Are you smarter than a Fifth Grader? Well, if the fifth grader in question is ten year old Will Phillips of Arkansas, and the “you” is me, then I’m not. Because he focused on an objection to the Pledge of Allegiance that I had not thought about and really should have. Even better, he did something about it.
My annoyance with the Pledge has always centered on the insertion of “God” during the 1950s, a relic of a time when we needed to show how much better we were than the Godless commies. But young Master Phillips decided that in a country where states actively discriminate against gays (including, it should be noted, Arkansas, by a vote ratio of 3-1 in 2004 that restricted marriage to straight couples) it is fundamentally hypocritical to state that the flag represents liberty and justice for all. To that end, he decided to remain seated and silent during the ritual recital of the pledge. He did this for three days in a row before it wound up offending the sensibilities of the substitute teacher running the class.
She proceeded to berate him and pressure him and tell him that his mother and grandmother would want him to fall in line–no doubt in front of his peers. She pushed him so much that he finally invited her to jump off a bridge, whereupon she packed him off to the principal. His mother was summoned, she Twittered, and nationwide hilarity ensued.
Now a couple of things occur to me. First, I suspect that for the sub, it was less about fealty to the flag and more about that she just wanted the boy to do as he was told. She felt it was a challenge to her authority and it became a contest of wills.
Second, should he have told her to jump off a bridge? (A suggestion that was preceded by my favorite four words that you say before insulting someone: “With all due respect.”) Well, no. Of course not. But she had his figurative back against the wall, probably with the other kids looking on; he lashed out verbally as a result.
As far as I’m concerned, the far greater lapse was on her part. She’s the adult. She’s the teacher. She could have used it as a teachable moment to talk with the kids that what the flag represents is a country where people have the right to do exactly what Master Phillips was doing: express himself. I don’t expect a sub teacher to be up on all the latest legal developments, but this isn’t exactly news. A student’s right to refuse to say the Pledge or honor the flag has been the law of the land since the Supreme Court said so in 1943. She had zero cause to back the kid into a corner until he had no choice but to verbally lash out at her.
He was in the right and she was in the wrong. Part of being a patriot is challenging the country you love to do better; to put into effect by actions those philosophies that it espouses, such as liberty and justice for all. Because if you don’t do that, then the words are just words. The truth is that when it comes to gay rights, America talks the talk but does not walk the walk.
Details can be found here.
The Pledge
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I used to do that. Of course, I went to a school that regularly forgot to say the pledge at all, so it was less of a problem.
Did you see the first episode of Wanda Sykes’ new show? She had a segment where she she chatted with several guests, mainly just making jokes about recent issues.
Then she brought up the issue that some people are now really getting against parents yelling at their children. I didn’t think much of this until one of the guests (who has kids of his own) said that when a parent yells at his kids, he’s failing, because he has *become* a child. Screaming to get your way or because you’re angry is acting like a child and means you’re not in control.
It’s the best argument I can imagine against it. I think you’re right, PAD, this substitute teacher got into an heated argument with a child, which basically means she automatically lost.
There any number of reasons to dislike the Pledge, but I don’t think I’ve heard this one before.
I don’t think this will do much good for the cause of gay rights but the kid was absolutely within his rights not to say the pledge and the teacher was absolutely wrong to attempt to demean him for it. He can politely remain seated for any reason or none at all–if he thinks Obama is a Kenyan citizen and therefore his presidency means the country has been taken over by a neo-con cabal of Red Lectoids and, by God, he is not pledging allegiance to a bunch of commie aliens from Planet 10, well, takes all kinds.
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Although there are many notable exceptions to this, an awful lot of substitute teachers are just warm bodies shoved into a classroom with little or no instructions on what to do. I live close enough to school that I usually drag my sick carcass in to make sure something is set up but a lot of them are just thrown to the wolves. Sometimes they are retired grade school teachers who have no inkling of what a modern teenager is like. “In my day we had a little thing called RESPECT!” they will write in the note they leave behind. Yeah, well, in YOUR day they had a little thing called The League of Nations too, time moves on. Often they will leave me the names of the students who gave them trouble, said names obtained by asking the offending student for their name. This is always an opportunity for hilarity as even the most unimaginative student suddenly turns into a Shakespearean punster– Hugh G. Rection, Phil McCracken, Dell Doe, and our Russian exchange student, Olga Fokyrcelf. Good times, good times.
I don’t think this will do much good for the cause of gay rights…i>
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I disagree. A brave young man is refusing back down from his principles, despite pressure from an authority figure and harassment from peers with a less-developed sense of decency. In so doing, he’s inspired other students to find their voice and openly express their support. Every little bit helps.
“Hugh G. Rection, Phil McCracken, Dell Doe, and our Russian exchange student, Olga Fokyrcelf.”
Aren’t those characters in that Potato Moon thing?
Oh, I wish there was an easy answer to this dilemma.
As a teacher myself I’m mostly inclined towards classroom discipline. It’s a safety issue. Student safety. I understand and respect PAD’s point, I do, but already the teacher was a sub and if I remember my classroom days – subs aren’t respected. Again, that’s just my memory and my experience; I can’t speak for all student and subs relationships.
Going on what I read, it would’ve been a great stroke of luck had the sub taken the child’s defiance and made a – wait for it – “teachable moment” about history, patriots and the ol’ “do as I say not as I do.” But what if that wasn’t on the lesson plan for that day? What if the school administration frowns on teachers ‘making it up as the go’ lesson plans? Remember, she was a sub and as such she has the pressure to ‘stay the course’ for the kids.
Already there has been a classroom disruption but her not being the assigned teacher. Now there are two because a kid isn’t doing what he’s supposed to – leave it alone, ignore it – it spreads like a virus, causing others to emulate (for whatever personal reasons) and there goes discipline out the window!
Using a tense scene between Dean Nolan (Norman Lloyd) and Keating (Robin Williams) from my favorite movie “Dead Poets Society” – the one where Nolan visits his old classroom to talk to Keating about his teaching methods; if remember that scene, you can understand how I could easily see both points of view.
Being a teacher, in the real world, you are a target for litigation. Even harboring the best of intentions, you can get sued (Hëll, just ACCUSED!) for some of the most trivial things you can imagine. Following procedure, discipline is the lesser of two evils. Believe me.
I agree, however, once the berating began – she lost any chance of winning the argument.
End of the day: You think teaching is easy? Then get certified, take a ruler and take a classroom post; because either way, I don’t care. I’d rather you just said “thank you” and be on your way.
BTW, I wrote the above paraphrase with Jack Nicholson’s voice in my head replaying that courtroom scene in “A Few Good Men.”
And I was just teasing.
As someone who was once a teacher whose position of authority with her students was precarious at best (young-looking foreigner=no respect), I wish my classes’ discipline issues had ever been this trivial. Was the boy’s behavior causing the rest of the class to destabilize? Were other students acting up in response to his sitting out the Pledge? If not, that sub should have chosen her battles and saved her energy.
Hmmm…I guess this is where the difference lies. As a college professor (part-time), I could definitely see this as a teachable moment. Heck, I teach Sociology, so I might actually use this article next semester!
But, I have a level of latitude that my secondary and primary contemporaries don’t. My chances of actions being seen as litigious are significantly reduced, and the flow of the class is different (I don’t have to ‘maintain discipline’ much…heck, I don’t even care if you show up!).
Additionally in Sociology we discuss ‘touchy’ subjects all the time; today we were talking about ‘what makes a family’.
However, I agree with acree – I’ve sat in to cover some classes for profs who were about before (in effect, subbing), and I realize I’ve got very little room for ‘teachable moments’. Having been a (7th grade) sub for a bit, I realize you have even less in that situation.
Or, she could have just ASKED the student why he chose not to stand for the Pledge. THAT could have turned the whole situation into a teachable moment. I don’t see in the article where it says the sub ASKED that question.
Usually the simplest answer is the best answer.
Yes. I’m a teacher.
Usually the simplest answer is the best answer.
Until it isn’t.
A person can only attest to their own experiences.
Despite agreeing that she made a mistake. I try – emphasis on the word – TRY (admitting to not always succeeding) not to judge others or be dismissive when a mistake is made be a co-worker.
Example of a deal breaker – seduction of a student either by male or female teacher. Here I feel VERY judgmental due to the pall this shadow places us all.
Again you and PAD have a point.
If proper ‘safeguards’ are in place, odds are in favor and sometimes it CAN be simple but (again my opinion) unless a trend is identified each case is unique and I’m willing to give the person – due to the nature of the job – initially, the benefit of the doubt.
I can’t or wont make that assertion (simplest answer, best answer) usually is the best. For me, it’s more a desired or hopeful outcome after a minute and truthful investigation is completed.
As a teacher myself, I don’t see the student staying in his seat as a big disruption or dicipline issue. The sub’s behavior was far more likely to undermine her grip on the class.
Oh, I wish there was an easy answer to this dilemma.
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That’s the problem: There was an easy answer. The first time the kid doesn’t stand, she lets it go, and then says to the principal later in the day, “I had a kid in the class who refused to stand or pledge.” The principal says, “He’s exercising his right as delineated by the Supreme Court in 1943. Ignore it.” She says, “Okay.” End of dilemma.
Going on what I read, it would’ve been a great stroke of luck had the sub taken the child’s defiance and made a – wait for it – “teachable moment” about history, patriots and the ol’ “do as I say not as I do.” But what if that wasn’t on the lesson plan for that day?
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Then she does it the following day or the day after that. She didn’t start in on the kid until the third day. She could have asked him privately on any of the previous days why he was sitting and I’m sure he would have explained it calmly. And she could have worked it into the lesson plan for the next day.
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PAD
I’d be careful of the “teaching moment” language though. It seems like most of the time when a teacher wants to make something a teaching moment, he’s the one who really needs to learn the lesson. In this case, about West Virginia State Board of Education vs Barnette.
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I think it’s kind of neat that the kid wants to grow up to be a lawyer and checked to see if he was permitted to sit before he tried it. He’s off to a good start. Next time, he needs to check on the disorderly conduct in schools statute first, though.
The phrase “teachable moment” was used with levity. Let me be clear about that and thanks for again pointing and citing out litigation.
Teacher get sued. I don’t have numbers so I will venture MORE today than they used to.
Sorta reminds me of Dr. Cox warnings to J.D. in Scrubs “Sooner or later you’re gonna kill somebody.”
I think it’s kind of neat that the kid wants to grow up to be a lawyer and checked to see if he was permitted to sit before he tried it.
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I think it’s less notable that this youngster checked the rules prior to sitting down, and more notable that he resisted authority on principle. I think he’s on his way to growing up to become a fine citizen.
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As an aside, I had a really good history… pardon me, “social studies”… teacher in junior high who once sprang a pop quiz on everyone at the start of class because one person talked out of turn. He was uncharacteristically nasty about it. Kids started griping, and he smiled and egged us on. Finally one of us got the hint and refused to take it. He smiled, and began his planned lesson for the day on… civil disobedience.
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Next time, he needs to check on the disorderly conduct in schools statute first, though.
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My cousin teaches history… pardon me, “social studies”… at the high school level, and he’s been called a “son of a bìŧçh” to his face by one of his students. My mother knows a grade school teacher who has been called a “møŧhërfûçkër” more than once (the teacher is a grandmother, and asks the children to instead call her “grandmother fûçkër” which always gets a laugh). Young Mr. Phillips is a piker when it comes to disruptive behavior.
No.
PAD, I’m sorry. I must repectfully disagree.
You’re presuming too much. If teaching and solving classroom dilemmas were that easy anybody could do it.
It just isn’t that easy. Dealing with kids – of all ages or types (lets’ not forget those with disabilities) – with school administrations – with parents? Nah. Even in the best of schools, anything can and will happen.
It’s a great gig – don’t get me wrong – hëll you could even say it’s more a calling but it’s not for everyone and most times than you’re willing to believe, there are no easy solutions.
How I consider what is a good day in the classroom? More than half paid attention to the lesson, the other students didn’t disrupt the ones that did and nobody got hurt on my watch.
Gonna leave the thread here because we can only agree that we disagree.
I’ve always gone with “Hey, that’s MR. Møŧhërfûçkër to you, pal.” Have to set a firm example.
Again, with all due respect, point taken. I know where you’re coming from.
She should have taken immediate action – no argument – but that’s ME and honestly I enjoy the luxury of looking at this situation from the outside.
Sidebar: This ever happen? Your watching Jeopardy and you answer those easy questions (not YOU, speaking generally) in the comfort of your home while a person on TV flubs it. Remember, a person in a TV studio, with cameras, bright lights, a buzzer, etc.
You can be a teacher with decades of experience, or a rookie and you still are gonna make mistakes. Personally (I know I’m already a bit biased) I always try to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt.
Other people’s kids are a handful!
The teacher missed an opportunity that much is clear – but again that’s also easy for me to say.
What teacher doesn’t make mistakes?
There is a time for everything, even defiance but even with hindsight, even had she done what I suggested, this situation could have gone south in many other different ways.
In my mind, this is the only pledge of allegiance we should be required to follow. I’m not sure about the rest of you but is the only one I could ever honestly give this country. I offer this substitute pledge, written by Samuel Clemens, to replace the current flawed one.
In a monarchy, the king and his family are the country; in a republic it is the common voice of the people. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t.
Bill M. — I wonder if you would categorize the kid as “a brave young man” if he his act of civil disobedience supported something with which you disagree with, politically.
As someone who was an adept adult button- and limit-pusher throughout grade school and most of high school, I don’t think this kid was particularly “brave” for taking a stand for what may very well be, for him, a cause du jour. After all, it’s not as if the average prepubescent 10-year-old is an expert on sexuality. The fact is, this kid may just be a stubborn little troublemaker who thought the substitute was wishy-washy enough to toy with, and then things unexpectedly escalated into unknown territory.
After all, if the kid was so “brave,” why did he wait until there was a substitute present to perform his act of civil disobedience?
The bravery involved has little to nothing to do with the presence of the teacher. It’s taking a stand on something having to do with gay rights, because anyone can tell you what’s going to happen next: He is going to–indeed, already is–face harassment from his fellow students, accusing him of being gay, of being unpatriotic, etc., etc. He’s a bright kid; he must have known that going in. It’s one thing to be a button-and-limit pusher if you figure you’re going to be regarded as cool. To do it knowing you may be harassed? Yeah, I think “brave” covers it.
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PAD
R. Maheras: PAD’s thoughts pretty much mirror my own. So, ditto what he said.
Uh… this was probably not the best place to do this. But I wasn’t clever enough to figure out your email address:
“Hello, Mr. David. My name is Chaos McKenzie, and I often do a lot of articles for a Canadian queer paper called Xtra!, looking at the presence of queer characters in mainstream comic works. Most recently I looked at Batwoman, but have in the past looked at Northstar, Rawhide Kid, and others. I was curious if you’d be willing to discuss recent scenes in X-Factor, for a piece looking at Rictor and Shatterstar, but mostly looking at you? Yes you.
Taken directly from my verbal diarrhea emailed to my editor (yes, I do write a mighty sloppy pitch, but I find I have to ramble my ideas out to my editor or they get ignored):
” I didn’t jump on it on the time, as I expected someone would have been on to it before me, but it feels like everyone slept through it. Peter David is the writer of X-Factor, he has this way of writing every character true, if they disagree with his view of the world or not, he writes everyone with a tone that is undeniably real. So when characters reveal things that might seem shocking, they instead just ring true to the story and Peter David never goes after cheap publicity for his books, he always stands behind the story, not that he’s against press, but he’s never done anything out of pure sensational reasoning. I mention all this, because he deserves a nod from the gay community, he’s been constantly adding queer nods and content to X-Factor, not because he’s attempting to appeal to anyone, he’s just being true to life. And even better, he’s not afraid to have characters react negatively to queer situations, and equally unafraid of having characters react positively to the same situations. He balances it all out, so it’s feels true and pure. He’s the first example, I think, of someone who uses queer characters where being queer to some degree or another really is a part of their character, and not just an attention grabber. There are all kinds of deftly handled subtle queer themes popping up in X-Factor, and I can touch on a few of them. … And Peter David, he hasn’t done it for the press, or the controversy, it just makes sense to the story. In perhaps the most progressive image to be shown in solidarity to queers within mainstream comics is the cover X-Factor 50, which shows Shatterstar and Rictor hugging, in an definitely more than friends kind of ways. Another character openly objects to the revelation, we’re getting all the dramas of real life, without having them choked down on us like causes of the week, and with the added joy of costumes and superpowers. And, yea, I thought it would be nice to look at that…”
I’m a little technologically impaired, but I was envisioning perhaps doing a MSN chat about the book and the characters and the reaction, instead of a typical interview. Something less formal that your standard interview, but not something so hefty to take up a lot of your time.
I’ve attached links to a few of my previous comic articles that you can check out if you wish. I hope this email finds you well, please let me know if you have any interest.
best
Chaos McKenzie
http://www.goldenbulletstudio.com
chaos@goldenbulletstudio.com
http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Batwoman_is_back_and_she_means_business-6791.aspx
http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Young_Avengers_enters_gay_universe-2540.aspx
http://archives.xtra.ca/Story.aspx?s=14771323&k
http://archives.xtra.ca/Story.aspx?s=14681221&k”
Sorry for approaching you this way.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Best
Chaos!
There is a possibility that the the fact there was a substitute is a coincidence. It happened pretty early in the school year.
and I’m sorry there’s no way in hëll you take a stand for gay right at his age and not be brave.
There’s no way he doesn’t know of latent homophobia at that age.
Especially in Arkansas (I live just across the river in TN, and we’re not much better)
Since when does one have to be an expert on sexuality to understand one group of people not receiving the same rights as everyone else is not “equality”?
As an odd coincidence showing the other side of defiance; I just came across this article on Yahoo tonight that shows how something innocuous becomes disruptive.
Made me laugh and – let’s be frank – the entire thing is silly but still —
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091112/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd__meep__ban
I’m on the side of the school on the “Meep” issue.
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My girlfriend’s kids use the word “moo” to use, among other things, “F-you.” She tolerates it because it is a substitute phrase, but I try to discourage it because of the underlying attitude.
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Nothing in the article leads me to believe that Will was in any way disrespectful up until the substitute teacher berated him and invoked his family. You read what is between the lines differently than I do, and that is each of our perogatives. But, it is certainly a different situation than the “meep” ban.
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Theno
The point of highlighting this is that things have a way of taking a life of their own… even something innocent like a ‘meep’
And suddenly time and money is wasted NOT on education but on a non-issue created into an issue. Administrations, teachers and students taking sides, etc., etc.,
The *link* that ties this into the article in question to this thread shows how easily and how fragile order is in schools EVEN those that pride themselves in maintaining it.
As a teacher with a decade’s worth of experience in the classroom, I know that the substitute teacher was 100% in the wrong. Handling an issue like that (where you have no legitimate leg on which to stand) in front of a group of people is a recipe for getting disciplined and/or fired.
However, the cynical side of me wonders how much of the situation was caused by a 10-year old’s desire to mess with a substitute teacher. My first thought would be that the kid was sitting during the pledge because he wanted to mess with the substitute, and when things started to get out of hand, he discovered some moral issue with which he had objections.
Spoken like a teacher with experience.
Totally agree.
My sponsor/supervisor said to me: the hardest part of teaching is trying not to become cynical. The moment that happens to you, it’s time to retire or change profession.
All I can say is that everybody ought to read Avi’s “Nothing But the Truth.”
It is, indeed, a tricky issue.
…and when things started to get out of hand, he discovered some moral issue with which he had objections.
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According to boy’s mother, he discussed this with her before actually sitting through the pledge. Check out the article PAD kindly linked to at the end of his post; it provides some important context about what happened.
Reading the article still doesn’t change what Chuck stated about his cynical side wondering.
“According to the boy’s mother..”
A mother defends her child! Who knew?
I’m more surprised – nay! SHOCKED, when they DON’T.
Reading the article still doesn’t change what Chuck stated about his cynical side wondering.
