In a time when laws and constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage are falling almost daily – Utah, Nevada, Virginia (especially poignant); and Michigan will probably be next – to federal court decisions resting on United States v. Windsor we see a flurry of new laws in entirely predictable states – Kansas, Arizona, Tennessee – trying to exempt people with religious scruples from having to comply with non-discrimination laws, although they fully expect the protection of those laws themselves.
The smell of desperation is thick in the air, and the spasms are coming ever faster and harder. The ploy here is to claim that religious freedom is under attack because religious people are more and more being penalized for discriminating against gay and lesbian people.
This takes a page out of Sun Zi’s book:
兵者，詭道也。故能而示之不能，用而示之不用，近而示之遠，遠而 示之近。利而誘之，亂而取之，實而備之，強而避之，怒而撓之，卑 而驕之，佚而勞之，親而離之，攻其不備，出其不意。此兵家之勝，不可先傳也。
All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive. When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder and crush him; if he is secure at all points, be prepared for him; if he is in superior strength, evade him; if your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him; pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant; if he is taking his ease, give him no rest; if his forces are united, separate them; attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.
These military devices, leading to victory, must not be divulged beforehand.
The beauty and power of this advice is that you do not have to consciously follow it for it to be effectual. It operates with or without intention. Whether or not there is a covert gay agenda, whether or not some queer cabal is orchestrating all this, the war is playing out exactly as Sun Zi said it will.
Kansas, Arizona, Tennessee
Kansas:
A bill in Kansas would protect people discriminating against gay and lesbian people from legal action on the pretext of protecting their religious freedom.
“House Bill 2453 explicitly protects religious individuals, groups and businesses that refuse services to same-sex couples, particularly those looking to tie the knot.”
The obvious flaw in the argument is that one person’s rights stop where another person’s right begins. That seems not to trouble the sponsors and backers of the bill, or perhaps they just don’t believe gays and lesbians have any rights in this area.
Arizona:
And then in Arizona there is SB 1062, which would allow businesses to discriminate if the owners’ religious beliefs promoted that discrimination. Since Arizona has a typical Sun Belt religious landscape – lots of Evangelicals and Fundamentalist – the groups this puts at risk are Mormons, gays and maybe Wiccans. But problems are rearing their head and some of the very people who voted for this Senate bill are having serious second thoughts:
“Three state Republicans who voted for the measure have also expressed buyer’s remorse, telling the Arizona Republic that the fallout from the measure is causing the state “immeasurable harm.”
Read the rest of Katie McDonough’s article to see how well proponents of the law can articulate the threat to religious freedom this law supposedly addresses. (She deserves the click, though she hardly needs it.)
Tennessee
”On February 5, Republicans introduced legislation in both chambers of the Tennessee Legislature allowing a person or company to refuse to provide services such as food, accommodation, counseling, adoption, or employment to people in civil unions or same-sex marriages, or transgender individuals, “if doing so would violate the sincerely held religious beliefs of the person.”
The most efficient and effective way to destroy this last ditch defense of bigotry is to excite it to excessive and convulsive action, to destroy its credibility so that the public sees it for what it is and rejects it; to destroy its mask of respectability and expose it as the hate movement it is and thereby demolish any chance of success it may have.
As Sun Zi tells us:
故上兵伐謀，其次伐交，其次伐兵，其下攻城。
Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy’s plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy’s forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy’s army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.
This is not the first episode of this backlash. The first episode came in the form of anti-SSM laws in states and amendments to state constitutions. Now that federal court decisions are knocking those down like ducks in a shooting gallery, a new backlash, more desperate, more incoherent and ridiculous, is shaping up. And almost certainly this one will fail before it even looks like having any success. The cycle has just gotten that much shorter.
So as public opinion shifts further and further and furhter away form the old homophobic tropes and becomes less and less toelratant of homophobia, these people are scrambling to brand themselves as homophobes. Remember the old story of the two scorpions in a botle who hated each other so much that they sat there stinging each other until both died? These religious homophobes are managing to do the same thing with only one scorpion in the bottle.
So all in all, these frantic attempts are a hopeful sign. But the enemy is not dead yet and its defeat here has prompted even more desperate attempts elsewhere – such as in and Russia. That is where the next battle is.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
I sometimes wonder if one of the drivers of homosexuality is the need by some men to seek female privilege (thus also the disproportionate number of “transgender” men). Same sex marriage is the most nonsensical thing ever. Of course people have a right to do nonsensical things and gay marriage may be what ends up saving men that are getting hurt by heterosexual marriage (though heterosexual marriage at this point in history is almost as nonsensical as homosexual marriage and I would rather see it fade away). But you know, discrimination is also a nonsensical thing that people have a right to. I fail to see how the right to homosexual marriage is any more valuable than the right to free association. In fact, I think the right to free association is about a hundred billion times more valuable. What’s up with this silliness?
