Talk amongst yourselves
CommentsHi everybody I’m on vacation (in Maui, no less) and haven’t been blogging as often as I like to. However, I am consistently impressed with the high level of discussion on the blog from both sides in the comment section and hope you’ll continue as my blogging slows down (I’ll be back at the end of the month).
A few things to throw into the conversation:
• Obama continues to agree with me on the most important LGBT issues, believe it or not. Rather than pushing for an end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” right away, he’s authorized a study - i.e. he’s listening to the experts, which is exactly what I said he should do last month here on this blog.
• I’m sick of the “1,000 benefits” talk as I am (more) of tired rhetoric on my side. If it was about benefits, there wouldn’t have been an expensive Prop. 8 battle, because Californian same-sex couples already had all the benefits of marriage. But my side is worse - I’m sick of the lazy thinking and ignorance coming from the “It’s not Biblical! This will lead to incest!” crowd. Sigh.
DB: “Rather than pushing for an end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” right away, he’s authorized a study - i.e. he’s listening to the experts, which is exactly what I said he should do last month here on this blog.”
Err, in politics, authorizing a study is not at all the same thing as listening to the experts. The article that broke this ( http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/02/01/obama_seeks_assessment_on_gays_in_military/?page=1 ) makes it clear that Obama is mainly worried he doesn’t have the votes because of nervous conservative Democrats (which would be a big part of the problem that Clinton ran into). So most likely what is planned is a report with a pre-ordained conclusion to give political cover and preempt competing studies such as a possible repeat of the 1993 GAO report to Congress. But we won’t know until it comes out.
David, it is not that the merger of SSM would lead to incestuous sexual pairings mimicking authentic marriage, but that without the core meaning of marriage the lines drawn against closely related people would become unsustainable, based on SSM argumentation’s two special rules.
Special rule #1: If it is not mandatory, it is not essential to marriage.
Special rule #2: If it can occur outside of marriage, then, it is not at the core of marriage.
These rules are routinely invoked to disparage the core of marriage which is directly regarded in two legal requirements that are vigorously enforced (i.e. are mandatory): the man-woman criterion and the legal marital presumption of paternity.
If SSM is merged with marriage, then, the rules that would have led to the abolishment of these central legal requirements would likewise undermined and topple the rational for the boudnaries around the core of marriage.
SSM argumentation is silent on the core meaning of marriage such that it cannot satisfy the special rules. There is no core meaning, apart from gay identity politics.
SSM argumentation’s special rules strip marriage of its public regard of the sexua. That argumentation does not place homosexuality on the list of legal requirements for one-sexed arrangements. So, for example, siblings might come for the license, and the bennies, without even touching each other or being sexually attracted to each other. If the cultural meaning follows the substitutied legal meaning, then, society ought not consider siblings to be out-of-bounds — at least not based on some public regard of a sexualized relationship type.
SSMers do not explain the societal significance of the sexual aspect of “the homosexual relationship” such that it merits special status on part with the conjugal relationship. But they make lots of noises about gayness vs ’straigtness’ anyway.
So, what is incest for marriage would not be for the merger of SSM with marriage, at law. And the SSMers make no secret that their goal is to change the culture via changes in the law. And they will vigorously enforce gay identity politics at every opportunity, should the merger be imposed or enacted.
CO: “Special rule #1: If it is not mandatory, it is not essential to marriage.”
What’s special about this? It would seem to be common sense.
CO: “Special rule #2: If it can occur outside of marriage, then, it is not at the core of marriage.”
I don’t recognize this. Where do you think we’re invoking such a principle?
–MORK calling ORSON. ORSON come in.
What is it MORK?
ORSON, I think it is time to reassign Chairm. Chairm seems to have lost track of reality and is seemingly very reluctant to accept the changes that are occuring here on Earth. –
Just a little levity. . .
But following the lead of David Benkof quoting President Obama, I would like to draw attention to the following quote from http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/civil_rights/
“While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It’s about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect.”
– Barack Obama, June 1, 2007
coupled with The Netherlands as the first modern nation to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001 and additional changes that led to Same-sex marriages also being legal in Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway and Nepal. And effective January 1 2009, Norway is recognizing Same Sex marriages. Other countries that recognize civil unions and registered partnerships include: Andorra, Belgium, Czech Republic,Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Uruguay.
OMG-d, Let’s look at the ‘destruction’ caused by all this tolerance in all of these countries.
Yes, social change is hard to deal with. And Yes, social change does take awhile to take hold. Let’s see, David Benkof suspended his earlier GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE and his work on supporting Prop 8 for suspected anti-semitism.
Yes, there are still folk out there who don’t like Jewish FOLK and even more recently the Catholic community and even Germans have been taken aback by the latest chapter in the controversy following the statements denying the Holocaust made by Richard Williamson, the Lefebvrist bishop whose latae sententiae excommunication the Holy See decided to lift.
Here in America, with the election of Barack Obama, there has been a notable insurgence of White Supremists and soft racist comments.
SSM is going to cause people to feel uncomfortable. GLBT folk are going to be subjected to the intolerant attitudes that lie below the surface and even the very blatant intolerant attitudes expressed by some of the commentors here at GAYS Defend Marriage.
If Marriage was a static institution, one that has never changed, morphed, molded or adapted, then there might be a argument, or two, to hold the line for maintaining Marriage and it’s CORE. BUT Marriage has changed. Many of the SSM folk are seeking marriage to honor the INSTITUTION, not tear it apart.
Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.
Another item from the WhiteHouse.gov Civil Rights site:
Expand Adoption Rights: President Obama believes that we must ensure adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation. He thinks that a child will benefit from a healthy and loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.
Supporters of GLBT civil rights and SSM do not fall only in the circles of the GLBT community, but also include family members, faith communities, and even top businesses across the Nation of the US and world wide. (In 2009, 260 companies were awarded this distinction for their employment policies and practices that include LGBT workers. A complete list of the honored businesses is available online:
http://www.hrc.org/placestowork. )
CHANGE IS COMING.
“Many of the SSM folk are seeking marriage to honor the INSTITUTION, not tear it apart.”
The road to hell is paved with good intentions…
and then there is http://www.ashleymadison.com/app/public/index.p
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZLjwhEp7nU
Not advocating, just putting this out into the conversation.
nice pic/avatar Marty is that reflective of your beliefs on evolution or just a statement about ‘the missing link’
ciao
Rusty – The Scandinavian countries have had some form of same-sex “marriage” the longest. 80% percent of first born children are born outside marriage.
If you care about homosexuals exclusively I suppose you feel things are going swimmingly. If you care about marriage and children’s welfare then you’re bound to be more introspective.
Chairm is trying to have a substantive argument about the worth of the social change you’re advocating. You have replied with a sort of open cheerleading that belies a need for the fait accompli without a desire to address the substance of the issue.
Rusty,
Is there something about change (in and of itself) that guarantees that the change being adopted is always for the best?
Time again to post his article by the late Australian philosophical critic David Stove, which originally appeared in the January 1988 edition of Commentary. I don’t think it’s necessary to point out the relevance to the current debate over neutering marriage.
Righting Wrongs
David Stove
In his autobiography Bertrand Russell mentions many brilliant people he had known at Cambridge early in the century. But one of these, John Maynard Keynes, left on him a unique impression of intellectual force. “Keynes’s intellect was the clearest and sharpest I have ever known. When I argued with him, I felt that I took my life in my hands, and I seldom emerged without feeling something of a fool.”
This is impressive testimony indeed. It is confirmed by something that Keynes said about Russell in “My Early Beliefs”, an essay on the Cambridge-Bloomsbury circle to which they had both belonged in the early 1900’s. Looking back after thirty-odd years, Keynes is contemptuous of the superficiality of that circle’s political and psychological ideas. But Russell’s political ideas, he implies, were outstanding for silliness even in that company. “Bertie in particular sustained simultaneously a pair of opinions ludicrously incompatible. He held that in fact human affairs were carried on after a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simple and easy, since all we had to do was to carry them on rationally.”
Just two effortless sentences, and yet how fatal they are to any belief in Russell’s political wisdom, or even sense! They are like a bayonet thrust through the heart and out the back. Russell was not only a fool in Helsinki in 1967, “trying” America for its “war crimes” in Vietnam: he was a fool even in 1903.
Professional logicians might question–I know, alas, some who certainly would question—whether the two opinions which Keynes ascribes to Russell are incompatible, strictly speaking. Well, that sort of thing is the logicians’ livelihood, and it would be unkind to try to deprive them of it. Let us call the conjunction of Russell’s two opinions absurd rather than incompatible, if this will buy for us the silence of those Russellian progeny, the contemporary logicians. And absurd, at least, that conjunction certainly is.
But the absurdity is one that is very far from being peculiar to Russell. It has afflicted countless other people as well, and its favorite victims are people who are, as Russell was, intelligent, educated, and “concerned.” It is, in fact, the characteristic absurdity of the utopianism which came in with the 18th-century Enlightenment.
The past, according to this utopianism, is unspeakably dark, the future unspeakably bright. Yet how can this be? Unless the change is simply a miracle, there must be some natural cause or causes which bring it about. If the past is so uniformly dark, how can it have brought us to “the shores of light”? It is no good gesturing at this or that particular person or event: Newton, or Luther, or Columbus, or the invention of printing. The more one knows about any such apparent singularities, the more they merge insensibly into their historical background. Utopianism, in order to justify its own destructiveness, has to paint the past as so bad, and the future so good, as to make it an insoluble mystery how the one can give birth to the other.
Condorcet and Godwin—to take the two most typical utopians of the Enlightenment—are utterly helpless in the face of this simple but fundamental objection. They are as exposed as Russell was to Keynes’s devastating reproach. They simply had no explanation, where they needed one most: of how darkness gives rise to light. Any explanation would have been better than none. For example, they could have said that God, at a certain point in time, simply changes men’s hearts for the better. This would not have been a good explanation, of course, and is indeed the very kind of thing which the Enlightenment claimed to have outgrown. But it would have been better than nothing.
In this respect, the utopians of the next generation, such as Saint-Simon and Comte, represent very little advance. Marx, however, to his credit, did offer an explanation, and an explanation in naturalistic terms, of the transition from darkness to light. It is a result, he said, of economic causes, which are working themselves out quite independently of anyone’s wishes or beliefs; and economic causes will install the classless society with the same inevitability as they once installed feudal, and then bourgeois, society.
It need hardly be said that Marx’s theory will not survive five minutes’ scrutiny. His distinction between the economic “base” and the ideological “superstructure” just will not stand up, and his idea of “relations to the means of production” is embarrassingly vague. But Marx did have the great merit of perceiving that his utopian predecessors and rivals had no mechanism at all to suggest. They just thought, like Russell, that it would be much nicer if if everything were much nicer, and that there is nothing, after all, to stop us from making everything much nicer, since all that is needed is for us all to be much nicer; more reasonable, kinder, etc. This is, of course, the logic of dreams and of childish religion. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, Christian, after being imprisoned in Doubting Castle by the Giant Despair, wakes up one morning and suddenly realizes that he has had the key to his prison in his pocket all along.
The preceding remarks have contemporary as well as historical application. For Enlightenment utopianism is by now the unofficial religion of all, or nearly all, the rulers of the free world….
The substance of this religion is as follows. The world—or rather, the free world (for this religion has nothing to say about any other)—is one huge festering mass of wrongs; wrongs deep and immemorial, wrongs inevitable in the past no doubt, but inexcusable now. All these wrongs must be righted now. We are free to do it and ought not wrongs to be righted? Indeed (such is the logic of utopianism) the more inevitable a wrong was in the past, the more imperative it is that it be righted in the present.
You see the metaphysical gulf which this religion implies, between the past, on the one hand, and the present and future, on the other; and in particular between all past human beings and Us, the enlightened ones of the present. They were all subject to Necessity, but We are Free. They lived under Nature. We live under Grace. They were not agents at all but mere patients, while We are pure agents and not patients at all. They, in darkness, could not but do the wrongs they did, but We, in the light, are free to right those wrongs.
The absurdity of this utopianism is only, of course, the absurdity of a Clarence Darrow defense writ large. “Your Honor, when my client shot the bank clerk, he was simply the helpless victim of his circumstances, his upbringing [etc.], exactly as the unfortunate bank clerk was. But you and I, you honor, are not: we are free, and should exercise this freedom, not to punish my client, but to acquit and reform him.”
What can one say of a religion so absurd, except that it is absurd? After all, the parents who brought up the bank robber had parents themselves, so if their offspring was never a free agent, neither were they. If bank robbers are helpless victims of circumstances, so are judges who punish them; if the judges are free, so are the bank robbers. All human beings, at whatever time, live under the same Nature, or the same Grace. To imagine that there was Necessity for Them then, but that there is Freedom for Us now, is to sever human life and history into two utterly discontinuous parts: a severance to which nothing corresponds, or could correspond, in reality.
