Anti-Gay Christian group apologizes, and shuts down

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/exodus-international-shuts-down_n_34709...

Exodus International was the gold standard for conversion therapy (which apparently was a false gold standard). This is seismic shift in many ways.

Good.

Excellent news.

Now if only all the other groups like it and people who believe you can "pray away the gay" would come to the same realization.

It shows that bigots can be open to learning processes.

It's pretty remarkable. Extremists don't generally change their mind. Confront them with evidence they're wrong and most people will dig in deeper. Organizations make it worse, because they have inertia beyond that of their members views.

Can anyone think of a similar situation—an ideological group that changed its mind and shut down?

Probably plenty have shut down, but I can't think of any in recent years that used their closure as a statement of repudiation against what they stood for.

>7 southernbooklady:

Right. And I don't know the internals, but I suspect they could have run on for a long time. The culture at large is moving against them, of course, but there are still plenty of conservative Christians out there who'd support them, and follow their program in the desperate hope of changing their orientation.

Well, the whole thing (gay rights, that is) is pretty impressive in its sweep and rapidity.

I am not sure I would call THESE people bigots, any more than I would call you a bigot because you have certain feelings about closed-minded people.

They were wrong. Period. Their methods did not work, and worse yet, the reasoning behind WHY they did what they did was wrong. Many of the people who ran the agency were gay, and were doing what they erroneously felt was their best to help other gay people. When Exodus started, homosexuality was still considered a psychological disorder by most mental health professionals.

You can say they were wrong. You can say they were slow to change. You can say they maintained their mission in spite of the overwhelming futility of it, and in spite of increasing reasons why they should abandon it. But they did abandon it.

I do not defend what they did, but I know I was in the same place less then ten years ago. I was not involved in a therapy to "fix" gays, but I did feel it was wrong, and that gay and lesbian people should not be ordained as ministers in my denomination. On the other hand, I had gay people attending my church, and was asked by a gay friend to bless his art gallery. After attending services at my church and meeting me, he called his grandmother to tell her he had finally found a church where he could be happy. (His grandmother was more concerned about his lack of church attendance than about his sexual orientation.) I wasn't any more bigoted than I am now, but I did realize I was wrong on something, and changed my mind.

Maybe there is a word for people who have wrong actions that stem from some wrong convictions (as opposed to LACK of convictions) but who may not have the resources to know better.

There are bigots out there, especially on this issue, but I think it is a mistake to describe everyone who disagrees with us as a bigot.

On the other hand, I will admit that to the gay person who encounters Exodus, the feelings are probably very similar to what they experience when they encounter someone who is just plain prejudiced.

>10 Arctic-Stranger: Maybe there is a word for people who have wrong actions that stem from some wrong convictions

If the "wrong actions" show intolerance or hatred towards a group based on one's personal convictions, isn't that the definition of bigotry?

I am not sure you can say that Exodus "hated" homosexuals. They were about as tolerant of homosexuality as AA is to alcoholism, and they erroneously equated the two. I would not call AA a hate group, although you could argue that if people think they are able to cure alcoholics (they cannot, and do not claim to) that can cause people to discriminate against alcoholics because "they refused to get cured."

So I agree with your statement. Wrong actions that show intolerance or hatred toward a group based on personal convictions is bigotry. So atheists who show intolerance to Christians are bigots, right?

Bit touchy there, Arctic?

This conversation is giving me flashbacks to Doug1943 and his arguments about race, genetics and IQ, with his repeated assertions that if the groups scoring lower on IQ tests (which, as he repeatedly asserted, tended to be darker skinned (or, black)) were able to be helped with medical intervention in the future, it was our duty to find whatever means we could to counteract their genetics.

Do you find that view bigoted?

>12 Arctic-Stranger: So atheists who show intolerance to Christians are bigots, right?

Well, I'd any anyone who shows intolerance for Christians just because they are Christians are prejudiced, at least. I'm on board with the wiki definition of bigotry:

Bigotry is the state of mind of a bigot: someone who, as a result of their prejudices, treats other people with hatred, contempt, and intolerance on the basis of a person's ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, or other characteristics.

But I have to say that just on a personal level your comparison of Exodus to AA makes me flinch. I'm no huge flag waver for AA but there is plenty of evidence that people in the program lead a better, more fulfilling life then they had managed to without it.

Conversion therapy, on the other hand, is a horror show that seeks to correct something that was never wrong in the first place, and thus puts every person who goes through it at war with himself or herself. It seems like psychological torture, to be frank. In some cases it is actually physical torture.

When your level of conviction is raised to the point that you think torture is a justified method to achieve your results, then hatred and bigotry are in there somewhere.

But I have to say that just on a personal level your comparison of Exodus to AA makes me flinch. I'm no huge flag waver for AA but there is plenty of evidence that people in the program lead a better, more fulfilling life then they had managed to without it.

Yes, but Arctic is speaking of motivations and not results.

It's actually sort of funny that you mention torture, because quite a bit of what I get in my FB feed comes from autistics and end up with things like the Judge Rotenberg Center and shock as mental health treatment.

I have no idea if Exodus used shock treatment therapy. Or humiliation therapy, or any of the other extreme "therapies" that were supposed to cure homosexuality. Maybe all they did was pray and offer support groups. But I do know a little about being the focus of efforts to convince you that you are "wrong" or "sick" or "mentally ill" and need to be cured of something that is perfectly natural and perfectly "you." It's a painful, painful experience and I'm not really on board with the "well, they meant well" approach to Exodus.

ETA: Much was added since I started this post. I am responding at first to post 14

I do, but mostly because I always thought that Doug should have been smarter than that, and because he brought in race where it was not always applicable. If he had just said that we could test people with lower IQ scores, that would be one thing. But to add, as he did, that those with lower scored tended to be darker skinned was what made his assertions racist.

The difference I think is Doug was saying a racial group has X characteristics, while Exodus was talking about people who exhibited the same behavior, and dealt with them solely on the basis of that behavior. To group people who have random sex with strangers, and make some defensable assertions about their behavior is one thing. To then extrapolate that to other areas of their lives is bigotry.

If you believe that same sex intercourse is immoral, then saying that all people who engage in same sex intercourse are acting immorally is not bigoted. If you call all people who practice law a lawyer, that may be insulting, but not bigoted.) If, on the other hand, you say that people who engage in same sex intercourse are pedophiles or sex addicts or thieves, that is bigotry.

What has recently changed in society is the idea that same sex intercourse is not immoral. For ages this has been the case, in both religious societies and secular law. The shift in public opinion and legal status has been seismic. I cannot think of another social change that has come this quickly.

If you believe that same sex intercourse is immoral, then saying that all people who engage in same sex intercourse are acting immorally is not bigoted.

I dunno, Arctic. I think the most you can say is that such people do not consider their views bigoted. But what is a system of morality but a collection of value judgments? In such cases, prejudices are always justified by the people who hold them--no one goes around saying "Hell yeah, I'm a bigot and proud of it!"

It's one of the reasons that the gay rights issue is so illustrative: one side of the debate considers it a moral issue (and thus not bigotry) whereas the other side regards it as a human rights issue, in which case any moral judgment about homosexual sex is almost bigoted by default.

I dunno. People who support gay rights seem to me to go past questions of law that "human rights" are normally about. They also tend to take a moral position--that it isn't immoral.

The human right/morality divide is not as simple as you seem to represent. For example, I think you have a human right to think, speak and publish whatever you want. Everyone has that human right. That doesn't mean I think everything ever published is moral. Do you?

>21 timspalding: They also tend to take a moral position--that it isn't immoral.

But the debate is framed that way by the opposition.

I think you have a human right to think, speak and publish whatever you want. Everyone has that human right. That doesn't mean I think everything ever published is moral. Do you?

Okay, but if this were the framework we were looking at, then the complaint wouldn't be against homosexual sex--or at least it wouldn't be so once it had been established that homosexuality was a natural occurence, not a mental illness or a perversion. Instead the debate would be focused on things like...promiscuity, adultery, the nature of consent.

Instead, there is a disconnect between one side, who identify as homosexual, and the other, who regards them as people-who-have-gay-sex.

>22 southernbooklady:: "But the debate is framed that way by the opposition. "

The "opposition", as you call it, is in fact the status quo of human social history. Those advocating for gay rights are the ones advocating for a change to that status quo -- so the onus is on them to show that the status quo needs to be changed.

Tim also hits on a key point -- the vast expansion of what qualifies as "human rights" that is involved here. The right to have the state recognize your marriage is not, historically, a basic human right. It does not appear in the various charters and bills of human rights that have been drawn up over the ages.

And finally, the imputation that to think gay sex is immoral is to be a bigot could itself be considered a violation of a long-enumerated basic human right--the freedom of conscience.

The "opposition", as you call it, is in fact the status quo of human social history.

No, it isn't. In many times and places homosexuality was openly accepted as a variant of human sexual behaviour.

>24 LolaWalser:: Then allow me to rephrase: the "opposition", as you call it, is in fact the status quo of modern, western human social history.

>23 nathanielcampbell: the imputation that to think gay sex is immoral is to be a bigot could itself be considered a violation of a long-enumerated basic human right--the freedom of conscience.

I really was trying very carefully not to "impune" anyone when I was attempting to describe the disconnect I see between a group of people who regard gay rights as a moral issue and a group that regards it as a human rights issue. And how a perspective that feels natural to one may look bigoted (or immoral) to another.

That said, freedom of conscience has little to do with bigotry. Everyone is free to believe what they believe. No one can deny them that. No doubt there are people who believe that I am a depraved and immoral person because I'm not only sexually attracted to women, but I act on that desire, I have sex with women. Personally, I don't think I'm either depraved or immoral when I do so, and I think that anyone who thinks so is "wrong" if not prejudiced. But in neither case is my or my critic's freedom of conscience in danger.

>26 southernbooklady:: "But in neither case is my or my critic's freedom of conscience in danger."

One hopes -- but with words like "bigot" being thrown around, it is not that long of a step to the criminalization of "hate" speech.

#25

Then allow me to rephrase: the "opposition", as you call it, is in fact the status quo of modern, western human social history.

No, it isn't. Perception of homosexuality has changed both in popular understanding and legal standing, in "modern Western human social history", and in different ways in different places/times.

The upshot is that there is NO "status quo" in human social history, even when religious totalitarianisms seek to impose one.

>28 LolaWalser:: Name one western government that officially recognized gay marriage before the current generation.

#29

Name one reason I should play your game. You spout nonsense about a "status quo" in "human social history", then arbitrarily limit it to "modern, western" and now to "current generation".

I made my point.

>27 nathanielcampbell: One hopes -- but with words like "bigot" being thrown around, it is not that long of a step to the criminalization of "hate" speech.

But I have not "thrown around" the word. I have explained why it might be applied to the Exodus group.

In any case, in the US anyway we are not noted for criminalizing hate speech, so I'm not sure what your point here is.

In any case, I've said in other threads that I think Christian doctrine faces a dilemma with regards to homosexuality and I am sure it is going to be a struggle to deal with, because at this point in time, Christian doctrine is out of step with modern understanding of the nature of homosexuality. I have some sympathy with the people who find themselves trying to resolve this dilemma in a way that makes sense to both their faith and their culture, but I'm not inclined to excuse organizations like Exodus who worked so long and so hard at denying it, and caused such terrible conflicts for the people they were trying to "cure."

Well, you should be play his game because that is way progress, development, science and a host of other things expands in scope.

He makes a statement. You challenge. He accepts part of you say, and he moderates, and makes a new statement.

You accuse him of nonsense, take your ball and go home.

#32

What new statement?

>29 nathanielcampbell: Name one western government that officially recognized gay marriage before the current generation.

If "the status quo" were really the be all and end all moral argument people want it to be then reform would be either unknown, or simply heretical. And women would still be chattel, slavery would still be an acceptable institution, and we'd still be riding horses to work.

In the end, it really doesn't matter what St. Augustine thought of homosexuality, or what Hildegard of Bingen thought. It doesn't even matter what Paul thought, except that in the US anyway he's still cited as justification for discriminating against homosexuals.

But what really matters is what this culture thinks, here and now. And here and now, homosexuality is not legally criminal, not psychologically perverse, not morally any more or less corrupt than heterosexuality.

it really doesn't matter what St. Augustine thought of homosexuality, or what Hildegard of Bingen thought.

Gasp! NOW you've crossed a line. :)

Why do some people consider homosexuality to be immoral? I can think of two reasons: one is "that's how I was raised" and the other is "God says so". People can change their minds about how they were raised, but if you believe that religion is the only moral compass then it's more problematic.

I've been trying to make sense of Exodus' volte face, and am finally getting a sense of what's going on. Exodus board member Tony Moore is quoted as saying: “We’re not negating the ways God used Exodus to positively affect thousands of people, but a new generation of Christians is looking for change -- and they want to be heard,” What does that mean? It sounds to me like -- "Once upon a time, we could make good money by selling snake oil, but now we've got to change our business model, because our erstwhile patsies have wised up and the culture at large doesn't demonize them the way it used to." How else can one understand that they're "not negating" their past accomplishments, but are deciding to start peddling something different to a new generation -- kind of like getting people to switch from Coke to Pepsi?

Apparently, "Exodus plans to launch a separate ministry that aims to be more welcoming." According to Exodus President Alan Chambers -- "This is a new season of ministry, to a new generation. Our goals are to reduce fear (reducefear.org), and come alongside churches to become safe, welcoming, and mutually transforming communities.” Who better to "reduce fear" than those who know how to "produce fear"?

>36 IreneF: Well, there's not really any point in pointing that out. I think that we already know that. What's more interesting is asking which passages show homosexuality to be immoral. Also, I would like to ask if the version of the bible matters in this question (looking at the generally accepted versions. I do recall that someone created a Bible specifically Gay-friendly.)

> 38. What's more interesting is asking which passages show homosexuality to be immoral.

This makes me think of a quote from Lynn Lavner -- "“The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.”

It can be difficult having this conversation, as southernbooklady and LolaWalser, though on the same "side", take very different approaches. The former's posts and arguments are consistently aware of the complexity of the issues under discussion and attempt not to fall into misleading or overbroad generalizations; the latter's posts often dismiss such nuance and refuse to recognize, for example, the complexity of broad social acceptance of homosexuality.

It is clear enough that western society is quickly moving to that broad acceptance -- but it must be recognized that, as social changes go, this one is a seismic shift coming at lightning speed. It is neither self-evident nor obvious to many that it is necessary or good, and it would be foolish to think such an acceptance will simply materialize without opposition. This is especially what grieves me about Lola's approach: it simply ignores how great a paradigm shift this does, in fact, represent for western society.

I should also emphasize that, by and large, I believe that the type of movement being made this week by Exodus is a good thing -- but it is a movement that will come only gradually, and with much debate and difficulty.

As a theologian, I can tell you that Christian theology isn't there yet -- there is still a lot of theological wrangling and evolution that will need to take place in order for Christianity to navigate these waters, careful to avoid the Scylla of replacing love of neighbor with hatred and fear, on the one side; and on the other, the Charybdis of betraying the Christological mission of recreation and redemption simply to conform to what the world thinks it should be. It will require a reevaluation of just what it means to love one another as Christ loves us -- but a reevaluation that is focused, not on what the world defines as "love", but on what Christ's being reveals as love.

Finally, it will demand that we prayerfully discern to what vocation and ministry the Lord calls those whose human identity is shaped by same-sex attraction. This will also involve a prayerful discernment of the ways in which heterosexual couples practice their vocation and ministry. Ultimately, I do not believe that the Church will simply determine that the sacrament of marriage can be effected between heterosexual and homosexual couples alike. Rather, I believe that the best theological way forward will be to recapture from the history of the early Church a broader notion of the orders within the Body of Christ, in which each has its own place and function, and in which the committed and life-long bond of love that unites two people of the same gender can form one of those orders.

I do believe lying with a man as with a woman is an abomination, and they should be stoned. Should be in Leviticus. It's one of the reasons I have difficulty with religion. Either it's cast in stone or it can be changed, but once you start changing it, it becomes human instead of divine. But it's not something I've contemplated deeply.

>40 nathanielcampbell: Ultimately, I do not believe that the Church will simply determine that the sacrament of marriage can be effected between heterosexual and homosexual couples alike.

I'd just like to point out that when gay people talk about the right to marry, they are usually talking about the secular institution of marriage, not the religious rite. They are talking about the ability to go down to the registrar's office and get a marriage license.

How the Christian wrestles with these issues theologically is ultimately not all that important to me, since I'm not Christian. They only become important when they try to impose their theological dictates on my civil government. That's what happened with North Carolina's Amendment One, that's what is happening as state after state officially recognizes same-sex marriage, and that's what's happening when the Supreme Court hears the arguments for and against DOMA.

The state can't make a church perform same-sex marriages. But it should not be denying civil marriages to its own citizens for no other reason than they happen to be gay.

> 41. I do believe lying with a man as with a woman is an abomination, and they should be stoned. Should be in Leviticus.

But isn't that all about the struggle between the God of Israel and the Canaanite Gods Molech and Ashtoreth, who employed shrine prostitutes of both sexes in their temple observances? In other words, the "immorality" is not so much same-sex behavior in general as it is worshiping false gods.

>42 southernbooklady:: "I'd just like to point out that when gay people talk about the right to marry, they are usually talking about the secular institution of marriage, not the religious rite. They are talking about the ability to go down to the registrar's office and get a marriage license. "

I get that, and as I believe I've said before, I believe that same-sex couples should have the same legal rights that married heterosexual couples.

But putting the two asunder, as it were, is not quite so simple. For centuries in western culture, ecclesiastical marriage was the ideal, the model, by which secular marriage was defined. That has slowly changed with the advent of modern, pluralistic democracies -- but the connection still runs deep.

And Exodus's ministry both old and new were and are explicitly Christian ministries, so how Christianity grapples with this question is entirely germane.

>43 jburlinson: That's how I would interpret it, but that's not how it is expressed. What's more important is what christianity teaches, which is generally straight (and narrow).

>44 nathanielcampbell: I believe that same-sex couples should have the same legal rights that married heterosexual couples

Very carefully worded! We could of course change the legal wording of all secular marriages to "domestic partnerships" but I'm willing to bet that the thousands of heterosexual couples who got married at the registrar would not be happy to find out that they were now in "a domestic partnership."

"Marriage," the term, carries emotional weight. Some of that is due to the religious model, that model itself was based on earlier ones that regarded marriage as a contract: an alliance based as much on property as on "love." A marriage, after all, brings together not just two people, but two families. (Or three, or more, if you are polygamous). So I don't think it will be easy to dispense with the word in favor of "equal legal rights."

>46 southernbooklady:: "Marriage," the term, carries emotional weight. Some of that is due to the religious model, ... So I don't think it will be easy to dispense with the word in favor of "equal legal rights."

Yes, the term carries emotional weight -- which is precisely why so many are fighting against gay marriage. If you want to keep the concept of marriage within the debate on civil rights, then you have to accept that religious notions of marriage will continue to inform the social and thus the legal situation. This is a case of having the cake and eating it, too...

>47 nathanielcampbell: This is a case of having the cake and eating it, too...

As opposed to not being allowed cake at all. ;-)

Fortuitously, I just ran across this article from the BBC this month: The gay people against gay marriage:

Jonathan Soroff lives in liberal Massachusetts with his male partner, Sam. He doesn't fit the common stereotype of an opponent of gay marriage.

But like half of his friends, he does not believe that couples of the same gender should marry.

"We're not going to procreate as a couple and while the desire to demonstrate commitment might be laudable, the religious traditions that have accommodated same-sex couples have had to do some fairly major contortions," says Soroff.

Until the federal government recognises and codifies the same rights for same-sex couples as straight ones, equality is the goal so why get hung up on a word, he asks.

"I'm not going to walk down the aisle to Mendelssohn wearing white in a church and throw a bouquet and do the first dance," adds Soroff, columnist for the Improper Boston.

"I've been to some lovely gay weddings but aping the traditional heterosexual wedding is weird and I don't understand why anyone wants to do that.

"I'm not saying that people who want that shouldn't have it but for me, all that matters is the legal stuff."

The article goes on to discuss lesbians who object to marriage on feminist grounds (they don't want to perpetuate its patriarchy) and other gay people who object to it because, as a legal institution, it discriminates against the unmarried.

Finally, it notes that none of the major polling organizations have actually asked the gay community about its support or not for marriage; and those in the community who voice opposition often face bitter backlash.

Those objections seem to be focused on the increasing irrelevance of the institution of marriage in modern life. Do you really want to go down that road? The feminist in me could argue for dispensing with marriage altogether, but your know--one battle at a time.

And then there's this recent study by the Pew Center on Journalism: News Coverage Conveys Strong Momentum for Same-Sex Marriage:

In a period marked by Supreme Court deliberations on the subject, the news media coverage provided a strong sense of momentum towards legalizing same-sex marriage, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. Stories with more statements supporting same-sex marriage outweighed those with more statements opposing it by a margin of roughly 5-to-1.
(...)
Almost half (47%) of the nearly 500 stories studied from March 18 (a week prior to the Supreme Court hearings), through May 12, primarily focused on support for the measure, while 9% largely focused on opposition and 44% had a roughly equal mix of both viewpoints or were neutral. In order for a story to be classified as supporting or opposing same sex marriage, statements expressing that position had to outnumber the opposite view by at least 2-to-1. Stories that did not meet that threshold were defined as neutral or mixed.

Many of the events themselves during the period studied, such as announcements by politicians and state legislation, reflected movement towards same-sex marriage. Polls show the nation's views have been shifting as well, though there remains significant opposition with 51% of the public in support of legalizing same-sex marriage versus 42% opposed, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
(...)
The findings show how same-sex marriage supporters have had a clear message and succeeded in getting that message across all sectors of mainstream media. Other elements may have also added to the greater focus on support versus opposition. Many of the newsmaking events in this time period indicated momentum towards same-sex marriage. These included endorsements from politicians, legislation at the state level and shifts in public opinion tracked by surveys. Second, during the week of the hearings, when most of the coverage occurred, the media offered many profiles of the plaintiffs or members of the LGBT community with few voices of opposition mixed in.

The study has a lot of other really interesting details, especially about types of coverage and social media, that I commend to the attention of all.

