You’re mistaking my intent, and I’m not taking it personally. If I was I’d be responding to Homebrew in fuckspeak.
The point that I am trying to make is that there is a fallacy inherent in these generalized rants.
Part 1
The fallacy is that group A has an aspect that is defined as homophobic, therefore group A is homophobic and qualifies as a general target.
Part 2
Therefore defending group A, identifying with them, or sympathizing with them is also homophobic. Doing so qualifies the person doing so as a general target.
Defining something by a single aspect is a fallacy. Part 1 and part 2 combined are a weapon. Do not take issue with Part 1 or you will be subject to part 2.
It’s rhetorical weapon built on a fallacy.
Homebrew gives a perfect example when he tells me that I have to prove I’m not a homophope by voting Bush out of the White House.
It’s a scary tactic of intimidation and pressure, and I think it needs to be challenged.
Well, if you’re as opposed to this sort of tactic as you suggest, then might not that be a good enough reason to vote against Bush? His “You’re with us or against us” schtick of the past couple of years has been one of the most blatant uses of this “rhetorical weapon built on a fallacy” that i’ve ever come across. It is, indeed, a “scary tactic of intimidation and pressure,” and one that has disturbing consequences when engaged in by the President of the United States.
I tend to agree in principle that it can be rather narrow-minded to define something by a single aspect. However, i guess that maybe Homebrew and others are wondering just how many homophobic organizations one can support while still making a viable claim to be a supporter of gay rights. At what stage are the claims of support outweighed by the actions of affiliation and membership? I truly don’t know, except to say that i’m sure that different people draw the line in different places. Homebrew obviously would view the situation differently from, say, the Log Cabin Republicans.
Great post Mhendo. Bush though is not engaging in the same fallacy. He is not defining the whole by a part.
He is defining a country’s stance to us vis a vis the war on terror by it’s stance on terrorism.
Had he declared war on France for their disagreement with us on an aspect of their stance as regards the war on terror he would be engaging in the fallacy. Instead his stance was that it was a disagreement among allies.
At no point did he define France by this single aspect.
Well, you’re being much more generous about Bush’s intentions and his rhetoric than i would be. While your point about the specific policy positions vis-a-vis France might be reasonable, i really think that Bush was being much more confrontational than that.
He actually said that, in this war on terror, you’re with us or you’re against us. Whether he intended it or not, this rhetoric led many people (both here and abroad) to interpret his position as one in which no disagreement with US policy was even allowed. The use of such rhetoric had exactly the same sort of consequences that you suggest emerge from Homebrew’s tactic–it makes unreasonable blanket distinctions, asks for absolute adherence to one of two dichotomous worldviews, allows for no grey areas or disagreement among friends, and qualifies any dissenter as a “general target,” if not of military hardware, then at least of unbridled invective.
Also, as you suggest in one of your posts, the consequences of this rhetoric spread far from the source, leading narrow-minded people to adopt simplistic distinctions, even if such was never the intention of the speaker in the first place.
But all my ranting about Bush is, of course, tangential to the issue at hand in this thread. I’ll try to refrain from further hijacking.
Whether they are being hypocritical in a legal sense, a moral one, or not at all, i think that the BSA are, at the very least, simply reaping what they’ve sown, and i find it hard to feel sorry for them.
Oh, and i would like to extend my congratulations to Homebrew for spelling “hypocrisy” correctly. Considering how frequently the word is used on these boards, it’s amazing how many people can’t spell it.
Back in the 60’s in the “Chickasaw Council” of BSA of America it was a lot easier because there weren’t any gay people back then - things have sense gotten so complicated.
I don’t have any issues with gay people but I would like to see the Scouts get their shot at the money/collection process, because limiting them in this collection process will in fact translate into less money.
Scylla, you’re missing the point here, I suspect delibertly. The Catholic Church, The Boy Scouts, The Republican Party, these are all private organizations who have adopted stances on various issues. WRT homosexuality, these organizations have all advocated policies or adopted positions that can fairly be labled “homophobic”, thus it is accurate to put this lable on any of these organizations. That does not, however, say anything about the individuals who comprise the membership of these organizations other than that the institutionalized homophobia does not outweigh the other benefits they see for themselves by belonging to the organization. I know plenty of people involved in scouts who disagree with the BSA’s stance on gays, yet continue to be involved with scouts because they feel that the positives for the boys outweigh the negatives of the BSA’s homophobia. Personally, I disagree, which is why even though I was a scout and feel that it was a great experience that taught me many useful things, my son, although he wants to be, is not a scout. For me descrimination and homophobia are a negative that outweighs the positives the scouts offer. Other people may feel the opposite. Reguardless, it is completely fair to lable the organization as homophobic and deal with it on that basis.
If most of the principles that these three organizations espouse are what you believe and these principles outweigh ( in your mind ) the descrimination that they also endose, I understand completly why you belong to them. My question to you would be that if you are truly in favor of gay rights, why aren’t you vocally condeming the descriminatory positions that these organizations put fourth? I don’t think that anyone would have jumped on you if you had said something along the lines of “Hey, I’m involved with scouts because it’s a great thing for the boys, but you’re right, that particular policy needs to be changed” * and then working to change it*. If 75 million Republicans wrote to Bush threatening to vote for the Democrat if he didn’t cut his support for the DOMA, you’d never hear those words from the White House again. If the local chapters of the BSA stood up and said “This isn’t right” and then sent people to the national council who believed the same way ( or disassociated themselves from the BSA entirely ), this stupid homophobic stand would melt away like a snowball August. Don’t just sit back and take offense when someone correctly identifies an organization you belong to as homophobic when it obviously is, you should agree, perhaps put fourth the resons you support it in spite of that, and then work from within to change the descriminatory policy, and recount how you are doing so. Then this whole issue can quickly be relagated to the midden heap of history where it belongs.