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I think you’re wrong. I think the article casts things in an entirely different light than the one in which you and Chuck wish to see this story.
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The boy’s parents had a history of publicly supporting gay rights. They have gay friends.
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More important, the boy chose to sit through the pledge in order to take a stand that he just had to have known would result in harassment from other children. A youngster as intelligent as he is would have picked a different cover story if he was merely trying to escape punishment.
Believe whatever you want to believe. Not being there, I can say without a shred of doubt, I can’t be sure.
And like Chuck noted it was a cynical side wondering, the comment didn’t come from an empirical sense of certainty.
If we’re going by what’s there… we have a premeditated act on a substitute teacher.
Yipee! That’ll show them ‘em! Today… the subs! Tomorrow… the world!
Sigh.
Believe whatever you want to believe.
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It’s got nothing to do with what I “want” to believe, arcee. The conclusion I’ve drawn is logical based on what we know about the incident.
It’s got nothing to do with what I “want” to believe, arcee. The conclusion I’ve drawn is logical based on what we know about the incident.
Bill: Sure some logic is involved, of course, but so is belief that what was written and reported (on something you nor I didn’t witness) by all the particulars involved … is the truth.
And the point was what a cynical side wonders.
Arcee, it appears that although you may be coming at this with a teacher’s perspective, you can’t seem to come at it with the perspective of a student. It’s amazing that at such a young age he found something he’s willing to stand up (or sit down) for like that.
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I have seen a school torn apart over issues of patriotism and saying the pledge before. It’s painful. And if it happens at that age when a kid is first trying to understand their rights, feeling them be pulled out from under you can make you want to rebel and act out from the school. Teachers should always be very much aware of what the children’s rights are as citizens, and not the difference between a child acting out because society isn’t fair v. a classroom being unfair. Because when you’re a kid and you try to take a stand on society and get punished by your school, that will spark the initiative to take a stand against the school as well.
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The teacher’s choice to berate the kid had an impact outside of that teacher and that kid, I’m sure. The other kids in class likely went home and talked to their parents, their siblings, about what happened. When something like this happens it tends to spread and become more exaggerated with each telling, until the whole community is upset about it.
Bill Myers wrote:
“More important, the boy chose to sit through the pledge in order to take a stand that he just had to have known would result in harassment from other children. A youngster as intelligent as he is would have picked a different cover story if he was merely trying to escape punishment.”
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Hee Hee. He sat to take stand. I find that odd poetic in a backward sort of way.
The teacher was out of line first, but the kid was out of line, too. The substitue teacher’s error does not make the kid’s comment OK. The better response would have been, “With all due repect, I checked it out and I don’t have to … the Supreme Court said so. Moreover, I asked my Mom and she supports my decision, so you shouldn’t try to speak for her.” Granted, I may be expecting too much of a goaded 10-year old, but his response was deserving of a trip to the principle.
That should be principal, of course.
Re: Jasmine Loucks says: November 15, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Arcee, it appears that although you may be coming at this with a teacher’s perspective, you can’t seem to come at it with the perspective of a student. It’s amazing that at such a young age he found something he’s willing to stand up (or sit down) for like that.
On the contrary, if I did only see from the teacher’s perspective then I wouldn’t recognize that the tardy berating by the sub was wrong – which I posted to the contrary.
Regardless of the ‘why’ I’ve also stated that she made a mistake. A grave mistake that may cost her the job and I don’t see that as something to celebrate.
However, it’s something to investigate and weigh pros and cons and certainly get down to the truth. NOBODY want a bad teacher in a classroom.
I admit, however, that I’m inclined to empathize with her – not sympathize – because of how hard teaching (especially substitue teaching) as a job really is but as Super Chicken would say, “You knew the job was *dangerous* when you took it.”
That’s why I stated since the beginning this doesn’t have an easy answer.
While there exists a possibility of a resolution as PAD posted — the odds are so against it when compared to the majority of cases and experiences in a school environment that all I can say is “In a perfect world…”
the problem is the general standards of education in this country are low, enough so that the teachers aren’t qualified to teach children. Hëll that’s true all the way to the community college level. In the South there is a certain degree of respect that is expected to be given to the teacher and that ultimate bullheadedness causes something potentially simple(like this), and actually quite a good catalyst for teaching and education, to become sensational. The teacher was very wrong and handled the situation poorly and I suspect she would have been fired for not blasting the kid. Remember this is also the bible belt and the term evolution sometimes is treated like a sin. I had an astrophysics professor who joked and said he couldn’t use the word stellar evolution so changed it to stellar changes…
I think that’s a bit of a dangerous generalization to make. In all my years of schooling, kindergarten through four years of college, I only ever encountered two people that shouldn’t have been teaching. All the teachers I know are more than qualified.
it is dangerous to make, but I’ve seen it far too often. When I was teaching physics at a community college, the person I replaced had a degree in biology. The longer I was there more I saw it happen. The value of teaching is so poor that finding a teacher that gives a dámņ is like stroking oil in a litter box. I’ve had teachers/professors that challenged their students and I’ve had others that made the most basic subjects so dense that no decoder ring could decipher the content.
For me, it all comes down to honesty.
There are faculty that are great teachers who will be terrible administrators and on the other side, bad teachers that turn into great administrators. In a perfect world a person in the profession should be great at both roles.
Truth is the person has to be honest with their limitations and accept to either work on their weak spots (be it more training, conferences, revise lesson plans, teaching methods or curriculum etc.,) or get another job before they do more damage to students.
I know, I know, easier said than done. LOL!
I never pushed buttons to be cool — I pushed them because I was hyperactive and impulsive. I drove my mom — and everyone else — nuts. To project adult behavior standards on a child just because he happens to have supported something one agrees with politically is not something I support.
Again, it’s not the issue per se… I just think it’s misguided to tout one’s platform vicariously through a 10-year-old kid.
To project adult behavior standards on a child just because he happens to have supported something one agrees with politically is not something I support.
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I’m not doing anything of the sort. I’m expressing admiration for a kid who took a principled stand over something about which he feels passionately, even though he had to have known full well he’d catch hëll from a lot of other kids as a result. That takes courage.
I just think it’s misguided to tout one’s platform vicariously through a 10-year-old kid.
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I don’t see anyone here doing that. I’m perfectly fine touting my own platform, thanks. I’m just saying this kid is extremely bright to have made this connection, putting together the actions he sees around him with the words he’s being asked to speak every day and seeing that they don’t match up. Now if you’re insinuating that the parents used him as a mouthpiece for their views, that’s a jump in motivation that I don’t think can be taken as fact.
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PAD
One could also question those who dismiss his actions simply because of age.
I’m with the kid all the way – including telling the sub where to go and what to do there when she pushed it to the point of invoking his family (if only beacuse she almost certainly could have known nothing about them).
PAD,
With all due respect … I for the most part agree. The sub over reacted and was clearly wrong about forcing the kid to say the pledge. Leaving aside the issue of gay marriage, there are plenty of ways gays have been harshly treated and been wronged. That type of silent protest should not have been handled in this manner.
Iowa Jim
Students may be able to opt out of the pledge but teachers can’t. I was told that I should pick a student to lead the pledge, then I should stand facing the flag with my hand over my heart. I could lip-sync if I didn’t want to say the words since it “was my right” to opt out of reciting the pledge. Sure I could have gone to the union and even gotten a lawyer but then I could kiss my career good-bye. I ended up switching schools to one where the pledge is left up to the teacher.
You can get a bunch of teachers of all kinds, all ages, sharing ‘war stories’; who disagree on a whole range of issues from teaching methods to textbooks but one of a few things they will all agree, it ain’t easy ‘dancing’ on that edge – you got to love the profession!
When I was in middle and high school, I stopped standing for the pledge and received similar reactions from teachers (and they weren’t subs). Kudos to this kid for fighting for his convictions, and to his parents for supporting him.
The objection I’ve always had against the Pledge is that it’s a ritual of State Worship. Kids are required to recite these formalised words long before they even understand clearly what they mean (How many years after you learned it did it take until you even knew the definitions of ‘pledge’ and ‘allegiance’?), and they are usually given the impression that one must recite the words or else be considered an ‘enemy’ in some undefined way. And although the words speak of liberty and justice for all, that is not what one is actually pledging allegiance to. Rather, it is the country, and one is supposed to simply assume that the country stands for liberty and justice, even though that clearly isn’t always the case. It’s patriotism in the worst sense, supporting your country because it is your country and assuming it must be right, rather than supporting because (and only when) it is right.
And there is also the idolatry of pledging the allegiance directly to the flag, and only as an afterthought to what it stands for.
It was because of all this that the Jehovah’s Witnesses fought against the Pledge all the way to the Supreme Court in 1943, and won. (Jehovah’s Witnesses may be annoying, but they have done so much to preserve liberty in this country.)
It should also be pointed out that the primary reason the Romans fed Christians to lions was because they refused to say a meaningless prayer to the Emperor, which was the Roman equivalent of the Pledge of Allegiance– just a simple ritual to show off your patriotism, that nobody except for a few religious weirdos could see any objection to. I wonder how many people who insist on patriotic ritual today are aware of the historical similarity.
Recently a bill was introduced here in Oklahoma to force schoolkids to pledge to the state flag as well. I haven’t been paying much attention to local news lately, so I don’t know what’s happened with the bill. I hope that it simply dies without a vote, because I don’t know if any Oklahoma politician would have the guts to vote against something like that.
One more thing. When the Pledge of Allegiance was first introduced, you were not supposed to hold your hand over your heart. They used a different gesture. If you look up the pledge on Wikipedia, you might be able to find a picture. (I don’t think it was the article about the Pledge. I think it was just one it linked to. I’m not sure. It’s been a while since I saw it.) The gesture wasn’t changed until after World War II had already begun.
Supposedly, this is where Mussolini got the idea.
Mary Warner:
“The objection I’ve always had against the Pledge is that it’s a ritual of State Worship.”
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I agree. I call it indoctination, which annoys me in any form.
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What really gets me is how we put so much value on respect in America, especially for any “authourity.” (I give everyone a certain amount of respect from the outset. From there it is up to the recipient to earn more or less.)
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One day it occured to me that America was founded on a healthy disrespect for authority. Let me be clear: A HEALTHY disrespect for authority. The colonies essentialy called bûllšhìŧ on the king’s… well, bûllšhìŧ. Basically the 13 colonies raised a middle finger and said, “Enough.” It was defiant, insubordinate, and disrespectful. It was also the right thing to do.
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This idea that we’re supposed to have automatic, and absolute, respect for someone just because they wear a uniform, arm band, funny hat, or made a career choice is just unhealthy. It’s like forcing aside ones sense of ethics for the comfortable feeling of being part of a group.
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A healthy disrespect for authority is the foundation on which America was built. It’s sad to see it succumb to a knee-jerk “respect,” which isn’t really respect at all. It’s tyranny light, which is still tyranny.
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The kid was right.
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Back to The Pledge. I’ve re-written it for myself, eliminating all the nonsense (AKA Bûllšhìŧ):
I pledge alegience to the United States Of America. One nation, with liberty and justice for all.
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Mitch Evans
Middle-Finger Patriot
When I enlisted in the US Air Force back in 1986, I swore “to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Not one word of that oath said jack about flags, politicians, or particular people – the closest was swearing to “obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me,” and in the military-law classes that were a part of basic training we were all told that this meant we also had a duty to disobey an illegal order. (The tricky bit, of course, was being sure which was which, and standing ready to take responsibility if we made a mistake…)
PAD,
As a newbie teacher myself, and I’ve subbed for a year in middle/high schools, I have a unique perspective on this issue.
Sure, the kid was exercising his rights. And he was backed into a corner, so to save face in front of his peers, he HAD to lash out. This issue, however, is very sensitive to many conservative communities in the breadbasket or the deep south–it is seen as a liberal approach that reeks of disrespect of ‘tradition’ or ‘your elders.’
There were steps that were wrong on all sides–the principal of the school, for one, did not adequately explain to the students of the school the function of the substitute teacher. Substitute is the adjective, teacher is the noun, and it means that that teacher is assuming the role of your normal teacher. It means they have the rights and privileges, and RESPECT, that you should give to any other licensed teacher in the school. It is their chosen profession, and no one has the right to treat another person with disrespect in that way. It’s a tough concept for students to learn, but I think if it was taught to them early on, it would be easier for teachers to a) find qualified subs and b) not lose time in their unit plans due to taking a sick day.
The teacher should have asked the neighboring teacher for help. And, they should have documented each development in this child’s behavior surrounding the Pledge in the morning.
As for me, I don’t say the pledge. I haven’t said it since I was an international student in New Zealand in Spring 2005, and my Kiwi flatmate asked me one day: “do you really pledge allegiance to a flag every day in school?” His father was elected to Parliament from Palmerston North. He seemed like a sensible enough guy, and he’s pretty smart, I thought.
It sounds really stupid when you look at it from his perspective–it’s a flag. It’s not going to save me from anything, so why pledge allegiance?
So, I stand in the back of the classroom during the Pledge when I sub or teach in East TN, smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt. The words of the pledge really don’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t bug me if students don’t say it. But, they’d better be able to explain the reasons why they abstain. And if that reason is “because my parents said I didn’t have to,” that is a perfectly acceptable reason.
It sounds really stupid when you look at it from his perspective–it’s a flag. It’s not going to save me from anything, so why pledge allegiance?
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Well, if you believe Wikipedia, the Pledge was part of an overall campaign “to sell American flags and American nationalism to public schools”. Why does this not surprise me?
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In the end, the Pledge is merely the continuation of flag-worship that “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a part of.
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But as one of the hosts of one of my favorite radio shows says, you really should run from anybody who wraps themselves in the flag.
I happen to side with Lewis Black on this subject. The Pledge of Allegiance has no meaning to the people who have to say it, and by the time you are old enough to comprehend the meaning of the words, you don’t have to say it anymore. It is coffee for elementary school students. By the time they get done saying it, they are awake enough to realize they are at school.
I respect this kid for even asking questions at his age, and for deciding to take a stand. (Although I shudder at the thought of someone his age who already wants to be lawyer.)
When I was a freshman in high school we had a one-year anniversary assembly in commemoration of 9/11. It was probably the biggest debacle I ever had to face in high school. This taking place in an incredibly liberal town, anyone could see the event was headed for disaster from the beginning. Some students, getting wind of the planned activities, and understanding that the event was mandatory, took it upon themselves to make signs to hold up. All of these signs were confiscated outside, up to and including my sister’s sign that read “Conscientious Objector,” for a reason that was explained to her friend in short terms “So the cops can’t beat you with it.”
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The event began, as you can imagine, with the pledge of allegiance. They even brought the color guard out in full uniform for it. Many students, myself included, didn’t stand. Some of us were yelled at. I believe one teacher even told a kid that if he didn’t want to stand for the pledge, he “might as well pack his bags and move to Afghanistan!” Every single foreign exchange student at the event looked to be extremely uncomfortable. This event was talked about for the rest of the year. It became the defining moment of my high school career (well, it was short). The awful way that some teachers reacted and the backlash from all of our parents, well, you can imagine the school never though an event similar to that ever, ever again.
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I never want to see a teacher discouraging a student from standing up for their rights, and the rights of others. To do so can cause kids to become disillusioned with the school and the teacher, and consequently doubt both the school and the teacher. When, as a developing young kid, you begin to notice inequalities, it’s extremely important to receive support from those around you, not to be berated.
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Also, a kid can absolutely understand gay rights enough to take a stand on it. Although they may not understand the sexual aspect of it at that age, I’ve known kids with gay family members or family friends to be unwavering on the issue of gay rights.
The teacher’s position is unsupportable. There is only one relevant question: It isn’t whether the child was wise to act as he did or whether the teacher had a strong interest in maintaining discipline, but whether the teacher had any right to compel the child to swear an oath he was not inclined to swear. The legal case cited and, I expect, other decisions make it very clear that the substitute teacher had no such authority, legally, morally or logistically. She was wrong, the boy was acting within his rights, and that’s that.
Seeing the responses in this thread going through mental gyrations to defend the teacher reminds me again of the need in this country for education reform.
Absolutely, positively agree. Right now, I am very thankful that my children are homeschooled.
Craig wrote:”But as one of the hosts of one of my favorite radio shows says, you really should run from anybody who wraps themselves in the flag.”
Funny how people selectively perpetuate certain hateful stereotypes when such stereotypes support their political proclivities.
Funny how Craig’s radio host is right.
Funny how people selectively perpetuate certain hateful stereotypes when such stereotypes support their political proclivities.
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It’s Monday morning, so I won’t even try and interpret what you’re trying to say.
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Suffice it to say, Jasmine’s story above is a great example of what that radio host was talking about.
Oh, and R. Maheras, the radio show isn’t political, it’s sports talk. You know, in case you want to jump to any more conclusions.
I used to stand for the pledge until I had a really great math teacher in high school who told us that he was okay with anyone that didn’t stand for the pledge, but that they had to sit quietly and not disrespect anyone that was standing. He was very patriotic and loved reciting it.
It never dawned on me until that moment that I didn’t have to say the pledge. I just did it robotically. It was part of my routine. I was never entirely comfortable with it. Why should I have to state my allegiance to this country every morning? I felt I already pledged my allegiance by not committing treason or other crimes. And, of course, I didn’t like the “Under God” nonsense.
So from then on, I didn’t stand. I wasn’t doing anything courageous. I wasn’t fighting for a minority group. That would’ve been noble. But I just sat silently during the pledge because it felt like the right thing to do. It made me feel like a real American.
As I grow older, I’m more and more impressed with my teacher. As I said, he felt very strongly about the pledge, and loved reciting it every morning. Yet he was still willing to not only let student avoid reciting it, but he told students they didn’t have to recite it! Students that didn’t even know it wasn’t required!
That is very impressive, I respect the man and all I’ve got to go on is this
I think I stopped doing the pledge of allegiance around the time I found out it wasn’t ‘for wichette stands’ (apparently in my youth I thought America was all about these particular stands that I assumed were of some sort of rattan/wicker material)
In all those years not one teacher or student even seemed to notice that I wasn’t taking part in it.
Graig wrote: “Oh, and R. Maheras, the radio show isn’t political, it’s sports talk. You know, in case you want to jump to any more conclusions.”
No conclusions jumped. The statement was political, regardless of the setting. It infers that those who show an “inordinate” amount of respect for the flag are “damaged” in some way (i.e., fanatical, ignorant, a threat to the rights of others, etc.). Overt, covert and inadvertant political messages are interwoven in all forms of popular culture — of which talk radio (sports-related or otherwise), is but one.
P Naheras wrote: “The statement was political, regardless of the setting.”
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Well, I guess I see it otherwise, particularly when it comes to the ‘hateful stereotype’ part of your comment.
It infers that those who show an “inordinate” amount of respect for the flag are “damaged” in some way (i.e., fanatical, ignorant, a threat to the rights of others, etc.).
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That’s a mighty big leap of logic. There are always those who are willing to use a cause — any cause — greater than themselves to advance a purely personal agenda. How do you know this particular sports host wasn’t making a distinction between people who proudly display a flag out of love of country, and those who use it to advance their own selfish agendas?
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By the way, it’s “implies,” not “infers.” A good way to remember it is: the speaker implies, the listener infers.
That’s not what I inferred from the implication (note correct usage). I tend to see people who “wrap themselves in the flag” as not displaying an inordinate amount of respect for it (I’m not sure why you put “inordinate” into quotes since you were the first one to bring up the word.) Rather, wrapping oneself in the flag shows a supreme disrespect for it, because the flag is seen as self-serving. Flag wrappers use the flag as a means of warding off anyone who criticizes dubious actions or opinions by declaring that the sheer act of posing such questions means that the questioner hates America. It’s a way to deflect criticism and short circuit the critics.
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If asking what you can do for your country is the sign of the conscientious American, then flag wrappers are instead trying to figure out what their country can do for them and act accordingly in a cynical and ruthless manner.
