rehash it here, but in the past I’ve addressed major anti-marriage-equality talking points, more talking points, the Prop 8 court debacle, accusations of “intolerance,” and Mormon whininess about Prop 8.
Somebody rescue my comment from moderation (too many links, apparently), please?
Kuri, just to let you know – I tried one of the links and I got a message there is a problem with malware. 🙁
IP, can you tell me what browser and anti-virus soft ware gave you the message?
Chrome, using a MacBook.
Thanks. That’s weird, because I checked the site with all four major browsers, Norton, and a couple of malware scanners, and I get nothing.
Has anyone else out there experienced this?
They all loaded fine for me.
Thanks Seth. I’ve scanned the site with four different malware detectors now, and they all came up clean.
@62 I was kind of thinking along those same lines. Maybe Seth meant that marriage oppresses men by making them take responsibility for their offspring…?
@70 I’ve had Chrome give me scare warnings too — not for your blog, but for some other innocuous site. I think it’s extra sensitive, and perhaps gives false positives.
Not exactly Chanson, I was thinking more arranged marriages, shotgun weddings, and various other ways a modern 21st century American male might find past wedding practices objectionable. I’d also point out that sexist brutality toward women brutalizes both the abused and the abuser. I think the men were also damaged by negative images of women – wouldn’t you agree?
Of course, I’m not even attempting to compare the level and kind of oppression of men in marriage historically with that of women. Completely different things.
@74, re the issue of how marriage historically oppressed men:
Since when does “finding something objectionable” necessarily equal “oppress”?
If that’s the case, then people are welcome to argue that anything that comes out of Boyd K. Packer’s mouth not only offends them, but OPPRESSES them.
You really want to go there, Seth?
The fact that men who oppressed women were psychologically and morally impaired by their role as oppressor, no matter how joyously they embraced it, does not mean that they were de facto oppressed by the institutions they created and/or benefited from.
it’s good to see, once again, that you’ll actually work to establish a point you subsequently acknowledge is intellectually dishonest.
p.s. Seth, since you mentioned shotgun weddings as one way that men were supposedly “oppressed” by marriage, let me point out that that means that Chanson is exactly right in guessing that “Seth meant that marriage oppresses men by making them take responsibility for their offspring.”
One other thing: this sentence:
If the principle is true here, it applies elsewhere, as in “I think the homophobes were also damaged by negative images of gay people wouldnt you agree?”
I think we can all see how it’s relevant to the conversation currently under way.
I noticed this strikingly when a divorced friend of mine, in his 40s, married a divorced woman, also in her 40s, with four children. He said that most people he knew, and perhaps especially most Mormons, treated him as if he were some kind of saint for taking on the huge “burden” of a middle-aged (-ish) woman and her large brood. His feelings, though, were completely different. He was over the moon that his years alone were ending and he was gaining a new (and big) family all at once.
And that, I thought, in contrast to all the usual talk about “burdens” and “obligations,” is how only someone who really values marriage and family life would think.
Tangent time, but this remark really reminds me of the strange-and-historically-important book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I felt like the author only truly empathized with the white and mulatto characters. That — despite the central role of the black slaves — the book was by, for, and about white people. And, specifically, the book was about the moral damage (impairment) suffered by the oppressors.
Perhaps it would help if there were some way to illustrate to those who discriminate against gay people that they’re harming themselves, morally. Naturally, they’re not harming themselves in quite the same way as they’re harming others, but if they could see the harm to themselves, maybe that would get a foot in the door…
@78 exactly.
Invictus Pilgrim
Good to see you here again.
I would have commented sooner, but I was in a coma from the shockwaves.
Don’t get the foaming at the mouth.
I’m dull and boring.
My wife(here’s where I resist listing a very long list of sexist, misogynistic terms for wife because I don’t won’t to be accused of devaluing my marriage when my intent is to comment on, um, non-egalitarian marriages.) and I live in the boring suburbs, in a track house surrounded by a boring lawn. For excitement I drive my uppity posterior to the grocery store(make that unionized grocery store) and Costco.
Oh yeah, civilization is falling.
The scariest thing about me is my carbon footprint. Now that’s real harm.