Yeah, I guess, what I mean’t was that for many reasons very few people in the geographic region of the Chickasaw Council acknowledged being gay, in fact the term gay had no sexual connotation at that time, as best I remember.
county-how would YOU have known whether or not they were gay, dumbass?
Scylla, chill out. I agree with the majority in this thread-homosexuality does indeed seem to be the last acceptable prejudice. I mean, here at the SDMB, it’s different-it’s amazingly, incredibly gay friendly.
I don’t see that in the real world. And that’s not right.
And I have to wonder what people would say of these organizations if they took a similarly hateful stand on racial or sexual issues. Well, the Catholic church DOES say that women and girls are barred from certain roles in the church…
(For those who don’t get the funny, funny joke: he made a broad generalization about homosexuals making broad generalizations. Oh, the wit! The irony! The je ne sais quoi!)
I just have to let out a sigh on this kind of issue.
I was in scouts for years, in fact my father is still active in the troop that I was a part of.
This particular troop has NEVER rejected anyone for any reason. Heck, they would probably let in a girl if one tried to get in. We had several athiest scouts and at least one gay one when I was there (although he wasn’t open about it). Scouting can be a very positive experience and I just wish the powers that be could see some of these rules are just stupid.
I’m a leader in my son’s cub scout group (tiger den leader), and I’m not anti-gay. I’m also an atheist for what it’s worth. In the circle of scouting people I associate with, there’s no anti-gay rhetoric. In fact, it’s never discussed, either as a positive or negative thing, much like non-scouting discussions. It may be some official position somewhere, but I’ve seen no anti-gay words or actions.
Also, Boy Scouts is an extremely loosely coupled organization. There is very little that’s required or even suggested for a given unit. Searching on the web, I’ve seen troops that make religion a core part of their value system, and I’ve seen others (such as mine) where it’s not even mentioned. In general, the official policy on religion emphasizes tolerance. There are some overlying goals which are good and decent, and taken by themselves encourage inclusive behaviour. There are some specific objectives (such as merit badges), none of which are anti-gay.
I don’t know of any confirmed gays actually in Boy Scouts, but I attribute that to the fact that all of the leaders are parents of scouts, and though there are plenty of gays with children, I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of parents are straight. Personally, I wouldn’t have any problems with gays as leaders, and (though the topic has never come up, which is an interesting sidenote in itself) I don’t think any of the other leaders or parents I know in scouting would have a problem with it either.
And you’re touting this as a preferable state of events? “Hide who you are, conform to the “norm” and everything will be fine”? I suppose if we could just get the darkies to sit at the back of the bus where they belong, and put those damn upity women back in the kitchen like God intended, then the world would be a great place, huh? :rolleyes:
Sorry, you’re wrong there, since Otto specifically mentioned -
This coming from Homebrew, who begins his response to Scylla with an obscene insult and continues with demonstrably false accusations. :rolleyes:
OK, so it’s the Pit, where hysterical invective and the usual lunatic rants are the order of the day. But a thread that objects when the Boy Scouts want to be treated as at least equal to PETA or NARAL? Aren’t you afraid of running out of moral outrage for serious topics?
WeirdDave is right. This is an issue that carries more weight for some than it does for others, but pretending that the statement was outright condemnation of all Scouts, Catholics, etc., is really a stretch.
I won’t give the Scouts a dime of support or a word of lip service. What they’re doing is wrong and because of it, my son was not a scout. It IS that important to me. My dad also wouldn’t let me swim at his boss’s club’s pool because they wouldn’t allow Jews to join. The point is, if you believe there is an injustice being done, you should take some sort of stand. In my opinion, the correct stand is NO support in this instance. Of course, you can do what you want, but don’t be surprised, if you take no action, that the line that separates you from your pet organization begins to blur.
I’m not touting anything, moron. I am explaining how things were in the geographic area of the Chickasaw Counsil of the BSA in the l960’s. Something else, the water fountains were labeled according to race. See, stating that as a fact is not advocating or decrying that practice.
But I’ll tell you something sport, crying about this sort of thing on a message board is not in any way shape or form activism. You don’t like that sort of attitude in society, get off your fat ass and go take some action. (IMO)
But, Scylla, that’s the discrimination that matters the most - the kind that comes from the people in your community and in your family. That hatred is the one that leads to LGBT kids living on the streets because their parents kicked them out, or closet cases engaging in violent Reaction Formations like bashing and suicide.
Hatred towards LGBTs is more easily justified in our current climate than racism or sexism. The mainstream does not basestheir entire concept of something as important as “family”, or their cosmology on the idea that women are inferior to men, or blacks to whites. Those ideas are not in any way rooted in fact, and we have come to a time and place in our culture where those views are seen as antithetical to human progress.
We, in our Western culture, are preoccupied with gender. The mainstream has a hard time concieving that to some people, gender may be unimportant, or fluid. Some people are threatened by the idea that gender is not fixed or definitive.
That is the root of homophobia: the belief that men and women have roles, and if those roles are not fulfilled by everyone in society, then society will fall.
I like to think more of humanity than that. But that’s just me.
Anyway, it is ultimately fallacious to compare homophobia to racism or sexism, because the latter two are not acceptable in polite company. The former is, and yet it is equally unjust.