Marriage is increasingly becoming a secular institution. In Europe, a church wedding is not a legal wedding, which is how I think it should be.

For me, having the same rights means "having the legal right to marry."

I don't think Nathaniel is wrong when he says the that overwhelming arc of sexual ethics in the west, with some major exceptions, has included the marginalization of homosexuality. That does not make anyone right or wrong, but with all the sodomy laws in existence England and America, I think it is fair to say that society has been less than accepting. That is currently changing, and at a rapid rate.

I am not familiar with how Exodus treated homosexuality, and it would be prejudiced of me to weigh in unless I knew more. I know how we treated schizophrenics, and that was ghastly. In other words, generally accepted practices in mental health, designed by the scientific practitioners, was brutal. It took families, lawyers and people in the political and ethical and religious realms to call the scientists out on. They were the ones doing lobotomies, convulsive shock, insulin shock and surgical treatments. I would imagine that gays would not be treated differently, however Exodus was not a clinic, and did not have scientific cover, so could not be as brutal.

>50 southernbooklady:: Although my precise point was to counter the assumption that "the gay community" of course wants "marriage", as opposed to equal legal rights, the more fundamental point was more to illustrate that the narrative is far more complex and multifaceted than we often admit or can even comprehend in soundbytes and LT posts.

As the BBC article concludes, "With so many different points of view on a subject that has long divided America, perhaps the debate just underlines the obvious - gay people are like everyone else."

#50

Agreed. I know many straight people who are also questioning marriage. Their dissent from the institution does not mean it is not right for straight people.

> 43

Probably not. See The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity.

> 41

You slay me, IreneF!

> 55. Interesting. Thanks for the reference.

But why, then, does Deuteronomy 23:17-18 say: “None of the daughters of Israel shall be a cult prostitute, and none of the sons of Israel shall be a cult prostitute. You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a dog into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God." Why admonish the daughters of Israel not to be cult prostitutes if there was no cult prositution in antiquity?

And why does 1 Kings 14:24 say: "and there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel"? And why does 1 Kings 15:12 say that Asa "put away the male cult prostitutes out of the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made"? And then (22:46) follow up by saying of Jehoshaphat that, "from the land he exterminated the remnant of the male cult prostitutes who remained in the days of his father Asa." And why does 2 Kings 23:7 say that Josiah "broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes who were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah"?

I'm not saying all these biblical references are definitive as to the historicity of sacred prositution; but it does seem that some of the authors were pretty phobic on the subject. So it seems to me likely that Leviticus 18:22 is talking about male cultic prostitution, even if the historical reality is dubious.

#40: As a theologian, I can tell you that Christian theology isn't there yet

I'm quite sure I can find several theologians who would roll their eyes at that subject. Ultimately, I think gay rights has been a disgrace for Christianity; this long petty contempt for a small group of people combined with the ignoring of clear or deep prohibitions, like on the first hand, James's prohibition of meat with blood, and on the other the Bible's repeated condemnation of the rich and greedy. I think it's made an impact on our culture, tainting the perception of Christianity.

(And yes, I know the basic outlines of the argument behind throwing out James's prohibition, but throwing clear bright-letter proclamations and claiming that the evil of homosexuality is a cornerstone that can't be moved without overturning the Temple doesn't amuse outsiders.)

it must be recognized that, as social changes go, this one is a seismic shift coming at lightning speed. It is neither self-evident nor obvious to many that it is necessary or good

It has been coming my entire life. As social changes go, it's been slower then and has less impact on the average person then the Internet; it's just that the Internet is unstoppable and the changes not as clear and simple as the passing of a few laws.

I think I join the fellow members of my generation in asking why? I'm a fairly strong advocate of monogamy counterbalanced by my strong appreciation of human freedom and awareness of my failure to understand the subject. You want to tell me why we shouldn't do this, why making people into the support structures of our society instead of forcing them out to the seedy corrupting underbelly?

#49: The article goes on to discuss lesbians who object to marriage on feminist grounds (they don't want to perpetuate its patriarchy) and other gay people who object to it because, as a legal institution, it discriminates against the unmarried.

Strange bedfellows. I don't think they're going to work with anti-gay marriage activists, and I think anti-gay marriage activists are going to try using their statements only, either obscuring the reasons why they oppose marriage or painting them as the real motives of gay-marriage activists.

Finally, it notes that none of the major polling organizations have actually asked the gay community about its support or not for marriage; and those in the community who voice opposition often face bitter backlash.

Funny that; you can replace gay and marriage with so many things. "Black" and "segregation" or even "slavery", for example. And it's not particularly hard to find black quotes advocating segregation, either.

>56 paradoxosalpha: Oh dear, forgot the quotation marks. I was trying to paraphrase Leviticus.

I think the change in attitudes toward gay people seems rapid only if you are not gay or close friends with gay people.

Those objections seem to be focused on the increasing irrelevance of the institution of marriage in modern life. Do you really want to go down that road? The feminist in me could argue for dispensing with marriage altogether, but your know--one battle at a time.

Right. One battle at a time. And there's one reason I'm glad about gay marriage--it reinforces a vitally important institution against the social anarchists and selfish users who collaborated to destroy a fundamental human institution—the age of key parties and "it's just a piece of paper."

In many ways the fight for gay marriage is the end of that tawdry era. The divorce rate peaked in 1980. (Since then the rate of first-marriage divorce has about halved.) The gays getting married now are the children of that generation. They want what straight society has, but also what their parents so often screwed up.

I take it as something of a hopeful sign. The culture has looked up from the sexual revolution to see that life is about more than sex, and indeed that sex has a sort of purpose, namely solidifying and preserving the relationships that often give our life meaning. It's true that while divorce rates have fallen, marriage rates have too. But excluding a whole class of people did nothing to combat the growing sense that marriage was obsolete.

</conservative argument for gay marriage>

> 57

Well, none of the texts you cite were written in English. So the question becomes: What terms were translated as "cult prostitute," and why? Budin and others think that those translations were in error.

ETA: At least according to Budin's thesis, which tends to ascribe the error more to the modern West than the Ancient Near East.

> 59

Dropping the quotes made it a lot funnier.

>58 prosfilaes:: "You want to tell me why we shouldn't do this, why making people into the support structures of our society instead of forcing them out to the seedy corrupting underbelly?"

You must have missed the parts of my post where I advocated for equal legal rights for homosexual couples and for an evolution in Christian theology to discern a vocation and ministry within the Body of Christ for those committed and loving couples.

What I was trying to point out is that whole segments of the population--according to the Pew numbers cited in post 51, at least 40%--are not ready for that yet. And jumping up and down and telling them how stupid they are not to "get it", despite massive social and historical inertia, is not helpful.

There seems this blindness amongst many gay marriage advocates to just how big of moral shift they are demanding -- they see it as self-evidently the "right" thing, and won't brook any who aren't so sure.

>64 nathanielcampbell: There seems this blindness amongst many gay marriage advocates to just how big of moral shift they are demanding -- they see it as self-evidently the "right" thing, and won't brook any who aren't so sure

I don't know about that. As others have pointed out, "gay rights" has been a long, slow process often punctuated with periods of severe backlash if not outright violence. But the momentum has certainly shifted, and now that it is moving in their direction I don't think gay people will be saying "woah, let's slow down here and take this in baby steps." Like most tidal shifts, you either go with it or you don't.

I think in many ways "gay marriage" has become the symbolic issue for gay equality--just as desegregation was the symbolic issue for racial equality. That's what accounts for some of the fierceness in the advocacy for gay marriage--it's not just about a particular institution, but about an overall acknowledgement of social equality.

And that's really what people who are against (or at least unsure) about gay marriage are facing. That "self-evidently right thing" they are questioning isn't just "marriage" to gay rights folks, its the right of gay people to be considered equal under the law. That's what's at the heart of the divide between people who see this as a moral issue, and those who see it as a human rights issue.

Nathaniel has steered this into another discussion on "gay marriage" after his ignorant (or, at best, careless) attempt to pretend that some "opposition" to homosexuality (not merely "gay marriage") was "status quo" in "human social history".

My post reminded him that such vapid generalisations are negated by what we know of "human social history", so he proceeded to defeat his own "status quo" argument by limiting it arbitrarily, first to "modern West", and then to the question of acceptance of gay marriage.

While his original argument was wrong, his subsequent "refinements" made it stupid.

But, he did change the subject.

The subject was the bigotry of this (now thankfully extinct) group who opposed, not "gay marriage", but gayness itself.

In 21st century, after everything we have learned about homosexual behaviour in humans and other species, after de-pathologization and decriminalization of homosexuality, after all the historical and everyday evidence that homosexual "lifestyle" is no barrier to having ordinary productive, even "family" lives, that homosexuals are as capable of being "regular people" as any other distinctive group of humans --this group clung to the bigoted message of its bigoted religion--or at least, as the "liberal" theists would have it, to a bigoted reading of religion.

Their attitude didn't just strike at the rights of gays, it struck at the very existence of gays. The mission was in effect to erase gays. Making the issue of "gay marriage" moot. Ra-ther!

>66 LolaWalser: Their attitude didn't just strike at the rights of gays, it struck at the very existence of gays. The mission was in effect to erase gays.

Yes. It's why I find things like "conversion therapy" to be so heinous. And why I object to the "well they meant well" take on any group that espouses it.

What I was trying to point out is that whole segments of the population--according to the Pew numbers cited in post 51, at least 40%--are not ready for that yet. And jumping up and down and telling them how stupid they are not to "get it", despite massive social and historical inertia, is not helpful.

Umm, given that support for gay marriage just gapped something like 8% over the past year or two, you might be entirely fucking wrong.

support for gay marriage just gapped something like 8% over the past year or two

Is it possible that this quick shift in opinion is due to people realizing that there's money to be made in gay marriage, from gay wedding planning to gay home buying to gay divorces? Economically, there's no down side. Even the churches are waking up to the fact that gay congregants open their wallets when the hat gets passed. Which is why Exodus is trying to rebrand by helping churches become "safe, welcoming, and mutually transforming communities".

Whenever "morality" butts heads with making a buck, morality loses.

>64 nathanielcampbell:

40% is still a minority. and frankly, when it comes to civil rights, the percentage of people who are against it are irrelevant.

there may have been a major shift in the intervening years, but in 1958 a Gallup poll said that 96% (!) of white people were opposed to interracial marriage, but it became illegal to deny interracial marriage 9 years later. likely a majority still opposed it. it's about what's right, not what's popular.

but >66 LolaWalser:, you're right. this group was about erasing people, not having a civilized debate about whether we should marry

#64: What I was trying to point out is that whole segments of the population--according to the Pew numbers cited in post 51, at least 40%--are not ready for that yet.

As the Slactivist says*:

If you’re not a same-sex couple seeking to be legally married, this doesn’t affect you. At all. It isn’t something that is happening to you, or even something that is happening near you. And as such, if you’re churlish enough to begrudge the people it does affect of something “fantastic,” then there’s nothing you can do apart from grumpily cross your arms and stand there, disapproving.

So the “Marriage Solidarity Statement” released this week by dozens of the usual suspects from the anti-gay religious right just doesn’t make any sense.

“We will not stand by,” the statement harrumphs. But, actually, yes, yes they will. Standing by is exactly what they will do because that is all they can do. This doesn’t affect them. It doesn’t harm them. It doesn’t compel them to do anything. It doesn’t compel them not to do anything. All they can possibly mean by “We will not stand by” is that “We will assume a posture of extreme indignation and offendedness while standing by.”

* http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/06/21/religious-right-will-hold-br...

And jumping up and down and telling them how stupid they are not to "get it", despite massive social and historical inertia, is not helpful.

As Jesse_wiedinmyer says, I don't think matches the evidence.

There seems this blindness amongst many gay marriage advocates to just how big of moral shift they are demanding -- they see it as self-evidently the "right" thing, and won't brook any who aren't so sure.

You can replace "gay marriage" with just about anything there. And really, I don't recall ever seeing an advocate whose stance would be improved by indecision. I'm not sure what that would mean; protesters marching on the Pentagon saying "we think the" ("Vietnam"/"Iraq") "war may not be a good idea"? A massive group of people gathered before the Lincoln Memorial to listen to "I have a dream that someday black and white children will be playing together in Georgia ... if that's okay with the white guys, of course"? It's farcical.

>71 prosfilaes:: According to that logic...

If you’re not a girl getting raped, when a guy does it on the other side of the country, it doesn’t affect you. At all. It isn’t something that is happening to you, or even something that is happening near you. And as such, if you’re churlish enough to begrudge the rapist something he thinks is “fantastic,” then there’s nothing you can do apart from grumpily cross your arms and stand there, disapproving.

If you think that a social acceptance of homosexual behavior is morally wrong, then this does, in fact, affect you very much.

>72 nathanielcampbell: Some people engage in rough sex. When it's between two consenting adults, that's their own affair. When one of them is sexually threatened, assaulted, and battered, without giving consent, then it is the crime of rape.

Homosexuality is not a crime. It doesn't affect anyone else unless two people decide to have sex, and then it affects only the two of them. (We'll leave out how it might affect third-party significant others.).

The people who don't like homosexual activity don't have to engage in it, and they should respect the privacy of the people who do.

>72 nathanielcampbell::

I can't quite believe you just put gay marriage on the same level as rape but okay. The thing is though, in the case of rape, that hypothetical person on the other side of the country is being physically and psychologically *hurt*, whereas with gay marriage, just like interracial marriage some decades ago, no one is getting hurt. It's the old adage; your freedom and your rights extends as far as to the point where another person's freedom and rights are being violated. Rape violates another person's freedom and human rights, gay marriage does not.

Also, acceptance of rape in a society does lead to *real* consequences (as in consequences aside from people feeling upset and disgruntled). Acceptance of rape in a society leads to a higher number of rapes occuring. And unless you have no mother, wife, daughter or other female relative or friend, that will affect you on a personal level. Gay marriage may lead to more gay people getting married but that won't really affect the everyday lives of anyone else, unless you truly believe that the gays will start rounding up straight people and force them to get married to their same-sex friends or something. Social acceptance of homosexual behaviour, whether you believe it is wrong or not, does not affect you. It might upset you, but it doesn't affect your life.

>72 nathanielcampbell: If you’re not a girl getting raped, when a guy does it on the other side of the country, it doesn’t affect you.

Nathan, please rethink this analogy. You are comparing gay people to criminal behavior. I'm sure if you think about it you'll realize how unfounded and offensive that is.

>72 nathanielcampbell: First of all, bad analogy- you are comparing two very different acts. Second of all, it does not directly affect you. If you " think that a social acceptance of homosexual behavior is morally wrong", too bad for you, but since Gay marriage doesn't trample on your rights, or majorly hurt where as rape tramples on the rights of the victim and can leave extreme psychological damage.

Of course I understand how "unfounded and offensive" it is -- that's why I used the analogy.

For those who think that homosexual behavior is immoral, then it can indeed fall in the same category as other immoralities, and should be treated likewise. From the Christian perspective, sin does, in fact, hurt you, even (or especially) if you willingly engage in it.

The problem with the "it's not hurting you so why do you care" argument is that it pulls the rug out from many standards of intrinsic morality. It takes us to the point where, so long as there is "consent", one person can do just about anything to another person, and we won't raise a word in opposition. I'm reminded of the case a few years back in Germany, where one person "consented" to being eaten alive by another. Does that consent make the action moral?

And now you are comparing homosexuality to cannibalism. I'm sorry, Nathan, but what you are calling "immorality" looks like bigotry from my perspective.

>77 nathanielcampbell: Well, if the person was completely sane, yes.

>79 aleng: I think the actions of both individuals in the cannibalism incident demonstrate questionable sanity.

Plus, you know, I'm pretty sure cannibalism is illegal, even in Germany. Homosexuality is not.

>77 nathanielcampbell: Isn't there a famous quote about throwing the first stone?

>80 IreneF: Exactly.

>81 southernbooklady: This is talking about morality, which tends to be very subjective, and transcend law.

>82 IreneF: "John:8:7: So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

Was this the quote you mentioned?
I'm using the KJV.

This is talking about morality, which tends to be very subjective, and transcend law.

Or ignore law. Or defy law. Laws are usually a collective agreement of what a society considers to be moral though.

>84 southernbooklady: Except when they aren't. For example, take the Defense of Marriage Act.

I'm sorry, Nathan, but what you are calling "immorality" looks like bigotry from my perspective.

Who are you to question? He has ways of knowing that have nothing to do with empirical knowledge of the physical world...

#77: For those who think that homosexual behavior is immoral, then it can indeed fall in the same category as other immoralities, and should be treated likewise.

As I said above, it's glaring that it's not being treated like other immoralities; you can be a Sodomite, and have arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but not help the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49), and escape judgment from most of the Christian sects in this society.

From the other side, if 40% of the population thinks an action is immoral, why should the other 60% care? It's not hurting the minority directly, so there's no reason for larger society to kow-tow to a minority on this issue.

The problem with the "it's not hurting you so why do you care" argument is that it pulls the rug out from many standards of intrinsic morality. It takes us to the point where, so long as there is "consent", one person can do just about anything to another person, and we won't raise a word in opposition.

In 1975, marital rape was illegal only in the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, some other Soviet Bloc countries, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Everywhere else, in the UK, in Canada, Australia, all 50 states of the US, it was still legal, and it wouldn't be until 1991-1993 did the UK and the last of the states of the US and Australia make it illegal. I'm sorry, were you telling me why it's so, so awful that people think that consent is the most important thing to worry about?

Prior to the Stonewall Riots, everywhere in the world but the Soviet Bloc countries and Scandinavia, a women could be raped and her rapist would have every legal right to do so. Your standards of "intrinsic morality" said nothing against that.

I'm reminded of the case a few years back in Germany, where one person "consented" to being eaten alive by another. Does that consent make the action moral?

It makes the action a lot more moral.

I fully believe that the government should encourage healthy relationships and while accepting that consenting adults have the legal rights to do what consenting adults want to do, discourage unhealthy relationships. For all the consistent ranting that anti-gay activists have offered, including repeated claims (lies) that the moral side of the argument is being ignored, the anti-gay activists offer argument from authority (an authority they seem to read carefully so as to find it judging others and never them) and argument from outdated information, frequently outright lies. Stop telling us morality matters and start telling us why exactly you have the moral right.

77 The problem with the "it's not hurting you so why do you care" argument is that it pulls the rug out from many standards of intrinsic morality.

I think that the so-called "moral" perspective on sex would do much better if people stopped obsessing about the sex act itself and started paying more attention to the reasons people have it.

>86 Jesse_wiedinmyer: So do I. Why does it matter?

#88: Fear not, the NY Times tells us why people are having sex: Big Pharma marketing scheme (and what isn't, you ask?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/magazine/unexcited-there-may-be-a-pill-for-tha...

Although, the article points out that monogamy is a killer for both heteros and homosexuals. I guess I could have lived a fulfilled and productive life without knowing about "Lesbian Bed-Death", but it does reinforce my prudish Nabokovian belief that people are at their most sublimely ridiculous not when having sex, but when talking about it.

(Rumor has it that Vlad and Vera played Scrabble (in the cyrillic position) at least three times a day . Hope I still have that kind of stamina when I'm in my eighties!)

Can anyone think of a similar situation—an ideological group that changed its mind and shut down?

They did shut down. But reading the statement, it is hard to see how they "changed their mind". The "apology" letter for the most part said "we still believe all the same things we believed before".

I believe I owe everyone here an apology, as I never meant to compare homosexuality to either rape or cannibalism. Rather, I was trying to demonstrate the structural flaws of the "it's not happening to you, so why should you care?" argument.

As I have said multiple times, I support extending to committed homosexual couples all of the legal rights that married heterosexual couples currently enjoy.

The problem comes with redefining the notion of "marriage" -- as marriage is not just a legal institution; it is also a social, cultural, and religious institution. Thus, social changes to it affect far more than just the legal framework of rights, and thus fare more than just legal rights play a role in the issue.

Finally, I should point out that failures in any historical moral system--such as not outlawing slavery or marital rape--do not therefore invalidate the concept of intrinsic morality. By such logic, a failing grade on a test should therefore invalidate a person's ability to learn.

>91 StormRaven: Tell that to China. "Marriage" is not necessarily religious, or cultural. I say that intrinsic morality is invalidated because there is no one source that can not be debated against.

>93 aleng:: "Tell that to China. "Marriage" is not necessarily religious, or cultural."

In the United State and most of Europe, it is historically a religio-cultural phenomenon. We're not talking here about whether China legalizes gay marriage -- we're talking about the specific movement for gay marriage in the United States.

You don't get to simply pretend that the religious dimensions don't exist. They do exist, and for a lot of people, they are vitally important.

>94 nathanielcampbell: But I'm not- I'm just saying that marriage is not necessarily religious or cultural. You are not "redefining" marriage, though some people may feel that way.

>94 nathanielcampbell: we're talking about the specific movement for gay marriage in the United States.

In which case your "intrinsic morality" is also a relative, localized manifestation, not an absolute measure. And thus is evolving to better reflect the current culture.

#92: Finally, I should point out that failures in any historical moral system--such as not outlawing slavery or marital rape--do not therefore invalidate the concept of intrinsic morality. By such logic, a failing grade on a test should therefore invalidate a person's ability to learn.

Generally speaking, it's impossible to disprove intrinsic morality from that direction. It is, however, quite justified to question whether all the people who have failed tests on the past will really have the 100% on this test that they claim. I think it's justified to demand they say more then just "we have the source of absolute truth".

In this specific case, I don't think the argument really is about intrinsic morality. Consent-based ethics could be as intrinsic as anything else; in fact, "An it harm none, do as thou wilt" is held up as the right intrinsic morality by some. It's about the specific brand of morality that's condemning homosexuality, and yes, a failing grade on a test means someone needs to bring their A-game when arguing against a star student, not fall back to "well, I know best".

>92 nathanielcampbell:

I think it ought to be possible to say "Look, I'm not comparing these two things as things, but because the situations have the same logical structure." If you say that and say it clearly, it should inoculate you from attack in this way.

