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Ah, the old 'you must tiptoe around religion' argument. As long as someone can find some way to hide behind religion, everyone has to respect his view no matter how ridiculous.
MLK and Gandhi were able to persuade people that the principles of their own belief system required them to change their specific position on an issue.
The tack taken in the current debate is simply to shout people down as bigots.
The reason for this becomes clear if one reads much left-wing intelligentsia material. Gay marriage in those circles is only secondarily about gay rights. It is primarily a stepping stone in overturning patriarchy, so appealing to patriarchial belief systems is counterproductive.
Ah, the old 'you must tiptoe around religion' argument. As long as someone can find some way to hide behind religion, everyone has to respect his view no matter how ridiculous.
I don't hate what they believe, I hate that they think they can dictate what others should do because of what they believe. Believe anything you want, just don't try and impose it on others.
Plus MLK and Ghandi's approach was about non-violence, not tolerance. They did not tolerate racists, they simply chose not to be violent towards them. Now, show me where exactly did I condone violence in my posts??
Right. Which is why the idea that the state shouldn't be involved in regulating marriage at all is not attractive to either side.
i didn't say you hate what they believe i said you hate them
So its not ok to tiptoe around religion. but it is ok to tiptoe around "gay marriage?"
How is requiring the equal rights demanded by the cons ution tiptoeing around it?
Well that went over your head
Are left-wingers really so doctrinaire and hide-bound? I wonder. This strikes me as a bit ivory tower, and a bit dated.
Who knows? Maybe I am the one who's dated. Maybe I took my finger off the pulse when I dropped out of college.
I think left-wingers have compassion for their gay friends, think of them as equals and, and want them to actually be equal. Outside the academy I see little evidence there is any great public animus against "patriarchal belief systems", unless by patriarchy you mean religion. I don't see any necessary ideological linkage b/w support for gay marriage and feminist doxa, but instead a more general concern for fairness. Giving allegiance to pomo/feminist theory first place puts the cart before the horse IMO. Left-wingers judge first and give reasons later like everybody else.
Last edited by Winehole23; 04-23-2009 at 12:16 PM.
Except I don't. I hate what they are trying to do, there's a difference.
Blow me, bag.
okay but we can't get married so we'll just have to leave it at that
so you like bigots?
They are actually quite strongly linked under current feminist theories. Unlike the "typical" me-first radical theories of first- and second-wave feminism, modern feminist thought favors an approach of intersectionality in which all systems of inequality, power, privilege, and oppression (including among them patriarchy and capitalism) are seen as fundamentally linked in such a way that it is impossible to ever fully address/solve the issues faced by women without also addressing/solving issues of race, class, dis/ability, sexuality, etc.
no, I don't like bigotry... do you?
Hence my qualifier, outside the academy.
Guess I'm out of the academy and out of step.
so do you hate bigots?
not particularly no. I think they are pathetic. I do hate when they act on their bigotry though.
Ah, people are talking past one another again.
In the vast majority of human cultures, there has been an impulse for members of the opposite sex to enter into long-term cohabitation and cooperate in the raising of children they bear. There are exceptions, but these prove the rule.
In the majority of these cultures, technology is limited, and the greater brute strength of the male tends to put him in a position of power.
The means by which the couple makes a living varies. Usually the new wife is added to the husband's family's household; sometimes, vice versa. Sometimes a new family unit is formed, and a deposit is put up front for the support of the new family unit. If the husband's family puts it up; sometimes the wife's family puts it up. Wealthy men might be able to afford more than one spouse; likewise, powerful men might have multiple families offering them daughters to be wives.
These relationships are organic and amorphous at the edges. However, as people submit to government over their lives for the general welfare, this government will have some say about the conduct of these relationships. A man cannot just take a woman and use her without providing for her welfare in a society where women don't have rights for themselves. In a society where clan distinctions matter, an illegitimate child conceived outside the clan may not get full inheritance rights. If there are disputes about dowries or bridewealth or ritual purity or what have you, the people may submit to the judgment of their government in resolving the disputes.
Now let's say these societies lead a Hobbesian existence where rearing a child to adulthood is a challenging effort that fails as often as it succeeds. I would expect in such societies there to be a fair amount of interest in involving the government, so far as it exists in its embryonic form, to regulate family affairs in order to ensure that there is enough fruitful progeny to carry on the society, contemporary libertarian arguments notwithstanding.
Now let's take one, rather unremarkable patriarchal Afro-Semitic society in the Levant. It indeed has an ancient law code regulating family affairs. Most men have one wife; a few remarkably wealthy men have several. As these people are conquered by successive cultures, their social mores are changed. As a particularly advanced civilization spreads through Asia, their philosophy and way of life significantly alters this still-cohesive society's way of thinking, such that monogamy is considered normative even for the wealthy.
Another, even more powerful society takes hold of the area. Meanwhile, within this ancient Afro-Semitic society's religion a splinter group emerges that believes God himself took human form, was killed, and then rose from the dead. This splinter group maintains many of the ethical and social norms of the larger group, with key exceptions. After a few centuries, this splinter group has spread to include many people outside the original ethnic community. The ethical and social norms of the original ethnic group take on a dogmatic, religious significance.