Seriously, as far as I know homosexuals today are treated the same by the law as heterosexuals, the only exception being the rule against homosexuality in the army. To pretend that marriage is a “civil right” for homosexuals is the most surreal thing to me. Homosexuals have a right to marry, they just don’t have a right to violate the rules of marriage is. Have people completely lost their mind as far as the meaning of the word “marriage”? It doesn’t mean “two people that love each other”. It means a contractual union between males and females for the purpose of organizing procreation. More than that, it has very specific features that exist due to the inherent uncertainty of natural heterosexual procreation. To a large degree, heterosexual marriage is obsolete and dying as an institution. Homosexual marriage is a fad with no future. I don’t really care if people want to live out their “marriage fantasy” within a homosexual relationship but seriously why is it made into such a big deal?
From the Civil Rights Act:
Does anyone know if anything has been amended to the “grounds” part of this? If not, what justification would a federal court potentially use to overturn these new laws?
Where do you get this definition? Even the Defense of Marriage Act doesn’t define it so strictly. I don’t remember any part of my marriage certificate that said anything about procreation, but I suppose I may have missed something.
I get this definition from the history involved in the invention of what we call “marriage”, which predates the “Defense of Marriage Act” by millenia. If you look at the word “matrimony”, it means “the state of being a mother”. This requires heterosexuality. It has nothing to do with individual rights and for most of history nobody was under the illusion that it had anything at all to do with love. Thus why we call the person you cheat on your spouse with, your “lover”. Marriage is a form of social engineering that was required under certain conditions to sustain civilization, and nothing more. Those conditions were primarily 1. The lack of paternity testing and 2. The lack of control by women over their fertility. Both conditions have been abolished, which is why we can treat the idea of marriage with such disdain and disregard that we have no fault divorces and “homosexual” marriage. There has never been any society on earth that has ever linked marriage with homosexual relationships because there is no reason to do so.
It is heartening to see that society has moved past the need for such dull pragmatisms as marriage being “strictly a procreation contract to ensure women don’t run off having kids with any old Joe, and that men provide for the family they sire” that are outmoded and outdated in a more comfortable era, where such things should be made primarily out of love, with the desire to raise a family being a close second.
All we need is to dislodge that stopper holding in the gynocentric privilege – you know, the one marked “feminism” – to allow progress to permeate heterosexual life too.
If both of those things make people uncomfortable, then it’s a damn good thing I don’t care how uncomfortable basic human rights and decency can make some people.
Using this as an argument against gay marriage would also mean using it as an argument against men who’ve had a vasectomy or who have a too low sperm-count marrying, against women who had an hysterectomy or is otherwise infertile marrying. It would also mean using it as an argument against people professing a desire to be childfree marrying. It would also require marriages that haven’t resulted in children so far to annulled when it’s confirmed that the husband and/or wife are no longer able to conceive a child (after menopause, impotence in the man etc etc.).
In short; it’s ridiculous.
Thank you! I’ve been making the argument for years now that all the freaking out over the numerous last-ditch Tea Party-esque legislation proves the opposite point that most people seem to make. While most people freak out over how many abortion restrictions (my original context) they don’t see anything but numbers. These extreme bills and laws are the deathrattle of a mentality that knows it has lost and desires to wreck as much havoc as possible in the hope that SOMETHING sticks through appeals and challenges.
Because if there really were a larger social movement toward restricting abortion or legalizing discrimination against LGBT individuals it would be very “normalized” with little fanfare and would simply pass into law. These are the actions of lawmakers who see their end approaching fast and so they’re trying to do as much as possible before their plummeting support numbers leave them on the outside without power.
This is, literally, watching a certain conservative, baby-boomer privilege melt away because society has moved far past them.
Gay men don’t get female privilege. They also get less male privilege.
While a man might lift heavy shit for a woman with a smile, if he has to do it for a gay man (suppose he’s asked by a family member or friend who is not the gay man), he might resent him being “able to opt out from that”, something he won’t resent the woman for.
And transgender men or women are not disproportionate, regardless of what your propaganda about “men raping little girls in public bathroom” NARTH has fed you. You also just called trans women as transgender men. So you got it backwards, too.
Gay marriage is a complete non-issue. Why do gays want to copy heterosexual dysfunction? Marriage is a slavery contract for heterosexual men.
At least gay marriage has the advantage of not having a built-in bias towards the female partner. Either both are, or none are.
As the Justicar on youtube said:
“Gay guys worked out a system decades ago. Heterosexual people, get together and FIGURE. SOMETHING. OUT! You ninety percent are really starting to fuck it up for the rest of us!”
It seems that the not-so-obvious point is that people are really good at sorting out their own arrangements, and a top-down rigid heuristic for organising peoples’ lives for them is really not for their benefit.