@79:
That probably would help. And certainly there are attempts to make this point–I think IP’s OP was one. But as Seth so ably demonstrates, the people who need the message shrug it off and insist that “it’s pretty insulting to the black civil rights movement to assert that gays today are facing anywhere even remotely close to the scope, depth, nature and intensity of discrimination that blacks were facing in the 1960s.”
@80:
I guess the argument would be that that’s because you’re so blinded by your own selfish desire to live an ordinary human life where you make and honor your own explicit commitments that you can’t see how you’re subtly but surely preventing us straight people from taking “responsibility for creating or contributing anything to society.”
Not that I can see it either. But maybe Seth will spell it out for us.
Ditto.
@80 – Thanks. The foaming at the mouth bit was a bit of hyperbole, and is meant to refer to how rabidly angry some of the Christian far-right (and some Mormons) get when gays and lesbians have the audacity to challenge bigotry and refuse to accept their designated place in the natural order of things. 🙂
I think what might be more useful than simply saying homophobia is “like” racism, which Seth is right, can be insulting, it would be better to show how homophobia and racism are linked (to patriarchy and colonialism, etc). This way, homophobia might not be as easy to dismiss by homophobes who are intent on not also being racist and patriarchal.
You really only have to look to the far right to paint the full picture for you. Here Christian Right activist Charles Colson links homosexuality and terrorism:
So, basically, homosexuality is viewed as creating chaos and selfishness where there needs to be order and…subservience…? In order to maintain this homophobic position, you also have to maintain racism and patriarchy.
This website explains it better than I can:
“The implicit assumption in [Colson’s] analysis is that heteropatriarchy is the building block of empire. Colson is linking the well-being of U.S. empire to the well-being of the heteropatriarchal family. Heteropatriarchy is the logic that makes social hierarchy seem natural. Just as the patriarchs rule the family, the elites of the nation-state rule their citizens.
“Consequently, when colonists first came to this land they saw the necessity of instilling patriarchy in Native communities because they realized that indigenous peoples would not accept colonial domination if their own indigenous societies were not structured on the basis of social hierarchy. Patriarchy in turns rests on a gender-binary system; hence it is not a coincidence that colonizers also targeted indigenous peoples who did not fit within this binary model.
“In addition, gender violence is a primary tool of colonialism and white supremacy. Colonizers did not just kill off indigenous peoples in this land, but Native massacres were always accompanied by sexual mutilation and rape. The goal of colonialism is not just to kill colonized peoples, but to destroy their sense of being people. It is through sexual violence that a colonizing group attempts to render a colonized people as inherently rapable, their lands inherently invadable, and their resources inherently extractable.”
Of course, genocide and slavery are different, but they represent two of the three pillars of white supremacy. The third pillar is orientalism/war, which we see above in Colson’s “us/them” formulation of how Muslims view “us.”
Really, I don’t see Seth’s position on these matters as being far from Colson’s. He’s routinely spoken of the US crumbling empire, and speaks of gay marriage as if it’s part of the crumbling.
Alan, Colson may link this issue with the maintenance of patriarchy, but I don’t. I don’t see that there has to be any connection and I don’t find Colson’s argument compelling. What is there about opposing gay marriage that automatically leads to the notion that women are subservient?
Kuri, I was reading through your first link. It talks about common objections to gay marriage and why they are invalid. First it cites some conservative arguments:
Four Key Points
1. Same-sex families always deny children either their mother or father.
2. Same-sex family is a vast, untested social experiment with children.
3. Where does it stop? How do we say “no” to group marriage?
4. Schools will be forced to teach that the homosexual family is normal. Churches will be legally pressured to perform same-sex ceremonies.
To each bullet point, it responds:
1. No more so than heterosexual divorce does.
2. The numbers are hardly “vast.”
3. There’s no reason it should stop with anything but the marriage of one person to one other person.
4. Schools should mind their own business and not presume to call some students’ families abnormal. There will probably be various social pressures on churches, but they can hold out if they believe in what they preach.
