The marriage laws in NY state have been opened to include gays, but not polygamists or animals. What is so sacred about monogamy, or humans? If marriage is no longer founded on the absurd dreams that man is the center of the universe in a drama over his soul between God and his woman, then why not be tolerant and allow polygamy as well as bestiality? Who are we to deny the love of a man for his cow? Why not encourage women to love gorillas? You know it's how Dian Fossey really felt. Whether silver backed or lowland mountain gorilla, floral shops will benefit, and there'll be more marriage licenses. If a fork was to marry a spoon, and were supported by a table, there might be a problem with what to buy for a present, but we should not table marriages based only on the difficulty of finding matching drapes.
What about Sasquatches? You know you love them, so why not marry one? A couple of glitches in the DNA got you worried? If you marry one of the same sex, you won't have to worry over offspring.
Now's the time to dismantle not just all marriage laws, but law itself. Why do we even have a legislature. We have baboons of the left and mandrills of the right. Why do we support them?
Why do we even bother with definitions? Why should not six equal three, and the circle be redefined as a square? Such dislocations would break up the monotony of conversation and introduce enchanted exchanges in which whales and sharks could go flipper and fin into a new world of love.
289 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 1 – 200 of 289 Newer› Newest»Nice used to mean stupid.
Human used to mean those of light skin.
Voter used to mean man.
Why!!! If we allow women to vote, then we'll have to allow monkeys to vote!
Just because something meant one thing before doesn't mean that it should be that way forever.
Consenting adults with the ability to make decisions of their own free will is what gay marriage allows.
Since monkeys aren't human, and don't have citizenship, they obviously can't marry.
You have to be a citizen to marry.
You have to be of a certain age (unless your parents consent).
You can't be closely related.
All those things are still true, and always will be.
Just because something Was doesn't mean that it has to Always be.
Look at Monarchy, slavery, and the 8-track.
This really is a pretty offensive thing you're talking about...
I mean, we Defined blacks as 3/5ths of a human before...we should keep doing it because it was done before!
THAT'S the way the world must work! Anything new is wrong and evil and allows for all new things to be true!
Just say you're against gay marriage because you're against gay marriage - this poppycock that you're against gay marriage because you're against bestiality is f'in stupid and quite frankly offensive.
"slippery slope." It's a fallacy. Look into it, don't use it as the basis for your entire worldview.
Heck, even O'Reilly's for the legalization of gay marriage as long as it comes through elected bodies.
I don't understand why you're so anti-family.
Just read the comments-post you made that this was a 'throwback' post... To an older Kirby.
Well, okay, that's weird - but you've also made a similar argument recently, you just didn't make it on the front page and with a picture of a lipsticked monkey.
. . . says the surrealist.
Nussbaum says that disgust should not be an aspect of moral thought. This is ridiculous since obviously it's disgust that makes us turn away from child predators or serial killers. Without disgust, we would have no way to orient our thinking.
You argue that things will always be the same, and that they are always changing. This seems incoherent to me.
Things move ahead via new kinds of disgust.
This is why Christians formed around Christ's ideas in the time of Nero, and still do to this day in places like China and Vietnam and India, where they threaten to displace their brutal others.
Disgust is almost very important.
But if we take it away, what's really wrong with polygamy or with bestiality or with sleeping with one's mother?
Love is all about forgiveness, and tender understanding of others, right?
I think JH has even said that he forgives the pedophiles in his midst. Gorillas in the mist.
I think the left would, in some ways, like to have us get rid of all disgust. That everything would then be just ducky. Total tolerance!
I just followed this out to its logical conclusion. Which is kind of how I used to think. It's insufficient but obviously quite fun to think in this way. As refreshing as an avalanche.
Quoth Brett:
"Gay marriage is sunshine and rainbows!. . .I don't see why you're so anti-family."
Way to be a spin-meister, Brett.
Kirby is pro-family--pro Dad & Mom & Kids (and, one would guess, Grammy and Grampy and Aunts and Uncles and Cousins--but all of these are based around the idea of a man and woman who get married in order to raise a family--you know, the condition that, along with language use, defines a culture).
If other folks want to live together, well, let them--but it's not a "family" nor is it a "marriage."
Changing society in order to be "nice" is, literally, stupid.
I've never heard the nice = stupid connection before. It's probably true, but I wouldn't know. I'm pretty nice in person. I guess I'm stupid. In print, I'm a little meaner. Maybe I'm smarter in print. I do think kindness is a good thing. But we shouldn't be kind to criminals. That only enables them. And I don't think we should get rid of disgust. Disgust can clarify what you feel. If the entire left hasn't tried to get together to build disgust for Sarah Palin, then I have no idea what they're doing. They tried to do the same thing to Reagan, but every time he came out and spoke, people loved him. Palin doesn't quite have that effect, but it's close.
I think it's because they were both good looking.
Romney is good looking, too.
Huckabee isn't good looking, but he is funny and interesting, which is probably even better.
I'm not familiar with some of the newer candidates like Bachmann. I'm hoping that the right will present an entire shooting gallery to the left.
No one needs to go after Obama. He does a good enough job shooting himself in the foot. Crowley-Gates was enough to sink him in my opinion.
Ruben Diaz, the lone Democratic dissenter on the bill, has apparently received many death threats as well as threats from people who have said that they will sexually assault his children for expressing his views. This was in the NY Daily News:
"Diaz said he and his family have received death threats due to his vocal stance on keeping gay marriage unlawful in New York State. They were reported to the FBI and Albany police, he said.
"We are in America; we are supposed to agree to disagree and respect each other's positions," the senator said.
On May 10, tweets by opponents of Diaz's May 15 rally included one in which the sender expressed the desire to sexually assault Diaz's daughter."
Brett,
Re: your first comment....
I agree with you as long as gay marriage is viewed as a privilege of society that society regulates, just as it regulates marriage between close relatives, etc.
In part I can understand Kirby's absurd arguments, but mostly because many gay marriage activists frame their arguments by saying that they should have a "right to marry whomever they want." (at least here in California they do.)
Fine, then I can marry my father.
Honestly I don't care if two men or two women want to tie the knot. But can't we have some discretion in our society anymore? Can't gay couples promote monogamy and decency? Truthfully, I'm getting really tired of gay pride parades that promote all sorts of sexual behaviours that wouldn't be defined as within the usual range....can I say sexual deviancy without being flamed? probably not.
Here in California we now have a state holiday: Harvey Milk Day. And Jerry Brown signed a law in April mandating all schools MUST teach gay history. I'm seriously considering leaving California because of this.
If gays want to marry, fine, but let's have some decency and restraint in public (that goes for straights as well) and stop shoving gay rights down my child's throat in school.
Wendy
"If marriage is no longer founded on the absurd dreams that man is the center of the universe in a drama over his soul between God and his woman, then why not be tolerant and allow polygamy as well as bestiality?"
Actually, that is a little absurd. Man at the center of the universe with woman somwhere external to the center of the universe?
It is a convenient phallacy that we've allowed men to dream up for themselves, for the sake of their egos.
There's nothing God-given about it :P
Also, the only person you ought to be warring with over your soul is Satan, not your poor sweet wife! If my husband said that I was an adversary for his Godly affections, I would take that allusion to mean he's calling me the Devil. Then he might get a slap on the cheek.
I think the issue of polygamy and bestiality are of two separate kinds.
Polygamy = Marriage of one man to more than one woman, human beings of opposite gender, who consent to the arrangement.
Bestiality = Having sex with animals. Animals who cannot legally consent, and are property of human beings under the law.
There's a huge difference between the two. I have less of a problem with polygamy than I do bestiality, for obvious reasons.
Wendy, your remarks are quite amazing to me: the governor signed a law stipulating what history must be taught? I would love to see the exact wording of that? Will it contain disease rates?
Emmy, I was talking about Adam & Eve, the first marriage. Does that make more sense now? The discussion concerning the apple, that is.
What has changed is the idea of what is disgusting...
We're not taking away the idea of disgust.
We are, however, saying that, as a culture, as a society, we don't view gays as disgusting.
Still do so for pedophiles and bestiality etc.
You may personally view gays as disgusting.
But please just go ahead and say it and be obvious...
My personal view is that government shouldn't be involved with marriage - civil unions I suppose for legal and economic reasons and whatnot - but if marriage is a sacred bond between two people and God, I don't want the government involved with that.
So either legalize gay marriage, or change the government's approach entirely. I'm cool with one or the other... The former seems plausible, the latter no.
Go to a church that doesn't perform ceremonies between homosexuals - that's one thing.
When it applies to what the government does, that's something else, and shows that Kirby only believes in his two kingdoms approach when it's convenient.
I never said that gay marriage was sunshine and rainbows - I'm sure it's a lot like normal marriage, in that some of them are stable, supportive relationships and others are hot messes.
And it's not changing culture in order to be 'nice.' It's changing it in order to be practical, pragmatic, and just.
You have a personally defined, narrow, nuclear-family definition of family.
But to legislate your definition into law is unjust.
You may say 'but it IS the definition of family and marriage.'
And then there are households with monogamous gay couples raising children... And what are you going to call that?
It's a family.
YOU might not think so. You might not think, say, that a black man and a white woman is a 'family.'
As you see, it's been defined by generations that blacks are inferior to whites and are made for physical labor in the hot sun (sorry for paraphrasing those dern documents about why the south seceded).
Yes, it's true that family has been defined a certain way for a while in our particular culture (of course, it has not been so across all cultures for all times). What we are saying is that, like many previous definitions, it is an unjust one... Especially as concerns governing bodies inhibiting religious freedom.
Kirby is personally disgusted by gay marriage. I'm personally disgusted by the idea of really huge, unattractive people having sex.
Doesn't mean that the law should be based on my personal disgust. It should be based on community standards (which are shifting beneath your feet, poor backwards folk), and, more importantly, should be based on a salient idea of what is just - That is, there are characteristics of those involved with a union that are based on free will, ability to make decisions, sentience, and the health of such structures.
I understand completely if your personal religious views make it so that gay marriage is not a part of your church...
But don't let the government tell a church that it can't marry two adults of consenting age who have the ability to decide that they want to devote their lives to each other.
You are impinging upon religious freedom and personal freedom, don'tyaknow, without any of the players being in a position of harm or subordination or in a state where they're unable to make decisions for themselves.
try here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/14/politics/main20054063.shtml
Wendy - yes, California is generally pretty insane (I've been here for 8 or 9 months), though it's about equally as insane as Texas, just on the opposite side (you should see the lists of things that get left Out of textbooks because of the Texas legislature being crazy).
Austin itself in Texas is a relatively sane place...there are a few pockets that tilt California-crazy, and a few that tilt wider-Texas crazy, but its center is sane.
Colorado's the only real sane place I've ever been, though they suck at investing money in education.
And hi Emmy! Been a while - you're pointing to the thing that Kirby refuses to acknowledge - that standards are based on the individual's ability to make the decision legally and consent...
Which is simply different than it was in the past - when a little girl would be married to a man against her will. 12, 13 year old girls marrying! Grossssss!!!
We view That as disgusting now, even though it was standard for much of history, and we view gay marriage as not-disgusting.
Why? Because we're respecting free will and requiring that individuals who devote their lives to each other be of age to consent... That is the main characteristic of those who should be allowed to marry...
And I agree with Wendy that hypersexual displays (it is to be expected that when ones sexuality has been defined as deviant one will take ownership of it by being obviously deviant, but that's an immature response) don't help anyone.
mercy mercy mercy mercy
I don't think gay people are disgusting. I do think anal sex is disgusting!
I think spreading diseases is disgusting.
I think bestiality is disgusting.
I think polygamy is a bit trying from the viewpoint of equality. 1 = 1. 1 does not equal 3.
But once you get all these lopsided approaches going, I think anything goes. The only thing that keeps things sensible is the force of tradition. Once you say that tradition is disgusting you're in the realm of endless innovation (which we've been in within the arts for at least two centuries since the Romantics).
I like the OT! But many people think the OT is disgusting.
I mean, God seems a little Disturbed, to put it mildly. Always saying, you have to kill this group. You have to kill that group.
It's disturbing.
It disturbs the peace.
I think forgiveness can be equally disgusting.
There are some things that shouldn't ever be forgiven. 9/11 is unforgivable.
Clinton in the Oval Office: unforgivable.
Clinton with Jennifer Flowers: weird.
Dian Fossey shooting gorilla poachers in Rwanda? Well, the gorillas were more or less her family.
Forgivable.
Weird, but forgivable.
I think it's ok to shoot someone who is directly endangering your family on your turf. Self-defense.
I haven't got a gun, but I would forgive anyone who was defending their children from a direct attack.
JH would like to say something. What is it?
Wendy, thanks for the link! I reviewed it.
I think what Brett is talking about is imposition on textbooks from the creationist viewpoint by Southerners. If they don't put it in as an alternative, Texans won't buy the books, which means they have a disproportionate representation of their viewpoint throughout the nation, since Texas is a huge part of the textbook market. Not sure if any actual laws have been passed forcing people to say stuff they don't believe to be true.
I think each teacher should still be allowed to have their own conscience. Each student should, too.
Otherwise, we are in the neighborhood of having ideas "crammed down our throats" in Wendy's words.
It's difficult to talk about these things. Look at what's happened to Ruben Diaz. He's the recipient of hundreds of death threats, and his daughter has been threatened with rape.
In the OT these incredible differences in opinion generally end in genocide. Here there is a tyranny of the most terror-driven.
I hope Senator Diaz and his family will remain safe. I'm sure the left thinks he deserves to die for his opinions. I don't think he does. At any rate, any extra-legal violence should always be condemned. And we still have the first amendment, at least for now.
And I think the principle of freedom of speech is actually spreading. In Holland that guy Geert Wilders has been allowed to express disgust about Muslims. The expression of disgust is a major element of freedom of expression.
It's tolerance for the sense, "Ive had enough."
People should be able to express this without being killed or threatened with rape.
Bring on the giraffes. I like the nightlife, baby!
Kirby, while I support the traditional Christian idea of marriage (one man-one woman), I recognize the prerogatives of a state to alter that conception for its residents.
That method includes state referenda, as in California. I think on such an issue that should have been the method for proposing an alteration to it in New York state. And after the vote in California (later overturned by one gay judge), the rage and vindictiveness of many gays was seethed out in expressions nothing short of deranged mob actions. And, as Wendy Hoke noted, the demands of gay activists to promote acceptance of homosexuality in the schools is ongoing and not just in California. For the erstwhile "Golden State" (in which, gratias Deo, I no longer live) perhaps some radical activist judge or some hare-brained legislature or governor should just declare the state motto there to be changed from "Eureka" to "Whatever . . ." (ellipses included).
I'll demur on the bestiality issue, but it seems to me if consenting adults are the only qualifying factor for "marriage," then there should be no bar to polygamous, polygynous, group, or incestuous marriages as well. The question of polygamous marriages is not merely hypothetical, especially among Muslims on the dole in Europe, Australia, etc.
Nah, it wasn't about creationism, but about adding a hugely conservative slant to content - including not teaching that Jefferson was one of our intellectual founding fathers, due to his being a deist and not a Christian...etc. They also excised important Hispanic figures from the textbooks.
Stuff like that..
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20100521-Texas-State-Board-of-Education-approves-9206.ece
That's what I was referring to - seems like some of the controversy brought back some of the more egregious omissions (chavez, Jefferson), but still...
If there is no procreative agenda on the table (and many on the left such as Curtis Faville believe there are too many people and we should get rid of as many as possible by any means necessary), then I think anything should go. This means polygamy and bestiality are back on the table.
If we accept anal sex as something the society wants to bless, then we should just bless anything. I think after all that sex with animals might be cleaner than anal sex. Here's Ginsberg describing a night out on the town:
...he fucked me in the ass
till I smelled brown excrement
staining his cock
& tried to get up from bed to go to the toilet a minute
but he held me down & kept pumping at me, serious & said
"No, I don't want to stop I like it dirty like this."
(quoted on p. 54)
Ginsberg's "active sponsorship" of NAMBLA, was another issue, but doesn't strictly pertain to this discussion. Not all gays are members of NAMBLA by any means.
But part of this is what drove me out of the left to find some kind of decency in the right. Wordsworth went to the right after witnessing the horrors of the French Revolution. In the 20s and 30s, there was of course Marianne Moore. Moore was especially shocked by the giddy quality of much of the sexual experimentation.
In the tract of poem above, could it be said that there was even a "relationship" between the autobiographical Ginsberg, and the perpetrator? One of Ginsberg's recommendations to me as his writing student was to write "great big dirty sex poems." Ginsberg for some reason thought the scene he described above should be generally experienced.
Podhoretz (from whom I gleaned the above quote) ends his chapter on Ginsberg with a quote from George Orwell, who also witnessed the sexual experimentalism of the left, and their cheerful comraderie toward criminals. "The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet to be fully alive." (p. 56).
Podhoretz cites Ginsberg's fist-fucking poem "Violent Collaborations," and poems like "Please Master" and "Sphincter" --, which are especially difficult to read, but Ginsberg's poetry, even poems like Howl, are replete with references to his NAMBLA-esque lifestyle and ambition, too.
At any rate, I think if you accept the one, you needn't necessarily accept the other. Please God leave children out of the fray, and keep the gay men off of men under 18 (it used to be 21, I think, and in progressive countries like Holland it's 14).
The whole issue is aggravating I think because there are no clear definitions. There is just disgust and delight. But there are no guidelines beyond that. So I think many people have a hard time thinking about the whole issue. I do, too.
But we ought to hold the line and keep children out of this mess as long as we can. I don't really want my kids to think about sex. It's too gross. Nature is gross. That California is forcing kids into an awareness of this whole mess is frightening, but as long as the left controls the legislatures, it's what they will force on the rest of us. I think there are some people who love what's gross, because it's gross. I often think that about Ginsberg. He was a major poet, but he loved gross stuff.
I just can't understand why they don't go all the way and say, go ahead and marry a monkey. It's all the same because all you need is love. I think this at least is what Ginsberg would have wanted.
There is the problem of consent, I guess, but that didn't matter to Ginsberg on the boy question. Why should it matter on the monkey question?
Usually the Catholics are a little more vocal for standards (they have a much more ethereal sense of what's poetic and beautiful and tend to deny the gross or not talk about it but this also means probably an erroneous view of nature since they don't look the details in the eye as ginsberg did) but this time the Catholic bishop of New York was in Seattle for a meeting of bishops and the vote was sprung on a Friday night and the discussion only lasted thirty minutes before a vote was forced.
Protestants said just about nothing. I think everybody is sick of the death threats and the constant fighting over it. At any rate, it's a civil issue. Cuomo was pretty careful to leave churches out of it. No church leader has to go against their conscience to marry people that aren't regulars in their congregation.
At least yet. Almost all my friends are 100% in favor of this at least those who are secular. My religious friends are just quiet on the topic and want to switch to another topic. I honestly hate the topic, but wanted to bring it up to see what others would think. It seems there is a lot of evolving thought going on.
I try to get my religious friends to read Ginsberg on anal sex, but most of them would prefer to sip lemonade and look into their gardens. It's summer and the cucumber flowers are just beautiful right now. I'll post a picture of them at some point.
Poetry has a lot to do with disgust. Poets should never neglect disgust. Many people think it's about beauty. But truly arresting things also often have a rubbernecking quality. You have to see it. I think Ginsberg depended on this. He knew about it in a way that many religious poets don't.
Religious people these days think everything should be about love and beauty. But the OT is mostly disgust and shock and hatred for what's weird and should be outlawed. It's a big part of our heritage. Ginsberg liked the OT and often cited it.
Oh dear. Am I perverse? I thought Kirby’s original post was hysterically funny, though with a serious underlying theme. But then, I thought Kirby was being funny about his Lyme hysteria, only to find out he wasn’t . . . I think. BUT -- to clarify -- I don’t think there’s anything funny about Lyme’s disease. Onward . . .
Nussbaum is absolutely right. It is a slippery slope to use disgust as a guideline for moral judgment. I am disgusted by snails. Should the French give up escargot? Disgust is subjective. Sometimes I am disgusted by what I read on This Very Blog. Should it be shut down? Does anyone here not –- on occasion –- disgust themselves?
The government does not belong in our bedrooms dictating personal sexual preferences. I believe most reasonable can people see the absurdity in regulating “this position is OK, this one is not,” and any other sexual variations(or deviations)between consenting adults. If you don’t like something, don’t do it! I take the same position about eating zucchini. Work these things out with your partner(s)!
But the issues of consent, pedophilia, age of consent, human sex trafficking, and yes, bestiality, should so obviously be regulated.
Wendy, I wholeheartedly agree with one of your comments, but find others disconcerting. It’s vulgar for anyone –- regardless of gender or sexual orientation -- to flaunt their sexual preferences in public and parade their goodies about for the world to gawk at. Please, some common decency and discretion folks!
But did I correctly understand your intent that gay marriage should be “viewed as a PRIVILEGE [forgive me for shouting, but I don’t know how to put words in italics for emphasis] of society that society regulates, just as it regulates marriage between close relatives, etc.”
That sounds stunningly condescending, and carries the stigma that gay marriage is not on a par with heterosexual marriage. Gays want the exact same marital privileges as straights, and they are willing to assume all of the same legal rights and repercussions. They are not seeking some deformed notion of “privilege”, nor is it their intent to marry their own mothers or fathers, as you suggested when you said “many gay marriage activists frame their arguments by saying that they should have a right to marry whomever they want.” Gays want equality, not marginalization.
When you say gay marriage should be something “society regulates” –oh my – that’s pretty loaded. Which faction of society would that be, and how would this be determined?
I don't know exactly what the law says. I wonder if we shouldn't look that up.
I did go through Brett's supposedly crazy history book, which does include the Beats as a must-be-studied group. Of course the main Beat -- Kerouac -- wasa superconservative who backed McCarthy.
But you wouldn't know that from reading most accounts of him, and those that do touch upon it mock him for it, and attribute it to his alcoholism.
You can't find anything out about it. The letters between he and Ginsberg stop in about 1960 when he turned conservative.
This side of Kerouac is extremely difficult to discover.
It's like a state secret of the left that their hippest guy was a rightie.
As far as Frankie's new post -- which I appreciated -- there is hilarity and seriousness in my arguments, in general. I am laughing up my sleeve as I write, and at the same time I am doing the best I can to think clearly. It's just that thinking for me is always a kind of travesty, because I am aware of how arbitrary every line is, and how every idea is itself more or less arbitrary.
Thinking is a travesty.
But we still have to do it, and have to do it as well as we can. I think we have to try to give an honest account of our thinking, as crazy as much thinking is.
Your notion of escargot and also frogs -- the French are all over that stuff, coating it with all kinds of bizarre sources. The stuff they call cheese just looks like fried mummy with the hair left on.
OMG, as they say. And yet they like it, and I guess it isn't lethal. It's just a bit too ambiguous or amphibious for my taste.
Culinary matters are relatively benign.
Sexual matters are something more in the political realm because diseases can be spread. I think we should return to the days of the Scarlet Letter.
Even that was a weakening of what they were asked to do in Leviticus which was to stone the adulterers.
To death.
If you're going to let the sexually profligate live, and almost everybody now agrees we should, then of course they're going to ask to be normalized, and if they ask long and often enough, they will be sanctioned (I love the ambiguity of that word), and then at that point, the society is well on its way to multiculturalism, which means we are no longer one society but multiple societies, or we will be a society with multiple personality disorder. Which is fine, except that we then have a disorder. This will manifest itself in geography such as the infamous rural urban split, and the north south split, and the university towns which are almost entirely owned by the far left loons, and the military towns which are more in line with what used to be the norms of the 50s.
Disgust is peculiar. Brett and Frankie say they are disgusted by pedophilia and bestiality. But exactly why has not been said. It's assumed to be a universal feature of humanity. And yet, it isnt. There are obviously bestiality persons (do we have a name for this yet, which I assume we mostly think of as a disorder), or for the pedophiles (we do have a name for this one).
But in the 50s homosexuality was presumed to be a disorder. And until 2 years ago it was considered by the vast majority in this state to be wrong. Now suddenly it's above 50% think it's normal. Maybe it was Brokeback Mountain, and maybe the whole problem is some of us don't go to the movies any longer so we didn't get the memo.
I am hoping to catch Cars 2 this summer with the kids.
Somehow I think leaving everything wide open is the answer until we can come up with clear lines.
I used to think that we should leave tradition in place until we could come up with reasons to change it. But now, I think we should let all lines in marriage go to the dogs unless someone can come up with something clear.
The Catholic bishop said it ought to be based on procreation and on raising one's own family. He's getting death threats for this, "naturally."
But I think the Catholics (having left the door open to pedophiles for centuries) are less than moral wizards in most books these days and so probably nobody cares.
Let the zoophiles out of their cages. Let dogs go barking mad. Let all tarnation roam the streets and let the devil take the hindmost.