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PAD
“It infers that those who show an “inordinate” amount of respect for the flag are “damaged” in some way”
Wrapping oneself in the flag is NOT respecting the flag, it’s using it as a weapon and a tool.
The one thing that I think is amazing that no one has really commented on is that he “took a stand” by “sitting.” This is the kind of punnery that PAD usually loves to comment about.
I put the word inordinate in quotes because in the context I used, it’s a relative term. That is, your definition of “inordinate” and mine might vary considerably.
The phrase “wrap themselves in the flag” is, as you point out, primarily an insult. And while you may feel it is primarily used against those who use the flag in a self-serving way, I believe the phrase is greatly overused these days and has an overall chilling effect on many who might otherwise think showing the flag respect is perfectly OK.
For example, for a while during the campaign, Obama opted not wear a flag pin because he said he didn’t need to wear a flag pin to “prove” he was patriotic. What he didn’t realize is that as the campaign progressed, he was no longer just another politician from Illinois — he was now running for a position that had probably as much symbolism and tradition as the flag.
I think what really happened is that he spent too much time around people who were cool to such “inordinate” displays of flag respect, patriotism, etc. He relented eventually, but only after the whole issue became a political liability.
Showing respect is not the same as following slavishly, but too many people these days — even real smart ones — don’t seem to understand that.
I think what really happened is that he spent too much time around people who were cool to such “inordinate” displays of flag respect, patriotism, etc.
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I don’t think it was that at all. It was just that he hadn’t been wearing one because, well, he didn’t. Most politicians don’t. If, upon receiving the nomination, he immediately started wearing one, then the questions he gets pelted with are, “Why weren’t you wearing it before? Are you now emulating President Bush? Do you feel he presents the model for patriotism that we all should follow?” And the Conservative pundits spin it to be that Obama is endeavoring to ruthlessly manipulate the image of the flag to his advantage. It was a lose/lose situation. But I sure didn’t see it as the negative commentary upon people who feel strongly about the flag that you do.
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Personally, of all the beefs I had with Bush, I never gave a dámņ about if he wanted to wear a flag pin on his lapel.
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PAD
I believe the phrase is greatly overused these days and has an overall chilling effect on many who might otherwise think showing the flag respect is perfectly OK.
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Oh, but *of course* it would be overused now seeing as the patriotism drum was beat to death after 9/11 by the very people to which the phrase applies.
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As for ‘chilling effect’, I didn’t realize that the left had gotten a stranglehold on thought and opinion in this country with Obama’s election. As was the case after 9/11, where if you didn’t goosestep you were portrayed as an unpatriotic SOB who should move to some other country.
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In the end, PAD summed it up far better than I could.
Craig wrote: “Oh, but *of course* it would be overused now seeing as the patriotism drum was beat to death after 9/11 by the very people to which the phrase applies.”
As I said in my previous post, your definition of “inordinate” and mine might vary considerably.
Political views aside, anyone wonder why this kid decided to speak up only when there was a substitute teacher?
Does anyone know if he brought this issue up with his regular teacher?
Did his regular teacher tolerate his stance if he did bring it up?
I dunno. Perhaps he had resolved to take action and didn’t know there was going to be a substitute, but didn’t feel as if he should restrain himself. Either way, it was even MORE incumbent upon the substitute to behave cautiously since she wasn’t the regular teacher. For all she knows, he never stood up for the pledge, and was making an issue of something that the teacher had no problem with.
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PAD
This is just speculation, but I’ve seen my fair share of subs come in with their ‘agendas’. After handing out the pre-programmed assignment that they are supposed to do, they get into discussions with students and talk about some things that are going on. It could be that the pledge was prefaced with a ‘you all must stand for this’ or some other statement that seemed to force compliance. Or a precursor discussion that just enraged the kid.
Frankly, he’s 10. He could have done it because Avatar is in re-runs. I’m more concerned about the fallout afterwards.
There’s probably a lot more of this sort of thing than most of us realize. It just seldom breaks out of the local news. Here’s something from aol about a kid who wanted to protest abortion by having a day of silence and was told she couldn’t: http://news.aol.com/article/nj-teen-barred-from-abortion-protest/771321?icid=sphere_newsaol_inpage
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Frankly, the idea of a protest where kids would “remain silent on Oct. 20, except when called on in class” would fill my heart with joy. I don’t care if they are protesting to get “Manimal” off hiatus, that’s the sort of dissent I would support wholeheartedly. (She also wanted to wear an armband with “Life” written on it and hand out pamphlets. I see no problem with the former but I’m not sure about the latter–has this ever been legally addressed?)
Jonathan (the other one),
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You touch on something that I did not: That those in authority are not always right. The respectable ones know this while the rest, at times, seem to believe that their rank/title grants them immunity being wrong or being questioned. Say, for example (now I’m going to be a little snarky), a substitute teacher who publicly berates a ten-year-old student. (End Snark)
Reminds me of a substitute homeroom teacher I had back in High School. It was *cough*1985*cough* and we all had that combination of weariness and laziness that comes with just wanting to graduate already. One day, in comes a male substitute teacher, smartly dressed like a drill instructor with buzz-cut hair, and before he sits down, announces “Future leaders of America, I salute you!”. Now, this was strange behavior for a teacher in a public school in Levittown of all places, and garnered a few nervous giggles. But it wasn’t until after the morning pledge that things got really uncomfortable. Many students shuffled or mumbled through the pledge, a few didn’t have their hand on their heart, and some simply looked like they wanted to be back in bed. Now, the homeroom teacher’s primary job is to simply take morning attendance and make announcements before the students go off to their regular classes, but following the pledge… This teacher remained standing, staring at all of us for a few uncomfortable moments before launching into a 5 minute lecture about how in HIS day, he showed “respect” for his country and his flag, and how by not standing perfectly straight and reciting the pledge proudly, we were “dishonoring” all the brave men and women who fought for all it stood for. He then silently left the class and we didn’t see him again in any capacity. Now, I had been one of those students who mumbled his way through the pledge and just wanted to crawl back into a warm bed, but as a kid, I always saluted the surviving WWII soldiers who marched by during parades because I knew that these guys really DID “fight for our freedoms” in a war that actually meant something, against some truly bad guys that did indeed threaten our way of life, so I showed them some respect any chance I got. But to be lectured about how I’m not a decent and upstanding citizen by reciting an oath and pledging allegiance to a symbol and trying to guilt me to fall into step with harsh words and criticism of my patriotism? Isn’t that the very same thing that was going on in the countries those very same brave soldiers were fighting against?
Blindpew:
“Isn’t that the very same thing that was going on in the countries those very same brave soldiers were fighting against?”
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Short answer: Yes.
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Long answer: You got it, Sparky!
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I’ve known people like this substitute teacher you mention. Seems like they live under the notion that what works for them must, absolutely, without a doubt work for everyone else. This mindset knows no bounds. I’ve seen it in the guise of the religious, ecconomical, political, mášŧûrbáŧørÿ, social, and even in ones choice of entertainment.
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I’ve found that, for myself, the best way to deal with them is to politely ask clarifying questions and listen to what they have to say before dismissing them entirely. Sure it gives them false hope, but they had that coming in (or just a šhìŧŧÿ attitude in general) which is why they were so snotty in the first place.
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I’m an evil little man…
Which particular school in Levittown was this?
That would be Island Trees High School (where hope goes to die a slow death). Graduated class of ’86, myself.
A homeroom teacher’s primary job is to take attendance and make announcements before the students go off to their regular classes? Is that really all they do? What is the point of having a special class just for that?
I’ve always wondered what ‘homeroom’ meant. We didn’t have it at my school. I hear it referred to all the time in movies and TV and such, but they’ve never given any indication of what it might mean. They just seem to assume that everybody already knows. I’ve noticed it’s that way with a lot of things in popular culture.
We had homerooms in my high school, but all it basically meant was that that was the room where you went to pick up your report cards, and your class schedules on the first day of school. I don’t remember it ever serving any other purpose.
Yeah, pretty much. That was the whole shebang as I recall it.
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PAD
Homeroom in my high school was something like 10 minutes long, and consisted of little more than the homeroom teacher taking attendance and giving out special announcements. We basically just sat there.
Homeroom was so mundane, I only clearly remember one particular one. The kid next to me forgot the combination to his brand new locker padlock, and since I was bored, I asked him if I could try and guess the combination. Naturally, he laughed, but he agreed that if I got the lock open, I could keep it. Well, to both my surprise and his, before the bell rang, I somehow got that sucker open. He didn’t let me keep the lock though, which was, in itself, probably a good lesson on life.
We didn’t have homerooms either. We merely had first period. Mine was always history somehow.
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I was also a “professional classroom disruptionist,” though I tried to do it in a creative way by staying on topic, thus steering the teachers toward tanjents. Failing that I would get the teacher talking about their interests outside accadamia. One was a Star Trek fan, like myself, so that wasn’t much of a challenge.
Hi Peter, I don’t understand why you equate “gay rights” with “life liberty and pursuit of happiness”. Shouldn’t we all have the same rights regardless of who we have sex with? Why do you think people who exhibit homosexual behavior are entilted to special rights? I mean the purpose of regulating hetersexual unions is to give the government some way of protecting the next generation of is citizens. There are a lot of groups that aren’t allowed to marry: Adults and children, close relatives, people and animals, groups of 3 or more. Do you think just because we call heterosexual unions, “marriage”, that everyone who does not fall into that narrow category, is somehow not “free”. Why do you think the government needs to put a label on every type of relationship? Since you think it is ignorant to recognize heterosexual unions, why not get rid of the recognition of “marriage” altogether, because I see no other reason, other than regulating procreation, for the goverment to even care about who is having sex with who. You would be more logically consistent to advocate the abolishment of marriage. That way we would be all “equal”.
Hi, Rudy.
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I can’t, and won’t, speak for Peter David, but I feel the need to comment anyway. Call it me pursuing happiness (I just can’t resist sometimes).
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Just some background first. I’m against “Gay Rights,” but I am all for “Equal Rights for Gays, Lesbians, and Anyone Else You can Swing a Stick At.” In fact, I’m rather annoyed with the gays for letting someone frame the argument for gay marriage as a gay rights issue. It isn’t. It’s and equal rights issue, in this case the right to marry the person one wishes to. It should also be viewed as an “equal protection under law” issue, but, again the gays have frustrated me by not taking this aproach. How anyone made the leap to children, pets, automobiles, furniture, and personal grooming impliments is astounding, to say the least.
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Let us examine how Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are relevent. Life. We are all motivated by self-interest there, because we value our lives. If the law shows preference one type of person (which has been and sometimes still is the case) then another type is devalued by default. Since none of us wants to be devalued in the eyes of the law it is in our own best interest to see to it that the law doesn’t devalue a life that perhaps doesn’t live the same way we do.
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Liberty. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
In the case of Caldwell v. Texas in 1891, Chief Justice Melville Fuller wrote about the Fourteenth Amendment: “By the Fourteenth Amendment the powers of the States in dealing with crime within their borders are not limited, but no State can deprive particular persons or classes of persons of equal and impartial justice under the law.” I’d say that pretty much clears up the liberty part.
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Pursuit of Happiness. Easy one. If the law of the land actively discriminates against us we are dámņ well not happy about it and, often we will pursue ways to attain the happy.
On the matter of marriage in general, I’m againt the idea for myself but if others are happy with it I’m good with that. I do believe that government, at any and all levels, should stay the Hëll out of it.
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But now a question for you, Rudy: Exactly how does regulating heterosexual unions provide a way for the government to protect the next generation of it’s citizens?
Hi Peter, I don’t understand why you equate “gay rights” with “life liberty and pursuit of happiness”.
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That’s from the Declaration of Independence. The Pledge, and the words in question, are “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” People have used gay rights as a divisive issue, and gays are being deprived of their liberty to marry and are being treated unjustly. So the words are a sham. That’s the kid’s point.
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Shouldn’t we all have the same rights regardless of who we have sex with?
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Yes.
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Why do you think people who exhibit homosexual behavior are entilted to special rights?
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I don’t. I think they’re entitled to the same rights you and I are.
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I mean the purpose of regulating hetersexual unions is to give the government some way of protecting the next generation of is citizens.
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No. It’s not. Otherwise having children would be mandatory and anyone past a child bearing age would be banned from marrying.
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There are a lot of groups that aren’t allowed to marry: Adults and children, close relatives, people and animals, groups of 3 or more. Do you think just because we call heterosexual unions, “marriage”, that everyone who does not fall into that narrow category, is somehow not “free”.
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You are tossing around the same old irrelevant canards. Children cannot enter into a contract of any kind. Nor can animals. As for close relatives or threesomes: Brothers and sisters are not asking for marriage rights. I don’t see a lot of polygamists mounting campaigns either. We need to deal with the issues in front of us, not those manufactured for us by the talking heads on Fox news. For what it’s worth, I’m quite sure that fifty years ago, the exact same arguments were being put forward over the prospect of black people being allowed to marry white people, or Jews marrying Catholics. So you’re in the company of bigots from half a century ago. Think about it.
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Why do you think the government needs to put a label on every type of relationship? Since you think it is ignorant to recognize heterosexual unions,
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What in hëll are you talking about?
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why not get rid of the recognition of “marriage” altogether, because I see no other reason, other than regulating procreation, for the goverment to even care about who is having sex with who.
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With whom. And the problem isn’t the government. The problem is the pea-brained citizens who endeavor to legalize bias and prejudice and discrimination. I want to know why YOU care who people are having sex with. There is no reason, other than unreasoning hatred and prejudice, to take it upon yourself to decide who should and should not marry.
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You would be more logically consistent to advocate the abolishment of marriage. That way we would be all “equal”.
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So let me see if I understand this: People who oppose gay marriage claim that permitting it will somehow erode and endanger marriage…and you suggest the matter should be handled by doing exactly what those who oppose gay marriage fear the most.
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PAD
Not PAD: I mean the purpose of regulating hetersexual unions is to give the government some way of protecting the next generation of is citizens.
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PAD: No. It’s not. Otherwise having children would be mandatory and anyone past a child bearing age would be banned from marrying.
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That’s not strictly true. It is true that heterosexual unions are the only kind capable of naturally generating children. Not every heterosexual union can produce children, but all unions that can produce children are heterosexual. A recognition of those relationships does further the goal of protecting child-raising families. It’s a bit overinclusive in the sense that it protects relationships that don’t have children, and a little underinclusive in that it doesn’t protect same-sex couples that have adopted children, but by and large it does protect two parent families as designed. A perfect fit is way, way too much to ask of any social system, or any governmental program, and God knows it’s too much to hope for a government program about a social system. And we probably wouldn’t want anything especially narrowly tailored– 40 years ago, my mother was told she’d never have children. When I was growing up she kept threatening to send my tuition bills to the doctor who told her that. People make mistakes. The current regime– marriage of people of different sexes– does further its stated goal. You can make the argument that it shouldn’t be the only goal or we could tweak it beneficially, but it’s disingenuous to suggest that isn’t at least one of the purposes of marriage, or that it doesn’t work at all.
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For my own part, I think the real threats to families are the no-fault divorce, and the de-stigmatization of illegitimacy. Society has gotten a lot freer in recent decades. That hasn’t been all good.
Not every heterosexual union can produce children, but all unions that can produce children are heterosexual.
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And what happens when science reaches the point where two lesbians can produce a child by, in a lab, combine their two eggs to create a child through artificial means? It’s theoretically possible. Does that then demolish the last of those desperate arguments others put forward to forbid gay union? Or is it that lesbians can marry but not guys?
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PAD
PAD: The problem is the pea-brained citizens who endeavor to legalize bias and prejudice and discrimination. I want to know why YOU care who people are having sex with. There is no reason, other than unreasoning hatred and prejudice, to take it upon yourself to decide who should and should not marry.
It is absolutely infuriating that anyone with a different opinion is called “pea-brained” and accused of being a hateful bigot. Are you not aware that people can disagree with you and not be completely stupid as a result? Some people have different beliefs than you do, and different reasons for those beliefs. That does not automatically mean you are smarter than they are, or are a better human being.
For the record, I do not hate anyone. You are the person resulting to person attacks against people and demeaning those who do not think exactly as you do.
And what happens when science reaches the point where two lesbians can produce a child by, in a lab, combine their two eggs to create a child through artificial means?
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Weren’t you the one suggesting that the “polygamy as slippery slope” problem was artificial, and that we should deal with the world and its problems as they are now? Pointing out that the “protection of the family” argument fails if you assume the validity of a science fiction scenario that might be plausible in 100 years isn’t going to persuade, well, anyone really.
“Not every heterosexual union can produce children, but all unions that can produce children are heterosexual.”
Does this fact have any implication on the issue of gay marriage? That is the question.
“A recognition of those relationships does further the goal of protecting child-raising families.”
How? The issue is not of child producing but of child raising. The fact that gay couples cannot ‘produce’ children (naturally) has very little to do with protecting child raising families any more than the fact that infertile couples cannot have children has anything to do with it.
“The current regime– marriage of people of different sexes– does further its stated goal.”
What is the goal?
“it’s disingenuous to suggest that isn’t at least one of the purposes of marriage”
Raising children us usually the choice of a married couple, not a duty imposed on them by the state. The state might encourage couples to raise children as a matter of policy. But if it should do so, why restrict it to families that produced the children naturally? And why penalize the ones that either choose or cannot have children?
Weren’t you the one suggesting that the “polygamy as slippery slope” problem was artificial, and that we should deal with the world and its problems as they are now?
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Yes, but I wasn’t proposing a brand new and irrelevant and frankly absurd problem in order to block someone’s rights. I was pointing out a situation where a current objection might become moot.
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Pointing out that the “protection of the family” argument fails if you assume the validity of a science fiction scenario that might be plausible in 100 years isn’t going to persuade, well, anyone really.
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Well, two things come to mind. First, the notion that families are remotely threatened by gay marriage is unsupportable except through the politics of fear. And second: One hundred years? It’s already been done. Not with women, granted, but with lab mice. It’s still extremely difficult, but scientists can be pretty determined once they’ve got a toe hold (and if they’re financing isn’t being shut down for some reason.) I think it’s going to be a lot sooner than a century that it will be a viable option, at least for lesbians.
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PAD
Micha, I think you’re conflating two arguments. (1) Gay marriage opponents assert that the purpose, or at least a purpose, of state recognition of marriage is to promote the raising of children. On the theory that the optimal scenario for raising children is one in which two parents have a stable relationship and join in the child-raising duties, the state offers its blessing (which brings with it tangible benefits) to such unions. That, at least, is the argument. (2) On the assumption of (1) being at least a goal of the civil institution of marriage, there’s a dispute about how well the current regime, which recognizes only same-sex marriage, fits. It’s a pretty reasonable fit. It is over-inclusive, in that it encompasses any permissible union of male and female, whether they’re fertile or not. It is under-inclusive, in that it doesn’t encompass same-sex pairings that have adopted or want to adopt children. But by and large, the definition of marriage is rationally related to its goal in (1). Why is there a bar on consanguinity in marriage? Because it greatly increases the chances of genetic disorders. Adoption notwithstanding (it doesn’t create children, though it provides homes to children who need them), eliminating same-sex pairs from marriage laws excludes 0% of unions that can produce babies.
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It is a waste of time for gay marriage advocates to go after argument (2). Let’s grant Peter his advances in asexual reproduction among lab animals. So assume that in 20-40 years, it will be possible for lesbian couples to engage in an elective and probably highly expensive medical procedure to make an end run around biological reproduction. Is that going to change anyone’s mind now? Is it going to be prevalent enough even when it’s possible that it will cause any significant number of people to rethink the definition of marriage based on changed circumstances? I doubt it. All it will do is start a new firestorm about whether health insurance should have to pay for the procedure.