I'd also like to come to Nathaniel's support on the degree and rapidity of change. It can hardly be overstated. Whatever its merits—and I support and even campaigned actively for full legalization and equality—homosexual marriage as it's conceived today, as an uncomplicated equivalent of heterosexual marriage, is very close to a brand-spanking new thing in human history. Within western culture, it's simply without precedent, and support has gone from nil to being favored by a majority within a generation.

This may strike a teenager today as very odd. But, unless, I'm mistaken, we've all pretty much lived through the change. I remember 1990 like it was yesterday. At that time 75% of Americans still thought homosexual sex was immoral, and the idea of gay marriage was so marginal that it would be six years before anyone even did a poll about it. The 1991 Hawaii case that started it all wasn't supported by a single gay-rights organization--they thought it was totally hopeless. The only precedent anywhere on the subject was Baker v. Nelson in 1971, when a unanimous Minnesota court decreed that restricting marriage to heterosexuals posed no Constitutional problem. Nobody was surprised--and indeed the justices didn't even ask a single question in argument. Gay getting married? It would be thirty years before the law in Minnesota allowed homosexuals to even have sex! (Today, the idea that homosexual sex might be criminal anywhere in the US, let alone in Minnesota, is basically unthinkable.) We've come a long way very quickly.

I say, basically, "bravo." But we ought to be conscious of this before we excoriate those whose view is what America's was back in our ancient history, defined as back the Simpsons was getting a little tired after so many years, but still fairly funny.

>98 timspalding: But, unless, I'm mistaken, we've all pretty much lived through the change.

That's really only if you narrow your perspective to the issue of gay marriage in isolation. But if you look at gay marriage as something that encapsulates and symbolizes gay rights (and this topic did start out as a discussion about a group giving up the notion that gayness can be cured), then the time period is lengthened. It was, what, the 70s when the DSM finally dropped homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses?

I think like any paradigm shift, the visible, public part of this one seems compressed and "sudden" only because there has been a long period of gestation and hard work from people that went unnoticed by people who just weren't paying attention. But I admit that while the momentum has picked up, the notion of gay normalcy has been a long, long time coming from where I'm standing.

But I suppose everything has a tipping point. In this culture having openly gay characters on family sitcoms during prime time doesn't even raise eyebrows. So naturally, the cultural response to this normative presence of gay people is something along the lines of "duh, well sure, why shouldn't they get married?"

#98: I'd also like to come to Nathaniel's support on the degree and rapidity of change. It can hardly be overstated. Whatever its merits—and I support and even campaigned actively for full legalization and equality—homosexual marriage as it's conceived today, as an uncomplicated equivalent of heterosexual marriage, is very close to a brand-spanking new thing in human history. Within western culture, it's simply without precedent, and support has gone from nil to being favored by a majority within a generation.

In 20 years, marital rape went from being legal pretty much everywhere except parts of Scandinavia and the Soviet bloc, to being illegal pretty much everywhere in the Western World, including all 56 states of the US and Australia. That's a law that changed the nature of marriage for everyone, not just a few people, and that was quicker then gay marriage, which is nowhere near ubiquitous.

But we ought to be conscious of this before we excoriate those whose view is what America's was back in our ancient history, defined as back the Simpsons was getting a little tired after so many years, but still fairly funny.

It's personal. When people go on about how your friends or family are filthy sinners, it's hard not to respond in kind. I certainly don't agree that we should be moderate on that type of stuff, nor that being moderate is tactically wise. Again, anti-segregationists didn't wander around being friendly with segregationists on the grounds that 20 years before nobody was talking about this stuff.

And ultimately it's about the arguments. Liars naturally get no truck with me. Bible thumpers get no truck with me, especially when they're Sodomites (again, Ezekiel 16:49). And at the end of the day, that's about all anti-gay activists have, besides arguments that morality should be a part of the argument, which is a great "I'm-not-listening!" argument.

#98: I think it ought to be possible to say "Look, I'm not comparing these two things as things, but because the situations have the same logical structure." If you say that and say it clearly, it should inoculate you from attack in this way.

I don't think it's that simple. When someone says "I'm not comparing LibraryThing to Salem during the witch trials, but ...", does it really matter what's coming after the "but"? There's an argument to be for nathanielcampbell's arguments to be taken as such, but the distinctions there were obvious; it would have made a lot of difference had he pointed out the obvious distinctions and handled them.

>100 prosfilaes:: "It's personal. When people go on about how your friends or family are filthy sinners, it's hard not to respond in kind."

It's personal. When people go on about how your friends or family are bigots because they don't support gay marriage, it's hard not to respond in kind.

>102 nathanielcampbell:

i totally get where you're coming from, i do. i even understood what you were trying do with your comments about rape and cannibalism. the thing is, though - i'll use a personal example. i love my dad. i think he's a good man, and largely responsible for teaching me to accept all people, regardless of things like race and ability. still, he's said some awfully racist and sexist (etc) things. i was in a forum on race years ago and said something like the above - that he's well meaning and a good man but has said some racist things. i was told by people in the group that maybe he's not such a good man after all.

and the thing is this - whether he is or not is for me (if i feel like it) to grapple with. they get to call my father a racist because he said racist things. it was up to me (if i felt like it, and i did) to interrupt future comments when they were said. if your family members and friends act like bigots, they get to be called bigots, and it's up to you (if you feel like it) whether or not to call them on that and interrupt them in the future. but responding defensively just because you care about those people and therefore they can't be bigots only undermines the entire issue. if everyone responded that way, every issue, every attempt at any social change would always be met with stagnation.

#102: It's personal. When people go on about how your friends or family are bigots because they don't support gay marriage, it's hard not to respond in kind.

There's an argument there, though you're talking about easily mutable choices instead of deep personality traits. But that just explains why this is heated, not why it shouldn't be. Again, I refer back to segregation.

I understood what NC was trying to do with his analogies, even though I didn't agree with them. He is generally a respectful debater and I appreciate someone who can discuss issues without resorting to ad hominem attacks.

Nathaniel, why are certain activities moral or immoral?

why are certain activities moral or immoral?

A problematic question to answer if the morality is based upon the action itself rather than the harm it may or may not cause.

It's personal. When people go on about how your friends or family are bigots because they don't support gay marriage, it's hard not to respond in kind.

There's an easy solution: don't be bigots. Just because you claim to have a religious justification for your bigotry doesn't make it any less bigotry.

> 106. A problematic question to answer if the morality is based upon the action itself rather than the harm it may or may not cause.

But if we base the morality on the harm that may or may not be caused, we're at the mercy of consequences, many (most?) of which are unintended.

#108: Um, okay? That's striking at some pretty basic morality; "don't murder your neighbor". It doesn't say anything about not luring him into a hut, hitting him over the head with a rock and then setting fire to it. If we can't be expected to know the consequences for what we're doing, you can't hold me responsible for doing the latter. You simply can't make a set of literal rules and expect that following them without understand will lead to good or moral behavior. "Don't look at your sister naked" is a great rule until she's having a seizure in the tub and needs someone to run in and make sure she doesn't drown.

>109 prosfilaes: In Jewish law the preservation of human life trumps other considerations.

#110: In what ways, though? To pick a real example, some Orthodox Jews won't press Walk signals on the Sabbath. Shouldn't the preservation of human life override that? More extremely, what we eat is of supreme importance, and what we grow can be likewise. Shouldn't the decision on whether or not to eat pork be driven by its impact on human life, both locally and globally, rather instead of on religious law? Taken to its furtherest extremes, it bears quite a relation to utilitarianism, supplanting all other moral law. In practice, well, not pressing walk signals on the Sabbath.

#107 There's an easy solution: don't be bigots. Just because you claim to have a religious justification for your bigotry doesn't make it any less bigotry.

A simple question: do you see your own anti-religious animus as bigotry? Or is bigotry strictly an attribute of anyone who thinks differently from you?

>112 enevada: A simple question: do you see your own anti-religious animus as bigotry?

A question that doesn't address the foundation for why homosexuality is considered immoral.

112: You don't seem to understand what bigotry is. Maybe one day you will figure it out. Here's a hint - it isn't just animus.

Try this hypothetical - are you "bigoted" against snake-oil salesmen?

#113: It isn't meant to.

#114: You didn't answer the question.

115: I did, you just didn't understand the answer, because you don't understand what bigotry is.

115: Perhaps this will help you understand why your question is complete bullshit.



Original source.

#117: there's your answer. As if scripted. Thanks.

118: You do realize that you've just demonstrated that your question was complete and total bullshit and you have nothing to offer any intelligent conversation, don't you?

But none of you have actually proven that being opposed to gay marriage is bigoted.

#119: That's one interpretation, yes.

120: It was amply demonstrated. You are just too wrapped up in your religious myopia to realize it.

121: So you're admitting that your contributions to LT are valueless. Good to know.

#122: It was more than amply demonstrated. You're a master.

>120 nathanielcampbell: But none of you have actually proven that being opposed to gay marriage is bigoted.

Proven? Does anyone ever think that their own opinions are bigoted? Do not all of us believe that what we hold to be true is justified?

I've pointed out why being anti gay marriage could be interpreted as bigoted. I've pointed out why considering homosexuality to be immoral could be considered bigoted. In fact, from where I'm standing, it looks like bigotry because it demonstrates intolerance based on a person's sexual orientation.

But your argument is simply that immorality is not the same as intolerance. However, without understanding the reasons that homosexuality is considered immoral, we are left with just the results of your opinion on which to judge how justified you are in your stance. And since the end result is that you don't think gay people should have the same access to benefits that straight people have, that looks like prejudice.

>120 nathanielcampbell: But none of you have actually proven that being opposed to gay marriage is bigoted.

Proven? Does anyone ever think that their own opinions are bigoted? Do not all of us believe that what we hold to be true is justified?

I've pointed out why being anti gay marriage could be interpreted as bigoted. I've pointed out why considering homosexuality to be immoral could be considered bigoted. In fact, from where I'm standing, it looks like bigotry because it demonstrates intolerance based on a person's sexual orientation.

But your argument is simply that immorality is not the same as intolerance. However, without understanding the reasons that homosexuality is considered immoral, we are left with just the results of your opinion on which to judge how justified you are in your stance. And since the end result is that you don't think gay people should have the same access to benefits that straight people have, that looks like prejudice.

"Immoral" has no special dignity as a flavor of condemnation. In fact, since it is so commonly a candy-coating for more visceral responses, I tend to give it rather less.

It does become difficult to take it seriously when one can talk both of murder and a short skirt as being immoral.

why are certain activities moral or immoral?

If a person holds with the Suzerain-Vassal covenant between God and His people, then the "immorality" would be in failing to honor the obligations of the vassal. Those obligations don't necessarily have to make sense, or even conform to notions of interpersonal morality.

First, it is NOT gay marriage, so get that part right. If you talk to actual gay and lesbian activists on this issue, it is marriage equality, or same sex marriage. (I got schooled in this several years ago after my Salon piece. Just about every group that advocated for marriage equality called me and let know in no uncertain terms, why "gay marriage" was unacceptable.

Second, the term homosexuality only came into usage in the late 19th century by a German psychologist, Karoly Maria Benkert. Of course the practice did, as well as the fact that there were men who were primarily attracted to men and women to women, but when speaking of the practices, one was speaking of practices and not orientation. So any discussion of "gay" marriage in the middle ages is off target from the get go. John Boswell uses the term gay marriage in his book Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century but retreated from it after the publication, and the outcry by historians that he time traveling with his language. Unless there is new work on the subject, Boswell's thesis has a few holes in it, which most reviewers pointed out. He makes his case from a few manuscripts that contain a liturgy for same sex commitments. Whether the manuscripts are talking about marriage or not is not clear. He assumes that heterosexual marriage was primarily a matter of property rights, but same sex unions were formed out of love. I think the divide he creates between the two in untenable.

But even Boswell acknowledges that the strictures against same sex intercourse were based, not on Judeo-Christian morality, but on prudery or bigotry. The people in power opposed it, not because of their religious convictions, but because they found the notion of same sex intercourse disgusting (or impossible, which is the reason given why Queen Victoria struck lesbianism from the laws.)

Third, recent polls show that a slim majority now favor marriage equality. (The margin might have widen recently.) But that is not the issue at stake. If the polls showed the opposite, I would still favor it because it is right. Those who value marriage as social institution have a stake in seeing that it persists as an institution. When homosexuality was "invisible" it was not an issue. Stonewall rioters did not go the streets for the right to marry; they went to the streets for the right to exist as gay and lesbian people. And now, homosexuality is no longer invisible. We can to back to the days when people had sham marriages, to cover their real desires, and because a straight marriage was the only way to have kids, but that, I believe does more to harm marriage than preserve it. Bad marriages does not create a healthy climate for the institution of marriage.

Finally, disagreement does not always equal bigotry. One can be against the proposed immigration bill, but not be bigoted against Hispanics, the Irish, Russians, or Canadians. One can oppose same sex marriage, but not be bigoted against gays and lesbians. One can support same sex marriage, but be bigoted against transsexuals. The capacity for human intricacies are infinite.

Oh, and finally finally, I think I managed to disagree with at least half the posts on here, and haven't used the term bullshit once. Because "bullshit" is not an argument, a fact or even a coherent statement.

>129 jburlinson:

I think I might have misspoke when I said suggested that the morality of an action ought to be based on the harm it may or may not cause. In truth, morality is just a collection of behaviors or agreements designed to make a society function smoothly. But we tend to want to enforce those behaviors by labeling those that are approved "good" and those that are not, "bad." But on what authority we designate some things "Good" (with a capital G) and others "Bad" (with a capital B) is up for debate.

Part of the problem for Christianity is that it can't explain why homosexuality is "Bad" -- why it deserves to be included among a collection of immoral acts like homicide, adultery, rape. There is a befuddled notion that the injunction against homosexuality is based in "natural law" but natural law--meaning, I guess, naturally occurring-- is better understood and there is no longer a reason to regard same-sex attraction as "unnatural." The church seems to be having a hard time coming to terms with this knowledge.

From an evolutionary standpoint homosexuality is useless. If sex, from a biological point of view, is for the perpetuation of the species, homosexuality should be something that is naturally selected out of existence. Of course humans have not been around long enough for that. Or maybe homosexuality is a way of population control? Except that the romantic endeavor thing is also a biological disaster.

Except that the romantic endeavor thing is also a biological disaster.

From what I've been led to understand, that's a relatively new concept, too.

Interesting article, and I just skimmed it, but I did not see the case for HOW SSRs can effect the evolution of a species. Did I miss it in the Bio-babble?

>135 Arctic-Stranger: I did not see the case for HOW SSRs can effect the evolution of a species. Did I miss it in the Bio-babble?

I don't know about "babble" but it is my understanding that from an evolutionary standpoint, the selective pressure is on the gene, not the individual, and it's a statistical pressure across the entire population, not an individual imperative. So that the "evolutionary stable strategy" -- the strategy that results in not going extinct--of a particular group of genes might result in a population of individuals where a certain number were not reproductive, but contributed their resources to kin or to the survival of the group as a whole. Thus, while such individuals would not directly reproduce and pass along their own tendency not to reproduce, the population as a whole would statistically always have a number of individuals not inclined to reproduce.

>131 southernbooklady:: "But we tend to want to enforce those behaviors by labeling those that are approved "good" and those that are not, "bad." But on what authority we designate some things "Good" (with a capital G) and others "Bad" (with a capital B) is up for debate. "

Which is precisely the problem with labeling opposition to gay marriage "bigotry". We tend to want to enforce our own points of view by labeling those that are approved "good" and those that are not, "bad" or "bigoted". But on what authority we designate those terms is up for debate.

Again, if we were only talking about the extension of equal legal rights, then the rather narrowly-defined arena of equal protection under the law would authorize us to label those who oppose equal protection as "bad" legal actors -- though "bigot" seems far too emotional and extreme a term for that.

But we're not just talking about equal legal rights -- we're talking about the entire complex of social, cultural, and religious interactions that constitutes marriage. Changing the definition of marriage involves a lot more than just the law, and so many more factors, which exist within an intertwined web of social and emotional responses, come into play.

That complexity cannot be so simply reduced to black-and-white, homophilia-vs-homophobia,* good-vs-bad.

-------------
*Before I get dinged for improper use of language, I am using "homophilia" here as the conceptual opposite of "homophobia": this dichotomy would be the one that separates the world in people who are over the moon in favor of their homosexual peers (the "anything goes" crowd), and people who hate the latter with a deep, abiding, irrational, and "bigoted" passion. In its reductionist vision, there is no place for the people who both treat all of their peers, regardless of sexual orientation, with dignity and respect; but also have cultural objections to an "anything goes" acceptance of sexual behaviors that have been historically considered aberrant.

But we're not just talking about equal legal rights -- we're talking about the entire complex of social, cultural, and religious interactions that constitutes marriage. Changing the definition of marriage involves a lot more than just the law, and so many more factors, which exist within an intertwined web of social and emotional responses, come into play.

Put that statement in the mouth of a Klansman circa 1966 or so and see how those same words sound.

>138 nathanielcampbell: we're talking about the entire complex of social, cultural, and religious interactions that constitutes marriage.

Well, for one, we're not talking religious interactions, just social and cultural ones. Because no one is asking for a religious marriage. Socially and culturally though, secular, civil marriages are a question of equality, because gay people are part of the society and the culture. Your religious objections don't come into play. Your moral objections remain suspect.

>140 southernbooklady: but also have cultural objections to an "anything goes" acceptance of sexual behaviors that have been historically considered aberrant.

You'll have to explain to me how two people wishing to commit to each other by getting married constitutes an "anything goes" attitude towards sexual behavior.

>140 southernbooklady:: "Well, for one, we're not talking religious interactions, just social and cultural ones. Because no one is asking for a religious marriage. "

But the one cannot be separated out from the other. They are all linked together by the concept of "marriage" itself.

142: But the one cannot be separated out from the other. They are all linked together by the concept of "marriage" itself.

No, they are not. Many countries get along just fine without even recognizing religious marriages. France, for example. In the United States, marriage is a purely civil event, but out of tradition states recognize religious figures as valid officiants. But the marriage itself is entirely civil, and no religious approval is needed to make it valid.

Just remember, when you line up in opposition to gay marriage, this is the side of the debate you are supporting.

It is true that in a world where morals are merely societal enforced or encouraged behavior, "bigotry" is merely a reflection of the views of the speaker, and does not convey any real moral force.

ETA: Germany also does not recognize church wedding. I don't think many European countries do. In spite of that same sex marriage has taken a while to catch on. This tradition, by the way, goes back to Luther.

As to who you stand with, that is totally irrelevant to the discussion. Jerks abound, on both sides of most debates. I know it is a time honored tradition on LT to pick out the crazies and paint everyone with their brush, but that is what is left when you don't have an argument of your own.

>141 southernbooklady:: "You'll have to explain to me how two people wishing to commit to each other by getting married constitutes an "anything goes" attitude towards sexual behavior."

Because their sexual behavior is itself suspect. The idea was mentioned earlier that what makes an act immoral is not necessarily anything intrinsic to the act, but whether its consequences are to cause harm, either to the person committing the act or to another person upon whom the act is committed.

From a Christian perspective, no amount of consent can negate the harm that committing a sin does to the person who commits the sin and to the person who has committed the sin. Thus, if homosexual sex is a sin, then it harms both parties, not matter if they consent or not.

Indeed, knowingly consenting to sin--turning away from God and the order for which he created humankind--is even more harmful (in the traditional parlance, it marks the transition from "venial sin" to "mortal sin").

At this point, I want to stress that I am not necessarily arguing that this is the end-all and be-all of where Christian sexual theology should rest on this subject. Furthermore, I am not arguing that Christianity's understanding of the harms of sin should be a legal block to the granting of equal rights under the law.

What I'm trying to do is articulate why so many people would think it a compelling reason to oppose gay sexual behavior, and why their views are not so easily dismissible as simple "bigotry".

ETA: The most likely area in which Christian sexual ethics will find a way to evolve here will be, as SBL has in fact pointed out, by recategorizing where homosexual attraction falls within the order of the natural law. But as I said above, the theology isn't there yet -- and theological evolution takes time, far more than has been given it to now to grapple with what appear to be such seismic shifts as this.

>143 StormRaven:: "Just remember, when you line up in opposition to gay marriage, this is the side of the debate you are supporting."

Just remember, when you line up in opposition to theism, you are supporting the side of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.

</logical fallacy>

144: As to who you stand with, that is totally irrelevant to the discussion.

No, it isn't. Because when nathanielcampbell argues for his position based upon the "complex of social, cultural, and religious interactions", and "an intertwined web of social and emotional responses", what I linked to is exactly what he is talking about.

The bomber may have been deranged, but the police who didn't bother to investigate the arson, and refused to classify it as an arson, the families who declined to pick up the bodies of their family members, the churches that refused to perform burial services for the dead, and the people who sent death threats to the one Episcopal priest who did perform a service, the bishop who rebuked him for performing the service, and even the reason that this group of people was forced to hold their meeting in a private room that made them vulnerable to attack, those are the "social and emotional responses" that nathanielcampbell is busy justifying, even if he doesn't realize it.

145: Because their sexual behavior is itself suspect.

An answer that boils down to one thing: Bigotry.

You dress it up, but we don't make it illegal for people who use birth control to get married, and there are many Christians who consider the use of birth control to be a sin. There are many Christians who consider anal or oral sex to be a sin, and yet we don't prevent couples who engage in anal or oral sex from getting married. There are even some Christians who consider interracial marriage to be a sin, and yet we recognize their opposition not as a moral principled stance, but for what it is: Raw bigotry.

There are a whole host of sinful practices that we don't make illegal, and aren't about to any time soon. But you single out this one thing - that gay people have sex with one another and that's a "sin", and say that is a reason to oppose equal rights for your fellow citizens. Had you lived in the 1960s, I suspect you'd have been a segregationist too, but only on "moral" grounds.

No, it isn't. Because when nathanielcampbell argues for his position based upon the "complex of social, cultural, and religious interactions", and "an intertwined web of social and emotional responses", what I linked to is exactly what he is talking about.

In one sense you are right, but your example does not exactly fit the argument that he and SBL are having. They are arguing on a macro scale, and the issue is, since for SBL morality is a matter of what society condones and condemns (I hope I am summing that up correctly) then there are no absolute moral strictures against same sex marriage. He is arguing that society, over time, has not condoned same sex marriage, even it has accepted some same sex arrangements, but he takes his case further, and states that marriage equality will change the state of marriage. Your one example of a fringe hate group hardly qualifies as a societal norm.

