As you know from reading all the coverage, the most important issue of our times is gay marriage. It's big, big, big!
Well, except that the number of potential beneficiaries appears to be small, small, small ... The Washington Post reports on a new Census study:
The bureau’s latest report said same-sex couples now account for 0.55 percent of total households in the United States, which also increased. That’s about the same share as in 2000, when it estimated there were about 358,000 same-sex households across the country.
Okay, 0.55% ... That's not gay married couples, by the way, that's single sex domestic partnerships, some of whom might take advantage of gay marriage.
Well, now that the forces of enlightenment are well on the road to their inevitable triumph on gay marriage (without, so far as I can recall, ever winning a popular vote on the topic -- they were 0 - 31 last I checked, but who cares about democracy?), they need a new issue to demonstrate their moral superiority.
Ever since New York approved gay marriage, The New Republic has been promoting this article on its home page under the title "America's Next Great Civil Rights Struggle." Therefore, expect to read a lot of breathless articles about transgender and transsexual rights.
But how many people are there who have had or who want to have themselves sexually mutilated? Granted, the SPLC has dipped its toe in this emerging market, supporting the vicious campaign by three very smart transsexual academics against the academic freedom of Northwestern psychologist J. Michael Bailey for suggesting a subversive alternative theory of the motivation to the standard party line that "I always felt like a little girl on the inside." This drove a few high IQ / high aggression X-men, such as Harvard football player turned economist Deirdre McCloskey, into rages. The Southern Poverty Law Center jumped into helping out with the pogrom against Bailey, but I'm not picking up too many signs since then that the SPLC thinks this is a real growth industry rather than a niche market.
But how many people are there who have had or who want to have themselves sexually mutilated? Granted, the SPLC has dipped its toe in this emerging market, supporting the vicious campaign by three very smart transsexual academics against the academic freedom of Northwestern psychologist J. Michael Bailey for suggesting a subversive alternative theory of the motivation to the standard party line that "I always felt like a little girl on the inside." This drove a few high IQ / high aggression X-men, such as Harvard football player turned economist Deirdre McCloskey, into rages. The Southern Poverty Law Center jumped into helping out with the pogrom against Bailey, but I'm not picking up too many signs since then that the SPLC thinks this is a real growth industry rather than a niche market.
And, what comes after the transexuals win (however winning is defined - presumably, after various people have had their careers ruined for suggesting that there's anything the least bit yucky about having yourself castrated)? There's too much energy, too much anger, too much self-righteousness, and too much money for the taking for the civil rights movement to ever declare victory and go home, no matter how diminishing the returns. So, what's the next stage beyond trans rights?
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192 comments:
The flip-side: Why are Republicans obsessed with this marginal issue?
If they're not careful, people are going to realize that their 10% number is nonsense, and the number is probably must closer to this half-percent.
I was opposed to gay marriage because I realized the left would use it as the thin end of the wedge.
The point of the exercise is not primarily to acknowledge and guarantee various rights and freedoms to those on the margins of society. The point is to force the center and the right to accept what is for many, if not most of them, the unacceptable.
The left won't stop of its own accord, it will have to be stopped.
The report doesn't say how many male, and how many female.
My bet is proportionally more female:
Higgamus, hoggamus,
Women are monogamous.
Hoggamus, higgamus,
Men are polygamous.
its not about promoting homo right so or trannie rights it's about dismantling whatever is left of our Western Christian roots.
Heck, Steve, you've brought it up yourself — the right to polygamy!
Peter Singer has written at length advising bestiality.
Chai Feldblum (it's real name)head of Obama's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is a virulent advocate for something called "polyamory"- which is inclusive of bestiality as well
Furries.
Pedophiles and Polygamists.
Call it "The Last Acceptable Prejudice".
People in the progressive vanguard in Europe are now championing "number-neutral marriages", i.e. legally sanctioned polygamy. The people who would benefit most from it are Muslims. Currently, the multiple co-wives of Muslim men collect welfare as single mothers. With legalized polygamy, they could get the same money, if not more, without pretending to be single.
That's easy -- plural marriage. It's hard to say yes to gay marriage and no to polygamy.
Who wants to be a brother in the struggle for eunuch rights/
When I see a multi-colored gay power fist, it's not very inspiring... Btw, shouldn't it be brown?
What'll be next? Incest marriage rights? Why shouldn't a mother and a son marry? or brother and sister? Or brother and brother? I mean le'ts not be incestophobic.
Libs compare 'gay rights' with civil rights. Conflating legal equality for blacks with the culture of anal sex between guys?
But then I look at guys like Al Shartpon, and maybe it's not so far-fetched.