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Gay marriage proponents need to go after argument (1). Grant that procreation is a reason for civil marriage. It doesn’t have to be the only reason. I’ve said it before: the way gay marriage will become accepted in this country is by the people of the several states reaching the conclusion that equality demands granting the same benefits to people in same-sex relationships. Litigation will achieve nothing but build resentment among people who don’t like having their votes overturned. Specious arguments about how gays might reproduce will not undermine claims about how families are good for children, and how marriage is good for families. Convince people to broaden their definition of “family.” Show the human side of the relationships and let Americans reach the correct conclusion. That sort of campaign will do more than any shrill protests outside of the California Supreme Court, or any argument based on lab mice. I think you hit the right issue when you said “Does this fact [human reproduction is sexual] have any implication on the issue of gay marriage? That is the question.” Society needs to reach the conclusion that the answer to that question is “no.”
Me to PAD: “Weren’t you the one suggesting that the “polygamy as slippery slope” problem was artificial, and that we should deal with the world and its problems as they are now?”
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PAD’s reply: Yes, but I wasn’t proposing a brand new and irrelevant and frankly absurd problem in order to block someone’s rights. I was pointing out a situation where a current objection might become moot.
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You don’t think that the possibility of lesbians reproducing artificially isn’t “a brand new and irrelevant and frankly absurd” objection to marriage laws? Really? Same-sex relationships can already raise children through adoption. That hasn’t caused people to stop arguing that the current definition of marriage promotes child-rearing. You really think that scientific advances that cause marriage to potentially cover only 99% of possible child-producing unions, down from 100%, is going to bring down the whole house of cards? Bringing that objection into the debate will achieve 2 things. First, it will raise a storm of controversy about how these procedures are paid for that will completely overshadow its impact on the marriage debate. Health insurance is a Federal political question now, remember. All hail the Democratic Party. Second, bear in mind that a good chunk of gay marriage opponents are opponents because they think gay unions are unnatural. Now you want to introduce the specter of genetic engineering that literally makes the impossible possible. You think that’s going to reduce the field of people crying “unnatural!” This will swell their numbers and cause them to redouble their efforts.
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And for what it’s worth, the slippery slope argument isn’t “brand new and irrelevant and frankly absurd.” Arguments over polygamy were ongoing generations before gay marriage was an issue– indeed, at a time when sodomy was a felony everywhere. You don’t think the FLDS will jump all over arguments used in favor of gays, a formerly persecuted minority, and say “hey, what about us?” You don’t think it’s reasonable to worry about how to fight that battle once “tradition” is removed as a possible defense of marriage laws? It’s a winnable battle– child sexual abuse appears to be endemic to polygamous societies in practice, if not in theory– but the more you make marriage a right belonging to any two consenting adults, the harder it is to carve out exceptions. This whole battle is about forcibly removing one of those exceptions. And in support of the slippery slope argument, I find it interesting that your reaction to polygamy is essentially my reasoning for supporting gay marriage: “I wouldn’t touch the concept personally with a ten meter cattle prod, but if people can make that work for themselves, I honestly don’t care.” If the rule becomes “whatever ‘people can make… work for themselves’ is a legally cognizable relationship,” what is left of the marriage law at all? That’s one of any reasons I think recognizing gay marriage by ballot rather than by judicial fiat is the way to go. There is a real danger of unintended consequences once you start throwing out “fundamental rights” language on the issue, and none whatsoever from a referendum as long as the courts stay out of it.
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And just because I’m a lawyer, none of this debate is “in order to block someone’s rights.” They don’t have a right that could be blocked. The whole debate is whether they should have that right extended to them or not. You’re assuming that because they should have that right, they do have that right and people who object are blocking its exercise. I agree that marriage should be extended to gay couples. I have said that many times now. I don’t agree that people taking the opposite position are oppressive bigots who are getting in the way of the exercise of those rights. Some are bigots. Some are enforcing the law as written.
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That sounds like a ticky-tack argument, but it really isn’t. It’s a question of how people view rights. Do we believe in natural law, in which case people have rights whether the government recognizes them or not? Or are rights conferred by the government because we live in a free country and we, as a nation, believe the individual should be protected in certain ways because that’s the kind of society we want to live in? If the latter is the case, then the only truly fundamental rights are the right to vote and free speech; granted those two, all others become the choice of the will of the people. Put another way: can people choose to enact a restrictive polity? The rhetoric of the Revolution was all natural law, but the nation the Founders built was of the latter form. The only thing unamendable in the Constitution is equal suffrage in the Senate. (It’s after 1809 so we can abolish the slave trade now.) People could get tired of criminals benefiting from the exclusionary rule and rewrite the Fourth Amendment if they so chose. Jerry Brown made a natural law argument in the Proposition 8 battle, and the California Supreme Court said “no.” It’s an important issue.
You really think that scientific advances that cause marriage to potentially cover only 99% of possible child-producing unions, down from 100%, is going to bring down the whole house of cards?
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No, certainly not, because current protestors will just come up with some other dumb-ášš argument. I was just responding to the contention that same sex couples can never reproduce by pointing out that that might not always be the case. What will bring down the house of cards is the next generation of voters, the majority of whom aren’t going to be appalled by same sex marriages, just as the majority of voters our age aren’t appalled by interracial marriages. Of course, there are still plenty of dûmbáššëš who ARE offended by interracial couples. Fortunately they’re in the minority, and that’s all it requires.
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PAD
PAD: I think it’s going to be a lot sooner than a century that it will be a viable option, at least for lesbians.
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I seems like it should happen for gay men, also. Cloning is done by stripping out the genetic material of an egg and replacing it with different genetic material. It seems like a few more advancements on the process and they should be able to replace an egg’s DNA with a sperm’s DNA, except for leaving behind the X chromosome. Once they have modified eggs, they’d just need the usual samples from the other partner.
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On a related note, Stargate: Universe (which is kind of mediocre) had a 3 second kiss between two adult lesbians who had been in a serious relationship for years. The message board I frequent completely blew up with protests. It absolutely amazes me how many people said they have no problem with gay people, as long as they hide away what they are where nobody can see it. Somehow a much milder display of affection than what we’ve seen from the heterosexuals on that show was somehow abusive to the viewers.
Cloning is done by stripping out the genetic material of an egg and replacing it with different genetic material. It seems like a few more advancements on the process and they should be able to replace an egg’s DNA with a sperm’s DNA, except for leaving behind the X chromosome. Once they have modified eggs, they’d just need the usual samples from the other partner.
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Maybe I’ve been teaching earth science for too long but I’m not sure that’s accurate. leaving behind the x chromosome and placing a sperm’s DNA into the egg is just normal fertilization. What we would have to do is A-take an egg, B-strip it’s X chromosome out C-replace it with the X chromosome from a sperm cell of Partner A. Then partner B fertilizes it in vitro and, depending on if it gets an X or Y chromosome, we get a boy or girl.
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The only problem is that we are assuming that the X chromosome from a man is the exact equal to the x chromosome from a woman and that may not be the case. There has been some kind of research on this where it was suggested that things are more complicated than we think. So having a genome that is entirely devoid of male contribution or female contribution could have unintended effects. At any rate, seems like a lot of trouble and expense when you could just adopt a baby or hire a surrogate.
David: “Gay marriage proponents need to go after argument (1). Grant that procreation is a reason for civil marriage. It doesn’t have to be the only reason.”
Yes, I agree. But I don’t see how the 2nd argument can be separated from the first given that it depends on it.
Look, I’m not saying that procreation has nothing to do with marriage both legally and socially. Like you said it is “a reason for civil marriage.” next to many other social and legal reasons. But the argument used by opponents of gay marriage is extremely disingenuous. They latch onto the fact that gays can’t naturally procreate making it from an aspect of marriage into the the whole essence of marriage. It is similar to justify discrimination against women by pointing out that women are biologically different than men (they are). Saying that gays can’t physically procreate is simply a last ditch attempt to deny gay marriage by pointing out that they are different than us. You can tell that it is disingenuous because no one would ever consider denying marriage from a heterosexual couple based on infertility. I think that’s what PAD is saying too. It is basically just a variation of the “concept of marriage” argument. Instead of saying, marriage can’t mean people of the same sex, they say marriage can’t mean people who are incapable of having babies naturally.
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David: “But the more you make marriage a right belonging to any two consenting adults, the harder it is to carve out exceptions. This whole battle is about forcibly removing one of those exceptions.”
David: “If the rule becomes “whatever ‘people can make… work for themselves’ is a legally cognizable relationship,” what is left of the marriage law at all?”
Is the only point of marriage law to restrict marriage for whatever reason? Aren’t there other legal concerns that make it necessary for the law to be involved in marriages?
Shouldn’t it be hard for the government to restrict people unless it has a good reason to do so?
Is tradition a good reason to restrict marriage?
The reason the slippery slope argument is wrong is because it appeals to fear of the strange and unusual instead of facing the challenge head on, presenting actual arguments why in one case or another it is right to restrict the ability to marry. If polygamists wish to present arguments why they should be allowed to marry, why should we fear it? Frankly, it seems to me they have a good case, as weird as they may seem to us. It seems to me that if we present good rational reasons for when it is right to step in to restrict marriage or sex, the easier it will be for us to do so when it is warranted (to defend from child abuse for example). I am more concerned with the slippery slope which allow people to restrict marriage based on no reason other than bias.
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“Do we believe in natural law, in which case people have rights whether the government recognizes them or not? Or are rights conferred by the government because we live in a free country and we, as a nation, believe the individual should be protected in certain ways because that’s the kind of society we want to live in? If the latter is the case, then the only truly fundamental rights are the right to vote and free speech; granted those two, all others become the choice of the will of the people.”
I think this dichotomy is at least partially unnecessary, as can be seen from the history of your country. If you take natural rights to the extreme than any person who believes he has a right can impose it on the people using the courts or even violence. On the other hand, if you take the other view to the extreme, then you have a system in which rights, including the right to vote and free speech, are gifts given by the sovereign, i.e. the majority, at its whim. Both extremes are absurd. Yet democracy is the balancing of both view, historically, philosophically and practically. Isn’t it the whole point of the checks and balances system? As I see it both the court and prop 8 are parts of the system.
Specifically, as a matter of principal, gays cannot approach this issue as if they are asking for a favor or an extra privilege. As a matter of tactics I agree that persuasion should not be neglected. Gays will accomplish much by appealing to the better natures of people — show to them that they have little to fear rather than belittle them. However, historical experience has shown that appeal to the courts and more confrontational approaches are sometimes necessary. The reason MLK is admired is that he was able to combine all of these methods effectively.
Shouldn’t it be hard for the government to restrict people unless it has a good reason to do so?
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I have a libertarian streak, so I say yes.
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Is tradition a good reason to restrict marriage?
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That is an excellent question. Its answer would arguably be dispositive of the debate– if the answer is “no” then I see very few arguments that could be offered against gay marriage. My own position is that it is a decent reason, but insufficient because of the liberty interest arrayed against it. Tradition is always a reason to at least sit and think about what you’re trying to do. People are scarcely omniscient. If you have a system that works well, it’s worth stopping to think whether a proposed change is really an improvement or whether it might make things worse. I can’t see how gay marriage would make things worse for anyone (apart from offending a few people, which is something I tend not to worry about) and it would make the lives of some people immeasurably better, so I’m for it.
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The reason the slippery slope argument is wrong is because it appeals to fear of the strange and unusual instead of facing the challenge head on, presenting actual arguments why in one case or another it is right to restrict the ability to marry.
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But the reason it’s right is that advocates insist on using the court system to solve the world’s problems instead of going to the voters. Precedent has a slippery-slope danger built in. When a court tries to decide a case it looks back at earlier similar cases, to see if the reasoning behind that decision has any bearing on the current case. The concern is that whatever rationale is used for gay marriage might have unintended consequences down the road. Think about Lawrence v Texas, the case that struck down Texas’s homosexual sodomy law. That opinion was written so broadly that it’s still unclear what its ramifications will be. For one thing, notwithstanding its statement that it wasn’t saying states had to allow gay marriage or anything, people have argued that its logic leads inexorably to gay marriage. So there’s that.
re: tradition
I think we can agree that tradition should be question, but with humility, not nihilistic arrogance.
re: slippery slope
I thought we were talking about slippery slope in the general sense of arguments against gay marriage and not in the narrow sense of legal precedents. I’m not a lawyer, but isn’t it part of the job of the supreme courts to see whether old precedents apply to new situations, and if no, why? And don’t the court, the legislature and the people have ways to deal with situations when precedents (or the law) create loopholes that open the door to something that we have good reason to think is wrong?
For example. Polygamists can use the same arguments as gays because in both cases they can make the same claims about their relationship (and they can also make babies), and the opposition is mostly based on a very subjective feeling and tradition that such relationships are weird. On the other hand pedophiles can try to use the same argument, but we would have a different argument pertaining to the ability of children to consent. So we are not helpless in the face of this precedent. Children (and ducks) are safe.
Actually, I think getting rid of legal recognition of marriage would be the best idea. Marriage is very tied up in religion and traditional cultures, and I really don’t think Government should be involved in such areas. But if people insist that we must have legal marriage, then I do think it should be available to everybody. I don’t see where you get the idea that it is mostly about regulating procreation, because few of the laws regarding marriage seem all that concerned with that. Most of the laws seem to deal with property and finance.
And if we must have legal marriage, then I actually would allow it for close relatives (not the best idea for them to procreate, but bear in mind they can procreate just as easily without being married, so why subject them to a purely symbolic ban?), as well as for groups of three or more. (I’ve never understood why this idea is so taboo in our society.) As for adults and children– well, children are not considered competent for most contracts, so disallowing them marriage rights is no different. (But it should be pointed out that one can marry at sixteen in every state under some circumstances, and at even younger ages in some states with parental consent and some other specific circumstances. [Some states allow marriage at younger ages if the girl is pregnant, for instance.] I don’t know if this is still the case, but according to an article I read about twenty years ago, California and Georgia had no minimum age for marriage, but required court approval below the age of sixteen, I think.)
As for people and animals– animals aren’t considered legally competent to enter binding agreements, and they are also disqualified from the other legal rights of marriage (inheritance, power of attorney, joint property, &c).
I wonder, though, why people opposed to gay marriage so often bring up the issue of animal marriage. Are they really that similar? I would think a person of my sex resembles one of the opposite sex far more than either one resembles an animal. So if gay marriage is so similar to animal marriage, then aren’t heterosexual marriages just as similar?
There are a few problems with legalizing plural marriages. For one thing, marriage gives one certain legal rights–you can’t be compelled to testify against a spouse, for example. Easy to fix though–that should be eliminated. I don’t see how justice is served by allowing, say, a wife who witnessed her husband burying a body in the backyard, refuse to testify to that.
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It also seems to be the case that societies and groups that allow for plural marriage often are plagued with problems–a generalization, I admit. It’s not hard to see why–generally the form these things take is one man with many wives and that leaves a lot of young men out in the cold. lots of young unattached males is a recipe for disaster–gang violence, public drunkenness, war, more Jáçkášš sequels (the next one will be in 3-D! Imagine the possibilities! Wow, makes you want to take a shower.). I’ve seen a number of stories about some of the breakaway Mormon sects where the young boys are thrown out once they reach a certain age–just not a part of the equation, I guess. Just wait until the selective abortion of females starts making it’s effects felt in China in a few years.
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But…and it’s a big but–I have a hard time seeing how one can morally be for the rights of gays to marry and not at least give serious thought to the rights of pluralists. Is their love somehow less legit than that of the rest of us? I’m on PAD’s side on this for the most part but sidestepping the question of rights for plural marriage advocates is dodging the issue. yeah, it may not be getting much attention now. Neither was gay marriage just a few short years ago. Just saw an episode of The Golden Girls where Blanche’s brother announces he is getting married to his male lover. Got a big big laugh, because, ha ha, what a wacky concept, two guys getting married! It’s one reason why I can’t join in the condemnation of those with whom I disagree with on this–a few years ago gay marriage was not anything I gave 1 iota of thought to, so it seems kind of self important to suddenly puff out my chest and act like I’m arguing for something that all decent people have known was a righteous cause. It’s pretty much a new idea, so I won’t condemn those for whom the idea seems just too new.
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Either we come out and say, yeah, this will probably lead to plural marriages and we should think about how to make that best work, or at least stop using arguments like “people should be free to marry anyone they love” because if you are against plural marriages or marriages between close relatives you don’t really believe that. That the number of such marriages would be small is not significant and also not entirely certain.
And anyway, I think a lot more can be done with appealing toward people’s better natures than by attacking them. Even the Mormon church in Utah is now supporting some gay rights proposals. The gay activists who worked to get that did so by working with the LDS members, not by picketing homes or making vague threats or issuing boycotts. When you are asking for something it’s best not to do so in a way that makes the person WANT to say no, like, for example, acting like a douchebag.
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Gay marriage has been defeated how many times now–20, 30? And not just in those states people like to characterize as full f bigoted inbreds, screw you very much. It’s time to reassess strategies.
Marriage is very tied up in religion and traditional cultures, and I really don’t think Government should be involved in such areas.
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Married is only tied up in religion now because religion decided, like they did with so many other things, to hijack it. And let’s face it, when you say ‘religion’, you’re pretty much referring to Christianity; that’s just the way it is in this country, since Christianity in all its forms is the dominate religion.
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But Christianity’s involvement in marriage is a fairly recent thing. Just like marrying for reasons other than hereditary titles, property, and paying for the bride is fairly recent.
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Religion should be the one to not be involved with deciding what is marriage and who is married. Everybody in this country lives under a single government – at least on the federal level. But not everybody in this country lives with the same religion; Christianity shouldn’t be dictating marriage or terms for marriage to those who are not Christians. And handing marriage to religion would do just that.
Are they really that similar?
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No, but those against gay marriage LOVE the ‘slippery slope’ argument – that gay marriage will lead to bëšŧìálìŧÿ or necrophilia, etc. There’s no basis in reality for the argument, but it doesn’t stop them from making it anyways because those saying it don’t care about logic or reason in this debate.
I’m on PAD’s side on this for the most part but sidestepping the question of rights for plural marriage advocates is dodging the issue.
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I”m not dodging the issue. I’m saying it’s a non-issue, just as–as you said yourself–fifty years ago, men marrying men was a non-issue. I’m saying you deal with the problem that’s in front of you. To say, “Well, if we allow gay marriage, then maybe there will be multiple marriage, and therefore we shoudn’t,” is the same as saying fifty years ago, “Well, if we allow blacks to marry whites, then maybe there will be men wanting to marry men, and therefore we shouldn’t.” I’m saying that societal mores change, and marriage should reflect that. Where we are right now is that blacks marrying whites is no big deal (except for one isolated judge, apparently, according to news reports) but gays marrying gays is. I am fully confident that years from now, gays marrying gays will be no more big of a deal than blacks marrying whites. The reason I believe this is that polls consistently show that people under thirty overwhelmingly support gay marriage. What we’re seeing now in the Prop 8s and such is the last, dying gasp of fundamentalists who see gays as not being worthy of the sacrament of marriage, just as–not all that long ago–they firmly believed that people marrying outside their faith were likewise undeserving, and even should be shunned.
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How do *I* feel about multiple spouses? Honestly, it sounds incredibly complicated, and I wouldn’t touch the concept personally with a ten meter cattle prod, but if people can make that work for themselves, I honestly don’t care.
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PAD
Have y’all seen The Daily Show’s take on this?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/20/jon-stewart-enlist-pro-wr_n_364979.html?
After seeing that boy in live action, I can totally picture him saying “With all due respect, ma’am, you can jump off a bridge,” to his teacher (or any adult), and it simply fills my heart with glee. I *really* don’t think that messing with the substitute factored into this kid’s decisions. He has far more backbone than that.
I think this little boy definitely represents the way things are going. Once the older generation dies off, gay marriage will be no big deal.
It’s about one adult human being marrying another. That gives them the same benefits as everyone else. When one dies, another is entitled to the 401k, they can be taxed accordingly, ect.
Any attempt to compare this with a human marrying a chair, or a four year old, or a goat is a stupid distraction.
