I know this is a serious thread about serious issues, but is it OK to say that that last sentence above made me laugh very loudly?
As to magellan:
My wife’s paternal grandfather was a pretty decent guy, all things considered. He was a elderly white landowner from a relatively undeveloped part of North Carolina, who was raised in a wildly racist place in a wildly racist time. On the subject of race relations, and by the standards of his neighbors, he might have been considered a bit of a progressive. Certainly, he thought of himself as one. He was firmly against shooting black people with shotguns, for example, and thought that lynching a black man for talking to a white woman was definitely out of the question. He thought blacks should serve in the military, if they wanted, and didn’t even object that they now had the right to vote.
On other subjects, he was… less enlightened. Mixed-race marriage, in particular, queered his stomach, and he would hold forth at great length on how he wasn’t a racist, but some things just aren’t right.
His son, my father-in-law, has commented on the strange thing that happened to my wife’s grandfather. When they were teenagers, and Grandpa would talk about things like this, everyone around him would nod and agree. As time went by and history ground on, the firm agreement morphed into shaky agreement, which morphed into skeptical tolerance, which eventually became open disagreement. And my wife’s grandfather never stopped believing that mixed-race marriage was an affront to nature, even once he was firmly marginalized (in that opinion, not in all things; he was, in many, many ways, a good and decent man). He also never stopped believing that he was not a bigot, in spite of the fact that he was a bigot.
Engaging magellan on the present subject is a gigantic waste of time, because he is a bigot, of course, but he will never stop believing that he isn’t. He’s finding that the once-firm support he found in his bigotry is being replaced by increasingly tenuous support from society as a whole, and with open challenge from fringe elements. Over time, the fringe elements will become society as a whole, and magellan will find himself muttering and confused, trying to figure out why everyone keeps saying I’m a bigot, when all I want is to limit the happiness of a group of people. He’ll stumble to the wrong side of history and he’ll never gain the perspective that allows him to see how he got there.
Actually, I wouldn’t care about who knows what i said. Anyone want to sue me for my opinions? Good luck with that. As far as names of who supports what political 'agenda" go, If you donate one dollar, nobody will care. If you donate a few tens of thousands, and/or are a big player in the promotion or even the creation of that agenda, then chances are “someone” knows already. I have to ask a stupid question though. If someone were sure enough that they were in the right, that they were in fact entitled to act as they see fit, then why and HOW would they get sued? Poltical speech is still allowed (I guess). You can’t sue someone for what they think (I guess). I HOPE this sort of case would be immediately thrown out.
I have no use for the people who backed Pro 8. But they still have a right to their opinion (even if it’s wrong).
And the fallacy of his disputation has been pointed out already.
“Society” does not have rights, any more than “society” has a pancreas, and for the same reason (“rights” are a property of individual persons, not of abstract groups).
The fact that you want to monopolize those tactics for yourself (via the “group rights” fallacy) does not give you some sort of trademark on them.
Seeing as the Norman household donated to the Obama campaign, our real-life names, addresses and occupations (and the meager contribution) are publicly available for all and sundry in the real world to look up. I am perfectly comfortable with that. As I’ve stated before, if I am going to hire someone to sway opinion for me, it is the moral equivalent of me, personally, speaking up.
If a potential employer looks me up and decides that an Obama contributor would be a bad fit in his organization, that’s the risk I am running. Courage of my convictions and all that. Better people than I had suffered far worse for taking part in politics.
This is precisely why the founders of the American Republic rejected democracy, and why accusing a respectable citizen of being a “democrat” was more or less equivalent to accusing a contemporary resepctable citizen of being a Red Anarchist. With some justification (particularly after some unfortunate political experiments in France), they wanted nothing to do with such mob rule.
I agree with the beginning of what you said here, but how about if that person does not wish his views to be public. This is not an odd notion, as we do have a secret ballot. and, obviously, a person can hold any opinion in the privacy of his or her own head. The question is: what constitutes a person making that view public? As I’ve argued, I think the law should be similar to the federal law, where a donation below a certain amount is kept private. Over that, the person can knowingly choose to make his views known. This is an arbitrary line, and we can discuss where it should be drawn, but I do think that there should be a line below which, people can advocate for their position anonymously.