And for the good of everyone, I think we should leave Pol Pot out of the argument.

If I favored the legalization of marijuana I would CERTAINLY not want to be identified with some of the quacks who also advocate it.

>148 StormRaven:: How many times do I have to say this? Repeating from post 145:

Furthermore, I am not arguing that Christianity's understanding of the harms of sin should be a legal block to the granting of equal rights under the law.

>145 nathanielcampbell: Because their sexual behavior is itself suspect. The idea was mentioned earlier that what makes an act immoral is not necessarily anything intrinsic to the act, but whether its consequences are to cause harm, either to the person committing the act or to another person upon whom the act is committed.

From a Christian perspective, no amount of consent can negate the harm that committing a sin does to the person who commits the sin and to the person who has committed the sin. Thus, if homosexual sex is a sin, then it harms both parties, not matter if they consent or not.

And here we come to the root of the problem. Some people, possibly you, just don't like the thought of homosexual sex.

Homosexual behavior, like heterosexual behavior, does not cause harm to anybody provided it is consensual (and thus has nothing to do to with rape). If it happens within the auspices of an officially recognized monogamous union--a stable, loving and committed relationship-- then not only does it not cause harm, it is beneficial to society.

So really the problem is just that somebody, somewhere, decided that homosexual sex is a sin. But since there is no good reason for it to be considered a sin, the objection is, shall we say, arbitrary. It has about as much merit as injunctions against masturbation, or sex of any kind except in the missionary position.

If it is true that morality stems merely from societal norms, and not from any outside source such as reason or religion, then all morality is simply bigotry.

ETA:

Furthermore, I am not arguing that Christianity's understanding of the harms of sin should be a legal block to the granting of equal rights under the law.

But civil marriage is a product of the law. One can be legally married in America and never enter a church or other place of worship. So by your standards, should not gays and lesbians be granted the legal right to marry?

>151 southernbooklady:: "But since there is no good reason for it to be considered a sin, the objection is, shall we say, arbitrary. "

Except that there were good reasons for it to be considered sinful / aberrant -- otherwise, it would not have been suspect and marginal for so many millennia of recorded human social history.

Those reasons may no longer appear to be good reasons -- but that doesn't mean that they weren't at one time good reasons. Furthermore, while you may not think they are good reasons, others do -- and as I understand it, you hold that the weight of cultural opinion is the sole standard for determining which of you is right.

Your one example of a fringe hate group hardly qualifies as a societal norm.

I wasn't aware that the police force of New Orleans and the Episcopal Church (and, if you read the piece, every other church in New Orleans) qualified as "fringe hate groups".

The issue is not that one crazy guy threw a firebomb into a building. The issue is the societal response to that event. And the kind of societal response that took place is the sort of thing that nathanielcampbell is defending.

>149 Arctic-Stranger: states that marriage equality will change the state of marriage

The problem with this argument, if you want to talk historical tradition, is that there is not one "state of marriage" and that there are and have been at least as many (if not more) secular reasons and rites for marriage as sacred ones.

But we live here and now. Here and now we think of marriage as the foundation stone of the stable family unit. Which in turn is the foundation of a stable and cohesive community, and even country. If that is the purpose of marriage, then there is absolutely no reason to refuse it to gay couples, and every reason to encourage it.

Except that there were good reasons for it to be considered sinful / aberrant -- otherwise, it would not have been suspect and marginal for so many millennia of recorded human social history.

An argumentum ad antiquitatem is a fallacious argument.

>153 nathanielcampbell: while you may not think they are good reasons, others do

But as has been pointed out, fewer and fewer of them. A minority, even.

I was restating what I thought Nathaniel was saying, not my own ideas.

But I do agree with you that marriage has changed and will continue to change. (In Alaska Native culture, they practiced what we might call a traditional form of marriage until the missionaries arrived, and then it all fell apart. Go figure.)

>153 nathanielcampbell: Except that there were good reasons for it to be considered sinful / aberrant -- otherwise, it would not have been suspect and marginal for so many millennia of recorded human social history.

There were really good reasons for thinking the sun revolved around the earth as well. It sure looked like it did. We know better now.

But morality is not physics. I admit that while I agree with you on where you land on this particular issue, I think you may be undercutting your own ability to further the argument by insisting that morality is merely a product of societal acceptance. Imagine a scenario where another virulent disease breaks out in the gay and lesbian community, and suddenly, out of fear, LGBT peoples are officially marginalized to keep the rest of society safe. If a large majority supported that, would it be "right?" It could never be "Wrong" and could only be "wrong" if society did not support it. Am I reading you rightly, of did I miss something?

There is a fuller story on Exodus here: http://www.salon.com/2013/06/24/the_future_of_the_ex_gay_movement/

One thing I found interesting was his insistence that he was "Leslie-attracted." The Redhead's daughter identified as a lesbian, but started to date a guy this year. Since then I have a few people who described their sexuality as fluid, and it depended on the person they were with. One woman I know is in a committed relationship with another woman, but up until then dated primarily men. She said that she was in love with her current girl friend, but never saw herself dating women until she met her.

>153 nathanielcampbell: The glaring exception here is ancient Greece, of course. Some people consider the Greeks to be the originators of Western civilization.

Well, they did put Socrates to death for "corrupting the morals of youth."

>160 Arctic-Stranger: If a large majority supported that, would it be "right?" It could never be "Wrong" and could only be "wrong" if society did not support it.

Actually, I think all morality is relative and the only authority that exists behind any moral system is the authority of personal conviction. But I'm aware I'm going against the grain in that. I've had plenty of discussion here on LT about relative versus absolute morality.

From my perspective, then, no, I personally would think that quarantining LGBT people would be "wrong" and because I have only myself to answer to in terms of the rightness of this opinion, I am free to try to convince others to come round to my way of thinking. (Something I've been trying to do here, by the way).

And from my perspective, Nathan is also free to believe and argue that his idea that homosexuality is a sin and that thus marriage equality should not be officially condoned. I've just been pointing out that his reasons for this moral position don't hold up to any rational challenge. If he is basing his opinion on how things have previously been done, his ethics are outdated. If he is basing it on some notion of a higher moral purpose to marriage, then his objections are unfounded.

Whether or not you can call such a position "bigoted" is really a side issue, although I think meets the wiki definition of "intolerance based on sexual orientation." But the term is never self-applied so it is never accepted without challenge.

When I first met the Redhead, she did not tell me about her daughter, because she assumed that because I was a Christian, I would not accept her. Is that bigotry?

But the term is never self-applied so it is never accepted without challenge.

Usually. I know of one individual who is proud to assert that he is a "racist, sexist, homophobe". He's pretty far gone to the vile side of humanity though, so his self-identification is fairly accurate.

>165 Arctic-Stranger: It is at least a prejudice. But did it extend to an intolerance of you?

And further, when she first met you, was she right?

Snort. Definitely not!

168> No, I had gone through my own transformation soon after I left my last parish, about five years earlier.

170: I think the fact that you say that you had to go through a transformation is an indication that she may have been right to be cautious. What if she had met you five years before?

>169 Arctic-Stranger:
So I'd say we all have our own biases and prejudices. But bigotry comes in to play when we allow those to govern our actions in such a way that we go out of our way to actively exclude or hurt those we are biased against.

You are just too wrapped up in your religious myopia to realize it.

Extreme political views are often expressed in mixed metaphors. Orwell noticed this phenomenon long ago.

>153 nathanielcampbell: The glaring exception here is ancient Greece, of course. Some people consider the Greeks to be the originators of Western civilization.

I have to interrupt here. Ancient Greek sexuality is a complicated topic, but reciprocal homosexual sex between equals was generally looked down upon.

Rather, ancient greek sexuality was generally "prison" sex—where the older, stronger or richer partner played the "active" role, and the younger, weaker or poorer played the passive. The virile upper-class Athenian male made sexual advances on pre-pubescent boys, culminating in receiving oral, intercrural or anal sex. That was fine. But for him to be be penetrated by the boy—or anyone else—was a disgrace. The adult "passive" was beneath contempt. The "active" was a man.

The pattern reappears over and over in ancient literature, from Homer to Catullus, who threatens oral and anal rape (pedicabo et irrumabo vos) to demonstrate his superiority, and is intimately connected to the sexual power-plays of misogyny. The relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion raised eyebrows because it was between near-equals, and therefore raised the possibility that Alexander sucked and bugger, not just being sucked off and buggering.

I would like to propose that "bigot" is partially about historical and social context.

How many of us are prepared to say that Harriet Tubman, FDR, Oskar Schindler, Ghandi* and Martin Luther King were bigots "on the side of the Klan." Yet we can't seriously question that they had negative views of homosexuality, let alone gay marriage? King even opined that homosexuals could change.

Bigots all? And what shall we be called bigots for in the future?

---

*Ghandi is a special case, as it's been alleged he was secretly gay. Publicly, however, he opposed homosexuality and the homoerotic in Hindu art.

>173 timspalding: I don't see how the fine points of Greek sexual politics alters the argument that homosexuality was institutionalized, and it didn't have any deleterious effects on the social order.

Of course, being a woman or a slave in ancient Athens was no barrel of monkeys, but that didn't change with the fall of the ancient world.

>174 timspalding:

Meh. It's tricky when you end up claiming pedophilia for homosexuality. And I think it was part of a larger package--an institutionalized hatred of the other that has, in fact, carried on in ugly ways since then.

How many of us are prepared to say that Harriet Tubman, FDR, Oskar Schindler, Ghandi* and Martin Luther King were bigots "on the side of the Klan."

On this issue they would have stood shoulder to shoulder with the Klan, which would have made them bigots. And they probably would not have even reflected on the fact that they were using the exact same language to condemn their targets that their persecutors used against them. Just because something is normal and acceptable doesn't make it not bigoted as well.

It's a neat trick to be morally superior to others by virtue of being entirely unexceptional within your own cultural milieu.

>174 timspalding: I would like to propose that "bigot" is partially about historical and social context.

Like Washington, Adams and Jefferson were all racists. So they were. But the historical context in which we understand the term matters.

178: Except I'm not asserting my moral superiority over them. I'm pointing out that the statements that nathanielcampbell has made concerning gay marriage would have sounded entirely in character had they been said about a Klansman regarding interracial marriage circa 1966. The justifications he uses now for his bigoted stance regarding gay marriage are almost identical to the justifications that racists used then.

Now you might protest that says he has valid moral objections, based on the dictates of his conscience and his faith. But the Klansmen would have said the exact same thing. They thought their stance in opposing interracial marriage was based on their morality and their faith, and warned of the dire social consequences that would result from letting black people marry white people.

When I say that had nathanielcampbell lived in the 1960s he would have lined up with the Klan, I don't mean he would have lined up with them on the issue of gay marriage. I'm saying that he would have lined up with them on the issue of interracial marriage, because the arguments he finds so convincing concerning gay marriage are identical to the ones used then regarding interracial marriage.

>176 timspalding: "Institutionalized hatred of the other" didn't begin with the Greeks.

>179 southernbooklady:

Racist is a descriptive term. They believed some races were superior therefore they were racists. There's no context about it.

However, you conceded historical context. When did history end, exactly? When Baker v. Nelson was decided, did context matter? How about 1991, when Hawaii first surfaced the issue? Wouldn't it be charitable to extend the period of "context" historically and culturally so that, for example, dear grandma who's 85 and hasn't changed her mind about much in the last 10 years isn't part of StormRaven's Klan?

>176 timspalding: "Institutionalized hatred of the other" didn't begin with the Greeks.

Yeah, but they raised it to a certain genius. And insofar as our culture owes more to them than to Heian Japan, it's worth saying.

Is it immoral to be bigoted?

#145: From a Christian perspective, no amount of consent can negate the harm that committing a sin does to the person who commits the sin and to the person who has committed the sin. Thus, if homosexual sex is a sin, then it harms both parties, not matter if they consent or not.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/08/rape-thats-a-kind-of-premar... points out that consent just doesn't matter for many Christians.

>182 timspalding: However, you conceded historical context.

Is that a "concession"? Historical context explains (not excuses) a lack of consciousness about the issue in question but that's about all you can say for it. We might say Harriet Tubman was "ahead of her time" in her conception of slavery. Are we to say that your 85 year old dear Grandma is "behind the times."? Isn't that what I suggested when I proposed that Christian doctrine was out of step with the modern understanding of homosexuality?

#178: It's a neat trick to be morally superior to others by virtue of being entirely unexceptional within your own cultural milieu.

Shrug. If you believe in your own moral system, you must believe that you, at least to the extent that you hold to that moral system, are more moral then people who don't. Self-righteousness and egotism are not moral values, at least not in my moral system, so you don't have to lord it over other people, you can understand where they're coming from, but that first (second?) sentence is virtually a tautology.

#174: And what shall we be called bigots for in the future?

I'd like to know; it would give me cause to carefully consider my stance on that in the present.

> 187. If you believe in your own moral system, you must believe that you, at least to the extent that you hold to that moral system, are more moral then people who don't. Self-righteousness and egotism are not moral values, at least not in my moral system, so you don't have to lord it over other people, you can understand where they're coming from, but that first (second?) sentence is virtually a tautology.

Suppose I believe that egotism is a moral value; many people do, whether they state it explicitly or not. If I hold to my moral system, I would be justified in considering myself more moral than people who don't, wouldn't I? In fact, it would seem entirely consistent with my egotistical moral scheme.

#189: If I hold to my moral system, I would be justified in considering myself more moral than people who don't, wouldn't I?

You would be justified in your moral system.

But if a mammoth came along and quashed you and your moral system--no foul, no fault!

> 190. You would be justified in your moral system.

OK. Fair enough. But there's nothing in particular that disadvantages my moral system from anyone else's, is there?

> 191. if a mammoth came along and quashed you and your moral system

In such a case, the mammoth might put an end to me, but (s)he might be demonstrating the superiority of my moral system, assuming that (s)he implicitly adopted it.

#193

Plus--in case the mammoth had seen your light before extinguishing it--you'd be a martyr in one easy (for the mammoth), giant (for you) step!

> 194. you'd be a martyr in one easy (for the mammoth), giant (for you) step!

"Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness." -- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason

I always wonder what Immanuel must've been like as a little boy... and think of Edward Gorey's pious infants.

Imagine in the distant future we start to follow the line that species are not superior, and we come to the conclusion that the swatting of mosquitos becomes as immoral as the killing of a baby. Alaska becomes the moral pariah of the world, and future generations look back at the guilt on people of our times because we had philosophers who tried to tell us. Our generation is condemned for being speciesist.

How guilty are you at this very moment?

Kant was a little boy?

#192: It fails the basic tests for the basic human values, like empathy.

In any case, all this fuss about a lack of an absolute morality is irrelevant to #187; in fact, #187 goes double for someone who believes that their morality is absolute. People who know that their morality is the one true morality should believe that anybody in another time who behaved wrongly was behaving wrongly against the one true morality that was every bit as true then as now.

#182: As a believer in absolute morality, who cares about historical context? Is there something in absolute morality that changes over time? If not, they were committing moral crimes and should have behaved more morally; why are you ignoring that?

>197 Arctic-Stranger: Already been done. The Jain community in India has rules about the taking of life, including the taking of insect life.

Shrug. If you believe in your own moral system, you must believe that you, at least to the extent that you hold to that moral system, are more moral then people who don't.

On the contrary, morality is about how you treat people. What you believe has little relevance for your morality if it doesn't have any result. That is, it's one thing to be a racist in the Jim Crow South, when the justice of the thing is all around you and good people must take a side, and quite another to believe that blacks are inferior when you're an Icelandic fisherman and you're never met one.

I think the error is a common one today, whereby people who've never done a damn thing for others, but share the prevailing attitude on certain hot-button issues as the other residents of their wealthy urban suburb, consider themselves superior to people who've spent far more of their time and money helping others, but have failed to transcend their environment on those issues.

If not, they were committing moral crimes and should have behaved more morally; why are you ignoring that?

I at least am not ignoring that. But it's one thing to say that someone should have done differently, and another to constantly compare him to the Klan.

#197: How guilty are you at this very moment?

If that is a valid ethical point, then very. What's your point? Why are our advocates of absolute morality arguing for relative morality, that it's okay to enslave, abuse and murder if our society says so?

182: They believed some races were superior therefore they were racists. There's no context about it.

And nathanielcampbell believes that heterosexual sex is better than homosexual sex. Your point? They thought their racism was justified by their morality, by their faith, just as nathanielcampbell does. When the polite upper class racists tried to argue in defense of their racism, they didn't just say "dur, we hate black people" in their arguments. They said things like "we think black people are unequal because God made them that way". And they sounded very much like nathanielcampbell does today.

When did history end, exactly?

Who said it ended?

Wouldn't it be charitable to extend the period of "context" historically and culturally so that, for example, dear grandma who's 85 and hasn't changed her mind about much in the last 10 years isn't part of StormRaven's Klan?

Why should we "save" grandma from her bigotry? Age doesn't give her a free pass.

#201: That is, it's one thing to be a racist in the Jim Crow South, when the justice of the thing is all around you and good people must take a side, and quite another to believe that blacks are inferior when you're an Icelandic fisherman and you're never met one.

Which undermines your point; a racist in the Jim Crow South is actively hurting people around him. A slavery advocate in the 1850s America is more immoral, not less immoral, then a slavery advocate today, since the later doesn't have any result.

Why does it undermine my point? My point is that, while the morality of an act is not relative, we should judge people against their environments. Grandma with her opinions about gays that are 10 years out of date is no monster. And wealthy, educated, urban professionals today get scant credit for being pro-gay.

I am just curious. People have pretty strong opinions on this. For people who are disagreeing with Nathaniel, what you done to further the cause of marriage equality?

On my part, I have flown to DC, and met with my congressional delegation to lobby them on the subject, and written emails and made phone calls in support of marriage equality. I have written an open letter to my denomination, and had long conversations with pastors about homosexuality. I led a seminar for Alaska Presbyterians on different ways to view homosexuality (I presented seven options) and on what the Bible does and does not say. Not to mention going public in a very public way, which cost me, I now find, as I look for a position within my own denomination.

Tim did phone banks for the Maine referendum I believe.

What have the others of you done?

But it's one thing to say that someone should have done differently, and another to constantly compare him to the Klan.

If he doesn't want to be compared to a Klansman, maybe he should stop using arguments to justify his anti-gay bigotry that mimic the ones that were used by Klansmen to justify their racism.

Right. I did phone banks, door-to-doors, and election-day signature gathering for marriage equality. And small money. But I'm the person who thinks my opponents aren't monsters. I stand with the Klan.

>206 Arctic-Stranger: I am just curious.

I'm curious as to why you're curious.

208: You're not making Klan-like arguments. nathanielcampbell is.

>208 timspalding:

Because treating people right is something you do, not the positions you rack up.

Note: I don't want to lean on this particularly hard, since there are lots of other issues I don't volunteer for. We all have limited time. We pick and choose. And I didn't exactly throw my life in it—many in Maine did. But there's something objectionable about the prevailing ideology that thinks of moral action as a set of positions held, not actions taken.

I am curious because when I get all heated up about something it is usually something I have a personal stake in.

My brother is a Republican in pretty Democratic neighborhood in NC. He often gets into bar arguments with people, and at some point he asks his opponent if they voted in the last election,. If their answer is no, then he says, "Then shut up! Your opinion is nothing but words."

I guess I just despise moral superiority when there is really nothing of any consequence behind it. If people are willing to write off a large group of people as bigots, I want to see what their ante is. I don't think you earn the opportunity to dismiss others if you are not really doing anything other than pontificating.

You don't think that people have a valid claim to an opinion just by virtue of being a thinking person?

I'm asking...not trying to dismiss the question. Just trying to suss out where it comes from.

what you done to further the cause of marriage equality?

I have done my small part to make marriage a less praiseworthy and desirable state of affairs.

#205: My point is that, while the morality of an act is not relative, we should judge people against their environments.

What you said was:

On the contrary, morality is about how you treat people. What you believe has little relevance for your morality if it doesn't have any result.

A person today who believes that it's okay to own slaves has no result. Providing he's a law-abiding citizen, the worst he can be is a jerk to the people around him. Someone in 1850s America who believed in the right to own slaves could have made huge differences, caused an entire county to change sides in the upcoming Civil War, catch slaves about to escape to Canada and sent them back, or just kept a private harem of women to rape.

Right now, being opposed to gay marriage has more negative impact on people, more negative result, then it ever has before or probably ever will again. Even talking about it in bars has an impact, making it seem like a mainstream opinion, something to take seriously.

Grandma with her opinions about gays that are 10 years out of date is no monster.

You've never met my Grandma; she was abusive to four generations, from her mother to her grandchildren. (She had no siblings.) Being old doesn't make you a good person.

In any case, I don't think anyone has a right to stop thinking, to expound upon something that they refuse to learn about on an ongoing basis. If Grandma is not actively defusing her attitude, then it doesn't have any result. If she's taking her grandchildren to anti-gay protests, then I don't see any reason to give her a pass.

she was abusive to four generations, from her mother to her grandchildren. (She had no siblings.)

Then she was abusive only to three generations.

My grandmother, on the other hand, was abusive to five, possibly six generations, since she started out by running a tricycle over the toes of her own grandma.

My god, what will happen if I can't talk about the fate of the West African rhino without going there and adopting one...!

well, more to the point, if I can't make my own position clear and argue for it rationally and convincingly, will it really make a difference if I say "but I did vollunteer at the phone banks during the Amendment One referendum"?

#216: Read my statement assuming I could count and chose my words carefully, please. I am given to understand that she was quite cruel to her mother's daughter, too.

>213 southernbooklady: Being a thinking person is one thing. Being an armchair critic is another. It is easy to toss around disapproval from the bench. Anyone can win a fight if they never leave their seat and stay in the bleachers.

I feel you have a personal stake in this, SBL, but others seem to be jumping on a bandwagon, saying things that are unsustainable in so many ways, and generally just trying to be au currant in the issue of the day. Plus this is a neat tool to further marginalize people who hold different beliefs.

