The anti-gay marriage movement IS homophobic

HofT wrote:

blatham wrote:
Agreed. But for the element of gross hypocrisy. This administration, and its supporters, have used sexual issues to frighten and to divide and to slander - all towards the end of increasing political power and effecting what is really an ideological totalitarianism ("I don't like it, so YOU can't do it"). Even if the fellow is guilty of what his ex-wife charges, this administration will keep him in place if they can get away with it. They will lie, they will stonewall, they will attempt to divert attention (Jeff Gannon) but continue to support him so long as he's achieving policy objectives.

The administration will support Mr Hager though not for the reasons stated in that post - he is indeed achieving policy objectives (and nobody can doubt the credibility of his ex-wife, given the contemporaneous medical and other data) foremost among which is to totally and irrevocably discredit the homosexuals' defense that AIDS is also transmitted via heterosexual activity and so therefore homosexual men shouldn't be stigmatized.

The "just say no" policy combats overpopulation, Medicare/Medicaid or pension fund deficits, prostitution, drug addiction, new drug-resistant infections and assorted issues - all at one go - by simply killing off the prospective patients. It's a brilliant budgetary maneuver and not a moral issue at all - but it does take a Republican (and/or a mathematician) to spot the technique at work <G>

One day, you'll be as old as I. Your mathematical models will have long fallen into disfavor and all you'll have left - take it from one who knows - will be a large collection of toenail clippings and a surfeit of moral outrage. There is comfort, of a sort, in these golden years.

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blatham wrote:

Your mathematical models will have long fallen into disfavor and all you'll have left - take it from one who knows - will be a large collection of toenail clippings ... There is comfort, of a sort, in these golden years.

Yeap, especially, when you can earn some money from it:

Toenail clippings to become art

http://www.machinehead-software.co.uk/nigel_jones/nigel_pix/nigel_toenail_clippings_large.jpg

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georgeob1 wrote:

I read Blatham's link fron The Nation concerning Dr Hagar. I am not at all familiar with this person and have no particular opinion about him. Mireover I know nothing of his past relations and current discord with his former wife. Well, now you do.

What struck me the most was the breathless prose style in the article. It could have come straight out of some Victorian-era depiction of the vices of the lower orders, only this time the shoe is on the other foot. I'll confess that I am not a regular reader of The Nation, but I had assumed its prose would be a bit less juvenile. Writers like Hunter S. Thompson don't come around very often and you ought not to apply that sort of elevated standard to all others in the profession - or risk feeling those pangs of confusing and unclear disappointment such as your wife might mention to you in private moments.

The information and detail cited in the article was a particularly interesting foil for what was left out. (What, by the way is this "emergency contraception" that Dr Hagar so wrongfully opposes? Sounds a bit like a euphamisim. What exactly does it mean? ) You bring up my favorite, if poorly known, Greek philosopher here - Eupham - and I can tell you with clear certainty that he wouldn't mince words if he saw what you've written. The tone and content of the article and the manner in which his religion and supposed moralistic statements are presented are certainly consistent with his assertion that they are motivated by prejudice - that is prejudgement of a person, merely on the basis of one or two attributes. It is possible that the detail and impression conveyed by the article are a fair and well-balanced picture of the whole man, good and bad. However I am inclined to doubt it. We want to start now, after all the above, with sailors' inclinations?

Just arrived for a beautiful weekend here in San Francisco. This place is getting better and better , though more crowded. Up early tomorrow for a trip to the Alexander Valley and a reception with friends among the redwoods. My best to everyone - Blatham too. May your future be bountiful in the context of all those long-deceased Irish nuns' plans for you.

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blatham wrote:

One day, you'll be as old as I. Your mathematical models will have long fallen into disfavor and all you'll have left - take it from one who knows - will be a large collection of toenail clippings and a surfeit of moral outrage. There is comfort, of a sort, in these golden years.

Another fine entry for my collection of favored Blatham metaphors. Sentiment, fraternal sympathy, toenail clippings, and comfort in the golden years - all with a lyric (albeit, somewhat Canadian) twist. Where does he get them? awful opinions, but wonderful sinuous thought & image processes and great expression.