I also do not disagree that there is nothing wrong with not doing business with someone who holds views you consider repugnant. But if you knew all the views of all the people you do business with, you might find quite a few of them repugnant. I do begin to have a problem when you start telling others to not do business with someone. I fear greatly, the power of the mob.
I guess I accept that in the world I live there are lots and lots of people who hold views I object to, maybe even that I feel are repugnant. Are we each to put each other under a microscope and sift through everything to determine where we might go to get our clothes dry cleaned?
I think, Miller, that if we could each remove ourselves from how this applies to SSM and could view it objectively from 30,000 feet, we probably would have assumed that you would be more of an advocate for my position than me. I say that because I think that the biggest danger is that a minority or unpopular opinion can be smothered by peer pressure. I really would expect a member of a group that has suffered from that happening would stand up against it. That is why I am so surprised, and disappointed (not that you should care) that someone who I viewed as being very thoughtful, principled, and consistent over thousands of posts seems to throw that all away for mere convenience and expedience. I find myself wanting to reiterate, again, that this has nothing to do with our respective position on SSM itself. But, rather, on the tactics one group might employ.
Yes. But… (see below)
…you ignore a very important component: intent. If, like the example you mention, the action is done with the sole intent of being insulting or mean, then that rightly becomes the stuff the playground is made of. That is NOT the case with Prop 8. Not for me, at least. We,as a society have had an interesting issue pop up: SSM. It has not been part of our make-up. Some think it should be. Others think not. So we try to come to terms with what we should do. One side is adamant that society bend a little to accommodate this, is we have bent in the past, and that no harm will come from it. In fact, it may even benefit us. Others think this is unwise, and would not be helpful, maybe even detrimental to society. Those are philosophical positions. And no one knows the right answer. Or, more accurately, both think they do.
Now, the bar is VERY high for what it would take for one side to convert the other. And that’s fine. And maybe there will always be a chasm. We have that any many issues: abortion, taxes, welfare, capital punishment, etc. But when one advocates for whatever position it is, the reason they do so is because they believe it to be right and would like to see their society operate that way. If an opposing group is insulted by that, that’s accidental fallout. It is not a slap in the face for the sake of a slap in the face. It is not intended to harm or insult anyone. Even if it does.
I think you skip or gloss over this reality. You fell the sting of a slap, an insult, and you then feel—from what I’m getting from you—that pretty much anything you do in hitting back is justified. Based on the total impression I’ve gotten from you through years of reading your posts, and battling with you and watching you battle with others, I really am dismayed that you are taking the position you have.
Do you have any idea what my position on gay rights and SSM is. It doesn’t appear so. You might want to do a search. If you can withstand the thought of wallowing around in a little less ignorance, of course.
Please. I know your position quite well. The fact that you do violence to a perfectly good language in your frantic reach to justify your bigotry is not particularly impressive.
Despite your desire to paint things in flowery, dramatic language, a majority does not equal a mob. Unless you think a mob is what elects our President.
My understanding is that Californian law has a similiar threshold. If it doesn’t, I wouldn’t be particularly opposed to instituting one, depending on where the bar is set. As a practical matter, going after every yob who donated $10 isn’t feasible, anyway, so letting them stay off the list isn’t a big deal.
I’m not asking you to put anyone under a microscope. You are free to use any standard you like, or no standard at all, in determining where you want to spend your money. For me, I choose not to give money to people who are actively working against my civil rights.
You keep characterizing my position here as not being thoughtful, principled, or consistent, but you haven’t shown why you say that. I’ve never demanded special consideration because I’ve held an unpopular view. If I say something that pisses off a dozen people, I don’t expect eleven of them to keep it to themselves, because it’s not “fair” for me to be outnumbered. Now that, in some very narrow contexts, I happen to be on the other side of the conflict, why should I impose limitations on myself that I never demanded by placed on anyone else? I suppose the “thoughtfulness” of that is debatable, but how is it not principled or consistent?
Well, it’s not exactly accidental fallout, is it? When you voted yes on Prop. 8, you knew very well that a victory would be devastating to thousands of gays throughout the nation. So it’s not like you did this, and then were surprised by this unforseen consequence. You simply decided that what you wanted was more important than the pain you knew you were going to cause.