Andre,
You raise some points I want to address. They have all been disproven many times before, but you are raisng them in good faith and you deserve a fair answer.
Marriage has always mostly been about inheritance and securing children in the father’s family and lineage, more than about actual reproduction and securing a a good environment for children, although obviously these are all connected. But the point is peasants didn’t need to marry and often didn’t, they could just breed. But they had nothing to pass on so the paternity of a wife’s kids was really neither here nor there.
Matrimony – the name for an object is not that object. It is the label and the object is the object. That label may be more or less descriptive but it never defines that object. So in the case of marriages, there have always been marriages where children were not the purpose.
“I don’t really care if people want to live out their “marriage fantasy” within a homosexual relationship but seriously why is it made into such a big deal?”
Bureaucracy. Marriage is a huge thing in bureacracy. It saves us $600/month because I can have my partner on my health insurance. It means he gets my pesions after I die. It quadrupled my tax retrun this year because we filed jointly. Those are just a few examples.
But the real issue in this whole mess is theocracy. This push in these states is driven by people who want theocracy, and that is unacceptable. And I hope these people back down and wise up, or else leave the country. The Constitution is worth killing people over. “I swear that I will that will defned and protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” etc…. backed up by everything up to and including nuclear weapons.
tamerlane,
“Gay marriage is a complete non-issue. Why do gays want to copy heterosexual dysfunction? Marriage is a slavery contract for heterosexual men.”
I happen to save personal experience of both sides, so i can compare the two.
“[Heterosexual] Marriage is a slavery contract for heterosexual men.”
Fixed that for you.
Marriage is slavery for a man when there is a woman involved, and even then not always.
My relationship and now marriage – 14 years and going strong – does not in any way copy the heterosexual dysfunction that my straight marriage degenerated into.
“You raise some points I want to address. They have all been disproven many times before, but you are raisng them in good faith and you deserve a fair answer.”
Okay, except you didn’t address those issues. Society is not a fine tuned machine so things are not always perfectly choreographed and thought out. People do things without realizing where those traditions came from and what benefit it provides them. They neglect traditions without realizing the consequences involved. And they also mess with those traditions without understanding them, often with disastrous consequences. There have always been children born “out of wedlock”, adultery and infertile women/men, this doesn’t mean marriage is not about procreation.
Marriage is not about securing a good environment for children, it is about protecting parents. It’s about protecting men from not being able to know which child is his and women from the consequences of this. This is important because sometimes I think people invert the relationship of procreation and marriage. Marriage is a result of the reality of sexual reproduction and the problems that arise from it, not some master plan to ensure this reproduction happens in an ideal way and children are well taken care of.
Peasants may not have married in an official capacity but there has always been a recognition of “common law” marriage. Marriage in essence is not the act of signing a paper, in a christian church or a court of law, but the tradition of assigning a single man as the exclusive male sexual partner of a female (regardless of how many sexual partners the male has) and of compensating for this loss of freedom on the female side with numerous perks. I’m not going to write a hundred pages detailing every nuance of this, this is the core of it and that is what really matters. There are some societies in which this is not done; these societies are all very primitive and have communal forms of child raising, and of living in general.
Now it is true that married people receive a number of benefits from the state. This is a form of social engineering. Homosexual marriage undermines this social engineering because it is not marriage as such that is valued by the state and society, but heterosexual marriage. Regardless of what you think about this social engineering, the fact is that it is incompatible with homosexual marriage. It might last a while but eventually either the benefits will be abolished or homosexual marriages will. As a single man I am just as hurt by them as a homosexual couple that can’t get married, but I’m not advocating for, or feel oppressed by the lack of, the right to marry my hand.
Your theocracy argument is… I don’t know… silly? Homosexuality was illegal in the Soviet Union; this wasn’t because the orthodox church controlled the Politburo but because the religion of the Soviet Union was socialism and the high priests of that religion decided homosexuality was now sinful. This is the reason there is no gay marriage in China, which is for all intents and purposes and atheist country, but there is gay marriage in Brazil which is supposedly catholic. The arguments by christian conservatives against gay marriage are foolish because they assume heterosexual marriage is still viable and can be saved. They are concerned, rightly so, that gay marriage is the final nail in the coffin of an institution that has been vital to civilization for thousands of years. Can you appreciate that? Can you appreciate that it is not about hating gays or “theocracy”?
“At least gay marriage has the advantage of not having a built-in bias towards the female partner. Either both are, or none are.”
Schala, this is the primary reason why I went from being against gay marriage to being indifferent to it. I think there is a good chance that “gay marriage” will reveal to the world the absurd nonsense that heterosexual marriages have become in this age of “promiscuity without consequences”. A hundred years ago gay marriage would have been a disaster. Today, it might save us.