Dinner last night with #2 daughter & fiancee. She glows, and he is a pretty nice guy (but a bit liberal - I bit my tongue dutifully, as he explained the folly of war & tax cuts.). Off now to the Grove to celebrate the 90th birthday and wedding of a friend and campmate - he has decided to "make an honest woman" of his companion of 15 years, as he puts it.

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As to honest women...good, there really ought to be more of them.

Quote:

Today's judge-bashing firebrands often say that it isn't homosexuality per se that riles them, only the potential legalization of same-sex marriage by the courts. That's a sham. These people have been attacking gay people since well before Massachusetts judges took up the issue of marriage, Vermont legalized civil unions or Gavin Newsom was in grade school. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, characterizes the religious right's anti-gay campaign as a 30-year war, dating back to the late 1970's, when the Miss America runner-up Anita Bryant championed the overturning of an anti-discrimination law protecting gay men and lesbians in Dade County, Fla., and the Rev. Jerry Falwell's newly formed Moral Majority issued a "Declaration of War" against homosexuality. A quarter-century later these views remained so unreconstructed that Mr. Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson would go so far as to pin the 9/11 attacks in part on gay men and lesbians - a charge they later withdrew but that Mr. Robertson repositioned just two weeks ago. In response to a question from George Stephanopoulos, he said he now believes that activist judges are a more serious threat than Al Qaeda.

Their cronies are no different. As The Washington Post reported, Rick Scarborough, the Texas preacher and Tom DeLay acolyte whose "Patriot Pastor" network is a leading player in the judiciary battle, first became active in politics in 1992, when he helped oust a local high-school principal for the crime of presiding over an AIDS-awareness assembly. The American Family Association, whose leader, the Rev. Donald Wildmon, is a Scarborough ally, had been whipping up homophobia long before anyone suspected SpongeBob SquarePants of being a stalking horse (or at least a stalking sea sponge) for same-sex marriage. So-called research available on the Wildmon Web site for years - and still there as of last week - asserts that 17 percent of gay men "report eating and/or rubbing themselves with the feces of their partners" and 15 percent "report sex with animals."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/opinion/15rich.html

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Both Blatham and the author of the article from which he quoted ASSUME that the core of any opposition to activist judges or even contemporary issues concerning the legal status of homosexual "marriage" is some sort of irrational antagonism towards homosexuals. Neither considers seriously the potential existence or merits of other bases for these views, This is prejudice in its most elementary form. The equivalent behavior directed at homosexuals, blacks, or any other group "protected" under the doctrines of political cortrectitude (note that Christians are not so protected) would be instantly denounced as racisim, homophobia ior any of the other single word substitutes for rational thought they find so attractive.

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georgeob1 wrote:

Both Blatham and the author of the article from which he quoted ASSUME that the core of any opposition to activist judges or even contemporary issues concerning the legal status of homosexual "marriage" is some sort of irrational antagonism towards homosexuals.

That is not an assumption, it is a fact.

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If it is a fact, as you say, then perhaps you can offer some proof that there are no other factors involved which may motivate at least some of those you oppose.

Your assertion alone isn't very convincing.

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georgeob1 wrote:

Both Blatham and the author of the article from which he quoted ASSUME that the core of any opposition to activist judges or even contemporary issues concerning the legal status of homosexual "marriage" is some sort of irrational antagonism towards homosexuals. Neither considers seriously the potential existence or merits of other bases for these views, This is prejudice in its most elementary form. The equivalent behavior directed at homosexuals, blacks, or any other group "protected" under the doctrines of political cortrectitude (note that Christians are not so protected) would be instantly denounced as racisim, homophobia ior any of the other single word substitutes for rational thought they find so attractive.

Pay attention. You likely don't want to be saying things in public such that others will think you a fool.

Point 1 - an idea or value originating in a religious community is neither necessarily good nor bad, prudent nor imprudent, helpful nor hurtful. It is merely one idea or value in competition with other ideas or values.

Therefore: religious ideas and values get NO SPECIAL STATUS OR PASS AS BEING WISE OR TRUE and they DESERVE NO SPECIAL DISAPPROBATION FOR BEING SILLY OR FALSE.