But this religion, unlike some others, is even more dangerous than it is absurd. For it licenses its devotees, or rather it actually requires them, to satisfy their “hunger and thirst after righteousness”, regardless of the possibility that their actions will have unforeseen and undesirable consequences. Indeed, it actually makes a virtue of recklessness: fiat iustitia ruat caelum, “Let justice triumph though the heavens fall”. Yet one of the most certain lessons of life is that our actions very often have unforeseen and unwelcome consequences, even, or rather especially, when they are well-intentioned.
I observed that SSM argumentation uses two specials rules.
Special rule #1: If it is not mandatory, it is not essential to marriage.
Mark said: What’s special about this? It would seem to be common sense.
Good.
The marriage law recognizes *a type of relationship* which is distinguishable from other types of relationships and arrangements.
What essentials distinguish marriage from nonmarriage, Mark?
* * *
Special rule #2: If it can occur outside of marriage, then, it is not at the core of marriage.
Mark said: I don’t recognize this. Where do you think we’re invoking such a principle?
What is at the core of marriage, Mark? Does it occur only within marriage?
* * *
Readers can review our previous discussions and find instances of your rhetorically invoking both of these special rules.
In courtrooms the pro-SSM arguments — by plaintiffs, amicus briefs, and judges — routinely push a button that automatically invokes Rule #1 and another button for Rule #2, whenever procreation and complementarity of the sexes are brought up in marriage cases.
SSM argumentation depends on these rules both implicitly and explicity whenever the infertility strawman is dragged into discussion of marriage and Government’s role in regulating the parameters of the core of marriage.
Of course, the legal incidents that flow from marriage are not the core of marriage. But there are requirements that are vigorously enforced. SSMers routinely try to sideline the man-woman criterion and the maritla presumption of paternity, claiming that these legal requirements are nonessential.
In a previous discussion it was established that the marital presumption makes of the conjugal relationship a sexual type of relationship. The criteria for possible rebutal of the legal presumption, on a case-by-case basis, entail the both-sexed sexual nature of the presumption. It is not merely a social assumption, as some SSMers misconstrue; it is a legal presumption to which all who enter marriage give their consent, as husband and wife.
But if this is not essential, then, what is? And if this is not marriage-specific, then, what is?
Rusty, I used to watch that show with my children. It had its hilarious moments. Thanks for the memories.
What has changed, socially, such that the core meaning of marriage is to be defined by the limitations of gayness?
The countries you cited have not stalled nor reversed the pronounced nonmarital trends in their societies. Is that the social change that paved the way for SSM and which will continue unabated?
The man-woman criterion of marriage is not a test of sexual orientation. Gay or not, each person is treated equally under that criterion. No further change is needed for that.
But you, of course, are talking about making gay equal to straight. That’s the gaycentric version of identity politics. But why do you not then demand that the law establish legal requirements of homosexuality when two men or two women come for a license?
Instead SSMers talk about same-sex and opposite-sex categories. The real comparison is the conjugal relationship type and the full range of nonmarital types of relationships and arrangements.
The change that SSM argumentation promises is in effect that people — especially young people — disconnect procreation from the social institution of marriage but also from the sexual type of relationship that merits preferential status.
If societies keep telling people that marriage is entirely seperate from childbearing and sexual behavior, people will increasingly behave as if that was true. Hence the nonmarital trends that increase or remain high in those countries.
Good Day Chairm, good to hear that you have wonderful memories of your time with your children. I hope you continue to have a warm and loving life with your family.
I too have wonderful memories of the young folk who have blessed my life. with over 16 years as a children’s advocate/educator I delight in the memories and the wonderful relationships that I have built and nurtured over the years with the many families and children that I have had the pleasure and blessings to be part of. . .In addition to my work with children, I have also spent a good deal of time as an HIV educator/caregiver and advocate. I have been blessed to realize my calling: to help those just starting out life and for others, helping them through end-of-life issues.
I just think that folk seeking SSM are just working to attaining the rights and privileges that come with marriage. If those rights and privilieges can be granted through legal adjustments that end up as ‘civil unions’ maybe that will be satisfactory for some. Others seeking SSM can seek out religious institutions that will perform the ceremony of marriage.
But as far as the GLBT agenda and it’s devious plan to uproot traditional values, well, I guess you are one of the few that may have come across that insidious plan hidden in the gay agenda. No one is quite sure of who actually had their hands in crafting the Gay Agenda that was put into play to destroy the institution of marriage. Some think it might have been teh gayz of the 50’s that crafted the plan to infilitrate society following the demise of the homos in the camps of Nazi Germany and the further retaliation directed toward gayz during the McCarthy era.
Others think that the Agenda took a strong hold in the 60’s in tandem with the feminist movement and ‘free to love’ generation of the sexual revolution of the 70’s. Others think that the Agenda was fortified as a result of early HIV epidemic that hit the gayz of the 80’s combined with the disgust generated by the lack of inaction of Folk like Reagan and other world leaders who just the dismissed AIDS as a gay disease.
Yes Chairm, angry gayz partnered with their lesbian sisters in striking a blow against SOCIETY by their combined attempts to undermine marriage. Seeking equal treatment and status in society, gayz and lesbian sisters are standing on the steps of government institutions in their wedding attire with a big middle finger directed outward to the masses.
Of course this agenda has had the power and ability to coerce major world governments to allow SSM and the recognition of equal treatment for gays and lesbians seeking acknowledgemnt of their ‘caring and committment’.
But back to reality. There are committed men and women who are in loving, productive relationships who are seeking the privilieges of marriage. Some hold marriage dear to their heart, just like their families, their parents, their grandparents. Some SSMarriages will thrive, others might dissolve and others might have a rocky road. All very similar to heterosexual marriages.
Being close to many gays and lesbians who have gotten married, and have planned for children, I do know that bringing children into their fold is a bit more challenging. For me, I have watched folk adopt, use surrogates, and some have chosen IVF. but these same folk are very intentional in their planning their formation of their ‘families’.
Dissing Gays and Lesbians and Bisexuals and Transgender folk is not a very ‘loving’ act. There are those out there that remind us that ‘we are all g-d’s children’.
Chairm, with a few keystrokes during nap time. . .I came up with this from our Neighbors in North.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada look for the following elements to determine if a conjugal relationship exists:
mutual commitment to a shared life;
exclusive – cannot be in more than one conjugal relationship at a time;
intimate – commitment to sexual exclusivity;
interdependent – physically, emotionally, financially, socially;
permanent – long-term, genuine and continuing relationship;
present themselves as a couple;
regarded by others as a couple;
caring for children (if there are children).
If you are dating and thinking about marriage, or living together to try things out, you are not likely in a conjugal relationship. Conjugal relationships are built over time and supported by evidence of a shared life together, such as joint ownership of possessions, naming each other as beneficiaries under insurance policies, financial support of one another and so forth.
http://www.entercanada.ca/blog/2005/07/conjugal-partners.html
Fitz: ‘You (rusty) have replied with a sort of open cheerleading. . .’
Well Fitz I do have to admit that I sort of like the idea of swinging pom-poms. But since High School was way, way back in the day for me, I wasn’t allowed to be part of the cheer squad.
Although I did get to see my sister in her freshman year take her High School Basketball team all the way to state in ‘79. Not a small feat, considering that the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act aka Title IX did come about until ‘72, it did take a couple of years for small rural schools to find ways to integrate young female athletes into the male dominated world of High School politics.
Today we have boys leading the cheer squads, cooking and attending Family Science classes and even becoming equals in the world of early childhood education. Young women including lesbians are succeeding and being praised on the home courts and fields of high schools across the nation.
But back to cheerleading, today I recommend a visit to the Trevor Project . org
>Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers (Massachusetts 2006 Youth Risk Survey).
>Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth who come from a rejecting family are up to nine times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers (2007 San Francisco State University Chavez Center Institute).
and maybe if you have the inclination, take time to watch Prayers for Bobby with Sigourney Weaver.
Ciao
Rusty, the kind of cheerleading you are engaging in here is all based on two assumptions: that 1) if it’s a change, and especially if it’s a change that you approve of, of course it’s going to make things better, not only in the short but in the long run, and 2) that the burden of proof, even when the subject is something completely new to mankind such as this, is on the opponents of the change rather than the proponents.
Can you make a general defense of either assumption (without even mentioning SSM, that is)?
And if you don’t, well, just continue this game of evading questions with cheerleading and sidetracking, out of the obvious hope that opponents will simply give up out of weariness. That is what you are trying to do, is it not?
“Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers (Massachusetts 2006 Youth Risk Survey).”
To say “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth” is to assume a scientific category that has no empirical basis outside the very label in assumption. One would exercise greater humanity and clarity to investigate the rate of teenage suicide overall since the late 1960’s with the advent of the sexual revolution & the gay “rights” revolution.
Perhaps the “victim” is actually the abuser.
Rusty
You now added to your cheerleading a penchant for painting yourself as a baby harp seal. I suppose you have donned this garb with an expectation that no one could club such a sympathetic animal.
But the question is who is clubbing the real seal here.
“Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers (Massachusetts 2006 Youth Risk Survey).”
To say “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth” is to assume a scientific category that has no empirical basis outside the very label in assumption. One would exercise greater humanity and clarity to investigate the rate of teenage suicide overall since the late 1960’s with the advent of the sexual revolution & the gay “rights” revolution.
Perhaps the “victim” is actually the abuser.
must have hit a nerve, sorry Fitz. . .oh, by the way, could you explain the introduction of ED drugs. Again, ED drugs are prescribed primarily to men who are past ‘breeding’ age, thus recreational sex. . . .
and as a 46 year old, I haven’t been clubbing in a long time but do enjoy the sunday tea dances.
RK. . .sorry but your comments 5. February 2009, 23:32
well forgive me, but not quite able to follow this. . .
could you explain this a little bit more.
Why is it so hard to follow?
Sorry, don’t mean it as a criticism of you, Rusty, more as a criticism of the schools. They are not teaching critical thinking. Teaching mere criticism of tradition (like with Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery) is not the same as teaching critical thinking.
Rusty, are you denying that change can be good or bad? Whether or not it is thought to be good by those advocating it?
What guarantees that change is good?
When we make major changes to a highly complex system, whose mechanisms we still do not understand nearly well enough, on what basis do we assume that the change is more likely to be beneficial than harmful? In general, I mean.
Highly complex systems….a machine (to those of us who are not mechanics); the environment, ecology, the economy, the culture, etc. (to all of us).
Oops. Mistake with the italicization. My second and third paragraphs above should read:
Sorry, don’t mean it as a criticism of you, Rusty, more as a criticism of the schools. They are not teaching critical thinking. Teaching mere criticism of tradition (like with Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery) is not the same as teaching critical thinking.
Rusty, are you denying that change can be good or bad? Whether or not it is thought to be good by those advocating it?
Rusty, putting aside your shrill attempt to mock, have you anything of substance to say in direct response to my comment?
If not, that’s okay, I expect you are too busy with those secret meetings and adding yet more items to the gay agenda.
Heh.
* * *
You linked to a blogpost about Immigration Canada. Please explain what you think the bits you quoted mean and the relevance to what I have said here.
Thanks.
Chairm, sorry if I came across as shrill. Guess I should have had my ‘hands off hips’ attitude in check. my apologies. as far as attending the secret meetings, I stopped going a long time ago. but if you are interested you can go to http://jointheimpact.com/ or http://www.tell-three.org/
there you will find the new advocates/activists working on that grand Gay Agenda.
but if you look at the canooks they just seemed to put a little revision of conjugal . . .
(one, two, three. . . hands off hips)
ciao
slight revision
Chairm, sorry if I came across as shrill. Guess I should have had my ‘hands on hips’ attitude in check. my apologies. as far as attending the secret meetings, I stopped going a long time ago. but if you are interested you can go to jointheimpact dot com or tell-three dot org
there you will find the new advocates/activists working on that grand Gay Agenda.
but if you look at the canooks they just seemed to put a little revision of conjugal . . .
(one, two, three. . . hands off hips)
ciao
golly gee RK I know that change is hard.
I know that changing the Western traditions of giving women a voice and active role in civilization was quite the challenge and still remains so. . .women still make less than a man in a similar position.
I know that resistance to change causes delays.
Funny how even after the emancipation, the civil rights movement, people are still espousing racist overtones, undertones and outright blatant hate.
I know that challenging traditional values and highly complex social institutions does ruffle the feathers. Don’t really know what might happen with the current changes being proposed in the world of ‘marriage’. I just find it interesting that this change is not isolated to one sub-group or particular section of the planet. I also find it interesting that this change in not only embraced by GLBT folk but of folk in the primary circles of traditional marriage.
Maybe there might be some revisions in a couple of years.
But to help you understand things. . .I am and have always been a risk taker. thus my nickname: Adventure-Russ.
Other adventurers. . .
Columbus and the world wasn’t really flat.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Newton and the idea of gravity
Ghandi and the idea of peaceful resolutions
MLK “We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny. . .
I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be.”
Harvey Milk “I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes the target or the potential target for a person who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed with themselves.”
slight revision
I know that changing the Western traditions (0f) AND giving women a voice and active role in civilization was quite the challenge and still remains so. . .women still make less than a man in a similar position.
ciao bella
Do you still not understand the question, Rusty? Or DO you, and unable to answer it, choose more evasion?
