The anti-gay marriage movement IS homophobic

"derisable" -- I like that. No doubt the group Blatham has cited does include some people who can accurately be described as homophobic. That does not constitute proof that "the movement" in opposition to the political campaign of homosexual advocates to get legal acknowledgement of gay marriage is itself (or among the majority of its adhearants) homophobic. Neither Blatham nor I can look into the hearts of people and know the motivation for their acts or political beliefs. To use one of the many and complex motivational possibilities to adversely characterize all those who lead or who support a certain political position is itself quite derisable.

A fool can advocate a good idea and a wise man a bad one. It is the political idea itself that is the proper subject of this dixcussion, not sweeping appelations cast indiscriminately at those who advocate them.

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So I am driving home from work last night listening to NPR and this lesbian from Massachusetts comes on. She is talking about some domestic partership provision that Mass has for gay people.

Apparently (and I am working from memory here so if I get some details wrong I apologize in advance.) in Mass they have a program that recognized domestic parteners and gives them spousal priviliges. Well, this woman was irate over the fact the heterosexual couple who were not maaried were taking advantage of this system.

Well, seems that the legislature has now revoked those priviliges for heterosexuals who are not married and this woman was basically gloating about it. She had my blood pressure up by the time I parked in the garage. Seems to me that now gays have "special" priviliges. Isn't that something the gay movement is trying to move away from?

Anyways, just my 2 cents on this. I may not have the whole story.

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A couple of weeks ago, two elderly ladies (both high in seventies) did similar and took advantage of the (German) civil partnership, both declaring that they were "of course" not lesbians, but only wanted to get these advantages.

(No-one is complaining here about such, besides some ultra-conservatives. [It is, however, impossible for relatives and male-females.])

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georgeob1 wrote:

"derisable" -- I like that. No doubt the group Blatham has cited does include some people who can accurately be described as homophobic. That does not constitute proof that "the movement" in opposition to the political campaign of homosexual advocates to get legal acknowledgement of gay marriage is itself (or among the majority of its adhearants) homophobic. Neither Blatham nor I can look into the hearts of people and know the motivation for their acts or political beliefs. To use one of the many and complex motivational possibilities to adversely characterize all those who lead or who support a certain political position is itself quite derisable.

A fool can advocate a good idea and a wise man a bad one. It is the political idea itself that is the proper subject of this dixcussion, not sweeping appelations cast indiscriminately at those who advocate them.

george

Can you look into a heart and see racism? Can you therefore deny it has real existence? There is no 'proof' available, in the sense you probably mean that term. Could you prove the statement "America was racist"? How? Does the sentence even have meaning? Does the sentence "America was never racist" seem mostly true or mostly false?

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McGentrix wrote:

So I am driving home from work last night listening to NPR and this lesbian from Massachusetts comes on. She is talking about some domestic partership provision that Mass has for gay people.

Apparently (and I am working from memory here so if I get some details wrong I apologize in advance.) in Mass they have a program that recognized domestic parteners and gives them spousal priviliges. Well, this woman was irate over the fact the heterosexual couple who were not maaried were taking advantage of this system.

Well, seems that the legislature has now revoked those priviliges for heterosexuals who are not married and this woman was basically gloating about it. She had my blood pressure up by the time I parked in the garage. Seems to me that now gays have "special" priviliges. Isn't that something the gay movement is trying to move away from?

Anyways, just my 2 cents on this. I may not have the whole story.

here is a link to the story.

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blatham wrote:

Can you look into a heart and see racism? Can you therefore deny it has real existence?

Into one heart or a few of them, probably yes. Into several millions of them, no. And while I have no problem with attributing ideologies such as racism to individuals, I am very reluctant to attribute them to groups of people. "America is mostly (mostly not) racist" has no meaning for me. "Rush Limbaugh is mostly (mostly not) racist" does.

blatham wrote:

Could you prove the statement "America was racist"? How? Does the sentence even have meaning? Does the sentence "America was never racist" seem mostly true or mostly false?