My response:
1. Then prevent divorce AND gay marriage. Then you get to encourage kids to have a mother and father in all situations. This is a common theme in gay marriage advocacy – to point to other social problems as an excuse for slipping in one more social problem under the radar. Rather than advocating for an end to divorce, gay marriage advocates simply compound the problem by trying to throw in gay marriage on the theory that it won’t mess up things any more than they are messed up already.
This isn’t a valid argument – it’s merely a sleight of hand trick.
“Now you see here in my one hand I’ve got gay marriage, and… WHOA – look at that over there – it’s a clown with balloons… wow – where did the ball in my hand go?!”
2. The numbers don’t need to be vast. They just need to be visible in the public consciousness to do all the damage to the public image of marriage that they need to. Just like Hollywood actors are not a vast numeric majority by any stretch of the imagination – but their divorces are shoved in the faces of everyone at the supermarket checkout counter. Gay marriages can and will have an impact on the societal perception of marriage that far outweighs their numeric percentages.
3. You don’t know that. It’s mere assumption. And in any case, polygamists can and will take advantage of the same arguments the gay marriage crowd is using – because the same arguments equally apply to them. Who cares what “consenting adults” want to do together?
People have blasted this as a slippery slope argument, but what people don’t realize is that the slippery slope fallacy isn’t really so much of a fallacy when you are talking about the US court system so much as it is an institutionalized reality. In the US legal system we don’t call things “slippery slopes” – we call it “precedent.”
4. This shows a completely contemptuous disregard for the troubles that churches and people affiliated with them will be facing. It’s merely dismissive and doesn’t even pretend to be an argument at all.
What if I said “gays should be denied marriage – they can hold out if they really believe in their relationships and love each other”?
How would you view that dismissive statement from me?
Then don’t do the same thing yourself by making idiotic statements like “well, churches will hold out somehow – frankly I don’t give a damn about them anyway.”
Incidentally, how do you think a high school SHOULD handle the following scenario:
A high school student in a class discussion, without name-calling, declares that marriage is supposed to be between men and women.
How should the high school handle it?
I was just in a discussion on a British religion forum where just about every gay supporter unanimously agreed that the kid should be taken aside by school authorities and re-educated in how homosexuality is just fine and gay marriage is too. Some of the more strident voices even suggested child protective services ought to be involved.
I’ll be frank – I don’t believe gay advocacy groups when they say they have no intention of re-educating kids on this issue. If you believe strongly in an issue – then have the courage of your convictions enough to acknowledge that you want our nation’s children indoctrinated in that ideal. Don’t lie to me and say – oh we’ll leave your kids alone… for now…
I haven’t gotten to the rest of your arguments Kuri, but I didn’t find the rest of the blog post much more compelling.
No, actually, it’s a reductio ad absurdum. If someone wants to make the “deny children a mother or father” argument, then fine. Outlaw divorce. Pass a constitutional amendment against it. Oh wait — that would be silly.
I’m not the one who said “vast.” I was answering the argument, not making it. And yeah, I’m sure it’s extremely damaging to the image of marriage when people desperately want it and spend years fighting for the right to do it. What better way to degrade something than to show how very very desirable it must be, amirite?
Not me.
Not completely contemptuous. I have a little compassion for people whose prejudices are butting up against a changing world. But only a little, it’s true.
Pretty much the same way it would handle this scenario:
A high school student in a class discussion, without name-calling, declares that marriage is supposed to be between men and women of the same race only.
It’s not meant to be “compelling.” It’s only meant to demonstrate that those talking points aren’t. If you want to talk about what’s “compelling,” then let’s talk about things like love and equality. Because that’s what’s “compelling” to me.
@84:
Lordy! This from the man who wrote, @36:
He really has no idea what he’s saying, does he.
Re: @85: the crucial point is, none of that really matters. As I said @64, the negative consequences to the majority of allowing a minority to follow its conscience in certain personal matters is well established. Arguments about the negative consequences to the majority are trumped by the fact that unless an activity is explicitly criminalized, the minority has the constitutional right to put its own concepts of what’s right and wrong ahead of the well-being of the majority.