"The flip-side: Why are Republicans obsessed with this marginal issue?"
Because the marginal people--Jews and gays--have mainstream control over our society and decided to make it the great moral crusade of our age.
When Lady Gaga is what passes for a moral leader for young peole, we are indeed in big doo doo.
I wonder... what if most gays are far-right or quasi-fascist, like Ernst Rohm and his SA loons. And suppose most incestuous and polygamous people were liberal and progressive(and allied with Jews). Would homosexuality still be considered a perversion while incest and polygamy would be the hip progressive thing?
Indeed, suppose Rohm had triumphed over Hitler and the Nazis were led by a bunch of gays. And suppose these gay Nazis were as brutal as the Spartans and killed many Jews.
What would the politics of gaydom be?
What about asexual friend-marriage to share benefits with lifelong friends? I think Alexander Cockburn argued for such thing once.
I LOVE "incestophobia"! This blog creates more new vocabulary than Orwell did.
"And, what comes after the transexuals win (however winning is defined)? There's too much energy, too much anger, too much self-righteousness, and too much money for the taking for the civil rights movement to ever declare victory and go home, no matter how diminishing the returns."
I could've sworn the original version replaced "declare victory..." w/ "peter out".
Superb, though I get while you (might've) changed it. Some folks are renowned for having no sense of humor.
Sex with small children
One good thing about this gay thing is the Left has finally jumped the shark. With 'gay pride parade' having precedence over civil rights marches--now a thing of the past--, the left is turning into a decadent joke.
What's next? Probably legalizing public sex. See Columbia's Katherine Franke. And Amsterdam.
It'll appeal to transgressive youth on college campuses.
Fun fact about transvestites: they used to be called female or male impersonators.
If they're not careful, people are going to realize that their 10% number is nonsense, and the number is probably must closer to this half-percent.
I think technically the 10% number is supposed to refer to all people who identify as 'LGBT'. Since quite a few people (nearly all of them women) are genuinely bisexual, 10% is probably accurate. If not an understatement.
Peter Singer has written at length advising bestiality.
I don't think Peter Singer has ever advocated bestiality. He has simply made the point that it's less cruel to have sex with animals (illegal) than to factory farm and eat them (legal). Pretty fair point.
Why are Republicans obsessed with this marginal issue?
Back at ya: why deconstruct an ancient and salutary institution that pre-dates the State itself so a deviant sliver of the populace doesn't get hurt feelings?
The Left takes the feelings of this deviant sliver EXTREMELY seriously becaue like Kylie says, it's the leading edge for the broader cultural revolution.
What's next after previously deviant behaviors become completely normalized? Racism and homophobia diagnosed as mental illness, justifying compulsory treatment.
Pedophiles, maybe?
"Nearly forty years later, a small group of mental health professionals, academics, and researchers have gathered in Baltimore, Maryland, to discuss how to normalize pedophilia and remove it from APA's manual of mental disorders."
http://elvisnixon.com/2011/08/25/leftists-normalizing-pedophilia.aspx
"There's too much energy, too much anger, too much self-righteousness, and too much money for the taking for the civil rights movement to ever declare victory and go home, no matter how diminishing the returns. So, what's the next stage beyond trans rights?"
According to Katherine Franke*, it's public sex.
Public Sex
*Katherine Franke, Law Professor and...oh, never mind
The flip-side: Why are Republicans obsessed with this marginal issue?
Spoken like a true lefty hypocrite. "Accuse the other side of being obsessed with the issue you yourself are obsessed with".
I think it's in "Rules For Radicals".
What's next is we'll see a steadily increasing surge of people gaming the rules of marriage for profit, since the institution has been taken from the spiritual realm forcibly. Some airline pilots and their wives just recently executed a mass strategic divorce and remarriage to shift some assets around regarding their pensions. Easy ways to bypass the estate and gift taxes are left as an exercise to the reader.
Its amazing how things that were once considered deviancy are now not only "right" but "virtuous". Take a "transgendered woman", which basically is a guy who just decides to live as a "female". Here in Canada our kangaroo "human rights" tribunals have awarded them the "right" to use female washrooms and female changerooms at pools and gyms. Gym owners in particular are in a bind. When female customers complain they don't want an anatomically male in their changerooms, the "transgendered woman" can sue the gym owner and demand an apology as well.
How about the rights of stupid people?
I see overwhelming evidence that people on the left side of the IQ curve are completely unrepresented on the Supreme Court, on Ivy League faculties, and in the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions.
Who will stand up for the rights of the stupid?
I nominate Steve. He should start the Stupid People's Legal Center and start suing people.
How about people who don't want any rights? How are we going to help them?