“Gay men don’t get female privilege. They also get less male privilege.”
You are looking at this all wrong. Sexuality and a sense of identity in general is something that is most plastic in childhood. A boy, even a very small male infant, might look at the world and see how women are treated, how people relate to them, and adopt certain aspects of the female identity. It is undeniable that many gay men pretty much worship women.
As far as your “they also get less male privilege” comment, I think that is a misrepresentation. Yes in some aspects that is true but here is something to ponder: male prostitutes (of all kinds) cater almost exclusively to males. Think about what that means.
“While a man might lift heavy shit for a woman with a smile, if he has to do it for a gay man (suppose he’s asked by a family member or friend who is not the gay man), he might resent him being “able to opt out from that”, something he won’t resent the woman for.”
The fact you can’t fulfill your fantasy doesn’t mean you don’t have it.
“And transgender men or women are not disproportionate, regardless of what your propaganda about “men raping little girls in public bathroom” NARTH has fed you. You also just called trans women as transgender men. So you got it backwards, too.”
Are there not many more men that want to be women (on a persistent and permanent basis) than women that want to be men? I don’t know what you are talking about with the “propaganda” comment. A man that wants to be a woman, as far as I am concerned, is still a man, even after he undergoes genital mutilation. I don’t think this is prejudice, it’s just recognizing reality.
Tamen,
For most of history there wasn’t really any way to know that a man had “a low sperm count”. There were no vasectomies. In fact, there was no real birth control at all. People didn’t really know why a man or a woman wasn’t having children. It was assumed that a marriage automatically resulted in pregnancy and children. This is the context in which marriage was invented and evolved. What we have today is inherited from that context and is still adapting to the changes that have taken place. Eunuchs have historically not been allowed to marry, as it was obvious they were infertile. In fact I just did a google search and a story popped up about an eunuch being arrested in Pakistan for trying to get married. You can always find the odd exception, like roman emperors that decide on a whim to marry another man, but that is all they really are. I was under the impression that infertility, to the degree that it could be determined, used to be grounds for a divorce. Wikipedia states: “The specific grounds for receiving a fault divorce include adultery, impotency, infertility or homosexuality of the other party”
I really don’t like the idea of forcing people to hide their beliefs because it keeps them untested and actually protects those who hold extreme beliefs from the consequences of those beliefs. Would anyone who opposes racism want to stay in a hotel run by the KKK as long as the law forced them to be polite and hide their beliefs and practices from guests? We seem to be accepting of anything as long as we can be protected from seeing it. Is there a genocide on the news? Just don’t show us–or tell us about–the gruesome bits. Is there a massive international debt crisis? More spending needed to take our minds off it. Is something not safe or healthy? Keep use from being free to fall victim to enjoying it.
This reminds me of that article that circulated Facebook awhile back. Some Christians wrote a letter to their gay server in a restaurant saying that they wouldn’t leave a tip because the server was gay. At first, I felt that the customers were being jerks for doing that. But upon further reflection, something occurred to me. How did the customers know that their server was gay???
Then i thought, if I were a customer in a restaurant, and some hetero chick was talking about how she banged the football team the other night, would I enjoy the atmosphere of the restaurant? No. I would have rather stayed home and cooked for myself.
As a business owner, I didn’t get into business for the money. I got into business for the freedom. Because being in business means that no one can force you to do something that you don’t want to do. I like that i can dress how i want, and associate with who i want, and I love it.
The most fundamental right that a person can have, is the right to be left alone. I would hope that you could understand that.
Hendrick: Didn’t that story turn out to be a hoax? The server wrote the message herself.
Adiabat: yes it was. Hendrick was right to be sceptical straight away.
First off, socialism is no religion. Capitalism isn’t one either.
Oh look, Christians!
Japan is a place that has condemned homosexuality on grounds different than Christian religion. They’re essentially NOT-Christian. And you have to do a LOT more to be condemned for it. Holding hands between two guys who aren’t family is not seen as gay, it’s seen as friendly. Heck you can even sit in his lap. It’ll become ‘gay’ the moment they kiss or touch sexually (which they’re very unlikely to do in public, since even straight couples don’t do much public displays of affection in public, kinda taboo there, unproper – not sinful).
Their reasoning for condemning homosexuality is simply about being strict on gender roles. They won’t say “God hates you”, or “You’re going to hell for this”. Their concept of god or the afterlife differs from Christianity, except for the small 1% who are Christian. They’re mostly non-practicing, but have cultural Shintoist and Buddhist elements (namely all their temples).
They simply want Sharia law to be the model for it’s Christian equivalent, in the US. To legally “punish the sinners”. This is theocracy. For example, bigamy and adulterer laws are already on the books. They don’t want separation of church and state. They want the church to BE the state. And are really scared about secularism becoming bigger worldwide (it’s the norm almost everywhere else in the West). Their tiny religious world is growing smaller.