I will add that if Seth is really so scared of the dire consequences of gay marriage that he lists @85, it’s astonishing that he can sanction civil unions for gay couples. After all, a number of gay civil unions will be likely to involve children and grandchildren who, like their same-sex parents, may or may not go to church; may or may not be elected to public office; may or may not teach in public schools; may or may not publish books or produce movies in which their families are matter-of-factly treated with respect. What will THAT do society and our concept of what “a family” is? Can anyone predict?
also: If gay couples get civil unions, what’s to prevent polygamist families from wanting civil unions? Hell, all the people in Centennial Park are agitating for now is decriminalization of polygamy, not official recognition. But what if they want civil unions? What then? What will the LDS church do then?
Really, Seth: you ought to embrace your own arguments and oppose any sort of formal recognition of gay relationships.
As for #4, about churches and stuff–there’s little “completely contemptuous disregard for the troubles that churches and people affiliated with them will be facing.” Particularly in the case of the LDS church, which will have to deal not only with its homophobia but its whole history with polygamy, there’s a lot of anticipation (which may or may not be contemptuous) at the prospect of seeing churches try to deal, once again, with their historic practices of using “the word of god” to justify bigotry and cruelty. The churches with sufficiently loving doctrines managed to make the shift from bigoted institutions that defended slavery on biblical grounds to institutions that preached the embrace of all of god’s children, regardless of color; the ones who clung to their nastiness were marginalized. It will be wonderful to see the same winnowing process happen again.
Also: Outlaw also dying while your kids are still little. Also outlaw abandonment, and enforce it. Make parents who hate their situations so much that they’ll just run off to escape it return and continue to live in the home with the people they legally contracted to live with. Don’t worry about how frequently or infrequently this happens. After all, “The numbers dont need to be vast. They just need to be visible in the public consciousness to do all the damage to the public image of marriage that they need to.”
Oh wait — that would be silly too.
Yes, this is a good reductio ad absurdum.
This is a poor reductio ad absurdum because the people (like Seth) who oppose gay marriage don’t find outlawing divorce absurd. When you say “Outlaw divorce. Pass a constitutional amendment against it,” people like you and me say “Oh wait that would be silly,” but people like the NOM say “Yes! Exactly! Great idea!!”
You’re underestimating how hard-won our modern divorce laws are and overestimating their acceptance. It’s a stinker of an argument and should be dropped.
It’s like saying “If you want to send Mexican-Americans back to Mexico, then why not send the African-Americans back to Africa, while you’re at it?” The people who find the latter absurd are the same people who find the former absurd. As for those who don’t — it isn’t helpful to give them more bad ideas…
And then people like Seth misread your argument as:
Which I don’t think is what you meant.
It’s better to present the positive face of the coin by pointing out that both gay marriage and modern divorce laws increase the proportion of marriages which are happy, stable, and successful (as opposed to dysfunctional).
I’m not sure that Seth doesn’t find it absurd (or at least impractical), but anyway, my argument wasn’t aimed at people like NOM or Focus on the Family or anyone else who is already convinced and unlikely to ever change. The talking points were aimed at people who are uncertain and confused about what to think about the whole thing; so were my responses. Nor were my responses meant to make a positive case in favor of gay marriage. They were only meant to show that there is no strong case against it. So I think the reductio ad absurdum is adequate for those aims.
@92 I agree that the argument may work on moderate/centrist straight people who (wrongly) imagine that they can discriminate against gay people without affecting their own rights. However, even in that case, it’s not so much a “reductio ad absurdum” as it is a “slippery slope” (i.e. “the people who want the government in gay people’s business actually want the government in your business as well, foolish straight non-ally”).
Given that there exist countries even today that have draconian divorce laws (and we can see the harm that draconian divorce laws inflict on families and children), I can’t dismiss it as absurd — there is a real danger of moving the poles of the debate in that direction.
p.s. You said you might attend Sunstone, but I didn’t see you there…
I don’t think divorce right are in any danger in America. Divorce is too mainstream. It’s way too common among the Evangelical Protestants who are most vehemently against gay marriage. They’re not about to agitate for laws that would make them feel bad about their own lives.
@93, Yeah, Sunstone happened the weekend before most of my family left for Japan for the month, (I’ll be joining them there later), so I spent the time with them instead. If Sunstone had been a week earlier or a week later, I could have gone, but it was bad timing for me.