If God is no longer any kind of part of our moral reasoning, let darkness and madness own the country from horizon to horizon. and let's call it all Love.
Frankie R,
A privilege as opposed to a right, legally speaking.
Society chooses to impose conditions on marriage. No one can marry whomever they please in our society. Hence my comment about marrying my father. Our government says I can't do that.
But our government cannot impose restrictions on "rights." At least their not supposed to. I'm simply trying to make the legal distinction, not a moral, ethical, class or gender distinction. I could be wrong, but I think Kirby was in his comedic way making some distinctions along those lines as well.
I would write more, but the baby is crying. Sorry.
Wendy
Brett,
You wrote:
"Wendy - yes, California is generally pretty insane (I've been here for 8 or 9 months), though it's about equally as insane as Texas, just on the opposite side (you should see the lists of things that get left Out of textbooks because of the Texas legislature being crazy)."
I have a lot of friends in education, in particular AVID. I've heard that there is an entire industry built around changing textbooks to suit Texas.
Will there ever be any such thing as totally objective history?
If history is a question of who is the most adamant, then I think the hardline Muslims will win. They're virtually indomitable. Traditionally the Catholics have been quite adamant in NY state, but in this round they almost vacated. The only strong presence for the right came in the Democratic senator Ruben Diaz. He's a Pentecostal pastor. I know a few Pentecostal Hispanics, I think Puerto Rican. I really enjoy them although obviously my own version of Christianity isn't nearly as well, adamant, as their own.
Somehow I think being adamant is a moral flaw.
And yet, maybe that's what's required. But think too of the Nazis. They were quite adamant, but they were destroyed at Stalingrad -- ground to bits, by an even more adamant Stalin, who last another 15 years.
And then they disappeared.
Stalinists still exist, but they're rare. I don't know of any true Stalinists left in the communist sphere. None at least who would openly say, "I'm a Stalinist."
There have been lots of very adamant gay people -- Ginsberg was one of the most prevalent. There was a rocker named something like Tom Robinson (he could actually rock) who had a hit called Proud to be Gay. He was adamant. I think British.
To be adamant you have to be 100% certain of your moral bearings.
That's a very hard thing to achieve and requires a lot of reflection and prayer and inner resolve. Or else it requires belonging to a cult where no other information gets in.
The Taliban have been rather adamant.
The Khmer Rouge was adamant.
I think if the zoophiles get that kind of adamancy going we're going to be in for some pretty big laughs. I can't wait to see their shows.
Friends.
Office.
Seinfeld.
But done from the Zoophile viewpoint.
Here's a link to the Tom Robinson hit Glad to be Gay. At one point in the song he says it's important to know your date's age, which should be 21. Which he seems to find completely exaspoeratingly irrelevant and a total drag on his time. Can you imagine going out with someone and not even knowing the basic demographic data of ho0w old they are? I guess a lot of people le do hook up now, which is more or less like that, but I find that kind of thing hilarious, and insane.l
By the way, if you want to italicize, you push control and i, and it will put these carrots I think they;'re called. I'm having a very slow time in the comments box and can't be bothered to wait for the thing to type out so I can fix all the typos. But I agree we shouldn't shout here. The comments box is like a kind of library with juice cans and strings attached to people on the different floors who are reading in different sections of the library. I'm up in Beat poetry. Stu is in conic sections. Dim Lamp is in theology. Brett is reading in the scriptorum. Jh is reading in the Catholics section next to JADL, Curtis is reading experimental poetry, Frankie is in psychology, and Wendy is in pediatrics, and Emmy is in history. Ed is outside telling us all to get ouf othe library and get a life by listening to his poetry reading. Some people are missing. Craig, for instance. Maybe he went ot the bathroom.
At any rate, I was googling to find the Tom Robinson hit Glad to be Gay or something I came across instead the old Cars hit I Like the Nightlife, Baby, done by a bunch of kids. I love the way the song descends as the velocity accelerates. The kids are a riot. It cheered me up. They sing well. The Cars are a band again but they stink since they lost their great singer Orr to pancreatic cancer in 1997.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPBJC0tjr4I
Worth a couple of laughs. And very much recalling Eve in the Garden of Eden.
I'd like to propose that what is lacking in the present discussion is a reasonable theory of marriage. So, with typical academic hubris, I'd like to sketch one out.
It is often said that marriage predates both religion and government. I'll disagree, although obviously human sexuality does. It seems to me that the right starting point for thinking about marriage is as a contract, and contracts between individuals are essentially meaningless without a societal context to interpret and enforce them.
JADL takes a very reasonable position when he says "while I support the traditional Christian idea of marriage (one man-one woman), I recognize the prerogatives of a state to alter that conception for its residents." He is distinguishing here between marriage as a religious institutions (specifically a sacrament within the RCC), and marriage as a civil institution. In effect, there are some civil marriages that a religion might not recognize (e.g., civil marriages between homosexuals in some confessions), and some religious marriages that civil society might not recognize (e.g., Mormon fundamentalist polygamous marriages). Indeed, there are religious marriages that some confessions will recognize, but others won't (e.g., a second marriage of a divorced but not annulled Catholic that takes place within a Lutheran church), and even some civil marriages that might be recognized in some jurisdictions but not others (e.g., gay marriages in the unconstitutional DOMA regime -- there is that "minor" problem with the full faith and credit clause that many of the so-called "strict" constitutionalists like to gloss over at this point).
I don't see any particular theoretical problem here, although there is a practical problem that people often have multiple commitments (e.g., I am both a Lutheran, and a citizen of the United States, and therefore I see both conceptions of marriage as having something to say about the relationship between me and my wife). We've reconciled ourselves to these distinctions, and it doesn't seem to me that gay marriage brings any new theoretical challenges.
Indeed, I think a big part of Kirby's fear (and others who opposed gay marriage on religious grounds) is that the civil definition of marriage will trump the religious one. Arguably, this has already happened with the Mormon fundamentalists, which is a precedent worth keeping in mind, since it argues that the state is capable of insisting on restrictions to marriage that essentially criminalize marriages recognized by some religious confessions. But the NY statute (and all gay marriage statues that I'm aware of) do not require religious organizations to solemnize such marriages, any more than the pre-existing statutes require the RCC to solemnize the marriage between two atheists. It seems to me that this is a line worth defending.
So, what are the characteristics of a contract that make it a marriage?
For a religious marriage, there is generally the expectation of both permanence and sexual exclusivity. For a civil marriage, at least as currently conceived, there are shared property rights, implicit rights of attorney (e.g., in making end of life medical decisions for one's partner), etc. In effect, a civil marriage is essentially a peculiar but common kind of corporation. These distinct views come most strongly together when a marriage results in children -- the existence of a marriage creates a presumption rooted in the notion of sexual exclusivity that the male member of a traditional marriage is the father of any children produced by the female member, and the civil notions of property come in to play in establishing the rights and responsibilities the marriage partners have regarding any children conceived by the union.
(1 of 2)
(2 of 2)
So let's consider a few of the questions that have come out of this discussion.
1) What about infidelity?
Essentially all contemporary notions of marriage include fidelity as an explicit marital goal. This is true even of civil marriages in the US. Even if adultery is no longer illegal, it is actionable (cf., "alienation of affection"), and moreover is all but invariably grounds for unilateral marital dissolution by the offended partner(s). Here, I think Kirby is simply wrong-footed. He sees infidelity (correctly) as being a major component of the gay community, and then judges gay marriage (incorrectly) in that light. BIt seems to me that gay marriage comes from a much more conservative/traditional place within the gay community, and the practical effect of his opposition is to drive potential political allies from his camp to mine. Go for it, dude!
2) What about polygamy? polyandry?
This is a great question. Let me suggest that for most of us, the marital relationship is explicitly closed, i.e., it does not admit the later addition of new partners. "Cleave only unto him/her." But what about contracts that are initiated as polygamous or polyandrous? These are prohibited in Christianity, but are at least plausible in a civil context. Why not big love? I don't see a theoretical firewall here. Some polygamous/polyandrous contracts might be initiated as closed contracts (e.g., essentially all real-world polyandrous marriages are closed), while some might be open. I might question the wisdom of a partner who enters into a disadvantaged position in a potentially open marital relationship (especially when closed contracts are also sanctioned), but the plain truth here is that people often enter into unwise contracts, and unwise marriages, and it seems all but impossible to legislate against stupidity.
3) What about bestiality?
This seems like a nonstarter. I'm aware of no religion that supports marriages that involve non-human sexual partners, nor can I see any civil jurisdiction granting power of attorney to a non-human over a human, nor discretionary property rights to a non-human. Nor do I see any great desire on the behalf of those who screw their goats to make such behavior public knowledge.
4) What about incest?
It is civil society, not the Christian religion, that prohibits marriage between cousins in most US jurisdictions, essentially on genetic/eugenic grounds. Likewise, the basic notion of a contract is tied up with the notion of consent, and generally speaking, contracts with minors are unenforceable in our society. Why would marriage be any different?
Why do pedophilia and bestiality disgust me?
Well, on a moral level it has to do with power dynamics in relationships - it's about equality between those involved in terms of sentience, cognizance, citzenness, etc.
I say this over and over again in different ways. Am I being unclear? Or are you purposefully ignoring the clear issue from my angle?
Don't know which...
I find the approach in many old traditional societies wrt marriage - that of 12 year old girls being sold off to sleezy older men for political or economic reasons - to be really disgusting.
Arranged marriage is gross, but there's a reason - because it has to do with the willingness and age of those involved with the marriage.
That is the most important (though not only) factor, imho, with regards to whether or not a marriage is legitimate.
Kirby - Ginsberg's gross.
That's fine.
There's a lot of gross heterosexual stuff out there, too.
You don't want me to link to it, do you?
In any case, marriage is the exact opposite of the one-night stand that Ginsberg describes.
It is the exact opposite of pedophilia.
You have the choice to offer homosexuals the right to legalize their monogamy, or you can deny them that right and force them into a society where their monogamous relationships are not recognized.
I mean, if you are promoting monogamy, I can't for the life of me see why the latter is preferable to the former.
Equating bestiality with homosexuality, and not seeing the very obvious difference (or not assigning value to the very obvious difference) in terms of consent... Well, that's Your problem. It's also your problem.
If marriage is only about procreation, should the infertile be allowed to marry? The old? That seems like a silly standard.
The standard should be about love between those who are of age and mind to give consent... It should be about those who are of age and willing to sign a contract stating their intent to remain monogamous for life.
(this post I had written before the one I just sent, though I hadn't 'sent it' until just now...)
My mother's brother came to visit for a few days during the summer when I was eight years old. He was an English teacher at a military academy in Indiana. He'd been a church organist for many years. He had perfect pitch and didn't need sheet music. If he'd heard it once he could play it.
During WWII he was in the navy and served as a chaplain's aide on a supply ship that delivered marines to Eniwetok for an amphibious landing. His job was to play the organ at church services on the ship.
We had a house on a beach two hours north of Seattle when my uncle came to visit. He wanted to go to the Seattle World's Fair and he did. He brought one of his former students with him, a fellow named Arthur, who was about twenty or so years old. They slept on a sofa in the living room that folded out into a bed.
I never asked my uncle if he was gay. They didn't have gay back then. All they had was witty and cheerful. He never got married, though in college he'd been quite popular as he was the accompaniast for all of the drama department's musicals, including the Mikado, where my mother sang the role of Katisha.
My uncle bought a carved wooden cane at the World's Fair with a sword blade concealed inside. He wasn't quite forty years old then. He'd just been diagnosed with the early symptoms of multiple sclerosis. He figured he'd need the cane to get around before too much longer. He continued teaching for another ten or twelve years, until it was too much trouble getting in and out of his wheelchair.
He didn't learn to read sheet music until he lost use of his hands. My mother would send him the sheet music for Beethoven's symphonies on his birthdays after he was paralyzed. He liked to read the scores while listening to recordings. When he was my age he'd been dead for two years. He died around the time when people first started hearing about AIDS.
Some good responses here, and I hope people read them. "Inequality" is what disgusts Brett about bestiality and arranged marriages in traditional societies. That's a good term, since we've been over it, and all basically agree it's a term that is true and right though sometimes difficult to define.
I wasn't sure what Craig's point was in his anecdote of the gay uncle, but it was an interesting anecdote. He was apparently into sexual tourism and found the Navy a convenient vehicle for this particular trip.
Plus he had a good ear.
Let's go way back up the thread to revisit Wendy's comment about gay pride parades. When you watch those parades you see among other things: bondage and discipline, wild party scenes, lots hip swaggering and simulated sex acts between partners who seem barely acquainted and may not know one another's name, much less a birthday, or what they like for breakfast. These are the activities this community is proud of.
What then, to revisit Stu's notion that bestiality is probably not something a citizen would want publicly recognized, would the gay community not be proud of, and yet which exists? Coprophagia, for example, is what the actor named Divine supposedly died from.
What about "golden showers" where a man pisses in another man's mouth?
Felching is something I'd rather not describe and which may be mythical.
If Brett is right, and to some degree he is, that aspects of the gay community are monogamous (I know two gay women who are), then I see no issues.
What worries me are the insurance issues with the other crowd.
But even that is only the first and relatively least harmful wave. Stu forgets that we're no longer a Christian nation. We've also got Hindoos and Islamics in our midst. Islamics such as OBL's family often have 50 kids or more under one roof. If all those wives and kids are recognized, who's going to pay the insurance costs?
Many of you import fancy large absttractions into my thinking. You must think I'm smart and subtle or something. I'm actually just a catastrophizer along the lines of Cassandra of Troy. I tend to see visions of America burnt to the ground by foreign elements who would do us harm either intentionally as in OBL, or unintentionally, as in all his myriad cousins, who just want to marry umpteen women, have kids, and hold down one government job and then tell us we have to pay insurance for all of them.
If the NY state legislature can't stand up to gay people, who are mostly fairly gentle even when they get irate, I'd like to see what happens when the Islamics demand recognition for multiple marriages. I suspect they'll be holding their ankles faster than OBL (or whoever his current incarnation is) can say Abu Ghraib.
One further point with regard to Stu's post: he mentions that genetic reasons mandate us to steer clear of incestuous relationships, but when there are no children in the offing (as between a gay couple) I think it's probably silly to think about genetics. Genetic problems may come to bear when some are more or less immune to eating the poop of a grandma and either dying from it or thriving (sorry, but if we're going to talk about disgust, I had to give just one example of something I in particular find disgusting, but pardon my lack of tolerance, as I know it disgusts many of you!), but I don't think it would have any impact on the likely offspring (of which there would be none, but I'm sure the geneticists in labs are working on ways in which gay couples can splice this and splice that and have any number of Frankenbabies.
It's all coming down the pike.
But remember, I'm Cassandra-esque. It's just my nature. Don't believe me.
At least in the short term I think I will not lose much in this new crisis. We will see. The estimated price for insurance for the newlyweds is estimated to raise prices about 11%. That's the real cost. Add another 15% for paperwork and other amenities, and this will probably raise prices about another 25% for those who have their own insurance. For government employees it will mean more stress for the system, and more cuts in terms of how many can work within the system. It will not bring the whole system down, at least not immediately. Perhaps eventually we will go to a Chinese system in which only one or two children are allowed, and after that you have to carry your own insurance, in order to pay for the newlyweds who are now entering the system. If the polygamous get to enter, that will hurt the system even more since there is a much smaller payin for a much larger payout.
If the zoophiles get in, then that will be worse because even if the animal isn't covered, there will be more bites and more vectors for disease transfer, especially if the animal spends part of its day wandering in the forest (it's the Sasquatch's nature to do so and I think most of us feel it is wrong to make an animal go against its nature).
Kirby,
I'd like to expand on a point I made in my long comment, but I'm not sure that you got.
There is certainly a subculture within the gay community that is voyeuristic, exhibitionistic, wildly promiscuous, and determined to visually and vocally differentiate itself from straight society in mannerism, dress, etc. Wendy's reaction was very nicely captured in The Onion: Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years, proving perhaps that the Onion deserves that Pulitzer after all.
My point here is to emphasize subculture. When you say, "Let's go way back up the thread to revisit Wendy's comment about gay pride parades... These are the activities this community is proud of." You're making (indeed, insisting on) the classic rhetorical error of ascribing to the whole an attribute of a part. I'd don't believe you can sustain the notion that the gay community writ large is proud of sexual exhibitionism. Indeed, the drive for gay marriage suggests that a large portion of the gay community lives out their sexuality within long-term, monogamous relationships, and is seeking societal recognition and support for these comparatively traditional arrangements.
But even that is only the first and relatively least harmful wave. Stu forgets that we're no longer a Christian nation. We've also got Hindoos and Islamics in our midst. Islamics such as OBL's family often have 50 kids or more under one roof. If all those wives and kids are recognized, who's going to pay the insurance costs?
We've been down this before. Current US law limits marriages to at most two individuals in all jurisdictions AFAIK, and the Mormons have been out there arguing for a different vision for a long time. I don't know why the Muslims would fair any better, given that polygamy isn't all that common in Muslim lands. The business environment has adapted to this environment, and offers products tailored to it. If the distribution of family sizes changes, businesses will adapt.
As an economic thinker, I see the "problem" of large families as being self limiting. Most families in the US struggle to provide meaningful opportunities to 2 or 3 kids. Providing for 50 requires tremendous wealth, very likely something on the order of $750K annual income, which correlates to a net worth of about $19M. The number of individuals with this kind of wealth is small, and the proportion of individuals with this kind of resource who would choose to expend it this way is likely miniscule.
Moreover, the "threat" of polygamy is hardly new. The Mormon church once defined marriage polygamously, and subcultures of it still do. We've had polygamy in this country a long time. Generally speaking, the polygamists have lead separated lives, trying to stay under the radar of the larger culture. In recent times, the larger culture has turned a blind eye toward polygamy, getting involved proactively only when it devolves into sexual trafficing of minors, and passively to assist disadvantaged partners in plural marriages who "want out."
Spitzer was the first to push gay marriage strenuously but after he was discovered with all his liaisons he was sundered from the capital and then it was Paterson who pushed through some kind of deal that said NY state should already legitimate all gay marriages from other states. So it's been in place for a while.
Cuomo in speaking after the sneaky vote (they changed the rules twice in session so that Ruben Diaz couldn't speak against the measure), said it was all about equality.
And how they want fairness.
But not for Diaz.
No one up top has said anything of the death threats against Diaz or the rape threat against his daughter. I assume they approve of any way to get business done, even if it's over dead bodies.
(Diaz said it would only happen over his dead body. I hope this doesn't come to pass.)
as for the breakdown of lifestyles of the gay community, I know very few gay men and women. I don't know very many people.
In Seattle I knew several gay men who had sex with complete strangers. Some of them are now dead although they'd only be about forty now.
I also knew some who survived that lifestyle. One has lost his mind, apparently, and doesn't recognize anybody or anything any longer and is under constant care.
I also know a few gay women. Most of them are very coupled up and do things like mow the lawn. I think this is largely a question of lifestyle.
I understand that there are hetero people who swing, but I think they all died in the seventies. I didn't know anybody like that, although I read abut them in Johns Irving and Updike.
Corso tried to be like that, but from what I heard he was almost never able to carry through. Girls would throw off their clothes and he'd go to sleep.
From a purely scientific view, deviations from heterosexual interaction are clearly not "natural" from the perspective of reproduction and genetic descent. Nature "stipulates" (I could say God says, but that's just old-fashioned speech) that in order to facilitate reproduction, two sexes are necessary. That's why we have different kinds of sexual equipment, and that's why we're programmed to want to have sex.
But sex, of course, has a recreational component. The same proclivities which facilitate reproduction, urge us to "play" with things. As far as I know, we're the only animals which re-conceptualize the sex act into something other than its original purpose (function).
When men and women settled down, began to live permanently in specific locations, abandoned the tribal society and created what we now think of as "civilization" they realized that the conception and raising of children required a certain setting. Humans are born completely helpless--as are most higher mammals--and require careful handling for several years before they can become full participants in the life of the culture. The nuclear family has been emphatically underwritten in the West for millennia, because it is seen as the primary institution for the breeding and raising of children. No institution is perfect, but marriage is probably the most productive and successful institution in history, bar none.
Deviant sexual "styles" have been around for a very long time, but historically they were always regarded as forms of expedient recreation, not subject to the same considerations of habitation or of raising children. There undoubtedly have been other kinds of "families" throughout history, but the kind of family that has had the most going for it has been heterosexual marriage, in which the issues (children, offspring) are the consequence and intention of the original partners. This is the ideal. Like all ideals, it has its detractors, and there are, as well, exceptions.
Part I
Part II
Homosexuality is an "exception" too, and as such, it must address the fact of its minority status--not just as a departure from the inherently "natural" function of sex for reproduction--but as a recreational pastime whose value and purpose lie outside the realm of any practical application. Before the advent of artificial insemination, couples couldn't conceive children without "other" partners. In Gay-Lesbian relationships, this is no longer true, since the sexual act is no longer necessary for conception.
Gay-Lesbian culture has grown increasingly ambitious with respect to the rights and privileges granted by law and custom--conceived within the framework of a "persecuted minority." But mono-sexuality is in fact a life-style choice, not a characteristic of being. Gays may be born Gay, but this difference is "invisible" except as regards behavior.
Society has every right to dictate the legal terms upon which contractual arrangements may occur between individuals or entities.
My suspicion is that Gay-Lesbians want to build a sub-society of Gay-Lesbian "families" in order to promulgate the legitimacy of their kind. Children raised in mono-sexual households will be brainwashed with the notion that mono-sexuality--which is a small minority of the real population (based on historical estimates) is, in fact, not only "normal" but "preferable." Children tend to a great degree to emulate their "parents." Children raised in mono-sexual households will idolize and cherish mono-sexuality--because that is the dominant archetype to which they are exposed. This will tend to encourage the increase and spread of deviant sexuality, regarded merely as a matter of personal choice, without any reference to the reasons for hetero-sexual dominance.
This is another kind of subversive, divisive and pernicious kind of attempt to chisel away at the idea of hetero-sexual marriage. People will naively say--"you're just being paranoid; Gay marriage is no threat." But they're wrong.
Stu said (re polygamy):
" . . . and the Mormons have been out there arguing for a different vision for a long time."
"The Mormon Church once defined marriage polygamously, and subcultures of it still do."
The Mormon Church gave up polygamy unequivocally a long, long time ago, and the break-off factions are not "subcultures" within the Mormon structure. They are offshoots that have no affiliation whatsoever with what is known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The Mormon Church disavows any connection with them or the beliefs they promote. I have discussed this issue at length with Mormon acquaintances, and they resent the ignorance that lumps them together with -- as one of the put it -- these "off brands."
I’m a bit taken aback by your promoting this nonsense, Stu. Although I did not have a religious upbringing, I’ve studied various religions and have had deep discussions with believers of many different faiths. And one thing I’ve learned from my own interaction with devout Mormons is that they walk the walk, which is a lot more than I can say for a lot of “Christians” I’ve known.
From the perspective of medicine, deviant kinds of sexuality are clearly not recommended. Sexually transmitted diseases are especially problematic among societies in which sexual activity is completely unregulated (within either religious or governmental control). Any time you have unbridled sexual activity--including prostitution, adulterous relationships, and the many perversions which are now common throughout Western society--there will be plagues. AIDS is one such plague, which developed initially through the intense and vast promiscuity of the Gay male populations in Africa, the Caribbean, and North America.
Monosexual culture desires to have sexual deviation placed outside the boundaries of prescriptive ethical and legal spheres. It wants monosexual activity to be "celebrated" and institutionalized within the culture at all levels. It sees all sexual activity as an aspect of "personal choice" first, with the birth and raising of children treated as a secondary matter. It wants deviant sex to be regarded as a legitimate form of personal expression, on a par with heterosexual intercourse, and to be seen by children as nothing more than a casual proclivity, like choosing clothes, or whether to play sports, or taking up smoking, etc. They want children to be encouraged to "experiment" with "difference" without any clear ethical guidelines. "If it feels good, do it."
If we could legitimate monosexual unions without involving child-rearing and parenting, I'd be more inclined to accept it. But monosexuals have no business raising children. It should be against the law, period.
If gay marriage is ok, I think eventually any and every choice should be ok, including zoophilia. No one really cares about the rights of animals. If we're permitted to eat them, we should be permitted to date them. I wouldn't date a porcupine, though.
If recreation is the main thing now, let's recreate, instead of procreate.
Marriage was something quite fragile like the water pipes going into NYC. Now that they've messed with them, I think we should have a deluge of new ideas, new arrangements, and new consortiums. It's only fair.
If equality is the case, even without true similarity, then everybody and anything should be equal. If someone wants to date a porcupine, let them. If people want to have a whole menagerie, let them.
Edward Hicks said he was looking forward to the day when the lion would lie down with the lamb. If that's not procreational but recreational, it should get a green light, and people shouldn't be so darned proscriptive.