A great guy named Bob Winquist died last year. He was the head of the Animation Department at my school. I know his grandfather lived to 99, but he only made it to 85. He was a pretty private guy, but I learned he was living with the same man for 50 years. I also learned that his partner died only three years before him. I was sad, of course, that he didn’t make it to the age his grandfather did. He wanted to. But there was something telling in the fact that he didn’t live that much longer than his life-long partner, just like any hetro married couple. And to think an outstanding partnership like that isn’t recognized as being “real”. It’s crazy.
I hope that when that little boy grows up most of America will realize how crazy this all is.
Peter, thanks for the responses. Here’s my reply:
Peter David:”People have used gay rights as a divisive issue, and gays are being deprived of their liberty to marry and are being treated unjustly. So the words are a sham. That’s the kid’s point.”
You miss my point. Putting aside religious considerations, what are the reasons for the government to recognize any relationship? Why should the government even know who is sleeping with whom? A secular government’s only justifiable reason is to paint with as broad a brush as possibly identifying those relationships vital to the goverment’s survival. For example, the United States is over 200 years old, and since people don’t live indefinitely the only way for a government to survive is to inculcate the next generation with the values and sense of nationalism to ensure the governments surival after the founders have long passed. In the old days when most folks had their kids at home with the mid wife, identifying those relationships in which producing children were possible was the most effecive way to incentivize folks to raise good citizens. The reason only heterosexual relationships fall into the category of marriage is because heterosexuals are the only ones capable of having children. Men having sex with men and women having sex with women, cannot have children. It is a biological fact. As I said, apart from religious considerations, why should the government care who you are sleeping with? In the case of heterosexals, those relationships can result in children, who are vital to the goverment’s posterity, in the case of homosexuals, there is no government interest what so ever.
Your argument that since not all heterosexuals can have children and therefore it is no different from homosexuals, again, misses the point. As I said, designating some folks as “married” was simply an easy way for a government to identify those relationships, with a very broad brush, where they could encourage future good citizens. The infrastructure 100 years ago was not nearly what it is today. If you want to argue that the infrastructure of our society hasgotten to the point where we no longer need to paint such a broad brush, then apart for religious considerations, the government does not need to know who loves whom. That’s between the people in love, no goverment need know or even care.
Peter David wrote” You are tossing around the same old irrelevant canards. Children cannot enter into a contract of any kind. Nor can animals. As for close relatives or threesomes: Brothers and sisters are not asking for marriage rights. I don’t see a lot of polygamists mounting campaigns either. We need to deal with the issues in front of us, not those manufactured for us by the talking heads on Fox news. For what it’s worth, I’m quite sure that fifty years ago, the exact same arguments were being put forward over the prospect of black people being allowed to marry white people, or Jews marrying Catholics. So you’re in the company of bigots from half a century ago. Think about it.”
Those “old irrelevant canards” are simply taking your argument to its logical conclusion, which, simply stated, is that once you decide the definition of “marriage” can mean anything, then what you’ve really done is make the term meaningless. You are just playing semantics. I don’t see how a honest and logial critique of these ideas makes anyone a bigot. I think it is simply easier to call someone a “bigot” then to offer a logical response.
Peter David:”The problem is the pea-brained citizens who endeavor to legalize bias and prejudice and discrimination. I want to know why YOU care who people are having sex with. There is no reason, other than unreasoning hatred and prejudice, to take it upon yourself to decide who should and should not marry.
I don’t care. Really. I think either you recognize that babies can only come from heterosexual unions or simply trust your infrastructure to ensure a nation’s survival. If you feel that technology is to the point where we no longer need to identify heterosexual relatonsips,then simply call for the abolishment of marriage.
Peter David:So let me see if I understand this: People who oppose gay marriage claim that permitting it will somehow erode and endanger marriage…and you suggest the matter should be handled by doing exactly what those who oppose gay marriage fear the most”
Well, six in one hand, half a dozen in the other. Lets be honest, if the only reason you are “marrying” is because you want the government to give its seal of approval to validate your relationship, then you are already off to a bad start.
1) “identifying those relationships in which producing children were possible was the most effecive way to incentivize folks to raise good citizens.”
This is not historically true. This is an attempt to present a 21st century argument as a historical argument because the old arguments against homosexuality don’t work anymore.
The argument is also false. Governments have laws that deal with children and their welfare that are not related to marriage.
2) “Those “old irrelevant canards” are simply taking your argument to its logical conclusion…. I think it is simply easier to call someone a “bigot” then to offer a logical response.”
Yet several people did offer a very logical response.
Children, animals and inanimate objects are not capable of getting into a contract and are therefore incapable of getting married. Bigamy that involves two people being married to the same person without being aware of it is fraud and a breech of contract. However, since polygamy, like homosexual marriage is a union between consenting adults there is no justification to oppose it, unless there is doubt about the consent. Incest 99% of the time involves abuse of one member who is usually a minor. However, in the highly hypothetical scenario of two related consenting adults seeking to get married, there will be no justification to deny them, except for possible biological harm to future offspring.
Here is something interesting. If you open a history book you might read that Pharaohs used to marry their sisters, or you might read that men used to marry women who were minors by our standards. Yet in both cases, the history book will call these unions marriage, disgusting as they may be to our eyes. Yet when two consenting adults of the same sex wish to call their committed relationship marriage this somehow threatens the definition of marriage?
3) “recognize that babies can only come from heterosexual unions”
False.
Babies are either the result of women having sex with men or going to fertility clinics. Unions are not necessary and are irrelevant. Sexual orientation is not that important either.
Marriages are formed when two people decide to form a household together based on a romantic relationship (as opposed to roommates). Gender or ability to have children are irrelevant.
4) “or simply trust your infrastructure to ensure a nation’s survival.”
Some families have children, either as a result of conception or adoption. The infrastructure that is important for the ‘nation’s survival’ is not the genitalia involved in creating the baby but the household and education that take care of the baby until he matures. This has nothing to do with gender either.
5) “if the only reason you are “marrying” is because you want the government to give its seal of approval to validate your relationship, then you are already off to a bad start.”
If the only reason you deny government approval of a certain relationship while readily validating many others is because you think gays are weird. then you are certainly off to a bad start.
6) “For my own part, I think the real threats to families are the no-fault divorce, and the de-stigmatization of illegitimacy.”
I should think stigmatizing children for the mistakes of their parents is hardly a good thing. There are other ways to discourage or deal with the situation of single parents, and the children that result. Yet people tend to frown on some of these ways.
7) “Society has gotten a lot freer in recent decades. That hasn’t been all good.”
Isn’t that the price of freedom?
Here is something interesting. If you open a history book you might read that Pharaohs used to marry their sisters, or you might read that men used to marry women who were minors by our standards. Yet in both cases, the history book will call these unions marriage, disgusting as they may be to our eyes. Yet when two consenting adults of the same sex wish to call their committed relationship marriage this somehow threatens the definition of marriage?
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Well, to be fair, opponents of gay marriage are likely to decry both of those scenarios as appalling and morally invalid concepts of marriage. So no, I don’t think you can successfully accuse them of inconsistent logic on those grounds. Abolitionists didn’t deny that slavery existed as a legal relationship; they felt it was repugnant to natural law and ought to be abolished. Historians acknowledge that Egyptian dynasties featured incestuous marriages; that doesn’t undermine the current social and legal norm that marriage should be a union of two unrelated people (of the opposite sex in 46 states). The typical reaction to those historical accounts isn’t “Hm, related people can get married in some societies, so our definition of marriage is really impoverished,” it’s “Ðámņ, that was one screwed up society if they let brothers and sisters marry.” Remember, people make fun of Appalachian states because of a perception that it’s common there for cousins to marry, without that concept threatening consanguinity laws elsewhere. Changing the focus back to gay marriage, only really disingenuous (i.e. lying) people claim that “marriage,” as of 1990 at least, didn’t describe a coherent concept of opposite-sex unions, and honest opponents will acknowledge that such marriages do actually occur in Massachusetts now; the real debate about same sex marriage has always been what the concepts of marriage and equal protection ought to embrace. The existence of different data points doesn’t really change that debate. In the fullness of time, assuming the sky doesn’t fall on the states that allow gay marriage, I expect that the experience of those states will undermine some of the factual claims about how damaging gay marriage might be, but then as now the argument will be over an “ought.”
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I should think stigmatizing children for the mistakes of their parents is hardly a good thing. There are other ways to discourage or deal with the situation of single parents, and the children that result. Yet people tend to frown on some of these ways.
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It’s absolutely not the children’s fault, which is why the legal regime has changed in the way that it has. I would point out, though, that illegitimacy was much less common when it was stigmatized, which is only to be expected. When you remove the cost from a behavior, that behavior is likely to increase. In most social contexts in 21st Century America, there is very little stigma to being an unwed parent; the only serious disincentives now are financial, and AFDC tries to help with that because, again, it’s not the kids’ fault. We need to find a way to discourage that behavior without punishing the innocent children. I’m open to ideas. It may be an unsolvable problem. (And some people may not think it’s as big a problem as I do; your mileage may vary.)
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Me: Society has gotten a lot freer in recent decades. That hasn’t been all good.
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You: Isn’t that the price of freedom?
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Yes, it is. We do have to take the bad with the good. (For example, popular sovereignty is good; Proposition 8 is bad.) That doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge and bemoan the bad.
David: “Well, to be fair, opponents of gay marriage are likely to decry both of those scenarios as appalling and morally invalid concepts of marriage. So no, I don’t think you can successfully accuse them of inconsistent logic on those grounds.”
David: “remember, people make fun of Appalachian states because of a perception that it’s common there for cousins to marry, without that concept threatening consanguinity laws elsewhere.”
David: “only really disingenuous (i.e. lying) people claim that “marriage,” as of 1990 at least, didn’t describe a coherent concept of opposite-sex unions”
I disagree. People who oppose gay marriage often present the argument that it would undermine the ‘concept’ of marriage, and that it goes against the regular meaning of marriage. They do not say that it goes against a legal concept of marriage at a certain country up to a certain time period. When challenged with the claim that the concept of marriage was subject to social change, they reject that idea as absurd. So pointing out that (a) their concept of marriage includes even kinds of marriages that they find appalling, and (b) that these kind of marriages are considered weird or even funny, but are not considered a threat to the institution of marriage, enables us to move away from the argument about the ‘concept’ of marriage (translation: two men getting married is gross). Then we can discuss the real question: is there a real reason to deny gays the option of marriage? We have a reason to do so in the case of incest. I’m not sure if first cousin marriage is illegal, although I think some religions disapprove. We restrict minors marrying legally although it is perfectly within the concept of marriage as far as most religions are concerned.
There is another more narrow legal question containing to the concept of marriage in the law books. One side can argue that since, historically, the concept of marriage in the US up until now did not include same sex marriages, then there is no justification to claim the right of marriage based on existing laws. While the other side can argue that since the laws do not explicitly say that marriage does not include gays, there is no legal justification based on existing laws, to restrict it just because the legislators did not take the possibility into consideration. Wouldn’t you say that a person marrying a cousin can claim that he has the right to do so unless there are specific laws against it regardless of whether he’s in a state where it is socially acceptable or not?
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Single parents usually occur as a result of three reasons:
1) People who are affluent enough but single decide to have children.
2) Divorce
3) Unwanted marriage as a result of carelessness.
As for the second there is not much you can do, except maybe force people to reconsider at least once before they divorce. Stigmatizing the first category would constitute butting into competent people’s private lives. In the last case stigma would be cruel. Moreover, of all the groups this one is the one that was all too common in the past too despite very cruel stigmas. Forced abortions are obviously not an option. So all you are left with is education.
You miss my point.
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No, I got your point. It’s just misplaced.
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Putting aside religious considerations,
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You can’t put them aside. Religious considerations are the root of the problem. But I’ll get back to that in a minute.
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what are the reasons for the government to recognize any relationship?
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Marriages aren’t automatically about personal relationships per se. People don’t have to be in love to marry, or for that matter want to have children. Marriages have been made for any number of reasons. Government’s “place” comes from the fact that it’s a legally binding contract.
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Why should the government even know who is sleeping with whom?
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It’s not a matter of who you’re in bed with except from the standpoint that you’re legally in bed with them, just as when one corporation gets into bed with another. And if that marriage falls apart, the courts may well be required to oversee the dissolution.
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A secular government’s only justifiable reason is to paint with as broad a brush as possibly identifying those relationships vital to the goverment’s survival.
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No. Wrong. You are wrong. You are towering in your wrongness. If you were any more off base you could be thrown out by an errant throw from a fan in the left field bleachers. You are completely manufacturing a reason for government involvement in marriage that exists only in your head. It’s not about government’s survival; it’s about providing a fair venue for participants in a contract to seek legal relief should the union go awry, not to mention other legal aspects such as being forced to testify against one’s mate, involvement in medical situations, etc.
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For example, the United States is over 200 years old, and since people don’t live indefinitely the only way for a government to survive is to inculcate the next generation with the values and sense of nationalism to ensure the governments surival after the founders have long passed.
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That’s an utterly crappy example, rooted not in law or legal tradition or the Constitution or anything except in either your head or something you heard Glenn Beck say.
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In the old days when most folks had their kids at home with the mid wife,
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In the old days, marriages were arranged affairs with love an irrelevancy, so all bringing up the old days does is underscore that marriage is a constantly changing state.
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identifying those relationships in which producing children were possible was the most effecive way to incentivize folks to raise good citizens.
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I defy you to find one shred of law that says that.
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The reason only heterosexual relationships fall into the category of marriage is because heterosexuals are the only ones capable of having children.
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Since your assertion is nonsensical, everything you’re saying that stems from that is likewise nonsensical.
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Men having sex with men and women having sex with women, cannot have children. It is a biological fact.
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They can adopt. Problem solved.
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As I said, apart from religious considerations, why should the government care who you are sleeping with?
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And now I’ll address the religious aspects, as I said I would above. The problem isn’t government. The problem IS religion. The problem is that the church hijacked marriage, quite possible to–as you indicate–to oversee the inculcation of possible issue into the church’s beliefs. This happens at the government’s sufferance: “By the powers vested in me by the state of (whatever) I now pronounce you man and wife.” You’ve got it exactly backwards: The authority for marriage comes from the state to the church, not vice versa. Therein lies the problem.
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You see, there are far too many people who believe that homosexuality is a sin. They believe that marriage is a religious sacrament. They believe that since marriage is a sin, therefore it should not receive religious sacrament. By connecting the church to marriage, it’s made gays marrying an issue when it really shouldn’t be.
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From a legal point of view, the church has no more business overseeing marriage than any other contract. You don’t need the clergy to bless the buying of a house or oversee a corporate merger or involve itself in a loan. Marriage is the only contract that the church stuck its nose into and as a consequence the only contract that has resulted in bigotry, unfairness and injustice. What were the odds? The solution isn’t to extract government from the equation. The solution is to extract religion from the equation. Which is what civil unions are, except they’re really not. Argue to me that religious marriage should be abolished, and you make a compelling point. Argue that government marriage should be abolished, and you lose me.
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Your argument that since not all heterosexuals can have children and therefore it is no different from homosexuals, again, misses the point.
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When you contend that marriage is all about having children, then it is entirely the point.
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As I said, designating some folks as “married” was simply an easy way for a government to identify those relationships
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And as I said, that is an unsupported point everywhere except in Rudyworld, so, moving on…
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Those “old irrelevant canards” are simply taking your argument to its logical conclusion, which, simply stated, is that once you decide the definition of “marriage” can mean anything, then what you’ve really done is make the term meaningless.
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Actually that’s an illogical conclusion, called reductio ad absurdum. When contract law rejects your examples, then its based on nothing and thus is easily rejected.
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I don’t see how a honest and logial critique of these ideas makes anyone a bigot.
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Because the critiques are dishonest and illogical. Bigotry stems from unreasoning thinking. Which is not to say that everyone who is illogical is automatically a bigot; far from it. But in this instance, it’s a pretty good bet.
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I think it is simply easier to call someone a “bigot” then to offer a logical response.
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I have offered logical responses. You’ve ignored them or answered them with illogic.
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I don’t care (who people are sleeping with).
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Good. Then you should have no problem with gay marriage.
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Well, six in one hand, half a dozen in the other. Lets be honest, if the only reason you are “marrying” is because you want the government to give its seal of approval to validate your relationship, then you are already off to a bad start.
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I personally don’t care why someone wants to get married. That’s their business, not mine. Or yours. Or the church’s. It is the government’s at those points where marriage intersects with various legal proceedings; it provides “standing” for the rights of the spouses. That’s pretty much it.
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Argue to me that religious marriage should be abolished, and you make a compelling point.
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How could that possibly be done? We can no more abolish the rights of people to marry in a religious ceremony than we can regulate what a priest or rabbi says during a church service. You’re one of the biggest 1st amendment boosters I know so it’s clear I am misreading this. So what exactly did you mean?
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And just to re-throw out something I mentioned before–is there any compelling reason to keep the “can’t be forced to testify against a spouse” loophole? Especially when we are broadening the definition of marriage to include more people?
1) The argument Rudy brings is very similar to Orson Scott Card’s argument. This is not a recommendation.
2) “We can no more abolish the rights of people to marry in a religious ceremony than we can regulate what a priest or rabbi says during a church service.”
Marriage has a societal aspect, and since until recently most societies were religious it meant that marriages took on religious aspects — they became a religious ritual. Marriages also have a legal aspect, and as a result governments are involved. This results in a meeting point between religion and state. In the US, in order to maintain the separation of religion and state, you have a situation where religious clerics also act as agents of the government, thus performing the legal as well as the religious aspect of marriage. Although you can pick any religious aspect you like, or none at all, and have a man with only legal authority and no religious authority perform the marriage. In France you get married in city hall (I think) and then you can have whatever religious ceremony you like, or none. So, there is less contact between the religious aspect and the legal than in the US. Another approach could be to have the government do only a legal union which will not be called marriage, and have clerics, or other persons of your choice, perform a completely non-governmental ritual. What you don’t want is a situation where clerics will use the legal authority granted to them in order to force their religious views on the governments and on the citizens. Believe me, it is not good.
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Don’t you find it strange that the political side which usually views and involvement of the government as negative is interested in government involvement in the case of marriage?
How could that possibly be done? We can no more abolish the rights of people to marry in a religious ceremony than we can regulate what a priest or rabbi says during a church service.
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It probably couldn’t be done. I just said it was a compelling point.
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Look at it this way: “By the power vested in me by…” Well, if that’s the case, then implicit in the statement is that it can be revoked, because power that’s vested typically can be. Let’s say that the argument is made in a state legislature that the concept of the separation of church and state means that the state should not be vesting the church with the power to perform legally binding marriages. There are plenty of powers the state reserves for itself, and let’s say that the legislature votes to make marriage one of those powers, no different than taxing citizens or issuing drivers licenses. It gets voted into law, and there you go.
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Would that ever happen? No, of course not. It would be political suicide; if the entire state senate voted to approve it, next elections the entire senate gets voted out. But Rudy was contending that the government’s interest in performing marriages should be wiped out, and I said that a more sensible argument could be made for divesting the church of that power rather than the government, if for no other reason than that–if a marriage is being dissolved, who do you want to go before? A judge? Or the local archbishop?
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But for the purposes of allowing gays to marry it isn’t the religions that are really the problem. Yes, there are religions that won’t do it but then again, I can’t probably get married by an orthodox rabbi either, unless I want to convert. A marriage that is valid to one religion may not be valid to another. It doesn’t matter. You find the religion that WILL marry you. Divest government from marriage and gays can get married that day. Divest churches from marriage and they still can’t get married until the government says they can.
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The politicians are the problem. Getting them to change or taking away their power is the solution.
But for the purposes of allowing gays to marry it isn’t the religions that are really the problem.
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That’s not what I’ve heard at all. From what I read, organized church efforts were largely rsponsible for putting Prop 8 through.
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The politicians are the problem.