I don’t get how this is a reply to my example of a man resenting another for being able to ‘opt out’ while they can’t, while not resenting a woman for opting out since birth (from say, heavy lifting, conscription, etc).
Your first sentence speaks of trans women. The propaganda bit is about where you most likely get your info that more trans women than trans men exist. And your last sentence is just plain bullshit, regardless of whether the indivual EVER gets surgery.
I have a penis, and I’m female. I’ll legally be so pretty soon (for now I only have the legal name). I won’t get surgery, at all. Fear us, we’re coming! Mwhahaha…
Sure, speak out your belief, but it can’t directly influence your business, who you serve, who you hire, etc. Or we might as well decide to not hire women, or to not hire Jew, or to not hire black.
You DO know the Muslim will use their “religious exclusion” shit to not serve or hire women, right? It’s inevitable.
I’ll use my Pastafarian exclusion to not serve or hire anyone I don’t like. Including anyone in a big religion, unless I decide “they’re cool anyways” on a case by case basis.
Hedrick,
“The most fundamental right that a person can have, is the right to be left alone. I would hope that you could understand that.”
I can understand that. So if you want to be left alone, go off and be alone. Just don’t try to do it in society – in our cities and towns, in our economy. Do not think you have a right to the benefits of living in society without the responsibilities that go with that, or you will sound like all these “what good are men stories” from women who want all the benefits of living in a world built by men – roads, buildings, hospitals, steady supply of food – without having to treat us like human beings.
Because guess what. Being left alone is not the natural state of affairs. You can call it a right if you like, but remember what the maximum effective range of a right is -zero – and. In a state of nature, you don’t get left alone, you get a lot of attention as potential prey. And one of the huge benefits of living in civil society is that fear ia llayed so people can get on with being productive. But that all rests on social cooperation.
Because otherwise? For al you know I happen to want to make a drinking cup out of a skull, and here you come along. And what’s to stop me? We all need each other, like it or not.
Hendrick:
Also, it’s not even close to the most fundamental right. The most fundamental right is one on which all others are based.It is:
“The right to have the consequences of your actions”.
Without this, any and all rights are moot. The consequence of going off by yourself as a human is something will eat you. Of which you can’t complain even a little.
Note on the theocracy thing – these new laws in these states are all explicitly about religion and the suppose dthreat to the free exercise of reliogion.
Brian Beutler says Brewer’s action yesterday just killed the movement off:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/27/gops_religious_liberty_scam_just_died_why_brewers_veto_is_so_momentous/
Schala,
“First off, socialism is no religion”
I don’t care to debate this, especially since this wasn’t my point.
“Oh look, Christians!”
The Soviet Union started with a period of extreme sexual “liberation”. When the consequences of this turned out to be negative for the state (or alternatively you might say, when those consequences were no longer useful), much of it was reversed. This has nothing to do with orthodox christianity. To suggest that orthodox christians dominated the soviet political machine, or that attacks on homosexuality were some sort of pandering to them, is… insane. Orthodox chirstians, while tolerated to some degree, were (and in many places still are) a persecuted group.
“Japan is a place that has condemned homosexuality on grounds different than Christian religion. They’re essentially NOT-Christian. And you have to do a LOT more to be condemned for it.”
Arab muslims also have a more relaxed attitude regarding male relationships.
“They simply want Sharia law to be the model for it’s Christian equivalent, in the US.”
Except there is no punishment in the Bible for homosexuality. Yes, it’s condemned as sinful, but it is not listed in any of the legal doctrines in any of its books and Christianity itself is rooted in the forgiveness of sin to such an extent that homosexual catholic priests that molested children were seen as deserving of a second chance by the catholic church. Bigamy (fraudulent second marriages) and adultery (fraud within a marriage) should be crimes, it makes perfect sense to treat them as such. Consider however that polygamists (such as Mormons) are persecuted by the same governments that view it as their moral obligation to allow homosexuals to marry. Polygamy is a much more reasonable arrangement than homosexual marriage.
“They don’t want separation of church and state.”
I can assure you that none of the people that invented the concept of separation of church and state, and applied it within the american political tradition, believed that homosexual marriages should be recognized as legitimate. My opinion is that the concept is nonsensical but even if it wasn’t, this has nothing to do with “separation of church and state”. The basis of marriage is not religious, it is biological. It is as secular as you can get.
“I don’t get how this is a reply to my example”
Then try a little harder because I can’t make it any more obvious.
“The propaganda bit is about where you most likely get your info that more trans women than trans men exist.”
No, I get that info from personal experience. It could be incorrect, but then where are these “trans men” hidding exactly?
“I have a penis, and I’m female.”