Now, there are a lot of issues where both sides want something, and no matter who wins, someone’s going to end up hurt. Abortion, for example, is an issue where both sides have very good reasons for holding the positions that they do. While I’m very much pro-choice, and think that outlawing abortion would be a terrible injustice, I can still recognize that there are valid arguments against it, and that the people who are opposed to legal abortions have good reason for feeling that way. The same can be said about immigration, or affirmative action, or any number of divisive issues facing our country.
The problem here is that there are no good reasons for opposing gay marriage. I’ve read your reasoning for voting yes on 8 repeatedly. And they are, without exception, vacuous, picayune, and entirely counter-logical. They are, in fact, the worst reasons I’ve ever heard for opposing gay rights. The idea that you’re willing to cause this level of pain to so many people, because of semantics, is on many levels more insulting than the people who voted yes because God hates fags. I mean, if there is a God, and he does hate fags, I can certainly understand not wanting to get on his bad side. But you - even if we agree that changing the definitions of words is a bad thing, the idea that it’s worse than the amount of pain you’ve caused by facilitating the passage of Proposition 8 is contemptible. The bottom line is that I have absolutely no respect for your opinion on this matter. I find it abominable on almost every level, even after factoring intent into the equation.
I’m fairly certain that, at this point, the next response from you will be a bunch of ad hominems and rolleye smilies, as is your habit when faced with something insulting. And I can’t say that I’d blame you for that reaction. It is, after all, precisely the sort reaction I’ve been defending in this post.
Well, then we’re basically in agreement. Though I’d draw the line at one or two hundred, which I think is where the federal line is drawn.
I’m with you on this. The question is to what degree do we seek to ferret out what people believe. If someone puts a sign in his store window, we’d agree, as he’s chosen to make his views public. The question I’ve been exploring is whether a donation automatically falls in that category. Or if there should be a threshold amount, below which a donation would not be made public. based on your first response above, we seem to agree.
My only point is that you’ve adopted both a tit-for-tat justification and an ends justifies the means justification. And those are not positions I would expect you to hold. That’s just my impression from what I’ve read of your posts over the years. It surprises me that you would offer those things as rationalizations. Maybe I’ve not gotten as full a measure of you as I thought through your posts. And there’s no snark intended in that whatsoever.
It IS accidental. It may not have been unanticipated, but it is accidental. It has nothing to do with why I voted the way I did. In fact, it was a factor that gave me pause. But it was not a deciding factor. Obviously.
Here’s where I have a hard time. I understand that you have no respect for my opinion regarding SSM. That’s fine. That means that I will have zero chance of persuading you. That I won’t give you an iota of a reason to reconsider your own position. We see eye to eye on that. But you’re using the metric that applies to “persuasion” and also applying it to my right to hold an opposing view. Maybe this is partially due to a misunderstanding you have of my position. It is not purely one of semantics. I do honestly believe that SSM will have a long-term detrimental effect on society. Although, I want the participants to enjoy the same legal rights, I want “marriage” to refer to a man and woman only. I’ve explained this and don’t want to get into it again here. You don’t think so. Neither of us KNOW for certain if this will be a good thing or a bad thing. And, I think, you put your own feelings above that assessment. Maybe. But you begrudge me and my position even the possibility of being correct. You demand a cite for this “harm”. But no such cite is possible, as I’m talking about “long term”. I don’t demand a cite from you because I know there is no cite. And I don’t think that what has transpired in some European countries qualifies as providing a long term view. Nor do I think that what might result in those countries necessarily translates to the U.S.
Huh? I just scrolled down and found only one “roll eyes”, and it wasn’t even to you. I do use them somewhat often, but I think a look back at the totality of our exchanges will show very few of them. So, this simply seems to be an ad hominem you felt the need to construct for some odd reason. And by the way, I didn’t find your post particularly insulting. Maybe because I can think one’s argument to be ridiculous or contemptible, and not extend that to the person himself. Maybe that’s a difference. Maybe not. But just not to disappoint you: :dubious:
I think I’ll leave it there. Especially since I see that we’re in agreement regarding the donations, which is the point of the thread. I’m glad I was able to convince you.
Yes, I’m familiar with your argument in its entirety. It rest on three foundations:
The meanings of words should not change.
The relationship between men and women is so special it should have a unique word that applies only to it.
Violating 1 and 2 could damage society.