Actually, it’s very related to the “shoutdown” method often employed on campuses to try to drown out speakers that students don’t like.
Columbus and the world wasn’t really flat.
Oh, I am SO glad you fell into that trap. Stand by for more on “The Columbus Argument”.
Other adventurers. . .
Columbus and the world wasn’t really flat.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Newton and the idea of gravity
Ghandi and the idea of peaceful resolutions
Two of these are discoveries: not analagous to what we’re talking about (Not to mention that Columbus did not prove the world was round, Magellan did, but he only proved something wise men since Aristotle had long figured out). The others are a new artistic style and a new method of resistance which, while admirable, has in fact been of limited success and not changed anything very much, as all the continued bloody wars have demonstrated.
Again, stay tuned.
At times like this, i find it helpful to restate the question, as consisely and directly as possible.
Rusty said: “the canooks they just seemed to put a little revision”
And the signfiicance of that is … ?
Rusty - Your penchant for camp simply reinforces the stereotype that homosexuals cannot be morally serious people. The same applies in regards to your failed attempt to” wave the bloody shirt” when it comes to suicide rates.
The “critical thinking” versus mere criticism of tradition distinction stands.
If you can start performing the former I’ll begin to take you seriously again.
I posted above David Stove’s “Righting Wrongs” which originally appeared in the January 1988 edition of Commentary. Well, the edition the month previous featured another of Stove’s articles…..”The Columbus Argument”. Here it is:
There might be good arguments for being anti-conservative in particular circumstances. But are there any good arguments for being anti-conservative in all circumstances? If there are, they would clearly have to be very general arguments: general enough to be philosophical, or at least to be of interest to philosophers.
There has only ever been one very general argument for anti-conservatism, as far as I know, and it is not a good one. But it is one which has been so widely thought good that hardly anyone in the last 150 years, touched at all by education, can have entirely escaped its influence. I call it the “They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus’ Argument” and for short “the Columbus argument”. It goes as follows: “Throughout almost all of human history, people who have proposed innovations, whether in belief or in behavior, have met with hostility. Death, or persecution, or prison, or at best neglect, has been the regular reward for their efforts. Yet whatever improvements have actually been made in human life, either in our opinions or in our practice, have depended, and must always depend, on some innovator in the first place. We ought, therefore, not merely to tolerate, but to welcome, innovators”.
The germ of the argument goes back to Socrates’ suggestion, when on trial for his life, that he actually deserved, not death, but a life pension from the state for the moral and intellectual stimulation he had given it. But the modern locus classicus is, of course, John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty (1859). And the argument in the form which Mill gave it (which is essentially as I have given it above) has swept the world. With every day that has passed since Mill published it, it has been more influential than it was the day before. In the intellectual and moral dissolution of the West in the twentieth century, every step has depended on conservatives being disarmed, at some critical point, by the Columbus argument: by revolutionaries claiming that any resistance made to them is only another instance of that undeserved hostility which beneficial innovators have so regularly met with in the past.
Mill’s essay did not go unanswered in its own time. Some saw clearly enough both the dangerousness, and the weakness, of the Columbus argument. The best reply to On Liberty was Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1878), a book by James Fitzjames Stephen (Leslie Stephen’s brother and hence Virginia Woolf’s uncle). The contest was very unequal intellectually: Stephen made mincemeat of Mill. But, historically, his book soon vanished without a trace, while Mill’s essay continued its all-conquering career.
We need no books to teach us now how dangerous the Columbus argument is: we have as our teacher instead the far greater authority of experience. For “They all laughed at Christopher Columbus” led, by a transition both natural and reasonable, to “It’s an outrageous proposal, but we’ll certainly consider it”. That in turn led to “We must consider it because it’s an outrageous proposal.” People who have surrendered, in their own minds, the right to deride ideas however absurd, or to repress conduct however vicious, are (as the vulgar in Australia say) history.
As to the weakness of the Columbus argument, it is perfectly glaring. No doubt it is true that, for any change for the better to have taken place, either in thought or in practice, someone first had to make a new departure. But it is equally true that someone first had to make a new departure in order for any change for the worse ever to have taken place. And there must have been at least as many proposed innovations which were, or would have been, for the worse as ones which were, or would have been, for the better. But if in the past bad innovations have been at least as common as good ones, then we have at least as much reason to conclude that we ought to discourage innovators in the future as to conclude that we ought to encourage them.
How did an argument so easily answered ever impose upon intelligent people? Easily. It was simply a matter of ensuring what Ludwig Wittgenstein (in another connection) called a one-sided diet of examples. Mention no past innovators except those who were innovators-for-the-better. Harp away endlessly on the examples of Columbus and Copernicus, Galileo and Bruno, Socrates and (if you think the traffic will bear it) Jesus. Conceal the fact that there must have been at least one innovator-for-the-worse for every one of these (very overworked) good guys. Never mention Lenin or Pol Pot, Marx or Hegel, Robespierre or the Marquis de Sade. There is no weakness in the Columbus argument which cannot be more than made up for by a sufficiently tendentious choice of examples.
In fact, of course, innovators-for-the-worse have always been far more numerous than innovators-for-the-better: they always must be so. Consider the practical side first. Do you understand television sets well enough to be able to repair a non-functioning one or to improve a malfunctioning one? Probably not: very few do. And if you, being one of the great majority, nevertheless do set out to repair or improve a TV set, it is a million to one, because of the complexity of the thing, that you will make it worse if you change it at all. Now human societies, at least ones as large and rich as ours, are incomparably more complex than TV sets, and in fact no one understands them well enough to repair or improve them. Whatever some people may claim, there are no society repairmen, as there are TV repairmen. So if anyone gets to try out in practice his new idea for repairing or improving our society, it is something like billions to one that he will actually make things worse if he changes them at all. Of course it is possible that he will make things better, but that is trivially true: it is possible, after all, that a furious kick will repair your ailing TV set.
The same holds for innovations in belief, at any rate in sciences like physics and chemistry; for those are intellectual structures of a size and richness comparable with our social structures. Even there, of course, it is always possible that a heretic or an amateur is right and the scientific establishment wrong. But the, possibility is cheap, as I have just pointed out: the thing is extremely improbable, that’s all, and you would be extremely irrational to believe it in any given case. Physicists and chemists rightly try, therefore, to maintain a professional organization and a screen designed to exclude the teeming would-be Columbuses whose letters begin, “I do not have a science degree, but….”
In less advanced sciences, of course, the situation is proportionately different. And by the time you come to the festering slums, such as sociology and anthropology have now become, the situation is quite reversed. There, almost any innovation would be for the better, and the rankest amateur, if he could get his foot in the door, would be sure to raise the tone of the place out of sight, morally of course but even intellectually.
Mill pleaded in On Liberty for the widest variety of what he chose to call “experiments in living”. The phrase was a sickeningly dishonest attempt to capture some of the deserved prestige of science for things which had not the remotest connection with science; principally—need I say?—certain sexual and domestic arrangements of a then novel kind. Certain respectable people had dropped him, because of his irregular association with Mrs. Harriet Taylor, and Mill thought that this showed clearly the need for a whole new, and more open-minded, philosophy of life. Not much more than that: he probably would have been horrified even by something like the Oneida Community.
Yet only sixty-odd years before Mill wrote On Liberty, certain more momentous “experiments in living” had been performed on France, by the Babeufs and the Robespierres. And even while he wrote, the Marxes, Bakunins, etc., were filling Europe with their announcements of the far more drastic “experiments in living” which they were preparing. It is idle to say that Mill could not have foreseen what these things portended: other people could and did foresee what they portended, and no one in England knew what was happening in Europe better than Mill did. The longer he lived, the more his writings worked to the advantage of the socialist “experiment” even when (as in the case of On Liberty) they were not intended to do so.
Here, then, is a sufficiently curious sequence of events. A philosopher publishes an argument in favor of welcoming innovations. This argument is so bad that, on its own, it could hardly have deceived a child of ten. Supplemented, however, by a tendentious selection of examples, this argument sweeps the world, and does more than anything else to bring about the present internal dissolution, and external irresolution, of free countries.
Yet some people think think that philosophers, and cheap tricks of argument, do not matter.
I should say that I would argue with some of Stove’s statements (he does tend toward overstatement a bit), but the overall point, that the Columbus argument is obviously and fatally flawed, is right on target.
RK quoting Stove: “But if in the past bad innovations have been at least as common as good ones, then we have at least as much reason to conclude that we ought to discourage innovators in the future as to conclude that we ought to encourage them.”
It’s certainly true that the majority of innovations are crap, and the bigger the innovation and the more complex the system being tinkered with, the greater the extent to which this is likely to be true. The reason that this is not a rout for conservatism is threefold:
1. The status quo is often crap, for certain groups, or people as a whole, and a bit of blundering around is not too high a price to pay for improvements.
2. A lot of conservative objections to particular innovations are crap because they’re not the product of any better an understanding of the status quo than that of the innovator - they’re just mindless rationalizations of a childlike faith that the status quo is the Best of All Possible Worlds.
3. A lot of conservative objections to particular innovations are crap because they’re self-interested rationalizations by people who have been making a profit off the crap in other people’s lives and want to continue to do so.
But Mark, even if all three of those are true, it does not make the likelihood that an innovation will be beneficial any better. You’re arguing that the motivations of the opponents of the change have something to do with whether or not it works. It does not.
RK: “But Mark, even if all three of those are true, it does not make the likelihood that an innovation will be beneficial any better. ”
I didn’t suggest it did. The benefit that sometimes comes from innovation was cited as an anti-_conservative_ argument. The unintended consequences of innovation were cited as a rebuttal. And in turn I was making the point that the rebuttal is not nearly as impressive as it sounds, because conservatism tends to be a stopped clock, right twice a day, but for unhelpful reasons.
The benefit that sometimes comes from innovation was cited as an anti-_conservative_ argument
Wrong. The argument that because benefit sometimes comes from innovation, therefore we should assume in general that an innovation will be beneficial, and put the burden of proof on the opponents of the innovation, is the anti-conservative argument. And you have not provided a defense of this. Your attempt to do so (if it can be even called that) is simply an ad hominem attack, or the common fallacy that the motive of the arguer somehow relates to the rightness or wrongness of the argument.
RK: “The argument that because benefit sometimes comes from innovation, therefore we should assume in general that an innovation will be beneficial, and put the burden of proof on the opponents of the innovation, is the anti-conservative argument.”
That would be anti-conservative in the sense of being against a common formulation of conservatism in the abstract, but I had in mind people of the conservative persuasion, because it seems to me that that’s the intent of the original argument. After all, conservatives are the people who mete out the “Death, or persecution, or prison, or at best neglect”. And at least in my experience of modern US conservatism (I’m from Australia originally), that’s not much of a caricature. Would-be respectable conservatives talk about burdens of proof, but I don’t see that the debate is actually at that level - when the conservatives took the creationists in, that was the beginning of the end to any claim to intellectual seriousness.
I had in mind people of the conservative persuasion, because it seems to me that that’s the intent of the original argument
No, it’s not. You seem totally unable to separate ad hominem argument from logical argument. Or to grasp that the motives of the arguer do not make his arguments either better or worse.
I understand that you have a personal stake in the argument, Mark. And have any of us…Chairm, Marty, or I, ever implied that your arguments should be dismissed merely because you have a personal stake in them? No, it is not because of your personal motivation, but because of your (generally) bad logic and tendency to resort to ad hominem and other fallacious methods. A personal stake in the argument, in and of itself, does not make the argument bad; indeed, it can often motivate the person to seek the best arguments he can, and some on your side who also have a personal stake (Jonathan Rauch being a good example) actually do succeed at doing so…even if we on the other side still don’t find the arguments persuasive enough, we can credit them at least for being among the better arguments. What I’ve noticed from you and too many others, however, is an unwillingness to even say that any SSM argument is better than any other and to lump them all together as being due to a bad motivation on the part of the arguer, as if, even if that were true (and it very often is not), that somehow negated the argument in and of itself.
RK: “No, it’s not [the intent of the original argument].”
So you say, but it still doesn’t seem that way to me, at least for the version in quotes towards the beginning, for reasons I’ve explained.
RK: “You seem totally unable to separate ad hominem argument from logical argument.”
I know perfectly well what an ad hominem argument is. I also know that an ad hominem argument is by no means always a fallacy. The standard example of a non-fallacious one is attacking the qualifications of a supposed expert witness. And my argument is essentially that although conservatives revere the status quo, they are typically not experts in it - on the contrary, they commonly have completely romantic and foolish notions about how it functions. (Of course innovators commonly have overly jaundiced and foolish notions - the point is merely that conservatives aren’t on some sort of intellectual high ground.) This means, that at the end of the day, there’s rather little point in asking the conservatives which innovations they think least risky, because the conservatives’ first instinct will be to say none and have the would-be innovator locked up. And if pressed, their best guess is unlikely to be a whole lot more reliable than that of the innovators. Precisely because people are fallible, to make progress you have to step outside your comfort zone and actually try things. That is, every step _has_ depended on conservatives being disarmed.
RK: “I understand that you have a personal stake in the argument, Mark. And have any of us…Chairm, Marty, or I, ever implied that your arguments should be dismissed merely because you have a personal stake in them?”
