Laura Bush didn't approve of the use of this video clip (which comes from a 2010 interview with Larry King) and she's voiced her objection to it:
Who knows what she secretly thinks, but officially, she's saying you shouldn't have used me without asking. Of course, the group that made the ad — the Respect for Marriage Coalition — has the right to appropriate this clip and use it in their political message. Imagine how hard it would be to make political ads if you couldn't use clips like this. I suspect that secretly she's happy to influence opinion this way — especially as she's able to hold herself at some distance from politics. She clearly likes to seem modest and completely unpushy, as you can see in the longer clip from the Larry King show:
What a terrible shame that the Republican Party didn't accommodate itself to this idea at least 10 years ago. Really, it's a shame they didn't buy in even earlier, 18 years ago, when Andrew Sullivan's "Virtually Normal" came out. At the time, the left-liberals I knew were antagonistic to the institution of marriage and viewed Sullivan's contribution as an unwelcome conservative intrusion on the gay rights movement, which they saw as belonging within a left-wing ideology that transcended traditional institutions. Back in the 90s, I sat through serious, lawyerly presentations aimed at stopping the marriage equality proponents from changing the focus of the movement. There was a wonderful opportunity then for conservatives to embrace the issue, and they missed it.
The Republican Party saw the advantage elsewhere, and now they're stuck with the result.
UPDATE: The Respect for Marriage Coalition withdraws the ad.
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291 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 291 of 291ST said: "Gay marriage affects so few people that this issue is obviously a farce being used against the electorate."
I am in my mid-20s and know many people my age who are fiscally and/or religiously conservative, but voted Obama based on the fact that they have gay friends and wouldn't be a "real friend" if they voted GOP (and wouldn't vote for Gary Johnson either...). Voting for their gay friends' interests was indeed more important (when I confronted each of these friends) than the impending fiscal mountain of doom.
Ann Althouse said...
Yeah, it would have been fantastic if the GOP had figured out how to be on the right side of history two decades ago. Same could be said of you, couldn't it? Oh, sorry, you remain unaware of that point.
I was always on the right side of ssm history!
Hooray for me! I've been for it since I first heard about. I was around lefties who rejected it, and later, righties who rejected it.
I remember the Friend of Angelo telling us we were on the wrong side of history opposing the spread of Communism in Africa.
Before declaring who's on what side, better make sure the history is written, first.
ed... Did they really stay home?
did you read the rest of my post? I think the dems have figured, county by county, to cheat.
X to what Bagoh said at 5:18.
Actually, X to pretty much all of what Bagoh's comments!
Personally I'm amused by the phrase "right side of history". As if tolerance of sexual differences only ever waxed, and never waned.
phx: I absolutely don't expect anything of the designated Bad Guys. Do what thou wilt!
Yet you should have expected it, in the "predict" sense of "expect".
Go play identity politics.
I'm not interested in them much myself.
Fine. Just maintain your disinterest when the "wrong" groups join the game. None of that "white supremacist" shit, okay?
Althouse, you're making the same mistake you made with feminism.
It's the vanity of intellect. The intellectual is always bamboozled by her ego over her intellect.
You've imagined that in your short time upon this earth, your lovely intellect trumps centuries of human experience.
You've fooled yourself again.
Palladian: It's weird how so-called small government conservatives squeal for the State to protect their "sacred institution" of marriage.
What's so weird about it? "Small government" doesn't mean "no government", and conservatives will differ on what they believe the purview of government to be. Sure, "conservatives" who are really more libertarian/neo-liberal types might want guv out of the marriage business; more "traditional" or social conservatives, who think in terms of "nation" and "culture" that would be alien to the libertarian-leaning, would think a national government should lay down the accepted forms of so fundamental a social institution as marriage.
I don't have any problem, for example, with the government saying "no polygamy will be allowed in this country", just as I have no problem with the national government providing for defense. You can't infer from the former that I favor "big gov" anymore than you can infer it from the latter.
AprilApple said...
Did they really stay home?
did you read the rest of my post? I think the dems have figured, county by county, to cheat.
I did, but anytime I can bring to light another new high in low from the last "election", I feel obliged to do so.
One day there will be that smoking gun - you may be onto it.
Sorry if you feel it was at your expense.
Revenant: Personally I'm amused by the phrase "right side of history". As if tolerance of sexual differences only ever waxed, and never waned.
The Whig delusion never dies, does it?
"At the time, Really, it's a shame they didn't buy in even earlier, 18 years ago, when Andrew Sullivan's "Virtually Normal" came out. At the time, the left-liberals I knew were antagonistic to the institution of marriage and viewed Sullivan's contribution as an unwelcome conservative intrusion on the gay rights movement, which they saw as belonging within a left-wing ideology that transcended traditional institutions. Back in the 90s, I sat through serious, lawyerly presentations aimed at stopping the marriage equality proponents from changing the focus of the movement. and viewed Sullivan's contribution as an unwelcome conservative intrusion on the gay rights movement, which they saw as belonging within a left-wing ideology that transcended traditional institutions."