No one responded the post on Boswell. Why? Would they just rather fight than have a serious conversation? And with all the words flying around, how many people have actually worked to try to change people's mind on this issue? (Not club them, but actually use communication skills to see if they will moderate their opinion.) How many people have made even the slightest sacrifice to try to get others to see their point of view? (I spent almost an hour with one of Don Young's staff talking about this issue. We left on very good terms. I spend an hour with Murkowski's staff, and Friday she came out in favor of marriage equality--not because of my hour there, but on the other hand, it showed her that Alaskans were willing to support it, even at the cost of flying to DC to do it. I did not fight with these people, or call them bigots. I engaged them.

There are good people on both sides of this debate and it is frankly dehumanizing to treat people otherwise, I get the feeling that very few people on here have actually sat down with someone who opposed them, and LISTENED. You have to earn the right to be heard and you earn that by listening.

My god, what will happen if I can't talk about the fate of the West African rhino without going there and adopting one...!


Why should anyone care what you think about west African rhinos? Unless of course, you actually did something for them. Then I might think you actually had some investment, and then I might listen to you. But otherwise you are just blowing hot air.

what you done to further the cause of marriage equality?

I have done my small part to make marriage a less praiseworthy and desirable state of affairs.

Best answer yet!

You heard it here first, ladies and gentleman. Gays are West African rhinos.

The West African rhino is extinct. Therefore . . .

That's sad. But I suppose I agree that wishfully thinking about an extinct animal is as morally consequent as taking a stand on marriage equality on a LibraryThing forum.

Possibly morally inconsequential, but LT often provides a higher level of discourse than other places. And it's valuable to let people who think differently articulate their views. I've definitely learned things.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/23/anti-gay-mormon-activist... is part of the problem. Should we excuse the behavior of going door to door and arguing a cause they had never studied, a cause they would repudiate the instant it came home to them and they did study it?

#212: I don't think you earn the opportunity to dismiss others if you are not really doing anything other than pontificating.

And yet you count phone banks, where you pontificate to many people, as doing something? There's a certain value in arguments like this; this argument, and thousands more like it across the Internet and in meatspace are telling people that this is an issue that matters, and an issue that people take a stand on, and the people on each side are saying that "my side is still alive, is still a viable position to hold".

Well, AS, if anyone knows about hot air, you do.

I joke because it is a whale of a joke to take you seriously. Have you no idea how ridiculous and pompous you are, with your pronouncements on who is allowed and who isn't to express their opinions? Who the hell died and made you the boss of us?

People are free to condemn (or praise, as the bigoted case may be) the discriminatory practices, whether they directly suffer from these practices or not, whether they intend, would like to, may, may not gay-marry, or don't give a damn about marrying at all.

You can grade others on contributions to the discussion or the cause, if that is your weird pleasure, but others get to point at you and laugh.

The bleedin' nerve!

#220: No one responded the post on Boswell. Why?

Because I haven't read nor heard of the book, so I can't exactly talk about it.

it showed her that Alaskans were willing to support it, even at the cost of flying to DC to do it.

And it shows me that money buys you a political voice.

#221: Why should anyone care what you think about west African rhinos?

So you're less interested in listening to someone on LibraryThing who you've talked with and whose positions are familiar to you then to someone who autodialed your name because it was next in the phone bank?

Who the hell died and made you my judge? Anyone can express their opinions (except you don't want me expressing mine I guess), but not all opinions, in my opinion, deserve a hearing.

You can grade my contributions all you want, if that is your weird pleasure. And if people want to laugh fine.

So how are the rhinos?

#224

The West African rhino is extinct.

And it's all my fault!

#225

But I suppose I agree that wishfully thinking about an extinct animal is as morally consequent as taking a stand on marriage equality on a LibraryThing forum.

Well, there you go--a nice public demonstration of your moral superiority. I make points joking about rhinos while you defend the bigots' rights to be bigoted.

And it shows me that money buys you a political voice.

If you think I have money, you are sadly mistaken. My credit card was maxed out for a long while because of that trip.

I haven't been as active as I could have been regarding marriage equality - I could have spent time campaigning for the Maryland provision in the recent election right across the border. On the other hand, I've spent a fair amount of my time working in Virginia in an effort to halt the seemingly relentless assaults on women's rights here, and as has been noted, we all have limited time.

>220 Arctic-Stranger: I feel you have a personal stake in this, SBL, but others seem to be jumping on a bandwagon,

it's always iffy to make assumptions about people who you know only via what they post on an internet forum. in many ways I epitomize Tim's description of "residents of their wealthy urban suburb" who "have failed to transcend their environment on those issues." (after all, I was recently told off for criticizing the airline industry for how uncomfortable I found it to fly!) This doesn't stop me from having opinions...even deeply held and strong opinions about every thing from air travel to human trafficking to fracking to Gitmo to abortion to the hunting of endangered species.

Now some of those things I have a personal stake in, most I don't, not directly. Where I do, that personal stake no doubt helps me bring the wisdom or perspective of personal experience to bear in my arguments for what I think. Perhaps that comes across as having more of a "right" to have an opinion. It shouldn't. We are all entitled to our opinions, even if the only thing we ever do in support of them is vote, or raise a little hell on the Internet. In fact, raising hell on the Internet could very well be somebody's version of public activism.

I feel you have a personal stake in this, SBL, but others seem to be jumping on a bandwagon, saying things that are unsustainable in so many ways, and generally just trying to be au currant in the issue of the day.

I am currently with a woman who is bisexual. One of my closest friends is a trans-woman. I work with another trans-woman. A substantial number of my friends are gay or bisexual. These questions directly affect the lives of the people who surround me.

But I'm just trying to be au currant on the issue. Sure.

And although it is no secret that I am gay, I am currently single, not in a relationship, and with no intention of getting married or wanting to get married. So maybe SR's opinions carry more weight than mine....in the personal stakes department.

maybe SR's opinions carry more weight than mine....in the personal stakes department.

Only to people who are explicitly interested in SR's personal situation.

In another group I got accused of offering personal anecdotes for the sake of rhetorical flourishes and stirring emotions. The weather changes from thread to thread.

But anecdotes and experiences are one thing. They are instances of "what happens", and people can learn from them if they want to. But offering my deeds up for tallying with some asshole's at the asshole's random whim, so that he can determine who is worthy of having an opinion and who is not, is out of the question. There's piss in them there pissing matches.

#220: I feel you have a personal stake in this, SBL, but others seem to be jumping on a bandwagon, saying things that are unsustainable in so many ways, and generally just trying to be au currant in the issue of the day.

So basically if you didn't fly to DC, you should shut the hell up? Instead of lobbyists having too much power, they have too little power, because the people in their homes still get to express an opinion.

You have to earn the right to be heard and you earn that by listening.

I've read every post here. I've listened to everything you said.

I only support marriage rights for gays and lesbians because all of the cool kids are doing it.

How many times do I have to repeat myself before y'all will stop making false claims against me?

I support the extension to committed homosexual couples of all of the legal rights currently enjoyed by married heterosexual couples.

I support the extension to committed homosexual couples of all of the legal rights currently enjoyed by married heterosexual couples.

I support the extension to committed homosexual couples of all of the legal rights currently enjoyed by married heterosexual couples.

I support the extension to committed homosexual couples of all of the legal rights currently enjoyed by married heterosexual couples.

I support the extension to committed homosexual couples of all of the legal rights currently enjoyed by married heterosexual couples.

#240: Off topic. The issue here is that you're a bigot.

; )

And to respond to SR's groundless claim that, fifty years ago, I would have opposed interracial marriage:

When a man and a woman, regardless of race, have sex, there is the possibility of procreation, which I am not alone in holding to be a key component of the socio-cultural definition of "marriage" and "raising a stable family".

No matter how many times two men have sex with each other or two women have sex with each other, they will never enjoy the possibility of procreation.

This is a structural argument about potentialities that has nothing to do with race and everything do with the biology of procreation.

As for the wider implication that I would have lined up with the Klan to oppose civil rights, I would point out a key historical difference between the civil rights movement of the 1960's and the movement for gay marriage today: the churches were on the forefront of the former, and rarely anywhere near the latter. (One of Notre Dame's favorite fundraising tools is to bring out a picture of its famous and longtime president, Fr. Ted Hesburgh, hands clasped with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a rally.)

The question before us is not whether we disagree with Nathaniel, but whether Nathaniel is a "bigot" for holding the view that, while gays should have all the legal rights of marriage, the term should be reserved for opposite-sex marriage. Is Nathaniel is to be personally condemned as a "bigot" for the view President Obama not only held but ran on to become president up to a year ago?

Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't vote for someone I thought was a bigot.

Did any of you vote for him?

#243: Whew. I guess I dodged that bullet. Everyone on the left side of the room line up with fellows in the white sheets. Mitt, Dr. Paul, and I are over here, with Harriet Tubman and Gandhi. Let's play some kick-ball!

#243 Of course I voted for the bigot. He was the lesser of two bigots. There wasn't much choice.

I object to any insistence that religious institutions and/or "traditions" be given special prerogatives in determining the nature of marriage with consequences for non-adherents of the religions in question.

Virtually every known human society has (had) marriage, and the real core of such generic "domestic partnerships" is the establishment of a household. Some societies have sexualized marriage because of a narrow view of the household as an arena of procreation. Ironically, there have been an assortment of Christian societies that have prized non-procreative households and used marital language to characterize the status of those (clergy, typically) who have entered into them.

>247 paradoxosalpha:

Religion clearly plays a role, but it's hardly all that's going on. It's not like atheist countries have gone for gay marriage. And the most secular country in Europe—Estonia, where only 16% believe in God—forbids it. The last poll showed only 32% were in favor.

Spot the religious countries?

If I recall correctly, the most recent Pew Poll found that a slight majority of Americans that oppose it cite religious objections. Aside from that, only about 10% of the respondents offered any other reasons. Let me search...

http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/06/in-gay-marriage-debate-both-supporters-an...

The religious basis for opposition to homosexuality is seen clearly in the reasons people give for saying it should be discouraged by society. By far the most frequently cited factors –mentioned by roughly half (52%) of those who say homosexuality should be discouraged – are moral objections to homosexuality, that it conflicts with religious beliefs, or that it goes against the Bible. No more than about one-in-ten cite any other reasons as to why homosexuality should be discouraged by society.

>249 Jesse_wiedinmyer:: "If I recall correctly, the most recent Pew Poll found that a slight majority of Americans that oppose it cite religious objections."

In other words, there are still tens of millions of Americans who oppose gay marriage for non-religious reasons.

Talk about cherry picking. Read the second sentence.

>250 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

Right. So 48% of those against homosexuality don't cite religion but most don't have much else to say. We may guess that they're disgusted by it or just against social change, but neither of those is something you tell a pollster, right?

Why not?

Because people lie to pollsters all the time. For example, routinely people are asked about frequency of church attendance, but if all those people told the truth about how often they attended, there would not be a seat for them in most towns on a Sunday morning. If you ask if people voted in the last election, the number of people who say they do far outweighs the number of people who actually did.

During a poll people will say what they WANT to believe about themselves, not what they really believe. And going back to what was said earlier, how many people would self-identify as a bigot?

If that's the case, then why not assume that the 48% that offer no reason aren't hiding religious reasons?

>256 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

I suspect more cite religious reasons when the real reason is disgust and fear.

There does seem to be a disproportionate focus on the issue compared to the time it's allotted in the good book.

#253: Why should we give credence to people who don't have reasons they're willing to tell a pollster? As AS said "During a poll people will say what they WANT to believe about themselves, not what they really believe."; why should we worry about justifications that the justifiers don't want to believe?

Maybe in much the same way that people tell pollsters what they want the pollsters to believe about themselves, people often read polls to see what they want to believe about themselves.

??????

to the extent that post-modern literary theory is true, of course. And there are issues of interpretation. If 48 percent give no reason, one can wonder what their reasons really are, and given that, maybe even extend that to the people who say religion is a reason. "("Well, I didn't want to just say that just I hate fags!") I am not sure why, in this country, people would HIDE religious reasons from a pollster, unless all the atheists here are wrong, and it is really unacceptable to be a Christian. But that don't make no sense.

>259 prosfilaes:

I don't think we should worry about it. But I think we should take note of it, however. That so many people give no reason is a good clue that their reason is not something one tells a pollster.

That so many people give no reason is a good clue that their reason is not something one tells a pollster.

Or that they don't have a reason. Come now. Let's either take it at face value or not. But this is absurd.

It's significant that 52% of people against gay marriage cite religious reasons. That said, I'd like to see what percent cite religious reasons for gay marriage. I would bet that a not-inconsiderable number of Episcopals, UCC and so forth would do so, if asked.

>263 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

They have no reason? What would that even mean?

And of course, the more salient point on the poll is the generational gap...

70% of millenials support.

There's also the problem of framing the question: it should be clear by now that I could not, in fact, give a simple yes-or-no answer to the question, "Do you support gay marriage?"

One wonders how many people on either side of the support divide (yes and no) actually fall into a third camp that is more complex.

They have no reason? What would that even mean?

If you believe Jonathan Haidt's work, there's a strong idea that a lot of justification for moral beliefs is actually ad hoc rationalisation after the fact.

#267

I believe that the way this particular question was framed "was favor/oppose allowing gays to marry legally."

I need to step away. I'm supposed to be packing for a move.

>269 Jesse_wiedinmyer:: "I believe that the way this particular question was framed "was favor/oppose allowing gays to marry legally."

For what it's worth, my answer, as I've repeatedly stated, is "favor".

I think I've finally hit on a major reason why the discussion here kept breaking down -- though I owe the analysis to a post on FirstThings: How Songs Like Macklemore’s “Same Love” Change the Marriage Debate:

As powerfully as any cultural artifact I know, “Same Love” reveals the odd imbalance or mismatch involved in the marriage dispute. On the one hand, the traditional, conjugal view held by, for instance, the Catholic Church, operates within the vocabulary of metaphysics (nature, being, cause, structure, purpose), practical reason/ethics (good, bad, right, wrong, proper, flourishing), and logos (causation, inference, syllogism, entailment). On the other hand, metaphysics is replaced with self-identity and expression (“Live on and be yourself”), ethics gives way to egalitarianism (“I might not be the same, but that’s not important / No freedom till we’re equal, damn right I support it), and logos to sentiment (“My love / She keeps me warm”).

So you have Theology of the Body or the arguments of natural law versus the word–image association of Macklemore—that’s not likely a ripe conversation—and Macklemore has a lead of 48 million views and a culture moving in his direction, not only in its beliefs but in its vocabulary.

That’s where the difficulty lies, not only in the conflict of judgment—conjugal versus revisionist beliefs on marriage—but in the mode of discourse, the process of how meaning is made. Neil Postman explained how the “Typographic Mind” utilized concepts, universals, and ideas in a way that images could not, for pictures present the concrete particular and cannot “argue” so much as offer “testimony.” So too did Jacques Barzun, in The House of Intellect, articulate the difference between intelligence and what R. R. Reno has called “urgent feelings and primal desires.”

#272: ethics gives way to egalitarianism

See, you object to being called a bigot, and yet you throw out (as your side has repeatedly done) the accusation of us being without ethics. Never mind what's actually being said; you just dismiss what we're saying as being built from ethics.

So you have Theology of the Body or the arguments of natural law versus the word–image association of Macklemore

Actually, we have DC Talk versus Macklemore. Let's make that fair comparison.

Yes, it might be a major reason discussion keeps breaking down, if you call your opponents unethical (aethical?) and chose to compare a pop song against your philosophers, instead of your pop songs versus our pop songs, or your philosophers versus our philosophers.

I can make arguments for gay marriage from utilitarianism, from social good, from liberty. Acting as if practical reason/ethics is the exclusive preserve of your side is self-serving arrogant bullshit.

"Give me the making of the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws."

"My love, she keeps me warm" is an example of replacing logos with sentiment? More like someone hasn't paid attention to popular music since long before we were born.

That's funny, except that it has absolutely nothing to do with how I changed my mind on this issue. For me it was a matter of metaphysics. I am firmly convinced that for some, probably a large majority of gay or lesbian people, their sexual orientation is not a choice. They no more choose their orientation than I chose my gender.

Given that, the options are, "That is the way God made you, and in terms of marriage you are screwed. Take it to God," or "The church over the years has learned to accept gentiles, eunuchs, women, slaves, soldiers, lawyers, people baptized by a Bishop who later proved to be a traitor (contra the Donatists), African Americans (after ruling they were not human) integrationists, Americans, bankers, psychiatrists, managers, marketers, and Methodists. (The latter is a reference to Blazing Saddles....sorry.) The history has been on the side of the inclusion. Maybe we should bite the bullet on this one too."

That does raise the question of "How far is too far?" and for some, this is too far. But a) the churches' stance is becoming at best an embarrassment, and at worst a hindrance, calling for millstones for the offenders (Let the Reader understand).

If we see the church as static, we are in a boatload of trouble. If it is dynamic, and can change, it is time to change.

ETA: And "A Mighty Fortress" has no place in Christian history?

How much airplay has "A Mighty Fortress" gotten? This is something of an apples and oranges comparison.

#277: How much airplay has "A Mighty Fortress" gotten?

Over the centuries? Way more then any flash-hit pop song.

Why is regarding sexual orientation as an innate quality such a stumbling block for people to overcome?

Well for a host of reasons. The big thing is that historically we do not allow people to let themselves be run by their sexual inclinations. We expect people to exercise control. If I see a young sweet thing wearing next to nothing at the beach, and that turns me on, I am expected to control myself, and not take her right then and there (whether she is interested or not). If I am married, and my co-worker is hot, I am expected to control myself, and not have an affair. If my wife tells me she is not the mood, I am expected to control my urges, and not rape her. The list of ways we are supposed to control ourselves is endless.

For ages, most people lumped homosexual relationships in that same category. (I am not making the case they belong there, but that has been the history.) Remember, Homosexuality was not even invented as a term until the late 19th century. Before that it was essentially the act of sodomy. (Which, if I want to have anal sex, and my wife does not, I should be able to control.)

For people who are not around gays and lesbians, which, when many if not most were closeted would include most of the Western world for much of its history, they would really have little way of knowing WHY and HOW someone would prefer the same gender. And if there is any fluidity in sexuality (and I think there is more than most would admit) they might recognize such tendencies within themselves, and be expected to control those.

I am not saying it is a good answer, but I think it explains a little.

The big thing is that historically we do not allow people to let themselves be run by their sexual inclination...

... If my wife tells me she is not the mood, I am expected to control my urges, and not rape her. The list of ways we are supposed to control ourselves is endless.

Ummm, that might not be the example you want to use.

Yeah; as I said in #87:

In 1975, marital rape was illegal only in the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, some other Soviet Bloc countries, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Everywhere else, in the UK, in Canada, Australia, all 50 states of the US, it was still legal, and it wouldn't be until 1991-1993 did the UK and the last of the states of the US and Australia make it illegal.

>280 Arctic-Stranger: for clarification, when you say "we do not" in your first line, are you referring to society or to the (or a) church?

> 279. Why is regarding sexual orientation as an innate quality such a stumbling block for people to overcome?

Honestly, I don't know the answer, but I do have a guess. I'm thinking it's because most people are to a greater or lesser degree bi-sexual, or should I say omni-sexual, in that most of us have impulses and urges in both directions. For many, it's not too difficult to suppress certain impulses, so they think to themselves, "well, if I can do it, anyone can", assuming that their relatively low level of drive is shared by everyone. Others actually do act on their same-sex urges, but, since they also have opposite-sex attractions, they tell themselves, "well, I'm really a hetero, but occasionally fall off the wagon, so everyone else is like me, too." In both cases, people think they're making choices, so they assume it's a matter of choice for everyone else as well.

So heterosexuals are able to control their sexual inclinations, but homosexuals cannot. That's a hoot.

>284 jburlinson:

i'm all for the fluidity of sexuality (and gender) thing (it's what i believe), but i do not believe that "most people" accept that they are or could be attracted to people of the same gender. certainly that must account for some homophobia, and probably some pretty intense homophobia at that, but for what you propose to be true, i think would require far more people to admit the possibility of same gender attraction than actually do - either to other people or to themselves.

>273 prosfilaes:: "Yes, it might be a major reason discussion keeps breaking down, if you call your opponents unethical (aethical?) and chose to compare a pop song against your philosophers, instead of your pop songs versus our pop songs, or your philosophers versus our philosophers."

and

>276 Arctic-Stranger:: "And "A Mighty Fortress" has no place in Christian history?"

I suppose it's my fault for not including the next paragraphs from the linked article:

I am in no way suggesting the absence of intelligent, coherent supporters of same-sex marriage who capably utilize metaphysics or ethics. I’m well aware and respect the work of John Corvino, Kenji Yoshino, Andrew Koppelman, and many others. I’m not claiming that we are smart and they are not, or that no arguments can be had, although a miniscule portion of the population reads, knows, or cares about such arguments. 50 million views of “Same Love” and roughly 10 million “Modern Family” viewers a week on the one side, and absolutely nothing of a similar mode of discourse on the other side. Nothing—that’s my point.

For Lewis the answer was not “to fortify the minds of young people against emotion” but rather “to inculcate just sentiments.” But here, too, the traditionalist is placed in a bind, for Macklemore has captured and co-opted the image and sentiments associated with justice, kindness, fairness, progress, equality, love, patience, kindness, care for the individual person, and human rights, while the tradition gets linked to poison, hatred, bigotry, discrimination, inequality, violence, and war. Of course, it doesn’t help that there are Westboro Baptist Churches. He owns the vocabulary of sentiment. And it is deeply unwise, and wrong, to use counter-sentiments of shame, disgust, or aversion in an attempt to capture back some of the emotional ground. Not only would this prove his point, but demonizing offends against agape, whether it works or not.

We can’t abandon the intellectual task of argument and research, or the political task of law and public policy, or education. All these are necessary and worth doing, but we also need the collaboration and help of artists, musicians, cinematographers, and poets, partly to show the beauty of conjugal marriage, but also, and perhaps more so, to tell the bigger story of the Church’s mission for dignity. So long as holy water means poison and Humanae Vitae is linked to burning crosses, our arguments will be received as abstract and inhumane moralism rather than the civilization of love they express in their own, faltering way.