Let the good times roll.
I think this will also help the economy because more people will be visiting pet shops looking for cute and curious animals to cuddle up with!
giant sea turtles pose the problem of the shell, but I imagine you could saw the shell off somehow, and still date it.
When you get tired of it, I hear they make excellent soup.
Shades of Jeffrey Dahmer, I suppose, but why not? Turtles aren't human.
And we eat other stuff. The French eat snails and frogs.
What's a turtle or two thrown into the mix?
Here's the Tom Robinson song, which I forgot to post last night (I got going listening to all kinds of New Wave from the period including the Cars which had some wonderful hits like I Like the Nightlife, Baby, and another one with a neat hook entitled She Used to be Mine, or something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7awIacy4uo&feature=related
At any rate, I hope the zoophles will have similar hits in the years to come, and that they too can finally come out of the closet. Once one thing is ok, and it's not about procreation, I think we should be free to mix across species, too.
It's just the logical progression of all our new freedoms since Christ.
Homosexual sex is, in fact, natural - almost every species has members that engage in it, and these numbers go up whenever there's overpopulation occurring.
Good gay parents raise better children than bad straight parents.
And marriage is not necessarily about raising children. Many, many married couples don't raise children.
My grandfather remarried at 80...Should that have been illegal too, since no kids were involved?
You write a lot of words, but aren't actually connecting the dots between allowing 'gay marriage' and 'attack on heterosexual marriage' that you think you are.
You sound very much like you're in the 70s, against the 'brainwashing' that would be the obvious result of letting gay people teach.
Kirby seems intent on being blind to the difference between gay people and cows, so that's disheartening...
I think it should be illegal for those without college education to marry - they get divorced at alarmingly high rates and have children way too young.
Well-educated gay parents raise much better children than uneducated straight parents.
Gay or straight, doesn't matter - education level should be the hurdle to jump in marriage. I mean, since we're being purely pragmatic and not taking human rights into account... (sarcasm should be noted - though I do think it would make more sense to ban the uneducated from marriage than it would to ban gays, if you're going to go that whole social-engineering, rights-denying route).
Frankie,
Interesting reply. Allow me, with respect, to take up my defense.
I believe your reaction to my note depends on stipulating an artificial technical definition inappropriately. When I used the term "Mormon," I meant all of the theological successors of Joseph Smith, Jr., i.e., folks who accept the Book of Mormon as scripture. This obviously includes the LDS, but it also includes other groups, including the Mormon fundamentalists I referred to. Describing the Mormon fundamentalists as a subculture of those who follow Joe Smith and accept the writings he brought forward seems like a reasonable usage, even if the LDS has excommunicated them.
In this, I would draw a parallel with other groups. For example, the RCC considers itself to be the Christian Church, much as the LDS considers itself to be the Mormon Church. But most people would use the term "Christian" to refer to a much broader collection of religions, specifically, any Trinitarian confession. This is a very diverse collection, ranging from Catholic to Pentecostal, and includes your humble servant a Lutheran, but it does exclude Muslims, Mormons, and Unitarians, all of whom deny the Jesus Christ as a person of God. (And yes, I'm aware that the LDS views itself as a Christian church, but it fails the fundamental litmus test of Trinitarianism.) As another example, Islam has many branches, each of which considers itself to be the one true branch, yet most of us are comfortable speaking of Islam as a family of religions which consists of those that recognize the Koran as scripture, confess Allah as God and Mohammad as his last and greatest prophet, and not just as a reference to the Sunni.
The Mormon Church gave up polygamy unequivocally a long, long time ago.
This is true enough for the LDS, but even in that case, it glosses over the fact that the LDS founders had polygamous marriages (e.g., Wikipedia attributes 28 wives to Joseph Smith, Jr., and 55 to Brigham Young, and it estimates that 20-25% of all Mormon marriages in the 1850s were plural, which is roughly 4x the contemporary Islamic rate). This history raises reasonable questions as to what the LDS stance towards polygamy might be in a civil environment that permitted polygamy. I suspect, and I say this with both an understanding of human nature and a considerable degree of sadness over our shared folly, that they'd divide over the question.
And one thing I’ve learned from my own interaction with devout Mormons is that they walk the walk, which is a lot more than I can say for a lot of “Christians” I’ve known.
Sure. But I think it's safe to say that the devout adherents of any religion walk their walk more than the typical adherents of any other religion.
Please note that my intent was not to slam the Mormons, nor to dispense nonsense. but instead to point out that polygamy in the US is both a historical and contemporary reality, and there's no need to appeal to Islam as an invasive cultural boogieman in this context.
Kirby,
If gay marriage is ok, I think eventually any and every choice should be ok, including zoophilia.
Color me skeptical.
The "big love" people have something of a case, and this includes both polygamous marriages (closed and open) and the even more freewheeling Oneida-like communes. But I'm cordially doubtful that they'd prevail in the civil arena, and even more doubtful if they did that this would be a common arrangement. Yes, people like sex. But they also like security. Monogamous marriages provide far more security than plural/community marriages, and it's far from clear that plural marriages would be all that common in an environment that provided for closed, monogamous marriages. [Oddly enough, and I know that this will scratch one of your itches, I remember an episode of "Petticoat Junction" that turned on exactly this point.]
But once you get down to zoophilia, I don't see much of a case. Yeah, I don't doubt that there are folks who'd love to introduce themselves as Mr. and Goat Jones, or Horse and Mrs. Smith, but individual desire and political reality remain distinct, otherwise, we'd all be subjects of Queen Palin.
No one really cares about the rights of animals.
Peta.org.
giant sea turtles pose the problem of the shell, but I imagine you could saw the shell off somehow, and still date it.
...
When you get tired of it, I hear they make excellent soup.
I've had turtle soup. Not as good as conch, but close, and way better than alligator, especially with a splash of brandy. Clue: there are worthy culinary experiences beyond Chef Boyardee.
Brett:
Rape and murder are also natural--should we legalize them as well?
The question of animal divorce should not be sniffed at. If animals can marry, should they be able to divorce? If a lion marries a hippo, should they decide that "irreconcilable differences" prevent a true union of souls? I think not. At least if I were the Pope of such unions it would be rare that I would grant a divorce. The animals might yowl and snip at one another, but I think they would work it out, eventually. So, yes to animal marriage. No to animal divorce.
Stu, provide more info on the Petticoat Junction saga. I'm moving kinda slow like Uncle Joe at the junction, too slow to remember any specific story line that matches this one.
Also, I think GM knocked an ace down the sideline on the question of "naturalness." I'd like to see if Brett can return that anywhere near the court. I think it's a clear point for GM. The ten c's in general go against basic natural desires, do they not, and ask us to use will to keep them in check. Or so I think that would be one way to look at the ten c's.
G.M. - no, not at all, but CF was using 'natural' as some sort of measure for what should be legal.
I don't view things that happen in 'nature,' or things that are 'natural' as a good place to go to for moral guidance.
But he used unnaturalness as an argument against gayness, so I attacked it from that angle.... His was a bad argument twice over.
a) Gayness IS natural.
and
b) What is natural is not necessarily what is good.
So, no, I don't believe that 'it's Natural!' is a substantive argument for allowing gay marriage.
However, it's equally true that 'it's Not Natural' is a bad argument against gay marriage.
The one thing that the truth of the naturalness of gayness does do is that it refutes the 'it's a choice' crock that the right spews.
CF did do some nimble verbal acrobatics to somehow acknowledge that it's natural to be homosexual but that this is separate from behavior...
So the options that I can come up with that you're giving to homosexuals are:
1) To manifest their gayness sexually, but do so only promiscuously or in non-legitimized-relationships.
2) To be celibate and without romantic love.
3) To pretend to be straight.
I just happen to believe that
4) To legitimize their monogamous relationships and promote family values and monogamy for homosexuals...
Is a far, far better choice - for them, and for society.
I guess you could force 2) on them, and have that be somewhat okay - but that would seem to be unhealthy, and also untenable.
It's all a matter of principle - you can concoct this-will-happen scenarios about gays brainwashing all the poor children, but a) that's paranoia...and b) that's a prediction into the future that is neither provable nor assailable.
I bet you 50000000000 dollars that, after gay marriage is legalized in the majority of American states, and then, say, 30 years after that happens, the numbers for percentages of gays will still be less than 20%.
the numbers of gays is quite hard to figure. They claim 10%. The government used to say about 1% claim this on their files. Many men and women in gay relationships could also be straight. Orlovsky for instance in his relationship with Ginsberg claimed that he preferred women, and always had girlfriends on the side. He liked Ginsberg, though, and liked having an apartment to live in (his family was often homeless, otherwise). I know several women who have had many boyfriends who now choose to be gay.
So it can be a choice, but isn't always.
Some claim there's a gene marker. Others claim there isn't.
Some claim it's hatred of the opposite sex parent.
But no one really knows. It's something like IQ. No one knows, and increasingly, there's a sense that no one really wants to know.
If there's a gene, there's fear that abortion will be used against that gene.
Or that some will only accept a baby with the gay gene.
It's one of these hotly contested areas of American life. This weekend there were enormous parades in NYC. The photos are FABULOUS, as they say. Lots of crotch wiggling, and triumphalism.
Spiking the football, as the prez put it.
But no violence that I've heard about: and that's good.
Kirby: Kinsey said 10% had "experiences."
The real number is somewhere around 3% or less.
Of course, this begs the question why are we having this debate over less than 3% of the population. . .
Kirby,
Stu, provide more info on the Petticoat Junction saga.
This is from the deep mental archives. We are, after all, talking about an episode that I saw once, something on the order of 45 years ago.
In a single episode, the eldest daughter dates and becomes engaged to a Arabian prince (who naturally speaks accentless English, and presents as the perfect gentleman). All is well, until he mentions the special advantage that will accrue to her because as his first wife, all succeeding wives will be subordinate to her. She hadn't taken into account the possibility of a plural marriage when she accepted his proposal, and is understandably taken aback. After the usual TV drama, she breaks off the engagement.
The whole episode revolved around that one "cultures in collision" moment.
GM, the short answer is that there are lots more parties in the wings who will see this as an opening. When we look back to pagan Rome and to the reign of the Emperor Nero we can say at the very least that what has come to be accepted as "normal," wasn't normal then. Nero slept with his sister and mother as I recall. Caligula broke in on marriages and demanded first cut with the wife, once even offering first cut to his horse.
People today today to think of these things as abnormal, and as quite bizarre.
But right around the corner is Jeffrey Dahmer.
Most people take their dates out to eat before sleeping with them.
Dahmer slept with them, and then ate them.
Orders can be easily reversed. It's just a question of who's in charge.
when you're out in the woods one of the weird things is you sense the wishes of nature to dethrone you and destroy you. It's not just the grizzly bear, it's the insects, and even the frogs are bleating for your destruction.
Everything is always baying for everything else's blood.
Genocide remains a constant even in the last century we had the Jews, the disappearance of the Armenians in eastern Turkey, and the total destruction of the Christian communities in E. Timor and in parts of the S. Sudan (ongoing in this case). The Assyrian community of Iraq has been quietly erased over the last ten years. They were 1 million strong before Bush went in. Now there are about 200,000 remaining. Many left, but many were also killed.
OBL said he wanted to kill ALL Americans. It was only our military and police that didn't allow this.
The gay community stands always in threat of genocide. In Shakespeare's time it was a capital crime to be gay.
But if you were ever in a predominantly gay classroom at the U. of Washington (as I was on several occasions) you quickly realized that they were thinking of genocide, too. They wanted straights to remain completely silent, and just listen to them, and there was a murderous stare in their eyes if you spoke.
Genocide is always on the table.
And there are lots of frequencies that would like to destroy the Christian frequency entirely and replace it with their own neo-pagan, or neo-Nazi, or Islamic, or whatever, viewpoint.
Percentages change very quickly.
Two years ago we had a 55% to 45% negative rating for gay marriage. That has been reversed.
Very quickly the norm of the heterosexual monogamous marriage can be replaced or even outlawed by new groups, who will in turn ban older arrangements.
Engels and Marx clearly wanted to ban heterosexual monogamous marriage in the Communist Manifesto. They claimed it was a throwback to private property, and they wanted everything to be communal.
In the Reformation there were outbreaks even under the Lutherans in which young women were considered group property and gang-raped by hundreds, just as happens in S. Africa now.
Things are slippery and underneath the supposedly normal surface of life are all kinds of leathery wings waiting for a chance to fly once more and cry the cry of the pteradactyl.
I'm alarmist. Of course. But imagine hundreds of thousands of spiders crawling over the dead bodies of your fellow citizens piled in a heap by the likes of OBL. Don't think he wouldn't have loved that, and that there aren't a huge number of people -- even other Americans -- who wouldn't love that.
Yes, yes, why do we care about the rights of a small minority?
Because we're Americans and believe that even minorities are of value and have God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The real question is why you feel so threatened by such a small minority, when their actions have no bearing on inhibiting Any of your freedoms, no matter the rhetorical ninjitsu you employ... And when you support the principle of monogamy that is legitimized in their relationships by the law being passed.
It's very understandable why homosexuals and those who are on their side care so much...
But why You do? Not a real rational reason for that that I've ever seen...
Brett:
Let me try to summarize my position succinctly, without any of the explanation:
I believe that history shows homosexuality--or what I call "monosexuality" which covers both kinds--has been with us for a very long time. That acknowledgment doesn't translate into "homosexuality" is "normal" or "natural" or "good." There can be deviance which is forever deviance--we can't simply make something (like anal intercourse--which is decidedly UN-natural)--into a "good" thing by simply saying it's so. Calling it a necessity of "love" between "likes" doesn't legimate it.
I believe that minority "deviance" is permissible on moral grounds, assuming that nothing can be done to "rectify" it--taking it as a given.
I believe that frank co-habitation is permissible as long as it doesn't lead to overtly exhibitionistic behavior, and as long as it isn't institutionalized and "celebrated" as a preferred "alternative." Tolerance would dictate safety, privacy, but not other privileges.
I believe in long-term, "permanent" relationships among monosexuals, in the interests of continuity, and preferred healthy life-style. The indulgent, multiple-partnered sexual activity characteristic among monosexuals brings into question the value of presumed "settled" relationships; it's hard to imagine a Gay man going to court to divorce his "spouse" on the grounds of infidelity--since Gays typically have multiple partners even while they're "committed" to long-term partnerships.
I am strongly against monosexual parentage. If we accept that 10% of the population will fall into monosexuality, that isn't--in itself--a recommendation to the other 90% to explore or consider it as a potential "choice." This prohibition would apply regardless of whether you believe homosexuality is a genetic or a nurtured ("seduced") phenomenon.
I do not believe in "celebrating" a form of sexual deviation as if it were a badge of honor or a redemption from some previously sin, or an emancipation from some previous unjust persecution. Celebrating freedom from slavery isn't the same as celebrating that one engages in anal intercourse and likes to dress up as the opposite sex.
We can easily confuse ideas of "freedom" with ideas of the glorification of deviance. I use deviance here in its purely clinical sense--not as a moral injunction.
Just wanted to put in one or two ideas here. Rectal recreation is not necessarily the gay method. I don't think the homosexual women do much with their anuses, but I could be wrong. It's the men. But even the men don't have to. Oral sex exists, and is safer. In ancient Greece, the men did something to the boys called "intercrural" sex -- the boy on the bottom would cross his legs and the area between the thighs was used as a kind of simulated vagina -- as opposed to the rectum, which is now on the receiving end of more action these days. Not sure what the percentages are of gay men who still use the rectum as the site of penetration. If this is the major objection -- and if it's because it mixes blood and feces -- then let's get right at that and say so.
At any rate, I think if that were curtailed we wouldn't have the anus as disease vector that we currently have, and everybody would be a lot happier about another million gay men joining the insurance roll.
The economics of that are what I think is puzzling, but I don't think it was even addressed in the legislative session last week. The right was not permitted to speak in the assembly. They ennacted new rules which disallowed discussion of the legislation by Ruben Diaz, the one fellow who was likely to speak against the new ruling.
He was silenced.
And the Bishop of NY was also silenced, since he was in Seattle when they sprang the vote.
3% of people doing something quite dangerous can cause rolling blackouts in economic terms if there are suddenly another million young men in emergency rooms.
The Democrats just think about the votes they will get -- never about the effect of their policies on the whole system. then they legitimate it with moral cover stories. But it's really about the votes they wish to shore up.
Brett:
I bet you 50000000000 dollars that, if monosexual marriage is legalized in the U.S.--or anywhere for that matter--literally millions of kids raised in such "family households" will mentally disturbed, sexually confused, and angry.
"Where did 'Dad' go?"
"Oh, he went down to the Pick-Up Tavern for some action."
"Who's going to cook dinner?"
"Hell if I know."
"Where's 'Mom'"?
"Oh, 'He's' at the doctor's--his anal fistula is acting up again."
"I guess we're on our own...."
"Yeah. Hey, wanna get that porn video and mess around?"'
"Cool. Let's go for it!"
Kirb:
"The Democrats just think about the votes they will get -- never about the effect of their policies on the whole system. then they legitimate it with moral cover stories. But it's really about the votes they wish to shore up."
I think BOTH parties have been courting the Hispanic vote--trying to curry favor among illegals--whom they expect to be game-changers in elections. "Vote for me and you don't have to be deported." "Vote for me and you'll get amnesty."
Talk about immoral!
Brett--I care because people are up in arms about the whole damned thing.
I *don't* care what folks do behind closed doors--I *do* care what folks shout in the streets.
It would be better if people just shut the hell up about it--but they won't; ergo solid decisions have to be made--it was a fine grey area until Milk & Bryant stirred things up on both sides--now that we've been unable to deal with that for 40 years we've some work to do.
I would rather the private be that way.
this whole homosex thing is a result of the birth control pill
if more women would simply consent to being mothers and objects of desire for more men then we'd get it right as for now
i think they're barking up the wrong tree
i think they're trying to put squares into round holes
i think they are on a holding pattern of defiance
i think god is very disappointed
i want nothing to do with any of this
i am disgusted
i did not bargain for this sort of world and i will not condone any of it i'm sorry it just ain't gonna happen
i refuse to define people by their deviant proclivities other than to say they are sinners
as am i
the arrangement the words it's all wrong
stop i want to get off
it would seem to me then if we're going to take the species argument and evolutionary biology then any sex will be OK i mean monkeys screw their children
dogs screw peoples' legs
i m with kirby on this one
let's just throw all moral constraint out the window
outdated laws which do not serve anyone anymore
we've evolved beyond the importance of jesus christ
it's one thing to be puritan
it's another to be beholden to
corpus christi
and let's have more and more weddings o and more dress stylists
o yea
this is getting so exciting now
oo ooo oooooo
fabric dress
anorexic models
androgenous style gurus
sickness on mainstreet
i gag
i think this is what is driving all this
the wedding industry is suffering they have had to come up with more ideas so....?
marriage was never sacred anyway
it was only the catholics who thought that...to hell with them
pervs all of them anyway
i guess for some
any oriphiss will do
just because it appears natural doesn't make it natural law
more fecundity
less aimless phuqqing
that's the world i bought into
i'm not putting up with any of the
rest
if chastity is not the standard
i'm not playing
everyone must be chaste
o lord
but not just yet
no
right away
and i want the word back
i will never associate the word
gay
with
deviant sex
give it back
now!
romper room redefined
children phuqqing children
i pray
to the immaculate conception
it's our only hope
welcome to america
where it's always meant
you just might get phuqqd in the ass
i think the girls have decided they don't want to be fecund anymore and so the men are deciding they will phuq anything
the girls have changed the equation
the men are so flustered
so humpty dumpty
we are born between piss and shit
but let's be honest about the "between"
give a dog a bone
nice to read some girls chiming in here
only the catholic church has the answer and now we're closing the doors on everyone
if you want the answers from now on you're going to have to pay the price
read elizabeth anscombe
new york should abdicate statehood
or secede
the only reason we are here is to make an effort to sanctify life
and that don't mean just make it OK for everyone to have the sex they want
homosex
is little but
buggery and denigration
i will weep
the altar was weeping
now it is groaning in
incosolable tirades of waves of tears
a curse on anyone who
efficiates at one of these
unions
this is all a natural development of the protestant reformation
i blame the protestant and the humanists and the girls
jh
freud sniggering jerking off in the grave
I was wondering when JH would weigh in! Wow! Talk about a subcultural viewpoint! I love it!
Curtis, if your arguments weren't based solely on stereotype and continuing your false claim that it's 'Un-Natural,' (again, a doubley-wrong argument as stated before...and it's weird that you say it's natural, then you say it's Un-Natural...), your arguments might have more teeth.
Kirby, if it's anal sex that's the problem, you have to also worry about it among the heterosexual population.
"
"Where did 'Dad' go?"
"Oh, he went down to the Pick-Up Tavern for some action."
"Who's going to cook dinner?"
"Hell if I know."
"Where's 'Mom'"?
"Oh, 'He's' at the doctor's--his anal fistula is acting up again."
"I guess we're on our own...."
"Yeah. Hey, wanna get that porn video and mess around?"'
"Cool. Let's go for it!""
Yeeeeeaaaaaa...you know how I know you don't personally know many gay people? Or any stats on how much heteros cheat?
Monogamy is as much a problem among heteros as it is among homos.
Wrt celebration, when a minority is persecuted, they really have no choice but to take ownership of their minorityness and form groups to defend their rights.
If the persecution doesn't happen, then the minorities don't have a reason to 'celebrate' their minority-ness.
So take away the persecution...
Go ahead. do it!
Oh yeah, you don't want to... Because you think that the worst of gay people is the representative of all gay people.
Your hasty generalizations disgust me.
Yes, gay clubs can be gross.
You ever been to a straight club? Just as gross.
You don't want to promote monogamous homosexual relationships, and you base this on a stereotype that homosexuals can't be monogamous.
What a whirly twirl of wrong you are!
Being poor and uneducated are much worse for your children and for marriage than being gay.
So if you want to be social engineers, again, start to outlaw marriage and childrearing amongst the poor and uneducated.
They's far more likely to create disorder and havoc in a society. Give me the gentrifying effect of the well-read, intelligent, stylish gays any day...
So you're against gay marriage (because you believe that all gays are sluts) and you are against gay childrearing (because you believe that all gays are morally depraved and will want to hump their own children). See, again you're double-wrong - what you Think is true is not true (there are plenty of monogamous gay people), and even if it Were true, that still isn't a salient factor (heterosluts are allowed to marry).
When y'all are two steps away from sensibleness, it makes it difficult to process.
In fact, I don't think Tea Party members should be allowed to marry - out there, celebrating their conservativeness....GROSSSSSSS
I am sharing this link to a WSJ editorial obviously published in response to the NY law. If this conversation is still going on in a few days, I will comment more. But I have two funerals to go to this weekend...seriously.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584004576416284144069702.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
I especially want to comment on JH's piece.
Well, I'm glad this won't be the 69th comment! Egads!
I just wanted to note that Brett's logic that if you give a reward to people who are promiscuous by telling them they are now encouraged to be monogamous by virtue of joining a monogamous institution is somewhat odd.
Does anybody find the logic odd?
It's like saying to lifelong Mafia hitmen, we are going to give you Civic Virtue awards. And then thinking that this will make the Mafia hitmen better people.
Now I'm not saying that gay men are hit men (I'm not saying anything about number of deaths caused, etc.). I'm just saying that the logic seems very childlike to imagine that if you call somebody something they will start to be that something.
I find it hilarious.
However, it might work for kindergartners to have high expectations for them, and to tell them that you have high expectations for them.
I just doubt if it would change the actual behavior of adults.
If you say to a whore who's been a whore her whole life, you are now going to marry your next client and live with him the rest of your life and have a deep relationship with him, who knows? Maybe it would work.
It just strikes me as illogical.
Brett is always accusing me of being illogical.
Maybe I am!
But does anybody think that you can make hitmen into good citizens by simply giving them badges of good citizenship?
Dan Savage has been going around saying that you can't ask homosexual men to not be promiscuous. It's just their nature.
I find this whole conversation to be quite fresh in terms of how many directions it's going. I'm especially enjoying JH's intervention. The Catholic ideal is chastity. I love it.
Sex was never supposed to be about sex. Most of us in the fallen world have accepted that it often is that. But it's supposed to be about procreation. According to Auggie Doggie Augustine.
But since '69, it has often been "something else," in the "make love not war" world of the uberliberals.