Do you seriously not get just how nonsensical that sentence is?
“I’ll use my Pastafarian exclusion to not serve or hire anyone I don’t like. Including anyone in a big religion, unless I decide “they’re cool anyways” on a case by case basis.”
I have no problem with that idea.
Ginkgo,
“So if you want to be left alone, go off and be alone. Just don’t try to do it in society – in our cities and towns, in our economy.”
You do realize this argument can be (and has been) used to persecute homosexuals?
“You do realize this argument can be (and has been) used to persecute homosexuals?”
Yes. Absolutely. That’s why it’s not the form of the argumet that matters but the substance. The substance is that this nation and this society made a civilizational decison over 200 years ago to build itself on Enlightenment values, that all values wwere not equal, that theocratic values for example were inferior to Enlightenment values.
It took a long time and a grueling proces sto realize this, and theocracy was not the sticking piont; the sticking point was the debate over the boundary between human rights and property rights. It nearly killed the country but the decision reached after a bloody war has held.
“I can assure you that none of the people that invented the concept of separation of church and state, and applied it within the american political tradition, believed that homosexual marriages should be recognized as legitimate. ”
Absolutely true. Not even open for debate.
““I have a penis, and I’m female.”
Do you seriously not get just how nonsensical that sentence is?’
Why is the penis and not some aspect of brain structure the defining mark of maleness? Are they not both equally anatomical?
“The substance is that this nation and this society made a civilizational decison over 200 years ago to build itself on Enlightenment values”
This is something you may not realize as an american, but the gay marriage crusade, and resistance to it, is a global thing. In some places the resistance is so fierce that it is actually causing a backlash against homosexuality, because the gay lobby is just pushing too far. Can you point me to examples of advocacy of gay marriage that are 200+ years old? Can you show me where George Washington wrote that the reason he fought the british monarchy was so that homosexuals could get married? This “nation” was founded by people who were deeply religious and the separation of church and state principle is meant to foster religious pluralism (particularly within a christian framework), not to drive religion from the public sphere. Thoreau was arrested for refusing to pay a religious tax. The United States was founded on a church, supposedly by the authority of God, because that authority superseded the authority of the King. I can assure you that if the founding fathers were still alive, they would be siding with your perceived enemies, not you.
“Why is the penis and not some aspect of brain structure the defining mark of maleness?”
Because brain fluid cannot impregnate a woman, nor can the brain gestate and then give birth to a child. Before you give the “infertile” argument, infertility is a biological defect. If you make this argument, you open yourself to the claim that transgender individuals have a brain defect. I rather not have that discussion.
“Are they not both equally anatomical?”
Sure, but what those anatomical differences implies is not the same thing. Plants can be male or female, without having a brain at all.
“the sticking point was the debate over the boundary between human rights and property rights.”
Even if I accept this narrative, the fact of the matter is that homosexual marriage is a not a “human right”, certainly not within the context of modern western societies. Again, as a single man, I don’t have society pandering to my chosen lifestyle. I am literally being oppressed by gay marriage being recognized. And this is to a degree greater than the recognition of and pandering to heterosexual marriage. This is not a significant concern to me because there are way bigger issues to address, but it annoys me to no end when people frame this as a human rights issue or talk trash against those that oppose it. It is not a human rights issue.
Andre
How does “people getting married” oppress you? Marriage has only ever been about property rights historically; it’s slowly a(and very painfully) mutating into an extension of human rights rather than property. Two of the biggest sticking points centre on men, specifically “men marrying men” and “men marrying no-one”. I (dubiously, it must be admitted) think they support each other. Men marrying who they love be it another man or no-one at all (human right of Enlightenment values) versus men marrying for the “benefit of society” ie. women (property rights – if you’re a ward of society, they treat you like valued property).You are actually being benefited by gay marriage being recognised. It is a cornerstone of men’s rights as humans being recognised.
“How does “people getting married” oppress you?”
There are a great deal of legal privileges awarded to married couples. The same privileges that proponents of gay marriage complained about not having, are denied to individuals that simply choose not to marry.
Andre
These are remnants of the whole “Marriage is to do with property” standard. Two of the things that may get these extended to single people are 1) more single people and 2) a distaste from the social conservatives to benefiting married couples if too many are the ‘wrong’ sort of married couples. It is not enough to say “things aren’t good for me now so fuck things that will benefit me personally or that I can use in the future”. I am willing to play the long game (it’s a game that only the honest sceptic can win) whereas people like yourself give up immediately in a storm of petulant tears. The feminists aren’t going to be able to steal credit for positive changes forever, nor is any other group of postmodern Enlightenment hijackers. Stop giving in so bloody easily.
“Stop giving in so bloody easily.”
Giving in to what?