Zoo?
Sailer wrote:
"As you know from reading all the coverage, the most important issue of our times is gay marriage. It's big, big, big!"
Hmm, it's almost as if it's a manufactured controversy!
But why this issue and not, say, taxing the rich? Imagine if the taxing the rich issue had such strong media exposure and support as the gay rights issue.
Say, ya don't think that having gay rights be the focus of the so called Left helps certain powerful interests? Does that question make me a conspiracy theorist?
sailer wrote:
"Well, now that the forces of enlightenment are well on the road to their inevitable triumph on gay marriage (without, so far as I can recall, ever winning a popular vote on the topic -- they were 0 - 31 last I checked, but who cares about democracy?)..."
Neither the GOP nor the Dems nor the activist bases of those parties care about democracy. They just care about the battle, about beating the other side. Tribalism at its best.
sailer wrote:
"they need a new issue to demonstrate their moral superiority."
Really? You think that is the reason why this minor issue has been shoved to the forefront of Liberal political activism by the corporate media?
I seriously doubt it. This is a political controversy manufactured for the bases because it does not hurt the rich entities that control the media via advertising revenue.
Ever since New York approved gay marriage, The New Republic has been promoting this article on its home page under the title "America's Next Great Civil Rights Struggle." Therefore, expect to read a lot of breathless articles about transgender and transsexual rights.
But how many people are there who have had or who want to have themselves sexually mutilated? Granted, the SPLC has dipped its toe in this emerging market, supporting the vicious campaign by three very smart transsexual academics against Northwestern psychologist J. Michael Bailey for suggesting a subversive alternative theory of the motivation to the one promoted by, say, former Harvard football player turned economist Deirdre McCloskey that he/she always felt like a little girl on the inside. But I'm not picking up too many signs that the SPLC thinks this is a real growth industry rather than a niche market.
And, what comes after the transexuals win (however winning is defined)? There's too much energy, too much anger, too much self-righteousness, and too much money for the taking for the civil rights movement to ever declare victory and go home, no matter how diminishing the returns. So, what's the next stage beyond trans rights?
My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
So, what's the next stage beyond trans rights?
Mandatory felching?
I see that Rick Santorum posts in here as "Anonymous"! Great stones you got, Dick, I mean, Rick.
The experience in Europe has been that only few homosexuals take advantage of gay marriage and that despite the backlog and the fact, that some gays initially marry just to make a point.
The gay marriage issue has completely dropped from political discussion in places where only some legal recognition, but not full marriage has been adopted. I guess this is partially due to the realization that there just aren't that many homosexuals and even fewer want to get hitched.
******************
I used to be in favor of gay marriage in the 90ies and still think that it doesn't matter in the big scheme of things, although I've come to oppose gay marriage for intellectual reasons.
If history is any guide, we can expect a backlash against gay self-assertion a generation or two down the road. Homosexuality was temporarily accepted in many societies in the past. But this has always been rolled back.
I expect to see a lot of adopted boys being abused by gay couples.
Gays are going to be increasingly annoying and pushy. The appropriately named gay activist Dan Savage has already come forward to argue that heterosexuals should learn from gays and drop monogamy in favor of open marriages.
Women won't like this at all.
Gay marriage was never about benefits for gays; it has always been entirely about symbolism, about forcing the government to officially endorse the idea that homosexuality is every bit as normal and natural as heterosexuality. Otherwise you would not have had people screaming and crying in the streets after Proposition 8 passed. (Marriage in California provides essentially no benefits that are not also provided by civil unions).
Others are correct, the polygamists are coming, but I suggest we will also see a bigger push for "immigrant (or "wannabe immigrant") rights."
The big advantages of, shall we call them, "alien rights" is that there's a certain resonance with the older, race-based civil rights (most aliens are non-white) and the cheap-labor wing of the business lobby will be glad to ally with the leftists and Hate-Amerikkka-First folks.
The argument will be that Amerikkkans need to prove their lack of wickedness by inviting everyone in the Third World to move into subsidized housing in Amerikkkan suburbia right away. Once they do, it would be morally wrong to deny our new neighbors "free" (tax funded) medical care, education, food stamps, etc. At the same time, it would be racist and "nativist" (the new label of maximum evilness) to demand the new neighbors adhere to retrograde Amerikkkan customs like working for a living, refraining from crime, marrying one spouse at a time (this will match up with the campaign against monogamy), or washing frequently.
I like cats. Programs to neuter feral cats because they reproduce too quickly are speciesist. Any cruelty to a cat should be punished quickly and severely using federal hate crime laws. Not only that, cats should receive all the emergency medical care they need at local veterinarian clinics.
