I suppose. I don’t think either of us is under an obligation to prove the rightness of their perspective to the other one, merely for saying it – it was my point that I quoted an article I found horribly biased in an OP in the Pit – if you have a problem with my opinion (which seems to be shared by a lot of other people, BTW, not that that proves anything), the work of writing a post or posts to refute it would rest on you.
And yes, I could say that IzzyR claims that the article is “balanced” without being insulting – I’d be attributing a claim to you. But, lest you’ve missed the point, it has become an (annoying) trend in the field of polemic journalism, particularly by those supposed conservatives attacking what they see as PC liberalism, to mock the use of a term by putting it in quotes. It originated with the 1960s articles about protests by “students” overseas, the very broad-brush implication being that they were doing far more protesting than studying, if they did any of the latter at all. In a genuinely balanced article that said, “Bishop-elect Robinson’s “partner” (as gay people customarily refer to the person who fills the role of husband or wife for them)…,” I’d take no offense, and I doubt that gobearet al. would either. But Wildmon and his cronies have mastered the use of the pejorative quoted word and have it down pat. I recall an article about a woman being ordained to the presbyteriate in which some snide writer said something to the effect that she was made a “priestess” – well, no, jerk, she was ordained a priest of the church, and your little quotation marks have no impact on the validity of her ministry. Nor do the Agape Press “partner” quotes affect the commitment Fr. (or Bp.) Robinson and Mr. Andrew have made to each other.
And in case anyone is interested, the Episcopal Church has never passed such a resolution. The resolution in question was the product of a massive campaign at the Lambeth Conference, a decennial meeting of Anglican bishops whose only role is advisory – no Lambeth proposal is ever binding on a member church except by its overt adoption. Contrary to my previous post, the resolution with those words did in fact pass – it was a butchering of a carefully worded proposal prepared after two years of study. But it has only slightly more influence on the Episcopal Church than what John Paul II might have to say.
And in case it was not clear, I stand fully by gobear in his interpretation of this story as very much insulting to him, his partner, and their commitment to each other. And if somebody referred to Barb as “your ‘wife’” and to our relationship for the past 28 years as “their so-called ‘marriage’” I think I’d be equally insulted.
Wrong. “Partner” is the standard term used to describe gay spouses.
And, unsurprisingly, you miss the point again. The theological significance doesn’t matter–using the term “homosexual” instead of the standard term “gay” is meant to be insulting, just as referring to an African American as a “Negro” would be. It’s the same distinction as referring to Saul Bellow as “a Jew writer” and “a Jewish writer”–and don’t say the only difference is using a noun and an adjective.
Well apart from the “it’s not a lifestyle” point, I see no no more reason to refer to him as an open homosexual as I would to refer to a straight person as an open heterosexual.
Perhaps it’s not universally accepted yet, but I think that anyone who would be confused about that usage of the term partner is hiding their head in the sand.
Little Plastic Ninja, I neglected your question, and I do apologize:
My own faith is grounded in the idea that God, though He allows a great deal of human-generated evil and natural events that we consider evil as they affect us (cancer, for example), generally works in our lives for good, loves us and ultimately wants to reshape us into people who find greater fulfillment and happiness in our lives in a relationship with Him and with our fellow men according to his teachings.
A lot of people found their faiths in other things – their family tradition, Scripture, a logical system of thinking that incorporates Him as a necessity.
Anything that “pulls the rug out from under one” can be a faith damager. Often a third party, sympathetic but not directly involved in the events that damaged or destroyed one’s faith, can be a good source of emotional and spiritual support.
I personally would not be so interested in rebuilding someone’s shattered faith as in helping them rebuild from the life traumas that shattered it, knowing that the faith will rebuild in time as the traumas are healed, and that God, who loves that person (and everybody), is both patient and compassionate and will not hold that loss of faith against them.
Faith is, after all, His gift. He doesn’t require that we generate faith on our own parts (an impossibility), only that we be open in mind and heart to receive His gifts, which will include faith.
