And when you call someone who is anti-gay a bigot, do you think you will get a significantly different reaction from the one you would get if you called them a troglodyte instead? (Ignoring the snarky “Yes, because they don’t know what a troglodyte is” answer)
Niggardly also has a literal and very real definition. But we’ve seen what that’ll do for a Senate career.
paging Senator Byrd for a ruling
Keeping with the definition of ‘bigot’ given by **Brutus ** above, the problem with it is that it covers both estimable qualities and the opposite. Thus, a radical proponent of change in an unfair world would see him- or herself as ‘obstinately devoted to his or her own opinions’, while they would see those who oppose them as ‘intolerantly devoted to his or her own prejudices’.
But I don’t think it’s a problem about words. Sympathetic understanding (ie trying very hard to understand what your opponent is really saying) and a refusal to believe in the notion of ‘manifest truth’ (ie the idea that, although truth may be hard to find, once it is revealed, it is impossible for us not to recognise it as truth) are, for me, the keys.
I think it’ll be rather effective, myself. Certainly, the technique seems to work pretty well in, for example, political campaigning. Time will tell, I suppose.
I’ve got quite a bit of evidence that the people who voted for this law are bigots. For example, the definition of the word “bigot.” I haven’t provided it in this thread because, so far as I can tell, everyone posting to it is already a veteran of the hundreds of other gay rights threads on this board, and are familiar with all the arguments for and against.
What more is there to say to that post? It’s pure opinion and appeal to authority, and wholly lacking in logical argument. How do you rebut that on any level more significant than “Is not!”?
Some offered reasons, some were just angry. Either on its own might not have been enough to change my mind. Both together were pretty formidable.
Still not following you.
I suppose my experiences and results differ, then. For the vast majority of the people who were motivated enough to go out and vote for this bill, I do not think it is possible to change their minds. I think the more realistic strategy is to go after those who haven’t formed solid opinions on the subject, through rational argument primarily (which I have done in other threads, but lately I’ve been getting sick of writting the same crap over and over) but also through old-fashioned political mudslinging. There’s a culture war going on, and if we never return fire, we’re going to get our asses handed to us.
What the fuck do I care about a bigot’s reaction?
Bigots vote, too. If you need to change the votes, you need to resist the temptation to alienate the voters.
(Just in the last six day, I saw an engineer lose a company’s biggest and oldest account because he was personally offended by the verbal haranguing of an idiot on the account’s management team and responded in kind. No matter how satisfying it was to let loose at the idiot, that was several millions of dollars annually over many future years that were tossed away to give him a momentary sense of smug self-righteousness at the end of a phone call.
Smug feelings are not a good principle on which to base actions.)
(1) sums up my feelings very well.
And not having read the actual Louisana amendment, I was judging it solely by brief descriptions in headlines. I now see that the amendment DOES, in fact, purport to prohibit civil unions… and I am dismayed. It is absolutely terrible that a valid purpose: the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman – is used to secure agreement for an invalid purpose: forbidding a private agreement between two people.
I would amend the federal tax code to recognize civil unions with the same benefits as accure to marriage if the persons claiming such benefits reside in a state that recognizes their union.
North Dakota has a state amendment banning same-sex marriage on the ballot for the November election. Thought 78% was high? Check for stats a day or two after the election.
Maybe it’s because I have absolutely no respect for tradition qua tradition, but I don’t understand the objection to just letting gay folk marry rather than going through all the work and tortuous constructions to get an entire other tier of legal relationship framework put into place for civil unions.
If a tradition is useful, keep it. If it’s not useful, or worse, is harmful, toss it. What is this slavish devotion to the current definition of the word “marriage”? It’s a fucking WORD. To set up an identical network of legal relationships just so you can call them something different is idiotic. And makes you look pretty irrational and bigoted, just so you know.
In fairness to the OP, it is a particularly gentle Pit post. So far as I can recall, it’s the first time I’ve been Pitted, and any Pit thread that advises the Pitee to select “a different course” as opposed to inviting him to fuck a small bird or rodent, or implying that his parents met in a New Orleans house of prostitution, is a good one. I think the OP had something to say that didn’t belong in GD, but was not particularly vitriolic. And I commend and thank him for it.
- Rick
Gotta admit that I find the subtle distinction between ‘marriage’ and ‘civil union’ (where CU means all the rights and responsibilities of marriage but with a different name) to be too small for me to discern.
But I can respect people who feel that way. I think it might be silly to worry over a hair split that fine but then again I find many things silly in society…one more won’t blow my gaskets.
Not unlike Bricker I favor a very strict interpretation of the constitution. I am personally deeply uncomfortable with the courts inferring rights and responsibilities that are not expressly laid out. Even where I agree with the courts (any courts) reasoning on such an issue I would be far happier if such were expressed and then enacted by the relevant legislative body. That is, after all, why we have legislatures and an amendment process.
But labelling Bricker as a ‘bigot’ is foolish in this regard. He is a man who’s opinion differs from yours on a ‘hot button’ issue. That doesn’t make him stupid or evil…it just means his opinion differs. Shouting and name-calling simply guarantees that YOUR opinion will be discounted.
Reasonable people should be able to discuss issues without emotion or rancor…even in the most heated debate.
Well, when your entire state population is smaller than the population of the Twin Cities…
That’s absolutely untrue.