The socons usually hype pedophiles as the next sexual minority to receive liberal/progressive patronage, but I suppose it could be zoophiles or incestuous adults. Is there somewhere to set up an online pool?
Cennbeorc
Silly me, polygamists are clearly next. In fact, they're likely to achieve full victory before the trannies. Expect news from Canada before long.
Cennbeorc
Was someone arguing there'd be many millions of gay marriages in the US? Of course gay people make up a very small minority - yes, probably closer to 2% than 10%, although that means an awful lot of non-gay people have had same-sex sexual experiences. It remains to be seen to what degree the increasing social acceptance of being gay and the formal legal recognition of gay partnerships changes gay culture to make it more marriage-centric.
In terms of what's next, there are a number of sexual minority groups campaigning for increased social acceptance and legal recognition, none of whom lend themselves to the gay-people-are-normal-middle-class-white-people-just-like-you HRC type of stuff. The polyamorous and polygamous want to be able to marry multiple people. Trans people want to not get beaten up. Kinky people would prefer to not have their parties raided by the cops and their names splashed all over the news for charges that are just going to be dropped anyway. And they'd all like employment discrimination protection, and to not have their kids taken away from them. None of these are exact parallels to the gay movement, and I don't think any of them are going to be as sympathetic. Some of the things they want fit neatly into my left-libertarian framework of the world: It shouldn't be socially acceptable to beat up trans people and put it on youtube, the police shouldn't raid your leather party and arrest you for spanking a willing partner, it shouldn't be illegal to be religiously married to more than one person. Some don't. But I'm not scornful of them, either. The major reason that we're even talking about this stuff is that straight, non-transgender people have changed how they think about sex and individual rights more generally. You're the main causes/beneficiaries/sufferers of all of this.
I can't be the only one eagerly awaiting Steve's comments on the very uneven (to be extremely charitable) Ron Unz piece in AmCon.
What's up, Steve, this is important!!
Lowering the legal age of sexual consent will be one of the future issues of this sort. It's already happened in Britain, where I believe it has been reduced to 16. Polygamy and "polyamory" are also likely. If state constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriage are thrown out by the Supreme Court, there is ultimately no restriction on marriage, or on any form of consensual sexual activity, that will withstand attack.
@kylie
Yep and then they can start mandating school books show 'diverse couples' that the army have its first gay general, first gay five star general and so on.
and all these people will be poltical operatives of the left.
I honestly don't see the transgender agenda getting any real traction, even on the left.
Most liberals are straight, and most have, or will have, children. Transgenders, who seek, say, to use the bathrooms of their desired sex, rather than those of the sex they were born with, will freak out the children even of liberals -- not to mention freaking out a good number of the liberals themselves.
And, most certainly, no one is allowed to freak out the children of liberals. They are the Entire Point of All Existence.
Not all slopes are slippery.
@anon 250pm
The left is going to use it to carry out their agenda as they do with every other 'right' they advocate.
Look at their track record. Every time they flutter their eyes and say 'we just want to be fair' watch out.
For the record:
abortion would never become a form of contraception and there would only be maybe a few thousand a year.
the 1965 immigration 'reform' act was just going to unite a few famlies maybe 3000 immigrants. that's all.
Affirmative action was just going to be a five year stint, max..
Need i go on??
Do you honestly think the radical chic leftists who funded the black panthers gave a rat's ass about blacks? Ha!
The next move would be lowering the age of consensual sex. Ever heard of NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association)? This will be really incremental. THe lack of a clear marker is the great herald that any rule is per se aribtrary and racist (by then the word should have been fully coopted and expanded to mean anything bad). I mean some people are hard to classify racially, so race does not exist. If the guy is 22 and the girl is 18, is that a crime? What about if the guy is 19 and the girl is 17. But why draw the line there, what's the difference between a 17 and 16 year old anyway? Etc. Sexual freedom and independence for the youth of ALL walks of gender will be the next big show.
I think one of the NR guys said necrophilia was next.
Realistically, probably polygamy. It's already practiced in plenty of other cultures, after all.
As a follow up to the age line on sexual freedom being the next point, it's got more legs than some of the other things people are throwing out there. The problem with polygamy for the left is that the femminist aren't really going to come to terms with it any time soon. They will push it on us for the sake of Muslims, but they aren't going to get as excited about it. But there are lots of kids out there and there are lots of interested adults out there, so the potential is greater. Also, this would rile the crap out of us all, and so the left would love that.
Steve makes the greater point that civil rights will never be over. The structure is there. People have a giant statue of MLK to worship and there are school programs with career tracks in civil rights. It does not stop, it searches for more.