Hey Izzy. You are a really “great” “guy.” You’re so “smart” and definately “not a fucktard that would probably deny that David Duke is a racist if it served your politics” like gobear is suggesting. “Shame” on you gobear.
I’ll read this thing in full tomorrow morning when I need the adrenaline to wake me up. Tonight, I’ll just comment that isn’t it curious how people get so het up about other people breaking what they see as God’s commandments while appearing to conveniently overlook the commandment Christ gave them? Also, how many people are willing to tell other people they must live a celibate and loveless life while not doing so themselves. Yes, in my opinion, someone who says that it is a sin for homosexuals to act on their homosexuality by loving someone or by wishing to spend the rest of their lives with someone is doing just that.
As far as I am concerned, anyone who pontificates about how homosexuals are in “open rebellion against God” is in serious danger of rebelling against God him/herself. Perhaps we should remember that we are all sinners, one way or another.
I don’t really know who it was who first uttered the rule given in Leviticus 18:22. But I do know Who it was Who gave us Matthew 22:39, and, IMHO, what He says goes.
Actually what you did was decline to respond to that post because you were tired of my “mock-ingenuous posting style”.
[sub](note also to greyseal).[/sub]
Perhaps, but conversely, most usages of the word partner do not refer to gay spouses. Hence the assignation of that specific meaning to it here. By contrast, most uses of the word wife do refer to a heterosexual spouse.
Actually you’re right here - I did miss your point. I thought you were complaining about the fact that the article referred to his sexual orientation - it never occurred to me that “homosexual” was to be considered a pejorative term. I think you’re really reaching here. Even if in fact the term homosexual is now considered insulting in certain circles, this has not permeated the larger society. You can’t interpret other people’s usage as being insulting because you and some other fellow thin-skinned whiners have decided that henceforth this word is off limits.
The reason is because there are many homosexuals (or gays, if you prefer) who are in fact closeted. Particularly if a gay person happens to be a clergyman there might be reason to wonder if he was openly gay or not. By contrast, all or almost all heterosexuals are openly heterosexual - the term open heterosexual is redundant.
Not interested. Let’s stick to the subject here.
Not how it works. You gave your reasons for finding the article biased. I commented on those reasons. Done my job. Afterwards you just made a general comment that you found the article “strongly slanted against Robinson” and invited me to prove otherwise. Not going to try. (I think we’re at an impasse here).
I see that both you and gobear have decided to fall back on a good old general attack on Wildmon and his “cronies”. Hey, they’re such bad bad guys that everything they say must be interpreted in the worst possible light. As I said, I know little of these guys, so I won’t be drawn into an argument about them. I only go by what I see in this article.
BTW, I notice that you yourself made liberal use of quote marks in your second post to this thread. “required”, “regretfully”, “balanced”, & “objective journalism”, to be specific. No doubt all of these quote marks were meant to be pejorative, to show that the terms are inaccurate or being used falsely. Got it.
Again you are wrong. From my first response to you:
Accuracy is not your strong point, is it?
C’mon you’ve had the bloody dictionary contradict you , and still you persist in your error?
It’s called “context”, putz! “Homosexual” is obviously not offensive in itself, as I already pointed out. The offense comes when it is used as a substitution for the more commonly accepted term in a sort of clinical and coldly polite manner that indicates frosty disapproval. The word itself is not off limits, you dolt; one has to read it in the context in which it is being used in order to get the meaning.
One thing for sure is that you can’t read a piece of text for irony. I’ll bet you think that Antony was praising Brutus when he called him “an honorable man.”
And I love the term “thin-skinned whiner” applied to anyone who speaks up against bigotry. Do you honestly expect gay people to take abuse and bigotry passively and never to respond, never to speak up?
And so is “openly” gay. Gay people live and work visibly every day, and we should be treated exactly the same as heterosexuals.
Polycarp, thanks muchly. That’s mostly what I’m trying to do.