I’m happy to acknowledge that, to the best of my recollection, you haven’t. On the other hand Marty has done it occasionally, and Chairm does it regularly with his ravings about identity politics.
RK: “What I’ve noticed from you and too many others, however, is an unwillingness to even say that any SSM argument is better than any other and to lump them all together as being due to a bad motivation on the part of the arguer, as if, even if that were true (and it very often is not), that somehow negated the argument in and of itself.”
The unwillingness to differentiate is perfectly real, but it’s not rhetorical - it really is my considered opinion that the anti-SSM arguments I’ve encountered are uniformly junk. (Over at marriagedebate.com when they had comments, I was more charitable to some non-SSM-related arguments that I disagreed with.) But I would agree that the poverty of one doesn’t imply the poverty of another, and I don’t believe I’ve suggested that.
SSM argumentation depends, utterly, on identity politics. Without it, there is nothing there.
Your own remarks have demonstrated this, Mark.
And, if I recall correctly, you have readily agreed while also dismissing ou-of-hand my objection to your support of pressing identity politics into marriage law.
My rejection of SSM argumentation is not based on your personal stake in promoting that argumentation nor is is based on your personal stake in identity politics of a gaycentric kind.
I openly reject the pressing identity politics into marriage law — regardless of the kind. You embrace a particular kind.
You are welcome to reject my rejection, of course, but if you have reasons that do not depend, utterly, on ad hom, then, we may yet achieve substantive disagreement on the marriage issue.
Mark, let me ask you the same question I asked of Rusty.
Is there something about change (in and of itself) that guarantees that the change being adopted is always for the best?
Or to defend either of these two assumptions:
1) if it’s a change, and especially if it’s a change that you approve of, of course it’s going to make things better, not only in the short but in the long run, and 2) that the burden of proof, even when the subject is something completely new to mankind such as this, is on the opponents of the change rather than the proponents.
That’s all for now, I have to leave. More later.
RK: “Is there something about change (in and of itself) that guarantees that the change being adopted is always for the best?”
No.
“1) if it’s a change, and especially if it’s a change that you approve of, of course it’s going to make things better, not only in the short but in the long run, and [...]”
I would not defend this.
“2) that the burden of proof, even when the subject is something completely new to mankind such as this, is on the opponents of the change rather than the proponents.”
Nor this. That’s not to say that I think the burden should be on the proponents - rather I think it should be symmetrical. And that’s because the fact that the status quo is commonly crap and capable of being improved on counts for quite as much as the perfectly real danger of unintended consequences.
On the other hand Marty has done it occasionally
I’ll certainly admit to it as well. You’ve proven time and time again that your reasoning is entirely subservient to your own sexual proclivity. Nothing anyone else can say or do will sway you from “what you know is right” in your loins.
It’s actually quite common in this debate.
Mark, thank you for answering the last questions I presented thoughtfully and honestly.
That’s not to say that I think the burden should be on the proponents - rather I think it should be symmetrical.
Well, I’ll accept that as a good halfway point, but I have to say the debate has not been treated that way by most on your side.
In Mark’s earlier post:
I know perfectly well what an ad hominem argument is. I also know that an ad hominem argument is by no means always a fallacy. The standard example of a non-fallacious one is attacking the qualifications of a supposed expert witness.
At first glance, an excellent point, but when subjected to simple example….
Mark, you said you were from Australia originally. I’ve never been to Australia, though I certainly would like to see it if I ever get the chance.
Suppose I was to say that Australia consists of six states, plus the Northern Territory and the federal district of Canberra, that most native mammals of Australia are marsupials, except for the monotremes, the Dingo (which was virtually certainly brought over by the earliesy humans), and some rats.
Okay, enough.
Now, I’m not an “expert” on Australia, right?
So, that makes what I just said wrong. Right?
After all, you say that to attack the qualifications of someone as an expert is an example of when an ad hominem attack is not a fallacy.
In one sense, you are right. An ad hominem attack, by itself, is not a “fallacy”. Whether by just calling a person nasty names, or by challenging their qualifications as an expert on a subject, that alone can be called many things, but not a fallacy. The fallacy is in the suggestion, stated or implied, that therefore what this person says is false or unreliable.
Maybe you are getting the picture. That a person is not an expert on something does not in itself make their statements on the subject wrong. They may be less likely to be right, but the statement has to be judged by whether or not it is in fact true, not by who said it.
In a courtroom, of course, there are many subjects which the jury lacks knowledge of and cannot possibly find the time to investigate themselves. Hence, in that setting, the reason for judging a witness as a qualified expert is to give the jury some reason to believe that the witness really knows more about the subject than they do. A non-expert could get on the witness stand and state something completely true about a subject the jury knows nothing about. But the jury does not know that it’s true, and his not being an expert gives them far less reassurance that it is true than they would have if he were an expert. It does not make his statement false. It is not an exception to the fallacy of ad hominem argument.
RK: “Now, I’m not an “expert” on Australia, right? [//] So, that makes what I just said wrong. Right?”
It doesn’t _make_ it wrong, a posteriori. It does however make it less likely to be right a priori. For example, you might well have gone on to say that Fosters was Australian for beer, which is now widely reported but even metaphorically not remotely true. (Iconic beers of Australia go by state - there is no national beer.)
RK: “In a courtroom, of course, there are many subjects which the jury lacks knowledge of and cannot possibly find the time to investigate themselves.”
Exactly. An adversarial situation with limited opportunity to cross-examine or independently investigate is precisely when AH is likely to be the best you can do. But the situation with conservatives versus innovators is rather like that. In particular, it’s like the situation where an expert witness is called from a field in which there is no genuine expertise, such as astrology or theology. Very commonly conservatism doesn’t have any genuine expertise, just the obvious but ultimately not very helpful insight that something might well go wrong. Indeed something might well go wrong, but unless conservatives are challenged to tell a plausible story about exactly what will go wrong and why, and actually rise to the challenge, you might as well ignore them and just try out the innovation to see if something goes wrong.
The challenge, Mark, remains with those who press for the merger of nonmarriage with marriage. There is no flaw in the man-woman criterion; nor in the marital presumption of paternity; no flaw that merits this merger.
CO: “The challenge, Mark, remains with those who press for the merger of nonmarriage with marriage. There is no flaw in the man-woman criterion; nor in the marital presumption of paternity; no flaw that merits this merger.”
And this is a good example of the sort of pompous, substanceless table-pounding that real-life conservatives indulge in that means you might as well ignore them and just try out the innovation to see if something goes wrong.
Mark Barton (writes)
“you might as well ignore them and just try out the innovation to see if something goes wrong.”
As they say: Fools rush in were Angels fear to tread.
Fitz: “As they say: Fools rush in were Angels fear to tread.”
Conservatives do say that - it saves thinking.
In exchanges with you, Mark, we’ve established that you can offer no core meaning for the relationship type that you have in mind when you’d to use the word, marriage.
You’ve not met a reasonable and standard challenge.
Pounding your chest. Scapegoating. Whining about those with whom you disagree. These are additional signs of a lack of confidence in your own attempting reasoning on this subject.
So, sure, that arrogant pose — the SSM vogue — saves thinking on your part.
CO: “In exchanges with you, Mark, we’ve established that you can offer no core meaning for the relationship type that you have in mind when you’d to use the word, marriage.”
You didn’t like my answer, but I have offered one: it’s about committed relationships. I think you didn’t like it because you have this strange idea that, to the extent marriage accomplished something useful historically, it did it primarily because of something it _was_ rather than something it _wasn’t_. Marriage didn’t foster procreation per se - people would have procreated anyway. Marriage did help foster _responsible_ procreation but mainly by the mechanism that if couples _weren’t_ married and were caught having sex, a world of hurt would come down on them. However the social consensus to punish sex outside marriage has collapsed, because people no longer think it’s the most effective way to encourage responsible procreation. So if you think you can achieve anything by tinkering with the eligibility rules for marriage without restoring the consensus to punish extramarital sex, you’re wasting everybody’s time. And if you do harbour the hope to restore the consensus to punish extramarital sex, then I have to assume you want to punish gay sex, and I want to hear an argument for why.
You didn’t like my answer, but I have offered one: it’s about committed relationships.
And as I think we’ve pointed out repeatedly, Mark, that answer fails because it really extends the boundaries way beyond what even you or most of those who support SSM say they want. I think I and others have pointed out the meaninglessness of the “committed relationships” argument so many times it’s become tiresome for us to keep repeating it. Why don’t you just say it, you mean a sexual committed relationship, and you’re willing to enforce it and exclude anyone who won’t or doesn’t engage in sex….no, I forgot, you aren’t willing to go that far, even though by not doing so you leave your core wide open to the same kind of loophole you use to attack the traditional core.
CO: “And as I think we’ve pointed out repeatedly, Mark, that answer fails because it really extends the boundaries way beyond what even you or most of those who support SSM say they want.”
No, I can’t recall you pointing that out. Perhaps if I could figure out what on earth you were talking about I would recognize it, but so much of what you write is word salad that most likely I didn’t understand it the first time either.
CO: “Why don’t you just say it, you mean a sexual committed relationship, and you’re willing to enforce it and exclude anyone who won’t or doesn’t engage in sex….no, I forgot, you aren’t willing to go that far, even though by not doing so you leave your core wide open to the same kind of loophole you use to attack the traditional core.”
Well if you want me to add presumptively sexual committed relationship I’ll be happy to. My attitude to sex in SSM is the same as your side’s attitude to sex in traditional marriage (not what you say it is but what it clearly is in practice). I presume that sex will be occurring in most such relationships, because typically at least, only people in a sexual relationship are going to be interested in the enormous degree of entanglement of financial and legal affairs that marriage entails. At the same time I don’t care, I’m not going to support putting having sex into the rules and I’m certainly not going to support making any effort to detect and punish people not having sex.
Family relationships are “committed relationships”. More than two people can be in a “committed relationship”. And, yes, “committed relationships” do not have to be sexual at all. We have pointed this out ad nauseum as to how the term “committed relationship” really is so broad it can mean anything and hence, nothing. (Yes, I could go look through all the blogs I’ve ever posted on and dig them all out, perhaps, tedious though it may be).
“…typically at least, only people in a sexual relationship are going to be interested in the enormous degree of entanglement of financial and legal affairs that marriage entails”.
I think this entails a confusion of love and sex. Love is not always sexual.
More later (including a rather long post in response to February 10 13:10, when I can take the time for it).
RK: “Family relationships are “committed relationships”.”
Not by any usual sense of the term.
RK: “More than two people can be in a “committed relationship”.”
Yes, although I didn’t have polyamorous relationships in mind.
RK: “And, yes, “committed relationships” do not have to be sexual at all.”
Yes.
RK: “We have pointed this out ad nauseum as to how the term “committed relationship” really is so broad it can mean anything and hence, nothing. ”
And as I was saying to Chairm, I’m completely unimpressed because I don’t see that marriage ever achieved anything much because of its own nature, it was the penalties attached to everything except marriage that did the work.
RK: “I think this entails a confusion of love and sex. Love is not always sexual.”
I never meant to suggest it was. I don’t doubt that some couples, both opposite- and same-sex, will get married because they love each other in a non-sexual way. It’s probably just somewhat less common than getting married to have a breadwinner/housekeeper, or getting married to have kids without regard to liking one’s partner, or getting married because of family pressure, or, the biggie, getting married because of sex-infused love.
Mark, it is easy to accept your answer about what kind of relationship you have in mind. It is very nice. Quite vague and unimpressive by design.
Note, I had asked for the core meaning. You have not plainly stated the essentials such that without those things - or that one thing — the relationship type would be something else. The closest you have come to, even now here with your SSM-vogue, is “commitment”. Well, sure people form a commitment but to what?
Meanwhile, marriage has integrated the sexes in many levels — including the public aspect of a private sexual relationship type. Marriage has virtually created fatherhood and has done so by united motherhood with the public aspect of the private sexual relationship type. Marriage has been a foundational social institution — a coherent whole — recognized and shown preference for being so. Not only do people entering the social institution, generation following generation, commit to this core meaning of marriage, but the culure recommits to it.
That’s far, far, far more than the relationship type, such as it is, that you described. And it is far more positive than the negative coersion outside of marriage that you emphasized in place of the relatively non-coercive and pervasive influence of a social institution’s nature or core meaning.
I think that you’ve shown a more principled approach than most SSMers, however, your approach is to dissassemble the coherent whole into incherent bits and pieces while offering a purposefuly (perhaps even necessarily) vague and effectively meaningless substitution.
* * *
Mark, earlier you replied to RK while attributing RK’s remarks to me.
CO: “You have not plainly stated the essentials such that without those things - or that one thing — the relationship type would be something else.”
Oh, that’s easy: recognition by the powers-that-be. In a modern society that’s the state. In a theocracy it might be an ecclesiastical court, and in an isolated village it might be the villagers collectively or a council of elders. We can argue till we’re blue in the face about what it _should_ be, but as far as I’m concerned what it _is_ is what the powers-that-be _say_ it is.
Do you want to rephrase your question?