So, what's the next stage beyond trans rights?
Fat people. There's a whole lot of 'em, so there's a whole lot of money to be made for the legal profession, and ultimately that's the driver for much of this "movement" stuff. Hey, it's not their fault - the problem is fast food, or, um, Monsanto or something.
Higgamus, hoggamus,
Women are monogamous.
Hoggamus, higgamus,
Men are polygamous.
I don't believe this is true, at least not the part about women being monogamous. Nearly every failed marriage in my peer group ended because the wife was unfaithful. At the risk of inciting Whiskey, let me say it seems as though the feminists have managed to convince middle class women that their personal sexual fulfillment is the peak of Maslow's hierarchy.
Anonymous at 2:50 p.m.: TNR is not a Republican publication.
Lefties always claim that righties are "obsessed" with sexual issues.
Because when they raise these issues, over and over again, a few righties fight back.
Who's really "obsessed," here?
From an evolutionary perspective, it's not exactly difficult to explain our (once) traditional sexual norms, is it? And it doesn't have much to do with some sort of rightie obsession with sex, does it?
i think i posted a few months ago that, in places in canada where gay people have been allowed to marry for a while, what the officials have found is that about 15% of gay men get married. so if about 50% of people are men, and about 4% of men are gay, per the recurring findings of sex researchers, then we're talking about 0.3% of people in canada who are taking advantage of this process by which the entire society is changed significantly. that's about 1 in 330 people.
perhaps there is an argument that their "civil rights" are being violated and this is "exactly" the same as racial discrimination, although i'm not so sure about that. but what we do know for sure, is that this not about civil rights for the people pushing this, but actually about shoving the gay agenda down our throats and normalizing it.
forcing gays into the US military was a major, major triumph for this, by which we now have to pretend that we depend on gay soldiers to protect us, and can't ever say anything negative about gays again. because the response to that now is automatic and forceful, as we saw when rick santorum gave his opinion on the matter. any time a gay activist wants something, they can just say "So we're good enough to defend your life, but not good enough to (fill in the blank with demand and threat), huh?"
all this power for putting perhaps 10,000 open gays in the US military, less than 1% of the forces. what a deal. what a bargain. serious bang for your buck right there.
of course, turning the tables on the military brass, every last one of the gays could leave the military tomorrow with zero effect on "military readiness". we don't depend on them at all, and suggesting that we do is a false choice. "So if a gay guy was on your side, you wouldn't want him shooting at the enemy or trying to save your life?" they say.
well, no, because they gay guy doesn't have to be there at all. a straight guy would be there next to me, fighting, exactly the way it's been for 200 years.
Don't worry, Steve: the Atlantic Monthly is already on the search for the next big civil rights issue, and -- surprise -- they have found it: the grievous abuse of black college athletes by universities.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/
As we are all well aware, there just aren't enough transfer payments being made to African-Americans (or to trial lawyers), so I hope this campaign will proceed with alacrity.
Equal legal rights for unmarried heterosexual couples.
Robert Hume
Anything one can be "bullied" for, which seems to be the latest push-phrase buzzword.
I've told you before, I'll say it again: Obama wants to turn America into Canada. I know, we're boring, but take a gander at this week's Canadian newspaper to find out what is going to happen in America a year from now. The "trans right" schtick started about a year ago here, the Human Rights Act was (almost? not sure if it got assent) amended to prohibit discrimination based on "gender identification". Meaning if a non-trans guy wants to get free drinks on ladies night and identifies as a female, the club can be fined for not letting him.
"So, what's the next stage beyond trans rights?"
One gets the feeling they're scraping the bottom of the grievance barrel. There is a "cause deficit" among wannabe "progressives" because all the battles have been fought and won. Global warming seems a "surrogate cause" meant to fill the vacuum left by the left's 50 year winning streak. They're like Alexander the Great beating a slave because there's nothing left to conquer.
The next cause? Not sure, tranny "rights" battle has yet to be "won" up here. Oh, "racialized persons", do you have that term in America yet? It's the new "visible minority" torqued up to suggest the majority is racist. Also the "bros before hos" paradigm as it relates to affirmative action, which is called employment equity here, will be reversed.
Great post, as usual.
OT
Don't miss last Messiah's speech.
Will he become such a hot commodity at next fund-raisers?
Might soon become a cult must-see/hear!
So, what's the next stage beyond trans rights?
Easy: polygamy, pedophilia and incest. I fully expect all to be "normalized" just as homosexuality has been before I kick the can (I'm 30).
The flip-side: Why are Republicans obsessed with this marginal issue?
Since you say it's a marginal issue, why do you care?