But there’s more than one way to express that civilization, and just now we might need music videos.

“Modern Family” viewers a week on the one side, and absolutely nothing of a similar mode of discourse on the other side. Nothing—that’s my point.

What the hell would the other side look like? An episode of Leave it To Beaver where Ward tells the kids that gay sex is against natural law? Or would it just look like what TV looked like for decades?

I mean, really, what would be a similar mode of discourse on the other side? How do you work that in? A gay man struggles to overcome his same sex urges? That might make for nice drama, but it wouldn't be a sitcom. The only way you could conceivably accomplish that would be to either a) never show a homosexual relationship at all (tv for decades) or b) portray them only in a negative light.

Really, how are you going to dramatize the damage done to society by allowing gay marriage?

> 285. So heterosexuals are able to control their sexual inclinations, but homosexuals cannot. That's a hoot.

Is this a response to 284?

> 286. i do not believe that "most people" accept that they are or could be attracted to people of the same gender.

Just because they don't "accept" it, doesn't mean they don't feel it.

>291 jburlinson:

but if they don't accept it, then they aren't going to respond as you suggested they might. they would only respond that way if they understood what they were feeling to be same gender attraction, and most people would deny they feel that.

For the record I was speaking of society, but you could include the church as well.

I realize the raping your wife example might not hold water, but it should.

I think many people are sexually fluid, but not in a way that really affects their lives or their self understanding....until you put them in prison. Although it seems women tend to have more fluidity than men. I knew several women who were "college lesbians," but not after.

Christianity is full of knotty problems. As, how can a church that wants to be all-inclusive, that asserts humanity is born sinful, make those kinds of judgments?

290> Response to #280

Is conjugal marriage anything like matrimonial marriage or connubial marriage? I can guess what it's supposed to mean, but that's an offensive abuse of language.

We all have our own ideas of the beauty of marriage; we grew up watching "Leave It To Beaver" or for my generation "The Cosby Show". Many of us also got to see it first hand, in some aspect of its realistic beauty and ugliness. Showing us the "beauty of conjugal marriage" is going to do nothing to discourage those that want marriage from wanting it, nothing to convince those of us who, like me, believe that getting people into happy stable marriages is a great benefit to society, and thus gay marriage is a must.

Which is my frustration here: my beliefs in gay marriage are rock-solid. The weakest point is my belief in marriage itself, which is so tightly bound up in emotion that I can't trust it. And everyone who claims to be for marriage is more interested in attacking gay marriage then making marriage a stable bond that will underpin the culture I and my possible children will live in.

The more serious problem is that marriage before children is fast becoming the normal course only for the older, better-educated white woman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/us/for-women-under-30-most-births-occur-outsid...;

> 292.they would only respond that way if they understood what they were feeling to be same gender attraction, and most people would deny they feel that.

We lie to ourselves all the time. The odd thing is that we seem to believe our own lies. For example, here's an intersting article from Scientific American that tells us, "most of us think that we are better than we actually are — not just physically, but in every way."

You Are Less Beautiful Than You Think

Woah. step away for a day and wham bam sixty more messages, why thank you mam.

So since I admittedly have a personal stake in the decision the Supreme Court will be handing down tomorrow, here's some (more) of my thoughts on the range of topics you have all covered since I went to bed last night:

On the notion that gay couples should enjoy "equal legal rights" as married couples, but not be able to get "married" (nathan at #240) I can only say that we've done separate-but-equal in this country before and the results were not pretty. I don't think you can implement a scenario like that without one side being regarded as inferior to the other. "Mom, Dad, Jennifer and I are getting gay-partnered!" ...nope, I'm not seeing it. Besides, as long as the state is in the business of marrying people, then it has to treat all of its citizens equally.

On the question of whether a person deserves to be called a bigot for views held commonly and by contemporary highly regarded members of society (Tim at #243)--at least some folks regarded Obama highly enough to elect him president--I think what has been missing in our discussion of the term has been not just the importance of a good grasp of historical context, but how willing or unwilling the person is to accept new evidence or revise their assumptions.

Now Nathan and I have disagreed on many issues in the time I've been nattering away here on LT Talk, but I have never once found him to be the kind of person who refuses to listen or respond to conversations put to him in good faith or a spirit of open dialog. For that reason alone I would not call him a bigot. The term implies a history of intransigence that Nathan, in my experience, has not exhibited--even on this subject. (I'm guessing that a few people here will say I'm waffling, but I live in the American South, my entire life is spent surrounded by people who theoretically disapprove of me, but personally get along with me just fine...it's a complicated place).

That said, it is clear to me at least that the main argument he's presenting against gay people enjoying the same marital status as straight people is still founded in the religious belief that homosexuality is a perversion (Nathan's term was aberration) and a sin, and thus not to be officially condoned on the same level as heterosexual relationships are. Which, by the way, would blow the whole separate-but-equal thing right out of the water.

Nathan does not seem to accept the "natural law" of homosexuality--that it really is just a naturally occurring thing, not simply a choice or a sexual kink. And since his ambivalence about homosexuality led to his consigning it in a general category of "immorality" I do think his attitude skirts dangerously close to bigotry, for the simple reason that he seems to think that gay people are being "intrinsically immoral" when they have sex.

And I'll say again that I have yet to hear a good explanation of why homosexuality is considered a sin.

On the questions of why those who disapprove of homosexuality do so, if not for religious reasons, I don't know that there is any good evidence for Tim's suggestion at #257 that people are citing religious to cover their own disgust and fear. It "feels" true to me, but that's hardly reliable evidence. But I will say that while distaste, disgust and fear are all familiar responses that every gay person (especially the men) is sadly used to enduring, those responses are largely the result of cultural conditioning--often religious cultural conditioning. And for that reason alone, I am highly suspect of religion's claims on the issue of gay equality.

On sexual orientation as "fluid" (jburlinson at #284): I think we have the potential to be more fluid if we weren't so hung up on a) labels and b) prurient interests. I consider myself 100% lesbian but I'm not absolutely positive I would throw Johnny Depp out of bed. Society does like to force us into neatly categorized compartments though--gay/straight republican/democrat, liberal/conservative star wars/doctor who...when deep down I suspect that many people like both Obi-wan AND the Doctor.

They have no reason? What would that even mean?

If you believe Jonathan Haidt's work, there's a strong idea that a lot of justification for moral beliefs is actually ad hoc rationalisation after the fact.

Well, of course. But there's something underneath it. It's not random. That something is probably more a feeling than a finely-tuned political argument. My bet is on fear and disgust being the biggies. Do you deny this?

I can only say that we've done separate-but-equal in this country before and the results were not pretty

I support your goal, but I still think this is a cheap shot. The flaw in separate but equal was much deeper--blacks and whites went to different schools, which were in reality funded at vastly different levels. Also, the "separate" was very direct; blacks and whites were engaged in the forced socialization process that is education, and did so separately. If "civil unions" meant "you get insurance, but it's crappier than married people's insurance" and "couples events would be state separated by homo- or hetero-sexual" that would be the appropriate comparandum.

Now, I think there's something good in applying the same semantics—the same terms—to marriage whether it's gay or straight. The term alone is meaningful. But, as concerns the legal reality, it's only a question of semantics.

those responses are largely the result of cultural conditioning

Well, exactly. The largest effect here is simply that—cultural conditioning. Attitude toward homosexuality is basically a rapidly-descending hill by age. Religion is not. Religion plays a role, certainly, but it's primary role is as a prop to culture, but larger cultural factors are more important.

I'm not absolutely positive I would throw Johnny Depp out of bed

Okay, but are you pirate-o-sexual, or, say, Tonto-o-sexual?

>303 timspalding: The flaw in separate but equal was much deeper

The flaw in separate-but-equal was that it predicated on the idea that it was okay to treat black people differently than white people simply because they were black.

Okay, but are you pirate-o-sexual, or, say, Tonto-o-sexual?

More gypsy-o-sexual ("The Man Who Cried") or the lovely if delusional JD of "Don Juan de Marco." ;-)

I'd really like to go back to/over the idea that marriage equality proponents have somehow taken over the discussion with things like "Modern Family" and that the other side has yet to offer a compelling counter-narrative and have effectively ceded the ground by not presenting their own side in popular culture.

I'm extremely interested in how one feels they would go about that...?

In a sense, I think that dovetails quite nicely with the discussion of reasons given for opposing gay marriage in polls.

If anything, I think the lack of a countervailing picture is actually symptomatic rather than driving. It's like saying "We're losing because they're dominating the discourse" rather than saying "We're winning because we can't offer a compelling counter-narrative that's not based in religious belief, flat disgust, or bigotry (I think those are the three possible things I've seen with respect to the pollsters and things one would not want to tell them (or, as Arctic stated, no one wants to self-identify as a bigot))."

#305: I'm extremely interested in how one feels they would go about that...?

I don't think they'll bother. If you place this issue in the context of traditionalist v. progressive (which is how I read the framing in the FirstThings article) - traditionalists aren't largely interested in popular culture, and are often repelled by it - especially the grossly commercialized mediums of pop-music and television. So, I don't likely see a "Reactionary Family" sitcom in the fall line-up.

I think that is what the article points to is that the divide isn't just religious, or demographic by age, education, and class - but also deeply cultural. Your salient point about Millennials in a post above may be salient if that particular generation is stuck in the time-retard that characterizes the Baby Boomer generation - meaning they'll drag their time-specific social values with them as they age and allegedly mature OR it could mean that their social values reflect a specific time and culture that is subject to change as they grow older. We don't really know, and thus the tendency as illustrated to the point of absurdity in this thread on the stand-with-the-Klan accusation that any opinion which deviates from an absolute is bigotry.

To return to your question of popular culture, and that posed by the author in the FirstThings article: how lasting is the influence? We know how broadly it covers, but how deep is it? That remains to be seen, and historically I think social change is never linear, but always circles back.

But, I agree - it is an interesting question.

>308 enevada: historically I think social change is never linear, but always circles back

This is probably true of swings between things that operate like fashions: periods of experimentation followed by periods of conformity. But it is not historically true (I don't think) about the evolving and expanding idea of what constitutes natural human rights. Those, once granted, tend to stick and not be revoked at a later date. And in the places where they have been, they've received near-universal condemnation and often erupted into violence and even war.

I think that is what the article points to is that the divide isn't just religious, or demographic by age, education, and class - but also deeply cultural. Your salient point about Millennials in a post above may be salient if that particular generation is stuck in the time-retard that characterizes the Baby Boomer generation - meaning they'll drag their time-specific social values with them as they age and allegedly mature OR it could mean that they're social values reflect a specific time and culture that is subject to change as they grow older. We don't really know, and thus the tendency as illustrated to the point of absurdity in this thread on the stand-with-the-Klan accusation that any opinion which deviates from an absolute is bigotry.

This is where I have to disagree, E. Because one of the most compelling counter-narratives (and one of the indicators that offers the correlations to support for marriage equality) is knowing someone that is openly LGBT. At that point, it's not about "popular culture" or "traditional culture," it's about friendship. It's why things like Dan Savage's "It Gets Better Project" have been so successful. It's part of the reason why the discussion is progressing as it is. And it's why we've moved so far so fast. Because we've gone from a situation where Anita Bryant was dominating the discussion and homosexuality was "the love that dare not speak its name" (to the point that any indications of it in popular culture would lead to massive uproars (Silence=Death/Roseanne! First same-sex kiss on television!) to where people (and this is why the millenials are key) simply say "Gay? That's my friend Heather."

Elsewhere, I told SBL that in some sense, every one of these conversations is something like "It's a Wonderful Life" for me. Like, every time someone starts arguing against gays having the ability to get married, an angel gets its wings. Because quite a bit of the time, the conversation does little but show the paucity of compelling narrative on the other side. And the very fact that the conversation is occurring at all is, in some small sense, revolutionary.

#309: That is the perception, yes, and why both sides in this debate (there are many sides, I'm simplifying here for the purpose of clarity) frame the issue of SSM in terms of 'law': natural, divine, on one hand and and the universal, humanist on the other. A traditionalist will give more weight to the former, because they have longer roots in our western culture, and will be suspect of the latter because 'universal human' rights is a relatively recent construct (and still has the whiff of the Jacobins about it ).

A self-proclaimed progressive, OTOH, will happily shed the 'shackles' of deeply rooted behavioral constraints and gravitate to the new, the shiny, the liberating.

Life goes on.

#311: the very fact that the conversation is occurring at all is, in some small sense, revolutionary.

Yes, in the sense that we are moving ahead while circling back. And, it is a good and necessary discussion to have, as long as both sides remain open to the possibility of persuasion .

On your other point on friendship – absolutely, we all have a vested interest in getting this right – in operating from the motivations of love and benevolence and not hatred and coercion. We agree there, and it is a point of strength (or could be) for both sides.

Consider that opposition to SSM is not opposition to gay people but a protest against the idea that the state has either the authority or the interest in the sanctification of marriage (or any personal living arrangement). The appeal to the state to act as the authorizing agency with regard to personal relationships is wrong, in my view, and a step backwards with regard to individual autonomy.

So, it isn’t a question of who “ought” to do what, for me – but what I see as another misguided appeal to state authority. The state has no compelling interest or authority in marriage, and should recuse itself altogether. No preferential treatment, no tax breaks, no false rhetoric.

People already have the right, and are free to exercise, the arrangement of their personal lives. Why look to the state for sanction?

Do away with state-sanctioned marriage entirely, then. Including tax benefits and breaks.

In which case, DOMA is a complete no-go also.

#314 & 315: I agree. Entirely.

For me, I guess that would leave us working within the system that we have, though.

You know, like voting for the lesser of two bigots.

Conservatives aren't interested in a society that is not built on the family unit, so I doubt they are interested in one where the family unit has no state support or acknowledgement.

#318: Ha! Or voting for Dr. Paul, in some Quixotic protest.

#319: Do you actually know any conservatives who have told you this? Because, I am a conservative and I am telling you something differently. State support is not the source of and is often at odds with the familial bond.

>320 enevada: Do you actually know any conservatives who have told you this?

Sure. Lots. There's an argument to be made for getting rid of the role of the state in marriage, of course. But in a secular society that would mean consigning "marriage" to an esoteric religious rite. And all those people who get married at the registrar's office would be...what? Not married? Not a family? I don't think conservatives really want that.

I don't think it's that controversial a point. Though it might lead to a discussion of definitions. And that extends through things like abortion, tax breaks, sex education, education, marriage. The idea that the state has a vested interest in promoting marriage is not new, though I could quickly see it becoming a "no true scotsman" sort of thing, where any conservative that participates in government loses conservative cred. Then again, there's actually a pretty strong theocratic thread in a lot of American politics that tends to be more closely aligned with the right than the left.

#321: Well, if it is only "conservatives" who are interested in state support or acknowledgement, then why are liberals asking for the state to sanction SSM? Face it, both groups are appealing to state authority here - and both are wrong to do so, in my opinion.

Why do people have to go anywhere to be "married" in a secular society? Who gives a hoot? They may want to hire a good lawyer, but anybody can download a decent contract template online, these days.

I don't think she's saying it's "only" conservatives are doing so. Though "family values" has long been a talking point of a certain subset of the population.

There is an ad absurdum argument to be made somewhere in here, though. At one extreme, SBL and I could get married (with or without a contract, I'll consider her word verbally binding). At which point, though, one wonders what marriage ends up being. Which would reduce it almost solely a religious rite, or a function of the universal life church.

322> see: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-104publ193/html/PLAW-104publ193.htm

Public Law 104-193
This Act may be cited as the ``Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996''

The Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Marriage is the foundation of a successful society.
(2) Marriage is an essential institution of a successful
society which promotes the interests of children.
(3) Promotion of responsible fatherhood and motherhood is
integral to successful child rearing and the well-being of
children.
(6) The increase of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and births is
well documented as follows:
(A) It is estimated that the rate of nonmarital teen
pregnancy rose 23 percent from 54 pregnancies per 1,000
unmarried teenagers in 1976 to 66.7 pregnancies in 1991.
The overall rate of nonmarital pregnancy rose 14 percent
from 90.8 pregnancies per 1,000 unmarried women in 1980
to 103 in both 1991 and 1992. In contrast, the overall
pregnancy rate for married couples decreased 7.3 percent
between 1980 and 1991, from 126.9 pregnancies per 1,000
married women in 1980 to 117.6 pregnancies in 1991

(10) Therefore, in light of this demonstration of the crisis
in our Nation, it is the sense of the Congress that prevention
of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and reduction in out-of-wedlock
birth are very important Government interests and the policy
contained in part A of title IV of the Social Security Act (as
amended by section 103(a) of this Act) is intended to address
the crisis.

What was the vote spread...? Who sponsored it?

#324: Marriage can be whatever you want it to be - in a free and secular society. That's my point - why would a person who is not religious care if religious people participate in the sacrament of marriage? They do, assuredly, consider it a sacramental rite, among others. That has no bearing or meaning on the state's jurisdiction, which legitimately extends to contract oversight and property rights, but nothing more.

You and SBL are free to enter any voluntary relationship you want, and you are free to call it marriage and even insist that others recognize it as such - and I imagine you could find a church somewhere to bless it, if that mattered to you, but you don't get to have the power of the state recognize the relationship as anything beyond the verbal, implied, or written contract that legally binds you to one another.

DOMA struck down, btw

322>

House: YES (R) 230 (D) 98/ NO (R) 2 (D) 97
Senate: YES (R) 53 (D) 25/ NO (R) 0 (D) 21

DOMA ruled unconstitutional.

#328: No surprise there. And, a good step towards getting the state - on any level - out of the marriage business, I hope. But, we probably all need to read the decision, here:

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_g2bh.pdf

And, a good step towards getting the state - on any level - out of the marriage business, I hope.

I really, really, really, really, don't think that's the way it'll work.

"DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment."

>296 prosfilaes:: "And everyone who claims to be for marriage is more interested in attacking gay marriage then making marriage a stable bond that will underpin the culture I and my possible children will live in."

I think this an unfounded and overbroad generalization, as I, at least, have come in for it on LT before for advocating measures to strengthen heterosexual marriage, quite apart from the homosexual marriage debate (see e.g. http://www.librarything.com/topic/141826 ).

Re: the FirstThings article, different modes of discourse, and cultural milieux:

What I've noticed is that different portions of society that I interact with operate with what seem to be entirely different cultural assumptions. Anyone who questions the legitimacy of gay marriage in these fora is liable to be thought of as a bigot; but in many of the Catholic and other traditionally Christian circles I know, traditional sexual ethics are taken for granted.

The problem that seems to plague me is that I attempt to listen to, understand, and empathize with both sides. I've mentioned before that much of my sympathy towards gay rights--including supporting their equality under the law--came from my experiences with my undergraduate advisor, who was both a wonderful man and a gay man, married to his decades-long partner in Massachusetts after such was made legal there. On the other hand, I remain both professionally and privately an advocate of the Christian tradition.

Rather than dismissing either side with which I may sometimes disagree--as when I shrink from the hateful and thoroughly unChristian treatment that some on the far right give to gay people, or when I remain reticent about redefining "marriage" to do away with its procreative pillar--as simply bigoted, I strive to understand each side, to empathize with its concerns and ideals, and to work to find solutions that take all of those concerns and ideals into account.

(For example, I'm in the process of exploring something similar on the place of women within the institutional church: that is, I have started to examine how women might be "ordained" into positions of juridical and canonical leadership without compromising the essential nature of the priesthood as an office reserved to men.)

From majority opinion: "...DOMA undermines both the public and private significance of statesanctioned same-sex marriages; for it tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriagesare unworthy of federal recognition. This places same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage. The differentiation demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects, see Lawrence, 539 U. S. 558, and whose relationship the State has sought to dignify. And it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples. The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives."

The DOMA decision came down while I was writing the above: I applaud it.

I was going to write a lengthy comment now expanding on natural law, sexual tendencies, and sin (as per SBL's comment 300), but as discussion of the SCOTUS decision will likely dominate, I will withhold such until later.

but in many of the Catholic and other traditionally Christian circles I know, traditional sexual ethics are taken for granted.

Not just traditional sexual ethics, but that there is such a thing, and it hews to your tradition.

Prop 8 down the tubes too.

So-so. Limited applicability. They ruled on standing, from what I understand.

Though I've not seen anything solid on it yet.

I'll definitely take the punt on 8.

>324 Jesse_wiedinmyer:
I would send some champers.

I'd have to ask first. Who knows, maybe we should do it just for the free champagne.

344> N.B.

almightygod @almightygod
Congratulations, LBGT-Americans. Sorry about condemning you to death in the Bible. That was before I saw Modern Family.

#332. Geez Louise, it is as if Scalia has been reading this LT thread:

from his lively dissent:

In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white:
Hate your neighbor or come along with us. The truth is
more complicated. It is hard to admit that one’s political
opponents are not monsters, especially in a struggle like
this one, and the challenge in the end proves more than
today’s Court can handle. Too bad. A reminder that dis
agreement over something so fundamental as marriage
can still be politically legitimate would have been a fit
task for what in earlier times was called the judicial temperament.

346: Scalia's dissent is kind of disingenuous though. A day after he joined the majority in striking down portions of the VRA based upon a shaky legal theory, he complains that the court should not strike down DOMA with much better justification because it was "passed by a majority of the legislature".

Scalia's dissent is pretty crushing. I like the political result of this, but he eviscerates the majority opinion shifting justifications. Alito's made my skin crawl in places.

I'd call it scathing and filled with disgust. I wouldn't call it crushing.

Then again, when he says things like "But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions," he's (once again) defending a rather narrow interpretation of tradition.

348: Scalia's dissent in part one makes a few points, but it becomes completely unhinged in part three.

>349 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

Well, yeah, it's all within an intellectual framework that is not shared with all justices.

#299

as long as the state is in the business of marrying people, then it has to treat all of its citizens equally.

This, and ramifications. Screw religion and morality--give people JUSTICE.