Boom! Your comment says it all. "the left-liberals I knew were antagonistic to the institution of marriage..." They haven't changed. Pushing for SSM is a tactic to destroy marriage- and always has been. Those same left-liberals are now pushing SSM. Do you really think they have changed their mind on the institution of marriage? Not a bit.
Progressives have always been agahast at the boring institution of marriage, the mainstay of the middle class, the oppressive institution that holds women back, etc. and so on and so forth. Any tactic that weakens it is ultimately a tactic the "progressives" will rally behind. It has nothing to do with marriage equality or any of that other bullshit.
Immediately after the full scale legalization will come the push for legalized polyamory and group marriages of any kind- and western civilization's decline will be rapidly accelerated. You're young enough that you'll probably live to see it, and wonder- "How did this happen?"
A society that refused to defend itself becomes something else.
Change for the sake of change does not usually mean good things for a society writ large.
Read carefully your own words, and realize what they say.
"Small government" doesn't mean "no government", and conservatives will differ on what they believe the purview of government to be.
In theory, I suppose, but can you actually describe a national government with a purview narrow enough to qualify as "small" but broad enough to cover administration and management of family social structures?
The local self-described small-government conservatives here seem awfully fond of insisting the government absolutely MUST be involved in marriage in order to ensure the production of the next generation of citizens -- as though humans hadn't been successfully solving THAT particular problem without government help for hundreds of thousands of years.
Voting for their gay friends' interests was indeed more important (when I confronted each of these friends) than the impending fiscal mountain of doom.
Precisely what I would expect from kids fresh out of two decades of indoctrination in the discrimination and bigotry racket funded by billions of dollars in taxpayer funds and administered the Diversity hires.
Dante asked...
Fr. Fox:
Do you think marriage is a uniquely Christian value? I don't. It's popped up all over the world as a cornerstone of society.
While I agree religions have been the vessels that have carried forward some social institutions, some good ones, I don't see marriage as a uniquely Christian value, and I don't think Christianity "owns" marriage.
The state owns it. Marriage is very important to the state, as it is the institution that creates the next generation.
To respond: no, marriage is certainly not a particularly Christian thing. It takes on particular meaning for Christians, but it's a universal institution, arising out of human nature itself.
So I wouldn't agree that the "state owns it," because I don't believe the state owns me or you or any other citizens. It is a social institution; while I am sympathetic to the suggestion that it become a purely private institution, I don't see how that can work: eventually, disputes over property or parentage would become questions for legislators or courts.
Palladian,
Well I for one agree. I'm not sure who asked government to get into the marriage-defining business, but its there now, and this is the deck of cards with which we have to play.
We can't just wish it away, and I can't see a practical way to put that genie back in the bottle.
Reverend Fox, I like your ideas and agree with everything you say except when you seem to low rate other Christians. I am Presbyterian but I have Catholics in my family. They are more fundamentalist than most Protestants. For example they don't drink and don't allow their children to watch regular TV. They watch that Catholic cable channel from Birmingham Alabama. I feel in communion with the universal catholic church. I don't think the Pope is the anti-Christ. Usually, I think he is a good guy.
I don't really care about SSM.
Hey here's a fun exercise, let's redefine personhood to include primates. What could it hurt? (Not a made up notion; there are people advocating that.)
So says the doofus who would redefine personhood to include zygotes and stem cells. (Not a made up notion; there are people advocating that.)
The Godfather said...
Father Martin Fox started a whole big discussion about how essential the Roman Catholic Church is, and gave as an example that Luther needed the RC to rebel against. The fact is, Father Martin, your denomination is better off because of the reforms that it adopted in response to the Protestant Reformation, and has continued to adopt over the centuries, just as we Protestants are better off because of the challenges we have to meet from your denomination and from the various orthodox denominations.
Actually, I was making a different point, but I won't pursue it unless someone wants to pick up that thread again.
But to your point--you are correct the Catholic Church benefited from reform which was provoked by that crisis. And while you didn't necessarily make this point, I would say that it is hard to imagine how history would have developed these last 500 years, had the Catholic hierarchy and Luther been able to work things out. If you think about it, we might be living in a very different world.
For better or for worse.
It takes on particular meaning for Christians, but it's a universal institution, arising out of human nature itself.
Thanks for the honest response. I, on the other hand, view it as one of grand compromises between the sexes and on in which the state has a very big interest, to raise the next generation. But, I mostly like the state out of any monkey-business, and would gladly trade all the other rackets and drop the marriage subsidies.
So I wouldn't agree that the "state owns it," because I don't believe the state owns me or you or any other citizens. It is a social institution;
At least, it was until a fascist going by the name of "Mussolini" gave that institution a state.