Animal rights. We are 97% identical to chimps.
Gay marriage matters a lot to two groups of people: long-term gay couples (more lesbians than gay men, I think, but there are certainly both) and Christian fundamentalists. There are a lot more Christian fundamentalists than gay couples, but gays care more on average about the issue (most people, religious or not, dont really care what anyone else is up to in their bedroom, as long as they dont have to watch). Both groups use the issue to organize political action and donations around.
Depending on how you count, gays are somewhere less than 5 percent of the population. Like blacks but more so, gays hit far above their weight in cultural visibility, because theyre so prominent in entertainment and art and music. Lesbians are in general less visible, both because they dont cluster in high profile careers like acting, and because they normally run to less flamboyant activities--fewer anonymous orgies in the bathhouse, more softball games in the park.
In terms of a political or socal movement, I dont see how TG or polygamy/polyamory could ever get much traction. The desire is just too rare to build much of a movement around.
We're running an experiment now with gay marriage. my prediction is that it will make some gay couples' lives much better, while not really causing much social change outside of that. Most people arent attracted to members of the same sex, dont want to sleep with them or date them or marry them, whether they're allowed to or not. Whatever legal rights may be extended to polygamous n-tuples (can't really say "couples," can I?), polygamy will remain extremely rare. Whatever legal recognition is offered for transgender people, it will remain still more rare, because its a vanishingly small minority taste.
The weird part of this is how succesful this attempt to dictate attitudes has been. The insane minority are increasingly able to use the power of the state to compel the sane majority not only to accept their delusions, but to be forced to approve of them.
I for one simply do not believe that having a doctor chop your dick off makes you a woman; you're just a messed up dude in a pants suit. Likewise, two people of the same gender can have a smartly-decorated home together, but as far as it being a "marriage" is concerned, it's just pretend. How long before this is a Thought-Crime?
One of the candidates for president of Ireland has a gay lover who was convicted of getting caught with having sex with an underage boy. So the next group we'll notice discrimination against are those poor folks whose love just happens to include people younger than the arbitrary statutory age, especially male people.
This has the benefit of having a large potential group of victims since almost all most gay men are victims of this sort of discrimination.
What percentage of black men get into Harvard? I'm sure it's less than .55%. Should we not permit black men in Harvard?
Haha, I took a class with Deirdre McCloskey as my professor less than 2 years ago, so it's funny your should mention it, no pun intended. It was an interesting experience, and what I found most objectionable about this person (for lack of a better term) was their fanatical support for free trade. He/she was patently very intelligent, yet in explaining trade positively refused to dwell into some of the inevitable consequences arising from it that are detrimental to the free trader ideology, even at the expense of making the lecture trivial in depth.
The next great cause will be "racial reassignment."
Michael Jackson started it.
Racial re-assignment is much easier to achieve. There are countless wannabe white "gangstas" ready to release their inner black.
Like you say Steve, the stakes in these battles are incredibly low and trivial. The elite wants energy focused on these stupid little fights. God forbid activists act like they did in the 1930s and actually start fighting for the rights and welfare of the white working class. That kind of activism would actually be threatening. The whole civil rights charade is a Trojan Horse to destroy the left, and it has worked pretty well.
"Furries."
Bingo, theres our next eternal victim. We're fursecuting them, and it must end now.
"People in the progressive vanguard in Europe are now championing 'number neutral marriages'"
This is indicative of the theology of progressives: attack and subvert what is, even it has proven to be good for society for to be typical is way uncool.
Maybe we go full circle and someone realizes there's money to be made in white heterosexual male rights? Nah, just screwin' with ya.
0.55%? Nah, that can't be correct. Every television show seems to have a gay couple these days, so I'm guessing it must be something like 25%. Right?
Kylie - The point is to force the center and the right to accept what is for many, if not most of them, the unacceptable.
The center and right grudgingly accept Project A through gritted teeth.
Then the left roll out Project B and dance around saying, "Well, look, you accepted Project A, why are you going to hypocritically stop B?"
Jody, you don't think there haven't been gays in the armed forces for the last 200 years? What the heck are you talking about?
Whether or not you support gays in the military, you have to admit that Rick Santorum's answer was disingenuous and gay.
"With 'gay pride parade' having precedence over civil rights marches--now a thing of the past--, the left is turning into a decadent joke."
It seems that more and more cities are inviting gay parades as a way for businesses to make money.
Oakland, seeing how many people go to SF to see the freak show and mindful of how much money is pulled in that day/weekend, has started planning and promoting their own gay pride parade.
Our poor economy had led, it seems, to cities considering any way of bringing in the dough. Yeah, that's decadent, a sign of the times. The more freakish the show, the more money made.
