The OP presented those comments without any context. Therefore the OP failed to make out a case for homophobia. The fact that additional context later arose in the thread does not change that analysis of the OP (as I’ve consistently noted, the material later presented does indicate an antigay stance).
From where I sit, waiting until sufficient evidence is presented before leveling a charge against someone is a GOOD thing. I guess you see things differently.
Also FTR, while I thank jkusters for his kind remarks, I think he goes a little far in describing what I mean as relevant context. Specifically, I don’t think mere knowledge of “typical practices and code words of the Religious Right, and awareness of the history of gay rights in this country” are quite sufficient to render the argument in the OP’s text as homophobic. Certainly I am aware of both, and yet I’ve still made that basic argument – not because it “compares” homosexuality to incest, but because it is a legitimate point about the ramifications of a certain line of constitutional argument.
I guess you take twisting people’s words seriously, too.
It wasn’t about giving the accused the benefit of the doubt; it wasn’t about innocent until proven guilty. You didn’t say, ‘we don’t know what he’s saying’; you said, “No, that is not what he’s saying.”
We had two competing theories here:
A) Santorum’s remarks were homophobic; and
B) Santorum was making a dry legal argument.
You were saying those who were claiming A were jumping the gun. So rather than say, “he’s innocent until proven guilty, and B is a live possibility,” you said, “He was saying B, period.”
IOW, you confused the legal assumption of innocence (a standard which only holds in courts of criminal law, AFAIK) with proof of innocence. As in:
That’s the mistake you made repeatedly in that first half-page, and (especially coming from the legal professional) it’s at least as egregious as the ‘mistake’ of those who took Santorum’s remarks as gay-bashing.
Now, I’d like to address the remarks in the OP, and only those remarks, in the context we all have: that of common usage in American discourse in the past couple of decades.
The fact is, lumping homosexuality in with a bunch of other marital practices that many or most people find objectionable is a common formulation. And when it appears in ordinary discourse, as opposed to specialized fora such as the courts or law journals, it almost invariably, IME (and apparently in that of many other posters here) is used to smear homosexuality with the taint of those other practices.
IMHO, when this formulation is used in ordinary discourse, it’s a reasonable presumption that the user of that formulation indeed means to do exactly that. It may be a rebuttable presumption, but I’d say it’s a reasonable one.
It is next to impossible to imagine that a politician savvy enough to rise to the U.S. Senate is unfamiliar with this formulation. In his case, I’d say the presumption is even stronger; he hasn’t been living in his room all these years.
Whatever you may have argued in a paper for law school is completely beside the point here. A legal brief or its equivalent is no more part of common discourse than my doctoral dissertation was.
As I said in the post you’re responding to: “Your point, on the other hand is…well, what exactly? That I could have been more precise in my early posts to this thread? OK, fine. Whoopitie do.” **
Oh spare me. This effectively means that anyone who makes the argument stated in the OP is presumptively a hateful bigot, and must rebut that presumption if he is to be taken seriously.
Fuck that. I’ve made that argument – not just in the formal airs of legal writing, but in “ordinary discourse,” including posts to this, a general-discussion message board. I categorically reject any notion that my making that argument should make me a homophobe until I prove myself otherwise. The burden in such matters rightly rests on those leveling the charge of homophobia.
I’m sensing a real pot/kettle dichotomy here. Isn’t being precise exactly what we’re arguing about here?
And I’m going along with RT - it sure read to me that you were stating with certainty what Santorum was saying, as opposed to giving one interpretation of what he might have been saying.
Either way, the fact that you continue to belabor this point does you no service. You’ve said, based on subsequent evidence, that it’s fairly evident the man is a homophobe, and you can reasonable see where his comments, not taken in a vacuum, were read as a slam against gays, not as a statement on constitutional law. So after getting all this information post-OP, what do you continue to argue? I’m waiting for you to say, “Wow, based on everything presented here, it seems I was wrong - he’s a jerk and what he said was wrong.”
(Oh, wait - you’re a lawyer. Lawyers never admit they’re wrong. Sorry. )
Oh, you were plenty precise. You quite firmly insisted that Santorum was saying things he in fact wasn’t. What you’ve beat this dead horse for five pages over was other posters’ equally firm (and ultimately accurate, but what you claim was premature) insistence that he was saying what he in fact was saying.
So my point is that your five pages of principled (IYHO) ranting should have been directed at you, just as much as at those you were criticizing.
And I bet you haven’t used that formulation here, although I’m open to correction.
I don’t give a flying flip whether you’ve made that argument here. Them’s two different things.
Your precise legal mind ought to be capable of distinguishing between one and the other, even if it’s not capable of recognizing when it’s spent five pages berating others for doing exactly the same things it’s been doing, only more so.
And standing alone, I would agree with you: my early posts were too strident and indicated a degree of certainty about Santorum’s comments that was indeed unwarranted. Absent my subsequent explanations, your conclusions would be entirely justified.