And let's not kid ourselves (or lull others) into believing that the papacy - and by extension, its institution - wasn't a political project long before that. It was intimately wound up with sanctioning the affairs of state across Europe for more than a millenium. In this way, it acted as an arbiter and condoner of the monarch-du-jour.
You pretend not to want it both ways, but you really do. And your "institution" - it always did.
The same sex marriage malignancy meme is also starting to infest the parliament in Australia.
Although I believe that marriage is a construct by the church, temple and mosque, I think the interest of the state in this activity is obviously and rightly so.
I agree that SSM should not be codified into law and so given the same stature as marriage between a man and a woman for the simple but fundamental reason that the continuance of human civilization depends on the procreative power of hetero-unions. You can see that in dogs society too. You need a she and a he dog for the continuance of their species.
On equal righst issue. Equating the civil rights issue of interracial marriage with SSM issue is wrong, they are not analogous. Gay and lesbian have the same rights as heterosexuals. Lesbian can marry a man and a gay man can marry a woman.
My other point is that it is self-evident that SSM is not really a marriage. How can there be a physical marriage or a union between gay men with same convex genitalia and lesbians with same concave genitalia? They just won’t fit snugly and they don’t look good together. But maybe that’s just me.
Revenant: In theory, I suppose, but can you actually describe a national government with a purview narrow enough to qualify as "small" but broad enough to cover administration and management of family social structures?
What, do you think every nation in history that prohibited polygamy and didn't have gay marriage - or laid down how many wives you could take, or didn't kept its nose out of inheritance issues entirely - was therefore a metastasized Leviathan? I guess you could argue that, but then you would have to say no state that regulated the forms of marriage in any way qualified as a "small government" country. Which kind of implies that the small government you seek is a utopian ideal that we're never gonna see in the real world.
...as though humans hadn't been successfully solving THAT particular problem without government help for hundreds of thousands of years.
Really? You think laws governing marriage are something new in human societies? Sheesh, marriage and inheritance are what even the smallest and most minimally organized societies get down to first, when they get down to organizing at all.
My serious question here - is where I can find this supposedly iron-clad proof that "marriage" always and forever existed as some kind of institution that excluded gays and had a precise, unalterable definition as such from the beginning of time.
My guess is that it didn't.
I keep hearing the reactionaries use words like "bedrock" and "institution", as if they are code for something. It's like the signal to propaganda and unalterable, unquestionable dogma; concepts that bear only a slight, if even noticeable resemblance to the actual truth, let alone a respectable search for it.
Ken in NC said:
Reverend Fox, I like your ideas and agree with everything you say except when you seem to low rate other Christians. I am Presbyterian but I have Catholics in my family. They are more fundamentalist than most Protestants. For example they don't drink and don't allow their children to watch regular TV. They watch that Catholic cable channel from Birmingham Alabama. I feel in communion with the universal catholic church. I don't think the Pope is the anti-Christ. Usually, I think he is a good guy.
Thanks for that.
I don't think I'm "low rating" other Christians.
But when we have folks--not just Freder--who argue, like him, that a Christianity that endorses redefining marriage is just as valid as Christianity that abhors it...
Well, then, it becomes necessary, I think, to remind everyone that Christianity is not a matter of personal theology and self-definition.
Yet doesn't this identify a fundamental problem with Protestant Christianity? When someone like Freder, operating in the context of Protestantism, says Christianity can be pro-gay-marriage, the Catholic (and Orthodox) answer to that is clear and founded on sound premises.
But, how does Protestantism really hold the line against that?
I want them to; but I think the very nature of Protestant theology creates a vulnerability there.
That's why I responded as I did. I don't know how a Protestant holds the line on that.
Now that Ritmo is here, the stupidity can shift into high gear.
The "original, deep" thinker who is really just a PC clone kid will now plunge the discussion into utter jibberish.
And, before you get confused when he starts jibbering about how much he loves blacks, let me assure you that he doesn't know any.
Let the idiocy commence! In this corner, the utterly stupid pale face white boy, Ritmo the Retard! He knows big words, too!
O Ritmo Segundo said...
So I wouldn't agree that the "state owns it," because I don't believe the state owns me or you or any other citizens. It is a social institution;
At least, it was until a fascist going by the name of "Mussolini" gave that institution a state.
Somebody tell Ritmo Mussolini did the same things Lenin did.
State Capitalism, baby. Only the nature of the overseas empire was different.
My serious question here - is where I can find this supposedly iron-clad proof that "marriage" always and forever existed as some kind of institution that excluded gays and had a precise, unalterable definition as such from the beginning of time.
My guess is that it didn't.
No, the Romans and the Attic Greeks permitted it.
Of course they're gone now.
Thomas, have you considered confessing to the Father your sin of attempting to act out your strong homosexual attraction to me? Clearly your obsession is getting out of control, even for someone who's as out of control as you are.
Edutcher:
No, the Romans and the Attic Greeks permitted it.
Of course they're gone now.
Do I understand you to say, here, that the Romans and Greeks allowed same sex marriage?