That’s too bad! I was looking for you, and was quite disappointed not to get the opportunity to meet you in person. I guess you’ll just have to come to Switzerland. 😉
Yes and no. There are plenty of divorced Evangelicals (and Mormons, for that matter), but those who aren’t are happy enough to condemn divorced people. See the discussion on this blog, for example.
And anyway, I really think it’s a losing strategy. I’ve heard gay people say things like “The high divorce rate is something that straight people did to themselves, so why should we be blamed for it?”
That has a certain logic, but it grants that modern marriage is damaged (compared to traditional marriage). Hence people like Seth logically interpret the argument as:
This confusion is why I recommend dropping this argument.
Yes, gay marriage is strongly tied to the way marriage has changed over the last couple of centuries. But it is a good change. If marriage were still an owner-property relationship, gay people would (rightly!) want nothing to do with it.
And neither would I, for that matter…
Don’t know if I’ll ever make it to Switzerland. I have relatives in northern Germany, so if I ever set foot on European soil I’ll have to visit them. So maybe I’ll pass through Switzerland on my way between Germany and Italy someday. (It’s kind of in the way down there, right? lol)
The thing with the Evangelical Protestants is that there’s been a sea change in their attitudes in my lifetime. Well into the ’70s at least, divorce was anathema for them, and divorced people were quite often more or less ostracized from their congregations. But they dropped those views like a hot potato when enough of them got divorced to reach some sort of critical mass.
I just don’t see them going back, because so much of their politics is about feeling superior to other people. They want laws that control what other people do, not what they do. And they get divorced too.
It’s just like when whichever Palin kid it was got pregnant out of wedlock. Some liberals were expecting Evangelicals to condemn her because of all their anti-sex talk, but I knew they wouldn’t. Too many of them are just like her, or have kids just like her, and Evangelicals never, ever, condemn themselves. They condemn other people.
Anyway, the argument I made was in response to a specific argument being made four years ago. I don’t use it as a general all-purpose thing. My go-to argument nowadays is to appeal to love, compassion, and empathy.
It’s no joke — it really is right on the way!
Seth @ 84
You should ask yourself that. It’s not a coincidence that religions that validate same-sex marriage also ordain women. And it’s also not a coincidence that religions that don’t validate same-sex marriage only allow men in the highest roles.
@97 On the way, or in the way? 😉
@99 har, har.
But seriously, Q: What’s between Germany and Italy? A: Switzerland!!
If you’re visiting both, it would be a shame not to drop by — it’s really beautiful here!!
I don’t advocate for an amendment banning divorce for a few reasons:
#1 – I don’t like using the constitutional amendment process for much of anything – from flag burning, to whatever else. I wouldn’t support a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage either.
#2 – I recognize the necessity of divorce in certain cases, and see no easy way to disentangle those needed cases from the rest.
But Chanson is correct – I generally view divorce as a negative thing. I think the amicable divorce is largely a myth, and I would support social movements that meant to reduce the rate of divorce in society thout endangering the people who marry.
So Kuri, the “but you support divorce” argument won’t fly – because I don’t support it. Neither do a lot of people who oppose gay marriage. I both support retaining distinctive societal status for heterosexual unions, AND support measures to reduce divorce.
And Kuri, you haven’t answered how you would handle the high school student who stated that marriage is between a man and a woman.
How would you handle it?
@103: Actually, Seth, Kuri did answer your question.
YOU are the one who hasn’t responded–to any number of issues others raised.
Certain attitudes here remind me of hearing RM’s talk candidly amongst themselves about both their missions and the rhetoric around them. Occasionally you’ll hear someone say something like, “Worst two years of my life–but I’m going to go home and say they were the best, so I can sucker others the same way I got suckered.”
It makes me wonder how much the “misery loves company” syndrome applies to opposition to divorce. In the same way that a link has been demonstrated between homophobia and repressed homosexual desire, there might well be a link between feeling trapped by a bad marriage and feeling that bad marriages should be hard for other people to escape as well.