Schala,
“I have a penis, and I’m female. I’ll legally be so pretty soon (for now I only have the legal name). I won’t get surgery, at all. Fear us, we’re coming! Mwhahaha…”
I really don’t want to get more off-track here than I already have but a thought came to me. Have you considered that renouncing your sexual identity as a male so you can be “pretty” and “feminine” is a type of deeply rooted misandry? Why can’t you be exactly who you are, whatever that may mean, as a male? If you don’t even want surgery then what part of being a man are you renouncing exactly?
Andre
Giving in to what?
” I shouldn’t change something for the better, even though I can use it to my advantage later on, because I only advantage myself”. You give into the essential lazy greed of the perma-child. I already said this in the comment you responded to – changing things so human rights supersede property rights can only advantage you; you just don’t care to, since you seem to take the same spoiled-child attitude that most self-centred twit ‘libertarians’ have: as long as I get mine, leave me alone and fuck everybody else. This is a defeatist attitude that will get you nothing but a noble sense of defeated chivalry that I’m sure the copses at the Alamo felt.
Andre,
“Again, as a single man, I don’t have society pandering to my chosen lifestyle.”
Jaysus! This is a whole huge area to research. (Not a derailment at all and thank you for mentioning this.)
This was a huge bone of contention in the Army where single people always got duty on the holidays so the married ones could “be with their families.” God that used to gripe. I and everyone else would have been happy to trade voluntarily but the idea of it being policy was just wrong.
Then there were all the laws in early Massachussetts and elsewhere basically forbidding bachelors from living alone. (Laws like this were necessary because men could live on their own, women and their labor being redundant whereas women couldn’t so there were no equivalent laws covering women.)
That’s why I say research. I have only a glimmering of what is out there on this.
“so human rights supersede property rights ”
Ginkgo used this expression too, which is alien to me. Can you define “human rights”?
Hendrick said…
The most fundamental right that a person can have, is the right to be left alone. I would hope that you could understand that.
Ginkgo said…
I can understand that. So if you want to be left alone, go off and be alone. Just don’t try to do it in society – in our cities and towns, in our economy.
Hendrick could possibly have expressed this better. We each have a right to decide for ourselves who we will associate with. I certainly have every right to decide for myself who I will take on as a client in my professional life or a friend in my private life. It isn’t up to others.
You can call the devoutly held beliefs of the faithful bigotry but that does not make it bigotry. As a devout Catholic I learned from a young age of the sanctity of life. The only act of intimacy that can create life is the one engaged in by a man and a woman and by extension that man and that woman are the parents of the life created. That is a fundamental belief held by the faithful and it happens to be the best model for raising a child. A child raised with two putative parents of the same gender will learn one day that one of those putative parents has no biological connection to them and that could result in some questioning and self doubt. The faith seeks what is best for the life created, but those selfish individuals seeking recognition of their lifestyle as normal and acceptable seek to crush and defeat the faithful. This will inure to the detriment to the ideal family model and ultimately to society as a whole. It is not bigotry.
“Why is the penis and not some aspect of brain structure the defining mark of maleness? Are they not both equally anatomical?”
Objectively gametes, sperm or eggs, do. Male and female is also often used to describe innies or outies, as with electrical plugs, but gametes take precedence. See: seahorses.
Subjectively seeing oneself as female because of secondary sexual characteristics is valid. Objectively it is not. It is important not to take subjectivity to an objectivity fight, as this results in sophistry. Likewise, it is invalid to objectively tell another how they should feel.
I’m not sure which is being discussed here, objective or subjective. I get the impression Schala is arguing subjectively and Andre objectively. Thus why Andre said Schala’s statement was nonsensical, which from an objective standpoint is a valid observation. And why Schala speaks of identity and being offended at others telling her who she is.
I used “her” because I chose to abide by the subjective, but “he” would have been objectively valid. It is important in transsexualism to separate the objective and subjective. Allowing the subjective to define the objective is what allows deeply religious people to be so frustrating to deal with, they believe their feelings should dictate other’s reality.
The big distinction between religious people and trans people, is that religious people want the right to trample on other people’s right (the right to not hire gay people), prevent their rights (like same-sex marriage) and basically impose religious law on even the non-religious, as well as the “casually religious”.
Trans people simply want to be socially and legally recognized as which they know themselves to be. And it only matters legally because governments even care about it in the first place. IMO they should not care about it.
Of course, some people think trans people are “trampling” on their right to know which sex someone is gamete-wise by simply looking at them. And “invading” their god-given sex-segregated bathrooms (note that they ONLY care about trans women in the women’s room, never the other). But those rights do not exist. In fact, most bathrooms are not LEGALLY segregated (it is not a misdemeanor or felony to go in the other bathroom, there is no law about it – women often go in the men’s room, too).