This is the essential difference. The posters I’ve been responding to haven’t been saying “Dewey, you’re right; standing alone, the OP isn’t homophobic, and it only becomes homophobic when we consider other statements made by Santorum.” No, no. Instead, they’ve been saying “the OP is homophobic even if we don’t consider any contextual information.”
I could not plausibly argue that my initial posts in this thread, standing alone and without context, did not sound as though they indicated a large measure of certainty as to Santorum’s meaning. That would be a foolish argument. It is equally foolish for participants in this thread to argue that the text in the OP, standing alone and with no reference to context, indicates homophobia. **
The first and third sentence here are contradictory; I’ve clearly stated that, with the addition of context, the remarks can in fact be read as antigay.
The question now is not “is Santorum a homophobe?” – that, I think, has been reasonably established – but rather “what sort of data is sufficient to level a charge of homophobia.” THAT is what I’ve been disputing for the past several pages. The OP’s quotation, absent context, is not sufficient to level that charge in my view. That charge just cannot be plausibly leveled without the additional context provided later on in this thread.
RT: I believe this post picks up most of your points. I would just add that a statement that “if the constitution protects homosexual sex, it also protects incest, etc” is an accurate, if imprecise, phrasing of the implications of the substantive due process argument I’ve made here and in other places. Making that argument, even using that phrasing, ought not be enough to level a charge of homophobia without additional context.
I would also like to see and end to the whining about how this thread has gone on for several pages. This thread lay fallow for two days, falling off of the first page of the Pit. I certainly wasn’t the one to revive it. I think you’ll find the bulk of my posts in this thread have been responses to other posters. I’m hardly the only guy keeping this thing alive.
Discussion is a two-way street, and this thread would not be continuing if other posters did not feel that continuing the discussion was fruitful. If you think the discussion has gotten repetitive or silly or otherwise not worth your time, you are free to discontinue your participation.
Dewey, I backed out of this discussion because it was evident from the first page that you were intnet on talking without listening. But today, I ovewr heard a racist remark on the Metro and it occurred to me that it was the perfect analogy to the point I and others have made.
Two older men were talking about golf memberships and one said, “If we let in the Mexicans, we ha’ll have to let in the Jews ans the Negros, too.”
Note that no racial slurs were used and that the speaker made a perfectly valid point, just as you say Santorum did. Yet from this remark alone, can you detect no racism? And in Santorum’s comments alone, can you detect no hatred of gays?
gobear: the obvious difference is that the old men’s comparison includes all undesirable outcomes – it is equally bad to exclude Jews and blacks as it is to exclude Mexicans from membership in a golf club. The appropriate retort to “if we admit Mexicans, we’d have to admit Jews and blacks” is “yeah, you would – so what?”
That isn’t the case in the OP’s comment. The response to “if the constitution permits all consensual sex, including sodomy, it also permits incest” is not “so what?” That’s a serious problem with the argument in favor of the constitution protectiong all consensual sex. If you’re going to make that argument, you need to deal with that fact – say, by constructing a principled argument for why “incest” shouldn’t be included in constitutionally protected “consensual sex,” but sodomy should be so included – rather than just calling the speaker a homophobe.
(I also take issue with your characterization of my participation as “talking without listening.” If I wasn’t “listening,” I would never have stated that subsequent evidence indicated Santorum was a homophobe, nor would I have ever stated that my initial posts were worded too stridently. It seems to me that you believe someone “isn’t listening” unless they reverse course and parrot your viewpoint 100%. If anyone is “talking without listening,” it’s you – I haven’t seen any desire on your part to compromise or otherwise admit that your posts have been anything short of divine truth.)
No, you seem not to be listening because you have had it explained to you in detail that the rhetoric used is inherently homophobic, yet you simply deny that any other interpretation than yours is possible.
Whether the language in the OP, absent context, is “inherently homophobic” is, to say the least, an arguable proposition. Yet here, once again, you indicate that anyone who does not accept your argument that such language is “inherently homophobic” must just plain not be listening. Apparently, once gobear has spoken, the question must be considered conclusively answered – apparently, gobear simply cannot be wrong.
I fail utterly to see how I’m the one saying “any other interpretation” is impossible. Quite the opposite, really. I’ve been consistently saying that the OP’s quotation could be either homophobic or non-homophobic, depending on the context in which it was given and depending on the past history of the speaker. You are the one hellbent on saying the text of the OP, standing alone, can only have one meaning. You are the one denying alternative explanations. I find it completely bizzare that you can claim the opposite with a straight face.
So the entire debate here is over the threshold Dewey should have for deciding something is homophobic? Even when, IIRC, he’s already purported to be against homosexual discrimination?
This reminds me of the “Seinfeld” where Kramer was assaulted for not wearing the AIDS ribbon.
Tried posting this twice and it didn’t show up…oh well, at least it wasn’t a dreaded double post.
Certainly it was, if you think that legalizing sodomy is an undesirable outcome. I’m sure you’ll natter on some more about context but for those of us who have read a newspaper article before about gay issues we knew right away that Santorum believes that sodomy is every bit as horrid as the other entries in his Parade of Horribles.