#348: In that case, the majority decision is crushing to Bill Clinton, who signed DOMA.
Scalia’s argument t against jurisdiction (as I understand it) is because there was no defense of DOMA on the part of the current executive and therefore no party-adverseness. He also warns – and this is a valid warning – against deciding this case or any case on the perception of legislative intent (this was the part that reminded me of our discussion here):

“It is a familiar principle of constitutional law that this Court will not strike down an otherwise constitutional statute on the basis of an alleged illicit legislative motive.” United States v. O’Brien, 391 U. S. 367, 383 (1968). Or at least it was a familiar principle. By holding to the contrary, the majority has declared open season on any law that (in the opinion of the law’s opponents and any panel of like-minded federal judges) can be characterized as mean-spirited”

"Screw morality, give people justice."

Screw right and wrong. Give people what's right!

on the part of the current executive and therefore no party-adverseness

This is an interesting weirdness, for sure. It's pretty infrequently that a bill is not overturned but the Justice department refuses to defend it. It would have been even weirder if the Justice department had defended a law they want overturned for the purpose of getting Scalia to consider it worthy of consideration…

#345: that's funny - that same thought crossed my mind - but then I realized (Scalia-like) there is a much more anodyne explanation: legal error.

My hunch is that Scalia's dissent will generate far more discussion than Kennedy's majority decision.

Whether or not "the state is in the business of marrying people" (e.g. a justice of the peace being the performative agent of marriage), the state will always need a way of recognizing voluntary domestic partnerships in order to deal with household property issues. It's not just a footnote to income tax.

Well, okay, I could be wrong. Households could be abolished and we could all be destined for Matrix-style pod life in individual subjection to the techocratic regime. But I rather doubt the systems steering in that direction are sufficiently robust to achieve it.

#356: the state will always need a way of recognizing voluntary domestic partnerships in order to deal with household property issues?

Beyond contracts? Why does the state have in interest in either voluntary association or household arrangement?

#354

Your morality isn't special to anyone but you. Your morality isn't the be-all and end-all. Nobody needs to be judged according to your morality any more than they need to be judged by Hottentot Herring Hallowing morality.

The law isn't based on morality--anyone's morality. It is based on a necessity to ensure a viable society. A viable society needs above all peace and harmony; peace and harmony are guaranteed by justice. Ideas on justice have historically changed, but in one clear direction--toward enfranchisement and protection of all.

It was found just that people of any race and class should have rights, it was found just that women should have rights, and the sick, and the disabled, and ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities... and that may not be the end.

The motor of these changes in understanding justice wasn't increased "morality" or better understanding of "morality". The motor were troubles caused by inequalities, material, economic and political, the unrests caused by people who fought for justice, and new knowledge. You couldn't keep legally classifying women with children and the mentally retarded, when universities started awarding degrees to these same women.

Bigots can keep thinking gay sex is immoral all they like. We are out of the desert--bigots' ideas no longer transfer into law for all.

#358: It was found just that people of any race and class should have rights, it was found just that women should have rights, and the sick, and the disabled, and ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities... and that may not be the end.

There's hope for unborn children, yet!

> 357

Shall we all need to manufacture explicit legal contracts defining the myriad conventional ways in which households create small economies?

Just a simple example: the state's cognizance of spouses massively simplifies the disposition of property for people who die intestate (lots of them).

This, and ramifications. Screw religion and morality--give people JUSTICE.

And injustice is not immoral or wrong in any sense? And exactly what do you mean by justice, if it is not going to be informed by any morality? Do you mean justice in the sense of a Rawls, or in the sense of Mill? Is it the greatest good for the largest number or a deontological category? Is justice merely adherence to the law, in which case the Law is always just, you are just looking for inconsistencies?

Ideas on justice have historically changed, but in one clear direction--toward enfranchisement and protection of all.

Have you not been paying attention to what has been going on in America the last ten years? Your metaphysics of history might need a slight adjustment. Justice in Alaska is giving oil companies less taxes, and white people the right to hunt in traditional native hunting grounds.

The motor of these changes in understanding justice wasn't increased "morality" or better understanding of "morality". The motor were troubles caused by inequalities, material, economic and political, the unrests caused by people who fought for justice, and new knowledge. You couldn't keep legally classifying women with children and the mentally retarded, when universities started awarding degrees to these same women.

If only life were that simple. Where would the civil rights movement have been without Jewish and Christian supporters? You are partially right. Gov. Terry Sanford, of North Carolina for example, realized that segregation would keep the state backwards, and worked hard to change it in the early 1960s. But he worked along side of churches who believed that segregation was immoral, and many of those church people were freedom riders or marched in Selma or made financial donations to King. It was a mixture of a variety of things that caused the expansion of civil rights in this country.

One of the many things that has started to change the tide on LGBT issues is the involvement of some churches. (I would not even argue it was a primary factor, but it was a factor.)

Your facile analysis of justice is not the standard I would hope the nation could rise to.

>358 LolaWalser:: "The law isn't based on morality--anyone's morality. It is based on a necessity to ensure a viable society. A viable society needs above all peace and harmony; peace and harmony are guaranteed by justice."

Except that morality is the branch of philosophy that determines the right and wrong, whose distinction justice then promotes. The law is based on morality -- it is based on the distinction between right and wrong.

Justice becomes a meaningless and foundationless term without morality -- though likewise, morality without justice becomes a despotic parody of itself.

#360: No need. I admit my plan would be a boon to the legal industry, but people can be as creative as they like in contracts.

If one enters into a living arrangement without the benefit of an explicit contract, then they have no discernible legal right to the property of the deceased room-mate. Why should the courts presume otherwise?

And lest we get all Kum By Yah about justice, it is in the name of justice that we put people in prison for long periods of time, or even kill them on occasion. It is the wheels of justice that determine which drugs are illegal, and which incarcerates those who choose unwisely. It is the wheels of justice that may demand we go to war to protect the rights of others.

if justice guarantees peace it is a very uneasy peace, and it does not guarantee harmony; it guarantees that fights will be fair.

#361

Your facile analysis of justice is not the standard I would hope the nation could rise to.

I live in a nation with that standard of justice.

>365 LolaWalser:: You've a perverted sense of justice if has no basis in an actual distinction between right and wrong.

>365 LolaWalser: I think it would be more appropriate to say that in YOUR world, there is that standard of justice. Most of us have to deal with the reality (he says, as he gets ready to go to court so they can assure "justice" in his divorce.)

The law is based on morality -- it is based on the distinction between right and wrong.

Justice becomes a meaningless and foundationless term without morality -- though likewise, morality without justice becomes a despotic parody of itself.

Law and justice are not the same thing. You seem to have conflated the two in your argument.

"Law" is to "Justice" what "words" are to "argument."

Morality, law, justice.

"If there is found among you, in one of your towns that the LORD is giving you, a man or a woman who does what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, and transgresses his covenant by going to serve other gods and worshiping them -- whether the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden -- and if it is reported to you or you hear of it, and you make a thorough inquiry, and the charge is proved true that such an abhorrent thing has occurred in Israel, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who has committed this crime and you shall stone the man or woman to death." Deuteronomy 17.2-7

Is that equal to "thou shalt not steal?" Is your point that all religious law is bad? Is your point that we should jettison anything found in a religious code?

Or are you simply pointing out that Hebrew law is pretty different from American law?

351: It's within an intellectual framework that is fundamentally dishonest. Scalia is a memorable justice, but he's definitely not a principled one, despite his claims to be. He's an ideologue who seems perfectly willing to cast aside principle to try to score points for the side he wants to win.

I have had to read a fair number of Rehnquist decisions, and he seems to have been principled. There were several occasions when I disagreed with Rehnquist, but he always seemed to adhere to a consistent set of jurisprudential principles. I have disagreed with some of Warren's decisions (one involving a right to travel for example), but I never thought that he was making a decision without being consistent with his previous established judicial philosophy. And so on. Most of the memorable justices were generally men who stood on legal principle as well.

Scalia has a flair for writing, but that covers up the fact that he is an unprincipled opportunist. When conservative judges like Posner and Easterbrook begin calling you out, then you have a problem, and Scalia has that problem. His dissent in the DOMA decision is a clear example of his lack of principles.

In his opening section, Scalia takes the court to task for deciding a case that presents no actual case or controversy. in doing do he follows a long line of precedents that deal with (among other issues) the questions of standing, ripeness, and mootness. In effect, Scalia says that because the Executive branch declined to defend DOMA, the case became moot, and no real issue was presented to the court. To get there he does a very technical reading of the relevant precedents and is very picky about how they should be applied. That's fine - if a justice thinks that the law should be applied in a hypertechnical way that's a valid stance to take. And if he had left his dissent there, he wouldn't be an unprincipled ass.

But he didn't. He went on, and in section three of his dissent, even though he didn't have to, he gratuitously evaluates the merits, and engages in a sloppy slip-shod argument that would garner a first year Con Law student a failing grade. He criticizes the majority for spending a fair amount of time discussing the fact that questions of who and who could not get married had traditionally been left to states. He then proceeds to attack the majority because they struck down a law in which the federal government attempted to insert itself in the question of which marriages are valid and which are not, putting the lie to the claim that he is a "traditionalist". He is, it seems, a traditionialist when it comes to justifying laws he likes, and not a traditionalist when laws don't meet his approval.

But that's not the unhinged part of his dissent. He talks about the situation in which Arkansas legalizes gay marriage and Alabama does not, and a gay couple gets married in Arkansas and then moves to Alabama. How, Scalia asks, should they file their taxes? They are legally married according to one state, but the other doesn't recognize their marriage. Scalia claims that the poor federal government is put into a bind by this situation, because of the conflicting state laws and DOMA was needed to answer this "tricky" question.

But this exposes Scalia's claim for the manure that it is, because the answer he claims cannot be found is sitting right in the middle of the Constitution itself: the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Contracts legally entered into in one state are required to be honored as valid by all states. This is the reason why your Elvis chapel wedding in Vegas is valid in Georgia, even if you didn't follow all the rules in Georgia for getting married. The application of the Full Faith and Credit clause on issues like interracial marriage and common-law marriage has been historically uneven, but the trend is towards overriding state restrictions. But in the case of the federal government, the Full Faith and credit clause answers Scalia's question easily - the marriage contract in Arkansas is valid. Absent DOMA, the federal government recognizes it. End of story.

This is so basic and so fundamental that there is no way that Scalia doesn't know this. Yet he leaves it out and acts like it is a huge unresolved issue. He wants to be very technical and strict concerning the 'actual case or controversy" issue, but then gives an incredibly slapdash reading when he comes to the substance so that he can justify the outcome he wants. And that is why, when future generations look back on Scalia, he will not be regarded as the legal giant he aspires to be, but rather as an unprincipled hack who could turn out decent prose.

Down with religious codes of morality! Of course, that means that we are now free to steal and murder, as those were forbidden under a religious code of morality (see Exodus 20), and so they are no longer applicable.

369: I would say rather that they are two entirely different things that once in a while intersect. An unjust law is still a law.

And masticated words constipate an argument if the speaker likes to fornicate words in sentences. But they are still words.

Your morality isn't special to anyone but you. Your morality isn't the be-all and end-all. Nobody needs to be judged according to your morality any more than they need to be judged by Hottentot Herring Hallowing morality.

Certainly my opinions about morality aren't necessarily true. But then my opinions about justice aren't necessarily true either.

What I'm questioning is your separation between morality and justice—more specifically your rejection of morality and continued demand for justice. I think this is dangerous word-twisting, and I wonder why you're doing it.

If I might, I suspect that you feel the word "morality" is tainted by opinions about morality you disagree with. Fair enough. But you something by throwing it out. For example, we agree that gay should be able to marry. I'd like to add that such discrimination is immoral. In throwing morality out, you'd lost your moral standing—as it were—to do so.

I'd add that morality is larger than justice. For example, simply being a bigot to your friends and neighbors—or, hey, what about LibraryThing?—is no violation of justice. But I'd like to think it's still wrong.

375: If you look to the law to find justice, you will be disappointed. Justice is not the sole, or even the primary objective of the law.

And can there be justice in a society without laws?

Not every word is a part of an argument, but every argument contains words. I am not sure that every aspect of justice contains laws (or something similar to law) but unless you are on a per case basis, it seems laws are the best way to guarantee justice. (I use the word law in a rather broad sense, which would include, for instance, the Constitution.)

#296: "And everyone who claims to be for marriage is more interested in attacking gay marriage then making marriage a stable bond that will underpin the culture I and my possible children will live in."

#334: I think this an unfounded and overbroad generalization

If "everyone" is taken entirely literally, I'm sure that's not true, but that's not the wording I would have used if I meant it to mean everyone in the literal sense. Perhaps "absolutely every single person, without exception". And Focus on the Family and National Organization of Marriage and friends have colonized the name space to the point that the word "Family" or "Marriage" in an organization name is a good warning sign that they're anti-gays.

I, at least, have come in for it on LT before for advocating measures to strengthen heterosexual marriage, quite apart from the homosexual marriage debate

That's not a resounding counterargument there.

>379 prosfilaes:: Nevertheless, your implication that to be for marriage is automatically to be disingenuously interested, not in strengthening marriage but in attacking gays, is illogical.

Otherwise, per your claim, it is not possible to be genuinely pro-marriage.

Alito, too seems to have ben reading this thread. In fact, he pretty much nails it:

In asking the Court to determine that §3 of DOMA is subject to and violates heightened scrutiny, Windsor and the United States thus ask us to rule that the presence of two members of the opposite sex is as rationally related to marriage as white skin is to voting or a Y-chromosome is to the ability to administer an estate. That is a striking request and one that unelected judges should pause before granting. Acceptance of the argument would cast all those who cling to traditional beliefs about the nature of marriage in the role of bigots or superstitious fools.

Exactly!

#380: Nevertheless, your implication that to be for marriage is automatically to be disingenuously interested, not in strengthening marriage but in attacking gays, is illogical.

That's not my claim. My claim is that when I look around at the world for a group that's interested in strengthening marriage in the 21st century, they're all about gay marriage. The natural names for organizations about making marriage strong are camped by anti-(gay) marriage organizations. It's as if the National Rifle Organization's main interest was in making sure the AR-15 was illegal, and all the other issues about guns were irrelevant to them.

>382 prosfilaes:: Pope Francis' homily today was on fatherhood, and he said not a single word about gay marriage: Pope at Mass: The joy of fatherhood (Vatican News)

I could dig up innumerable examples of churches--whether Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant--having continual conversations about strengthening the family without ever talking about gay marriage. As in other matters, it would seem the problem is that you aren't listening close enough.

ETA: Here's an interview from March with the head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, in which you will find exactly two paragraphs out of more than thirty that discuss gay marriage: http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/vatican-family-czar-says-pro-life-peace-and...

Indeed, Archbishop Paglia goes out of his way to emphasize how many other areas of social justice (and especially helping the poor) are important to the family:

I believe this Pope will propose a comprehensive message about the family. We've already heard him talk, when he was Cardinal of Buenos Aires, about the family in his speeches for this dicastery, and he's touched on all aspects of the subject: from the themes on morality and bioethics, to the matters about education, work, the importance of respect for the elderly, and a spirit of welcome for the newborn. He realizes that the family is the most robust resource for our society. He'll put it at the center not only of the life of the Church, but also political, economic and cultural life.
(...)
If the church, which, as Paul VI said, is an expert in humanity, is animated by a compassionate gospel spirit, it will see this reality and be able to talk credibly about it in a positive way. We'll be able to see that the sick would be abandoned without their families, the elderly would be lost, small children wouldn't know how to grow up, the young wouldn't know where to go. In a time when it's hard to find work, and in which young people often have to stay at home longer, what would happen to them without their families?
(...)
I'm a Roman, so let me quote Cicero, who wasn't a Catholic and not even a Christian. He defined the family this way: Familia est principium urbis et quasi seminarium rei publicae, meaning, "The family is the fundament of the city and like a school of citizenship." Without strong families, we would have disfigured cities and unsustainable societies.
(...)
Right now I've got two objectives. Pastorally, one regards helping the church throughout the world to better prepare young people who are getting ready for marriage. We need to find a new language for them. We also need to connect the family in a much tighter fashion to the parish community. If families are left by themselves, they rupture. It's not good for man to be alone, sure, but it's also not good for the family to be alone. Sunday therefore becomes crucial. It's the day of thanksgiving, of celebration, of rest, and we can't ever give that up, but it also needs to be the day of the family. The parish can't just be a structure fielding an army of workers who perform services with their heads down in hospitals and so on, as important as those are, but it also needs to be where families come together. I also want to promote the idea of every family having and reading its own Bible, and I have to say that in this regard the United States is in a higher gear.

On the cultural front, we've also got some things going on. In April, for instance, we're organizing our first conference on the family as the primary business firm, bringing together economists. We'll open with a prayer, but we're not going to be talking about prayer in the family. We're going to be talking about work. We also want to involve intellectuals in a discussion about the rights of the family. It's important to study it from a juridical point of view, and perhaps make proposals to governments if they're needed. We also want to take up the problem of inter-generational relations, which has to be faced all around. We're organizing a conference on that subject too.

But despite all of this, you've determined that anybody who says they support the family is really focused on just one issue: gay marriage.

It's as if the National Rifle Organization's main interest was in making sure the AR-15 was illegal, and all the other issues about guns were irrelevant to them.

This is simply untrue. NOM (or maybe it's focus on the family) also has very strong views on the women and men's respective roles in the family.

>383 nathanielcampbell: But despite all of this, you've determined that anybody who says they support the family is really focused on just one issue: gay marriage.

And yet it is certainly true that as marriage equality has played out politically, the groups and organizations arrayed against gay marriage do tend to use "support" and "defend" language. There's a reason that the federal law just struck down was called the Defense of Marriage Act. I don't think you can ignore the rhetoric here, or cry foul if it is pointed out.

Then too, context is everything, and talking about defending or strengthening marriage on, say, a forum devoted to helping impoverished single parents would carry entirely different implications than talking about defending or strengthening marriage on a forum discussing whether or not gays should be able to get married. To carry on as if there isn't a difference suggests a peculiar kind of tone-deafness.

In any case, I think you could say that marriage, the institution, was indeed strengthened today. Because now lots more people will be able to participate in this institution that is at the foundation of so much of what we've built as a society.

In any case, I think you could say that marriage, the institution, was indeed strengthened today.

I have repeatedly made the argument that same sex marriage does not weaken marriage, based on the fact that whatever class of people who marry does not affect the strength of the institution. Conversely, I am not sure you can say marriage was strengthened either.

>386 Arctic-Stranger: I am not sure you can say marriage was strengthened either.

At the very least, it gives gay people who are married in states that allow it the added legitimacy that their marriage is recognized at a Federal level. That in itself gives them an added level of security.

#376

What I'm questioning is your separation between morality and justice—more specifically your rejection of morality and continued demand for justice. I think this is dangerous word-twisting, and I wonder why you're doing it.

Yeah, see, we aren't even in the same book, let alone page. You are still selling the idea of some absolute morality--of which you happen to have the secret, or at least are closer to than those who think differently.

So I reject your morality. So what. You also reject mine. See the problem? Why does your rejection get to matter more than mine? Because you have some army behind you? Might is right? "Majority opinion"? What? As has been pointed out repeatedly, so did the slavers, and segregationists etc. Their morality probably didn't look all that different from yours (lots of them seem to have thought themselves good Christians)--but I suppose you'd agree that at least on one very important point--whether it is moral to treat human beings like market commodities, or sequester the races on the basis of higher and lesser "superiority"--yours is nothing like theirs. So, what, are they suddenly immoral? Were they always immoral? Or only once they started losing ground?

If I might, I suspect that you feel the word "morality" is tainted by opinions about morality you disagree with.

No, it's just that there is no one morality. The morality I try to uphold is alive and well. But it is mine. And unlike you I don't expect anyone else to automatically follow MY morality. By the same token, I don't expect anyone to have the power to make me follow theirs.

Fair enough. But you something by throwing it out. For example, we agree that gay should be able to marry. I'd like to add that such discrimination is immoral. In throwing morality out, you'd lost your moral standing—as it were—to do so.

No, I don't care about moral standing. You would deny me moral standing anyway because you disagree with my morality. Again--it is relative, therefore cannot serve as absolute standard.

The main point: It is quite enough that the discrimination against gays be recognised as an injustice, a social injustice, a legal injustice, something that needs to be rectified on the level of society as a whole. This seems to be some sort of stumbling block for you. No, speaking as someone who actually might gay-marry some day, I don't feel the faintest need to have those denying gays this right brought to the marketplace, thrown in the stocks, and proclaimed IMMORAL, up from some high horse.

What is important to me is that their actions are recognised as unjust and oppressive. And made illegal.

I'd add that morality is larger than justice.

Well, again, you would because you're sunk in theistic idealism and don't apprehend the same reality I do (the same way I do). I'm an atheist and to me--speaking politically, of themes that concern society and whole classes of disparate people--nothing is larger than justice. Because nothing except justice can serve billions of people with god knows how many "moralities".

For example, simply being a bigot to your friends and neighbors—or, hey, what about LibraryThing?—is no violation of justice. But I'd like to think it's still wrong.

But the problem isn't about how we treat friends and neighbours, we are discussing something that affects entire categories, millions of people, billions maybe. Bigotry is aimed against entire categories. A bigot hates all Jews, all gays, all blacks etc. (Although some are famous for having "some best friends" belonging to these categories.)

>388 LolaWalser:

The incoherence of your view is that you speak about morality being entirely relative, yet persist in making moral claims not restricted to your own actions. If the possibility for differences of opinion were enough to establish that morality is relative, the terms you prefer, like "justice," "injustice" and "oppression," would be equally capable liable, for surely they are often interpreted in different ways by different people. If morality were indeed relative, you would acknowledge the equality of all stances about gay marriage, either on a personal or a societal level, depending on the brand of relativism you prefer. You don't. You aren't a moral relativist. You just want to say you are. I'm not sure why.

There's nothing "theistic" in my view. That morality has an objective component—some things are truly wrong, although some things may be relative—is the common sense view of almost everyone. The vast majority of professional philosophers are atheists too, yet a solid majority are also moral realists, not moral relativists or moral nihilists. As for me, I make no claims that objectivity morality is about God. Indeed I find the view that morality is established by God repugnant.

Moral realism, not relativism, is quite clearly your view too, as your language makes clear again and again, with far more persistence and force than mine. You think I'm on my "high horse" about morality—in this case, about thinking that same-sex marriage is not wrong. You think you aren't, but—on the same subject and having the same view—you have recourse to swelling rhetoric about nothing being "larger than justice" and the topic being of dire import to "entire categories, millions of people, billions maybe."