Its pretty well established they weren't too bothered by same-sex behavior. But I wasn't aware that in their societies, marriage was solemnized or contracted between people of the same sex.
Can you point me to a source on that?
I'm surprised the advocates of redefining marriage haven't made more of that.
the Romans and the Attic Greeks permitted it.
Of course they're gone now.
They are not. There are still residents of a city called "Rome" and there are still Greeks who reside in the region of their country called "Attica".
And most importantly, their ideas of government survive intact, and the ensuing capacity for civilization thrives - with us. Because we emulated them.
But perhaps that bothers you.
I'm surprised the advocates of redefining marriage haven't made more of that.
I'm sure they've made use of what they can find (normalization) and would make more use of examples of "solemnization" if they could. Maybe those latter examples didn't exist.
But neither did marriage as a basis for much other than procreation, political alliance and wealth transfer. Are those the only bases you wish to condone? What of marriages between infertile octogenarians or the otherwise sterile?
I'm sensing some inconsistency that you'd be brushing up against with this.
Will married gays be exposed to social criticism for adultery?
We know the answer is no.
Gay unions are loving arrangements, I'm sure, but they are not marriages.
Shorter Ed (and others?):
If civilization means not excluding gays from our institutions or castigating them then count me out!
None of that "white supremacist" shit, okay?
I'm far from a white supremacist. They are among the ultimate players in identity politics! I'm always happy to say how ridiculous I think they are.
Just because I don't play identity politics doesn't mean I'm not going to laugh my head off at those who do when I choose. Of course. They're ridiculous.
So says the doofus who would redefine personhood to include zygotes and stem cells. (Not a made up notion; there are people advocating that.)
Yowsa. I think that was a lead right.
Pow.
I'm far from a white supremacist. They are among the ultimate players in identity politics! I'm always happy to say how ridiculous I think they are.
No doubt. And certain people here who shall remain nameless (although with the intials "ST") are the ultimate practitioners of it.
It's pretty hilarious to see anyone north of the Mason-Dixon line proclaim, in 2013:
All you're saying, in your usual fucking idiot fashion phx, is that lower and middle class whites should just give up and let themselves be run over.
(Expletive excerpted).
And yet, that just happened. A mere few hours ago.
Who says that evolution is untrue. A social fossil was just unearthed and proclaimed to the world, as if it was waking from a state of frozen animation, that it believed it was walking a world that no longer exists. It even urged onlookers to agree with its worn-out and useless understandings.
Incredible!
It's like a caveman being unfrozen in someone's backyard and screaming in agony and confusion at the civilization that now surrounds it. Quite a sight.
Lot of people feel victimized.
I should have said, "additional expletive excerpted". I can now see that the reptilian limbic system I quoted was so full of rage and profanity that it wasn't possible to repeat his kernel of an actual thought without letting slide his irresistible urge for a blue streak.
Privileged people gonna feel privileged.
Phx:
Yep, I'm against treating human beings as garbage, whether they are gay or straight.
Of course, one of the most convenient way to do that is simply to redefine them out of our moral concern: Roe v. Wade.
Since Roe v. Wade said the Court couldn't determine if an unborn child is a "person" under law, then it's up to Congress.
Of course, it's easy for the born to say, who gives a damn, throw those worthless things in the garbage.
But then, I'm not a compassionate, enlightened person like Ritmo. I think unborn babies deserve better than being deemed garbage. Or used for medical experiments.
Same-sex marriage is also a big deal in France right now, and religious leaders there are weighing in on it. Gilles Bernheim, Chief Rabbi of France, in particular, has taken a strong stand against it:
"In an essay published last October, Bernheim argued that plans to legalize gay marriage are being made for 'the exclusive profit of a tiny minority' and are often supported because of political correctness.
In 'Gay Marriage, Parenthood and Adoption: What We Often Forget To Say,' Bernheim also wrote that homosexual rights groups 'will use gay marriage as a Trojan Horse' in a wider campaign to 'deny sexual identity and erase sexual differences' and 'undermine the heterosexual fundamentals of our society.' "
He gets it.
Yep, I'm against treating human beings as garbage, whether they are gay or straight.
Good father, I'm with you on that.
Fr Martin Fox said...
Edutcher:
No, the Romans and the Attic Greeks permitted it.
Of course they're gone now.
Do I understand you to say, here, that the Romans and Greeks allowed same sex marriage?
Its pretty well established they weren't too bothered by same-sex behavior. But I wasn't aware that in their societies, marriage was solemnized or contracted between people of the same sex.
Can you point me to a source on that?
Padre, some of my understanding was anecdotal, coming from a long education in the classics (4 years of Latin).
Here is one document, from Yale which is quite specific.
This website has that document, as well as others.
See the 3rd section, particularly documents 1, 5, and 6.
O Ritmo Segundo said...
the Romans and the Attic Greeks permitted it.
Of course they're gone now.