Of the three, only the first has a reasonable, non-bigoted interpretation. The second carries a strong implication of heterosexual exceptionalism - inherent in the idea that this relationship requires a unique nomenclature is the idea that heterosexual relationships are superior, and that homosexual relationships are necessarily inferior. The third argument is flatly and indisputably homophobic. If allowing homosexuals to marry can cause damage to society, then it must follow that there is something damaging about homosexuality. Because heterosexual marriage is not damaging to society, it is clear that heterosexuality does not have this damaging component. Therefore, by any standard, heterosexuality is again superior to homosexuality. The essence of homophobia is, of course, the belief that heterosexuals are in some measure superior to homosexuals. In your particular case, we can’t identify what for that superiority takes, because you have never been able to describe the mechanism by which homosexual marriage would be damaging to our society, or even how that damage would manifest itself. None the less, your arguments still rest on the essentially bigoted notion that there is a qualitative superiority to heterosexuality, and therefore, you yourself are a bigot.
I’m going over all this again because I want to make it clear that when I call you a bigot, I’m not doing it to insult you, or out of a knee-jerk reaction that anyone who opposes gay marriage must be a bigot. It’s because your arguments, exactly as you’ve presented them, fit neatly under the definition of the word “bigot” as I understand the meaning of the term. And, not to speak for other posters here, but I suspect that the same impression applies to them, as well. Telling storyteller to go back and read your posts when he calls your position bigoted isn’t going to change his opinion of you, because he has read your posts, and he has come to the same position I have, and the same position so many other posters here have come to. The characterization of you as a bigot does not come from a misunderstanding of your argument, but rather, from a perfect understanding of it. The only part that surpasses comprehension is how you can look at it and convince yourself that you are not a bigot.
Magellan, actions speak louder than words. You keep saying you think gays should have all the rights that straight people have, yet you voted to deny them those rights. Surely you can see how your reassurances that you really do want them to have equal rights is not comforting to Miller. No amount of words can make up for the damage your actions caused.
It reminds me of the fundamentalist bigot rhetoric I have to listen to at work. These people are always talking about how they love gay people. Love the sinner, hate the sin, and all that happy horseshit. The thing is, their actions are indistinguishable from those of someone that DOES hate gay people. So in the end, what good are words?
Miller, I just wrote you a longish response and it has now disappeared. Aaarrghhh. I guess it doesn’t matter much, as the discussion has drifted from the OP as it is. I’ll just repeat what I wrote concerning #1: I think that certain words should not change. That there are some things so important and valuable to society that they deserve, and it is to our benefit, to have words that clearly represent them. “Marriage” is one. “Hero” is another, whose dilution I have lamented and argued against, as well.
While I’m at it: I think homosexuality to be as natural as heterosexuality. Consequently, I think the orientations are equally fine—for the individuals involved. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that what be beneficial for an individual is or would be beneficial to the larger organism: society. I think heterosexual marriage has been an important institution. I don’t think we should imply that is not special or unimportant by diluting the one word that clearly represents it.
I know that you insist on calling me a bigot because you really think I am. The problem I have is that if you look at what I advocate for gays, that doesn’t seem to fit at all with what I think the word to mean. I guess the fact that I see and acknowledge a difference might qualify me. But that’s akin to calling a doctor working on sickel-cell anemia who concentrates on blacks a racist. I just have to shrug at that. Also, I know how I live my life and how I interact with the black people I know. But, I guess, if you must, you must. You’re simply wrong. But go right ahed.
No, I voted to deny them the use of the term “marriage”. I want them to have those rights. They chose to intertwine the issue as they did, not me. If they’re was a proposition extending to committed gay couples all those rights enjoyed by married people, I would vote FOR that. You can believe me or not. But if you don’t, it doesn’t really matter what I type, does it?
While I am not religious, I think you unintentionally disparage some good religious people. Some people believe it to be a sin. Still, some of those same people, for instance, work in AIDS clinics around the world, trying to make one’s final days as comfortable as possible. And someone who loves the sinner and hates the sin would hardly go around bashing gays like some people who DO hate gays actually do.
And, as I’ve said before, as far as homophobic bigots go, you are far, far less bigoted than most people like you. But there’s really no way to get around your professed belief that homosexuality could destroy American society. There’s simply no way you can justify a belief like that in non-homophobic terms.