I read Wendy's link. Thank heavens for the Baptists. They are kind of a last link to intelligent fiery Christianity. I don't know, if I had lived my whole life without sex I would be ok, I think, because so often it brings sorrow, in addition to the beautiful children it brings (I mean heterosexual sex). There is also guilt and confusion and weirdness, but not about the children! The thing that I have really really liked in life though was Christianity. Without the Bible, and the churchgoers, and the beauty of that, life would be beautiful and strange, but it would be like living without the lights on in a dismal world of stinky feet and miasmic nothingness. I admit I don't think of the Episcopalians as a church any longer. Or even the ELCA. I just don't. I think of them as ships that are going under and sinking into ancient seabeds. The Baptists and the Catholics and the remnants of Lutherans that have escaped the clutches of the progressives, however, do strike me as worthwhile.
This isn't to say I think of Brett and Stu or even Curtis as bizarre or indecent or anything. It's just that they find something else worthwhile, and good for them. For me, those things would be hollow. But then there are people who live for all kinds of things. Last night I was in Wal-Mart getting a new microwave oven (the old one started to burn everything) and saw the magazine rack. Cars, professional wrestling, knitting, and gossip journals. There must have been fifty different magazines and I didn't even want to open one of them. But clearly they have buyers, too! The Finns say, There is a passenger for every train.
Many trains, or so it seems to me, have a final destination of hell.
But who am I to judge? It's just a feeling, and feelings can be wrong, can even be VERY wrong!
I don't know that my logic was directly stating what you seem to be saying it was stating, Kirby -
I don't think I directly argued that allowing gays to marry would change their behavior... I don't think their behavior is as Curtis believes it is...If you approach the situation with confirmation bias, of course you will get the sense that all gays are crazy-promiscuous...
Just like if you approach the Tea Party with confirmation bias, it's very easy to get the sense that they're all fat uneducated racists.
They're not, but if you want to believe that, it's very easy to. Just go to the right websites and block out any evidence to the contrary as 'exceptions.'
What I find weird is the pushback against monogamy by the right wrt gays.
You're not Allowed to have family values if you're gay...
You're not Allowed to be in a monogamous, committed relationship that is recognized by the state and society...
If you're a slutty gay and you're going to stay a slutty gay, you shouldn't marry. Same if you're hetero.
Whether or not legalization of marriage will drastically change gays in terms of promiscuity (the ones who are promiscuous now will continue to be...the ones who are monogamous now will continue to be), I just think it's weird that you are Against gay monogamy (and I think it's poppycockparanoia that Curtis is so afraid of some sort of weird brainwashing that happens when intelligent, loving gay parents raise children).
I went to school growing up with a dude who lived with his mother and her 'wife,' though of course you couldn't call it that.
He weren't gay none...
The possibility of cross-species affection is well-documented. People keep dogs, cats, fish, monkeys, some even keep tigers and lions. Consent on the part of the animals can't be established since they can't sign contracts. People have traditionally kept horses. Catherine the Great had sexual relationships with horses. Caligula married his horse.
Once affection is established, I see no reason not to take the relationship to the next level, and either have sex with the animal, or even marry it.
Men give women roses, but what if it's really the roses they love not the man?
Men give women diamonds, but what if they really love the beautiful diamond, and it is the diamond they're marrying, not the man?
We might as well get realistic and see how affection can go anywhere, and if we're going to consecrate one marriage, we might as well consecrate them all. We don't know if there aren't spirits in minerals and trees that are worthy of affection.
Besides, in a materialist universe in which only things count, and spirits are suspect, we must remain objective about the world, esp. in the secular sphere where the communists roam, trying to make everyone the equal of everyone else. Why not go further and make everything equal to everything else?
All borders are bizarre.
Once we establish that people and animals can do anything they like, I think next we should work on the cybernetic context and get the Stepford Wife thing going again. Of course we can also make gay robots, and dog robots, and peacock robots. This in turn should get the whole economy moving again. I think the big O should get behind this and toss in development funds.
subcultural
HMHMNH!
i thought i was being mainstream
what if america morphed into a big ole operation where the samesexcrowd and the women on the pill ran everything children running normal vaginally inclined free men hanging out at bars taking up smoking again fishing is big nice to have a tractor to ride on maybe woodworking would make its way back into t he activities of men men hanging around being somewhat idle but in a very innocuous sense
as i type i realize that probably 90% of the houses in america are empty people are out driving around or enslaved to jobs they cannot leave and i'me sitting in a pool in the high sierras contemplating the exigencies of this amuhrikhun life
cool spring water in the mountains
nothing like it
i think i'll be a trout
bleup bleup
snacksplash
we been forced to believe that expending extraordinary amounts of energy and time and movement to feeding the economy is virtuous
the monster has nice teeth
he must see a dental hygenist
this is a weird discussion i don't want to talk about any of this sex stuff anymore
it's icky
i cannot believe for an instant that because we have a more open society and presumably know more and can say more about sex than our parents did that we actually handle it better or make more sense
it is all spinning in a nauseating cortex of coriolis whaaaah whaaaah cough cough cough
sorry
time to go pray
help m
mister wizard
jh
Brett: You misinterpret--is it deliberate?
Do you examine your positions, or just argue from presumptions?
Stereotypical thinking is exactly what the advocates of Gay rights and privileges engage in. All Gays are "sweet" and "lovable" and just like everyone else! Duh!
One thing is perfectly clear. Sexual reproduction is THE function of our sexual difference. What we may do with our bodies is a personal matter, but there ARE limits, embodied in custom and law and practice. "Consenting adults" may engage in any lawful interaction, as long as they accept the risks inherent in that activity. But even here, there are limits. We can "use" our bodies in other ways--as for recreational sex--but I don't see that "alternative" use as the basis for an alternative identity, an alternative legal category, or as a basis for other kinds of familial units.
Gays want to use deviant alternative recreational sex as a marker for social categorization, for legal set-asides that entitle them to privileges historically preserved for the nuclear family.
When a man and woman enter into the pact of matrimony, their commitment is to devote their lives to each other's welfare, and to create a setting for the conception and raising of their own children. That's the ideal template of marriage. Couples who can't conceive, or are too old to conceive children, may adopt. Heterosexual couples who do not wish to raise children, or can't, or simply don't, preserve the structure of the archetypical couple. Their sex is "normal" and within the natural paradigm of one man, one woman. Since Gays can't conceive through their sexual interaction, their tendency is to think of all sex as recreation, to regard their sexual organs as playthings, because there are no consequences. This trivializes the sex act, and subtracts from sex as the deeply profound and potentially consequential occasion that it is. Nature "wants" us to reproduce, and that burden, that risk, governs our sexual behavior. To pretend that our sexual organs are mere the means to our individual pleasure is to degrade all sex, and to neutralize the powerful bond that links men and women to their own past, present, and future--the future of the race of man.
Most people in Western countries clearly prefer this model.
End Part I
Part II
You argue, as most detractors do, that traditional marriage has faults, that there is a high divorce rate, that there are children born out of wedlock, and that many heterosexuals are poor, or neglectful parents. All that is true. But this is arguing from a negative. The nuclear family is the most productive, and ideal setting for the raising of children, despite whatever failures it has suffered. A failure to resist cocaine, isn't an argument in favor of heroin use. We don't judge our institutions by their failures, but by their successes.
Is it possible for two women to raise children? Of course. Is it possible for two men to raise children--less so, I would think. But these aren't the ideal cases. Militant monosexuals want to "make a statement" against the hetero hegemony, and raise children in an atmosphere of hatred, suspicion, and prejudice. Their children are conflicted, not having a "normal" family. Such children crave normality, and have nowhere to turn. "I have two moms, who make Lesbian love in tirhe bedroom." How weird is that for a boy growing up?
And yet I have nothing against recreational sex, as long as it is performed by consenting adults, in privacy, is not "enterprised" through prostitution and sexual slavery, and doesn't form the basis for "family units." I am in favor of civil unions, as long as that permission includes a prohibition against Gay child-rearing. But marriage, sanctified by the moral blessing of church and state, must be reserved for heterosexual couples.
Kirby:
You say:
"Sex was never supposed to be about sex. Most of us in the fallen world have accepted that it often is that. But it's supposed to be about procreation. "
The point about deviant sex is that since it has no consequences, it tends to be practiced as a recreation--something we do with our bodies (or minds) as play. But sex isn't play. In its natural, original form, it's a divine (I mean this only in its quasi-religious sense) interaction meant to glorify our commitment to the continuation of our species. Creation is--should be regarded as--a holy act. Conceiving children within the sanctity of marriage bond respects our bodies, and the children who are the deliberate issue of that power. Ultimately, what we want is to raise heterosexual union to the level of a divine event.
Practicing sex only as a personal expression of lust, or of "sharing" with another human being, is second-rate sex; and at its worst, is a demeaning act, fraught with transgressive implication, and a trivialization of our value as transmitters of life and meaning. Non-traditional sexual practices are ultimately a diversion from the business of life. Our bodies are not playthings; their "purpose" (if they may be said to have such ulterior meaning), is to reproduce, to prosper, thrive, and strive for higher orders of perfected existence.
We're not animals, wiggling about smelling butts and mounting each other casually in full view in the park. People who want that kind of sex aren't fully human.
The ultimate sad pathetic thing is to hear Gay people talk about longing to have "families"--to bear children and preserve their "legacy" in the future.
But Gay families are a perversion. Gays have been seduced or diverted into an impotent sexual proclivity which doesn't produce off-spring, so they envy that power, and want a counterfeit version instead. They want to have their own kind of impotent, recreational sex, but they also want the fruits of natural sex.
Why should those who have voluntarily relinquished the responsibility and purpose of normal sex, get to mimic the traditional nuclear family, with its proscriptions and duties and privileges? And why should innocent children bear the brunt of this jealous coveting of genuine family life?
I loved reading Curtis' three posts, as well as that of JH. JH, it may interest you to know that the controversy is driving a lot of Protestants back into the Catholic fold. Fox News posted this today:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/07/01/episcopal-church-in-maryland-converts-to-catholicism/?test=latestnews
What Curtis wrote is very similar to the notions of Natural Law which have been more or less coming down the pike. You can break Natural Law or encourage other people to go to hell by enabling them, but ultimately it will bother your conscience and you won't sleep at night.
Curtis came very close to endorsing the church and holiness in his last posts. Unless you want absolute anarchy, you have to move toward an understanding of Natural Law, something that's been missing in the left since 1969.
The Democrats are now a party of enablers.
The Republicans are the party of love, although it's tough love.
Tough love is the real love. The other kind just encourages chaos.
I think we'll continue to see more stories about people seeking out more conservative churches, including the Catholics.
In a big town near here named Cobleskill they have a giant Lutheran church. The church body split over the gay ordination issue, but the conservatives lost by one or two votes. Most of the members of the congregation left, and now it's just 20 or 30 people who show up every week whereas it used to be hundreds.
Where did the others go? They're meeting in a Holiday Inn.
at any rate, I thought JH would be interested in the Fox News bit.
as for Curtis' three posts, I thought they were the most eloquent posts he's ever written. I knew that underneath his writing there was a floor of fire, but I had never seen it before. thanks much.
Much as we disagree about most political issues, I'd agree that CF's postings on this issue have been exemplary. JH has also outdone himself.
At the time the Defense of Marriage Act was an issue in the 1990s, I wondered whether the state really should have a role in defining marriage at all.
"All Gays are "sweet" and "lovable" and just like everyone else! Duh! "
Where did I ever argue this in any way whatsoever?
I don't really think of people generally as sweet and lovable... Look at divorce and infidelity rates generally...Not all that peachy. And have you been to the DMV?
Maybe you're mixing up my posts with Kirbys animal weirdness... Cause puppies ARE cute!!!
You have argued that all gay people are incapable of monogamy, and you gave a very offensive 'example' of how you think gays behave as spouses and parents, and claimed that this was true of the whole.
That's stereotyping... Like, uhhh, by definition. Sooooo...I think it's more about you not understanding what you're saying than about me not understanding what you're saying...
"When a man and woman enter into the pact of matrimony, their commitment is to devote their lives to each other's welfare////, and to create a setting for the conception and raising of their own children."
The first half is true, the second half is not necessarily so... You might think it is, and that's fine, but not according to the law or the wider culture......
"natural paradigm" - See, there's that word - natural - that you keep throwing around. How can you not see that using the supposed 'naturalness' of a cultural quality is a bad argument? GM nailed it on the head... Rape is natural. Murder is natural. Slavery was once seen as 'natural,' so was the oppression of women... You can keep saying this 'natural paradigm' matters, but I'm sorry, unless you like slavery rape and murder - it doesn't... We have to look to higher principles that 'naturalness'.
" Militant monosexuals want to "make a statement" against the hetero hegemony, and raise children in an atmosphere of hatred, suspicion, and prejudice"
Hasty generalization - (I guess using 'militant' as a qualifier somehow makes your statement somewhat closer to true...but it's a weird rhetorical slip on your part)
I'm sure some gay couples do - Most gay couples don't. They want to raise children. So, there's that. If you think all gay people want to raise kids in some sort of angry hateful environment...well there you go, stereotyping away...
Some heterosexual couples want to raise their children in an atmosphere of hate... So the fact that some gay people might do this is not an argument to promoting a barrier to gay marriage. It doesn't wash...
For one, you're (we're) conflating issues - whether gays can marry, and whether gays should be able to raise children. Perhaps the 'ideal' is a man and a woman raising a child... But we can't legislate that only 'ideal' partners should be allowed to marry or raise children.
"Is it possible for two women to raise children? Of course. "
Then why do you want to make it illegal?
"Practicing sex only as a personal expression of lust, or of "sharing" with another human being, is second-rate sex;"
I mean, I guess if you view procreational sex as the only firstrate sex, then that's your viewpoint...However, it's a personal, almost-religious viewpoint that shouldn't be disseminated through the laws of the state, or play into those laws in a direct way... And, again, all of these arguments you make against homosexual arrangements apply to heterosexuals as well.
The comparisons to heterosexuality that people on 'my side' make are because the arguments you're making are oft invalid.
If you say that we shouldn't allow trees because they're green.
And then I point out that grass is also green, and you say you love grass!
And then you say I'm 'arguing from a negative...'
Who's being the illogical one here?
"voluntarily relinquished the responsibility and purpose of normal sex,"
Part 2:
I thought we had come to agree upon the reality that gays are born being attracted to and falling in love with those who are of their same sex... So saying 'voluntarily relinquished the responsibility and purpose of normal sex" doesn't really apply to reality.
"I wondered whether the state really should have a role in defining marriage at all."
I agree with this sentiment - though if you're going to have the gvmt. meddling in marriage, they shouldn't be bigotted and/or 'divine' about it. The gvmt.
I think the thing here is that you have to think of individuals - two lesbian women or gay men - intelligent, monogamous, good at time management, respectful - are not allowed to marry or raise children in Curtis's world. Their kids might get some guff (depending on where they live) - but so do the kids of fat people, or the kids of stupid people, or the kids of poor people. You can't legislate toward the ideal - if you have to recognize that you are dealing with actual individual human beings, as much as you would like to generalize and philosophize about the nature of homosexual lifestyles, you would realize that you're denying good parents the right to raise children and loving spouses the right to their spousal rights...
Why not legislate against fat people marrying and having kids? They're going to die young, they have unnatural appetites, their kids will be made fun of in school and want to have 'normal-sized' parents.
You have to realize that you are keeping good, hardworking, kind people from being committed to each other legally and from raising good, respectful children.
It's easy to deny the rights of a group when you take the worst members of that group and paint the whole with a broad stroke.
Everything you said about non-procreative sex also applies to heterosexuals who use birth control... I think only JH would be consistent on that 'round these parts.
So what I'm getting at is trying to find what the salient difference is, to you, between hetero and mono marriage... You write a lot, but most of your arguments aren't specifically homo-directed, just promiscuity-directed.
"We're not animals, wiggling about smelling butts and mounting each other casually in full view in the park"
Most gay people don't do this. I have seen far more straight people fucking in parks (or at Burning Man) than gay people. Whoopsies!
Look, Curtis - if you want to say that the best way for society to be organized and for people to behave is for wealthy intelligent individuals to be sexually monogamous and not engage in sexual intercourse except with a partner with whom they are going to raise children within the holy bounds of matrimony (of course between a man and a woman), then okay. That's great. But you can't LEGISLATE that environment or that culture. (or to be consistent, you should outlaw promiscuity).
The reason we bring up all of those heterosexual analogs is because the Very Things you attack about homosexual marriage (hastily generalizing the whole way through) are also true in heterosexual relationships.
If you want to outlaw the Very Things, then that's a different story - but I don't think you do.
You want to outlaw relationships that you falsely assume will necessarily lead to those Very Things.
I don't know if people are having sex with robots yet. There was the movie Stepford Wives in which such a sci-fi world was posited. I think people generally found that creepy. Are sex bots on the market? Can you marry one?
Can you leave money to your robot in your will? I think you should be able to do this.
There's a movie called Cherry 2000 in which a young man in LA is having sex with his bot on the kitchen floor when the dishwasher overflows and gets uds in her circuits. The rest of the movie is about how he's trying to replace her chips in a Mad Max type southwest where the parts are kept in warehouses guarded by loonies on bikes with New Age mentality of communist enterprise -- sort of like pirates for Jesus or something. He hires Melanie Griifth as the Mad Max tracker to help him get the chips, and they fight their way through New Age types on bikes ot get the chip. Finally he does get the part and allshe can say in a soothing voice is Can I make you a sandwich? This is what he was dreaming about all along. IT's a neat movie. This is Cherry 2000s face:
http://content7.flixster.com/photo/56/34/96/5634965_tml.jpg
She's a bit like Ginger in Gilligan's Island, except her verbal repertoire is not so extensive. She can ask you if you want another sandwich and how are you doing, in these seeking lovely tones, but the guy is madly in love with her.
Apparently the skin is lifelike. It's disappoint because the guy goes off with Melanie Griffith at the end, with all of her problems. I think the bot looked like the answer. She couldn't leanr anything so the possibility of revolting conclusions from reading communist books wasn't even in her circuitry. Her circuitry was closed.
If we all moved to bots or became bots diseases could be prevented, and the economy would improve since all the machinery would be quite costly to procure. Bots might develop a penchant for animals, as I suppose any hard-wired system can become perverse, which is to say it can err from its original or designed porpoise.
At any rate, I like the tone of the whole discussion. Most of us are straying from our usual positions (although Brett is sticking to his guns, they are getting much stickier than usual!).
Curtis came close to adopting a fundamentalist approach to marriage. This brought he and JADL and me into proximity.
Brett attempts to scatter us again with his latest.
Will it work? Look, listen, learn.
The link to the face didn't show up. Try this link to the trailer. Basically the whole plot turns on the notion of an immediate economic future in which men are trying to find robotic sex toys that match certain scripts. It's quite brilliant fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-wzbjpiNyM
Again, I think that once you allow procreation as recreation, you have to allow for the Cherry 2000.
There are pretty advanced sex dolls out there.... Not quite sex robots yet... And there have been inanimate sex toys for ages... If you mix those with the kind of attachment you can feel to a roomba, you might get something interesting. anyway, yeah, sex dills are and should be legal... The question of marriage would have the same sentience and citizenship problem bestiality does. And I am not trying to scatter... Just trying to expose the unsoundness of curtis's arguments... At least most of them, so we can home in on whatever arguments he puts forth that don't rely on slippery slopes, hasty generalizations, or characteristics that are not salient. There are so many of those that he puts forth that whatever kernel there might be of simple belief or viewpoint gets drowned out by the gobbledygook. I am loOking for organizing principles over and above personal mores masquerading as principle or reason. Most of my posts, it should be noted, are responses to curtis's arguments to expose their myriad holes and fallacies. I believe I have stated my personal positive viewpoint clearly and repeatedly.
Kirby,
The problem is that you don't know how to embed links in HTML. It's really not that hard: the pattern is <a href="url">description</a>.
Cherry2000 image
YouTube: Cherry2000 Trailer
Oh, and about sex robots. Of course they exist.
TrueCompanion.com (NSFW)
I understand they're customizable. Searching YouTube for Roxxxy makes it clear that the Cherry2000 movie isn't about some dystopian future so much as it's historical fiction.
Luc Ferry, in his book on the French philosophy of 1968, says that it can be summarized in word, "Hedonism."
When we think of the 68 era on our side of the pond I remember Playboy was at least back then a huge part of the 68 push. People tend to forget Hugh Hefner's central role in the 60s, and how his journal published interviews with many of the leading lights and backed them.
Hefner is still pursuing the Cherry 2000 via his latest wife/fiancees, although he is getting increasingly shuttled to the side now, and will soon be a footnote (he's 85).
The old version of the Protestant Work Ethic meant service to others.
Since 68, it's been a question of trying to get serviced.
Prostitution is now legal in Nevada.
We have various inanimate blow up dolls which are increasingly common and which people approve of, in general, it seems. There's sex bots. And gay rights has to be seen as part of that.
No longer is the world about raising the next generation. That's what marriage was originally about, as Curtis wisely observed.
Now the next generation is parked in front of an episode of Waverly Place with a bag of chips.
Obesity on the rise while people still seek out the Cherry 2000 or the closest equivalent.
In microcommunities like Delhi, there are still Little Leagues, soccer leagues, swimming, even hiking and camping and fishing. But a lot of kids in the cities are hooked up to the computer and shortly, to their Cherry 2000.
Modernism was a fantastic assault on the last vestiges of the Protestant Ethic in America, and on the older Catholic vestiges in some communities.
Black Panthers argued that the only place for women in their movement was prone.
Hippies held orgies.
Playboy, Hustler, and Penthouse pushed women as blowups, and as pleasure. Playgirl tried lamely to respond.
But some started to opt out as early as the 70s. Jerry Rubin started to look into New Age beliefs. Many feminists turned against themselves as the pleasure object of leering men, and went fat, or went after one another.
Gay men in San Francisco (let's not forget that that's where Curtis is situated, and the rest of us in the countryside don't see the gay community insofar as there is one as all metal-studded and in their triumphalist mode -- SF has a majority of gays in some areas so they can let their true nature come forward, and don't have to hold back).
"True" and "nature" should be ironised a bit, since many in this conversation don't believe either one really exists.
If marriage is just about servicing one another sexually, and if gay men and gay women can;'t do that heterosexually, then the logic must be that marriage has to extend to them. The straight world has basically adopted the Cherry 2000 worldview of sex: that it's about getting "laid."
Curtis gave a glimpse into an older worldview -- which is moving out of sight now and is becoming a layer of archaeology -- a world in which care for the other as soul, and for the children that came up as a result of the group soul established in the family came first.
But the other thing the sixties were about exploding was the family, toward an atomization in which the individual was supreme.
Happiness, as in the pursuit of, is a definition more likely now to be defined by Hugh Hefner than by Martin Luther.
Pretty sure prostitution- like drugs - was more legal in America in the past than in the present... Used to be real acceptable like in Texas... Before they shut down that best little whorehouse... (not just fiction. Had an old friend I played bar shuffleboard against who talked about going out to whorehouses in highschool... Something
I and my young liberal minded friends found difficult to process as something you would do.
Most of the truly promiscuous people I know are conservative straight men.....
(and I am in la now... Went to my gay friends place last night for a small party in west Hollywood. Everyone ended up screwing on the floor.. Oh wait, no, we had a pleasant evening with cocktails and good cheeses and everyone went home sober and at a reasonable hour...
Kirby,
A few remarks...
Prostitution is now legal in Nevada.
According to Wiki Prostitution in Nevada, prostitution has been legal in Nevada since "the middle of the 19th century," and there's a brothel in Elko that's been in business since 1902. This is not a recent (as in, post-68) development.
No longer is the world about raising the next generation. That's what marriage was originally about, as Curtis wisely observed.
Curtis's view relies on a naive idealization of past.
The contractual character of marriage has only ever been relevant among people who have assets. The notion of "common law" marriage exists precisely because this was once the arrangement of the common people. Peasants didn't marry -- they paired off and declared one another to be husband and wife -- maybe with a preacher's blessing, maybe not. Arguing that the motivation for a common-law marriage was about procreation is absurd -- even in societies that massively exploit child-labor, children are an economic burden for the better part of a decade. That the working poor of any society have children is a witness to the power of human sexual desire over economic calculation/interest. As for the classes in which marriage had a contractual character, it's worth keeping in mind exactly what the Jane Austin novels were about -- they worked in the dynamic tension between marriage as a romantic institution and marriage as an economic institution, and they sought resolution in ideal marriages that combined the character of both.
The past also had hedonists and homosexuals, and if we're to judge from the literature of the past, in about the same proportion as the present. The primary difference is that they sought cover in traditional relationships, which seem to be much more effective in fooling contemporary conservatives (who, cf. the current discussion, have an ideological incentive to be fooled) than their gossip-minded contemporaries.
In microcommunities like Delhi, there are still Little Leagues, soccer leagues, swimming, even hiking and camping and fishing.
Not just micro-communities. In my town (Homewood), there's a vigorous youth baseball league, soccer, a big (and popular) community pool, etc. There's an Isaac Walton nature preserve, although you do have to travel some to find decent hiking or fishing -- but this has more to do with the glacial redevelopment of Illinois than population density. And I've lived in Hyde Park (the neighborhood of Chicago where UC is located), and it's much the same.