Point 2 - A group of people belonging to a church or religious community are like any other group of people within the greater community. They are like Doctors Without Borders or The Rotary or Plumbers' Local 27 or The Dallas Women's Etiquette Enhancement Collective or the Smith family down the street or the Green Party or American Wiccans For Peace. THEY ARE NOT SOMEHOW MORE SPECIAL EITHER INTELLECTUALLY OR MORALLY OR POLITICALLY THAN ANY OTHER GROUP. THEY ARE NOT SOMEHOW LESS SPECIAL INTELLECTUALLY OR MORALLY OR POLITICALLY THAN ANY OTHER GROUP.

Therefore: though a religious community might wish or seek to demand adherence to its ideas and values by those other groups and individuals outside of its own members, it has no more right to demand this - intellectually, morally, or politically - than any other internal community would have such a right to demand that of the religious community's members

Point 3 - to attack, as I and others do, a claim that The Church of High Tuesday or PipeFitters Local 23 has some special right or status to bestow moral propriety upon the others outside of their group and then use that as a justification for community-wide laws disallowing or penalizing what they deem improper IS NOT TO ATTACK THAT RELIGION AND IT IS MOST CERTAINLY NOT TO LIMIT ITS RIGHTS IN THE COMMUNITY. IT IS TO ATTACK SPECIAL STATUS FOR ANY RELIGION OR GROUP WHICH WOULD PROCEED TO LIMIT OTHERS' RIGHTS.

Therefore: my position is not anti-religious at all. You stupid ninny. It is precisely the position held by the framers of your constitution who wished liberty for all faiths and value systems through disallowing the special status of a single one.

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Blatham: These are three valid points. But I don't see how they relate to George's assertion about yours and the author's narrowmindedness, even assuming that his assertion was false on both accounts.

-- an adherent to constitutional originalism, heretic to the doctrine that gay marriage is a constitutional right, and atheist.

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georgeob, in a fit of mistemper, extruded the following

Quote:

Neither [bblatham or article author] considers seriously the potential existence or merits of other bases for these views, This is prejudice in its most elementary form. The equivalent behavior directed at homosexuals, blacks, or any other group "protected" under the doctrines of political cortrectitude (note that Christians are not so protected) would be instantly denounced as racisim, homophobia ior any of the other single word substitutes for rational thought they find so attractive.

It was this to which I responded. george keeps asserting that if I castigate those religious groups which are active in the anti-gay or anti-gay marriage movement I must therefore be prejudiced against Christianity AND that any such castigation MUST BE instances of anti-Christian prejudice.

Of course, many other religious communities also oppose gay behavior and/or gay marriage, in the US and outside, so he really ought to broaden the accusation to 'blatham is anti-Religion'.

But then it is also the case that many Christian groups do NOT hold with george's community in its opposition to gay behavior and/or gay marriage (and we'll note that many catholics do not hold with these particular ideas either), and as I'm not castigating those other Christians, then george's claim proves doubly wrong.

And I just won't let him get away with nailing himself to the cross here and playing religious victim, and I won't let him get away with consciously or unconsciously demanding special status to his community simply on the basis that it is a church community.

He ends up, if he's honest, with the limited and quite unthreatening claim that 'blatham opposes some Christians and some non-Christians on the issue of gay behavior and gay marriage because he does not accept the reasons given as anything near adequate to compel the broad community to create or enforce legistlation which places gay people in a 2nd class category of citizen.

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Ya know...one tries many routes into george's noggin on this point. Dismal failure on each so far. I'm like a deep miner whose helmet light went out days ago and whose ankles are now so fukking battered that even they don't recognize each other. But what else to do but onward?

Religious Correctness...it has a ring to it. You'll notice, if you're attentive, the ring has a wavelength precisely equal to the Liberty Bell. That's not a coincidence.

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Blatham writes

Quote:

It was this to which I responded. george keeps asserting that if I castigate those religious groups which are active in the anti-gay or anti-gay marriage movement I must therefore be prejudiced against Christianity AND that any such castigation MUST BE instances of anti-Christian prejudice.

Well, if some castigate gay groups pushing to change a definition of marriage that has endured for millenia and who refuse to offer or accept any compromise to that change, don't you say that any such castigation or objection MUST BE instances of homophobia or anti-gay prejudice?