Pardon me, but you seem very high up there looking down on the billions. And I hear a loud neighing.

#389

No, you persist in seeing everything through a moral filter, whereas I'm saying that optic has no place at all among people with different moral systems. I mean, think about it--how could it? If in one system gay sex is sinful, and in another it isn't, how do we determine whose view is "right"?

If morality were indeed relative, you would acknowledge the equality of all stances about gay marriage, either on a personal or a societal level, depending on the brand of relativism you prefer.

They are equal in that they are opinions. There's the opinion that owning people is okay, and the opinion that owning people is not okay. If you live under a system in which operates one absolute "morality", it is easy to label one or the other moral or immoral. But what if there are conflicting "moralities"? (Darn, I AM repeating myself...) Result: you cannot resort to "morality" to solve this problem.

That morality has an objective component—some things are truly wrong, although some things may be relative—is the common sense view of almost everyone.

Common sense is often bollocks. What things are truly wrong?

Pardon me, but you seem very high up there to be pontificating about billions.

Well, yes, you COULD have acknowledged my argument, or ignored it for petty ornamental pouting. For the n-th time--I have zero interest in your weird obsession over who's more "moral", "morally superior" etc. That's pretty much the whole point. It doesn't matter if I'm a worse person--judged within your morality--than Countess Bathory and Cruella de Vil rolled into one.

All kinds of "immoral" straight people--thieves, murderers, traitors, liars etc.--can marry. How does your morality explain that?

Justice isn't a prize for good behaviour. It is what every person born in a "free" country is due.

I mean, think about it--how could it? If in one system gay sex is sinful, and in another it isn't, how do we determine whose view is "right"?

If in one system gay marriage is injustice, and in another it is justice, how do we determine whose view is right?

#391

We throw out the question for torturing grammar.

We throw out the question for torturing grammar.

No, in English, we can refer to something as "justice" or "injustice"—poverty is injustice, etc. It is stark, but entirely grammatical. If you disagree, I'll find some Martin Luther King for you to criticize. If you prefer another construction, please substitute "an injustice," etc.

If in one system gay marriage is injustice, and in another it is justice, how do we determine whose view is right?

So, you aren't willing to answer a simple, short and direct question, right?

Justice isn't a prize for good behaviour. It is what every person born in a "free" country is due.

How about the people born in unfree countries? Since you are a proclaimed relativist, you can scarcely claim that one system is better than another.

So, you aren't willing to answer a simple, short and direct question, right?

First you have to explain how a gay marriage is an injustice, and/or how a hetero marriage is "justice". Alternatively, you could explain how a gay marriage is in one system an orange, and in another a banana. (Fruit salad puns ahead...)

How about the people born in unfree countries? Since you are a proclaimed relativist, you can scarcely claim that one system is better than another.

You can invent imaginary arguments and theories for me, but you can't seriously expect me to sign them. I said morality is relative. That suffices for now. My aesthetics, for instance, are absolute.

OT, fyi, I'll take a system with justice over the system without justice (Canada over the US, for instance.) And yes: I certainly think people living in the unjust system (US) deserve justice.

First you have to explain how a gay marriage is an injustice, and/or how a hetero marriage is "justice". Alternatively, you could explain how a gay marriage is in one system an orange, and in another a banana. (Fruit salad puns ahead...)

Right. Justice and injustice are like oranges and bananas, not like opinions. Gay marriage is not an injustice, irrespective of which "system" you are in. Congratulations. You are a moral realist, despite your claims that you are a moral relativist.

#383: I could dig up innumerable examples of churches--whether Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant

Given that examples are quantized, any collection of examples you could come up with would be numerable, and in fact finite. So your claim is disingenuous and illogical.

you've determined that anybody who says they support the family is really focused on just one issue: gay marriage.

Again, if you look at organizations with "marriage" or "family" in their title, you find they tend to be strongly biased. Google organization marriage and you find on the first page National Organization for Marriage and Freedom to Marry, both gay marriage focused. Google organization family, and you find the Focus on the Family and the World Family Organization. The second is not one I've heard of, as one that doesn't have much impact on the US. The first has in their hot news three articles against gays, one against abortion, and one against religious freedom of non-Christians.

But yes, I'm sure, the most powerful organization in the world that explicitly excludes women from any significant position of power and spends a great deal of time attacking gays is exactly the organization that will lead marriage into the 21st century.

#386: Conversely, I am not sure you can say marriage was strengthened either.

An institution that people feel is fundamentally injust is one that people don't want to be associated with. On the other hand, an institution that has the pictures of people triumphantly joining is one that people want to be part of. Marriage is getting sold hard, for the same reason that clubs will hire people to stand outside to make them look popular and in demand.

I don't see how you can disentangle justice from morality either, nor what you would gain from that. They're not fundamentally different things; you have the same issues finding an objective basis for either one.

The point is that we DO separate morality from justice, all the time. Tim does it when he "supports" gay marriage, but apparently preserves the right to consider it immoral (or he's just kicking the ball for shits and grins).

All of us expect all kinds of people to separate morality from justice, constantly. I expect the devout Muslim cabbie not to toss me and my girlfriend out of his cab because she put her head on my shoulder and his morality abhors gays. As customers, citizens, workers etc. we expect to be served and treated as well as the person of a different race, creed, orientation, politics etc. And if we are not, we expect we can demand justice. We don't demand a change in offending person's "morality".

Slavery and segregation again--they weren't done with when everyone had a change of heart. In countries where gay rights have been won, it wasn't always the case (if ever) that at the time of victory some new "morality" prevailed. No, what prevailed was the stance similar to Tim's (if I got that right)--the freaks are immoral and god save us from them, but on the interfaces with the collective they function like regular people, so let's treat them right, because that's the right thing to do.

And to bring in the billions again--society isn't friends and neighbours, the whole clan sitting happily in church together. It's a wildly heterogeneous huge mass in which most people will never meet most other people. While you can impose, for a while at least, one brand of morality on your family and choose friends of the same flavour, it becomes more difficult if you try to "expand". And it becomes impossible when faced with modern society.

The problem for the society is to create a system that would treat all this diverse mass with equal justice. The solution isn't to pick one holy book and then wave it at everyone.

but apparently preserves the right to consider it immoral

I don't think it's immoral. I do think some things are immoral. You do too; you just use the word justice to describe what is in fact the stance of perfectly normal moral realism.

"Justice" and "morality" aren't interchangeable. There are connections (although we may not agree on what those are or how they come to be), but they are different things.

Justice condemns deeds, morality condemns even thoughts.

>400 LolaWalser:

This is true of Christian morality. It is not true of all moral philosophies by any means. Indeed, Christianity is the outlier there. Many philosophies would say that thinking about killing someone all day is probably unhealthy or even insane, but not immoral until you do it.

I'm sure we disagree on many questions of detail. The difference between moral realism and moral relativism isn't about what is moral or immoral, but how and why. The moral realist thinks there's some objective reality behind it, at least sometimes. The moral relativist thinks that morality depends entirely upon the opinion of a person or of a society. So long as you think it's a bad thing the nation of Uganda or a guy with a tire iron and a bad opinion of gays wants to kill gays, and so long as you think the desire to murder gays is more than one equally valid opinion among many, you are a moral realist.

>401 timspalding: The moral realist thinks there's some objective reality behind it, at least sometimes. The moral relativist thinks that morality depends entirely upon the opinion of a person or of a society

You've tried to explain this to me before and I continue to be muddled about it. I would have said I was a moral realist because I base my opinions on realistic evidence and observation. I have always considered myself a relativist because I don't think of an objective "good" as anything more than an intellectual convenience when discussing abstract concepts.

But your description of moral relativism -- where a person has no basis for preferring or choosing one moral system over another -- doesn't sound "relative" to me at all. it sounds "amoral" -- if you think of the term in its strictest sense.

I think when Lola uses the word "morality" she really means "Christian morality." Either that or she is unaware of the huge amount of philosophical and legal scholarship on justice and morality. Or she is saying that without religion there can be no morality, and that is just fine with her, as long as you do things her way.

Even within Christianity there are relative moralities. What is moral for one people at one time is not longer moral for people of a different time. (Tamar sleeps with her father-in-law and is the virtuous hero, but the guy in Corinth is a sleazebag.) Aristotle's morality could easily be said to be relative in one sense. The virtuous person is the one who does virtuous actions, and virtuous actions are defined as those done by a virtuous person.

After the enlightenment attempts to discern a totally rational morality, the notion of morality became unfortunately tied to the same procedure that produces scientific knowledge. That has the unfortunate side effect of making ALL morality look relative, because no moral notion is as absolute as the second law of thermodynamics. And look how well that worked! Nietzsche was right, I think, when he posited that secular moralities are a waste of time because there is no enforcement behind them. In the end we are left with who can enforce their morality. We don't even teach kids the Categorical Imperative, much less expect them to follow it.

So in a very real sense, Lola is right, except that "justice" in the end becomes the person who has the right end of the Big Stick. You can posit "reasonable" moralities, but they are essentially unenforceable. You can, of course depend on the goodness of human nature to curb immoral actions in which case, thank goodness the courts defined corporations as people, so now they can go out and do good! And I have some beachfront property in Fairbanks for sale.

Jeffrey Stout, in his book Flight from Authority discusses the various ways we have moved away from having any central authority, and his analysis goes much further than just that we do not believe in God anymore. (He is a secular philosopher.) For example, he has noticed that scholarly work mostly takes the form of articles these days and not books. People do not have the discipline to sit and write or sit and read a long scholarly work, and he ties discipline to his notion of authority.

MacIntyre, in his book After Virtue makes the point that we only revere technocrats and emotion as moral authorities. So our doctor is a moral authority ("Stop smoking, wear a bike helmet and a condom, and cut down on your drinking!") and the person who shouts the loudest gets to pontificate on the TV, even if he or she have no real arguments to make.

Once we tie ethics to science, anything previous to ...well Kant, really, but you can go back to Spinoza, looks relative, although if Aristotle came back he would surely not describe his ethics as relative.

#401

I think we discussed before some possible "objective" elements moral codes may be based on--but I would prefer to talk about "codes of conduct" if forced to speculate about genetic bases of behaviour and suchlike. Because, clearly, me taking the materialist atheist approach and you not, there is no other "objective" element we could begin to discuss. But if I may leave this for later...

The moral relativist thinks that morality depends entirely upon the opinion of a person or of a society.

I recognise that in history (including our past and present and most probably future too), moral codes have varied from place to place and time to time. Can we agree that this is a historical fact? If we can, then we are both recognising historical relativity of morality. I mean, we could consider simply the various moralities existing in five-mile radii around each of us, right?

But then you seem to confuse the simple recognition of this historical fact with the idea that "anything goes" in an individual's morality. The way I understand WHAT moral codes are, this is absurd. I don't expect anyone alive has a morality in which just any behaviour is simultaneously right and wrong.

This is true of Christian morality. It is not true of all moral philosophies by any means.

I'm not thinking of moral philosophies. Lots of people feel bad, however faintly, if they have, say, negatively misjudged a person. They don't have to be Christians, or religious, or subscribe to some definite "moral philosophy" to do so. And we all silently judge people around us--however faintly. People careless of other people's privacy in transit annoy me greatly. I judge them boorish, impolite, obnoxious. I condemn their behaviour. But I don't reach to "immoral". Bad manners break a social code but aren't necessarily immoral. I would, however, like it if "justice" could visit them in the form of fines and reprimands.

#403

Yes, I see the understanding of "morality", in the context this discussion arose in (gay rights in the US), as inevitably and inextricably coloured by religion. In other places, among people with different customs, it would be easier to speak of morality separate of religious codes.

In the US and speaking of the US one has to keep constant reminders going that it is not, in fact, natural to expect everyone to uphold Bible-derived morality, or expect to base a legal system in sync with it.

'To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily as she turned it round for him. 'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right — though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now — and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents —'

'Certainly,' said Alice.

'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

When Tim refers to "moral realism" he's referring to the idea that there is a distinct, immutable reality behind appearances. That's the sense in which "realism" is the same as "idealism," not the sense in which those terms are opposites (the gritty "realist" versus the cloud-dwelling "idealist").

I really think we have a massive gap here in the way we use our terms.

Morality; the act of naming actions good or bad. From Wikipedia: the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are "good" (or right) and those that are "bad" (or wrong).

Ethics: the philosophy one uses to determine morality.

Justice: (from Wikipedia) is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, equity or fairness, as well as the administration of the law, taking into account the inalienable and inborn rights of all human beings and citizens, the right of all people and individuals to equal protection before the law of their civil rights, without discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, color, ethnicity, religion, disability, age, or other characteristics, and is further regarded as being inclusive of social justice

When someone says, for whatever reason, marriage equality is good (or right), that is a moral statement.

When someone says it is a matter of justice, THAT is a moral statement.

I know Wikipedia is not the ultimate authority, but I don't' find these statements inconsistent with what I learned in college and graduate ethics classes.

When someone says that want to severe justice from morality, I really have no idea what they mean. That is like saying they want to severe anatomy from biology. when someone says that morality is not how we decide what is right and what is wrong, that makes no sense to me, because morality IS the way we decide what is right and what is wrong.

We can play those word games on here, but it shows a real lack of understanding of how the communal arguments are being made.

But then, ....well I won't go there.

When Tim refers to "moral realism" he's referring to the idea that there is a distinct, immutable reality behind appearances. That's the sense in which "realism" is the same as "idealism," not the sense in which those terms are opposites (the gritty "realist" versus the cloud-dwelling "idealist").

Yes.

And that is a use of the word "realism" that I am unfamiliar with.

#403: And look how well that worked!

Yeah. A staggering drop in murder rates. One of the most peaceful times in human history.

You can posit "reasonable" moralities, but they are essentially unenforceable.

I don't want to kill you. We can go back preEnlightenment, where I would have to kill you first because I know there's no room for both our religious beliefs and you'll kill me once your religion gain power. Maybe not enforcing your "reasonable" moralities is a good thing?

And again, we do a pretty good job of enforcing the consensus morality.

For example, he has noticed that scholarly work mostly takes the form of articles these days and not books.

"These days". I'll assume he gave better then that, but I'm getting real tired of hearing "these days" tossed around, trying to make a point without being concrete enough to let it be argued. Nope, yesterday, we did that too.

On one hand, we could connect it to the ease of communication and rise in number of scholars, where it became feasible to mail in articles and assemble them into regular journals. On the other, we can skip the idea of discipline; no longer did we trust one author to run on for the length of a book without making critical errors, making journal articles a means of constant correction and making knowledge-building a communal act, not an individual one.

One of the most peaceful times in human history?

The Holocaust.
Rwanda (a situation that arose from Western colonialism)
Serbia/Bosnia and all the former Yugoslavia Republics
A rise in Islamic fundamentalism.
Stalin's purges
Pol Pot.
WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq
If the new immigration bill passes, the border between Mexico and the US will be more fortified than the Berlin Wall.
Piracy
Massacres in places like Indonesia and Turkey.
The extermination of North American Indians
the Slave Trade and Jim Crow laws
Hiroshima, Dresden, Auschwitz and the siege of Leningrad
French Algeria and German Nambia
Apartheid

Seriously you sound like one of those persons who inanely repeats that "America is the greatest nation on earth" without looking at the facts.

I am not saying we are worse, but better? The Enlightenment philosophers DID NOT solve the problems they set out to solve. You might say they just created a new Imperialism.

#412: http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/11/the-decline-of-violence

Oh, and let me point out again that you used a huge range for your argument. "These days", again.

Seriously you sound like one of those persons who inanely repeats that "America is the greatest nation on earth" without looking at the facts.

And you responded fact-free and anecdote-rich.

> 410

It's a very traditional philosophical usage, but it clashes confusingly with modern colloquial application of the words.

I was using the term "these days" solely in reference to Stout's assertion. I don't remember the term he uses in his argument. I think you only read one paragraph of my post.

The rest of the time I was talking about the Post-Enlightenment world. Pinker is making his assertions, as best as I can tell, because while he is a little more specific than "these days" he is not much more specific, from ancient, pre-state times. His thesis is that the more government we have, the less violent we are. I want to compare, say the fifteen century with the 20th century. He wants to compare the 20th century will societies that have not yet developed as nation states. Given HIS parameters, I guess I would not disagree with him, but he keeps moving the argument around so that the data fits.

#415: I was using the term "these days" solely in reference to Stout's assertion.

And? If Stout uses that, his argument isn't worth touching. If you're using it to describe his argument, it's unhelpful.

I want to compare, say the fifteen century with the 20th century. He wants to compare the 20th century will societies that have not yet developed as nation states.

From the article:
"The homicide records go back in many parts of Europe to the 1200s. And they all show an astonishing trend. Namely, that the rates of homicide have plummeted, from anywhere from 30 to 100 per 100,000 per year down to the {current} European average, which is between one and two per 100,000 per year."

"The New Peace is another phenomenon that very few people are aware of. Namely, there are war nerds who meticulously tabulate the number of battle deaths year by year in each of a number of categories of armed conflict: civil wars, interstate wars, colonial wars, and so on. They have been stunned, in plotting their data, to notice there’s been a big decline in wars in the rest of the world, starting around the end of the Cold War. All of those nasty little civil wars in Africa, South Asia, and Central and Latin America kind of fizzled out, and no one’s even noticed. More important, the number of people killed has plunged. This past decade, even with all of the wars that we read about, has had the lowest rate of battle deaths of any decade since they started keeping score in 1946. That’s the phenomenon I call the New Peace—that the Long Peace is starting to spread to the rest of the world."

He's looking at the broad scale, but I hardly think that justifies your statement.

"This past decade...." I would not argue with that.

And in fact I have no argument with Pinker, at least not as neurologist. He and I are talking about different time frames, and he apparently is talking about many different time frames, but to be fair, this was an interview and not an article.

I also quoted 1200s to modern day, which should cover your post-Enlightenment nicely.

This is hilarious. The FRC's new anti-gay marriage campaign slogan is On Your Knees for America.

LOLLLLLLLL!

Fabulous subtext. Self-parody will never go out of style with those people.

Also--very long thread, this.

I remember when Limbaugh was going on about "bending over to take one from the Republicans" or something like that. Maybe he has an announcement in the hopper!

I reviewed the Pinker article and other sources. They are very convincing, and while the 20th century has had its share of atrocities, I do admit it has been worse in the past. We are getting better.

My original statement was the Enlightenment failed, in part, because it has not brought peace, it brought a new form of imperialism. A consistent, broadly accepted secular ethic never emerged. Pinker's thesis was that there was less violence because of the rise of the nation state, and I would agree with him on that. As nations are more coherent as entities, the possibilities of a sweeping Mongol horde diminished greatly.

I still hold that the enlighten was partially a failure, but I admit I was wrong in thinking the 20th century was any worse than any other century. WWII was, in the overall scheme of things, not as bad as many other past events.

I still think that WWI, WWII, the Holocaust, colonialism, imperialism and other atrocities of "modern" life are evidence of the partial failure of the Enlightenment. (In terms of what it contributed to science, it was a smashing success, and I for one enjoy watching "The Newsroom" and other accoutrements of modern life.

I am writing this, not to further derail the thread, but because when I am wrong, I think I should own up. And I was wrong on this one.

422: But isn't the very idea of nation states part and parcel of the Enlightenment?

Yes and no. The process (and Pinker traces this) starts much earlier. Pinker goes back to Rome, but there were nation-states long before Rome. Israel, before the split was a confederation of tribes for example and by the time the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, Judea was every bit nation-state. Both Rome and Israel were defined in part by their religion.

The Modern Nation state evolved around the time of the Enlightenment, but there were other things that helped the process. What the Enlightenment did was to provide a new standard for conformity of thought.

Spain, in expelling the moors, and instituting the Inquisition established itself as a nation state. It was a Spanish Inquisition, carried out by the Catholic church, not just a Catholic Inquisition. One requirement of a modern nation state is conformity--conformity in language, in ideology, in mental health status (thank you Mr. Foucault for that insight) and in devotion to the nation state. The fact that we marginalize those who disagree with the DOMA decision, calling them bigots and assuming that they are not in line with the what the State demands of us, or the denigration of people who do not accept fully the precepts of modern science is a micro example of how the need for conformity takes hold. A person who does not hold to the dominant culture's ethos is a danger, and must be marginalized in some way.

of course this gets all confused when two competing powers are vying for domination of the national myth.

#424: What the Enlightenment did was to provide a new standard for conformity of thought.

I don't buy that. You have a Middle Ages where non-Muslim Western Europe was held under one Church that brooked no dissidents. You have a 100% Catholic England; Jews were expelled in 1290 and only reappeared in England in 1656, and not even officially. Pre-Enlightenment, could you really openly criticize the King? Would the type of protests that exist in modern democratic countries really be tolerated in the Middle Ages?

The fact that we marginalize those who disagree with the DOMA decision, calling them bigots and assuming that they are not in line with the what the State demands of us

People who objected to King Henry VIII's divorces died. Admittedly, that's political, but I don't think there's ever been a time when despising the marriages of a group of people hasn't meant despising them, and when you despise a group of people who aren't on the outs, you're called a bigot (or the historical equivalent) and ostracized.

The Enlightenment hasn't always been the wellspring of social tolerance, but it's generally been good at political tolerance, or at least better then its ancestors, and it frequently embodies social tolerance better then its ancestors, particularly religiously speaking.

Did you miss the word "new"?

Friend Arctic, you're losing me here: our views of "the Enlightenment" seem to differ 180 degrees.

#422: My original statement was the Enlightenment failed, in part...

Uh, what? "failed"? Failed at what, exactly? "Failed" at leading us completely out of superstition?

#424 What the Enlightenment did was to provide a new standard for conformity of thought.

Unlike the pre Enlightenment, when a hundred flowers bloomed?
Lots of people were burned at the stake for Wrong Thoughts before the Enlightenment; in relative terms, probably more before than after.

Tolerance for "diversity of thought" was an accidental by-product of the religious wars of the 17th century; it's hard to see how the modern concept doesn't come into existence entirely as a product of the Enlightenment.