Gay men in San Francisco (let's not forget that that's where Curtis is situated, and the rest of us in the countryside don't see the gay community insofar as there is one as all metal-studded and in their triumphalist mode -- SF has a majority of gays in some areas so they can let their true nature come forward, and don't have to hold back).
Most urban areas have gay ghettos. What's new about this isn't that the gay ghettos exist, it's that they can publicly acknowledge what they are, which is good if you want to find them, and good if you want to avoid them.
As for the triumphalism, show a little grace. Rights aren't grants, they're takings. If you learned nothing else from the founding fathers, you should have learned that. Whining is for losers.
Kirby,
Oh, and one more...
But the other thing the sixties were about exploding was the family, toward an atomization in which the individual was supreme.
Thanks. You've just conceded my point that we do not live for ourselves, instead, we're part of a larger society that we benefit from, and have obligations towards. The difference between you and me amounts to whether we see all of society, or just the smaller society of our own family.
Much of your argument against the left involves conflating some very different political and social philosophies, and then picking and choosing from this conflation of your own making specific points what you want to argue against. That's very evident here. If you want to argue against the supremacy of the individual, you'll find your real opponents in the libertarians.
If you're looking for exemplars of the protestant work ethic, you'll find much more compelling models among the sober working poor (and my use of "sober" is restrictive, not descriptive, for there is a difference) than among those who inherited wealth (which is the vast majority of those who are wealthy today). Consider the janitors and secretaries and administrative assistants that support you at Dehli. If they're invisible to you, as your argument that the work ethic is dead suggests, then you have much to answer for.
I know dozens of plumbers, secretaries, police officers, automobile repairmen, carpenters, bank employees, and so on, who still have a work ethic, and all of whom are 100% Republican.
The Democrats that I know are artists and professors and people who are, generally speaking, in love with laziness.
I think the big cut-off is with St. Paul: those who don't work shouldn't eat.
St. Paul cuts the community right there.
Now we have to define "work."
I would argue that prostitution isn't work, because it doesn't build the community. I would say the same thing about people who sell illegal drugs. Or perform other crimes.
Or just wait for the monthly check.
Or who are here illegally.
Kirby,
I know dozens of plumbers, secretaries, police officers, automobile repairmen, carpenters, bank employees, and so on, who still have a work ethic, and all of whom are 100% Republican.
I know quite a mix. The union plumbers and electricians are all Democrats. The independents go both ways. The secretaries who live in Illinois are generally Democratic, the Republicans generally live in Indiana and commute into the city for work. The police? Probably more R's than D's, but it's not a blowout.
The Democrats that I know are artists and professors and people who are, generally speaking, in love with laziness.
A pretty biased sample. Obama recieved 69,456,897 votes, mostly from folks who think of themselves as Democratic. Professors and artists are a sliver of this number.
I think the big cut-off is with St. Paul: those who don't work shouldn't eat.
I don't believe you can find a quote from St. Paul that reads quite this way. You will find things like this, "And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them (1 Th. 5:14)." My objection is with your choice of the word don't, because I see St. Paul as having distinguished with considerable care between don't and won't. St. Paul, e.g., eagerly supported efforts by the Greek churches to support the poor in Jerusalem (cf., Rom 15:25ff).
I'd certainly affirm the notion that those who can work, and who have the opportunity to work, don't deserve handouts, and in fact we do them and us a disservice if we allow them to become dependent. But I'm much more sensitive than you seem to be about the caveats that exist between don't and won't, and I see society as having an obligation to those who can't, and in support of those who will, but for whom work is not available.
(to add on to the end of Kirby's post).
Or who hire those who work here illegally.
I found this from a lay Catholic in SW Massachusetts named Thomas Eddlam. Here's what he says, which sort of says some of the things I've been saying so I'll quote it at length:
"I cited St. Paul's command about people who don't work shouldn't eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10-12):
"When we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat. We hear that some are conducting themselves among you in a disorderly way, by not keeping busy but minding the business of others. Such people we instruct and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly and to eat their own food."
I explained to my friend that St. Paul understood one cannot describe a material good as a "right," other than a right to what you've produced (which accounts for "Thou shall not steal" and "Thou shall not covet"), since creating unearned material rights imposes a type of slavery on the persons who are obligated to provide those material goods. And if there's a social mechanism for providing those goods as "rights," such as government, rights can only be provided through the violence of a barrel of a gun.
But my "World Food Day" friend rejected St. Paul's teaching. I mentioned that latter conversation to a third Catholic friend of mine, who responded: "Well, St. Paul was a bit crazy. He also said wives should obey their husbands. You've got to understand that St. Paul's was a patriarchal society. Had it been a matriarchal society, he would have said the reverse."
The ignorance astounded me.
Paul's commands about marriage are a perfect example of Christian teaching, though perhaps among his most misunderstood teachings. In Ephesians (5:20-25), St. Paul instructs:
"Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her..."
St. Paul gives one set of instructions to wives, and another set of instructions to husbands. They are differently worded, but they essentially say the same thing, that each person in the marriage is told to serve the other. Neither is told they have the right to boss the other around. St. Paul's instructions impose a personal moral burden, but his instructions are based on freedom ... not authority! In St. Paul's world, nobody has the right to demand anything from anyone else, even if individuals are called to serve each other. What and how much you give is based upon your own conscience, not the violence of the state.
In the same way Jesus talked about voluntary giving, not government socialism. He imposed individual moral burdens, not social burdens. Probably the best example of that teaching is the story of the Good Samaritan from Luke's Gospel (10:30-35). Responding to a scholar in the law,
On another topic, Eddlam also curiously supports something I have said in the past, but which was rebuked as not communist enough:
"In the same way Jesus talked about voluntary giving, not government socialism. He imposed individual moral burdens, not social burdens. Probably the best example of that teaching is the story of the Good Samaritan from Luke's Gospel (10:30-35). Responding to a scholar in the law,
"Jesus said 'A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.
A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight.
He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him.
The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, 'Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.'
'Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers' victim?'
He answered, 'The one who treated him with mercy.' Jesus said to him, 'Go and do likewise.'"
Note that Jesus didn't say that society or government should have provided him the care he needed. Rather, he instructed the scholar to pay out of his own pocket as the Good Samaritan had. It was an individualistic charge, a personal burden for mercy and charity. In this story, of course, the Rabbis and Levites may very well have been government employees, as they had been at various times throughout Biblical history."
Government sucks in other words and should remain tiny, and people like the Big O, who want it to grow, are evil scum who are bankrupting our nation for bad ideas that came from the socialist devils, not from baby Jesus.
"When we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat."
I'm sure Stu is also at this moment posting a comment that asks you to change your paraphrasing of this passage from 'don't work' to 'won't work,' since the operative term here is 'unwilling.'
Christ's teachings had, in general, very little relevance to the manner in which a government should be run - that both sides bend toward Christ's teachings as a way of describing how government should be shows that both are conflating church and state.
So I don't think either side claiming Christianity as the basis for their governmental viewpoint is a good idea -
Generally speaking, liberals get into somewhat of a trap by saying 'look, you guys on the right say that you use Jesus as a guide for how you govern...well, if you Really do that, then of course you need to be supportive of welfare.'
When really, both sides should jump away from trying to emulate Christ's teachings in government, and then should discuss the government's proper role with regard to legal principle, the constitution, and practical reality.
That'd be nice.
But when you're arguing politics with religion-wielders, it's ever-so-tempting to be a religion-wielder yourself.
Yes, if Christ is to be a guide for how we govern, then we should be much more socialist, using Sweden or something as a model...
But we shouldn't use Christ as a guide for how we govern.
So y'all should stop using him as a guide, and we should stop pointing out that when y'all use him as a guide you're being hypocritical, because that gets rhetorically gooey and easily misunderstood/misrepresented.
There's a lot more comment here:
http://bible.cc/2_thessalonians/3-10.htm
People who won't work are thieves.
People who don't have legitimate jobs are thieves.
We shouldn't support them, and the church shouldn't support them. The commentary even says that lazy monks who lie about eating but working are thieves.
The socialists can't believe that this is truly in the Scriptures. It doesn't accord with their lazybones' notions.
Communism is theft.
Kirby,
It's nice to see that you're finally citing scripture. Good. The next thing for you to learn is to cite scripture that makes your point, not mine.
You said, "I think the big cut-off is with St. Paul: those who don't work shouldn't eat." I made the point that this is inaccurate, that St. Paul's condemnations were directed who could work, not those incapable of work.
And then you cite 2 Thess 3:10-12, which does not say don't work, but says was unwilling to work. You're an English prof, for crying out loud. You're expected to understand the distinction between incapacity and volition.
People who don't have legitimate jobs are thieves.
Some people lack the ability and/or opportunity to secure legitimate jobs. St. Paul's writing does not condemn them, but you do. On what basis? And what of those who work to the best of their ability, but are unable to make enough to live on? In your eyes, they're thieves. But not in God's eyes, and not in mine.
Communism is theft.
Again, you're expected to get the quote right. It goes like this: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
Let's work backwards: the last quote is a reversal of Proudhon's "Property is theft." He wrote that when he was about ten, after finishing a pot of custard and sitting in the sun too long. When he was at the end of his life, he reversed the sentence on property, and decided it was the individual's only power against the state. It had to exist, or the state would crush us into serfdom.
Communism steals individual property and pretends to redistribute it. It does, to other communists, and forgets about the poor. Let them eat gruel, Stalin said.
People who have illegitimate jobs are thieves, I should have written.
I had just finished a pot of custard and had sat in the sun too long when I wrote the other version.
It seems then that we're all happy with St. Paul in Thessalonians (I hadn't got it quite right, but Stu seems to accept it).
I also agree with Brett that employers who hire illegals should do time. How much time? And how do you make sure you nail the right person? In a hydra-headed company with a shifty corporate structure it may be difficult to nail the right person.
What if they have corporate scapegoats who are low-paid CEO's who agree to go to the electric chair for just about anything so long as their family gets a payoff?
It seems easy to nail the right person, but the right people are often protected by a phalanx of lawyers who will do everything to promote misdirection and travesties of justice in which fall guys and gals are mown down many times before they get hit.
Still, I like the principle.
Btw., I tracked down the director of Cherry 2000, and have his personal email address. I think I will email him for the blog. Let's see if he responds.
I think Kirby had already made his point about the unwillingness (not inability) to work by citing Thomas Eddlam's comments on the passage from 2 Thessalonians 10 before stu's and Brett's rebukes, but perhaps this misunderstanding was due to delayed posting. St Paul admonishes those who may be said to have adopted an illegitimate occupation in the following verses (11-12):
"For we have heard that some among you are living irregularly, doing no work but busy at meddling. Now such persons we charge and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ that they work quietly and eat their own bread."
A curious case recently brought up by Sen Tom Coburn (also an obstetrician) for investigation is that of a 30-year old so-called "adult baby" and his "mother" living on Social Security disability payments:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/17/senator-questions-benefits-to-adult-baby/?page=all#pagebreak
Possibly this is a case of someone who doesn't work settled into a life of "won't work." Coburn is right to question this fellow's dubious assertions that he can't work. If his diability claims are false, then he's not only a drone, but a thief who's stealing from those who may deserve disability support.
JADL's document (the picture is priceless) is the perfect illustration of the sensibility of the do-good left, which in turn turns people into wardens of the state, i.e., babies for life.
I understand that there is compassion behind this. I understand that there is a spirit of fine sentiment behind it, and the notion that we ought to help others.
But there's something to be said for growing up, serving the communities with the talents God gave us, and standing on our own two feet. Perhaps even feeding ourselves.
There is something to be said for getting a job, and going to it even when we don't really want to, or especially when we don't want to, and doing the best possible job that we can do.
We shouldn't enable adult babies who in turn make many more babies, so the Democrats will have someone to pamper, in return for votes. This oversized baby, I'm sure, has a voting record, and it's solidly Democratic.
Democrats, I grant, are the party of love. It's just a love that is sometimes misdirected.
Republicans are the party of tough love, which, in the end, is better for the country, perhaps.
I wonder if the theft from other disabled (or truly disabled) people is in fact the worst crime here. The worst crime I think is to disable a person from being all that they can be, by pulling themselves together, and working at their utmost for themselves. I know many people don't believe in this any longer: JH has said over and over he prefers laziness. I think the work ethic is an excellent thing and that it brings out the best in people when it's fully engaged. It can show us what it means to be human in a community of human beings. There are of course senile people and people with AIDS, and other diseases that can keep them from fully functioning, but if a person is fully functioning, then functioning fully is an end in itself, a very satisfying feeling, like a catcher picking up a ball and winging it to first base and beating the runner by half a foot.
Having the satisfaction of this is very important.
It's equally satisfying to be a bank teller and come out within a penny at the end of the day. Or to be a manager of a shop, and pull your weight, and bring in a profit. Or to write a beautiful poem, that gives people life. Or to cook a delicious meal that people tell their neighbors about. Or to put in a road and have it line up beautifully mile after mile.
We're robbing people of experiences like these when we just mail out checks to fatsos who want to glob down another shake with fries. That lifestyle turns America into one that is no longer a sweet land of liberty, but a land of licentious twits, even if they still get to vote.
Remember the debate between Bush and Kerry? Everyone thought that Kerry won on points, but people LIKED Bush, and he came out way ahead.
Debate is strange. It isn't won on points. It's -- have you moved anyone to your side.
No one in this thread has really done that to any discernible degree.
Therefore, it's a draw.
I did come away liking Curtis Faville's posts very much, and now that we've returned to the economy, I loved JADL's photo of the adult baby. Who knew?
So maybe we've all sharpened our nails a bit and are more familiar with the problems of our arguments, and the problems of other arguments.
I'm a bit less willing to think that marriage as a system and as a definition has completely collapsed into utter chaos.
But I still don't think there any extant or valid definitions of marriage.
Marriage defines who we are and what we're doing here: it's a very important symbol. Nothing is more significant.
When we therefore leave the ethos of the OT we are moving into a brave new world where financial transfer and hedonism are the main pillars of significance.
Many people are deeply happy with that, as they see it as a way to enter the American economy more fully, including the symbolic economy.
For various reasons I see it as a problem in terms of getting off the old gold standard of why we're here as argued from the OT forward through the NT.
(I realize now that not so many are on that old standard.)
Lions and tigers and bears.
Continuity between generations. Is that still a value? The long genealogies in the OT?
"The nacreous epithelial spheres of Pinctada fucata roll unnoticed before the gatherings of Sus scrofa."
Translates loosely as:
"The lustrous/pearly thin-membranous-ish spheres of the Akoya pearl oyster roll unnoticed before the gatherings of wild boar.
Ah, it's a pearls-before-swine thing... I wouldn't call Kirby et al. pigs. They're more Equus africanus asinus-ish.
Boars maybe, but not bores.
My basic objections are still on the intuitive ground, but still there are problems for me with definition of the PWE with regard to marriage (I see marriage partially as a vehicle that links generations to generations). I was raised to believe that we aren't living for today as the dirty hippies claimed but for our grandchildren's grandchildren, as it says in the Bible.
When I see the gay pride floats going past they seem to be living purely for today. I'm totally against this stupid pleasure now, think later about the diseases paradigm.
I'm also against any kind of pleasure that leaves you with aches and chills in the morning, or doesn't feel decent in the morning.
In general I think people should try to limit their wild pleasures to about three minutes a day, such as looking at orchids, or enjoying the v-neck of Canada geese flying south for the winter (I recognize that their flight is in some sense sybaritic, but they're just animals for heavens' sake).
It doesn't mean that we have to act like animals.
When you have sex with robots, as apparently all my neighbors are doing, and everybody in the city does twice a day, it's hard to understand how you're getting much of anything else done. Also, you don't get children out of this.
So how are you living for your grandchildren's grandchildren in this instance?
The people who live for today have no sense of continuity with the past. I guess some people believe that shaking your booty is the way to go.
But I think there are still come Venn diagram overlap with many of the communists. They like nature, and so do I. Setting up parks and nature trails and so on, is good.
I just wish we could spend more money on Lyme Disease, and less on sexual diseases which are currently swamping the budget of the CDC.
I think we need to understand that laws and contracts are based on a perceived need for order in human relationships. In fact, laws acknowledge that people don't always act in a way that is ethical or sensible or beneficial. Laws and contracts are a way of enforcing what we believe are better behaviors, better versions of ourselves. We know we aren't perfect, but there is an ideal of perfectibility which we share.
Ultimately, laws and contracts are an acknowledgment that we have ideal visions of what life should be like, and how that vision can be brought about. :Laws and customs set limits, but they also set standards. As citizens we aspire to those standards, or we struggle against them.
For thousands of years, and in every society in history, monosexuals have lived on the margin, in a shadow-world of semi-permission. They were tolerated, or abused and cast aside. Their behavior was regarded as an affliction, even as a sin.
Now, for the first time in history, monosexuals are petitioning society for an expansion of rights and privileges traditionally derived from the ideal institutions of marriage and families.
This isn't an old thing, an old right which has been denied over centuries. This is a brand new thing, never even conceived of previously. Show me some documentation prior to, say, 1970, anywhere in the databank that addresses the presumed need for monosexual marriage and parentage. You can't, because nothing like that ever existed before.
This new bright idea was invented in imitation of the rights movements among ethnic minorities, and women. Those campaigns derived their energy and purpose from concepts of democratic fairness and equality.
Gays are saying, in effect, that ethnic (racial) minorities and women,e once denied rights and privileges, were made whole through legislation that restored rights they had previously been denied. Giving people something they obviously had been denied, deserved to have. Black people and women deserved to have the vote. They deserved to be treated equally before the law, and to have the same opportunities as everyone else.
But there are important differences between the kinds of rights traditionally regarded as desirable for such previously "excluded classes" and the kinds of rights and privileges now being demanded by/for monosexuals. To demand rights and privileges that had previously been denied, is one thing, but to invent a wholly new excluded minority class under law, seems expediently opportunistic.
Those who can't understand this difference tend to argue from the position of excluded classes, the same way Blacks and women used to argue. "We want the same things straights have always had, as if the transportation of those customs could simply be legislated into existence.
Several defenders of Gay rights will argue their case by attempting to undermine the idealized concept of marriage, saying, in effect, that marriage is already a compromised--even a failed--institution, and because of that, heterosexuals should cease attempting to defend it on either moral or pragmatic grounds--that since heterosexuals have "failed" in their ideal institution, it is obvious that expanding its definition to redefine the meaning and identity of parentage and sex will have virtually no effect on the institution itself.
I question the naivité of that assertion, that there is no significant difference between heterosexual marriage and parentage, and monosexual imitations.
I see them as crucially different both in their archetypical performance, as well as in their effect on commonly held beliefs about roles and functions of the sexes.
I agree with most everything in this last comment of yours, Kirby, except (of course) for how it relates back to the topic of whether or not government should allow gay marriage.
Obviously, the thing about gay marriage is that it's at least a dedication to continuity between the past, present, and future in ones own life. Whether or not it's tied to future generations (it can be, if children or productivity are involved...hell, the gentrifying effects of gay communities have already had a positive effect on the future), you have to at least admit that it is about more than living 'for today.'
Sha, la, lalalala live for today!
But them hippies also had...
Teach your children well.
(Can you hear and do you care and
Cant you see we must be free to
Teach your children what you believe in.
Make a world that we can live in).
"heterosexuals should cease attempting to defend it on either moral or pragmatic grounds-"
This is not quite the way it works, at least in terms of the arguments I personally have been making.
For the one, I do not see how gay marriage is an 'attack' on heterosexual marriage, and that heterosexual marriage would therefore require defending.
The other is that the sort of argument you are pointing to is as a way of tearing apart arguments against - that is, if you argue that 'the reason gay marriage is bad is because of X,' and X is not a characteristic unique to gay marriage, then X would not seem to be a salient quality in determining the legality of gay marriage.
I loved Curtis' post again, and especially the notion that laws should represent our ideals. I think that Republicans believe that laws represent our ideals, but Democrats have come to the conclusion that law is just whatever we can push through, whatever a significant voting block can push on to the polity. And ideals no longer matter, if they ever did. They have a Nietzschean/Maoist notion that power comes from the end of a gun.
Going back to Lincoln, who said that right equals might, we still can't entirely waive the problem that the Union army was bigger than the Confederate one, nor the problem that our intelligence gathering was superb (the Confederates were operating completely in the dark during Gettysburg, while the Union army knew almost everything the rebels would do, which is why when Pickett's charge came they can into 10,000 Union rifles which decimated their ranks in seconds.
I do think that rightness matters.
I don't see how anyone can legitimate living for today especially when it is at the expense of the polity. The notion that all of us should have to pay for gay diseases through the CDC while children with Lyme die slow deaths makes no sense to me whatsoever. As the casualties from Lyme mount, I have no idea why 1% of the population doesn't trump the comparatively smaller percentage with AIDS, except for the fact that those with AIDS are powerfully mobilized, have important spokesmen, and women, and movies, books, poems, etc., on their side. Lyme is invisible from the larger media viewpoint. I'm probably one of the only people in the arts who ever mentions it.
At any rate, just wanted to mention that I too think laws should be based on ideals, but the left no longer believes this. They've adopted a might makes right mentality across the board. If they can pressure the legislature into giving them benefits, they will do it, even if it pushes others out, or is unfair, and they will maintain the face of self-righteousness until the last PWL drops dead. The same thing has happened inside the churches. They will do anything to swing votes even if it means entire congregations leave. They don't care.
For them, it's better to kill an institution than allow it to belong to any group that doesn't think like them. It's appalling, and the only thing to do is to realize this, and proceed accordingly.
Meanwhile, any pretense at universalism of any kind of thought or behavior has been totally gutted. It's just power groups vying for benefits now.
However, I think the right should still try to be right. It's what's holding us together. Let the left have their Spitzers and Weiners and Strauss-Kahns, and let them adopt any self-righteousness stance, until their voters realize that it's cynicism running this, and behind this, is the face of Manson.
Manson is the true face of the left. Power, using any means necessary, to push its agenda.
Brett, you quoted Curtis as saying that monosexual marriage (he uses this term, not heterosexual) is an "attack" on traditional marriage. But I don't think he uses the term "attack." I combed through his latest post, and he frames marriage as a set of ideals which many traditionalists have failed (50% or more of marriages now end in divorce -- whereas Cosby says the black community -- which is at about 85% divorce -- is among the most strenuous deniers of gay marriage rights).
These are puzzles, and there are certainly paradoxes and problems to contend with. Sex may not yield to reason as well as we might conceive. It almost seems to knock out the reason of even the most reasonable.
Blind lust carried Paris and Helen off and destroyed two ancient civilizations. Aphrodite/Dioynsos is certainly a powerful force, and for many, more powerful than Christ. One could also put Satan into that initial category, but we'd lose the secularists in doing so.
If Christ articulates our ideals, Satan traditionally has been the force that tempts us to drop our ideals.
False peace is a false ideal but is certainly tempting. Many just want to stop arguing, stop fighting for what is right, and if those who endlessly harangue the polity for rights can be quieted just a tad, it might be worth it. Kind of like giving into a child who wants sweets, and endlessly asks for them.
It's not a responsible thing to do, but I can certainly understand doing it.
It just makes the situation worse. Because now the kid has succeeded, and knows it can succeed again, if it keeps trying.
Conscience is a problem, but it isn't just conscience, it's the id speaking in the name of conscience that is troubling. The id is clever and can wrap itself in the flag, or in all kinds of sentimental claptrap or political rhetoric to get whatever it wants.
There are many trusting people who go along with this. I see Stu and Brett as trusting members of the left -- who are willing to believe the convenient truths of the left because they believe they are always spoken by decent people. Brett is young and idealistic. Stu is older but has lived a seemingly sheltered existence.
I believed the communists and Ginsberg when I was younger and then as I got closer I saw what a scam it was, and how they weren't really idealists, but were people who could speak to others' ideals, in order to garner benefits accordingly.
In Athenian terms, they were sophists.
In Christian terms, they were false prophets.
I think there are probably also false prophets on the right. There is also a certain degree of selfishness. But it strikes me as easier to take because it isn't wrapped in a false set of ideals that are rotten at the core. They openly speak of profits. They openly talk of law. Their roots go back to Madison and Hamilton.
I see Marx as the true core of the left: and I see him as a shamelessly ambitious monster who destroyed any rivals, lied, and basically made the Faustian bargain: selling his soul for worldly gain. A very suspect individual, with a philosophy that has brought every society that has embraced it to ruin.
He used the word 'defend.' What do you defend against? An 'attack.' I guess that was a bit of a leap for me to say he was calling gay marriage an attack...
Though it does beg the question that if heterosexual marriage needs to be defended, what is it being defended against, if not an attack?
Lyme's disease, Democrats-are-all-Marxists...