Perhaps you can elaborate on whatever distinction you might see between these two instances?

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Was it something I said?

Here, for the record, is the key segment of the piece quoted by Blatham and to which I referred;

Quote:

Today's judge-bashing firebrands often say that it isn't homosexuality per se that riles them, only the potential legalization of same-sex marriage by the courts. That's a sham. These people have been attacking gay people since well before Massachusetts judges took up the issue of marriage, Vermont legalized civil unions or Gavin Newsom was in grade school. ......

Perhaps the issue hangs on just what you suppose constitutes the universe of "Today's judge-bashing firebrands". I suspect Blatham justifies all this to himself with an image in mind of redneck, unlettered, intolerant, religious fundamentalists, and perhaps the most hypocritical of them at that. However my belief is that the universe of people who resent the judicial activism of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and who also resist elements of the various Homosexual special rights group's political agendas includes many people, indeed a majority, who do not at all fit this stereotype. I have no doubt that there are some who do fit it, but painting all with that brush is intolerance and prejudice in its most elementary form.

Blatham makes the point that the ideas of religiously motivated people carry no special privilege in civil matters, merely because of that motivation. Their ideas are no more worthy of public consideration than others. While I agree with that proposition, I go much further -- It is impossible to truly know what motivates the thoughts, beliefs and political views of other people, and any judgement based on the presumption that one can know them and rank the value or merit of their ideas based on what one supposes motivates them is itself false and contrary to the fundamental principles of our constitution.

In particular the political ideas of people who appear to be motivated by religious considerations cannot be dismissed on that basis. The ideas as they relate to civil governance and order must be evaluated on their own merits, in accordance with constituted process. Much of the "judge-bashing" to which Blatham refers appears to be motivated by concerns about judicial activism - usurpation of the perogatives of legislatures (state and federal) by the courts. No doubt in some cases this is just a mask for religious prejudice -- but to insist that all such opposition is so motivated and therefore unworthy of consideration is itself just as intolerant and prejudicial as are the actions of the firebrands (real or imagined) who fir the stereotype. Worse, it is a denial of the basic rights of those so prejudged.

It isn't necessary to corrupt the institutions of matrimony and conventional families to enable homosexual couples to form lasting civil unions sanctioned or recorded by government. In the same sense it wasn't necessary to make those who oppose abortion on moral grounds become complicit in it through sweeping judicial actions that removed most of government's ability to make distinctions regarding it in the many social medical, educational, and even child welfare processes it follows --- all to make abortion available in those "few, rare" occasions which its defenders describe. In both cases the ability of the people to moderate the actions of government on these sensitive matters was eliminated by judicial excesses, which merely substituted a new form of intolerance for an old one.

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Another failure. I retire the effort.

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The anti-Christian argument is hogwash. I am a lesbian and a practicing Catholic.

Opposition to gay rights is fueled by fear and bigotry. Take away the hate and the opposotion to bestowing gays civil rights would virtually vanish.

I imagine that opponents

--------------------------------------------
So the fearful georgeob1 is not content to deny rights to gays, he also wants to roll back women's rights. Amazing.

Jeneane Garafolo has a theory that the more a guy is
adamant about opposing abortion and gay rights, the kinkier he is in his "private moments." Examples of this phenomenom have played out time and time again.

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In all due respect Chrissee, I think it is the straw man conclusions such as you just drew that keeps the war going. The all or nothing mindset is its own form of intolerance.

The following essay is about another chapter in the same war. The encouraging thing is that in this version, the judge finally saw the need for tolerance from both sides. We can only hope that trend continues.

5/23/05 US News & World Report
Sex for Dummies
by John Leo

When covering a dispute over sex education in public schools, many reporters know what to do. Just type that the fundamentalist yahoos are at it again. For all we know, editors have installed a special timesaving key on newsroom computers so that the usual sex-ed news article pops out in 15 seconds or less. A classic example is the front-page Washington Post piece for Saturday, May 7, [Link] (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601648.html) dealing with a new pilot program in Montgomery County, Md. The reporters managed to associate the protests with national right-wing Christian politics, the anti-evolution crusade, and Dorothy's discovery in the Wizard of Oz that she wasn't in Kansas anymore. (For a deft takedown of the bias in this piece, go to oxblog.com and scroll down to the May 8 analysis "More Ignorant Christian Fundamentalists?")