They are not. There are still residents of a city called "Rome" and there are still Greeks who reside in the region of their country called "Attica".
And most importantly, their ideas of government survive intact, and the ensuing capacity for civilization thrives - with us. Because we emulated them.
When Ritmo is stuck, he feels obliged to get cute.
The Roman Empire and the civilization of the Athenian city-state are long gone.
We've tried to emulate the best of Rome and the Greeks in the Constitution, but Ritmo's wet dream in Washington is doing his best to destroy it, so their ideas are being destroyed, not surviving intact.
And, last I looked, civilization is in pretty rocky shape. Particularly in Chicago.
And let's not kid ourselves (or lull others) into believing that the papacy - and by extension, its institution - wasn't a political project long before that
This is a classic lefty move. Conflating the papacy with the institution, and the institution with what the Church really means. The Church is run by humans and has been for 2 thousand years. Because prior popes and Church hierarchies did bad things doesn't make the Church in and of itself the same.
Since we're cueing up acceptance of polyandry/polygamy,
Where does the Professor stand on those, has she already climbed aboard?
I'm interested in hearing her reasoning.
But then, I'm not a compassionate, enlightened person like Ritmo. I think unborn babies deserve better than being deemed garbage. Or used for medical experiments.
What you're really upset about is that priests (and before them, shamans) long ago lost the esteem that came from being trusted to effectively treat illness, in favor of the physicians who could. Perhaps this might have had something to do with their courage to face up to something known as "science". (N.B. a fear of science is not a good thing coming from a rep of the clique that cast out Galileo. Just some advice).
Seriously, you really don't know a darn thing about biology, do you?
You must feel really resent the fact that for all the sacrifice of the flesh and whatever else, it's the guys who went to medical school, who could understand science, who don't perform exorcisms, that actually get to make all the advances when it comes to treating cancer, disease in general, or even mental illness. And all the esteem and recognition for it, too.
What service are you doing the world by promoting (not for the first time, historically speaking) massive ignorance and ridicule against all they can teach us and all the good that they can do and regularly carry out?
You are no social missionary of any sort when you do this.
BTW - Inga loves the idea of not agitating the muslims by throwing people in jail, what does she think that acceptance of this will do?
Just another reason The Great Satan has to go.
France will be interesting, their muslim population is bigger than ours.
This is a classic lefty move. Conflating the papacy with the institution, and the institution with what the Church really means. The Church is run by humans and has been for 2 thousand years. Because prior popes and Church hierarchies did bad things doesn't make the Church in and of itself the same.
This is a classic desperate move. And one expected of the righty attempting it. Blaming the ills of a concrete entity and peoples with one too abstract to take blame for anything, assuming that separation can even be made.
Current and recent popes have all had very severe shortcomings. The problem probably relates to the outsourcing of personal responsibility that unfortunately accompanies an obsession with easily - to the point of nearly automated ritual - "redeeming" "sin".
Edutcher:
Thanks for the citations, I appreciate it. I gave it a look. I read most of the Yale document, and some of the "Gay History and Literature" item.
The articles have a common problem; frequently they conflate the question of marriage and sexual intimacy. Evidence of same-sex behavior being practiced and documented, even tolerated, is not really evidence of such a thing as "same sex marriage."
The articles do claim evidence for the latter; however, my skepticism was heightened when I saw the Yale article leads off with citations from John Boswell's article about same-sex marriage in Medieval Europe. I recall quite a lot of discussion, and debunking, of Boswell's argument when he issued his book, but it's been awhile.
Here's what Wikipedia has on it. I'm not assuming Wikipedia has it all right; but it's useful to provide other links.
One of other things that leads me to think we're not getting a careful analysis is that it didn't seem to me that what the two articles I looked at pointed at as "gay marriage" was treated, by those societies, as essentially the same sort of marriage that the society recognized and sanctioned uniting men and women.
That's really what we're talking about in our day and age. The better analogy, I think, between some of what the articles pointed to, and current events, would be "civil unions," not a full-on expansion/redefinition of what marriage is.
So let's say I'm not convinced yet of cultural precedent for marriage understood as we're being asked to redefine marriage.
What, do you think every nation in history that prohibited polygamy and didn't have gay marriage - or laid down how many wives you could take, or didn't kept its nose out of inheritance issues entirely - was therefore a metastasized Leviathan?
I asked you to describe a "small government" that meddled in marriage. Shall I take your failure to do so as an inability to do so, or do you plan to eventually get around to answering my question?
Anyway, I award you two points for the attempt at a false dichotomy between "small government" and "metastasized Leviathan". Historically most governments were neither -- the people had essentially no rights to limit what the government could do to them, but most governments didn't bother doing much beyond what was necessary to protect the ruling class.
Our own government was fairly unusual in that it was founded on the principle that there was only a very limited set of things the government was allowed to do at all (and if you're curious, "award benefits to married couples" didn't make the cut). Tellingly, the US government didn't try banning polygamy at the national level until long after all the Founders were dead, and didn't start regularly awarding federal benefits to married couples until the progressive era of... big government.