Nope.
I accept that you have given your answer to the question asked.
The core meaning of the relationship type that you have in mind is whatever the government *arbitarily* decides it to be.
* * *
If you were the government, what would be the essentials of “marriage” that define the core meaning of the relationship type?
CO: “If you were the government, what would be the essentials of “marriage” that define the core meaning of the relationship type?”
Committed ones. Seriously, that’s pretty much it. The various responsibilities of marriage are the test. If two people are prepared to sign up, given how comprehensively marriage entangles their lives, then they pass.
Mark in the thread above: After all, the only thing you can actually tell from the existence of an institution in the past is that it served the interests of the _powerful_
(That is a grossly oversimplified and inaccurate statement, but more on that later).
Mark in this thread:
Oh, that’s easy: recognition by the powers-that-be. In a modern society that’s the state.
So, it was all about who had power in the past, and it will be all about who has power in the future. Forget consistency or principle. The king is dead, long live the king. Or, as The Who said: “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”
More soon. I have been busy and tired a lot over the past week, but that is only part of why I have not posted more, really, it is as much laziness on my part.
RK: “(That is a grossly oversimplified and inaccurate statement, but more on that later).”
I don’t see that it’s oversimplified in the slightest. In particular, it _would_ be oversimplifying to claim that one could tell from the persistence of an institution that it served _only_ the interests of the powerful, but I didn’t say that.
RK: “So, it was all about who had power in the past, and it will be all about who has power in the future.”
In terms of what marriage _is_, yes. But then as I believe I allowed, what it should be is a different thing entirely. In fact there are few passages that give me a worse case of the creeps than that from which the phrase “powers that be” came:
“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist [KJV: powers that be] have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.”
Mark, what did you mean in your answer?
As far as I can make out, you said that commitment is the essential of committed relationship type.
But commitment to what?
Yes, in effect, you’ve said that the relationship type is an entanglement of lives, but that is just another way of saying that it is about commitment.
Commitment to entanglement.
How would you, as the governing authority, distinguish commiment/entanglement from the nonmarital types of relationships and arrangements?
CO: “As far as I can make out, you said that commitment is the essential of committed relationship type.”
Yes. And I was deadly serious. Of course, I presume that most marriages, of same- or opposite-sex couples will continue to be sexual relationships, and I presume that most of the opposite-sex couples will be intending to procreate and a significant minority of the same-sex couples will be intending to adopt, but I specifically don’t intend to make any of that definitional.
CO: “How would you, as the governing authority, distinguish commiment/entanglement from the nonmarital types of relationships and arrangements?.”
I wouldn’t. I’d distinguish commitment from non-commitment by whether a couple applied. And I’d distinguish marital from non-marital by whether they had my official stamp on a piece of paper.
Okay, so showing up would be proxy for commitment. All would be eligible and none inelligible.
And the rubber stamp would signify … what?
CO: “And the rubber stamp would signify … what?”
Official and other public recognition. Of commitment. That need not be the only one of course, but it’s the one of last resort in a dispute.
Recognition of commitment to what?
I think you are circling your hollow concept of marriage, Mark. What you are talking about (or circling about) is merely a facade and not recogniton of a foundational social institution.
CO: “Recognition of commitment to what?”
The relationship with the other person.
CO: “I think you are circling your hollow concept of marriage, Mark.”
And I think you’re wasting everyone’s time portentously insinuating something I believe I’ve already cheerfully made clear: that I don’t think it’s terribly important what I, or you, or anyone else thinks what marriage itself is - it’s primarily the alternatives to marriage and what you propose to do about them that matters. I know you half-understand this, because you’re up in arms about no-fault divorce and want to make divorce more difficult. But it seems to me that on a bunch of other fronts you seem harbour the strange delusion that the main problem is people not understanding what marriage is “about” and if you just cleared up their confusion they’d all magically and happily fall in line.
Actually, Mark, you have stumbled upon the actual disagreement.
Societal preference for the social institution of marriage is based on its core meaning. And this is a public meaning for a public relationship.
You said that you meant commitment to “The relationship with the other person.”
That commitment is not just between two people in a private arrangement.
Society is party to this commitment. It very much does matter that people who enter the social institution understand what they are committing to when they say, “I do”.
You said: “it’s primarily the alternatives to marriage and what you propose to do about them that matters”
Yes, a one-sexed arrangement is a nonmarital alternative.
You haven’t yet explained why a one-sexed arrangement that is sexualized — or at least gay — ought to benefit from special treatment amidst the wider range of nonmarital alternative arrangements.
Is the idea to reward same-sex sexual attraction or same-sex sexual behavior or gay identity politics?
I am unconvinced that there is no core meaning to this reform you support. If it was meaningless to you (and to your purpose for society), you’d not be speaking with such certitude.
CO: “Societal preference for the social institution of marriage is based on its core meaning. And this is a public meaning for a public relationship.”
I never suggested differently.
CO: “That commitment is not just between two people in a private arrangement.”
I never suggested differently.
CO: “Society is a part to this commitment. It very much does not matter that people who enter the social institution understand what they are committing to when they say, “I do”.”
My point exactly: it’s about bludgeoning people until they conform to some conception of marriage.
CO: “Yes, a one-sexed arrangement is a nonmarital alternative.”
Which why when you say this sort of thing I assume it’s incitement to punitive measures against people in same-sex relationships…
CO: “You haven’t explained why a one-sexed arrangement that is sexualized — or at least gay — ought to benefit from special treatment.”
… even when you frame it as merely withholding special privileges. We’re not going to pay the least bit of attention to your stupid project of unifying the sexes simply because you withhold a few privileges. It’s a stupid project because for the 90-95% of the population who are straight it’s a total waste of time - they’ll unify themselves thanks very much and wild elephants couldn’t stop them. And if you want to push the 5-10% of people who are gay into opposite-sex relationships, seriously inconveniencing them for no obvious benefit, if you’re _not_ proposing fairly drastic punitive measures, then you’re simply not serious. If you think you have any carrots we’d be interested in, you don’t have a clue.
They’ll unify themselves?
Well, first, since marriage is a social institution of civil society, the Government is not involved to force anyone to enter the social institution much less to conform to the core meaning of marriage.
Government merely acknowledges that the institution benefits society and so society benefits the institution’s core meaning. Maybe you objec to the influence of foundational social institutions and would rather that the Government impose something upon civil society.
By the way, “unifying” is not the same as “having sex”, as I think we’ve already discussed.
I asked why you’d treat one subset of the nonmarital category differently than the rest of that category.
What’s the inconvenience, if any?
Protective measures for vulnerable families ought not be based on identity politics or “having sex” — gay, straight, whatever.
Marriage is a different thing that what you have in mind, clearly, Mark. To get that other thing does not require abolishing the special status of marriage nor abolishing its core meaning socially, culturally, legally.
The SSM project is thus “a stupid project” that has wasted a great deal of energy which should have been focussed on 1) strengthening marriage and 2) accomodating the vulnerable families outside of marriage. That’s the solution to the actual problem.
The manufacture problem that SSMers keep pushing to resolve is their desire to make gaycentric identity politics the supreme measure of all laws and of all forms of relationships. Marraige is just a vehicle for that socially corrupt and legally corrosive project.
CO: “They’ll unify themselves?”
Well, yes, straight people like being in male-female relationships, often not for quite as long as might be hoped, but still enough that much of your work is done for you.
CO: “Well, first, since marriage is a social institution of civil society, the Government is not involved to force anyone to enter the social institution much less to conform to the core meaning of marriage.”
Currently indeed, the government is relatively laissez-faire, but historically your claim is nonsense. Governments and other powers-that-be have traditionally been heavily involved in enforcing marriage as the only acceptable sexual relationship. In particular, at a minimum the government has always supplied the critical bookkeeping function: lack of government sign-off on a relationship has always been the official cue for shunning and shaming and other punitive actions by the citizenry. And government commonly got involved directly as well: all US states had anti-adultery and anti-sodomy laws at one point and 16 banned pre-marital sex.
Now I find it difficult to believe that you don’t know all this, which is why I tend to assume that most of what you say is just a stalking horse for a plan to bring back all manner of coercive measures. But if you really don’t know, then you’re that most pathetic figure, a cargo-cult conservative, who wants to bring back the superficial appearance of the Good Old Days without having the foggiest idea of how the Good Old Days actually worked.
The conjugal relationship is the most acceptable sexual relationship for the reasons we’ve already discussed.
But what makes it a kind of sexual relationship for the purposes of being preferred is that it provides for the contingency for responsible procreation. See the marital presumption of paternity which is about far more than merey “having sex”.
We can reach back in time, if you wish Mark, to discuss the perils of identity politics, too, including Government coercion.
In any case, my remark, which you quoted above, remains accurate.
* * *
Your namecalling is tiresome, Mark, and unworthy of public discourse on the issue of marriage. Look in the mirror.
CO: “The conjugal relationship is the most acceptable sexual relationship for the reasons we’ve already discussed.”
No, in all the years we’ve been sparring, I’m quite sure you’ve never said a word about what was more or less “acceptable”. I’d remember, because I’ve always suspected that your views were driven by active disapproval of gay sex and gay relationships (as opposed to just less enthusiastic approval) and I’ve been prodding you to see whether it would surface. Here we seem to have a flash of it, but it’s hard to say because you refer me to an answer you’ve never given.
CO: “But what makes it a kind of sexual relationship for the purposes of being preferred is that it provides for the contingency for responsible procreation. [...] Your namecalling is tiresome, Mark, and unworthy of public discourse on the issue of marriage. Look in the mirror.”
I stand by what I said. As far as I can tell this sort of verbal mush (”provides for”, “contingency”) is the extent of your understanding of how the traditional system worked.
So sorry for the delay in getting back to this, but in response to several of Mark’s posts here:
Mark, 10. February 2009, 13:10:
Indeed something might well go wrong, but unless conservatives are challenged to tell a plausible story about exactly what will go wrong and why, and actually rise to the challenge, you might as well ignore them and just try out the innovation to see if something goes wrong.
And, earlier, 9. February 2009, 16:53:
That’s not to say that I think the burden should be on the proponents - rather I think it should be symmetrical.
Now, both of these sound perfectly reasonable, Mark. On analysis, there are corollary questions with the first, and some general problems with the second, which I’ll get to shortly. But are you going to seriously tell me that SSM proponents, including yourself, are really taking either of these positions in the debate as it is being currently conducted?
I have seen no indication in the pro-SSM movement that their strategy is to “test” SSM in some places to see if something goes wrong. Now, yes, sometimes they argue that so far, nothing’s gone wrong in the Netherlands, or Massachusetts. But I have never heard any SSM proponent argue that we should wait and see what happens in these places before trying to impose it elsewhere. That is how you conduct an experiment, you test it in a limited area before you determine whether or not it works, and, if it works, you then apply it elsewhere. This is how you determine whether a new drug is effective, for instance.
Now, a corollary question is, just how long should it take before an experiment is declared a success? I have argued on other blogs, since the debate over this issue has begun, that this is not something that can be determined overnight by any means. I have argued that because the actual change comes not just from the change in the law itself, but from the change in public perception in the meaning of the institution, and because this change in perception does not fully occur at least until a generation has grown up with only the new perception, that we cannot reasonably declare the SSM experiment to be a success or not for at least 30 years.
You may argue with this, of course. You may maintain that my time frame for declaring it a success is too long. And I’m sure others may argue that it is not long enough. But the fact is that really, I have not heard SSM proponents, at least in the public arguments on the issue, even raise the issue of just how long it should be before we know if the experiment is successful. They have not even called for dialogue in determining how long it should be. True, neither have most opponents. But, if you say you believe that we should “experiment” with SSM to see if anything goes wrong, and if you are sincere in adopting that approach, then that is the next step, as the experiment has already started.
Now I would still argue that we should err on the side of caution and accept a higher figure for the number of years before declaring it safe. But what I detect from the pro-SSM movement is only a desire to declare it a success as soon as possible and start trying to legalize it wherever they feel it is politically possible. No discussion of how long it would take for us to know. Just start the bandwagon rolling as soon as possible, whether we know or not. That is the way the issue is being presented, in California and elsewhere. So if it turns out not to be a success, it will fail in far more areas than just the Netherlands before we even know. Clearly, the SSM advocates are not asking to “experiment” and see if anything goes wrong.
Nor are they taking the position that the burden of proof should be “symmetrical” between proponents and opponents. On the contrary, in California, and throughout the nation, the notion is being pressed that simply because this is to be declared a “fundamental right”, therefore the proponents should have everything automatically assumed in their favor, and that there is no argument otherwise. No talk of symmetry or burden of proof exists in this assumption. Am I wrong in this analysis of the campaign?
There is, of course, a problem with the argument that when discussing a change to a highly complex system, that we should place only the same burden of proof on the opponents of the change as we do on the proponents. This problem is best demonstrated by analogy with another highly complex system, the environment.
A change was introduced into the environment, the introduction of hydrocarbons, fluorocarbons, and other chemicals into the air.
