elaine&#39;s strange little world

Have you read Doug Muder's "Red Family, Blue Family"? It gives one plausible explanation. Perhaps another explanation is the widespread sense that sex is unclean and therefore immoral, like smoking or eating at McDonald's or eating non-organically-grown vegetables, except under special circumstances. And, of course, there are those folks who feel that they (and, by extension, everyone else) need strong societal support to stay on the straight and narrow and not, say, snort coke, bang their secretary, and have buttsex with transvestites. There is strong evidence that strong societal support for some code of morality reduces the number of people who deviate from it. Of course, there's a lot of tension between that and our values of a liberal, pluralistic society.

I think hatred accounts for only a small fraction of the folks opposed to same-sex marriage, although of course they tend to be particularly vocal.

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i'm sorry, but regardless of the reasoning, i have a hard time believing that insisting on reducing people's rights is anything but bigotry.

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In this particular case, or are you also talking about, say, people's rights to snort coke, sexually harass their employees, and patronize prostitutes? Because I think the difference between those things may be much larger from your and my point of view than from the point of view of the folks who want to vote yes on 8, and not because of any bigotry.

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I'm talking about this particular case, clearly. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree at this point.

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Your comment I was replying to wasn't very clear; you seemed to be relying on an assumption that you and I have some shared context that not everyone who reads this discussion will have, and which may not actually represent reality accurately. I'm glad you clarified, here and in your comment below.

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hmm, i'm not sure what shared context i'm relying on. i'm talking (ranting) very specifically about the proposition to eliminate the rights of same-sex couples to marry. what context did it look like i was assuming?

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The context that being in a same-sex couple is something that people are born into, or at least that some people are born into having a choice between being in a same-sex couple and remaining single for their entire lives — remember that many of the proponents of Proposition 8 think of sex between people of the same gender as a voluntary choice, not an unavoidable orientation. Elaborated more in my longer comment below.

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remember that many of the proponents of Proposition 8 think of sex between people of the same gender as a voluntary choice, not an unavoidable orientation.

yes, but i don't agree with that, at least not for the most part.

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I assume you mean that you don't think of sex between people of the same gender as a voluntary choice, not that you don't agree that many Proposition 8 proponents think that.

Given that they do, then perhaps you can see that their opposition to the activity isn't necessarily rooted in hatred of a group? They don't even believe the group, as such, exists.

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On a personal note — this is the first time I've mentioned my own opinions on the matter — I think sex of any kind is a voluntary choice, but I think it's a choice that we should work as a society to make as safe and non-harmful and enjoyable as possible, by measures such as having it inside of long-term committed relationships with explicit societal support, preventing people from being coerced into it, using barrier contraceptives, legalizing prostitution and making it subject to government regulation to protect the health and bargaining power of the prostitutes, and so on. (My primary objection to sex between adults and children is that children are very vulnerable to coercion by adults because they have so little power.) So I think same-sex marriage should be strongly supported by the whole society, including the state. I attended my cousin Karrie's wedding in Arizona a few years ago; I went to the gay pride parade here this weekend.

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The main reason to vote Yes on 8 is because of the rather horrid side effects same-sex legalization has caused in CA and Massachussetts:
1) Catholic Charities, which have been helping babies find adoptive parents for hundreds of years, were banned from the adoption process because they refused to let gay families adopt (in Massachusetts)
2) Christians in the government in CA have been fired for refusing to perform same sex marriages against their conscience.
3) A Christian doctor has been successfully sued for refusing to artificially inseminate a lesbian, even though he used the conscience clause and referred her to another doctor. The lesbian, though, wanted to "make an example out of him".

Among other issues, such as churches being sued for not allowing gay pastors, the SF elementary school taking their kids to a lesbian wedding (as a teachable moment), kindergarteners signing "Allies of the LGBTA" cards, parents not having the option to pull their kids from such events, etc.

A no vote is discrimination against Christians, essentially.

Personally, I feel that the government should not be involved in the wedding business in the slightest. It pissed me off that I had to get permission from the county in order to participate in a religious ceremony with Macy this last weekend. Who gave them that right??

In my perfect world, the government wouldn't have anything to do with marriage at all, except perhaps keeping records.

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I think the issues you bring up are all problems; however, they're not ones that are solved by denying rights to others. These are similar arguments to ones used way back when it was illegal for non-whites to marry whites.

I agree that the government should stay out of the marriage thing entirely. However, this isn't currently the case. Denying a group of people rights and privileges based on their sexual orientation is nothing other than discrimination.

ETA: Also, the thing about people being fired for refusing to perform same sex marriages? When one signs up for a job, one agrees to perform all duties associated with it.

Edited Date: 2008-11-04 11:06 pm (UTC)

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Nobody is proposing to make gay men and lesbians wear pink triangles and then deny pink-triangle-wearers the right to get married to opposite-sex partners.

They just think that sex between people of the same gender is immoral, It's true that racists thought that sex between people of different "races" was immoral, and just as most Americans think that sex between adults and children, or horses and people, or sex between siblings, or group sex, is immoral. The belief that sex between people of different "races" was immoral did generally originate in beliefs that one race was superior to others: pure, unpolluted, and so on. But the other beliefs do not necessarily rely on bigotry against children, or people who find children sexually attractive, or horses, or farmers, or people who aren't only children, or people who are sexually attracted to their siblings, or people in open marriages.

All of these moral intuitions are fundamentally founded on disapproval of some activity, not some social group, although of course they tend to result in disapproval of social groups that promote that activity (e.g. NAMBLA).