The school system withdrew the curriculum, for the current school term at least, after a federal judge, Alexander Williams Jr., issued a 10-day restraining order on two First Amendment grounds. Those grounds were viewpoint discrimination (the curriculum teaches "the moral rightness of the homosexual lifestyle" to the exclusion of other perspectives, the judge said) and state entanglement in religion. The curriculum depicts the churches that endorse homosexuality as theologically sound, while singling out Baptists and fundamentalists for scorn. Churches differ, the curriculum says, but all agree that Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. Why the state should involve itself in telling us which religions are wrong and what Jesus said or didn't say is obscure.

Resistance to anything-goes sexual preaching in the schools is routinely depicted as a phenomenon of conservative Christians, but in an analysis of health textbooks, Gilbert Sewall of the American Textbook Council says that the sexual assumptions of the aggressive "health lobby" offend lots of Americans of all faiths and none. Sewall wants sex education to find a middle ground between abstinence-only programs and the muscular "health lobby."

Even apart from church-state entanglement, the Montgomery curriculum is out of line in dismissing moral claims as myths. On what basis can a state institution tell parents and children that their morality is faulty? In dealing with homosexuality, the job of the school is to teach tolerance, not to disparage traditional views. Gays are our neighbors and should be treated with respect. Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, one of two local groups opposing the curriculum, makes this point clearly. "Teaching respect for persons with same-sex attraction is appropriate and right," the group says. "But demanding affirmation of a homosexual orientation and behavior goes beyond the ethic of tolerance." The curriculum does in fact teach approval of homosexuality. Understandably, gays want that approval, but it can't be imposed by state schools.

Indoctrination. Much of the most contested material is tucked away in the teachers' resources guide. Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum complains that health teachers did not mention or show the teachers' materials at parent meetings. "When asked about them," the group said, "the standard answer was they were 'for the teachers only to use and not of interest to the parents.'"

There's a reason why so many sex-ed specialists slide into indoctrination almost without noticing what they are doing. The programs are often prepared with heavy input from Planned Parenthood, gay groups, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, all of which operate on assumptions that much of the public does not share. One assumption is that sex is simply a smorgasbord of choice, and it doesn't really make any difference whom you have sex with or how, as long as you have orgasms and use contraceptives. "Oral, anal, and vaginal sex" all require condoms, says an earnest young woman in a video (since withdrawn from the curriculum) that demonstrates the proper way to place a condom on a cucumber. Elsewhere, the curriculum says, "Sex play with friends of the same gender is not uncommon during early adolescence." Whatever.

The strangest aspect of the Montgomery curriculum is the insistence that students should ponder their gender identity. In plain English, this means boys should examine whether they really want to be boys, and girls should wonder if they should be girls. This is a current obsession in the world of sex ed, apparently inserted here to accommodate transvestites and transsexuals.

The good news is that local parents and their friends were able to make a solid case, take it to a reasonable judge, and get the county to back down, at least for now. It's a model of how dissenters in other communities should act.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/050523/23john.htm

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Quote:

Well, if some castigate gay groups pushing to change a definition of marriage that has endured for millenia and who refuse to offer or accept any compromise to that change, don't you say that any such castigation or objection MUST BE instances of homophobia or anti-gay prejudice?

"Endured for millenia"...it's a grand basis for establishing fairness and justice. Slavery and racism is another one, enduring for millenia. Killing jews...a good old tradition. Women as second class citizen..boy, that reaches back into the glorious past.

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Don't forget female infanticide, female childhood genital mutilation, state-sanctioned execution as public entertainment, the burning of "witches"--why the mind boggles at the thought of all the good, clean, wholesome fun that those nasty librul puritans are denying to our good, clean, decent christians.

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Ah I see. Because there has been slavery and racism and anti-Semitism, you can justify criticism of Christians and see no prejudice or discrimination, but gays are untouchable because those other things exist? You don't see your comment as a substantial straw man and/or a huge double standard?

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The anti-gay marriage movement IS homophobic

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