Now, before you jump in with cries of “outrage” and contend “How dare you compare the fundamental right to marry with the introduction of a pollutant into the air”, remember that we did not think of these chemicals as “pollutants” at all when we started introducing them into the air. We thought we were doing mankind a great service. We were making transportation easier, enabling people to reach far away places sooner than they ever had before. We were developing new materials in our factories that would greatly increase our quality of life and make life a lot easier. We were going to provide us all with relief from the misery of scorching heat and humidity. We were doing it to make the world better. Or so we thought.
Now, I suppose, Mark, that here you may also try to get into a diversion about how it’s conservatives that are the ones insisting that none of these things have hurt the environment, or that global warming isn’t happening. This is totally irrelevant. I’ll be the first to admit that “conservatives” are not always so conservative. Or, to put it more precisely, that in this case they seem to apply their conservatism to the fear of major changes in only one complex system, the economy, while ignoring it with respect to another complex system, the environment. They may be right about the short term effects on the economy, but if the environment is irreperably damaged, in the long term the economy will suffer along with it.
Whatever the facts on global warming (and I realize that there’s still debate although the growing consensus is that it is happening), one thing can’t be denied: We had no idea it was happening until many decades after we started putting the chemicals into the air. Obviously, we didn’t treat the introduction of the chemicals as an “experiment”, did we?
Now, if we had done the smart thing, and “experimented”, how would we have done it, knowing what we did at the time? Would we have just released the chemicals over a small area? How small? And how much time would we have decided would be necessary before we could have finally claimed “See. No harm.”? Just from what has happened, if the worst predictions of scientists now are true, the answer would almost certainly be “not enough”. So even if we allow what we feel is a reasonable amount of time to declare an experiment a success, if we are in fact premature in declaring it so we may well pay the price still later. There is no logical reason why the same may not be true about social changes, even when they are assumed to be good ones.
Mark in the thread above: After all, the only thing you can actually tell from the existence of an institution in the past is that it served the interests of the _powerful_
The problem with this common argument should be obvious. “The powerful” are mortal. But the effects of their policies are not. If the effects of their policies are in fact beneficial to the society they ruled, they are more likely to continue on after they are gone, as their successors are likely to continue them. But if their policies prove detrimental to their societies, those policies are likely to be abandoned after they are gone, or their society will not survive.
What’s more, it is simply not clear why the “powerful” have a vested personal self-interest in keeping marriage male-female. Many powerful people in history are widely acknowledged to have been homosexual themselves (or, at least, to have frequently engaged in homosexuality). To kind of turn the tables on a common question SSM proponents ask of opponents, explain just how allowing males to marry males threatened the power of a society’s rulers, or how it threatened their power over their wives, for that matter.
Mark: 9. February 2009, 2:48:
The unwillingness to differentiate is perfectly real, but it’s not rhetorical - it really is my considered opinion that the anti-SSM arguments I’ve encountered are uniformly junk.
By allowing that some anti-SSM arguments might be better than others, you would be opening up to the possibility that some that you haven’t heard might be better yet, and thus that there might even be one that’s convincing. Because you refuse to even consider that possibility, you thus feel forced into a take-no-prisoners position where you just declare them all equally “junk”. It’s not a very mature way of approaching argument.
I think you are a very intelligent person, Mark, and I really admire your determination and tenacity here. And while, as I have said, your personal feelings do not stop you from making an excellent argument for your position, I feel they do blind you from objectively considering the merits of those on the other side, and though this is true of many this is not true of all other advocates of SSM that I have encountered.
RK: “But are you going to seriously tell me that SSM proponents, including yourself, are really taking either of these positions in the debate as it is being currently conducted?”
I certainly am. I think the pro-SSM side’s effort to explain why people are being harmed for the lack of SSM are adequate, and I think the anti-SSM side’s efforts to tell a story as to why SSM will lead to disaster are laughable.
RK: “But I have never heard any SSM proponent argue that we should wait and see what happens in these places before trying to impose it elsewhere.”
Well, how much local testing one does and what precautions one takes depends on what problems are anticipated and how credibly they’re anticipated, as well as the severity of the problems being addressed, and sorry to say, we’re that unimpressed by the quality of the scaremongering that we’re not hanging around waiting for the Netherlands.
RK: “I have argued that [...] we cannot reasonably declare the SSM experiment to be a success or not for at least 30 years.”
Sure, let’s review it in 30 years.
RK: “A change was introduced into the environment, the introduction of hydrocarbons, fluorocarbons, and other chemicals into the air.”
Yes and no., _Thousands_ of changes were introduced into the environment, in the form of novel chemicals not found in large quantities in nature. Some of them caused non-obvious “complex system” problems, some of them were just plain old obviously noxious from the outset, and some of them didn’t cause problems. If you cherry-pick your example you can make a fine morality play but it doesn’t prove much.
RK: “I’ll be the first to admit that “conservatives” are not always so conservative. Or, to put it more precisely, that in this case they seem to apply their conservatism to the fear of major changes in only one complex system, the economy, while ignoring it with respect to another complex system, the environment.”
Sure, but that’s the point: it isn’t a random aberration that conservatives failed to object to greenhouse gases and are now fighting attempts to address them tooth and nail - conservatism is much more about power than tradition.
RK: “Now, if we had done the smart thing, and “experimented”, how would we have done it, knowing what we did at the time? Would we have just released the chemicals over a small area? How small? And how much time would we have decided would be necessary before we could have finally claimed “See. No harm.”?”
Err, I get what you’re trying to say but I can’t resist noting that between the conservatives with their heads in the sand and this you picked a spectacularly bad example to illustrate it. There’s a reason it’s called _global_ warming - it’s an intrinsically global problem and one couldn’t have discovered it by a local test because the gases freely mix throughout the whole atmosphere.
RK: “The problem with this common argument should be obvious. “The powerful” are mortal. But the effects of their policies are not. If the effects of their policies are in fact beneficial to the society they ruled, they are more likely to continue on after they are gone, as their successors are likely to continue them. But if their policies prove detrimental to their societies, those policies are likely to be abandoned after they are gone, or their society will not survive.”
Certainly, if a policy is so bad that it leads to the complete collapse of an isolated society, then it will not be continued - there will be no one to continue it. In fact, in Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, he shows that this is not uncommon, and while ecological stress is usually the primary cause, a common contributor is an elite that is insulated from the worst effects of the problems and so resists change until it is too late.
But short of that your argument doesn’t prove very much at all. A non-isolated society can’t be so weak that it falls to military conquest, but it will muddle along with the peasants in considerable squalor indefinitely if the changes that would improve the average well-being are not to the advantage of the elites. And the military conquest exception doesn’t change the situation all that much because (i) the neighbouring societies are hobbled by the same dynamic, and (ii) to the extent there is competition it’s in ability to raise armies not in improving welfare.
In fact archeologists have long known that at the time of the agricultural revolution, populations went up, because food could be obtained from much less land, but (ii) the average health and longevity went down and did not recover until quite recently. And that’s mostly because farmers, who are tied to a plot of land, are easier to tax than hunter gatherers, so it created the new economic niche of king/warlord to run protection rackets on the farmers.
RK: “What’s more, it is simply not clear why the “powerful” have a vested personal self-interest in keeping marriage male-female.”
Well, the powerful were the men, and it’s not so much that they had a vested interest in keeping marriage male-female, it’s that they had a vested interested in keeping it patriarchal, with the power and prestige of the male much greater than that of the female, and that ends up producing contempt/hatred for gay men who blur the roles to some extent.
RK: “Many powerful people in history are widely acknowledged to have been homosexual themselves (or, at least, to have frequently engaged in homosexuality).”
Indeed, and when you look at the details, it confirms the suggested psychology above. Judeo-Christio-Islamic religion imposes a blanket ban on gay sex, which doesn’t tell you much, but a very common pattern outside such societies, or on their margins, is for it to be fine, even celebrated, or at least winked at, for an adult male to be a “top”, but somewhere between gauche and utterly shameful to be a “bottom”. Thus the bottoms have to be either youths or slaves/servants/lower class.
RK: “By allowing that some anti-SSM arguments might be better than others, you would be opening up to the possibility that some that you haven’t heard might be better yet, and thus that there might even be one that’s convincing.”
Of course some anti-SSM arguments _might_ be better than others, and there _might_ be one around the corner that’s wonderfully convincing. But I can only call it as I see it: I’ve been participating here and on marriagedebate.com and elsewhere since 2003 and it’s my considered opinion that all the arguments I’ve encountered, which you’d think would be pretty much all of them, are uniformly junk. Sorry.
MB: I certainly am. I think the pro-SSM side’s effort to explain why people are being harmed for the lack of SSM are adequate, and I think the anti-SSM side’s efforts to tell a story as to why SSM will lead to disaster are laughable.
Whoa. That is not the “symmetrical” application of burden of proof that we are talking about. A symmetrical application of burden-of-proof applies to the consequences of the proposal for both sides in the future, not just to the current burdens for one and the future consequences for the other side. A symmetrical application would ask the pro-side to argue why the proposed new idea will work, and the anti-side to argue why it will not. Not merely for the pro-side to argue why the status quo is bad. By this token, all we needed to do to justify putting all those chemicals into the air was show that we were suffering badly enough from heat and humidity, that we took too long getting from place to place, and that our lives were miserable in other respects. And if those opposed to the chemicals couldn’t have demonstrated exactly what negative effects they might have, then their concerns would have been seen as laughable also.
What’s more, sorry, but no, the pro-SSM side has not made its case as to why the lack of SSM is so harmful. They have not demonstrated that something like the Salt Lake City proposal, granting them all the benefits, but not calling their unions the exact same thing as marriage, is so terribly harmful to them, other than that it doesn’t make them feel “equal” and hence doesn’t grant them “dignity”. Not good enough. You can’t make two unequal things feel equal just by pretending they are. Even law can’t do that.
MB:Well, how much local testing one does and what precautions one takes depends on what problems are anticipated and how credibly they’re anticipated, as well as the severity of the problems being addressed, and sorry to say, we’re that unimpressed by the quality of the scaremongering that we’re not hanging around waiting for the Netherlands.
Well, what problems were anticipated, and how credibly, regarding all the chemicals we put in the air? Did anyone “credibly” predict the damage to the ozone layer before we started putting them in? I’m sure many found the concerns of opponents “unimpressive” as well. But by your reasoning, we were perfectly justified putting them in anyway.
MB: Yes and no., _Thousands_ of changes were introduced into the environment, in the form of novel chemicals not found in large quantities in nature. Some of them caused non-obvious “complex system” problems, some of them were just plain old obviously noxious from the outset, and some of them didn’t cause problems. If you cherry-pick your example you can make a fine morality play but it doesn’t prove much.
If our coastal cities, and even whole nations, go underwater, and mass disruption due to the climate change occurs, sorry, Mark, but as an analogy that proves enough, and if you don’t see it than all you are doing is advocating playing dice with the future. To say “it might lead to disaster, yes, but it might not” is woefully inadequate. Should we still accept putting any untested (or inadequately tested) chemical into the air on the ground that examples of past environmental damage have just been “cherry-picked”?
MB: Sure, but that’s the point: it isn’t a random aberration that conservatives failed to object to greenhouse gases and are now fighting attempts to address them tooth and nail - conservatism is much more about power than tradition.
I take it you apply this to Edmund Burke and J.F. Stephen, et al, as well.
The character of the current “conservative” political movement is irrelevant to the question of cause-and-effect or other matters whose truth or falsehood are separate questions from the persons making the statements. You continue to make ad hominem arguments. Best way I can put it is, the truth, whatever it is, is separate from the person.
As for the tactic of reducing history to a mere power struggle (which you use throughout your post), I don’t have to remind you, but we’ve already seen, through numerous examples, that when those who define all history as such actually come to power, even in the premise of making things more “egalitarian”, what they in fact wind up doing is anything but. Power just becomes more concentrated than ever before. The “temporary” state of totalitarianism necessary to overthrow the old power structure does not just evaporate away as is promised, because those who had the power before are still (in reality or the imagination) willing to do anything to get it back, and stopping them from doing so requires applying more power.
MB: Err, I get what you’re trying to say but I can’t resist noting that between the conservatives with their heads in the sand and this you picked a spectacularly bad example to illustrate it. There’s a reason it’s called _global_ warming - it’s an intrinsically global problem and one couldn’t have discovered it by a local test because the gases freely mix throughout the whole atmosphere.
Err, that strengthens my point, Mark, not yours. That it would have been extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to test for the effect of the chemicals only shows the case for erring on the side against such massive changes, especially when they are untestable.
MB: Certainly, if a policy is so bad that it leads to the complete collapse of an isolated society, then it will not be continued - there will be no one to continue it. In fact, in Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, he shows that this is not uncommon, and while ecological stress is usually the primary cause, a common contributor is an elite that is insulated from the worst effects of the problems and so resists change until it is too late.
Okay, so when ecological stress occurs, a change is necessary to adapt to it.
Problem is, what guarantees that if a change is made, it will be the right change and not the wrong one?