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No. The people are the problem and the church is the problem. Look at Maine, where the politicians voted gay marriage into law and the governor signed it. The politicians got it done. What happened? The voters took it upon themselves to undo it. And who was one of the key players in that endeavor? The Catholic archbishop who devoted ten grand in discretionary church funds to defeat the law. The intolerance stems from the Church’s assertion that to be gay is to be sinful, and therefore they are working to prevent gays from marrying.
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Well, yes, the people are the problem, in that it’s the people who vote for politicians and support the church of their choice. I realize that people are behind everything. A “church” has no power other than that given to it by it’s people. I agree with that.
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My point was that although you are correct that ultimately the people can undo what the politicians do, it’s still the politicians who have codified the problem. The Defense of Marriage Act passed the Senate by a vote of 85-14, the House by 342-67. Senate Democrats supported it by 2 to 1. Most democratic House members voted for it. A democratic president signed it. The penalty they received from the group that has been a solid voting block for the party and who they had just stabbed in the back? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. A letter to the New York Times expressing hurt feelings, that’s about the size of it.
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Well, it’s clear that nobody is going to hold the politician’s feet to the fire, so how best to get “the people” to think the way we do. The strategy so far has been to portray gay marriage opponents as intolerant bigots and, when they oddly react to this by working even harder to deny victory to those attacking them, double down on the name calling. Some have even threatened vague retaliation. Boycotts have been launched against those who are on record against gay marriage.
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How has that worked out?
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Yeah, eventually we will win, I think, just on demographics. The younger generation is much more in favor of gay rights and I think it unlikely that they will become less so as they get older. The more gay people one meets the harder it is to think of them as undeserving of respect and dignity, especially now that it is not just the stereotyped flamboyant dÿkëš on bikes types that one sees as representatives of what gay people are.
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The only thing that will stave off victory for as long as possible would be to galvanize the opposition. So I would ask those who are in favor of seeing gay people get the full rights they deserve; is it more important to you to win or to see your opponents lose. Because although it seems like the same thing it really isn’t.
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Wow… Just… Wow…
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Rudy, stop now while it’s clear that you don’t know fully what you’re talking about and before you prove that you haven’t even the faintest first clue what you’re talking about.
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Rudy: “Putting aside religious considerations, what are the reasons for the government to recognize any relationship? Why should the government even know who is sleeping with whom?”
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Just on the legal end of it there are an entire host of reasons. There are some matters (such as with medical emergencies that leave you incapacitated) where privacy laws, medical confidentiality rules, guardianship rights and the legal authority to act on behalf of one’s estate all come into play. Visitation rights and the right to authorize certain medical care require you to be either direct family or a legal spouse of the person receiving the care when they cannot speak on their own behalf. Despite the claims of some on the right, not everyone has the full rights and abilities granted a legal spouse under some of the local laws passed to cover homosexual unions and even then not every state has the same level of rights guaranteed a homosexual partner that some other states do.
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Various states have tax laws that base your taxes on your status as single or married. Various tax breaks, exemptions and other tax issues are determined by your legal status as single or married. Same with taxes from the federal level
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Insurance is another issue. You, me, Peter and almost anyone here can legally place a legally recognized spouse on our insurance. Now, we can’t just add or girlfriend or boyfriend and in many cases homosexuals are stuck with that problem. They person living with them is not a legally recognized spouse and is therefore ineligible for coverage under the other partner’s insurance. If, thanks to these wonderful economic times, only one person is working at a job that offers insurance for their position or the other partner is making enough to cover the extra insurance plan out of pocket at the time of a serious illness or accident you are faced with the options of having no care, having poor care or having care at the cost dámņëd near going into bankruptcy.
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You can also have fun problems with that as well. My wife had a preexisting condition and was unable to get insurance through an employer or on her own. We actually got legally married months before we had the actual ceremony because she had been putting of some stuff for a long, long time due to the financially ruining costs attached to just some of what she needed done. She was finally able to get it done because my insurance was changed to cover her after the paperwork was filed with city hall. In many states still, had we been a gay couple, she would either be suffering greatly right now, we would be very tight financially from having to foot the bill for her insurance or, if we couldn’t afford the private insurance for her, we would likely face bankruptcy when we would finally be forced to deal with her situation and face tens of thousands in medical costs.
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And, seriously, even you can’t be so dim that you think that you can walk up to just any old legal or private institution and get whatever rights and privileges for yourself as someone’s boyfriend as you would be able to as their husband. The simple fact is that in many areas our society extends legal rights and privileges to legally recognized spouses that are not available to friends, BFFs, boyfriends, girlfriends or even partners. It is simply unjust and discriminatory that my wife and I can have the legal rights and privileges extended to us thanks to our soon to be five year old marriage when a good friend of mine and her partner are denied them after their almost fifteen years of being in a relationship that is in every way but name a loving, faithful and devoted marriage.
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Then there’s the host of issues that come up when a relationship goes south after years together and divorce is looming. It may sometimes get ugly, but heterosexual couples have a legal framework in place to deal with just about ever aspect of that process. Homosexual couples? Not so much.
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Rudy: “For example, the United States is over 200 years old, and since people don’t live indefinitely the only way for a government to survive is to inculcate the next generation with the values and sense of nationalism to ensure the governments surival after the founders have long passed.”
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Beyond the fact of that reading like it was written by a complete and total nutter… That’s horse $&!^, Rudy.
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Lets say we agree on the one portion of that. Lets say that a government needs to survive in the fashion you suggest. That has nothing to do with marriage. It could actually be more effectively done by removing marriage and families from the equation. If that’s the foundation of your argument… Your house is falling down around your ears
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Rudy: “In the old days when most folks had their kids at home with the mid wife, identifying those relationships in which producing children were possible was the most effecive way to incentivize folks to raise good citizens.”
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Good god, Rudy… Where did you get this claptrap?
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Beyond the just loony bit on the end; the beginning of that statement just bags to be boomeranged back at you.
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“In the old days” women were treated like farm animals and often had no say in who the could marry.
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“In the old days” marriages were arranged and brokered like business deals by wealthy families.
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Why, yes, for the marriage of our children to take place I can offer up half of my prized apple orchards, but you must grant me this parcel of land that allows me direct access to this river.Fine fishing and, more importantly, direct access for my ships to come inland and carry my wares to the seaports.”
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“In the old days” it was illegal in some places for people of two different religions to marry.
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“In the old days” it was illegal in the majority of this country for people with two different skin colors to marry.
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Seriously, you wanna talk about “the old days” in an argument where you’re trying to make a case against gay marriage based on what “traditional” marriage is all about? Yeah, lets talk about how “traditional” marriage has changed every few hundred or so years now.
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Rudy: “In the case of heterosexals, those relationships can result in children, who are vital to the goverment’s posterity, in the case of homosexuals, there is no government interest what so ever.”
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Yes there is. see above for just the few that I outlined for you.
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Rudy: “Those “old irrelevant canards” are simply taking your argument to its logical conclusion, which, simply stated, is that once you decide the definition of “marriage” can mean anything, then what you’ve really done is make the term meaningless. You are just playing semantics.”
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No, they are irrelevant because they are in fact irrelevant. As pointed out by Peter; children and animals are not allowed or simply unable to enter into legally binding contracts. It’s foolish to claim that those ideas are analogous homosexual marriage.
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You’re also stretching the point with your other silliness. Heterosexual marriage is a union by two consenting adults who are of legal age, love each other, want to share their lives with each other and wish to be joined in marriage for life. They also want and expect the full legal rights and privileges granted to them by the legal recognition of that union. Homosexual marriage? Same thing. But some want things to be so that they are more equal than others under the law and they’ll come up with any argument, no matter how bizarre, to claim that their privileges and rights should remain theirs and not be equally recognized for their fellow citizens.
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Rudy: “Well, six in one hand, half a dozen in the other. Lets be honest, if the only reason you are “marrying” is because you want the government to give its seal of approval to validate your relationship, then you are already off to a bad start.”
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No, he’s speaking as someone who knows that marriage in our society automatically grants a couple certain rights and privileges that most heterosexual people take for granted at this point. He’s speaking as someone who would like to see homosexual couples enjoy those same rights and privileges. Your speaking as someone who has no clue what he’s talking about at best and, at worst, someone who knows what the issue is but will say anything to deny others the same right that they have.
PAD cited “…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”
A right for gays to marriage is one thing.
That probably comes under “pursuit of happiness”.
A right for gays to enjoy equal protection under law – and equal feedom from discrimination is yet anohter.
That would be “liberty”.
But, you know, fighting back against the kind of hatred of gays that leads to the banning of such rights which, in its turn, fans the flames of that hatred…
I think that might very well be the “life” part…
PAD cited “…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”
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Just for the record, no, I didn’t. That was Rudy putting words in my mouth. Quality words, though.
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PAD
Oops.
Sorry.
Peter David:”People have used gay rights as a divisive issue, and gays are being deprived of their liberty to marry and are being treated unjustly. So the words are a sham. That’s the kid’s point.”
I agree with the part of “the words are a sham”, but I’d use that phrase towards the “gays are being deprived of their liberty to marry”. My problem with the whole gay marriage issue has nothing to do with religion. It’s that I am against changing the very meaning of words simply because some people feel left out. Since the inception of marriage, the word has been defined along the lines of “a legal and sometimes spiritual union between a man and a woman”. A man and a woman. By definition of the word, marriage is not between two men or two women.
Nobody is denied “liberty to marry”. Gay people are still equal under the law, and have every liberty that strait people have. The law is entirely equal. Given the definition of marriage, a gay man can still marry a woman, and a gay woman can still marry a man. A strait man cannot marry a man, and a strait woman cannot marry a woman. The law is fair, there is no discrimination.
Bill with no last name (as distinct from the Bills who do have them), your facts are disorganized.
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“Historically” (insofar as the word actually means anything), “marriage” has been defined as between one man and one woman, between one man and several women, between two brother warriors, and (in parts of Tibet) between one woman and two or more brothers.
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As to your last talking point, regurgitated whole and undigested from several right-wing commentators, it is also incorrect. A straight man has the right to marry someone he loves and wants to have sex with. A straight woman has the right to marry someone she loves and wants to have sex with. Gay men and women are denied that right, and its concomitant privileges.
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In the city of Seattle, there lived a pair of women who lived together and loved together for decades. They raised a lovely girl (adopted, of course), and were happy grandmothers to her children.
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Two years ago, during record-setting rainfall, a storm drain in their neighborhood failed. One of the women, who worked as a voiceover artist, was trapped in her basement studio and drowned, despite her partner’s efforts to get in and save her.
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While the voiceover artist was in the hospital in a coma, her partner was forbidden to see her, because she wasn’t “a family member”. When the woman died, her partner had no legal say in the funeral arrangements – if the woman’s parents had still been around, her partner could have been banned from any services, as the parents disapproved of their relationship.
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If the same thing had happened to my wife, I would have had no difficulty with any of that – I would have been recognized as her next of kin. And we’ve only been together twelve years. How is this “equality”?
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As for the state’s interest in marriage, they do have one legitimate interest – the regulation of contracts, and the collection of fees. Personally, I figure that if two or more people are of age and mentally competent to sign a contract, and can pony up the fifty bucks or whatever your county charges, have at it, and may the deity of your choice smile upon you!
Bill – you’re using pretty much the *exact same argument* that was used to justify the laws against miscegenation.
Quick “search and replace” with a 50-year old argument.
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“Nobody is denied “liberty to marry”. Black and white people are still equal under the law, and have every liberty that other black and white people people have.
The law is entirely equal. Given the definition of marriage, a white man can still marry a white woman, and a black woman can still marry a black man.
A white man cannot marry a black woman, and a black woman cannot marry a white man. The law is fair, there is no discrimination.
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Same argument, same bigotry – and no rational, constitutional, and especially *secular* justification for it.
Equal marriage for all – get used to it, it’s coming, and it’s inevitable.
i agree with the kid though he should not have told the sub to jump off a bridge for after all one of the rights we have is freedom to be one self for the kid was just exercising his free speech right to refuse to do the pledge the sub did not like it and wound up becoming a headline . for after all the student was exercising his right.too bad it will not wind up inspiring the end of the discrimation going on against gay people who just want their basic rights to be legal.
“The issue is not of child producing but of child raising. The fact that gay couples cannot ‘produce’ children (naturally) has very little to do with protecting child raising families any more than the fact that infertile couples cannot have children has anything to do with it.”
Child-raising is certainly a critical issue – and as someone who works with children, IMHO there are too dámņëd many children NOT being raised in loving homes for us as a society to be bickering over the gender of the people who are doing the raising. Love for a child is love for a child – ask any foster care child and they will tell you how unimportant the gender of a loving parent is.
PAD,
“We need to deal with the issues in front of us, not those manufactured for us by the talking heads on Fox news.”
You are obviously passionate about this issue, PAD and you actually make some compelling arguments, but I feel you undermine them when you unnecessarily throw stuff like this in. As if everyone who is against gay marriage is a monolithic Fox News watcher. I have yet to EVER hear Glenn Beck talk about gay marriage, for example. He mainly focuses on fiscal issues – tea parties, health care, etc.
By making such a broad generalization of a groups of people you do not really know or care to understand based on the words or actions of a few – that a majority of those against gay marriage are bigots is another example –
you are engaging in the sort of hate-filled diatribe against a group of people based on the actions of a few that you accuse others of.
And the Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law by Bill Clinton – and I’ve never heard you call him a hateful bigot for doing so. Never. You even stood in line so you could get an autographed copy of his book. Despite the fact that he signed a law that had the specific intent of denying the liberty you want gays to enjoy. Is your anger – bordering on hatred – only reserved for ordinary people or those who describe themselves as right-wingers?
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Really Jerome? I barely watch him and I’ve seen him talk about it several times. What do the internets say?
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May 12, 2009 – Glenn Beck in response to a caller on his radio show who expressed the idea that gay marriage is wrong and would lead to things like incest.
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“I contend [marriage] is the building block of the entire universe. If the male and the female don’t get together, then the whole universe collapses.”
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April 13, 2009 – Glenn Beck discusses gay marriage with show guest Megyn Kelly and covers the Iowa Supreme Court ruling that a ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
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Beck: “I believe this case is actually about going into churches and going in and attacking churches and saying you can’t teach anything else. When you say marriage – civil unions is different – when you say marriage must be defined as this, well then you also have to go into the schools.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hih9Vo75oSE&feature=related
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He further went on about how the courts were attacking and destroying American values and hit the anti-gay highlights list.
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Glenn Beck: Gay Marriage Leads to Polygamy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq2kLf1NXt8
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I could go on, but I won’t. Google will show that he’s covered the topic a lot.
Actually, Luigi, Beck has spoken out against gay marriage any number of times, declaring it to be an attack on the church, an endeavor to dismantle traditional values and…my personal favorite:
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“I contend [marriage] is the building block of the entire universe. If the male and the female don’t get together, then the whole universe collapses.”
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I should also mention that my first use of the word “bigot” in this discussion was in reference to the thinking from fifty years ago that believed blacks should be forbidden from marrying whites. Are you going to argue that that was NOT bigotry? Because if so, y’know, good luck with that. All I said was that the attitude displayed towards gays is evocative of that sort of bigoted thinking.
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But since you brought it up: To be bigoted is to be intolerant toward a particular group of people. What better way to describe the attitude displayed toward gays, particularly by those who would go out of their way to “protect” marriage when it’s not, in fact, threatened?
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Yes, I went to get a book signed by Clinton. When it comes to gay rights, I don’t know that he’s been bigoted; I think he’s just been totally chickenshit about defending them. I think Obama’s been the same way. I don’t believe for a second that Obama is really against gay marriage; but in the political climate that is fostered by conservatives, Fox news, etc., gay marriage has become the new third rail of politics. “Soft on gay rights” is the new “Soft on crime.”
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PAD
I think it’s a far greater attack against Obama to say that he is secretly ok with gay marriage but is willing to sell them out in exchange for not pìššìņg øff conservatives. I mean, wow. That’s way worse than calling someone a socialist, at least socialists have core principles.
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Why people think it’s more supportive to think of Obama as a mendacious opportunist willing to trample on civil rights for negligible returns as opposed to just a guy who is stuck on the traditional view of marriage is beyond me.
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The idea that Fox news has made the topic such a third rail that nobody can touch it seems rather untenable when Bill O’Rielly has no fear in stating “Your humble correspondent doesn’t really care much about gay marriage because I believe it is no danger to the republic and the deity can sort all this stuff out after we’re dead. I take a libertarian position on issues like gay marriage because I want all Americans to be able to pursue happiness equally.” Did he not get the message?
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And saying that Bill Clinton is merely chickenshit for not defending gays lets him off the hook. He signed the Defense of Marriage Act. He instituted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. No wonder so many Democratic politicians feel no compulsion to live up to liberal ideals; liberals will give them a pass. Not being a Republican is all it takes.
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Bill Mulligan: “I think it’s a far greater attack against Obama to say that he is secretly ok with gay marriage but is willing to sell them out in exchange for not pìššìņg øff conservatives.”
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I tend to agree with you on that one. The idea that it’s better to say that bigotry/discrimination is wrong while saying that you’re going to back up the bigotry/discrimination legally and only give lip service to supporting the people who are the focus of that bigotry/discrimination is a little out of whack.
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Bill Mulligan: “The idea that Fox news has made the topic such a third rail that nobody can touch it seems rather untenable when Bill O’Rielly has no fear in stating “Your humble correspondent doesn’t really care much about gay marriage because I believe it is no danger to the republic and the deity can sort all this stuff out after we’re dead. I take a libertarian position on issues like gay marriage because I want all Americans to be able to pursue happiness equally.” Did he not get the message?”
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Would that be the same fellow who said…
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May 11, 2009
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“All right, Hoover. I did not know this, but I had said from the jump if you OK gay marriage, then you have to do plural marriage, which is now — has a name, triads. Three people getting married. There is a group in Maui, Hawaii, called the Lessin’s adversary group — advocacy group, and it’s World Polygamy [sic: Polyamory] Association. They’re associated with that. And they want to be married.”
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May 11, 2009
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“Hoover, you would let everybody get married who want to get married. You want to marry a turtle, you can.”
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June 5, 2006 (after being repeatedly told by the people he was talking to that the study they did of the Netherlands showed that in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden the rates of heterosexual marriage went up and heterosexual divorce went done after the passage of their various same sex union laws…)
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ESKRIDGE: But the point is that, in Sweden, we’ve seen some of the same trends that we saw in Denmark. So, in Sweden, the rate of marriage had been plummeting before 1994, when they adopted same-sex unions. The rate of marriage has been increasing in Sweden since 1994.
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[…]
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O’REILLY: I think we can draw this — this is what I’m drawing from all of your data. The gay marriage, per se, the marriage of homosexuals, doesn’t really impact on straight marriage for those who want a traditional union.
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But it does, Mr. Spedale, it does lead to a more libertine or permissive society in the sense that marriage itself then is de-emphasized as we see in Sweden. And more and more people cohabitate.
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SPEDALE: No. I think that’s not true. I think exactly we saw the opposite. And that’s why these statistics are so interesting. In Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, in each of those countries, after they passed their gay marriage type laws, their registered partnership laws, the rates of heterosexual marriage went up per capita. The rates of heterosexual divorce went down.
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Even after that he misrepresented their findings, arguing with Kirsten Powers that…
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“Now Kirsten, as I talked to the authors of the book, I — it would — there’s no question, based upon their research, which is gay friendly, by the way, all right, that societies that are embraced to gay marriage, regular marriage, OK, has declined and cohabitation has increased. Is that a byproduct of gay marriage?”
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The same man who said…
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“And if you go to Holland, you’ll go to all these other places, you’ll see that. The courts there’ll let anybody get married to anybody. You want to marry a duck? You can do it over there. OK. And it’s basically, we don’t really care. Whatever makes you happy. This is the Western Europe model you can do.”