If the legislature passes a law I don’t like, and that law is challenged and upheld by the courts… that would be a decision I don’t like. But you would never hear me call that “judicial activism.” Because the courts would be doing their job: interpreting the law as written.
Similarly, if the courts read into the Constitution a heretofore-new right in an area I agree with – say, for example, that a federal court found that an unborn child is vested with full proections as a person under the Fourteenth Amendment – I’d like the result. But I’d be the first first to decry the action as judicial activism. That change – even though I favor the result it would bring - should come from the legislature, NOT the courts.
I’m about the PROCESS.
- Rick
Two points:
(1) Bricker never said any such thing, and your inference of such a statement from what he has said is completely unwarranted.
(2) If you think that the hair-splitting difference between the word “marriage” and the term “civil union” is proof of hatred and bigotry, may I respectfully suggest that you obtain some perspective from somewhere. Because if that’s all it takes to warrant such serious accusations, you’ve just condemned one hell of a lot of non-hateful and non-bigoted people who are otherwise squarely in the gay rights camp.
Telling women who have been in an exclusive, committed, loving relationship for 50 years that they are unworthy of using the word “married” to describe themselves is disrespectful in the extreme.
Fuck alternate names. Fuck jumping through hoops of fire to get second-class status. “Marriage” has power and status in the world, and denying the word, even when granting the rights, is a statement that same-sex couples are “less than.”
If you seriously think the anger mounting at Bricker has anything to do with his pointing out the anti-SSM backlash (as if we were all backward children who don’t read the papers to see it for ourselves; as if many of us don’t live in states with bans either proposed or in the works right now) then you’re foolishly mistaken.
“I prefer peanut M&Ms to plain” is a difference of opinion.
“Your 50 year relationship is unworthy of the name we extend to Britney Spears’ drunken Vegas wedding because you’re homosexuals” is bigotry.
Bigotry is stupid and evil.
Therefore…
Except that you would be hard pressed to find an instance wherein “marriage” is being defined as the union of a man and woman that doesn’t include a little something that shoots down any and all hope of the civil unions between homosexuals that you advocate.
This sounds like an awful lot of trouble to go to just to protect the word
“marriage” from being used by gays. Besides, what happens when people move, as they do in this mobile society of ours? Are they screwed if they move to a state that refuses to recognize their union? Would there be any recourse available to them? Or should they just rub some dirt in it and move on? As I said in the thread that spawned this one: Adding more bureaucracy seems like a bad idea in this instance. Plus you’ve managed to create a whole lotta new problems for those who move from state to state, and I guarantee you that once you start dicking around with the federal tax code to recognize something that is virtually identical to SSM, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the land. Why not just allow SSM from the go? Makes a lot more sense, to my POV.
I’m not telling them that they are unworthy. I’m telling them that the word doesn’t apply to them. If a man serves honorably 52 years as a U.S. Senator, he is not entitled to be known as “Governor.” This does not mean that I am denigrating his long and faithful service as a senator, or being disrespectful to him, his dedication to public service, or the great good he has done over his career.
No, it’s not. It’s “different than,” yes, but not “less than.”
And I continue to find this fascinating. I am in support of full legal equality for same sex unions, and I’m a bigot. This attitude may be a good clue for those activists who actually wish to accomplish something in this arena.
Alienating those who would support significant advancement of your cause is an idiotic thing to do.
Therefore…
I hear ya, Bricker. I’ve had similar taunts thrown my way for a similar position.
I think these measures up for vote in several states accurately portray the feelings of Americans in general on the subject. The mere fact that others might wish these citizens felt differently won’t make it so. Neither will name-calling.
There is a backlash going on right now, a huge and effective one. This is a political reality that would cause normal political operaticves to shift tactics.
I think the fact that this is such an emotional issue for many, on both sides, can cloud judgement. Absolutists who take an all-or-nothing stand are quite likely to end up with nothing, instead of all. How this helps people who need benefits right now is beyond me.
A lot of parallels are being made to the civil rights movement. But that movement, at least the moderate arm of it, was led by people with far more political savvy than this. They knew they wouldn’t gain all of their goals immediately. They instead took every victory they could, and used their expanded rights and power to press for more rights, and more power. The progress they made was incremental, yet very effective.
In this case, ‘different than’ is ‘less than.’
Civil union is a local status, invented by each jurisdiction piecemeal. Marriage is portable. If I get civilly unioned or whatever the verb is, as soon as I cross the Quebec border, my partner and I would be strangers. If I get married, I’m married in all ten provinces and three territories – or at least I have a much better position to argue that I should be.
This will become more and more important as more and more countries get same-sex marriage. (Spain is scheduled for the beginning of October, fyi.) There is a far, far better chance of people who are married in Quebec being considered married in the Netherlands than there is of people who are civilly unioned in Quebec being considered PACSé in France.
On a more fundamental level, you’re not going to come up with a word that conveys both equality to heterosexual marriage and difference from it. I’m just supposed to accept that my husband won’t be my husband because he’s male? What sense does that make?
In days gone by, the definition of “marriage” was “a union between a man and a woman of the same race.” Apparently, to avoid tarnishing the sacrosanct definition of marriage, we should have come up with a different word for interracial marriage. Maybe “shirley.” Of course, “shirleys” would have status almost the same as marriage… and Loving should have just shut up and accepted it. Wouldn’t want to alienate those people who were sort of in favour of it.
(Interesting side note: the most recent edition of the Canadian Oxford, under their definition of “marriage,” states “…two people…”)