See the problem with this? This is why I have to agree with Stove that compared to other disciplines, sociology is indeed a “festering slum” (though I would not go so far as to say any rank amateur would make it better…things can always get worse). How an entire discipline can elevate to one of its central tenets that “societies collapse because they don’t change”, while not stressing the at least equal likelihood that they will collapse if they decide on the wrong change, can only be explained by a pervasing, ingrained progressivist bias. The flaw is so obvious that a ten-year-old should be able to spot it. If mankind’s foolishness is enough to prevent them from changing when they need to, how is it simultaneously not enough to prevent them from deciding on the wrong new idea?
Now Jared Diamond is a fine author and I enjoy reading many of his books, but he is vulnerable to the same analytical problem, the progressivist bias. For every example of a society that made a successful adaptation to new ecological (or other) pressures, or every one that failed because it refused to change, how many others were there that failed because they made a change that did not work out? It’s given short thrift, way too short. And it’s a major problem in sociology and anthropology as a whole.
MB: Well, the powerful were the men, and it’s not so much that they had a vested interest in keeping marriage male-female, it’s that they had a vested interested in keeping it patriarchal, with the power and prestige of the male much greater than that of the female, and that ends up producing contempt/hatred for gay men who blur the roles to some extent.
You’ll need to work on that a lot more. One wonders why we don’t see neutered marriage more in hunter-gatherer societies, as they are (supposedly) so much closer to our natural egalitarian state that existed before the unnatural influence of power entered and corrupted everything.
MB:Sure, let’s review it in 30 years.
I’ll agree on that, but you can’t deny that if its results then turn out to be negative, the fewer places that jumped on the bandwagon in the intervening 30 years, the better.
MB: Of course some anti-SSM arguments _might_ be better than others, and there _might_ be one around the corner that’s wonderfully convincing. But I can only call it as I see it: I’ve been participating here and on marriagedebate.com and elsewhere since 2003 and it’s my considered opinion that all the arguments I’ve encountered, which you’d think would be pretty much all of them, are uniformly junk. Sorry.
Sorry, Mark. I believe it’s your opinion, but not your “considered” opinion. The pretzel logic you go into to refute them (i.e. that the untestability, before the fact, of the consequences of introducing chemicals into the atmosphere worldwide undermines the argument against making untested changes) indicates otherwise. It’s a take-no-prisonals refusal to consider them, nothing less.
You may have seen this before, Mark, but if not:
http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005244.html
True, she’s not even saying she’s against SSM, but her points are still worthy of consideration. Whether you think so or not (and no, I’m not expecting conversion by any means) will tell me something about whether your opinion is “considered” or just stubbornness.
RK: “A symmetrical application of burden-of-proof applies to the consequences of the proposal for both sides in the future, not just to the current burdens for one and the future consequences for the other side. A symmetrical application would ask the pro-side to argue why the proposed new idea will work, and the anti-side to argue why it will not.”
Quite so, it’s just not a very symmetrical situation: the suggested mechanism of the fix is so direct and so obviously likely to succeed (marriage already solves the same problems for opposite-sex couples) that I don’t apologize for glossing over it as obvious, whereas the suggested mechanism of the claimed knock-on problems is, to be charitable, very indirect.
RK: “What’s more, sorry, but no, the pro-SSM side has not made its case as to why the lack of SSM is so harmful. They have not demonstrated that something like the Salt Lake City proposal, granting them all the benefits, but not calling their unions the exact same thing as marriage, [...]”
Which SLC proposal do you mean? You appear to be describing something that would typically be called a civil union, but the SLC scheme that David has mentioned ( http://www.gaysdefendmarriage.com/2009/01/21/salt-lake-city-solution/ ) is a particularly feeble domestic partnership. It needs to be particularly feeble to squeak past Utah’s particularly severe anti-gay marriage amendment, and David and many other conservatives like it precisely because it’s particularly feeble.
RK: “[...] is so terribly harmful to them, other than that it doesn’t make them feel “equal” and hence doesn’t grant them “dignity”. Not good enough. You can’t make two unequal things feel equal just by pretending they are. Even law can’t do that.”
If that were the source of the indignity, you’d have a point, but it’s not. Realize that to the extent we make that argument, we’re not talking to you, or about anything you have to say. You’re politely making an argument that opposite-sex and same-sex relationships are different and have been treated differently and therefore, on general principles of conservatism, should not lightly be merged. And since you seem like a remarkably smart and honest conservative, I pay you the considerable compliment of taking it at face value. I think it’s as weak as dishwater and it doesn’t convince me in the slightest, but I take it at face value. The trouble is however, that you are the lipstick on the pig. What primarily convinces most of the anti-SSM movement is the superstitious idea that gay sex is an abomination before God, and that if you can’t have gay people locked up and if you can’t stop them getting anti-discrimination protection and if you can’t stop them getting domestic partnerships then maybe you can draw the line at civil unions and still send some sort of message about how evil they are. Even if you think that on balance same- and opposite-sex relationships should be kept separate, I hope that you would agree that the dignity of gay people would be significantly increased if that attitude were authoritatively slapped down, and that whatever else it might do, allowing SSM would have that effect.
RK: “If our coastal cities, and even whole nations, go underwater, and mass disruption due to the climate change occurs, sorry, Mark, but as an analogy that proves enough, and if you don’t see it than all you are doing is advocating playing dice with the future.”
But that’s all you’re doing too. That’s all there is to do. The future is inherently difficult to predict, and all you can do is play the odds as best you can with as much information as you can get. Sure, sometimes you change things and encounter unexpected bad consequences, but there are other mistakes and other potentially catastrophic mistakes. If we’re going to cherry pick, the global warming example is a rather better illustration of _both_ of the main complementary mistakes, leaving major potential gains on the table and not changing and being steamrolled by external change. After all, thousands of years ago when cavemen first realized one could burn fossil fuel, conservatives would have been shivering in a corner, worrying about the sky falling, when in fact it’s possible to burn quite a lot of fossil fuel and have a much better standard of living without perturbing the climate unduly. And then, now that we _are_ approaching a natural limit, conservatives are resorting to complete hackery to dismiss the problem and justify continuing the exponential growth status quo.
RK: “To say “it might lead to disaster, yes, but it might not” is woefully inadequate. Should we still accept putting any untested (or inadequately tested) chemical into the air on the ground that examples of past environmental damage have just been “cherry-picked”?
Tested for what? You have to have some vague idea or you can’t do a test. Sure, you can test whether a chemical is poisonous, but that’s only one of an infinite number of ways that one could imagine a chemical doing harm. Indeed, carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, is barely poisonous to animals (it’s more of an asphyxiant) and in moderation it’s good for plants. For more on why I make an issue of this, see below.
RK: “I take it you apply this to Edmund Burke and J.F. Stephen, et al, as well.”
I don’t know anything about J.F. Stephen. I’d apply it to the conservative bits of Burke, but of course Burke was hardly a consistent conservative.
RK: “The character of the current “conservative” political movement is irrelevant to the question of cause-and-effect or other matters whose truth or falsehood are separate questions from the persons making the statements. You continue to make ad hominem arguments.”
No, between interesting diversions I’m mainly criticizing a very particular argument: the maximally generic conservative argument that we shouldn’t change anything because something might go wrong. I’m saying that while that argument is as vague as that “something” might go wrong, with no credible suggestion as to what the something is or why, you might as well ignore it - it’s not doing anything to meet the conservative side of the burden of proof. It’s unfalsifiable paranoia - no possible test can assuage it, first because it doesn’t imply any tests that ought to be done, and second because any tests that are dreamt up and performed will be dismissed with the fear that something _else_ might go wrong. And I keep coming back to this form of the argument partly because you do and partly because I think that the non-religious anti-SSM arguments are that hopelessly vague and paranoid.
RK: “You’ll need to work on that a lot more. One wonders why we don’t see neutered marriage more in hunter-gatherer societies, as they are (supposedly) so much closer to our natural egalitarian state that existed before the unnatural influence of power entered and corrupted everything.”
I don’t suppose there ever was a natural egalitarian state. That was an old idea made in ignorance of how actual hunter-gatherer societies operate. As I understand it, typically the men hunt and the women gather, and that even though one might expect the women to have considerable power because the gathering provides most of the resources, the greater physical strength of the men seems to carry the day.
RK: “I’ll agree on that, but you can’t deny that if its results then turn out to be negative, the fewer places that jumped on the bandwagon in the intervening 30 years, the better.”
Sure. But like I said, I’m that unimpressed by the arguments that something might. More on your link later.
Mark: …the suggested mechanism of the fix is so direct and so obviously likely to succeed (marriage already solves the same problems for opposite-sex couples) that I don’t apologize for glossing over it as obvious
With the high divorce rate we’ve got, and having seen so many long-term heterosexual couples who have been living together for years split up shortly after getting married ( a factor of social changes which have affected marriage, not marriage itself), I do not find the “fix” so “obviously likely to succeed”, even for gays. I would not be at all surprised if after SSM becomes ingrained, and opposition marginalized, many gays will likewise decide that it was not all it was cracked up to be.
whereas the suggested mechanism of the claimed knock-on problems is, to be charitable, very indirect.
As was the mechanism by which all the chemicals we put in the air resulted in global warming.
The trouble is however, that you are the lipstick on the pig. What primarily convinces most of the anti-SSM movement is the superstitious idea that gay sex is an abomination before God, and that if you can’t have gay people locked up and if you can’t stop them getting anti-discrimination protection and if you can’t stop them getting domestic partnerships then maybe you can draw the line at civil unions and still send some sort of message about how evil they are. Even if you think that on balance same- and opposite-sex relationships should be kept separate, I hope that you would agree that the dignity of gay people would be significantly increased if that attitude were authoritatively slapped down, and that whatever else it might do, allowing SSM would have that effect.
No, Mark, I don’t agree that the dignity of gay people would be significantly increased if “that attitude were authoritatively slapped down”. Gay people would then become the objects of hatred and resentment by many precisely because they would be seen as trying to “authoritatively slap down” the sincere religious beliefs of many other people. Nor do I agree that SSM will have the effect you foresee of significantly increasing the dignity of gay people. In fact, I already see something in young people which I suspect may be an early indication to the contrary. I’m talking about the “oh, that’s so gay” talk (in reference to so many things in life) that you hear out of so many hetero kids who often, when asked about same-sex marriage, say they are all for it. Even among liberal adults who support SSM, I often find them even more likely today to stereotype gays according to behavior or other things, or to state how they feel that it’s “obvious” that someone is gay.
You see, what I think they are trying to do is convince themselves that gays are indeed a separate world that is not going to interfere with theirs. In other words, they are trying to mentally confirm the image of same-sex marriage that its proponents know is necessary in the interim if heteros are to accept it….namely, that marriage will be “equal” de jure, but gays will have their marriages and heteros will have theirs, and they will be two separate kinds of marriages de facto. By telling themselves that it is so obvious that they are not gay, and that their best friends are not gay, and that they can easily tell who is and isn’t gay, they can easier maintain the idea that gays are in a separate world that won’t effect or in any way influence theirs, and thus that SSM won’t hurt them.
Well, the problem becomes when this stereotyping gets out of hand. Thus, a partial list of what I often hear described as “so gay” today, for males:
1. Enjoying opera
2. Enjoying classical music
3. Appreciating painting, or sculpture, or architecture
4. Knowing much of anything about the above
5. Watching Lifetime movies
6. Watching soap operas
7. Listening to or enjoying disco music
8. Complimenting a woman on her dress/clothes, rather than just on her body
9. Complimenting a woman on her new hairstyle
10. Not making uncouth remarks about a woman’s body, or drooling over one in a porn mag.
11. Appreciating nature
12. Being gentle with animals
13. Being attentive to babies
14. Appreciating literature, or knowing much about it
15. Not being into sports, or not knowing a lot about it
16. Or, if into sports, preferring baseball to football
17. Discussing your deeper feelings
18. Treating women too gently
19. Not pushing quickly for sex in a relationship
20. Discussing your disagreements in a relationship
And the list can go on and on, and a similar list can be made for females, but you get the picture. The more they try to retain the idea that gays are a different world, the more they stereotype, and the more they tell heteros “hey, to prove you’re not gay, don’t do this, don’t enjoy this…”
Does it need to be said that this helps neither heterosexuals nor homosexuals?
But besides all this, the experience with all movements for equality is that no matter how equal the law is, it is never enough to make the groups feel fully equal. It has not been the case with blacks and whites, sadly to say. (Since SSM advocates like to make analogies with Loving, is anybody going to argue that Loving, which I always supported on principle, actually made blacks and whites feel fully equal, or made interracial marriage fully accepted, even to this day?) It has not been the case with women either. What happens is that the less inequality there is, the more the little inequalities that remain become magnified into even greater issues of friction, just as Alexis de Tocqueville noted. And even if the law treats two groups completely equally, the de facto inequalities that remain then become magnified. So on that basis I just do not have your confidence that SSM will be such a big boost, in the long run, to gays’ sense of dignity.
Nor that it will end prejudice against gays. Not to mention the belief among many that homosexuality is immoral. And my question to you, Mark, is this: if SSM does not do enough to eliminate the feeling that homosexuality is immoral, if it does not do enough to end prejudice against gays, and if it does not do enough to raise gays’ sense of dignity, what further would you then intend to do to “authoritatively stamp out” the feeling that it is immoral, or not truly equal to heterosexuality? If necessary I will keep asking this question until I get an answer.