Backstory to the question, dropzone: someone I love infinitely has been rather kicked in the teeth by fate and finances over the past few years. Trouble has been piling up on his shoulders daily, and he piles more responsibilities and stress on himself because he is a fine, kind, upstanding individual who would give his life and his sanity for his friends and family. But he’s starting to crack, and the solace he once took in God is gone…he is having a hard time reconciling the state of the world and the lives of those he loves with a loving God. He is very angry and sad and upset, and I’m doing my best to help him out, but a lot of his sadness comes from this recent crisis of faith. He…blocks me out, and spends most of his time with himself, trying to sort things out. He doesn’t want help…rather, he doesn’t think anyone can.
I’ll say this, though: people like Polycarp really help restore my faith in the capacity of human beings to be truly fine and wonderful individuals.
Following an argument does not seem to be yours. Try reading slower, making a mental note of who is saying what, and what points are being made or responded to. It might make your posts into something more than blatantly false statements interspersed with childish insults. Or it might not. But it would be worth a shot.
I’ll help you in this case. The distinction made in my third post to this thread was in response to a comparison that you had made, in your typically infantile way, in your previous post. That being the comparison between the terms wife and partner. So I alluded to this comparison and made a distinction. You ignored it, and when you brought up the comparison again, I made the distinction again, and referred to my previous post on the subject.
So now what? That you said in your first post that quote marks are insulting? Yeah, I figured that out already. We are long passed that. Do try to keep up.
No the dictionary does not contradict me. My point - again - is that the most common usage of the word partner is not as homosexual living partner. Can you not grasp this elementary point? There is nothing in the dictionary that suggests a contradiction, nor would there be one, as it is a blatantly obvious fact.
Well I’m all for context, but in this case you are using it in such a nebulous way that it is useless. This is more like an analysis of gobear’s psyche than an analysis of that article.
Hey, don’t try to extend this to anyone who speaks up against bigotry. I’m talking about you.
No.
Sorry, treated like heterosexuals does not include pretending that the concept of closeted homosexuals does not exist. It does, and “openly homosexual” is not redundant in the same manner that “openly heterosexual” is.
Another blatantly obvious fact is that no one puts partner in quotes anymore EXCEPT those trying to cast the very idea in a negative or questionable light.
Just for the record, because Izzy questioned my use of quotes here:
My definition of when one quotes single words is when one chooses to distance oneself from the use of terms by another, indicating that he, not I, said it that way, and did so for a purpose. At times, this is done pejoratively, as in “partner” being put in quotes as if to say, “that’s what this gay man calls his live-in lover, not the term I’d use for it.”
In the first paragraph above, “required” was the term Moyer used. A priest who is rector of a church is not entitled to “require” the bishop of the diocese that that church is in to affirm a statement of doctrine that he, the rector, has written. And Bennison said “regretfully” in describing his personal feelings with regard to his deposition of Moyer, and I felt that quoting that term might give a little perspective on his feelings regarding his action.
By the second sentence, I meant that I saw Agape Press making an effort to write a story that they (not I) considered “balanced” – the term they, not I, would use to describe their story, and hence in quotes. And again “objective journalism” is a term attributed to a generic other person, whether Izzy or another, as describing that story, and not a term I’d use in describing it.
There are legitimate reasons why a writer might want to set off a word as the term used by another, with which he himself does not agree, to give clarity to a position he is describing but himself does not concur in. And likewise there are cases where placing a term in quotation marks is simply giving offense.
In a post by, say, Joe Cool (not to pick on someone banned, but to take a person whose stance I know well enough to speak for), he could say to gobear something like the following (a manufactured quote, which I think accurately represents his views):
There’s no difference between the use of quotes there and in the OP article. But the intent is quite different – he acknowledges gay men and women’s intent to have the same marital rights as do straight folks, but explains why he feels the term marriage is invalid as applied to such unions, and in doing so quotes the terms, using quotation marks to distance himself from their use. And I believe that gobear, understanding his intent to make clear what his objections are, would not be insulted by the use of the quotes there.