"No", "no", and "none of the above". "America was never racist" seems mostly meaningless to me. About as meaningless as "The Equator was never racist", or "The New York Symphony Orchestra was never racist".

georgeob1 wrote:

A fool can advocate a good idea and a wise man a bad one. It is the political idea itself that is the proper subject of this dixcussion, not sweeping appelations cast indiscriminately at those who advocate them.

I think George is on to something here. The most important objection against the title of this thread isn't so much that it is false or meaningless, even though I think it is. The main objection is that it is a red herring. It needlessly distracts us from the question, "Is it a good idea to extend marriage to gay couples or not?" -- which is what we ought to be asking in my opinion.

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blatham wrote:

george

Can you look into a heart and see racism? Can you therefore deny it has real existence? There is no 'proof' available, in the sense you probably mean that term. Could you prove the statement "America was racist"? How? Does the sentence even have meaning? Does the sentence "America was never racist" seem mostly true or mostly false?

The racial segregation that was once practiced in this country (overtly in the South, more subtly in the North), and the laws and customs that supported it were undeniably racist. Sentences such as "America is/was racist", don't have much real meaning unless quickly amplified, precisely because they are so broad, inclusive and categorical. I believe an intelligent person, who is interested in real understanding would avoid such statements, or put them in a limiting context to make a real meaning clear.

If one considers all the group, nationalistic or tribal behaviors and intolerance exhibited across the world, I believe that even considering the United States as it was in (say) the 1930s one would conclude that the United States was then among the most tolerant and welcoming of nations. At the same time we did practice a repugnant form of racism directed against blacks, as well as other somewhat less virulent forms of intolerance against other groups, Chinese, Jews, Catholics, and others. However overall we had a bit less of this than did most other countries. (It is important to distinguish between virtue and the mere lack of temptation or opportunity here - Iceland, for example, had not yet had the opportunity to display the virulent racism that characterized its later actions).

Nothing much to brag about here, though. We like all other nations have learned only the lessons that our particular histories have taught us.

In sum, I think the categorical questions you posed do not have meaning.

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You two seem much in agreement here, so let me address this as if you are the same person, a sort of germanic potato addict.

To compare"The NY Symphony/equator was never racist" and "America was never racist" ignores the relevant point that only one is a political category. The first two are non-sensical, but the third is far less so.

To allow that one can sensibly say an individual or a small group perhaps is racist seems a matter of ease of determination. Sit him down and grill him, or better, look for speech acts and physical acts in his past which might support the thesis.

How is that different from a larger group, other than that it becomes more difficult, perhaps, to establish it so?

Can we say this..."nation X demonstrates policies and frequency of citizen behavior which indicates that nation's citizens generally are more prone to racism than those of nation Y"?

In the field of foreign affairs, for example, one has to operate with such loose and inexact assumptions. Bernard Lewis, for example, will suggest that the west will be prudent to do A but not B when engaged with the Muslim world, because of broad and general cultural propensities or commonalities. Is all such understanding valueless and are all such sentences meaningless?

I truly don't mean to bring this up as a diversion or red herring. If the community discussion is influenced by a deep taboo or cultural value (and that is surely the case here) which is not available for reflection, how does one proceed with discussion. It is rather like ignoring the elephant.

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Is racism really such an "American" characteristic, or are you just focusing on America? I know most cultures have racist characteristics.

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McG

No, don't mean to imply that at all. Canada has its own racist problem, as do Australia and New Zealand with aboriginals. I'm focusing on the US because it is my main area of intellectual interest (but also, though to a lesser extent on this issue, because it is the big power and the big influence in the world). Homophobia shows up here too and likely in similar frequency individual to individual. But only in the last decade has an organized movement appeared in Canada which seeks to push back acceptance of homosexual activitites and relationships as equal.

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Cool.

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Blatham,

Did you know potatoes came from Peru and were introduced to Europe by Spain? In any case the Irish never had a quarrel with the Germans. (The only real difference is we boil our cabbage instead of pickling it.) Even Wagner recognized the kinship - Isolde was an Irish girl! (Great lyric melody at the end too, but in a rather Germanic way one must endure three hours of duet before getting to it - Irish music gets to the good stuff quicker.)