"Expect news from Canada before long."
Canadians got crazier before we did. The metrosexualizing of a whole nation, indeed a basically rural nation, is a travesty.
I used to like Canadians. Now I think of them as ball-less wonders.
Seriously, there's a difference between being nice and being a patsy. They've become patsies.
Lowering the legal age of sexual consent will be one of the future issues of this sort.
Actually the trend is moving the other way, in large part because of shocking studies finding that the average age of the baby daddy of teen mothers was much older than anyone realized (one Virignia study, IIRC, found avg age was 25). When I was in law school in the late 90s (so yes I had a non-creepy reason to know this), several states had 14 as the age of consent, in New Mexico it was 13. Since then every state has gone to an age of consent of either 16, 17, 18. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next decade, Uncle Sam starts withholding, say, Medicaid funding from states with an age of consent less than 18 (withholding highway funding is the reason 21 is the drinking age in every state). Of course, 18 is already the de facto age of consent, thanks to camera phones...
Doesn't matter what the state age of consent is, if a 16 or 17 year old girl sends or receives a nude photo from her older beau (which happens approx 100% of the time in creepy older guy and Juliet cases), he can be popped on federal child porn laws. Age of consent on that is 18.
On the tranny rights issue, at the end of the Bush Admin the Dem Congress had the votes to pass a gay civil rights law (because of Dick Cheney's strong personal interest in the bill, Bush was expected to reluctantly sign it). What derailed passage was that it didn't protect transexual rights. Moderates (Democrats and a handful of Republicans) wouldn't support the bill with tranny rights and liberal Democrats wouldn't support it without. That will end up being the GOP's fallback position, endorsing gay rights bill (to the exclusion of transexuals) and then sit back and watch the no loaf is better than half a loaf Democrats kill it.
So, what's the next stage beyond trans rights?
Civil rights for non-humans. We're already moving in that direction.
The next stage is inserting gay content in school curriculums.
Interspecies marriage.
I was opposed to gay marriage because I realized the left would use it as the thin end of the wedge.
The point of the exercise is not primarily to acknowledge and guarantee various rights and freedoms to those on the margins of society. The point is to force the center and the right to accept what is for many, if not most of them, the unacceptable.
Because it's "icky", right? Which is perfectly legitimate reason to legally deny gay marriage. Good thing the Constitution guarantees everyone right to not be grossed out. You, Sailer, and everyone else who wallows in pre-60s America like a old pigs in mud can rest easier.
-
Lefties always claim that righties are "obsessed" with sexual issues.
Because when they raise these issues, over and over again, a few righties fight back.
Who's really "obsessed," here?
The self-appointed guardians of traditional morality.
I think the next civil-rights battle will about regarding pets as full-fledged family members. Employers will be pressured to fund health insurance for animals. Public places, such as restaurants, will have to be as accomodating of dogs as they are of children. The pet owners will wish they had not been so successful, though, when leaving a cat home alone all day results in a visit from Pet Protective Services.
What if instead of calling them gays, or even homosexuals, or even sodomists, we called them what they really are: men who like to have anal, oral and anal-oral sex with other men.
Turns out, surprise surprise, that a lot of these gay 'marriages' or marriage-like thingamajigs are unlike the overwhelming number of heterosexual marriages in that they don't require monogamy. A 'gender research' named Colleen Hoff found that 47% of gay partners had mutually agreed to 'sexual agreements' that they could get some on the side, and another 8% had one partner who thought such an agreement was in effect. That celebrity homo Savage ('it gets better') has a 'sexual agreement' with his 'husband'.
An informal poll of my friends indicates approximately 0% of heterosexuals have such an agreement.
The flip-side: Why are Republicans obsessed with this marginal issue?
Obviously Republicans want to posture and pretend to take stands on issues like this to avoid doing any actual work or making any actual sacrifices or providing any actual representation (e.g., immigration).
That said - one tends to become "obsessed" over "marginal issues" when said issues involve one's enemies being "obsessed" with one's self. Further, once one's enemies establish a half-century+ trend of destroying everything they touch, including much of what one holds dear, one tends to oppose as much of one's enemies' goals as is practical irrespective of marginality. The question becomes more about sussing out one's enemies' real goals (as opposed to false, Briar Patch goals) than about whether to oppose them.
At this point I oppose any goals liberals have that I do not explicitly share; I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.
Sailer wrote:
"As you know from reading all the coverage, the most important issue of our times is gay marriage. It's big, big, big!"
No, it isn't, not anymore. The next big thing is Straight Victimhood. Just page through the comments and you'll see that this blog is in the vanguard of a movement that not even Oprah can stop.