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The same guy who said on September 14, 2005…
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O’REILLY: The secular progressive movement would like to have marriage abolished, in my opinion. They don’t want it, because it is not diverse enough. You know, that’s what this gay marriage thing is all about. But now, you know, the poly-amorphous marriage, whatever they call it, you can marry 18 people, you can marry a duck, I mean —
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LIS WIEHL (co-host): A duck? Quack, quack.
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O’REILLY: Well, why, you know, if you’re in love with the duck, who is the society to tell you you can’t do that?
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April 13, 2005
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“So this is just the beginning, ladies and gentlemen, of this crazy gay marriage insanity — is gonna lead to all kinds of things like this. Courts are gonna be clogged. Every nut in the world is gonna — somebody’s gonna come in and say, “I wanna marry the goat.” You’ll see it; I guarantee you’ll see it.”
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March 29, 2005…
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“The judges in Massachusetts knew they weren’t going to be impeached when they said to the state legislature, “Gay marriage is now legal in Massachusetts because we say it is. We the judges” — they knew they weren’t gonna be impeached. They knew the legislature didn’t care. You get the government you deserve. In California, the prevailing wisdom is marijuana is no big deal, let’s legalize it. And since we can’t get that through the legislature, we’ll do it this way. And they did it! You see?
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And 10 years, this is gonna be a totally different country than it is right now. Laws that you think are in stone — they’re gonna evaporate, man. You’ll be able to marry a goat — you mark my words!”
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November 13, 2008 on The O’Reilly Factor…
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“So you can see the debate over gay marriage is now a full fledge national battle. As talking points said last night the election of Barack Obama has emboldened secular progressives who feel it is their time. Gay marriage just the beginning. Other cultural war issues will also be in display very shortly. These include limiting gun possession, legalizing narcotics, unrestricted abortion and the revocation of the Patriot Act.”
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And, right after he wrote the passage you quoted he threw some more anti-gay marriage stuff out and twisted the facts of the study he discussed earlier yet again.
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http://www.billoreilly.com/newslettercolumn?pid=26610
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“However, I do understand that most Americans believe heterosexual marriage deserves a special place in our society. Our Judeo-Christian traditions, which have made the United States the most prosperous and just society the world has ever known, speak to a family built around a responsible mother and a father—certainly the optimum when it comes to raising children.
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I also understand that once America changes marital law for one group, homosexuals, it will have to allow plural marriages and other types of situations under “equal justice for all.” Also, there is no question the Scandinavian marriage model of anything goes has led to a drastic decline in traditional marriage.”
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…
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“So the gay marriage debate is just about over. Conservative states won’t pass it, but liberal states will. There was a time when we were truly the united states. No longer.”
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That’s the fun thing about Beck, O’Reilly and some of the regular Fox News crew. They occasionally throw out the odd “reasonable” quote to point to when they want to say “but I’m not someone who attacks gay marriage/Islam/etc.” while spending much more air time doing and saying exactly what their critics accuse them of saying. It’s a bit like a bigot who points to the one time he said that blacks are basically good people when someone slams him for the dozens upon dozens of times he talked about blacks being genetically inferior, genetically less intelligent, genetically predisposed to being less civilized, etc, etc, etc…
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But, hey, at least the bigoy once said that they’re basically good people.
I don’t know where ORielly got this duck fixation. truly bizarre.
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On the large point of gay marriage being just the beginning of changes to marriage law (or at least attempts to do same) he’s probably right, though I doubt goats and ducks will come into play. If one takes the position that many supporters take–the basic who are we to deny someone the chance to marry the person they love position–then yeah, on what moral ground does one exclude polygamy or any other variation of plural marriages?
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And here’s the irony–the best way for people who are pro-marriage to protect marriage is to ENCOURAGE the rights of gays to marry. Emphasize the idea that it is a commitment between two loving adults. Hëll, this is actually a kind of conservative VICTORY, only they don’t see it. Not long ago it seemed like marriage was on the way out. “It’s just a piece of paper” was th attitude of many. Now, we are told that the right to marry is fundamental to one’s dignity, that denying people this right is denying them the opportunity to express their love in the fullest way possible etc etc…the point is, boy, marriage has really gotten major shot in the arm in terms of importance and respect.
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Gays want to marry? Embrace that hope. Nurture it. Having won the right they will be powerful allies in making sure it doesn’t get cheapened.
I hope this comment is appearing in the right place. The ‘reply’ is located above the ones I want to reply to, but they don’t have a ‘reply’.
I never knew about O’Reilly’s obsession with marrying ducks. I’d heard that Pat Robertson said something about that once. Anyway, there is a music video inspired by that, which you can find on Youtube– ‘Sex With Ducks’ by Garfunkel and Oates. (Yes, that IS the actual name of the duo.) It’s kind of cute and funny. They have several other good songs, too. Check it out.
I think it’s a far greater attack against Obama to say that he is secretly ok with gay marriage but is willing to sell them out in exchange for not pìššìņg øff conservatives. I mean, wow. That’s way worse than calling someone a socialist, at least socialists have core principles.
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It’s not an attack; it’s a guess. But here’s what’s not a guess: If Obama comes out and says he’s in favor of gay marriage, he doesn’t get elected. Period. The conservatives make the entire election about gay marriage, just as the conservatives made the first months of Clinton’s presidency about gays in the military.
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Politican lies in order to get into office. Stop the presses.
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PAD
“Hoover, you would let everybody get married who want to get married. You want to marry a turtle, you can.”
Only if he’s also a ninja.
“I don’t know where ORielly got this duck fixation. truly bizarre.”
There is a Daffy Duck cartoon just asking to be written.
It’s not an attack; it’s a guess.
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Are the two mutually exclusive? Saying “Obama probably hates America and all it stands for.” is a guess. Saying “Obama probably agrees with all the nutty things Jeremiah Wright said but won’t admit it.” is a guess too. I’d label them attacks as well. Guessing that the guy is not an actual bigot but merely pretends to be one, with a position on gay rights that is to the right of Ðìçk Cheney…if you don’t mean that as an attack, so be it. I’d hate to see an attack.
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Politican lies in order to get into office. Stop the presses.
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I don’t know. Politician sells out the civil rights of an oppressed group in order to win a few votes, yeah, I’ll read that story.
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If you’re right then we can only hope that Obama gets re-elected and, once it’s safe to do so, reveals his secret affinity for justice. Kind of like how Bill Clinton, once he got that second term…oh wait, no, he never did come around when it would have done some good. there’s always something that makes it inconvenient to bring up gay rights and waste precious political capital on a bunch of people who will probably vote for you anyway, so why risk it? Thank God LBJ, for all his myriad faults, had some guts, a trait you seem to think Obama lacks in abundance.
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I guess it was just a matter of time before we had a Democratic president that I actually hold a higher opinion of than you do. It’s a funny world.
Are the two mutually exclusive? Saying “Obama probably hates America and all it stands for.” is a guess. Saying “Obama probably agrees with all the nutty things Jeremiah Wright said but won’t admit it.” is a guess too. I’d label them attacks as well. Guessing that the guy is not an actual bigot but merely pretends to be one, with a position on gay rights that is to the right of Ðìçk Cheney…if you don’t mean that as an attack, so be it. I’d hate to see an attack.
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I think you’ve seen plenty from me, Bill, that the difference is easy to discern. Throwing around random comments such as that Obama hates America are steeped in nothing but attempts at character assassination. To speculate that a man who owes his birth to the sort of mixed marriage that barely forty years ago was still illegal in Virginia would not truly be aware of the irony of extending such unfairness to others seems, to me, a not unreasonable guess.
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Furthermore, for all your fumfoorah, you cannot deny a simple truth: Obama comes out in favor of gay rights and he doesn’t get elected, because your contention that Fox (among others) hasn’t turned gay marriage and gay rights into the new third rail was thoroughly demolished. We’ll never know what Clinton might or might not have done in his second term because it was thoroughly derailed by the impeachment, so that’s not really a fair comparison. Would Obama change his tune given a second term? Let’s hope we have the opportunity to find out.
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PAD
My contention that gay rights is not the third rail of American politics was thoroughly demolished? Really? I’ll gladly admit that Jerry pointed out that Bill ORielly has said some stupid things about man on duck romance. If Obama had come out during the election for gay marriage it would probably indeed have given him some trouble, not the least of which would have been that it would have been correctly portrayed as a flip flop from his previous position.
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It will be relatively easy to see which of us is correct–if gay marriage becomes a reality in the next few years, you’re wrong, since even if Obama changes his mind in a second term it is unlikely that congress–remember them?–will gladly touch the third rail. He won’t have anything to lose. They will.
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I give it 5 years, unless the pro gay people lose their collective minds and try to bully people into it. Then I give it 10 years. Third rail? Not even close. I mean, you yourself acknowledge that the younger generation is more comfortable with the idea, something certainly is not the case with “soft on crime” or other unmentionables.
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To speculate that a man who owes his birth to the sort of mixed marriage that barely forty years ago was still illegal in Virginia would not truly be aware of the irony of extending such unfairness to others does not seem, to me, a not unreasonable guess.
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That’s not quite the same thing as him not having any trouble with gay marriage but pretending to for political gain, which is how I interpreted your original statement. I have no problem with thinking that Obama Just Doesn’t Get It. Many don’t. I would prefer that to actual lying, especially when that lie is at the expense of civil rights for other people.
Peter, thanks for the exchange. My thoughts on your thoughts:
Peter wrote: “You can’t put them aside. Religious considerations are the root of the problem.”
I agree. These debates always lead into the realm of philosophy and religion, which never seems to get us anywhere, but more on that later. I was trying to argue from a more concrete viewpoint, which was: Governments have an interest in the survival of a nation, heterosexual unions are the only unions that can produce children, and therefore governments have a legitimate interest in heterosexual unions. Not that they can’t have an interest in homosexual unions, but that the unions of both groups are fundamentally different. That difference is rooted in biology. To treat these unions as if they are the same is an exercise in wishful thinking.
Peter wrote: Marriages aren’t automatically about personal relationships per se. People don’t have to be in love to marry, or for that matter want to have children. Marriages have been made for any number of reasons. Government’s “place” comes from the fact that it’s a legally binding contract…. it’s about providing a fair venue for participants in a contract to seek legal relief should the union go awry, not to mention other legal aspects such as being forced to testify against one’s mate, involvement in medical situations, etc.
Again, we agree. My point was, if we are going to go ahead and deconstruct the whole marriage concept, let’s not be sheepish about it. Instead of just putting just a foot through the door, let’s kick it down and see what we find. Let’s ask the question, “Why do we have marriage to begin with?”. Surely, if all we are looking for is the legal right to bestow on significant others the right to be the point person during situations or conditions in our lives, then we can create a legal contract that will accomplish this. Call it a Civil Union, or whatever. What I don’t understand is co-opting the religious term “marriage”. If religious folks want to get “married” fine, but if they want the legal benefits, make them apply for a civil union as well.
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Peter wrote: “I defy you to find one shred of law that says that.
Laws providing tax relief for having children, laws forcing parents to provide child support, against abandoning children, forcing parents to send their children to school, etc, etc.
Peter wrote:”They can adopt. Problem solved.”
No problem not solved. I don’t see why the ability to adopt should automatically lead to the “right to marry”. Single folks can adopt, people (gay and straight) can undergo fertilization treatments. This doesn’t change the fact that ALL children are the product of the heterosexual reproductive mechanism. It takes a sperm and an egg. 99.99% of children are born via ordinary heterosexual sex. Homosexual sex produces nothing of interest to the government (Sorry warm feelings don’t count). There is nothing intrinsic to homosexual activity that justifies special recognition. If legal rights are what is desired, again use civil unions, and make heterosexual partners apply for it as well. Restrict marriage to the religious forum.
Peter wrote: “You see, there are far too many people who believe that homosexuality is a sin. They believe that marriage is a religious sacrament. They believe that since marriage is a sin, therefore it should not receive religious sacrament. By connecting the church to marriage, it’s made gays marrying an issue when it really shouldn’t be…From a legal point of view, the church has no more business overseeing marriage than any other contract. You don’t need the clergy to bless the buying of a house or oversee a corporate merger or involve itself in a loan. Marriage is the only contract that the church stuck its nose into and as a consequence the only contract that has resulted in bigotry, unfairness and injustice. What were the odds? The solution isn’t to extract government from the equation. The solution is to extract religion from the equation. Which is what civil unions are, except they’re really not. Argue to me that religious marriage should be abolished, and you make a compelling point. Argue that government marriage should be abolished, and you lose me”.
Okay, I think we are agreeing here, but that just can’t be right.
The intolerance stems from the Church’s assertion that to be gay is to be sinful, and therefore they are working to prevent gays from marrying.
Peter you talk as if all religion is simply a man made construct. Maybe some religions are, but maybe some aren’t. What if, like in Plato’s Theory of Forms, there is an Ideal State, and that, depending on how close you are to this “Ideal State” determines the meaning of your whole existence. What if, similar to Plato, some religions have gained some insight on how people can best find meaning and fulfillment? Sin would then be not simply “breaking a rule”, but a deviation from one’s true self. Plato would argue that man achieves meaning when he implements the good. So, if certain religions have gained this insight, it would be wrong for them to teach otherwise. I know you are not convinced by the design argument (pëņìš fits vágìņá), so is there anything, aside from a visit from God , that would change your mind on this subject?
As always, thanks for the robust debate and the forum to have it in.
Sincerely,
Rudy
Restrict marriage to the religious forum.
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Or we could, you know, stop letting religion hijack everything for their own purposes by forcing them out of marriage in this country.
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That sounds like the much better option from this MARRIED agnostic.
Craig, again, other than taking away “the power vested in me part”– which is semi-bogus anyway, it isn’t really a marriage unless the papers are filled out, right? (actually…am I right about that? If I get “married” in a church by a minister and never bother to do the legal paperwork, if we split up do I need a legal divorce?) what is there to take away?
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And it will pìšš øff people and they’ll blame the gays who STILL won’t get married until the government lets them. So what has been gained?
what is there to take away?
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For me, the whole marrige vs civil union debate is separate from the issue of gay marriage.
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As has been shown in this thread, some want marriage left to religion… even though marriage was an institution that existed long before western religions sprang up. Yet, they think marriage belongs to them because at some point somebody said “Gee, we think we should control that, too”.
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I simply refuse to allow that to happen. I refuse to call my marriage by some other term because some religion wants to steal the word for themselves.
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Yes, gay marriage may enter into the debate, because those opposed to gay marriage want – at worst – for it to be civil unions for “those people” as well.
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Its about control of the word ‘marriage’ as much as anything.
I’m not aware of any movement to define marriage as having HAD to be endorsed by a church. In fact, don’t we even have common law marriages? So you can be legally married without benefit of either church or state sanction. Doesn’t sound like religion has much of a stranglehold on the institution.
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So again, I’m puzzled over how exactly one could take marriage away from religion. You can’t stop people from being married in a church. i suppose one could try to remove the ability of churches to provide legal marriages but I’m thinking that will probably be supported by 0.0% of our elected officials so this hardly seems a position worth spending a lot of time on. let’s keep our eyes on the prize here.
In fact, don’t we even have common law marriages?
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According to Wikipedia, only 11 states & DC still allow common law marriage, 26 states no longer allow it, and 13 states never did allow it.
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Doesn’t sound like religion has much of a stranglehold on the institution.
and
You can’t stop people from being married in a church.
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As you noted earlier, a church marriage means nothing legally, it’s all ceremonial; you still have to sign the legal documents.
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But, as comments by Rudy show, there are religious folks who would LIKE to have a stranglehold on the institution and the word marriage, to be able to decide who gets married and who gets relegated to having something less than marriage, a ‘civil union’ or whatever other separate-but-equal term you want to call it.
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Bill, it may not seem like much of an issue, but I see the whole ‘marriage’/’civil union’ stuff coming up more often, specifically because of the gay *marriage* debate. Basically, religion wants nothing to do with allowing gays to marry.
Ok, so there are religious folks who would like to have that power but they don’t. So…again, I’m not clear what it is that you are in favor of “forcing them out of”.
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But I’m probably bogging down in semantics in my usual OCD way and should just be happy that we agree on the larger issue. Anyway, I’m off to Kentucky for Thanksgiving so happy holidays for everyone! May your cranberry sauce be the good kind, the stuff out of the can that looks like the can and tastes great, not the awful “genuine cranberry sauce” made with real cranberries that your Aunt Edna insists is The Real Deal, just like the Pilgrims had. Yeah, so was smallpox.
Historically speaking, religions didn’t take over marriage. In the past the notion of separation of church and state was meaningless. Marriage was both a religious and a legal institution without these concepts being separate from each other. But as the state got stronger and secularism more common, religion lost ground. Religion ended up playing second fiddle to the state on the issue of marriage, you had the option of a non-religious marriage. But religion is still fighting to maintain some of its power, even as second fiddle.
However, you misdiagnosing the problem. The problem you have with religion is not that clerics are given the power to perform legal marriages. since that power is not exclusive, and taking it away from them will gain you nothing. Your problem is that religion is trying to maintain its cultural — not legal — influence on society. Since it is no longer influential enough to delegitimize homosexuality completely, it is trying to use its influence to stop gay relationship from gaining even more legitimacy in society. They are using the view held by many that marriage is a religious ceremony (which it is). But the only way to stop them from doing that is by stopping people from holding a religious concept of marriage — i.e. forced secularism — which you cannot do.
—————–
It should also be noted that some people don’t like gays without religion.
1)
A) “Governments have an interest in the survival of a nation,”
But that has little to do with gay marriage.
B) “heterosexual unions are the only unions that can produce children,”
C) “and therefore governments have a legitimate interest in heterosexual unions.”
C doesn’t follow from B.
Governments have an interest in children and their welfare. This includes children that are born as a result of natural sexual relations between heterosexual married couples, but not solely.
Governments also have interest in many different legal aspects pertaining to marriages (as well as other legal relationships). This includes children who were born to or brought up by married couples.
D) “Not that they can’t have an interest in homosexual unions,”
Exactly.
E) “but that the unions of both groups are fundamentally different. That difference is rooted in biology.”
But this difference has no importance as far as the government is concerned, anymore than the difference between a fertile or infertile couple does.
D) “To treat these unions as if they are the same is an exercise in wishful thinking.”
From a legal/governmental standpoint the similarities outweigh the differences.
It would seem that the same is true from a societal and emotional standpoint.
———————-
2) ““Why do we have marriage to begin with?”.”
That is a question in history, anthropology and sociology.
“Surely, if all we are looking for is the legal right to bestow on significant others the right to be the point person during situations or conditions in our lives, then we can create a legal contract that will accomplish this. Call it a Civil Union, or whatever.”
At present this kind of legal union is called marriage in most countries.
“What I don’t understand is co-opting the religious term “marriage”.
Currently it is also a legal and societal term, not solely religious. Is there any reason to change that?
“If religious folks want to get “married” fine, but if they want the legal benefits, make them apply for a civil union as well.”
That’s one way to go. Although it is interesting that nobody had a problem with marriage being both a religious and a legal concept up until now, although non-religious marriages have existed for quite some time. Why is that?
———————-
3) “Laws providing tax relief for having children, laws forcing parents to provide child support, against abandoning children, forcing parents to send their children to school, etc, etc.”
Exactly. There are many separate laws pertaining to children. They are not related or dependent on marriage, and certainly not relating to how the children were conceived. So trying to use the issue of children to exclude gays from marriage is absurd.
————-
4) “Homosexual sex produces nothing of interest to the government (Sorry warm feelings don’t count). There is nothing intrinsic to homosexual activity that justifies special recognition.”
It does produce (sometimes) many things which are of legal interest to the government and which justifies special recognition. Jerry Chandler listed several of them above.
————-
5) “If legal rights are what is desired, again use civil unions, and make heterosexual partners apply for it as well. Restrict marriage to the religious forum.”
You seem to mix two sets of unrelated arguments: one pertaining to procreation and one pertaining to religion.