In the first place you must consider just what is the meaning of the term, racism. Does it refer only to skin color, or are their other factors such as nationality and culture included in the term? There is no shortage of other uses of the term prominent in the history of the last few centuries. The Greeks and the Turks fought a particularly bloody war in the early 1920s. Can you accurately use the term, racism to describe the mutual intolerance and violence attendant to it? How about the bloody events in India between Hindus and Moslems in the 1940s (there ARE detectable ethnic and language differences in these populations)? How about all of the many nationalistic wars of Europe in the past century, from the two Balkan wars to the two World Wars - were they racist? How about the Chinese treatment of the Tibetans? The early stages of the Mexican revolution against Spain involved rather horrific slaughter of the Spanish and Creole population by an Indian-dominated revolutionary movement under Morillo. Was that racism? Consider the struggle between the Tamil population of south India and Sri Lanka and the government there. Is that a manifestation of racism? Is the friction between the Russian speaking population of eastern Ukraine and the western part of that country racism?

I think the main point here is that "racism" is at best a very vague term used to describe various forms of intolerance. Same goes for "homophobia". Both are merely words used, usually inaccurately, to characterize and prejudge the motivations and intent of an opponent. Life and human thought and motivations are a good deal more complex than allowed for in such categorical terminology. Wise men (in my view) avoid such appellations. Better to judge political movements by the specifics of what they do and advocate, than to attempt to judge what one imagines motivates them. Same goes for individual people. One judges them based on what they do, not on what one imagines they think. Most of the evils of the unlamented 20th century were done by political movements that demanded to know and control what people think, and insisted on the right to judge their worth based on that.

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OB1 pontificates:

Quote:

I think the main point here is that "racism" is at best a very vague term used to describe various forms of intolerance. Same goes for "homophobia". Both are merely words used, usually inaccurately, to characterize and prejudge the motivations and intent of an opponent. Life and human thought and motivations are a good deal more complex than allowed for in such categorical terminology. Wise men (in my view) avoid such appellations.

What a load of crap. I guess it is easy to dismiss racism and homophobia if one has never been the target of it.

How many pages now? And they are still trying to convince themselves they are loving, compassionate open-minded people. Keep trying to convince yourself anyway if it makes you feel better.

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blatham wrote:

How is that different from a larger group, other than that it becomes more difficult, perhaps, to establish it so?

Because the larger your group gets, the greater the differences inside the group become, relative to the differences between the group and the rest of the world. For example, a few days back, I started making a list of conservative think tanks, sorted by the size of their budget, and probed their stand on gay marriage by searching their website for the term "gay marriage". I didn't finish the project because it ended up consuming more time than I was willing to put in. But what I did see was that conservative American think tanks publish opinions as diverse as America as a whole.

Official positions range from the Cato Institute's, which is rabidly pro-gay-marriage on freedom-of-contract grounds, to that of the Family Research Council, which literally stops just short of the claim that allowing gay marriage would risk bringing about The Flood again. In between, you have the American Enterprise Institute, which has no definite position; it thinks the states should just experiment in either direction and see what happens. Also in-between is the official position of the Heritage Foundation, which is definitely anti-gay-marriage but just as definitely not homophobic. I find it very hard to see anything in this spectrum that would be coherent enough to be called a 'movement', and a 'homophobic' one at that.

blatham wrote:

Bernard Lewis, for example, will suggest that the west will be prudent to do A but not B when engaged with the Muslim world, because of broad and general cultural propensities or commonalities. Is all such understanding valueless and are all such sentences meaningless?

Almost meaningless, I'm afraid. In reality, what he calls "the" muslim world is even less coherent than American conservatives are on the topic of gay marriage. We have been brought up with history books where such generalizations sounded important and insightful -- but the more I grow up, the more I see this rhetoric for the pompous pretension that it is.

blatham wrote:

I truly don't mean to bring this up as a diversion or red herring. If the community discussion is influenced by a deep taboo or cultural value (and that is surely the case here) which is not available for reflection, how does one proceed with discussion.