Prior to that, it was rightly recognized as not being any of Washington's business what the fuck people did at home.
I sure hope that Fr Martin Fox will have the intellectual courage to answer my 8:55 post about the proper roles for science and its practitioners as regards priests, shamans, religious aides and others who might be in an easier position to confuse "cells" with "babies".
Ritmo:
Are you complaining because I won't talk to you?
Well, I am happy to spare you effort. I'm not really interested in conversing with you.
The Church is run by humans and has been for 2 thousand years. Because prior popes and Church hierarchies did bad things doesn't make the Church in and of itself the same.
Yet for some strange reason we're supposed to consider the *good* things it has done as proof of its goodness. :)
Look, if you want to play the "the Church is made of humans and humans are fallible" card that's fine. The problem arises because people play that card and then still try to claim that Church leaders and dogma should be deferred to on moral matters. If the church is to be held as having special insight into Good and Evil then the periodic acts of Evil perpetrated by it need a better explanation than "they're human, shit happens".
What a terrible shame that the Republican Party didn't accommodate itself to this idea at least 10 years ago.
What a terrible shame that the Professor doesn't realize all the assumptions she makes in this ill-thought-out and patronizing post.
If the Republican Party had embraced the gay marriage issue back then, does she believe that this would have won more gays to the GOP than losing conservatives who would have been alienated?
Does she believe that if the Democrats had then embraced the issue that gays would not have returned to the Democrats?
Both are counterfactuals, so it's impossible to say, but I'd argue she is wrong on both assumptions.
Or is she just short-circuiting all debate on gay marriage and declaring it the absolute moral good which Republicans ought embrace to avoid being evil bigots?
I don't really care about SSM.
But it cares about you. Read Harold at 7:26. Says it all.
"Prior to that, it was rightly recognized as not being any of Washington's business what the fuck people did at home."
It isn't about what the f*ck people did at home, but rather nine months later after the f*ck happened.
The child.
Sorry for the profanity. The government has an interest in a mother and father in their parental obligations. Being married to the father of my children, means I'm not constantly in family court fighting over visitation and child support. Being married also lowers the risk of my children and myself being in poverty, hence being more reliant on government for social support to raise them.
marriage public policy defined as one man/one women for the reasonable expectation a child may come from the relationship actually limits government intrusion running after dead beat dads and costs in social programs to over compensate for what is lacking in the home.
Oh right, in the name of moral relativism we shouldn't give a sh!t what was happening in the home, that's not government's business. Until the child ends up in front of judge in juvenile court.
it's not about just what the f*ck happens inside someone's home, it is about some public recognition.
Children's needs and rights deserve recognition, I have no problem acknowledge other forms of adult relationships that may not be heterosexual or in fact non-sexual/romantic. That acknowledgment doesn't stem from the same reasoning as marriage does.
We live in a modern day rule moral relativism.... it doesn't matter the evidence or relevance of the concerns. Children have no rights, and they have no money to pay off politicians to gain power like the special interests.
oh well...
"If the church is to be held as having special insight into Good and Evil then the periodic acts of Evil perpetrated by it need a better explanation than "they're human, shit happens"."
Dude.... Read the Book Genesis.
Well, I am happy to spare you effort. I'm not really interested in conversing with you.
I'm sure that sparing effort isn't all that difficult for you. Having a fact-based, evidence-based reasoned discussion is a lot harder than just casting about judgments and pronouncements, isn't it?
Anyway, it's sad to see that you lack the courage to admit to what you do or don't know about cells and babies. I was hoping you would at least have the courage of explaining your convictions, but apparently you think you're above having to do something so expected and responsible as that.
Padre, your skepticism regarding Wiki is very well taken.
One source which is, I suppose, really circumspect is Fellini's "Satyricon", in which there is a same sex ceremony.
Whether he was doing that for dramatic effect, but I recall a lot of critics(!) praising its realism, etc.
Make of that what you will.
I do know that part of the upper class dictum in Greece was that what a man did, and whom, when he was young was OK, but he was expected at some point to grow up, find a nice girl, settle down and raise a family and that homosexual relationships were accepted and in Sparta, it is unclear whether some of the mentoring relationships in the army were homosexual.
You probably know more than I.
It isn't about what the f*ck people did at home, but rather nine months later after the f*ck happened. The child.
The federal government didn't start meddling in how children were raised until the 20th century, either.
The government has an interest in a mother and father in their parental obligations.
Yes, so advocates of big government claim. The notion that politicians are better judges of a child's interest than the actual parents are has quite a few adherents these days.
Many parents and their children need to think there is something special about their family life. Those of you with IQ's 2 standard deviations above the mean probably can't relate to this as your childhood was awesome as was your parenting experiences. But many families have only this magic holding them together. This is the reason a parent will successfully raise a child that is high maintenance and this is the reason a child will respect a parent. Take away the nuclear family, and you are taking away all that many families have. What we perceive to be our sexual needs is an order of magnitude less important than this.