The horse has been dead for years and now you're just beating the fat maggots that have eaten off of it.
There have been some interesting posts in the Curtis v. Brett homosexual marriage discussion, though I have seen from him neither an approach that exposes any flaw in my specific denunciations of his specific arguments, nor a retraction of those specific arguments.
"Legislating to the ideal" is a weird thing to want to do. If the ideal is marriages that consist of wealthy Christians with strong family backgrounds, male and female, fit and with bachelor's degrees (at least), shouldn't we legislate THAT ideal?
Restricting rights based on the mores and ideals of a very particular viewpoint has never sat well with me, and this is what is happening when you seek to deny those who are born to be attracted to and fall in love with those of the same sex from marrying and adopting and/or conceiving children.
And yes, there is a need for order in human relationships - the question is, what are the basic organizing principles for ordering those relationships? I have declared what I view as the government's proper principle here - the decisions and commitments of equal citizens who have free will in their commitments and the wherewithall to make such decisions...
I do not see an organizing Principle from y'all, just a specific More - that man and woman is the way it's been, and so that's the way we want it...
You can use religion, perhaps, as your organizing principle - I would take that as a valid standpoint, if we were talking about churches.
But we're talking about the government.
What's the principle behind this order that you impose? A simple sentence or two will do...
You can say, Kirby, that I'm naively trusting of those with whom I agree...I could say the same of you. It's a bit of a fruitless argument, an ad hominem without any teeth, a gummy ol' fatso of a statement.
"You only believe the things you believe because you aren't at all critical of those you agree with."
I think you're mistaking me for you - I'm not necessarily making the same mistake you made of being uncritical of the left, and then all of a sudden realizing the failures and flaws therein, and then feeling betrayed and like my former self was naive.
That's your personal story. Mine is of coming from places of middleground politics (Austin, Colorado) where I have been exposed rather intimately to both ways of thinking, to both conservatives and liberals, and have, on most issues of the day, come out on the side of the Democrats. This, I feel, has more to do with a right that has gone further right than with my being especially leftist... When I was in highschool I was pro-Bob-Dole (maybe just because Conan Obrien's skits were funny), and if there were doles in the public sphere, I might be more willing to vote Republican.
But instead we've got the far-right masquerading as the center-right. We've got hardline fundamentalists wanting to shut the government down because they view Clinton-era tax rates as some sort of Marxist dystopia. We've got a Dole-esque HCR bill that the right wants to paint as Communist...
Anyway, who am I naively trusting wrt the current debate? Gay people who say they're NOT horribly promiscuous? I mean, I don't come to the viewpoint that gays have the ability to be monogamous because they've Told me, but because I've seen it and know them personally as non-triumphalist, non-lascivious, committed, monogamous monosexuals whose relationships should be recognized by the gvmt.
By the church? That's a different story. By the gvmt? Yeah, that seems like the proper response.
Kirby,
When I see the gay pride floats going past they seem to be living purely for today. I'm totally against this stupid pleasure now, think later about the diseases paradigm.
I understand, and agree. That said, why do you ally yourselves with climate change deniers, who are doing the same thing on a global scale? You find it comfortable to believe that geophysical scientists are liars because most of humanist professoriate is liberal. What the two have to do with one another is anyone's guess, in the meantime, the energy companies continue to corrupt the discussion by funding climate deniers, which takes us back to the starting point... Why do you ally yourselves with climate change deniers, who are doing the same thing on a global scale?
When you have sex with robots, as apparently all my neighbors are doing, and everybody in the city does twice a day, it's hard to understand how you're getting much of anything else done. Also, you don't get children out of this.
From what I've seen, the folks who are having sex with robots are overwhelming males who lack the social skills to attract females. As married men, the appropriate reaction is not disgust but rather pity. Honestly, I think you'd be happier taking an evolutionary biology view of much of this: there are certain people who do the species a great service by not passing on their genes.
Going back to Lincoln, who said that right equals might, we still can't entirely waive the problem that the Union army was bigger than the Confederate one, nor the problem that our intelligence gathering was superb (the Confederates were operating completely in the dark during Gettysburg, while the Union army knew almost everything the rebels would do, which is why when Pickett's charge came they can into 10,000 Union rifles which decimated their ranks in seconds.
I don't know what you've been reading here, but Union intelligence was pretty pathetic, especially from 1861-1863, when for some reason successive commanders of the Army of the Potomac took that miserable lying coward Pinkerton seriously. The plain truth of the matter was that the calvary recannaisance mattered a heck of a lot more than anything that happened in the salons of the Willard, and the Confederates had a material advantage in calvary quality early in the war. Yes, if you ask me, Buford saved the Union, but his great triumph had as much to do with J.E.B. Stuart's hubris as with his own commitment and excellence.
And while I'd certainly not denegrate the steadfast Union infantry at the angle on July 3rd, those 10,000 rifles had a the primary function of protecting the batteries of Union artillery that did most of the butchery. Indeed, the definitive characteristic of the civil war was that the effective range of artillery was essentially the same as the effective range of infantry arms (about 400 yards in both cases), which had the effect of making this essentially the only war in the past three centuries where artillery was primarily a defensive weapon.
As the casualties from Lyme mount, I have no idea why 1% of the population doesn't trump the comparatively smaller percentage with AIDS, except for the fact that those with AIDS are powerfully mobilized, have important spokesmen, and women, and movies, books, poems, etc., on their side.
I'll note in passing that your claims about Lyme morbidity are roughly 5x the CDC's. And as noted before, AIDS is a much more serious disease than Lyme.
Blogger jh said...
prostitution is the paradigm
by which american feminism
works out notions of liberty
only now they sell their souls to
machines and chemicals and illusions of a just protestant work ethic
which i suppose is better than
being subject to men
st paul seems to be certain that neither husband or wife is their own master...they are equally subject to one another
he was the first prophet of authentic socal liberation
and we've beaten him down misitepreted him and neglected his message in favor of what? leotards derridas pantaloons and lacanologies
and misplaced lingerie
let's get back to some real cotton underwear
like thomas aquinas wore
god bless ahmuhrikah
jh
kirby proves once again
kinky sex still sells
but
the free speech on this blog
is quite what should we say?
ciilized
pax romanum
July 4, 2011 11:20 AM
I don't know what to make of climate change except to say that the Catskill winters are endlessly bitter and cold, and that we are all hoping for climate change. It was once a lot hotter on the earth instanced by the existence of GREEN land, and that was at a time when there were no cars, and no factories to speak of. So, I see the likelihood of this being another attempt by the left to regulate and control industry, not for the good of humanity, but because they're control freaks who think they should meddle in everything, and control everybody's behavior and speech from cradle to grave. The science is clearly that it got a degree warmer over the last some odd years, but why this happened isn't clear. I'm still rooting for sunspots, and hope for more of those. I can't stand the Catskills winters.
the thing about Yankee intelligence from the Civil War was on the History channel and I didn't vet it, just believed it blindly. Didn't even follow who said what as I was reading another book on Lyme disease as I listened half-heartedly.
As for Lyme, it's not clear which one is more deadly. It doesn't kill you outright, but there are claims that it turns into ALS, and Alzheimers, which means that it's proportionately far larger.
These etiologies haven't been accepted yet by the AMA, but then the argument is that the insurance companies are paying doctors to keep this from attaining critical mass so that they have to start making payouts on bug bites.
Why am I willing to believe one set of paranoid truths about Lyme and not about the weather? It's partially that Lyme is still little known, and little discussed, so I can feel avant-garde. Once it's accepted I will turn against it all as a fraud and back some other sour lemon.
I used to be for gay marriage back when everybody was against it.
Now that everybody's for it, I find it appalling.
Is there logic guiding my thinking?
I suppose.
I turned against the church when everybody I knew was a Christian.
Now that almost everybody in academia is a Marxist, I'm a Christian.
It's like I'm determined to be against any and every kind of evolution and to be exterminated. I love to struggle uphill. Actually, I don't really have a choice in terms of what ui believe.
I know this is depressing news, but any news that doesn't serve to depress most people isn't really news.
I like to be on the cutting edge for some reason and as soon as critical mass arrives, I'm outta there. I think was possibly true of Moses, too.
He was the kind of guy who never wanted to arrive, but liked wandering around in deserts promising all kinds of things.
Let's fix Lyme!
Let's be Lutherans!
Let's go back to surrealism!
Carefully watching that no one follows.
For if they do, I can't feel like an idiot.
That's one interpretation. The other interpretation is that AS THINGS start to move toward finalization, I feel the problems inherent in something.
It's fun to get people going, but once they get going, I get worried.
I mean, can you imagine using the lion's share of the CDC for Lyme? Wouldn't that be just insane?
A tiny disease that is mostly cured by over the counter pills in about a week?
Can you imagine if Lutheran Surrealism really did get legs, and people began to go to Missouri Synod churches and write poetry from that paradigm?
Can you imagine if we began to marry animals together, and celebrate their nuptials?
What the?
I love utopian far-fetched ideals, and like to support them. But as they become reality, I find the problems and start to scream, stop, please stop. By then it's generally too late.
Animal Crackers.
I am rarely this clairvoyant with regard to my circularity. I am generally just dotty, without much choice in the matter.
We now return you to your regular programming.
That said, I think there is another type of personality that likes to pile on to whatever's faddish, and says yes to the majority thinking of its time. Isn't this even worse? Everybody says the earth is flat, so I'll kill anybody who says otherwise. Everybody agrees that negative one times negative one equals one, so it must be true. Climate change is happening, so let's make everybody walk. Everybody likes Barack Obama, so I'll like Barack Obama. All my friends are hippies, so I guess I'll get long hair and be a hippy. I find this to be quite dangerous.
Everybody is a Marxist feminist now in the academy, so I better sign up.
Now which is dottier?
Those who always follow the norms, or those who almost inflexibly buck them?
I'm generally with the counterculture, partially because when it gets down to a small remnant of believers, generally they really know what they are doing, and are fighting for it, and when I listen to them, I can find the truth in what they are saying.
When countercultures become mass cultures, there is all kinds of fraud and chameleonic Napoleons in the cherry tomatoes.
Thinking is impossible.
It's best done in fits.
but I do buy your point that it's a good thing that many people choose not to replicate. I'll buy that. and I suppose that if people are going to kill themselves with disease exposure, then it's just as well, as it keeps the stock reasonably fit.
Maybe everything is as it is, because as it is is as it should be, in some sneaky way.
Let the fireworks begin.
Ideally, ones viewpoint should not come from a desire either for conformity or not to conform.
Either way, your ideals are based upon the opinions of others, not your own (or God's) principles.
So I guess on 'Merica's birthday you've stepped out from behind the curtain and revealed (as we all mostly guessed anyway) that your viewpoint is not so much based on principle, but rather that your viewpoints are based on outsiderness (if you search the comments record I am sure you will see me psychoanalyze you and make this very same point...even relating it to that instance in your childhood when you were made an outsider because they thought you were stupid, but really you were too smart and made an outsider still...) and on a talk-radio-show-hostish desire to stir the pot so you can see some fireworks.
You're a sort of philosophical hipster...
I'd like to think that the record will show that my views are not based on the views of the people around me (whether through desire to conform or desire to be an outsider)...
I think when too many people sign on to something I begin to doubt its authenticity. Imagine being one of the original apostles: all of whom died for Christ. Now that's pure authenticity. Paul, too.
Today it's the suburban corollary of joining AAA in case of a popped tire.
On the other hand, being a Marxist in an academy in which it's almost necessary to be Marxist is a sure sign of fraudulence. Many of the same people would be Nazis if this was Germany in 1939.
So I'm not QUITe saying that I sign on to minority viewpoints, or else I'd join GM in his group.
It also has to accord with something I regard as authentic.
But to my mind a viewpoint is more authentic the less people are willing to hold it out loud.
Kirby,
That said, I think there is another type of personality that likes to pile on to whatever's faddish, and says yes to the majority thinking of its time. Isn't this even worse?
Yes, but if it's intended as a side-swipe at Brett or me, it missed. For one thing, he and I both have religious commitments that are pretty uncommon in the professional circles in which we travel. Christian Profs? Christian Filmmakers? It's pretty clear to me that I'm a minority at work (as near as I can tell, I'm one of four practicing Christians in my department, out of 20-ish) as well as a minority at Church (because I understand science, know that evolution is the best theoretical explanation for biology, because I've pursued religious education after communion, etc.). My attitude is that I stand with God, and therefore with the truth, and that he did not give me a mind to reason or a heart to have faith in order to mislead me.
And certainly, you've pretty much thrown in with the Tea Party, and it seems to me that your political beliefs are essentially inseparable from theirs, save for your token, ineffectual and self-undermining protestations that you're actually an environmentalist at heart. Given that you don't think that certain rather sizable classes of votes ought to count at all, it seems to me that all you're doing is following the majority as you define it, while maintaining a limited reservation to preserve your self-image of an against-the-pack rebel.
In the end, the difference between us is pretty straightforward. I'm confident enough in my understanding of God and the world to be willing to be 20 years ahead of common opinion. You're confident enough of yours to be 20 years behind it.
Everybody agrees that negative one times negative one equals one, so it must be true.
Well, not everyone. Someone has to be wrong, might as well be you. Still, negative one times negative one equals one isn't an opinion, it's a theorem. Do you bet against instant replays, too?
JH,
prostitution is the paradigm
by which american feminism
works out notions of liberty
I won't often disagree with you, but I will here. It seems to me that feminism is based in large part on a desire for self-definition as individuals. From a feminist perspective, prostitution represents capitulation, a choice not to fight for oneself as a individual, but to submit to becoming a commodity.
st paul seems to be certain that neither husband or wife is their own master...they are equally subject to one another
Indeed. My experience is that this is the true basis for a marriage that both partners view as successful.
Stu, you and Brett are Christian but this hasn't made you substantially different in any of your beliefs from your non-Christian colleagues which surround you.
UC and Hollywood are ultra-liberal bastions, and you guys are ultra-liberals.
You both believe in gay marriage.
You both believe in Barack Obama.
You both believe that Islam should be considered as a serious and decent religion, by and large, in spite of the amazing backwardness of the countries in which it actually exists.
You both believe the poor deserve major handouts.
You both believe in global warming.
I don't think there is any significant way in which either one of you departs in your thinking from the realm you inhabit.
So, yes, it was a kind of trap door, or oubliette, which I meant to put underneath you guys.
You're both Christians, but you both tend to jettison the OT, and to focus on "love is all you need" as the newest and only necessary commandment going forward.
It's fine with me, I'm just saying it seems from this jaundiced vantage point like signing on, and I see signing on as dangerous.
Liberalism in this country is very hard to distinguish from Marxism (at least for me). The Democratic umbrella has plenty of room for both, at least at this point. Of course if Marxists get a majority the liberals will instantly be liquidated in any country in which they can achieve this, but until that point there is an opportunistic synergy afoot.
One component of my thought that has never changed is an anti-Marxist viewpoint, which in turn can be seen as being against any totalitarian viewpoint.
This is at least partially because I always beg to differ. To some extent this is a game, and that much I call myself on. Because I like fashion, secretly, I do, and I enjoy being a fashion victim. Not in terms of following but in terms of standing out. Before I became a Lutheran I was very drawn to the gnostics. I loved how weird they were. I like weirdness.
But I am also slowly morphing to finally accept some norms. It's very weird, but I love parades (though not gay parades) and I love chestnuts like My Country Tis of Thee, now. I admire the people who hold to the center. I wish there were more of them.
One thing I admire about you two is your willingness to talk with me. I'm a refugee from the liberal camp, and many people when they find out I've signed off, won't talk to me again. This bothers me, because I realize that they are not really willing to examine their positions, and it makes me think they've just signed on out of some kind of opportunism.
But you guys are kind of weird, too. A mathematician with interests in poetry and Lutheranism. A film maker who bothers with the avant-garde world of poetry.
I like all the weirdos I've collected here. A Marxist monk who in many ways holds to the orthodox tenets of Catholicism. A classicist who fought in Vietnam and is Catholic but is married to a woman thirty years younger. A weird historian who lives in the Philippines. A member of a strange Anabaptist sect who livesin Florida and follows debates in contemporary poetry. A guy from San Francisco who is against gay marriage.
We have some women here too. WW is hard to understand. She turned against Lutheranism but finds it funny and is not afraid to read poetry but loves cats and works as far as I can figure in the business milieux. A psychology type who is liberal and yet backs the hardest Mormons. I like it when people have conflicting commitments.
I like orangutangs. Spent the afternoon with my kids watching Mr. Popper's Penguins in the theatre. Carrey does a remarkable job imitating them as they walk in a line. He's not as crazy as he has been in the past, but he's still fun. I'm drawn to Carrey's love of animals. I like them too. They're weird and cool, and I think they deserve protections and forests of their own, and swamps and stuff. The NRA also wants to protect them so they can shoot them. It's weird, but I think that paradoxes like that do work out in the long run.
At any rate, yeah, I was trying to get you guys by hitting you with going along with the secularists that surround you at least in all major ways. You are both for abortion, for the Democrats, for gay marriage, for handouts and reparations (?) and for BO, and for just about everything they are. I doubt if either of you could say one way in which you seriously differ from the colleagues around you. I find that suspect.
Of course, people do have to get along.
We do have some angry people who visit here from time to time: J and Ed, for instance, convinced secularists, and I can't imagine that either one of them would fit as well into the world of the academy or of Hollywood, esp. if their views were known. J's anti-Semitism is so marked that I doubt he could last ten minutes in Hollywood. Ed's cantankerousness is probably more of a function of just being old. I find him fun. Old people should be mean as long as they are having fun. An old doctor in the village was telling a grocer woman the other day in Price Chopper that she was the only non-retard in the store. I think older people should be able to be jerks like that as long as they are enjoying themselves. He was. I would never say things like that, but I might think like that.
I've been dismayed by the Marxism of the academy since I was twenty. I never liked it, always feared it, and try in every way I can to rattle it. It may be all I can do is to put a penny under the freight cars coming down the pike. But when it smashes Lincoln's face, I keep hoping it will derail.
My last two comments were a response to an earlier comment by Stu. But then while I was typing the mega-comment he posted a short and sharp riposte to JH, which I hope no one misses.
This is a rebuke to JH's odd conflation of prostitution and feminism.
I'm sometimes shocked into a feminist solidarity by JH. The rape of the immigrant by the socialist Strauss-Con (French figure of the IMF who is expected to lead the French socialist party to victory shortly) may not be a rape, and it may be sex paid on the up and up (still illegal in NY state, as the former governor discovered).
But then Strauss-Con has other problems. He also attempted to rape a young French novelist named Banon. Appalling.
She may be a feminist (not clear, as I haven't read her novels, one of which seems to be titled, He Forgot to Kill Her, which might be about a serial killer, perhaps?) but certainly she isn't a prostitute.
I don't think working for a living can be made into an equivalent of prostitution.
It's a strange corollary to GM's assertion that working at Walmart is tantamount to slavery.
I object to these sleights of hand.
I know that I conflate liberalism and Marxism, to the disgust of liberals.
But it disgusts me to a degree when such conflations are made in which work and slavery are made to be synonymous, or women workers are suddenly all prostitutes. I think women should have the right to work, and to go unmolested by men in their occupations.
I think that socialist Strauss-Con may not think so.
Stalin certainly thought all women were his prostitutes.
And in the socialist Panthers, they believed that the only position of women among them was prone.
Really discouraging. Missouri Synod doesn't allow women to pastor. However, other than that, we stand with Paul's definition of complete fairness in the marriage bond that we work together toward goals, and don't merely dominate or submit.
I think Paul was in his own right a feminist, as was Jesus.
That is, he saw the value of women, and saw them as individuals.
One of the most beautiful moments in the NT is the women waiting all night for Christ after the horrible beating he took. They don't say a word. But their silence is almost the most eloquent thing in the entire world.
Kirby,
You both believe the poor deserve major handouts.
No. I believe that everyone should have an opportunity to live honest, productive lives. This means that meaningful, life-sustaining work should be available to all, and it is in society's interest to ensure that it is. I believe we pay a terrible price for accepting a sham of justice rather than real justice.
I don't think there is any significant way in which either one of you departs in your thinking from the realm you inhabit.
There is that Christian thing, and with it a sense of living for more than one's self.
You're both Christians, but you both tend to jettison the OT, and to focus on "love is all you need" as the newest and only necessary commandment going forward.
I'm well aware of the law and it's demands, and see justice as a part of that, but not the whole. Justice, "loving your neighbor as yourself," is the second greatest commandment, not the whole of the law. But the law is not whole without it, and neither Brett nor I chose to live with the pious fraud of a law that rejects that commandment.
Liberalism in this country is very hard to distinguish from Marxism (at least for me).
The caveat is the key here.
Before I became a Lutheran I was very drawn to the gnostics. I loved how weird they were. I like weirdness.
Gnosticism is a false path. You know this. Playing with weirdness is one thing, but it's crucial to keep a sound mind, and not to be seduced by weirdness for weirdness's sake.
A member of a strange Anabaptist sect who livesin Florida and follows debates in contemporary poetry.
I believe that GM is a member of the Church of the Brethren, which makes him a Hussite rather than an Anabaptist, and so a theological cousin.
You are both for abortion, for the Democrats, for gay marriage, for handouts and reparations (?) and for BO, and for just about everything they are.
I'm not pro-reparations, but I consider iron-clad objections to reparations to be cut from the same self-righteous ignorance as the demands for the same. My objection isn't that they're not just, but that they would be prejudicial to an effective remedy.
I would support would investments in education, jobs, and infrastructure made on a per-capita basis, which would mean substantial additional investment in our inner cities. I believe that the continued inequity that we see in economic standing between (e.g.) blacks and whites is purely a function of inequality of investment and the sequelae of slavery, and not of character, ability, or culture.
I doubt if either of you could say one way in which you seriously differ from the colleagues around you.
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior! And these are not mere words, but a commitment that my life is organized around. If you walk into my office, you'll find icons of Christ Pantokrator and Mary with Jesus prominently displayed. My colleagues know that I set aside my "consulting time" for church work. So you speak in error and ignorance.
I've been dismayed by the Marxism of the academy since I was twenty. I never liked it, always feared it, and try in every way I can to rattle it.
Hardly my experience. When I came to Chicago's math department 30 years ago, we were told that one of the UC math profs was a communist. We were all amazed! A real communist? In 1981? Who'd have thought it? In the years since, I've served on a number of university communities, and I'm well aware that even at UC, there are an appreciable number of Marxists in the humanities. But threatened? Never.
Brett:
Have you ever heard of the "perfectibility of man"?
Here's a quote from Thomas Jefferson:
"I am among those who think well of the human character generally. I consider man as formed for society and endowed by nature with those dispositions which fit him for society. I believe also... that his mind is perfectible to a degree of which we cannot as yet form any conception. It is impossible for a man who takes a survey of what is already known not to see what an immensity in every branch of science yet remains to be discovered, and that too of articles to which our faculties seem adequate."
Our whole approach in the West has been based on this notion of the attainment of higher levels of knowledge and living.
We reward achievement and punish failure. We send our children to school in order that they may improve their minds, and prepare themselves for citizenship.
Our whole art and literature seems based on the possibility of an examination of circumstances, and the potential resolution of conflict between the individual and society, or between good and evil. Conduct is an essential tenet of our view of behavior and order.
We are not a religious nation, but like religion, our political structures are based on an ethical foundation of right and wrong, and codes of duty and performance.
We place a value on many of the cardinal virtues which are embodied in religious dogma: Prudence, Justice, Restraint, Fortitude,--to which we might add tolerance, mercy and fidelity.
In what sense are those who practice deviant sexual practices adhering to any of these principles?
Departures from the virtuous life carries many risks.
Do we want to encourage, or indulge, deviance in our society? Acknowledging that deviations from the norm will occur, sometimes unfavorable ones, does not imply that we should therefore encourage them. If we accept that 5-10% of the population will engage in unnatural acts, that tolerance and mercy does not translate into indulgence and celebration.
If a relation of mine crosses over that line into another kind of behavior, I don't reject them out of hand. I seek to counsel them towards another alternative.
Tolerating and acknowledging monosexuality does not mean we should treat it as an honorable estate, as a privileged "minority" or as an excluded class of deprived entitlement.
Men/men and women/women wish to live together, to congregate together, to make contractual agreements with one another, and to be free from persecution and prejudice--that is perfectly justifiable.
But as a society we have no obligation to raise such a "life-style" minority onto an honored pedestal. As parents, we have every right to insist that our children are not led to believe that deviant sex practices and roles are simple another kind of "diversity"--and to understand that because some small percentage of the population may indulge in such practices, is not an argument in favor of those practices.
If I encounter a man who is "addicted" to strip clubs, or prostitutes, I will regard him with the same distaste that I will a Gay man who goes to Gay bars looking for pick-ups. Both kinds of behavior are unworthy and shameful.