Of course, people who genuinely do hate farmers, or pedophiles, or gay people, or polyamorists, will be drawn strongly to one side of the debate. And they may be among the most vocal advocates on that side. But in the case at hand, the vast majority of people on the other side of the issue from you aren't motivated by hate. They just don't want the state to officially sanction a behavior they abhor.

I'm surprised that you think the issues

shakauvm brought up are all problems. Do you really think same-sex couples should have to go from town to town searching for a justice of the peace who's willing to perform their marriage?

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*deep breath*

i did add an ETA that i thought cleared up that i don't think people should be able to serve in a government position and deny services that the government provides.

i'm really unclear on where the pink triangle thing is coming from.

i think i'm going to take a step back from this conversation. i made the mistake of ranting, and i don't feel the need to further defend myself.

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Pink triangles: not allowing same-sex marriages is discrimination against an activity, not against a group of people. If you hold a point of view, for example, that believes that gay men, like het men, can and should just marry women or remain celibate, it doesn't mean you adhere to some bigoted ideology.

Of course the effect can be discriminatory, just as forbidding polygamy has a discriminatory effect against Mormons and Muslims, and forbidding the sale of dog meat in restaurants may have a discriminatory effect against Northern Vietnamese immigrants. But if you want to change people's minds to eliminate the discriminatory effect, you won't get very far if you start by assuming that they are motivated by hatred of Northern Vietnamese or Muslims.

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ok, wait. i have to come back to this for one second. did you really just compare, in all seriousness, gay marriage to pedophilia or sex with animals? i don't want to make assumptions, but that's what the second paragraph here is implying.

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More or less. I'm trying to show you the point of view of the people on the other side of the issue, although I don't think I'm succeeding.

I said that people who are in favor of Proposition 8 generally feel that sex between partners of the same gender is morally similar to other kinds of sex that you (I am guessing from your comment?) find morally repugnant.

Furthermore, I said that their moral intuition is not necessarily rooted in hatred of the people who are tempted to engage in that kind of sex, just as your (?) moral intuition that sex between adults and children is perhaps not rooted in hatred of people who are attracted to children, and your (?) moral intuition that sex between people and horses is perhaps not rooted in hatred of people who get turned on by horses.

By the way, when I met my first wife (one of the greatest blessings that has befallen me in my life) I was 17 and she was 39. Under California law, some of the things we did could have put her in jail for a long time — thank God we were in New Mexico. So while there are important practical considerations that differ between e.g. age-of-consent laws and Proposition 8, the difference in the situations to which they apply is not always practically as great as one might think.

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>>When one signs up for a job, one agrees to perform all duties associated with it.

Not necessarily. There's something called a conscience clause that allows people to not perform a job if it conflicts with their ethical or religious beliefs, if there is an alternative way for said service to be provided.

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I don't agree that those are side effects of legalization of same-sex marriages, nor that they constitute discrimination against Christians.

Those are effects of the same shift in social values that pressures the government to legitimize same-sex marriages.

If a state official refused to perform a wedding because the bride wasn't a virgin and non-virgin weddings violated their religious beliefs, would firing them constitute discrimination against their (unspecified) religion?

Plenty of Christians have performed same-sex marriages, artificially inseminated lesbians, taken their kids to lesbian weddings, hired gay pastors, and so on. So the group being discriminated against is not Christians, as such. We're "discriminating against" people who are intolerant of homosexuality, and in most of the cases you cited, that "discrimination" consisted of removing those people from positions they were using to hassle homosexuals. I think that's generally a good direction to go in, even if some of the people going that way are going too far. (At the moment, for example, I'm particularly upset about how California is making it difficult to home-school.)

I have a question for you. In your perfect world, would the government be permitted to choose not to keep records of a couple's marriage because the couple was of the same gender?

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>>Those are effects of the same shift in social values that pressures the government to legitimize same-sex marriages.

Right, and I'm against social values being tied up in our laws, as, I'm guessing, are you. Neither gays nor Christians should be discriminated against, regardless of which direction our culture is heading in. Firing Christian Ministers of the Peace is a worse form of discrimination, in fact.

In the other cases, the Catholic Charities were not the only adoption agency in Boston; they supplemented the state agency, and as such, could not possibly harm anyone with their efforts to find more adoptive parents. Forcing them to shut down when gay couples could still adopt from the state agencies just seems evil to me, as the only people it harms is the kids in need of adoption.

>>I have a question for you. In your perfect world, would the government be permitted to choose not to keep records of a couple's marriage because the couple was of the same gender?

The government would record whatever the person wrote down. (You could marry your house plant for all I care.) The state should not have the power to deny people the right to marry, period.

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Laws are all about social values. I think the values embedded in them should be catholic, egalitarian, liberal, and inclusionary in nature, because that is the only way a diverse society can survive.

The Catholic Charities would have been harming the kids in need of adoption by keeping them in foster care or group homes, where they are very vulnerable to abuse:

There's also another important way in which the laity needs to rise up. The leaders of Catholic Charities in Boston have defended the decision to place children in same-sex homes because most of the children involved were very difficult to place.

In other words, the children had languished in foster care or group home situations for a long time because heterosexual couples had not stepped forward to adopt these generally older children with greater physical, emotional or psychological needs.

(from Catholic Charities and Gay Adoption, Catholic Online, 2006-03-25)

So if Catholic Charities from has authority over the adoptions of some such children, then a decision on their part to stop permitting these same-sex adoptions would result in the children remaining in orphanages ("group homes") or foster care, possibly until they grow up, even though there are stable families that want to adopt them whose only drawback is that the parents are of the same sex. It seems to me that removing Catholic Charities from a position of power if they made that decision, because it would constitute a serious abuse of that power.

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