Renee makes some interesting points. I'm not necessarily won over but that's a comment that needs to be dealt with.
It does strike me that "moral relativism" is a distraction from the real problem. I'm not sure I could argue it but I think it will be seen to be misdiagnosis.
Dude.... Read the Book Genesis
You need to catch up on the thread. We already went over the "humans are flawed" angle.
Wow jhapp. A couple of serious arguments.
Take away the nuclear family, and you are taking away all that many families have.
Nobody is proposing that the nuclear family be taken away. Try a different straw man.
jhapp makes people sound like victims again though.
But many families have only this magic holding them together.
Is that really true? Should we encourage that dependency thinking?
Is it really a godly, christlike or humanistic thing to proclaim that "cells are babies", as a way of insulting someone, and then refusing to explain the rationale for your objectively erroneous and strangely anti-scientific utterance - despite putting yourself in a position of moral authority for doing so?
How is this a somehow more ethical or socially appropriate thing to do than merely asking for an explanation of why it should be done?
We can't even say natural family, without someone claiming homophobia. so yes, the nuclear family has been taken away.
You can have two gay parents, but you can't have two moms or two dads. It's about the identity of the biological parents, we each have a mother and a father their orientation whatever it maybe is not relevant.
We can't even say natural family
Well you CAN say it, it just makes you sound silly unless you're describing "a man, however many women he can get to have his kids, and their kids".
Describing a lifetime pairing of a monogamous man and woman as "natural" displays an ignorance of both history and human nature. Monogamy is anything but natural.
(which is one of many reasons why people really, really shouldn't use the word "natural" like it was a synonym for "good and desirable")
"You can have two gay parents, but you can't have two moms or two dads. It's about the identity of the biological parents, we each have a mother and a father their orientation whatever it maybe is not relevant."
And remember, according to at least one judge right now- 3 parents on a birth certificate! But don't worry, all is well...
I asked my uncles' gay parrot what he thought. He's a very good repeater. Especially of issues. As good as most other repeaters, maybe better, you have to coax it out of him at first, but get him going and he's all squawkitysquawksquak.
So we had a moment alone together, and it's my way in that situation to touch on a personal thing, and I go, "Don't you resent being culled from the flock like that? As something special and different, and curried favor to like that? Isn't it a bit obvious and offensive and somewhat uncomfortable?" And the parrot, Jim's his name, the parrot Jim goes,
"Nah. Open a box of Cheez-Its, will you? I love those things," in that parrot-y bird-voice they have.
Thank God, I've spent the past couple of hours playing music instead of paying attention to the babbling of Ritmo the Retard.
How stupid was he?
Sullivan isn't exactly an objective source on the subject of homosexuality. Might as well cite Karl Rove on the subject of campaign management.
Sullivan isn't exactly an objective source on the subject of homosexuality.
There's an "objective" source?
We're in Monte Python territory here!
"There was a wonderful opportunity then for conservatives to embrace the issue, and they missed it."
There was also the wonderful opportunity to add wheels to my grandmother and call her a wagon.
Though adding wheels to her, and calling her a wagon, still would not have actually made her a wagon.
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edutcher,
This thread is probably dead by now BUT I started to read that Yale article. It's interesting but, so far, I'm seeing a lot of special pleading based on over-reliance on myths and legends, and on inaccurate or outdated information.
Just one example: on p. 1438, footnote 50, the author mentions a depiction of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton (whom he calls Ikhnaton) with his "apparent co-regent Smenkhare". They're both nude, and Akhenaton is stroking *Smenkhare* under the chin. The author states: "Smenkhare is given titles of endearment that had been used previously for Ikhnaton's concubines and queen."
He's talking about Berlin stele 17813, showing two people wearing crowns reserved for kings. It had been assumed that the figures were two men, namely Akhenaton and a man who took the throne some time shortly after Akhenaton's death. This man's full royal name was Ankh-kheperu-Re Smen-kha-Re Djeser Kheperu, called Smenkhare by scholars for short, but called Ankh-kheperu-Re by Egyptians.
However, it turns out that a definite co-regent of Akhenaton had the same first name as Smenkhare, but was a different person entirely. This person's full name was Ankh-kheperu-Re Nefer Nereru-Aten. And this second co-regent was a woman, as shown by one inscription where she was called "effective for her husband", using the correct grammatical form for female gender. It's thought that this Ankh-kheperu-Re may have been a new name for Nefertiti after she was made co-regent somewhere between Akhenaton's 13th and 15th regnal years. It also now appears that she ruled as sole pharaoh under this new name for several years immediately after his death.
In sum, the person whom Akhenaton is shown touching intimately on this stele has a 50-50 chance of being the female Ankh-kheperu-re as the male one, by name alone. And since the pharaohs are elsewhere shown in such poses only with women, the chances are actually more than 50-50 that this Ankh-kheperu-Re is the female one, whether she turns out to have been Nefertit or not.