My experience in the humanities at the UW was quite different. Not only was almost everyone I knew a Marxist, but there was felt disdain and contempt for anyone who was liberal. In that period I realized what the Mensheviks found out earlier on: they were tolerated strategically, and liquidated when they were no longer needed. This realization is what drove me toward the conservatives, where I at first couldn't believe I found myself. But I think there are substantial numbers of us who've been driven out of the humanities, seminaries, and other values-laden areas by the hard left who took over those institutions from the seventies through the nineties.
I can well imagine that mathematics would be relatively impervious to their blandishments.
I just hope for your sake your side never completely wins, and you find out what it means.
While they are a minority Marxists are all about tolerance. As soon as they become a majority, everyone else is silenced, all too often by unmarked graves.
I think what confuses Gary is that all the exhortations he lists from the NT are exhortations to single people, not to a government program, to help the poor. And in fact it's well known that Republicans do donate substantially more on a percentage basis to the poor and to worthy charities than do Democrats. Democrats expect the government to take care of these issues.
The post by Curtis should receive further comment because it's so interesting. He opens with a quote from Jefferson about the perfectibility of man. This I found strange, but then he goes on to argue that gays are not the ideal, and so should not be given the right to marry because we are in a sense enshrining defective human beings within the ideal.
I have never had that much truck with gay people. In high school in 1973 there were several openly gay people. I tried to be nice to them (all men including a teacher) but they were clearly different from me, and quite different. I didn't know what to think about it.
A brother of one of my female friends was gay, and I spent part of an evening talking with him at a party. He suddenly said that he hated women, and considered himself superior to them, and that women were an inferior race, and that they disgusted him. I thought this was probably an anomaly, and filed it as such.
I continued to be friendly with gay men and women when I lived in Seattle for twenty years. It got difficult generally to be friends with the men because invariably they wanted to sleep with me, which meant I would have to ditch them. So after a while, I gave this up.
The women didn't have this problem, but they considered themselves superior to men, and many of them dreamed of a separatist society where they didn't have to deal with men any longer.
I studied fiction with William Burroughs, and invariably his hatred of women arose. He really hated them with a palpable intensity. He had a son. I remember thinking it would be terrible if it was a girl. He did have a wife but he shot her to death in a game of William Tell in Mexico, and then fled prosecution.
It's not a very big sample and that's clear, and to generalize from it is probably risky.
At graduate school there were a large number of lesbians, especially among the faculty. They inculcated, it seemed to me, a palpable paranoia about men, and also a sense of women's superiority to men, which I thought was the equivalent of what I found among gay men toward women.
Now it may be possible that friendships, genuine longstanding friendships, do exist between gay men and gay women, or across this gender divide.
Curtis says they shouldn't be allowed to raise children. I think in most states they are now permitted to do this (not sure of the numbers, or the states). I have a few gay friends who have done this, and in every case they choose their own gender to raise.
Now again that's a small sample.
And I think they try to allow for the possibility of a girl liking boys, and vice versa. It's like they're racists, but allow the children not to be.
There are a lot of questions that Curtis taps into, and they're questions that nobody feels very qualified to ask or answer.
I don't know if Brett or Stu have deep longstanding friendships with gay men or women. When I have friends I listen to them, and let them run on and on, and it's surprising what comes out.
People have a lot of garbage inside of them. I should have been a shrink. I like to let people empty the trash, and I try to watch for patterns.
With gay men what always comes out is a visceral hatred of women that is so intense that it almost invariably emerges as disgust to an extent that I thought must be unimaginable to the sentimentalists of the left who imagine that they just love their own gender. Well, I don't know. It just seems to me that they hate the other gender and so their only recourse is to love their own. I have wondered if they got stuck in the period of life when kids are sorting out their gender, and boys play with boys, and girls with girls, and rarely do they care about the other gender, even when they are squeezed into the same classroom. Or maybe it's just a gene. I don't know what it is.
Most straight men I know have a lot of warmth toward women, not lust, although there's that, too. It's just a lot of warmth toward women and girls, and most straight women I know have the same thing toward boys and men. This isn't to say that there isn't a war between men and women. But generally men and women really like each other, and enjoy each other. With gay people, though, this doesn't seem to be there.
With gays, what I find, in the admittedly small sample I've dealt with, is a bizarre disgust and feeling of superiority toward the other gender. It's something they try valiantly to hide.
I'm not sure that this is an unvarying law. It's just my experience.
Does it mean that because they hate the opposite sex they should be able to marry their own? I don't know. It seems the legislatures have already decided that.
But I think if this is the case then people should be able to marry their dogs and cats. There are some people who love across species more than they love their own species. Some people bond with dogs and cats or other animals, like a fish. Shouldn't they be able to go out to dinner with them, and bring them to the dance, or what have you?
I'm allergic, mind you, so you can imagine how broad-minded I'm being.
At any rate, I think marriage is a deep and engaging subject, and who knows. Maybe for some, robots are the answer. There are some people who hate everybody, and for them, robots might just work out if they're programmed correctly.
"If I encounter a man who is "addicted" to strip clubs, or prostitutes, I will regard him with the same distaste that I will a Gay man who goes to Gay bars looking for pick-ups"
Ah, but what if you encounter a monogamous monosexual couple....
And again, you keep using that word - 'unnatural' - but then you acknowledge that monosexuality is natural.
So you confuse me there, doubly so, and ever-over-again.
You think that homosexuality itself is bad. That's really all your argument comes down to. It's an a=a proposition. It's bad because it's bad. You slipslide around with 'deviant,' first using it as 'not normal' and then using it as 'bad.'
I think that you're wrong, and the way you've argued shows to me that your basic belief is based on hasty generalizations.
" Prudence, Justice, Restraint, Fortitude,--to which we might add tolerance, mercy and fidelity. "
Monosexuality has no direct bearing on an individual living up to these traits. I know monosexuals that live up to them. I know heterosexuals that don't.
If you believe that being homosexual means you automatically lack mercy, or tolerance, or fidelity, or fortitude, then you are being both wrong and illogical.
My gay friends are mostly male monosexuals - About a dozen that I've worked with (closely, it's summer camp, you see them constantly and everyone becomes very close) and a few of them I consider to be very close friends.
Had a lesbian boss who was in a relationship for 20+ years (still is, far as I know).
None of them were filled with hatred for the opposite gender - generally speaking, the gay men get along exceptionally well with the straight women, which is a pretty common circumstance. Our difference in experience may have to do, Kirby, with the fact that the gay men you know are older and come from a different time when they were defined differently by the general culture and therefore felt more antagonism toward it.
I have known nothing but gay men who were very kind to straight women, and in fact they generally understand them much better than we straight men do - We straight pinheads use them as interpreters and spies to understand what them gals is thinkin'!
I have many very heterosexual acquaintances who go out to 'bang chicks' and they cheat on their girlfriends and wives and... Well, you get the picture.
"As parents, we have every right to insist that our children are not led to believe that deviant sex practices and roles are simple another kind of "diversity"--
Yes, you can teach this to your children. You can teach them the ills of premarital sex, of strip clubs, of Islam, of twinkies, of a whole host of things that you may or may not view as lesser-than ways to live.
This does not mean that you can or should legislate your worldview through the government.
And I don't think your Jefferson quote relates the way you think it does...
Part 2:
Kirby -
With regard to viewpoints I hold that are at odds with my environment, I would say that my personal morals wrt sex and drugs are rather astoundingly abnormal...
Though I do drink, and I do loves me some rock and roll.
Politically, I'm more moderate than my lefty peers, and hate communism more than they do, though there's a wider diversity at my school than one might expect. A lot of us love 'merica.
And I agree with most of what Stu's been saying, though I somewhat disagree that the problems with the inner city are only about investment - that's half of it, I suppose, but the other half is broken families and an understandable but outdated mistrust of authorities and successful ways of living.
Would inner-city investment make stronger families? Perhaps. But there would also need to be cultural/worldview work done... Somehow.
What matters most for a child is growing up in a strong, loving family. When I worked with the felon-teenagers, the one thing they all had in common, regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic status, was that they came from a troubled home-life and were neglected.
Some were troubled due to poverty. Some because their parents were in gangs or on drugs. Some because their parents were neglectful upperclass folks who didn't give their kids proper boundaries.
And none of their parents were gay.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100831091240.htm
Brett makes wonderful points here. I have to go coach Little League. I like that he has these experiences that differ substantially from mine, and it may be age, as he says.
Gary, this is exactly why government shouldn't be allowed to help people. It's because it can't do it secretly.
Unless you want the CIA to distribute funds.
Obama has made huge noises about his Christian affiliation.
If you're making a big noise about how Christian you are, and how you love to help, but the country keeps slipping further into debt and unemployment, who is BO really helping with all his seductive noise?
The best thing a person can do is to think about structures of implementation and attempt to help businesses get moving again. Obama is so busy remonstrating his Christianity via redistribution that every business has run for cover and is just waiting for the Good Samaritan to lose the next election.
I think the thing, Gary, is not to say that 'You can't be a Christian and a Republican,' but, rather, to say that 'it is hypocritical for Republicans to say that they view America as a Christian nation...or to say that their policies are best on Christian teachings...while maintaining a trickle-down theory of economics.'
That is, it is fine to be Republican wrt the economy if you denote a clear separation of realms between politics and religion - It is quite another to sometimes blur this distinction, and to sometimes use 'it's the Christian way' as an argument for how the government should behave, but to only do so when it suits your purposes.
Whether Kirby himself does this or not is up for debate - however, there are some very consistent viewpoints that one could have where one is a Christian but still holds conservative economic views... The way much of the Republican party wraps themselves in a Christian-based approach to governing, however, is hypocritical.
Brett:
You say that government shouldn't be allowed to "legislate" morality, but from the point of view of those of us who don't want to legitimate deviance, that's exactly what legalizing monosexual marriage and parentage does.
It legalizes and blesses it.
We aren't considering "restoring" something that has been withheld since, like, forever--we're considering creating a whole new institution out of something that was invented, like, yesterday!
Brett, I'm not conflicted with respect to the issue of the "unnaturalness" of monosexuality. Deviation has indeed been with us for millennia, but my point is that acknowledging this doesn't necessarily oblige us to declare it admirable and beautiful and perfect. It's clearly an unnatural behavior.
For a while we thought it might be possible to "cure" monosexuals, but it's like any other kind of addiction--those with predispositions, or powerful lusts. can't be cured. And, following in the pattern of failure, they now refuse even to categorize it as abnormal behavior (illness).
For mellennia, their fate was to live out their lives in frustrated concealment. Now, in our age of permission and emboldened "diversity" they've decided to acquire all the traditional privileges of heterosexuals. Why? They never cared about these things before. All they wanted was to have a steady diet of sexual partners, to have sex acts which held no threat of conception.
If you have no experience of the monosexual life, you should educate yourself. Heterosexual partners devote themselves to monogamy, and attempt to remain faithful. But monosexuals swear allegiance to infidelity. Most heterosexual men are lucky to have more than a handful of partners their whole lives--but monosexuals typically will have relations with literally hundreds of partners, in early adulthood. And there is a strong strain of exploitation of youth and even childhood among monosexuals. Boys under the age of 15 are especially coveted.
Traditionally, heterosexual women have been much more cautious about promiscuity than men, because they have so much more to lose.
In my work in disability programs for years, I heard countless men describe how they had become "diverted" into homosexuality in their childhood, when they were raped (usually anally), and then became "branded" by their victimhood. This kind of "seduction" is so common in the Gay world. It's sad and disgusting. Those who try to make all this sound sweet and loving refuse to discuss the vivid and revolting realities of the monosexual life. We're all uncomfortable with it, and there's a good reason we are. It's ugly.
Brett, I'm not sure if all your corrections of GBF's absurd claim that one can't be a Christian and a Republican (followed by his
"[t]o wit" citing of New Testament passages, as if these provided some sort of "res ipsa loquitur" evidence for the claim) are persuasive.
Of course you're right to point out that one can hold conservative economic views and profess the Christian faith (thanks for your benediction--hope it wasn't too painful to make) as well as (by implication) liberal views.
But your clumsily-expressed and sweeping claim that "much of the Republican Party wraps themselves in a Christian-based approach to governing, however, is hypocritical" is itself pretty murky. Of what does a "Christian-based approach to governing" consist?
And there's also the insinuation that somehow it's hypocritical that Christian Republicans embrace "trickle-down" economics (not presumably the "trickling-down" of taxpayer funds well-heeled liberal politicians and bureaucrats provide for their dependent charges through redistribution), whereas in contrast Democrats and liberals are not so because they hold to redistribution schemes that ostensibly better accord with scriptural precepts. That's a pretty weak example of biblical "charity," as Kirby and others have pointed out.
Nevertheless, there are many areas where faith and public policy intersect. Here's an article in "First Things" about which perhaps we might both find points to agree with:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-preferential-option-for-the-poor
"If you have no experience of the monosexual life, you should educate yourself."
No direct personal experience - I'm heterosexul - though again in previous posts I noted that I have very close gay friends who do not live the lifestyles you described.
I'm not sure why you prefer that homosexuals live hedonistic lifestyles in ghettos they have to hide their affections. (this part of the convo. has as much, if not more, relevance to general acceptance by the culture than on gay marriage specifically).
I guess you like that more than if they can be coupled off monogamously in plain sight and not have to be ashamed of their natural attraction to the same sex?
Again, you're older than I am, correct? Perhaps the less you force people to live their lives in secret, the more likely people are to live lives of fidelity and mercy etc.
And you're wrong that it's unnatural. You can Say it's unnatural. But, uh, it isn't. It occurs 'in nature.' It has occurred for millenia. It's been proven to be based on pre-birth influences.
And when you say that, from your point of view, the gvmt. IS legislating morality - the thing is that what they be doin' in illegalizing gay marriage is to deny privileges to one group based upon the morality of another.
You have no privileges or rights or activities denied you because gays are allowed to marry. Nobody does.
Also, you need to realize that you're in California - the problem with gays in California isn't that they're gay...
It's that they're in California, which is a land that makes everyone crazy.
I'm used to Colorado/Kansas/Missouri style gays.
Perhaps they owe their relative level of acceptance these days to the extremists out West. But that doesn't mean they automatically follow their behaviors. (Though one of my friends here in L.A. is a transplant, a gay dude, and not at all the stereotype you describe).
I think the main issue here, Curtis, is that you have flawed principles. You believe that that which is abnormal is therefore bad (if you don't believe this, then you need to work on your rhetoric, because that's what you have been clearly communicating).
The normalness or abnormalness of something has no bearing on its rightness, and it definitely shouldn't be used as a barometer for what activities the government should and shouldn't make illegal.
Everyone on this blog is abnormal, and I don't think it's at all a bad thing.
"For mellennia, their fate was to live out their lives in frustrated concealment. Now, in our age of permission and emboldened "diversity" they've decided to acquire all the traditional privileges of heterosexuals. Why? They never cared about these things before. All they wanted was to have a steady diet of sexual partners, to have sex acts which held no threat of conception."
Well, two things - one is that people are individual people - "they" is a weird word to use to link dudes doin' it in ghettoes in the 1800s to men now. So you have to realize that they're different human beings...
They want marriage now because they've gained a greater level of acceptance. You don't try to get marriage if you still can't tell your friends about it.
But gays can now come out of the closet - while still being oppressed and dismissed to a degree, it's not as bad as it used to be - so, since monosexuals can live out their homosexuality in public these days, it would seem to follow that they would therefore want to live monogamous relationships and be able to start families and be devoted to one another before the law.
You prefer they wallow in the ghettoes... I think that's a silly position.
Curtis,
You say that government shouldn't be allowed to "legislate" morality, but from the point of view of those of us who don't want to legitimate deviance, that's exactly what legalizing monosexual marriage and parentage does.
It legalizes and blesses it.
Actually, it just legalizes it. To ascribe to the government the power to bless is to buy into the pious fraud of the American civil religion, and you're too sophisticated for that.
For a while we thought it might be possible to "cure" monosexuals, but it's like any other kind of addiction--those with predispositions, or powerful lusts. can't be cured. And, following in the pattern of failure, they now refuse even to categorize it as abnormal behavior (illness).
It seems to me that homosexuality is not like the kinds of addiction that are generally recognized as such.
While the thought of being a junkie is personally repugnant, I do have some comprehension of of desire for the release from reality and physical pain that drugs claim to provide. Many addictions are based on psychological or physiological consequences of overindulgence in things that common and perhaps even healthful in moderate quantities—food and alcohol come to mind. But for the vast majority of straights, there's no slippery slope that leads to homosexuality. What are the plausible first, second, and third steps that lead a straight down the road to homosexuality? How do they "tunnel past" the common revulsion that most straights have to homosexual acts?
For mellennia, their fate was to live out their lives in frustrated concealment. Now, in our age of permission and emboldened "diversity" they've decided to acquire all the traditional privileges of heterosexuals. Why? They never cared about these things before. All they wanted was to have a steady diet of sexual partners, to have sex acts which held no threat of conception.
Actually, I believe you're factually wrong here. There's good evidence that many homosexuals have formed stable pair-unions, which is the substance of heterosexual marriage, they've just had to present themselves to the rest of the world as roommates and friends, rather than as sexual partners.
If you have no experience of the monosexual life, you should educate yourself. Heterosexual partners devote themselves to monogamy, and attempt to remain faithful. But monosexuals swear allegiance to infidelity. Most heterosexual men are lucky to have more than a handful of partners their whole lives--but monosexuals typically will have relations with literally hundreds of partners, in early adulthood.
Now, you deserve to be mocked. First, for arguing without any limiting quantifier that heterosexuals partners devote themselves to monogamy, which is as ridiculous as anything that Kirby's claimed in debate; second, for immediately contradicting your core argument by referring to heterosexuals who have many partners as being "lucky"; and finally for revealing yourself as someone who is sexist w.r.t. to sexuality, by specifically limiting the pronouncement of "lucky" to promiscuous homosexual males.
In my work in disability programs for years, I heard countless men describe how they had become "diverted" into homosexuality in their childhood, when they were raped (usually anally), and then became "branded" by their victimhood.
This is disgusting. But it is not just the homosexuals who did the raping that disgust me, but even more so the straights who imposed the branding upon them. Without that second sin, the first has little power. It is the close mindedness of your position that gives predatory homosexuals (and I won't deny that they exist, any more predatory heteros) the power you loathe.
"In my work in disability programs for years...."
This would seem to give you a very, very skewed sample? Though I'm not sure quite what 'disability programs' means...
And.
"Those who try to make all this sound sweet and loving refuse to discuss the vivid and revolting realities of the _human_ life. We're all uncomfortable with it, and there's a good reason we are. It's ugly."
FTFY
1 in 4 women in America has been sexually assaulted. Thousands and thousands of women are sold into sexual slavery every year.
Heterosexual, homosexual, the numbers are all bad and gross and disgusting and when people rise above that to be committed to each other in a monogamous relationship, that's a good, celebration-worthy thing.
You can't use the worst-case scenarios to brand an entire group, and to brand every individual in that group. It's called a hasty generalization.
And just so there's no confusion, my comparison to heterosexuality is not a positive argument - it's an argument to show the flaw in your line of reasoning. It's saying 'this is the same exact logic you are using...see how wrong it is!'
I'm on the road at library computer, and will check in tonight again around 10 pm. Apologies for the delays.
I think Brett's 1 in 4 rate of sexual assault is way high. It depends on how you define "assault." the communists want it to mean, "felt uncomfortable during a romantic liaison." That would be more like 100% for anyone who's been there, I suppose.
"Assault" along the lines of the French woman Banon, who had her bra and jeans ripped off by the socialist, Strauss-Kahn?
That's quite a singular occurrence. I doubt very much if that's one in four.
More like one in a hundred thousand.
Kirby, look around - the stats are all much closer to the 1 in 4 range than the 1 in 100,000 range...
I've seen 1 in 5, 1 in 6, depending on the sample and year of the study...
I'll leave Stu to eviscerate your pinheadedness wrt statistics in a more in-depth fashion.
I find it interesting that the same kinds of arguments are always brought forward to defend positions that are indefensible on the merits.
For instance, in arguing against illegal immigration and general amnesties, one ALWAYS (no exceptions) encounters the charge of racism. This is true whether or not one is speaking of Latinos, Asians, Black Africans or "aliens" of any stripe. Once this mud is slung, it invariably sticks, and the debate deteriorates into counter charges, and the issues of quotas and enforcement and law are abandoned. The system must be "broken."
In the debate about monosexuals, all evidence from the history of monosexuality--its life-style character, its promiscuity, its unhygienic habits--is set aside in favor of comparisons with the "failures" of the institutions of marriage and parenting. All women and children are abused in traditional relationships, all monosexual households are loving and stable, and there is no appreciable difference between being raised in a hetero-sexual nuclear family, and others run as Gay-Lesbian ones.
The debaters here, Brett and Stu, don't have any real knowledge about monosexual culture, and are willing and determined to imagine that its primary problem has been its suppression over the centuries--and that once this is removed, monosexuals will be revealed as the normal, "natural" people they always have been, that the only reason they've been branded as promiscuous or predatory or unstable is the psychological pressures they've previously experienced.
The statistical occurrence of infidelity among so-called "monogamous" monosexuals is staggering. This has traditionally been linked to the "permission" that not risking complications (i.e., pregnancy) has fostered. The AIDS crisis revealed how promiscuous that subculture had become by the 1970's and 1980's. Unprotected sex among monosexual men might involve 15 or 20 partners per week (sic). The rates of infection of all kinds of venereal disease were several times greater than in the general population. The only other place (outside the major urban cities of America) in the world where this kind of promiscuity existed was in parts of Africa, where rootless male workers traveled around the countryside, engaging with prostitutes from place to place.
Part I
Part II
Brett and Stu will say "well, you're extrapolating from extreme instances" and really "most Gay-Lesbian individuals aren't really like this". Think again.
Most of the monosexuals I've known I've regarded as friends--people I respected and appreciated and would sacrifice for--but the other side of their lives--the promiscuity and instability and distress--was something we rarely discussed. Generally speaking, they were either embarrassed about it, or ashamed by it, or wanted me to share it, or (as Kirby has mentioned) wanted to have sex with me. Their sexual drives were relentless. They wanted it every day, every weekend. Mostly with "strangers". Quick, impersonal, wild. It had become an addiction.
Among those I've known, monogamy and fidelity were truly novel concepts. Could they go for even one month without cheating? Impossible. Because the life-style they'd laid out for themselves demanded that they have this "freedom". But even as they practiced it, they knew it to be an empty life. They knew it was wrong, but had no options.
I think the drive to legitimate monosexuality has settled on imitating hetero-sexual culture--to get the state and the church to "recognize" their "life-style" as a new, entitled, identity, and thus to grant permission for their behaviors and practices, which they couldn't get in any other way. Stu pointed this out in his remark about groups "taking" rights for themselves.
If you want another instance of "taking"--come to California and see what the Mexicans are taking. Look with an unjaundiced eye. Tell me it isn't a war.
I would advise Brett to engage with his monosexual friends about their lives. Get down and personal. If this isn't something that could ever occur, why not?
The point about the new monosexual freedom is that it should be something none of us is ashamed about, which we could all discuss freely and without risk.
Whenever I tried to broach this topic with monosexuals, they'd become very uncomfortable. I asked why monogamy couldn't work for them, but it was like talking to a wall. My best Gay friend told me that he believed that Gays could never have stable relationships--it wasn't in their nature. I believed him.
I think part of the problem here with Stu and Brett is that the monosexuals they may have known have kept their real lives private. They don't talk about it, they don't feel permission to reveal it. I rented an apartment from a fellow in Victoria BC (Canada) a few years ago, and discovered that in his "off-hours" he was a "leather boy" who cruised the streets for sailors and teenagers at night. His closet was full of black studded leather coats, weird military gear, chains, etc. By day, he was a "straight" corporate mid-level manager. By night, he was banging young boys in alleys. I suppose this is all just anecdotal irrelevance.
I think the more hard evidence you check out for yourself, the less inclined you'll be to swallow all the pap that's put out there by apologists and paid advocates.
The local KQED Television station produced a documentary about a Gay couple in San Francisco who "raised" a daughter (by way of one partner's previous straight marriage). The daughter--who grew up in the Castro district--because (surprise!!) a Lesbian. Interviewed for the program, she explained how she appreciated being given the "choice" to choose her sexual orientation, and felt no pressure about it at all. This is because children tend to emulate and accept the given context their parents provide. This young woman might have become a well-adjusted married woman, but was fated now to spend the rest of her adult life in a series of "under" relationships with jack-booted domineering "mannish" dikes. The producers of the show apparently saw no inherent contradictions in this.
Does anybody here watch the game show 'baggage'?