The situation is different in the OP – masquerading as a news story, the use of quotes is to denigrate the reality of the commitment made by Robinson and Arthur and by other gay couples by putting “partner” in quotes and by putting gay “commitment ceremonies” in quotes, by leading the story with the David Moyer quote, and by giving reaction from only one side of the controversy.
If you want the truth about my opinions, I see people like Moyer, Wildmon, and our own former Dr Chuckie as engaged in a small-minded, bigoted effort to destroy the efforts of my church to reach out to and include a group of people who have been badly mistreated by churches generally. And I have seen a great deal of their efforts, and did not form this opinion lightly.
Yep. My last post on the subject was intended, not to provoke further argument, but to agree with what you say here. You’re under no obligation from me to react to my views – other than whatever may motivate you personally, which would be internal to yourself. I regret that the phrasing about “onus” that I used (quotes to pick up on my own phrasing this time!) implied otherwise. I made an OP, you questioned my opinions about the objectivity of the article cited, we discussed, and the subject can be dropped. What I was saying is, if you wish to pursue discussion about its objectivity, the burden is on you to make your case that it is; I’ve given my reasons to think that it is not (though I could expand on them at more length) – not that you were somehow “obliged to” (quotes to distance myself from a term describing a position that I’ve just demonstrated I don’t hold, but which the poor wording of an earlier post implied I did).
Then do you believe that members of a religion that does not venerate the Christian God (or, let’s be fair, the same God venerated by Christians, Jews, and Muslims) are not truly married?
Can a Buddhist man marry a Buddhist woman? Can Hindus marry? Because they are not coming together in the sight of the Christian God, their religion does not venerate (H)him or their covenant with (H)him. Under American marriage law, a man and a woman who wed under any religion can be married.
It doesn’t even take a religious wedding. I could be considered the common-law wife of multiple guys because we’ve shared the same address. I wasn’t their live-in sex slave, sure, but according to Texas law, we just have to cohabitate for a given length of time. Or we have to share a hotel room (under the same name, so we’d have to be listed as Mr. and Mrs. Ninja, but even so).
But this ONLY WORKS with opposite genders. Yet a legal marriage as far as the gov’t is concerned has less to do with procreation than it has to do with legal standards – who has the rights to what, basically. What does that have to do with gender?
More to the point, how does the legal wedded status of any other person on the planet affect YOU, personally? How does it invalidate your own marriage or those your children may have? If Bob and Steve love each other very, very much and decide to get married, how does that affect YOU? Their personal lives are just that, personal. Why does the fact that they’d be married scare you so much when their status would be just the same unmarried?
And don’t say “Well, if their status would be the same, why bother getting married?” They want to get married for the same reason a man and woman might – because they love each other very much and want an everlasting symbol of their love.
We may not have to wait too long, LPN. The first Western state to legalize complete and equal marriage is already upon us. And, of course, that state is in Canada. Ontario. http://365gay.com/NewsContent/061003MarriageLegal.htm
As Andrew Sullivan states: from now on, traditionalists against gay marriage will now be on the side of trying to BREAK UP already existing marriages. That, I think, is going to give a lot of people cause to pause and think about what they’re doing.
Here’s a solution to the partner/wife/husband/spouse dilemma: require the laws regarding marriages be changed to those being civil unions. Let’s get the government out of the marriage business.
I would question whether this is true, let alone blatantly obvious. (I tried a search, but can’t get the search engine to recognize “” as part of the quote itself.)
You are being silly here. No one is saying that partner has to be put in quotes. Only that it might be. I observed earlier that the authors of this article tended to use a lot of quotes. Everyone has their own style.
Polycarp,
OK, but you should try to judge each person and statement and article individually. It seems that having formed your opinion, you are now going to judge everything connected to these people in the worst possible way.
Trying to find exactly the ratio of how little I can believe your bullshit to how little you probably even believe it, I broke out my calculator and tried to divide 0 by 0…
Hey, I think my calculator is broken!
Your observation might as well been made by gobear: they used quotes both extensively AND selectively, to demean certain things but not others.