And I’m in favor of unisex bathrooms, with bigger separations than the 2 inch thick urinal separations currently in the men’s room. It would take the same floor space as the current 2 bathrooms, but without the wall separation, it would have more room for stalls. And maybe people would ‘get over’ their very prudish fear of being “in the wrong bathroom”, or their moral panic at the thought of a male in the presence of females voiding urine. They’d get over it because it would be “normal” for them in public facilities. And people still wouldn’t rape, assault or murder, not more than now anyways. It’s not a crime of opportunity, but one of predation. Heck it might happen LESS, because white knights would defend a woman victim (currently they’re not in the room).
“Since males could not perform this important task, they provided protection and resource-provision (in essence, all the ‘rest’).”
And this requires territory and control of resources, and that requires strong groups and ways to organize them internally. The most obvious and most resilient and self-perpetuating form this takes is the male lineage. This has several follow-on effects:
1. Since male lineages secure territories and resources, male lineages are more important than female lineages. That is why we don’t have female surnames. The only exceptions are in cultures that depend on such a high degree of male disposability that female lineages become the default organizing structure. The only example I can think of are the Tlingit.
2. Since male lineages secure territories and resources, and since sons rather than daughters perpetuate the male lineage, sons are valued over daughters. This interferes with the disposability/cherishability paradigm above. It is not all females who are cherished, only the breeding ones – those from outside. Also, children without a male lineage do not thrive at all, if they even survive. The children of prostitutes do not fare as well as the children of wives for this reason, and that includes the children of men how knock women up all across the landscape. The inner cities and pockets of rural poverty furnish examples.
3. A strong male lineage ensures the best access to territory and resources. Whatever strengthens and enriches the male lineage improves the reproductive success of the male lineage. That comes down to numbers; whatever increases the numbers increases the wealth and power of the lineage. That will include unrelated males that join, however they join – illegitimacy, adoption even it is through kidnap, and also slavery. And through history we see a spectrum of these practices. The Iroquois specifically waged wars to kidnap children to replenish their ranks after hard winters. Something else that strengthens this community is a high ratio of adults to children. This includes monasticism and homosexuality and provides an evolutionary incentive for the retention of homosexuality in the gene pool.
Ginkgo,
I think you replied to the wrong post.
Indeed I did. I’m going to remove it so it doesn’t disrupt the flow of the thread
Ginkgo
” if you want to be left alone, go off and be alone. Just don’t try to do it in society – in our cities and towns, in our economy. Do not think you have a right to the benefits of living in society”
Ha ha! Ginkgo invented civilization! Ginko owns “the economy”.
I’m the owner of my place faire and square. There is an unbroken chain of ownership going back to the original man who went out into the unclaimed swamp and who dug ditches with a shovel to drain the land. Who dug out rocks and roots, and who chopped down trees and sawed them into lumber to build with. Who mingled his labor with the land. Everyone else stayed home in the cities, but he struck out on his own and claimed the land that no one wanted. No one wanted it until he improved it. Then they fairly bought parts of his claim and further improved the land.
They built houses and buildings and businesses. They mingled their labor with the land.
So then I worked my butt off to save a little bit, and used it to buy a run down shack. I put allot of labor into it, working 80 hours a week. I ate ramen and peanut butter and hot dogs, and poured all of my resources into it.
And then Ginkgo comes along and claims that he’s the rightful owner! Bahahahahaha!
There is plenty of cheap open land in this world. Go start a civilization, but if you want to buy into this one, you’d better have something that is worth years of my life which i have sacrificed for MY part of it. All cash and sweat.
Unless the part that you’ve contributed is that you’ve NOT rioted. You’ve NOT murdered. You’ve NOT committed armed robbery. Then I should share because you did what you were supposed to do anyways? Right? Well I’ve refrained from doing all those things too. So maybe you should be forced to share with me!
But I’ve also gone beyond that. I’ve taken in the homeless and helped them turn their lives around. I’ve anonymously given away food. But it was because of love, not because it was my “duty”.
But if you think that YOU owe society your life, go ahead and give them what they already own. But I own myself, and anything I give is a gift.
You go run along and serve those who own you, because they are entitled to it. Society OWNS Ginkgo!
I’ve never heard one convincing argument to why homosexual marriage undermines heterosexual marriage. In fact it is an assertion made based on emotion. heterosexual marriage was killed by no fault divorce.
I am anti marriage as it is a legal control that is immoral and there is no reason why married people should get a tax break, while single people pay more into the system. I think the whole state contract of marriage should be completely abolished. Homosexual marriage and heterosexual marriage should be abolished completely. If people want to call themselves man and wife, let them do so but there should be no state slavery contract or state privileges granted when it comes to peoples private love lives.
Also there have been cases of gay men divorcing. I am sure you can get fucked over by another gay man if you marry the wrong one.