Well, Brett, I would think that someone is doing a lot of this abusing, and it it's socialist politicians, or at least Democratic politicians, of the ilk Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or Spitzer, or Weiner, or Clinton, or what have you, yes, maybe the statistics are correct. US govt. statistics are much less in terms of the rape numbers. Christina Hoff Sommers in her book Who Killed Feminism? tackles one claim of 80% rape rates. You have to remember that feminists now are Marxists, and the central thrust of the Marxist pinhead push is to make everyone in a group feel that they are victims of a common enemy, and then to roil that army up, so that they can gain empowerment. 1% rape rates aren't going to do that, so the numbers have to go way up. 20% and you're talking business.
You have to remember that almost everything you think you know is because you've never really thouight about anything: you take what's coming down the pike and go as far as you can with it. It's not your nature to look deeply into anything, and there's nothing I can do about that.
Stu is a dedicated apologist for the liberal mind-set and has never been able to get away from this.
There is no way anyone could ever get either of you guys to even depart from the liberal mindset. It's not doable. So if they say 20%, you will find some way to justify it, or else you turn to other problems that are easier to continue to push your rugby scrum's electoral chances.
I understand this, and to some extent I simply say, bien.
If rape rates in your socialist milieux seem so high, then that is perhaps reflected in your politicians.
I doubt if Reagan or Nixon were doing this kind of thing. Carter said he didn't do it, but was thinking about doing it all the time.
I really doubt if Reagan or Nixon were thinking like this. They were normal people of the kind that just wanted to make the business climate work for the middle class.
"You have to remember that almost everything you think you know is because you've never really thouight about anything"
That's deeply offensive and flatout wrong. Because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm thoughtless.
Don't be an asshole, please. It's beneath you.
Curtis - You assume that the homosexuals Stu and I have known have kept their private lives private.
You assume that all homosexuals must be as promiscuous as you imagine they are.
At this point, we can only turn to the numbers...
Which, in terms of kids raised by gays, are pretty good for the gays (they do quite well, thank you very much).
In terms of infidelity on the parts or homosexuals, then we'd have to look at those numbers.
Your comparison to racism and the immigration debate is invalid. I'm not accusing you of an 'ism,' but, rather, pointing to the inherent logical flaws in your argument by showing that the Very Things you argue against exist outside of gay marriage and are not, outside of gay marriage, characteristics that make marriage illegal...
Sorry, but the reason that heterosexual comparisons come up is because whatever arguments you have against gay marriage should be (if one is to be logical) both necessary and unique to gay marriage.
If they are neither, then you are doubly-wrong.
You're doubly-wrong with many of your arguments.
As Gary will agree I have proven everover again.
And you focus on gay, instead of lesbian, methinks, because you know that your stereotypes are even less applicable there.
Funny thing is that our difference in opinion wrt gays may come from the fact that you're old, and I'm not, and that the gays I know have grown up with the inkling of an idea that they might find legitimacy in the culture, and therefore are less likely to be these horribly promiscuous beasts you describe.
Or you could just be going off of confirmation bias. But yes, I know monogamous gays. Sorry that this busts your preconceived worldview and you can't believe it, but it's true.
I think it does come down to, now, statistics and facts - so many assumptions being thrown around by y'all that are assumed necessaries - gay couples create gay children, gay people can't be monogamous, etc. - that the arguments are based on assumptions of manifestations of reality, as opposed to principle.
So, if that's the case, you must (MUST SAY I!!!) use stats to back your claims.
If your claim is that all gays are promiscuous - well, I can say no, they're not, because I know one gay who isn't.
So that claim's already Gonesies...
But in general, stats would help - stats on gays raising children, by the by, are pretty good, which I believe I linked to earlier...
So that's a mark against what Curtis said his real beef was with the gays (though is it weird to him that gays could adopt long before they could marry anywhere? )
(let's just wait to hear 'stats that I disagree with = commie' from Kirby).
Oh, and Kirby, find me some stats that show that sexual assault is close to 1 in 100,000, and I will send you over 50 dollars. If I find stats that show sex. assault is close to 1 in 5, then you send me 10. Deal?
(To clarify, as in 1 in 100,000 women have been sexually assaulted in their lifetimes vs. 1 in 5...no confusion that this is a 1-year-based thang).
Brett,
I'll leave Stu to eviscerate your pinheadedness wrt statistics in a more in-depth fashion.
Kirby's preferred method for determining a statistic is to pull it out of thin air. Given that his grasp on basic arithmetic is tenuous, I suspect he thinks this is what everyone does. A fact-based discussion seems beyond his comprehension, and since he doesn't perceive it as amusing, that's a gap we're not likely to close.
The Wiki article "Rape in the United States" lists two rape prevalence studies (i.e., efforts to estimate "the percentage of women who experienced rape at least once in their lifetime so far"), one in 1995 gave a rate of 17.6%, while a 2007 DOJ study gave 18%. In as much as women who had not been raped at the time they were surveyed might be raped later in life, your statistic of 1 in 4 seems to be in the right ballpark.
In any event, the number that Kirby pulled out of thin air (1 in 100,000) as a lifetime risk is almost 30x less than the reported annual risk, as measured by the Bush-era DOJ.
Curtis,
The debaters here, Brett and Stu, don't have any real knowledge about monosexual culture, and are willing and determined to imagine that its primary problem has been its suppression over the centuries--and that once this is removed, monosexuals will be revealed as the normal,
We are not personally acquainted, and you have very nearly zero knowledge of me as an individual. Yet you feel competent to say that "I don't have any real knowledge of monosexual culture" as if you were so well acquainted with me and my life as to be able to make such an assertion. This is both incredibly rude on your part, and incompetent debating, because making unjustifiable statements as if they are fact calls shows a reckless disregard for the truth.
The statistical occurrence of infidelity among so-called "monogamous" monosexuals is staggering.
Granted, but irrelevant. "Average" does not mean "typical" in the context of a multi-modal population. By way of illustration, the average adult in this country has one testicle and one breast, which is hardly a common configuration. So your statistic is irrelevant to the parameters of this debate unless you can also sustain the argument that the gay population is unimodal. The argument in favor of gay marriage does not deny that there is a mode within the gay community that is promiscuous, exhibitionistic, hedonistic, etc. But it does assert the existence of another mode, which consists of stable, long-lived, mutually faithful pairs. Your argument against Brett and I amounts to a denial of this second mode. This calls into question the breadth of your knowledge of the gay community, whatever its depth might be w.r.t. the specific subculture you view as representative of the whole.
Rape rates are different among different groups. 17% isn't one in four, or even in one in five, I will note, but even if it's less than that, you have to remember that rape rates are based on the idea that many people aren't reporting it, which means we don't really know if it's happened or not, it's just that some communist in some office wants to up the rates to justify their office. It's like Sharpton looking for Tawana Brawley's to justify his viewpoint. Never believe anything the communists say, since it's all calculated to give their offices more power, so that they can grow.
Brett, you used the word pinhead first.
I simply elbowed back.
The notions of fairness that communists push are quite funny to me. The only way to truly create total fairness is through total death (when everyone is dead, then there can be total fairness because while alive people have an unequal distribution of talent, looks, and brains). Death cools that down. That's the Khmer Rouge approach.
The other method is total taxation. No one can own or make anything, and our God-given talents are seized by the state, and we become property of the state. This is the North Korean approach. This too leads to death because it causes a collapse of the economy.
People like Gary are driven by resentment of the piles that some people can make under capitalism.
Communism is more fair because no one can make anything. As we approach zero, everything seems more fair.
But lazybones types who are drawn toward Taoism (why not just move to China if that's what you like?), might just as well put on a black bag and tape it and jump into a salt sea with sharks.
Or move to China, since it would amount to the same thing in the long run.
When I was bussed into a useless black high school in the late 60s the idea was to make it fair by making sure that no one could learn anything. If one group wasn't learning anything, no group should learn anything. That's fairness, communist style. I spent the entire day just trying to survive.
It was a mini-Zimbabwe.
The fairness of the communists is to reduce everyone and everything to zero. Zero learning, zero safety, zero earnings, zero calories, zero individual initiative.
As they approach zero, they congratulate themselves on the equality they've achieved.
On an annual basis, there are about 29 rapes per 100,000 in the US, according to the Wiki page on Rape Statistics. however, it also says that
"In 47% of rapes, both the victim and the perpetrator had been drinking."
Add to this varying geographic rates, and most people living in relatively civilized areas among relatively civilized people, and not drinking, and avoiding drinkers, it's probably closer to one in one hundred thousand.
Over a lifespan it's one in six women are victims of attempted rape. But again, the definition of this term may include things such as, felt uncomfortable on a date as things were going too fast.
If one partner is drunk and the other not, that could change perspectives.
I don't know any drinkers. I drink a half a beer a year.
So it may be different in your circles.
Part I
Thank you for your considered reply. IMO, the most useful thing we can do now is to argue out in the open, rather than gliding forward on assumptions designed to quiet debate. I'm sorry if you interpreted my remark about your lack of first-hand experience regarding monosexual life-styles and behavior as a personal slight. I was simply trying to point out that arguing from "principle" while ignoring realities, makes you more susceptible to illusion and fantasy. In any case, I think we all tend to form pictures of those with whom we argue, which are poor composites of the real people involved.
Also, the subject we're engaging is a complex one, with many facets. Each side tends to think their opponents are over-simplifying, when what's really occurring is that people are taking short-cuts and making short-handed assertions in the interests of economy and efficiency.
Look, I know as well as you that sexual behavior isn't a black and white matter. Across populations, there are many different variations in behavior, attitude, and condition. I'm not religious, and I have no axe to grind with respect to morality. People with good and bad behaviors occur across the spectrum of human variation. One doesn't want to generalize from extreme instances, nor to credit positions which are derived from them.
The debate about monosexuality has been going on for a long time, but serious consideration of its causes and meaning have largely been abandoned over the last half-century, because of socio-political pressures designed to legitimate it. Studies intended to diagnose its etiology were often poorly designed. But most studies acknowledged that monosexual individuals had undergone some kind of personality trauma in childhood or early youth, which had altered their "normal" sexual fixations. Monosexuality was once lumped together by psychologists with all other kinds of sexual deviance--which clearly wasn't helpful. Monosexual types are variable within defined limits, but they generally share acquired traits which are statistically significant. A weak, absent, or abusive parent is almost always a factor. Children in such families tend to experience a reversal of role, to compensate for the loss of a beneficial model. As with all kinds of human behaviors, there are exceptions. Nothing is simple. A Gay witch-doctor in New Zealand isn't the same as a Lesbian doctor living in Boston. Boys growing up in a matriarchal household may grow into normal heterosexuals as adults, etc. Across statistical samples, it can be difficult to define types with consistency and certainty. Historically, monosexuals have been persecuted out of primitive prejudice and suspicion and simple cruelty.
Understand that in speaking of monosexuality as a phenomenon among varied cultures, we're not addressing it as a political issue. Our culture wants to "celebrate" diversity, while denying the probable consequences of all kinds of difference on principle. Applying legal remedies as a way of forcing permission or adherence is about power and the sway of public opinion; it's not about truth.
End Part I
Part II
Classic psychological studies of monosexuality suggest that unbalanced households tend to be a breeding-ground for problem children--children who become anti-social, a-social, criminal, deranged, as well as sexually confused. Put simply, recent attempts to legitimate monosexual households in law trouble many people who see this as an attempt to make such household compositions more common--to regularize and institutionalize family units guaranteed to produce troubled offspring.
Personally, I have direct experience of stable monosexual relationships. There is nothing scientifically "wrong" or "abnormal" about people of the same sex co-habiting, having some kind of quasi-sexual "interaction" and maintaining a kind of closed society of their kind. Who are we to judge whether such relationships are right or wrong? It's a matter of privacy and personal choice. And extreme examples of promiscuity and hedonism etc., are not a basis upon which to promulgate public policy. I'm not attempting to fashion (what you call) a "uni-modal" argument here. I'm neutral with respect to the existence of a Gay component in our culture--once these people are counted among that sub-group, they remain there forever, in whatever variety, and they're entitled to all the rights and protections of citizenship. Until perhaps two decades ago, this was all they wanted, and all they demanded. Whatever I or anyone may feel about monosexuals as a group, is a matter of personal opinion, and should have little or no effect in law.
But from a scientific and practical point of view, the expansion of monosexuals into full-fledged institutional status as parents, flies in the face of all we know about the advisability of doing so. Since openly monosexual parenting is such a novel idea, we have virtually no direct evidence of the consequences of promoting it. Institutionalized monosexual parenting simply didn't exist prior to the last two decades. And yet we're encouraged to rush headlong into granting it full status, before anyone has thought about it.
Brett and Stu, you're young. I was young too once. Everything is clear as day. Everything has to happen immediately. People who question change are tired old fogies--they're just burdened with prejudices and preconceptions and old-fashioned ways of thinking. They just confirm the past and deny the future. Right on, brother. Hard rains gonna fall.
Frankly, I don't think the train is going to stop, or even slow down. A generation from now, monosexual households, and the children who grow up in them, will be a commonplace. Will this be a good thing? I don't have the answer. Will a world in which kids talk casually about trying to decide whether anal fucking is good or bad or just "another option" be one that I could live in? Don't ask me, 'cause I'll be dead. And a good thing, too.
Kirby - calling you a pinhead with regard to your specific statement that 1 in 100,000 women have been raped is a much different thing than claiming that I never think about anything.
It's the difference between 'you're a stupid person' and 'you said a stupid thing.'
Also, I earlier called myself and my friends pinheads wrt women...so it was obviously a friendlier, joshier term than 'you never think.'
And Bush's DOJ seems not to be a good place for commies.
Again, calling any statistic that you disagree with 'commie' because you don't like that it points out a reality you don't like is bad rhetoric.
And look at your math, even if you refuse to acknowledge that rapes as a whole go unreported - you said 1 in 100,000 in Life. Which is 30 times less than the 29 per 100,000 that you admit happen PER YEAR.
"But again, the definition of this term may include things such as, felt uncomfortable on a date as things were going too fast."
No, no it can't... do we have the specific questions from those surveys? That might be helpful. I'm pretty sure it has to do with 'the legal definition of rape.'
"Add to this varying geographic rates, and most people living in relatively civilized areas among relatively civilized people, and not drinking, and avoiding drinkers, it's probably closer to one in one hundred thousand."
This paragraph is weird, and irrelevant.
And here we go...
This is copy-pasted from http://www.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/AR_RapeStatistics.pdf .
The prevalence rate they got from these questions was 12.65%. Considering that there are many other activities that could legitimately be called 'sexual assault,' this definitely puts my numbers much closer to the truth...
1. Has a man or boy ever made you have sex
by using force or threatening to harm you or
someone close to you? Just so there is no
mistake, by having sex, we mean putting a
penis in your vagina.
2. Has anyone, male or female, ever made you
have oral sex by force or threatening to
harm you? So there is no mistake, by oral
sex, we mean that a man or boy put his
penis in your mouth or someone penetrated
your vagina or anus with their mouth or
tongue.
3. Has anyone ever made you have anal sex by
force or threatening to harm you? By anal
sex we mean putting their penis in your anus
or rectum.
4. Has anyone ever put fingers or objects in
your vagina or anus against your will by
using force or threatening to harm you?
Findings: Prevalence of lifetime experience of
rape was 12.65%, meaning that 12.65% of women
endorsed at least one of the four rape screening
questions as having occurred at least once in their
lifetime. Past-year prevalence of rape was 0.71%,
meaning that 71 out of every 10,000 women reported rape experiences... It is worth noting that only 16% of rape
victims surveyed in this study stated that they had
reported their rape to law enforcement...
Oh, and look at the numbers from more recent studies - in 2006, the total number was 18 percent. 16 percent reported forcible rape.
I have already stated that the 1/4 is a number that uses the most lax definition, and that 1/5 and 1/6 are closer to other studies that use a harsher standard for their rape statistics (though I of course used the more lax term 'sexual assault,' but even ignoring that, the reality is still closer to 1/5 or 1/6).
So, to clarify, you are wrong when you say that these statistics come from people who say they 'felt uncomfortable.' Look at the questions...They're right there, and they are not what you had assumed they would be. And they don't even include a situation where, say, a 10-year-old girl's 46-year-old uncle forced her to stroke his penis, and kissed her and fondled her nipples. So you are wrong that these questions are too 'lax' for sexual assault. They are, in fact, too harsh. Yet still they make the point.
Rape statistics are complex. The ones that Brett cites here may or may not be the ones used by any given group that is compiling or inventing the statistics. When you look up "rape statistics" the first sentence says how hard they are to compile. Female to male rape isn't even a category, and records aren't kept. Many might claim that that's not a category, but John Irving has said he was raped at age 11 by an older woman. What happened? Exactly what was the scenario? wa she attracted, but later found out about statutory rape? He isn't specific.
Every one of these incidences has a story surrounding it, and without the story, the number is meaningless.
Also in Rape Statistics it says that in 47% of cases both parties were drinking. In another 19% of cases, the male was drinking. In another seven percent, only the female victim was drinking. So, in 75% of the cases, drink was involved. Also, almost all cases of rape take place indoors.
Among people who know one another.
And then if you look up race and rape, you find out that blacks make up an alarmingly high percentage of the perps. And then you find out that Hispanics, who are also alarmingly high, are classified as whites.
(Christina Hoff Sommers in her book Who Stole Feminism? goes through these rape rates reported by feminists and minces them up even further to show how unrealistic it is for someone who isn't in a high risk group to think that he or she has a one in four probability of being raped. It's more like one in a hundred thousand, or less.)
I have never even imagined raping anybody, and I can't imagine who would think in that vein. I don't think a normal person would think like that. On the other hand, I was only drunk one time in my life. I was sixteen, and thought it was one of the worst experiences of my life (I drank some awful Thunderbird wine and threw up for an hour, and had a headache for a week).
I think, as with all statistics, rape rates spread very high numbers in small areas across a broad swath of society. It's probably more like if you live in a bad neighborhood and everybody is drinking, and you are a young woman, your chances of getting raped are about 100%.
While for most people living in secure areas around people with high IQs and normal Protestant work ethics, the chances are next to nil.
Which isn't to deny that living in S. Africa is a picnic (it's more likely that you'll be raped there than that you'll learn to read -- but again that's not true for whites AND blacks -- black women are far more likely to be raped -- and most rape is intraracial).
Stu always brings up the data but never parses it as he'd rather jump to a conclusion and then use his formidable mathematical skills to defend his mistaken position.
Stu is really the king of race, gender, class thinking. His paradigm begins and ends there, and he never leaves that framework.
Even when the representative got whacked in Arizona, he was certain it was right wingers at work. It took us a week or more to work him out of this mode, and then he never thanked us but just went on with his next jumbled thought process combined with heroic numbers work.
I admit it's frayed my nerves.
With the rape rate issue we see something of the same mental defects at work. This time all men are responsible for all rapes, and we're all guilty.
But if he would have just read the Wiki page he sent on as proof of his thinking, he would have immediately seen that 47% of the rapes were due to both parties drinking. So all a woman has to do is not drink, and she's twice as likely to go unraped.
If you want to turn yourself into a moron by drinking, and then you want to surround yourself with other morons, good luck. Getting drunk is not the greatest idea in the world.
Ask Lot.
We need to parse out the larger stories behind rapes. But because this requires going beyond race, gender, and class, most academics can't go there. So as usual it's left for me to be a tad creative and to actually read the essay in question, and point to the darker realities behind the data.
I often wish people would read outside the lines of their basic paradigm. Stu almost never does this. And when you do it for him, he just opens a different can of worms and serves it up in order to change the subject.
What I appreciate about Curtis in this round is that he's not just doing the rgc dance. He's thinking from his own extensive experiences among his friends who have been homosexual, which tends to change the basic paradigm in which the right is always wrong, and the left is always right. He's looking at things from a position that's going to get him called all kinds of things, because there are many ways the left has developed to keep anyone from straying from the basic paradigm of race, gender, and class as the only question that is allowed to answer any reality, and the only result that is permitted. Anything else will go unfunded, and people asking those questions will be named, and then rejected, from the polity.
I grant that I don't have an advanced degree in mathematics. But I can add, and I can read, and I can think outside of rgc. So, by the way, can everybody on the right. It's just the left that is ghettoized by that thought. If I need to do advanced math, I have a pocket calculator. It cost $3.50, plus the draconian taxes from the communist state, and it was still less than $4.00.
Imagine, an entire field replaced by $4.00 calculators.
Reading, on the other hand, can't be taught. You have to try to read for the anomalies in the data in order to expand the paradigm, and the basic thinking with which you started. Waiving away anomalies (such as drinking levels in rape victims) will tend to reinforce the very position you started out with. That's how almost all academics think, but it's how thinking shouldn't be done.
Just a touch of creativity and we are toward the one in one hundred thousand figure. Even that's probably high, but I am so fair and balanced, that I decided to make the rate as high as I could so as not to make Brett and Stu upset.
I hate to upset apple carts.
"guaranteed to produce troubled offspring."
Since monosexual households were allowed to start raising children in the 80s, there is now a sample size of the results of such parenting.
(Did I really not link to that article earlier?)
It shows that they do better than single parent and divorced parent situations, and only slightly worse than heterosexual marriages (a difference that all but disappears when socioeconomic status is accounted for).
Truth is that if you don't have a lot of people screaming 'This needs to happen now!' it never happens. If you do have a lot of people screaming 'this needs to happen now!' it happens, but over a long period of time.
"Will a world in which kids talk casually about trying to decide whether anal fucking is good or bad or just "another option" be one that I could live in?"
That's the world you do live in (especially if you define 'kid' as under-21), and it has nothing to do with homosexuality... (they talk about it wrt heterosexual analfucking).
And 'that's the way it's always been' is simply not a valid reason to believe anything. I recognize full well that liberals tend to view 'new' as necessarily good, and conservatives tend to view 'old' as necessarily good. It's the natural flaw in both sides' thinking, though I do think it's good that the conservatives are there to put on the brakes so that the liberals don't just run wild into an unknown future, and the liberals are there to keep the conservatives from being able to hold onto things just because they've been that way.
But that which we call good and legal needs to come from a more principled perspective than 'it came before!' or 'it's new!' As individuals, we need to look at the thing itself and view how it lines up with our principles, and try best to think about how it will manifest itself practically, and then define our stances based on those things...
I have done this thinking, and I believe you have as well, (Kirby, not so much:-) ) though our initial instinct is to believe that the other is merely arguing out of 'it's old so it's good' or 'it's new so it's good.'
I do think what we've gotten out of this back and forth is a pretty good discussion of how gay marriage relates to our principles, and some discussion about what effect its legalization will have on the culture moving forward. I still believe, and believe I have supported, that pragmatically it will have a positive effect on the gay community, the gay lifestyle, and the wider culture. And I believe, and believe I have supported, that it falls in line with our basic principles as a nation and with the principles governing who should be allowed to marry and why.
YMMV :-)
And I am sure that Stu is thrilled at being called young:-) Having just hit 30, and with my hair marching further and further away from my face, I find it a bit uplifting myself.
We seem to be teetering toward some sort of agreement, or understanding, or common ground - which is troubling, since I was hoping this comments stream would roll on toward 200 without a hitch... And I am so obviously right compared to Kirby wrt the sexual assault statistics that I don't think even he can put a whole lot more juice behind his absurd claims...
Maybe Kirby will come out with all gay men are illegal immigrants or something to get the ball rolling again...
Brett, a big part of the rape rate is illegal Hispanic immigrant.
Does that help?
They are listed as white, but are clearly not PWE Americana.
They are something else.
Most of that rape is intraracial.
this is something that IS NOT GOING to be studied in your Chicano literature programs.
It doesn't fit the Marxist paradigm, so it can't be thought.
So when a woman gets roofied, that doesn't count as rape?
Huh?
You're trying real hard here, Kirby, but the fact of the matter is that at least 1/6 women have been sexually assaulted in their lives. Why you can't acknowledge this simple truth is beyond me.
The question wasn't 'whats the likelihood of a female version of Kirby getting raped,' the question was 'have 1/6 American women been sexually assaulted in their lives?"
The answer is yes.
(and, uhhhh, look who's discussing things in terms of race, gender, and class...it's You Kirby! Stu and I hadn't mentioned race whatsoever. And yes, usually when a man rapes a woman, we blame the man. Silly, I know! It's not to say that women can't rape men - go to fark.com and read how often they have 'teacher with student' stories - but the stats we are talking about are about women being raped, because...uhhh....that's the first statement I made that you disagreed with...So that's the relevant info.)
But the rates are not true across the whole spectrum, Brett. I am turning race, gender and class upside down, and I know that's hard for you to fathom, but try to imagine it for a second. Just one full second.
Your chances of getting raped in some places is 1 in 2, and in others next to nothing.
Just as your chances of getting mugged in some places is 1 in 2, and in others next to nothing.
Violent crimes are located among certain populations. It's not PC to think like this, so don't if you can't.