Bob Ellison (and ken in sc),
I'm not getting that from Fr. Martin's argument at all (and I'm as Protestant as they come.)
And now I come to Fr. Martin's 7:58pm comment where he says: "I think the very nature of Protestant theology creates a vulnerability there... I don't know how a Protestant holds the line on that."
Ouch! Fr. Martin, as a (still, for the time being, somehow holding on) member of the PCUSA, I'd say you've got the way better part of the argument there. How indeed...?
Rev,
"Unions don't represent the interests of lower and middle-income whites.
They represent the interests of union members."
All too often they don't even do that, but instead represent the interests of the union officials.
Kirk and Father Martin--if you gentlemen are still around--that 'holding the line' language jumped out at me too. As a former member of the largest and most liberal Lutheran body, I can attest that there is precious little in church doctrine and practices that hasn't been bent, broken or binned
in some church leaders' searches for acceptance and meaning within the tiny confines of the postmodern Western morally relative paradigm.
Revenant: I asked you to describe a "small government" that meddled in marriage. Shall I take your failure to do so as an inability to do so, or do you plan to eventually get around to answering my question?
I see. So we've switched from "governments didn't say nuttin' about marriage for thousands of years, and people did as they pleased", to arguing about federalism in the United States. Where, by the way, you couldn't have a polygamous marriage or marry your gay lover, even in the earliest and smallest-government days of the nation.
Anyway, I award you two points for the attempt at a false dichotomy between "small government" and "metastasized Leviathan".
Sure, Rev, whatever. Laws governing marriage and inheritance (which all human societies have, your peculiar revisionist libertarian fantasies nothwithstanding) indicate that every state in history was a bureaucratized modern welfare state.
Our own government was fairly unusual in that it was founded on the principle that there was only a very limited set of things the government was allowed to do at all (and if you're curious, "award benefits to married couples" didn't make the cut).
Sorry, but local or national, there were always laws governing the forms of marriage, even in the U.S. at the time of the founders. (No, you could not then have practiced polygamy without state interference)....
Tellingly, the US government didn't try banning polygamy at the national level until long after all the Founders were dead,
...and if you think really really hard, you can figure out why the US government, and probably any local government, didn't get explicitly arsed about telling people they couldn't have more than one spouse or marry their gay lover. (Though I'm pretty sure they were quite black-letter about bigamy.) C'mon, Rev. Think.
Here's a hint: it most emphatically was not because everyone and the law in those days would have just minded his and its own damned business if the guy next door went in for "plural marriage" or two men showed up at the courthouse wanting to register their marriage. (Oh, I forgot, nobody had any dealings with legal documents when they got married in those days, right?)
Jesus, this is stupid. The U.S. government tried, and succeeded, in banning polygamy as soon as it appeared as an issue on the political scene. And why is that? Why do you think the 1st Amendment arguments for allowing polygamy failed so resoundingly in those days? Because the culture of the country had become something that would have been alien to the Founders?
No. It had not. 1st Amendment arguments for allowing polygamy will be taken seriously (and probably succeed) in the near future, precisely because the cultue now has become something that would be alien to the Founders. "Anything goes" in marriage forms and the big government you deplore are not the product of opposing views of goverment, as you are contending. They go together. (This only seems like a mystifying paradox to acolytes of asperger-libertarianism.)
"...and didn't start regularly awarding federal benefits to married couples until the progressive era of... big government."
No, but the law bloody well did enforce the norms of monogamous heterosexual marriage long before the era of big government.
Prior to that, it was rightly recognized as not being any of Washington's business what the fuck people did at home.
No, Rev, you could not have a polygamous marriage or marry your gay lover "prior to that", whether the law came from Washington or from a closer legal authority.
Ann Althouse wrote:
Here's a nit for you: The definition of words is a different issue than the scope of our rights.
You want to submit all your rights to the authority of a dictionary.
Even dictionaries don't submit to the authority of dictionaries as they define words for their next edition.
Rights are a deeper matter than the question of what words mean.
Morality is a deeper matter.
Why are you tripped up at the threshold of the discussion like this every time? At least look more deeply into the question of why you choose to trip yourself up there.
what a load of crap. Marriage has a definition. Saying that you should have the right to "marry" does not mean infinity. Do you have a RIGHT to marry five people three of who, are kids and one of whom is your mother? no? then what you're arguing is crap.
Revenant wrote:
Prior to that, it was rightly recognized as not being any of Washington's business what the fuck people did at home.
so how many people were "gay married" during that prior time?
It would be easier to support this position if there weren't a number of prominent gay people, including Andrew Sullivan, who proposed doing away with the assumption of monogamy in marriage.
And pushing this change in marriage will not stop the compulsion to push for other changes in marriage. After all, at this point, what difference would it make?
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