Tested for what? You have to have some vague idea or you can’t do a test. Sure, you can test whether a chemical is poisonous, but that’s only one of an infinite number of ways that one could imagine a chemical doing harm.
It may indeed be hard to test chemicals, perhaps impossible, but that doesn’t make the effect any less disastrous when they are so. In using the example of global warming, I am not arguing that “anything can be tested”. Nor am I arguing that we should not adopt a change when it can be tested. As long as it may take to test SSM, it is likely easier to test than are chemicals in relation to the ozone layer. It just would take a long time to test it. What’s more, testing SSM would require that outside of the test areas, other areas not adopt it until the results of the test were apparent, and you are not willing to accept this, which means you are not willing to test it.
You seem to be saying that we were right to put the chemicals in the air because we had no way to test for their effect on the ozone layer, or on global warming, and that we didn’t even know that might be the effect. I don’t find that very convincing, but I at least find that better than saying that we should just go ahead with a radical change without a test even when we could test it, merely because the test would take too long and you can’t wait. (People suffering from devastating diseases probably feel like this too, but the medical establishment doesn’t just put them on a new medication or treatment without first testing it).
My way of approaching things is, first do no harm. In other words, do not make things worse than they are if you can avoid it. I will usually choose leaving things as is over something which might make things better but may also make things worse. This depends on other factors as well: the radicalism of the change, just how bad the current situation really is (if I find a bomb about to explode and can’t get out or throw it out I will just have to take the chance that the wires I cut may not be the right ones), the likelihood of positive over negative results if that is truly predictable (there we may agree in principle but disagree in this particular case), whether the change has been adopted previously and succeeded, etc. But in general, that is how I would approach changes in environment, ecology, economics, culture, and other complex systems of which we do not know nearly enough how they work. If the analogy of global warming does not adequately demonstrate the dangers of making untested changes to complex systems (whether we can test or not) then I guess. Mark, that we are just going back and forth with each other. You believe we should err on the side of the change and I do not. I don’t think there’s anything more that we can say to one another to convince the other of our positions. We can continue going back or forth, or we can just call it a day, and agree to disagree, and agree not to assume that if either of us does not respond the other one has “stumped” him.
I’m saying that while that argument is as vague as that “something” might go wrong, with no credible suggestion as to what the something is or why, you might as well ignore it
See, the limits of our imagination are not the limits of reality, and that applies to opponents of a change as much as proponents, which is why things might go wrong that even they didn’t imagine.
I don’t suppose there ever was a natural egalitarian state.
I’m glad to hear that, since explaining the change from an egalitarian state to a power/authoritarian state is a lot like explaining culturally how dark suddenly turns to light. As is the reverse—explaining how we are one day just going to change from a power/authoritarian state to an egalitarian one, if you believe that that’s going to happen. Not saying you do, and your statement about wanting to “authoritatively slap down” beliefs you don’t like seems to indicate that you just want the source of power and authority to change from them to you.
RK: “With the high divorce rate we’ve got, and having seen so many long-term heterosexual couples who have been living together for years split up shortly after getting married ( a factor of social changes which have affected marriage, not marriage itself), I do not find the “fix” so “obviously likely to succeed”, even for gays.”
Note that the only problem that I was counting on it to solve is providing a legal framework for a committed relationship, addressing all the issues that commonly come with such a relationship, including tax, inheritance, domestic violence, separation etc.
RK: “As was the mechanism by which all the chemicals we put in the air resulted in global warming.”
Err, no. You may be confusing it with the ozone layer. _That_ was a surprise - in fact the CFCs that caused the problem were chosen precisely because it was expected they would have little effect on ozone compared to alternatives available at the time. On the other hand, the mechanism of global warming (the greenhouse effect) was discovered in 1824, well before it became a problem. There were many uncertainties because of other effects that might have increased or decreased the problem (e.g, absorption of extra CO2 by the oceans, sulphites associated with CO2 from coal etc, etc) but the basic idea that we could easily get to the point of wrecking the climate with exponentially increasing burning of fossil fuels has been obvious for ages.
RK: “Gay people would then become the objects of hatred and resentment by many precisely because they would be seen as trying to “authoritatively slap down” the sincere religious beliefs of many other people.”
I can’t help noticing the strategic vagueness here. Let’s spell out what would actually happen: gay people would become objects of hatred and resentment among many _religious conservatives_ precisely because they would be seen as trying to “authoritatively slap down” the sincere religious beliefs of many _religious conservatives_. Well, duh. Many religious conservatives have a persecution complex - failure to agree with them or to cooperate in beating up on the people they want to beat up on is considered oppression. Why should I pander to this? It’s not as if by attempting appeasement I can buy peace - religious conservatives hate gay people already. Why exactly is my dignity not increased if the authority and power of the state is behind the proposition that religious conservatives are to be prevented from taking out their hate on me in practical ways, like withholding service in public accommodations?
RK: “I don’t find that very convincing, but I at least find that better than saying that we should just go ahead with a radical change without a test even when we could test it, merely because the test would take too long and you can’t wait. ”
“The” test would take too long? What test? You haven’t proposed a test. You’ve proposed letting things play out on a limited scope in the Netherlands and seeing what happens, but without more of a hint as to what would count as success or failure you’ll have to excuse me if I regard that as more of a stalling tactic than a test.
RK: “I’m talking about the “oh, that’s so gay” talk (in reference to so many things in life) that you hear out of so many hetero kids who often, when asked about same-sex marriage, say they are all for it.”
Do they? I know lots of kids say “oh, that’s so gay”, and I know lots of kids are supportive of SSM, but I don’t know that they’re the same kids. On the contrary, I know that serious homophobia is getting to be almost exclusively a religious conservative thing. I expect that _some_ kids who are supportive of gay people in the abstract still use a demeaning idiom rather thoughtlessly, but hey, that’s rather better for my dignity than the situation a generation ago. The news is not that that sort of stereotyping is still around, the news is that it’s a lot less vicious than it used to be.
RK: “It may indeed be hard to test chemicals, perhaps impossible, but that doesn’t make the effect any less disastrous when they are so.”
I don’t suggest that anything makes disasters less disastrous. I suggest that if demands for testing are as paranoid and unfocused as conservative demands commonly are (especially the maximally generic conservative argument I criticized), it doesn’t make disasters less likely.
RK: “I’m glad to hear that, since explaining the change from an egalitarian state to a power/authoritarian state is a lot like explaining culturally how dark suddenly turns to light.”
Note that it’s only gender relationships that I’m saying have probably always been pretty unegalitarian until quite recently. As I think I’ve also said, I think that the agricultural revolution led to a much more authoritarian state in other respects, because farmers are tied to a plot of land and thus sitting ducks for a king to come along with some soldiers and tax them.
RK: “Not saying you do, and your statement about wanting to “authoritatively slap down” beliefs you don’t like seems to indicate that you just want the source of power and authority to change from them to you.”
Yes and no. Obviously “it’s good to be the king”, to quote Mel Brooks. But I’m actually all for fairness, I just don’t think that fairness consists in religious conservatives getting to commit vigilante action against gay people and to act all persecuted if their obsession are not enshrined in law, with no comparable right of retaliation for me.
I’m quite sure you’ve never said a word about what was more or less “acceptable”.
Marital status is a preferential status. This is due to the societal preference for the core meaning of the social institution of marriage.
If you were paying attention to what I actually have said, rather than to the gaycentric voice inside your noggin, you’d have know that by now.
I’ve always suspected that your views were driven by active disapproval of gay sex and gay relationships
I’m driven by favoring marriage and understanding the societal significance of the unity of fatherhood and motherhood.
The gay stuff is irrelevant to marriage.
It is, however, the gay stuff that is central to the identity politics of the pro-SSM campaign and its argumentation. Both the campaign and its arugmentation are profoundly anti-marriage and have proven to be highly corruptive of governance and culture.
(as opposed to just less enthusiastic approval)
Your thought process is absurd.
I’ve been prodding you to see whether it would surface. Here we seem to have a flash of it, but it’s hard to say because you refer me to an answer you’ve never given.
See my first sentence in this comment.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
CO: “Marital status is a preferential status. This is due to the societal preference for the core meaning of the social institution of marriage. [//] If you were paying attention to what I actually have said, rather than to the gaycentric voice inside your noggin, you’d have know that by now.”
But again you evade answering the question. Society could express a preference by applying a carrot to opposite-sex relationships and remaining neutral to same-sex relationships. Opposite-sex relationships would be “rewarded”, and same-sex relationships would be “acceptable”, just not favoured.
Or society could remain neutral to opposite-sex relationships and take a stick to same-sex relationships. Opposite-sex relationships would be merely “expected” and same-sex relationships would be “unacceptable”.
Or society could do a bit of both.
I’ve been trying to find out which of these you think it is but you won’t tell me. I take it as obvious that, historically, as far as opposite-sex vs same-sex is concerned, marriage is _entirely_ about stick. It’s no meaningful reward to straight people, who would be forming opposite-sex couples regardless. And it’s no meaningful reward at all to gay people, who are quite uninterested in forming opposite-sex couples. Yet most of the time you talk as if it were a precious carrot not to be wasted on same-sex relationships. I’m trying to figure out whether you’re so lost in your world of empty slogans that you actually believe such idiocy, or whether it’s a stalking horse for a secret desire to bring back the stick.
Mark: Let’s spell out what would actually happen: gay people would become objects of hatred and resentment among many _religious conservatives_ precisely because they would be seen as trying to “authoritatively slap down” the sincere religious beliefs of many _religious conservatives_. Well, duh.
First of all, the percentage of those who you would call “religious conservatives” is a lot higher than the percentage of gays. So I don’t know how you can not see this as a major problem for you if you in fact increase their resentment of you, and no, I’m not just talking about your making SSM legal, but the added things you will advocate doing to get rid of the belief that it is wrong, which you will feel will continue to oppress you and make you feel unequal.
What is more, no, we are not talking just about the many religious conservatives in this country, but also their families, friends, and neighbors who may not agree with them but respect them as family, friends, and neighbors. Many of these people will see the flagrant contempt directed toward them and react with similar contempt toward you. I know, you can make a similar argument for the friends, families, and neighbors of gays. But, again, the number of religious conservatives is bigger, and so, likely, is their circle of influence.
but without more of a hint as to what would count as success or failure you’ll have to excuse me if I regard that as more of a stalling tactic than a test.
Failure would be anything observed of obvious severe cultural damage which did not occur, or occurred to a measurably lesser extent, in “control” areas (no SSM and far from the influence of the test area), and for which other causes could not account. (i.e. those other causes were present in “controls” but did not produce the damage).
On the contrary, I know that serious homophobia is getting to be almost exclusively a religious conservative thing.
That’s almost laughable, Mark. I suppose you are going to argue that the most severe instances of anti-gay violence are perpetrated by “religious conservatives”. They are usually committed by heterosexual males whose real “religion” is their own sense of machismo. You’ll still have that to deal with, and that won’t be as easy to eradicate because a need to assert one’s sexual identity, and the ways in which the mechanisms to fulfill this need can become distorted, are matters largely unrelated to religion. (This leads to another point, which is my feeling that the question of whether or not same-sex marriage can work culturally is closely related to the question of whether or not a totally gender-free society, that is one in which no gender roles, expectations, or stereotypes develop, can ever really occur. But that is an issue for a later post).
Why exactly is my dignity not increased if the authority and power of the state is behind the proposition that religious conservatives are to be prevented from taking out their hate on me in practical ways, like withholding service in public accommodations?
Ultimately, same reason, Mark. Because it involves something more than just religion. Ask Matthew Shapard, Teena Brandon, or Scott Amedure, just to name a few. All, I take it, killed by others acting in the name of religion. Puh-lease!
I suggest that if demands for testing are as paranoid and unfocused as conservative demands commonly are (especially the maximally generic conservative argument I criticized), it doesn’t make disasters less likely.
It doesn’t if the test did not measure the disastrous effect that actually occurred as a result, though frequently that may be noted regardless. In any case, if you think this is a refutation of the “maximally generic conservative argument” then either you do not understand the argument or your reasoning is totally faulty; it amounts to a retort of “so what if it does”.
Note that it’s only gender relationships that I’m saying have probably always been pretty unegalitarian until quite recently.
With a lot of variation from culture to culture, but even limiting it to gender relationships, this suffers from the same logical problem, the failure to really answer how and why a power state develops from an egalitarian state, and vice versa.We’re as much a product now of our natures, though influenced by our surroundings, as we were then. Those who assert a magical change from darkness to enlightenment, or from power abuse to egalitarianism, vastly overestimate a small number of factors and vastly underestimate or ignore the others.
Regarding global warming, yes, some predicted some aspects of it, but are you saying that if they hadn’t, it would have been less likely to have occurred? Or that even if we had known about the greenhouse effect, it was alright to risk the ozone layer because the damage to that had not been predicted? Or is what you are really saying, that “hey, we do what we do in the name of progress, and we’ll deal with the consequences later.” Okay, I get you.