Combine the Mormon obsession with marrying, sooner rather than later, and not being overly picky about whom you choose, with the whole “endure to the end” directive, and it seems likely enough that people will end up so well and truly stuck in bad situations that they can’t help resenting and thinking poorly of anyone who manages to get out of a bad marriage–but also be too cynical and dishonest to admit what’s going on in their own lives and how that affects their sense of what others should be able to do in similar situations.
This is particularly true when they discuss marriage in terms of obligation rather than happiness.
@101 Well, I’ve explained the context of my argument and who it was aimed at, and that’s obviously not you, so I don’t see any point in carrying on with this part of the discussion.
@102 This was my answer:
Pretty much the same way it would handle this scenario:
A high school student in a class discussion, without name-calling, declares that marriage is supposed to be between men and women of the same race only.
OK then, how would you handle a situation where “A high school student in a class discussion, without name-calling, declares that marriage is supposed to be between men and women of the same race only”?
does anyone get why Seth apparently thinks he’s posing a difficult question here?
high school students say lots of inaccurate things. You just point out that there is factual information that contradicts what they’re saying. Often their classmates will do it for them. Someone might say, “Marriage isn’t just between a man and a woman–in Belgium, or Iowa, or Massachusetts, or Washington, DC.”
And then you can just nod and add, “And anti-miscegenation laws–meaning laws making inter-racial marriages illegal–were declared unconstitutional in 1967 by the Supreme Court in a case called Loving v. Virginia.”
It’s really not that hard, and teachers deal with utterly inaccurate assumptions and assertions about what the world is like ALL THE TIME.
@106 Many things would depend on the school, the class, and the student. At my own kids’ school, my primary concern might be preventing responses from his/her peers from becoming verbally abusive in any way. (Same thing for your gay marriage scenario, btw.) In general, though, I suppose it might be a good springboard for a discussion of Jim Crow, Loving vs. Virgina, and so on.
How would you handle it?
Doesn’t sound like a bad approach to me Kuri. I was genuinely curious actually.
Not sure I’d handle it as competently Kuri, but I hope I would handle it the same as you describe.
I think we’ve agreed that openly speculating about other commenters’ personal lives falls outside the realm of civil discourse. So I’d prefer to keep this general rather than (perhaps erroneously) applying it to any individual. However, I do think that the misery loves company syndrome is apparent in much of the “defense of marriage” position.
When someone makes a tremendous sacrifice, generally the last thing they want to hear is that it was unnecessary. They can bolster their belief in their own choice by insisting that others need to make the same sacrifice (and by resenting the people who choose otherwise).
If you think you’d be happier without your spouse and children — but you stay with them out of social pressure and a sense of duty — you can easily get the mistaken impression that those are the only glue holding together anyone‘s marriage. The decision to leave a bad marriage (or not to marry in the first place) only looks selfish if you see marriage as an inherently unpleasant obligation. Claiming that marriage requires coercion truly denigrates the institution of marriage.
My perspective is that most free people get married and stay married because they want to be married. Coercing/pressuring people to get married is not merely unnecessary, it is totally counter-productive to creating stable marriages and good parents.
Chanson, I think you’d be making a rather self-serving assumption about people to say they’re unhappy.
Also, I think you’re confusing happiness and fulfillment with mere pleasure and pain-avoidance. Not the same thing at all.
Everyone can see a defect, as long as it’s on the other side.
But have you ever stopped to consider this –
The advocates of the general “free sex” movement don’t really come off as a particularly cheerful bunch either. There’s a sort of hysterical desperation in the tone of their declarations about how “happy” they are. Almost like they’re begging you not to question it. Sort of like watching drunken revelers at a big city nightclub. Something profoundly fake and inauthentic about the “good time” they are trying to prove they are having. If you look behind the plastered-on smiles and enthusiastic yells, there’s a kind of twitchy nervousness underlying it all.
Nah – typically the people who crow the loudest about being happy are the least happy in the room. Same thing with authenticity, same thing with fulfillment.
It’s why I don’t bother trying to tell people on the Internet whether I’m happy or not in my life. It’s a pointless thing to argue about with people who, frankly, don’t know that much about you personally anyway.
One other thing to consider – duty may be a lousy long-term reason to stay in a marriage. But it can get you through some rough patches to better times together. It would be stupid to throw away such a useful tool.