The powerful society that conquered the Levant holds a vast empire for centuries. As this empire starts to decline due to decadence and incursion of other tribes, its leader decides that it must shift its political and economic focus further east. He finds a strategic location for a new capital on a natural harbor lying along a narrow strait which made up a fulcrum of trade routes stretching thousands of miles. The emperor's mother, meanwhile, starts following this new religion mentioned above. The area where the new capital is planned to go happens to be a hotbed of this religion. The empire had been persecuting it off and on, but now it gets fully legitimized and gains access to the resources of the empire for its own spread.
The religion explodes in popularity all over the empire, even outside it to the invading tribes which were weakening parts of it. The social and ethical mores of that little Afro-Semitic tribe, modified through its interaction with conquering societies, survive largely intact and are spread over an entire continent.
The descendants of the invading tribes a millenium later are forced by cir stances to take to the seas and end up discovering other lands. This discovery and subsequent exploitation make them vastly more powerful than even that ancient society whose culture still informs their own.
In this period, the religion adopted a millenium earlier still held vast sway, and social and ethical norms inherited from that Levantine society way back when were still matters of religious doctrine. This included views of marriage -- a patriarchal, heterosexual, monogamous relationship held to represent the relationship between God and his people. The government's role could hardly be separated from that of the religious authorities in regulating it.
Some of these descendants end up displacing the native population over a wide swath of one of the discovered continents. Maybe of these people arrived because their ancestors had to flee from persecution, as their views of the prevailing religion differed from those of the religious-political power nexus. They were influenced by changing philosophical views back on the old continent that questioned the role of religion. Ultimately, these people broke free from colonial power and formed a nation where state power and religious power were kept separate. Nevertheless, most of them still followed the religion, and its social and ethical norms regarding marriage were still considered authoritative.
Over time, a lot of people stopped following that religion in anything but a perfunctory sense. Many repudiated it entirely. Its social and ethical norms no longer were considered authoritative for the whole society. Meanwhile, the understanding of marriage changed. No longer were legal family bonds absolutely necessary to keep women and children from abandonment -- women could earn a living in a technological society where brute strength was not the most important skill. The state ins uted social programs where in the event a father left the household, the state could provide for the children though tax revenues, or could compel the father to pay for their provision outside the household. Marriage stopped being an obligation for good social order and began being a contract recognized by the state which accorded certain privileges.
With this new understanding of marriage, people in other kinds of relationships besides that traditionally regarded as marriage began lobbying to receive the same kinds of privileges for their own relationships. The cons ution of their own government called for equal protection under the law, and extended that requirement to all its provincial subsidiaries. These people also sought to take hold of some of the echo of sanc y within the cultural residue of the society's old ideas of marriage in order to counteract the marginalization, ostracism, and persecution they experience because of their preference in sexual relationships.
Meanwhile, others lament the loss of adherence to the old religion and the concomitant drift in social and ethical norms, and seek to use state power to enforce notions which no longer are authoritative within the culture.
Another group is allied with the marginalized people seeking to acquire the same privileges for its own relationships, but this group has a bigger agenda. It sees the old cultural residue of the society as an impediment to its further progress. Marriage cannot be extricated from patriarchal oppression and must eventually be abolished. The culture must shift again so that monogamous, long-term heterosexual relationships are no longer normative. The new ideal would be relationships of indeterminate period between an indeterminate number of parties of indeterminate iden y where all individuals have total freedom to enter and exit as they please. Familial affinity cannot be separated from ethnic preference and must be abolished. The culture must shift again so that people do not feel any extra bond to those of blood relation but choose "families" based solely upon mutual affinity. All relationships must be based solely on feelings of companionship and emotional love. While they recognize this would result in a drastic drop in fertility, they see this as a feature, not a bug, in a world where population will peak at nine billion this century and where the society in which they live consumes a vastly disproportionate amount of resources.
Still others think that the implementation of that last group's agenda will result not in a utopia of freethinking individuals, but rather a total collapse back into a Hobbesian society, because freed from the basic cultural obligations of family, people will revert to radical selfishness until the infrastructures and safety nets brought about by the collaboration of communities past are eroded to destruction.
This process was already well underway before gay liberation. If gay liberation fancies itself the vanguard of the destruction of the social nomos, it really isn't. It's more like the cherry on top of the sundae.
IMO the amoral market (and its tacit, anything goes libertarianism) is the universal solvent of traditional culture, and ideology is just a lagging indicator of the damage done.
No. It is a lot more complicated than just the disease, as such situations usually are.
I hope you will forgive that I don't expound further as this is a sensitive subject.
ed Perez Hilton; biased judge
Bravo Carrie(for speaking your honest opinion; I'm not anti-gay or anything)
I'm a man; would you marry me?
Yes, the process was underway before gay liberation. No, I don't think gay liberation fancies itself as the great promulgator of social antinomianism. I think the people who are ohhhhhh so smart in the academy fancy themselves that. I don't think gay liberation is the cherry on top, either. The heterosexuality and monogamy of traditional marriage in the academic view are inextricable from its patriarchy, so polyamory is next in line. Gay liberation is maybe the colorful sprinkles on top.
I think after the West falls, some future people will come up with another system that fixes the flaws of this one, and have a great run of 300 years before the cracks in their system break it apart too.
At least someone really spoke their mind. That's become less common over time. Yes, the venue was trifling, but it's good to see someone, anyone, dare to do something other than the routine banal regurgitation of what they are expected to say. Sure, her motives may have been less than idealistic. We've become a society ever ready to ferret out cultural heresy and condemn it. Or draw a penis and ejaculate outline on it.
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