See, that’s why I am not being hard on Dewey because his heart really is in the right place. It’s just his insistence that those of us who see Santorum’s remarks as bigoted are delusional is infuriating.
I don’t think I’ve ever stated anyone in this thread was “delusional.” Willing to cast accusations without sufficient evidence, yes, but delusional, no.
Nothing in your link has anything to do with Santorum – it does not quote him or make reference to acts undertaken by him, other than to note the interview quoted in the OP, so it is not a source of context for Santorum’s meaning (N.B.: I cede that other statements of Santorum’s pointed out in this thread are appropriate sources of context for Santorum’s meaning, and do indicate antigay sentiment on Santorum’s part). Your article does not give us any additional insight into Santorum’s mind. Santorum is not responsible for the rhetoric of other third parties.
Furthermore, the 365Gay article you cite claims that an amicus brief filed by Alabama AG (and federal court nominee) Bill Pryor compares homosexuality to “prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, incest and pedophilia.” The 365Gay article is inaccurate in that respect.
Here is the brief filed by Pryor (along with the AGs of South Carolina and Utah – warning: PDF) You will see the portion in question is a dry legal argument opposed to the substantive due process rationale for overturning the Texas law. It does not “compare” homsexuality to incest, etc – it points out (among other things) that the SDP argument would make incest, etc subject to constitutional protection.
I think we can agree it’s best to go directly to the source document rather than depending on a third party’s interpretation of that document, particularly when that third party – in this case, a site targeting a gay audience – has a vested interest in putting its own spin on things.
Your argument is particularly stupid given that the brief is filed with the Supreme Court – its target audience are the nine justices deciding this case. You’ve said this type of argument uses “code words” designed to appeal to bigots. Well, are the Supreme Court justices “bigots”? What could possibly be gained by using “code words” in a legal brief that no one but the justices, their clerks, and avid court watchers are likely to read?
It’s context to the overall discussion, which has wandered a bit from focusing specifically on Santorum. You may be opposed to topic drift but a certain amount of it has happened in thise thread. Deal with it.
To put several things on a list and declare them to be similar to each other is to compare them.
Pryor has been nominated for a federal judgeship, so his record including his legal briefs are going to be read by people well beyond SCOTUS, its staff and court buffs.
If you can quote my post where I use the phrase “code words designed to appeal to bigots” I’d appreciate it because I certainly don’t recall saying it.
Hey, if you want to shift the focus to a discussion of the brief and of AG Pryor, fine. Let’s just be clear that you’re no longer talking about Santorum.**
And nowhere in the brief are they “declared to be similar,” outside of the fact that an argument that the constitution protects all consensual sexual acts necessarily protects all the listed items. The only way in which they are “declared similar” is in that all of the listed acts would fall under the umbrella of that particular SDP argument.**
How is that, exactly? Certainly opinions he writes as a judge will certainly be read, because they form precedent. His official interpretations of Alabama law as AG will carry some weight. But this is neither – it’s an amicus brief. It’s important to the resolution of this particular matter, but it carries with it no weight as precedent. After a case is decided, the briefs are really only of interest to historians – it’s the opinion that counts. **
I may have conflated your remarks with other posters who have talked about “code words,” for which I apologize. Still, some of your comments reflect this line of reasoning. For example:
Page 4: “If you had any extensive experience, you would have understood immediately from the OP quote all by itself that these were not the words of a friend to the gay community.”
Page 5: “Uh, and again no. See, those of us who read the occasional story about gay issues immediately recognize the ‘incest/adultery/bigamy’ line of ‘reasoning’ as anti-gay rhetoric.”
Page 6: “I’m sure you’ll natter on some more about context but for those of us who have read a newspaper article before about gay issues we knew right away that Santorum believes that sodomy is every bit as horrid as the other entries in his Parade of Horribles.”
That certainly sounds to me like you’re saying making this particular argument (that constitutional protection of all consensual sex necessarily protects incest, etc as well as homosexual sodomy) is necessarily an “anti-gay” argument designed to appeal to homophobes – i.e., such an argument cannot be interpreted any other way. Which again raises the question: why present such an argument before the Supreme Cout?
Huh…wasn’t it you who made fun of someone a page or two back for reading through the entire thread to pick out comments? Anyway, I believe I’ve explained this before but I’ll explain it again. I never said that the argument is “designed to appeal to homophobes.” What I said was that whenever a gay rights issue is discussed the radical anti-gay right immediately raises one or more of these shibboleths (comparing them to homosexuality, sort of like Santorum and Pryor did). This is done to link the parade of horribles to homosexuality. Someone lacking your razor-sharp mind who is otherwise not particularly homophobic could be led to conclude that homosexuality is as reprehensible as the other listed items to which it is being compared and thus be more likely to oppose extending civil rights on the basis of sexual orientation. This in my opinion is anti-gay.
I can think of nine reasons to present the argument, all of whom wear black robes. I’m willing to predict right now that if SCOTUS strikes the law (which I believe it will), Scalia’s angry dissent will include in it verbiage similar to “by striking down this law the majority has opened the door to legalizing bigamy, incest and pedophilia.”
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