Since there are many religions it is up to each religious group to decide on their own attitude toward homosexuality. But so long as marriage is also a legal institution, there is no reason to restrict it for gays, certainly not for religious reasons.
—————
6) “What if, similar to Plato, some religions have gained some insight on how people can best find meaning and fulfillment? Sin would then be not simply “breaking a rule”, but a deviation from one’s true self.”
Perhaps, but that’s a private matter that has nothing to do with the government and the laws of marriage, unless you live in a theocracy or in a country where religious clerics have undue control of the legal institution of marriage. The US is not like that, so it is irrelevant.
“if certain religions have gained this insight, it would be wrong for them to teach otherwise.”
Freedom of speech allows them to do so. But if they are trying to force their beliefs on people who do not share them by influencing the legal institution of marriage than that would be a problem.
—————
7) “I know you are not convinced by the design argument (pëņìš fits vágìņá),”
My money’s on the vágìņá. Aside from that it is a pretty silly argument. The biological fact states has nothing to do with the issue at hand. It is philosophically wrong to deduce moral conclusions based on biological facts. However, if you are to do it you should also take into account that homosexuality is apparently a biological fact too.
8) “so is there anything, aside from a visit from God , that would change your mind on this subject?”
If your only reason to oppose gay marriage is your religious belief, why all the arguments. The issue is not changing religion but the law. It is up to religion to change on its own. History has shown it is capable of doing it, although not easily. The principal of the separation of church and state protects religion and guarantees its right to hold its opinion about homosexuality as long as it pleases. Why would you want to break that separation?
That’s one way to go. Although it is interesting that nobody had a problem with marriage being both a religious and a legal concept up until now, although non-religious marriages have existed for quite some time. Why is that?
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I think you’ve put your finger on it, and it goes right back to what I said earlier. Bottom line, critics believe that being gay is sinful and therefore doesn’t deserve to be recognized by marriage, which they see as sacred. There’s two ways to fix this: 1) eliminate religion from marriage or 2) get over it.
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PAD
Micha:
“It is up to religion to change on its own. History has shown it is capable of doing it, although not easily.”
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Hi Micha,
I admit I may be taking the above line slightly out of context, but hasn’t history also shown that religion will change quite easily if it stands to benefit (wealth, power, etc.) from change?
“Hi Micha,
I admit I may be taking the above line slightly out of context, but hasn’t history also shown that religion will change quite easily if it stands to benefit (wealth, power, etc.) from change?”
I think it would be unfair to portray religion as willing to easily change for money. If all it took was throwing some money on religious institutions all the religious conflicts could be easily solved.
However, we can definitely say that despite usually being a conservative entity that sees itself as preserving rather than changing, religion is adaptable. Sometimes for money or because of money, sometimes because of other pressures.
In the past religion had the power and the will to condemn and persecute homosexuality completely. Back even then it adapted and looked the other way at times in order to avoid conflict. Now (in the west) religions find it necessary to adapt to levels of tolerance toward gays that were unthinkable in the past, and they no longer have the power to enforce its will. So they to became more tolerant. But still they are trying not to bend to much by making a stand on the issue of marriage.
On the other hand, when religions adapt their is sometimes a reaction, resulting in fundamentalism
1)
A) “Governments have an interest in the survival of a nation,”
But that has little to do with gay marriage.
B) “heterosexual unions are the only unions that can produce children,”
C) “and therefore governments have a legitimate interest in heterosexual unions.”
C doesn’t follow from B.
Governments have an interest in children and their welfare. This includes children that are born as a result of natural sexual relations between heterosexual married couples, but not solely.
Governments also have interest in many different legal aspects pertaining to marriages (as well as other legal relationships). This includes children who were born to or brought up by married couples.
D) “Not that they can’t have an interest in homosexual unions,”
Exactly.
E) “but that the unions of both groups are fundamentally different. That difference is rooted in biology.”
But this difference has no importance as far as the government is concerned, anymore than the difference between a fertile or infertile couple does.
D) “To treat these unions as if they are the same is an exercise in wishful thinking.”
From a legal/governmental standpoint the similarities outweigh the differences.
It would seem that the same is true from a societal and emotional standpoint.
———————-
2) ““Why do we have marriage to begin with?”.”
That is a question in history, anthropology and sociology.
“Surely, if all we are looking for is the legal right to bestow on significant others the right to be the point person during situations or conditions in our lives, then we can create a legal contract that will accomplish this. Call it a Civil Union, or whatever.”
At present this kind of legal union is called marriage in most countries.
“What I don’t understand is co-opting the religious term “marriage”.
Currently it is also a legal and societal term, not solely religious. Is there any reason to change that?
“If religious folks want to get “married” fine, but if they want the legal benefits, make them apply for a civil union as well.”
That’s one way to go. Although it is interesting that nobody had a problem with marriage being both a religious and a legal concept up until now, although non-religious marriages have existed for quite some time. Why is that?
———————-
3) “Laws providing tax relief for having children, laws forcing parents to provide child support, against abandoning children, forcing parents to send their children to school, etc, etc.”
Exactly. There are many separate laws pertaining to children. They are not related or dependent on marriage, and certainly not relating to how the children were conceived. So trying to use the issue of children to exclude gays from marriage is absurd.
————-
4) “Homosexual sex produces nothing of interest to the government (Sorry warm feelings don’t count). There is nothing intrinsic to homosexual activity that justifies special recognition.”
It does produce (sometimes) many things which are of legal interest to the government and which justifies special recognition. Jerry Chandler listed several of them above.
————-
5) “If legal rights are what is desired, again use civil unions, and make heterosexual partners apply for it as well. Restrict marriage to the religious forum.”
You seem to mix two sets of unrelated arguments: one pertaining to procreation and one pertaining to religion.
Since there are many religions it is up to each religious group to decide on their own attitude toward homosexuality. But so long as marriage is also a legal institution, there is no reason to restrict it for gays, certainly not for religious reasons.
—————
6) “What if, similar to Plato, some religions have gained some insight on how people can best find meaning and fulfillment? Sin would then be not simply “breaking a rule”, but a deviation from one’s true self.”
Perhaps, but that’s a private matter that has nothing to do with the government and the laws of marriage, unless you live in a theocracy or in a country where religious clerics have undue control of the legal institution of marriage. The US is not like that, so it is irrelevant.
“if certain religions have gained this insight, it would be wrong for them to teach otherwise.”
Freedom of speech allows them to do so. But if they are trying to force their beliefs on people who do not share them by influencing the legal institution of marriage than that would be a problem.
—————
7) “I know you are not convinced by the design argument (pëņìš fits vágìņá),”
My money’s on the vágìņá. Aside from that it is a pretty silly argument. The biological fact states has nothing to do with the issue at hand. It is philosophically wrong to deduce moral conclusions based on biological facts. However, if you are to do it you should also take into account that homosexuality is apparently a biological fact too.
8) “so is there anything, aside from a visit from God , that would change your mind on this subject?”
If your only reason to oppose gay marriage is your religious belief, why all the arguments. The issue is not changing religion but the law. It is up to religion to change on its own. History has shown it is capable of doing it, although not easily. The principal of the separation of church and state protects religion and guarantees its right to hold its opinion about homosexuality as long as it pleases. Why would you want to break that separation?
Jerry Chandler,
Thank you for your Beck evidence. I really had no idea. I never really watched him on CNN and whenever I do watch him now, he is predominately talking about economic issues and health care.
You should go look up what he said about health care back when he was working for CNN. It was the exact opposite of what he says now.
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The man simply has no values or principles. He plays to the audience he thinks he has truth or facts be dámņëd and he’s found what works best for him. Half the time I doubt even he believes 90% of what’s coming out of his mouth. The other 10% of the time I think he might actually believe it only because he comes off as too insane to be faked.
Jerry Chandler,
Do feel you are being a BIT harsh on Beck and I’ll save my reasons why for another thread. Because here’s the thing. And I mean this as someone who works in the media, there is a reason why Fox as an entity and Beck as an individual have such a following – and it’s because a huge number of people long ago realized they weren’t getting the full story on things. Even take what I feel has been disgraceful, pillowy coverage of Obama since the primaries that even had me saying, “My god! They are really being tougher on Hillary!”
But take that out of the equation, just this past year, we’ve had a Speaker of the House accusing the CIA of lying publicly. Where was the follow up? Regarding the stimulus, cap and trade, health care, you have virtually no one asking Who? What? When? Where? And why? And how is it going to be paid for? Not to mention ACORN, SEIU, and the recent e-mail scandal that at the very least gives more plausibility to the notion that global warming has been a hoax.
Regarding that last story, even if you don’t feel the same as I and Hannity and Beck do about global warming, isn’t such a development worthy of at least some coverage? I actually watched “Nightline” for the first time in years tonight and thought they would talk about the Afghanistan decision Obama seems to be ready to make on troop levels. Or perhaps a unique angle on health care. Or perhaps the global warming e-mail scandal. they led with a story on Rachael Ray and ended with a feel-good story about Thanksgiving.
I mean, really, if these e-mails were about abuse at Gitmo NBC, CBS, MSNBC, ABC and CNN would be all over it. But because it might cast doubt on something they are too invested in to have exposed as a lie, there has not been one peep about this story that “The New York Times” is even reporting on.
Who? What? When? Where? How much? How is this going to work exactly? These are the questions the other stations aren’t asking and that people like Beck and that Fox in general is. Even liberals and moderates want to be more informed, which is why even those viewers are watching Fox in greater numbers.
Hi Jerome,
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There is another element involved with all the news outfits. All of the personalities (Rachel Maddow, Glenn Beck, Keith Olberman, Bill O’reily, etc…) are very much like the Superstars of Wrestling. Instead of sports entertainment their angle is news entertainment. Rush Limbaugh himself, the Hulk Hogan of news entertainment, ‘fesses up to being an entertainer.
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It’s actually kind of frightening to think that these people have such a hold on the public. Do people not see the ‘show’ for what it is?
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At least Vince McMahon came clean about how the wrestling is staged and choreographed. Perhaps a bunch of exposed e-mails will force the ‘news’ media to do the same one day.
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“I mean this as someone who works in the media, there is a reason why Fox as an entity and Beck as an individual have such a following – and it’s because a huge number of people long ago realized they weren’t getting the full story on things.”
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No, what most Fox watchers are doing is tuning in to see the people who will tell them what they want to hear. It’s really quite that simple.
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Hannity has a long history of distorting facts, flat out telling lies and just making it up as he goes along. That’s not opinion. That’s documented fact.
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With Beck… Any time he’s attacking something that I actually know details about he comes off sounding like an ill informed idiot. He knows this as well. He hypes his own stuff as important when he’s pushing it and when he gets caught flatfooted he plays the “aw shucks” card and says that he’s just the Fox News rodeo clown and not really a journalists doing hard hitting news.
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And their “full stories” sometimes are a bit fuller than they really were. Beck and Hannity just got spanked for using falsified footage of the anti-Obama rallies they were pushing. They showed footage of the huge crowds that they claimed were there and being underreported by everyone else in the media. Too bad it was discovered that the footage they were showing had footage of other, older and larger rallies spliced into them.
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Of course, it was a “mistake” on their part and just a simple error that two of the guys who keep claiming that the numbers at these rallies they’re promoting, not reporting on but actively promoting, are bigger than the official sources say that they are used falsified footage to show that the rallies were bigger than they really were. And, of course, it’s a complete coincidence that less than a week later Fox got caught doing the same thing again. Add in the fact that Cavuto got caught on film intentionally inflated the attendance number for the Sacramento, CA rally that he and Fox had been promoting heavily and that he was broadcasting live from. California Highway Patrol, who called the demonstration large but peaceful and estimated the crowd at above 5,000 and Cavuto got caught on tape asking for the numbers right before he broadcast. When he went live he announced that the numbers for the attendance were estimated at “easy double or triple” the 5000 people they expected that day.
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Hmmmm… Quite the “full” story there by Fox.
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Oh, and how about the video of the Fox film crew doing a live broadcast from a rally where the Fox producer was coaching the crowds? There’s some honest reporting for you.
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How about this classic from the election last year.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTkqosRiyYo
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It’s priceless when the people on location actually laughed at the Fox reporter. Hëll, even he had difficulty sticking to the Fox News script for the story they wanted to report.
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And ACORN? You mean the story that Beck rarely reports accurately? If you think that Beck’s version of reality is a “full story” than you really need to look at this bridge I have for sale.
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The email stories are new, but just some simple fact checking shows that Beck and Hannity are up to their usual low standards. Just yesterday Beck was discussing two emails in particular that I spent some time looking up and discovered, surprise, that Beck was doing his usual sloppy hatchet job of distortions and out of context quotations.
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He referenced on email where a scientist mentioned using a “trick” to hide declining temperatures. Even the wording Beck used sounded odd to me as it sounded more like part of a statement that someone would use when saying a variation of the common phrase about something “doing the trick” when they had a problem or were working on something. Sure enough, the full context reading of the complete email shows that and not Beck’s version.
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His other “condemning” evidence was to cherry pick phrases about how a scientist was calling it a “travesty” that they couldn’t “can’t account for the lack of warming.”
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Too bad for the “full story” crowd that the in context reading of the full email shows that the scientist in question was referring to findings and an article that talked about short term climate variations within the overall warming trend. Oversimplifying for you; he basically said that there was a brief period in the overall trend of warming where the rate of warming declined or halted and that he and others felt that it was a travesty that they could not find the reason. His email was not, as Beck lied about it to his cooperatively gullible viewers, about the scientist feeling that it was a travesty that they could not account for and hide the fact that no warming was going on at all.
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I’m sorry, but anyone who uses Beck and Hannity in sentence about news that includes the concept of them giving the “full story” on anything is just begging to be ridiculed.
Nature abhors a vacuum. If The New York Times suddenly feels squeamish about printing emails obtained from a whistle blower–something that never bothered them much before–it’s pretty certain that someone else will. Then they will complain that the story has been reported in a biased matter. And that their circulation is collapsing like a bad souffle. And none of them will see how this might all connect together. No wonder Superman was able to fool everyone just by putting glasses on.
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I don’t expect all journalists to be equal parts Sherlock Holmes, Vidocq, and C. Auguste Dupin but, dámņ…
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As far as the Climate scandal, if scandal it be (yarrrr!), I say wait a bit for more details to emerge but already i can say that these clowns do not sound at all like the scientists I once worked for. They sound more like a bunch of grant writers who Peter Principled themselves into a sweet deal and didn’t have the smarts to keep quiet about it.
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I agree on the wait and see part, but as of right now I’m seeing a lot of stuff that’s being taken out of context or blown out of proportion. Beck was going on about another email that was sinister in its implications because the scientists were discussing the fact that they would like to see stricter regulations/control over what gets published in scientific journals. Essentially, they wanted to see less research that wasn’t peer reviewed getting published.
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Given how many garbage research pieces are published by opportunists and frauds in all fields of science that get disproved by simple peer review I can understand that feeling. I’m sure watching the damage and confusion cause to/about real science by garbage science that was commissioned and published to support a political agenda probably gets on a lot of scientists nerves no matter their political stripe. Junk science of any kind damages real science in the public eye and, unfortunately, todays 24 hour news cycle all too frequently runs with anything they get the second they get it.
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But Beck sees this as the evil scientists wanting to control information and trying to stop the truth from getting out by simply refusing to peer review “the truth” and thus keep it from the American people.
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Same old Conservative Media song. Fear the scientists and the educated. Hate the scientists and the educated.
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One correction as I understand it though. The emails were not released by a whistle blower. The University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit had its server hacked and the emails were amongst the information stolen. The emails have since been leaked by the thieves. Given that this scenario is a bit different than simple whistle blowing and given the time to actually authenticate and confirm the emails validity I can somewhat understand the delay that reputable news agencies might have had with running with them.
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But, yeah, I’m waiting for more on it myself. I’ve just not yet seen anything that reaches the levels of Beck’s conspiracy nut theories and statements on the matter.
Well, one man’s “whistle-blower” is another man’s “thief”–I’m sure whoever owned the Pentagon papers felt the same way about Daniel Ellsworth.
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It’s interesting that the emails seem to be so focused on Global warming–the institute was the subject of a Freedom of Information Act request and when they declined the papers got leaked. makes me suspect this was not just a random theft of information but a very specific leak of compiled data.
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One telling clue will be whether or not Phil Jones resigns. When environmental leaders like George Monbiot think you deserve to leave there just MIGHT be a problem.
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And I think there is something seriously wrong in attempting to stop science journals from publishing people who disagree with you. The complaint in the emails was NOT that the people disagreeing with them were being allowed to publish non-peer reviewed articles, it was that the writer claimed that skeptics had “taken over” the journal and were publishing peer reviewed articles that the writer did not want to see published.
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This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”
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maybe the writer is correct but I have no reason to take his word for it. I’ll say this–the immediate reaction to try to blame the people who exposed this (“Thieves! Miscreants!”) does not fill me with confidence. They’re acting like kids caught with the cookie jar and if they are hoping the story will go away, well, welcome to the world wide web.
That may be the email he was referencing, but that’s not the one I read the other night. I also doubt that it is the one he was referencing since he specifically quoted a line about wanting to see more regulations about the publishing of non-peer reviewed papers and how that would mean, in Beck’s mind, that scientists would simply stifle critics by not peer reviewing works that were critical of global warming/climate change theories.
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While I do find this email more childish in tone and content, I still don’t see it quite the way that Beck played it up. The guy says he doesn’t like a certain journal or at least some things about a certain journal and asks others what they think about not working with that journal anymore. Given that Beck and other Fox personalities have declared in the past that certain films, shows, etc should be ignored/pass up/boycotted by their viewers and listeners because they didn’t like someone’s political beliefs… Kind of hypocritical here.
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Besides, have you ever seen papers or articles by William Gray or Patrick Michaels? Both men have been frequently and definitively debunked and Michaels has even been caught altering another scientists work (James Hansen’s) while giving testimony to congress on global climate change because Hansen’s model actually had two very accurate and precise predictions of what would happen with CO2. When, years later, Michaels went before congress to refute the idea of climate change he actually erased the projections and left only that part that misrepresented the work.
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He’s also been busted for having findings printed in the journal Climate Research where he messes up (either by stupidity or deliberate deception) basic math and frequently confuses degrees with the much larger radians. It just happens that the mess ups on his part all seem to work in favor of making his “findings” look accurate. Yet he still gets published again and again.
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Dr. William Gray isn’t much better in the credibility department. He’s an okay meteorologist, but that’s about it. He also has zero peer reviewed papers on climatology and the science in just about every paper he has put forward on climate change has been utterly destroyed.
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Gray is also the same nut that was comparing Al Gore to Hitler all over the place a few years ago. Oh, and he’s a favorite of Beck.
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So, yeah, I can understand their frustration that two proven frauds keep getting recognized as “legitimate” critics by a supposedly scientific journal.
Well, we will see. Despite the reluctance of the times, the story is coming out. At the very least we seem to have people who are trying awfully hard to destroy evidence that might be revealed from a Freedom of Information Act request. Were this, say, Halliburton or the Diebold Vote Counting Machine Company I would think folks would suspect they had something to hide. But there may well be an innocent explanation and the wheels of journalism will grind the truth out eventually.
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The fact that Beck is covering this means nothing to me, other than that this is what happens when supposedly more legitimate sources choose to look the other way and devote more column space to Adam Lampert and mope about what a decade from hëll this has been (which, if you owned stock in Time Warner, it has been).
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At the very least this should expedite the release of the raw data. Then let the chips fall where they may. Me, I say let’s try to get off fossil fuels for a myriad of reason that have nothing to do with bogus “let’s save the planet from falling polar bears” superficiality. It would be unfortunate if that goal is harmed by a bunch of data massagers who were in it for the grant money.
Okay… I freely admit that I’ve not yet read every email, but where are the ones with scientists discussing anything about “trying awfully hard to destroy evidence that might be revealed from a Freedom of Information Act request” in the emails. Not saying your wrong here, just saying I’ve not yet seen anything like that.