One doesn't. One occasionally points out discreetly, as ehBeth did earlier in this thread, that some countries have gay marriage yet the sky isn't falling there. One repeats such hints from time to time,then waits as the taboo slowly dissolves. This is how the English overcame the Victorian taboo against speaking about underpants, and this is how most anti-gay Americans will eventually overcome their taboos against homosexuality. But rushing into gay marriage won't do much good, any more than a legal prohibition against using the word 'unspeakables' would have done in Victorian England.

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Chrissee wrote:

OB1 pontificates:

What a load of crap. I guess it is easy to dismiss racism and homophobia if one has never been the target of it.

How many pages now? And they are still trying to convince themselves they are loving, compassionate open-minded people. Keep trying to convince yourself anyway if it makes you feel better.

Not at all. We are instead defending ourselves from others who would prejudge our intentions and motivations. We are not the ones hurling epithets at others in this thread. It is you who stoops to such tactics here.

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There was an TV advirtisement that the NAACP put out where it implies that the word homophobia discriminates. I agree with those damanding Bush to band those Marriages. If sombody called me a Homophobic they would be discriminating against my belieths.

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Yeah, I damand that Bush band those marriages and spare my belieths as well!

You people kill me.

Cycloptichorn

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If he bands the marriages, does that mean he approves them?

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Quote:

The Greeks and the Turks fought a particularly bloody war in the early 1920s.
How about the bloody events in India between Hindus and Moslems in the 1940s
How about all of the many nationalistic wars of Europe in the past century, from the two Balkan wars to the two World Wars - were they racist?
How about the Chinese treatment of the Tibetans? The early stages of the Mexican revolution against Spain involved rather horrific slaughter of the Spanish and Creole population by an Indian-dominated revolutionary movement under Morillo.
Consider the struggle between the Tamil population of south India and Sri Lanka and the government there.
Is the friction between the Russian speaking population of eastern Ukraine and the western part of that country racism?

george
Youv'e pointed out some genuine examples of hatred. I think that the current attempt to hang onto the coat tails of people who have truly suffered, cheapens their memory. But as their objective is very self centered why should they care? I have very much enjoyed reading your post as well as those by thomas. Although my reasons for opposition are different, I respect your perspectives as honest. I cannot say the same for (most of) the others here. They have yet to address the possible effects to children. I believe this is because they are part of a growing segment of our society that is solely concerned with themselves. As such they view children as adornments instead of our future. I have tried to get them to debate this point but they instead just keep calling names. Although they are learned they have no wisdom. And no honesty. I must admit that I feel that I have been foolish too. I feel that I have been casting my pearls to( w/ exceptions) swine. I wish all of you the best, even Blatham.

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Thanks Datothree.

I try to avoid getting sore at other posters here, no matter what they say. I fail occasionally, but generally prefer to find out what they think and confront them with my views and then see what happens. In many ways this is a learning experience for everyone involved. (Though I'll deny it if anyone raises any specifics, I have picked up a few new ideas and interpretation of events here.). I agree, Blatham is a good guy, despite his flaky ideas.

With respect to the issue at hand I believe that willing tolerance of homosexuals is an important goal that our society has often failed to achieve. Short of permitting excesses that are denied to others, they should be able to live the lives they choose unmolested by others.

Like you I am concerned about the disintegration of the family structure in this country. We all have a stake in the educational, economic and social achievements of the next generation of Americans, and the bad effects of divorce, absent parents, and indifferent parenting on children are both well known and evident in some of the problems we encounter today. I see bad side effects on all this in many of the trends, both of government and of society generally in the last few decades. I view the question of gay marriage in this context, and see in it yet another dilution of the support for an already sorely oppressed institution of our society and culture. I see much more to be lost in yet another stress to an already overstressed institution of child-rearing families, that likely to be gained by extending marriage to homosexuals. I don't oppose governmentally sanctioned civil unions for them, but I do not wish to see the economic and legal benefits of marriage diluted any more than has already occurred.

None of these reasons has anything to do with homophobia, but it is difficult to persuade others of that fact. .

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The anti-gay marriage movement IS homophobic

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