“Nah typically the people who crow the loudest about being happy are the least happy in the room. Same thing with authenticity, same thing with fulfillment.”
That is the way I’ve felt when I’ve repeated heard in LDS Church meetings that Latter-day Saints are the happiest, most authentic, most fulfilled people in the world. And that’s not to mention they have the most stable marriages.
@112:
this from the most notorious mindreader on the site, the guy who regularly insists, in profoundly self-serving ways, that he knows what people are thinking and why they do what they do, and refuses to be corrected — even when they themselves insist he’s got their motives and beliefs all wrong.
Wow.
@114: Exactly. thanks, Parker.
I think we might even add that “typically the people who crow the loudest about being concerned about the welfare of children are actually the least concerned in the room.” It makes such a great smokescreen for some other agenda.
I think that’s certainly true Parker. I saw plenty of people at BYU who reminded me of the mom from the movie “Strictly Ballroom” (“I’ve got my ‘happy face’ on”). It was also the same on my mission. The missionaries who were the most obnoxious about how “ugly” the local Japanese girls were, were the most likely ones to wind up having girl problems on their mission.
It’s a human thing.
I wonder how far we can take Seth’s principle that “typically the people who crow the loudest about being happy are the least happy in the room. Same thing with authenticity, same thing with fulfillment”? Would it make sense to argue, for instance, that the people who crow the loudest about being worried about the future of marriage (always predicting, as Kuri put it, predictably unpredictable dire consequences) if society does X are actually the most invested in some very personal present-time reality?
Another possible corollary: We have Seth himself to thank for demonstrating that the people who crow the loudest about Sunstone being inconsequential are sometimes those who most want to be there and resent that they can’t. http://mainstreetplaza.com/2012/07/29/because-the-need-to-understand-a-relationship-often-doesnt-die-when-relationship-does/comment-page-1/#comment-105117
In any event, it’s appropriate to consider Seth’s principle in relation to Mormonism, as Parker points out and as Seth supports with his examples. Mormons do claim, more loudly and often than just about anyone else, that they have the secret to happiness. They enlist a vast body of “volunteer” missionaries, who, as I noted, sometimes feel deceived about how the happiness their service will provide–but rather than announce that the emperor has no clothes, they continue the deception.
Part of the need to perpetuate the deception stems from the Mormon assertion that their formula for happiness is perfect and if you don’t manage to make it work, the problem is YOU and not the formula. Rather than risk being condemned as faulty, people simply refrain from revealing the formula as the fool’s errand it is.
No doubt the formula does work for a few people, in the same way some few people manage to lose incredible amounts of weight on diets that fail everyone else; their claims about how great is is are sincere. And there are probably many people who parrot what they hear others say without stopping to think very hard about whether they really like the life they got stuck with.
But Mormonism doesn’t come with a “you mileage may vary” caveat. Nope. Your mileage should NOT vary–unless you’re somehow doing it wrong.
So when people figure out that A) the formula doesn’t work and B) no one is allowed to talk about its problems, It’s not surprising that they would walk away in droves from the whole fool’s errand.
Which makes both the church’s staggering attrition rate and the anger some people feel about the whole deception pretty easy to understand. It’s not just that the Book of Mormon is an utter fiction; it’s that believing and basing your life on a lie doesn’t actually make you any happier—and it’s pretty insulting to be told that if you just believe the lie harder, it would have worked.
This conversation illustrates parts of the lie. Mormonism teaches people to fear the world in all sorts of ways–so many things are a threat, including other people’s sex lives and family structures! It shouldn’t need pointing out, but apparently it does: being taught to fear the world, being encouraged to feel threatened, makes you feel unsafe and insecure, which are pretty incompatible with happiness. How can you trust in your own full personhood, your own relationships, when you’re explicitly told and really do believe that others’ attempts to claim full personhood and define their own relationships fundamentally undermines your own?
I don’t claim to be exceptionally happy. I especially don’t claim to have the formula for happiness, nor do I believe that others need to copy my choices.
I do hope that people will look at my example — and the examples of many, many other people — and decide for themselves what are the best choices for their own lives and their own situations.