Straights will now only allow themselves to be photographed with those bars over their eyes, and will become so ashamed of their sexual need that they will lurk about in public areas desperate to find others afflicted with their tragic, unfortunate disposition. They may even start their own psychotherapy groups.
Yes, not content with seething with resentment over the mere existence of blacks, Jews, Mexicans and other "minorities" the straights will direct their ire at the dominant Homo tribe, demanding a constitutional amendment to assure their right to engage in...that yucky stuff they do.
I don't think Peter Singer has ever advocated bestiality. He has simply made the point that it's less cruel to have sex with animals (illegal) than to factory farm and eat them (legal). Pretty fair point.
Yes, the idea that cruelty is not at the apex of immorality is a fair point.
*Katherine Franke, Law Professor and...oh, never mind
Don't worry, the dog whistle's already loud and clear.
public sex and lowered age of consent are the next two things people are pushing for. after all ,two consenting adults have a 'right' to do it, don't they? The left can only survive by destroying, they cannot build, they never have been able to, - they can only parasitically take over inherently conservative institution like the church or universities and 'cash in' the moral capital acquired by them, just like the Michael Eisner types did with Disney.
The appropriately named gay activist Dan Savage has already come forward to argue that heterosexuals should learn from gays and drop monogamy in favor of open marriages.
There's that dog whistle again.
Steve-- you are mistaken, the gay issue will be used as **the** attack instrument for decades to come and Britain is our example.
In the UK secularism is now enforced with a steel fist, against Christianity at least, with the gay issue being the legal arm of attack.
It has gotten to the point that a judge has ruled that Christian couples may not foster children in the UK. (This amid shortage of foster parents).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361469/Christian-beliefs-DO-lose-gay-rights-Judges-ruling-devout-foster-couple-lose-case.html
The upshot is that all forms of Christianity with any substantive doctrine are attacked. Of course no such attacks are made against Muslims or Jews.
Catholic adoption agencies across the world are being forced shut.
The following is a new front being argued....
British MP: 'Force Churches to Perform Same-Sex Unions or Close Them Down'
http://www.christianpost.com/news/british-mp-force-churches-to-perform-same-sex-unions-or-close-them-down-55371/
"Weatherley added that until “we untangle” marriage and “religion in this country, we will struggle to find a fair arrangement.”"
All guns are aimed at Christianity by the left and if the UK is any hint, there is lots of room to run on this.
Christian carer struck off after Muslim girl converts
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/christian-carer-struck-off-after-muslim-girl-converts/
Since quite a few people (nearly all of them women) are genuinely bisexual, 10% is probably accurate. If not an understatement.
There are lots and lots of bisexual men too, but they aren't as visible because of the stigma. Female bisexuality is actively fashionable (to the point where there are probably flat-out straight women who say they are bi), while male bisexuality isn't.
And before anyone brings up that study which purported to demonstrate there were no male bisexuals -- it's been thoroughly discredited , as even the original researchers concede.
I don't believe this is true, at least not the part about women being monogamous. Nearly every failed marriage in my peer group ended because the wife was unfaithful.
Monogamous is not the same as faithful. In fact, monogamy is why the marriage has to end when the woman cheats -- she can only bond to one person at a time.
"reqq said...
Not all slopes are slippery."
But they are all slopes.
Not all "rights" are rights.
It is an interesting sign of how the label "left" has lost its meaning.
Karl Marx had absoultely nothing to say on gay marriage & I doubt if he would have understood it as an "issue" let alone supported it.
He probably would have understood polygamous marriage as a possible issue and likely held a "right wing" view against it, or indeed lowering the age of consent to 10 (actually at the time in some places that would have been raising it at the time).
Perhaps the next "leftist" issue will be marriage with sheep, so long as the sheep appear consenting.
Give iit up. You guys lost.
The next great struggle will be frocing white girls to quit bearing white children and have sex with dark men.
The advantage of public sex advocacy is that it will feed off of vigilante beatings of lewd gays, while also provoking more tensions from people who do not want that kind of thing going on in their neighborhood parks.
On the other hand, do police forces even clean up dirty parks anymore? Have enough politically-connected gays stopped enforcement of these laws?
The Phelps clan was supposedly provoked into their attention-whoring when one of Phelps' grandkids was accosted by a gay man in a public park known for lewd acts, and local authorities allegedly didn't do anything. In Kansas. In the 1990s.
"The flip-side: Why are Republicans obsessed with this marginal issue?"
Gee, I didn't know that the Republicans invented the idea of gay marriage.
Oh, wait. They didn't. It never occurred to them or to any others in the 99% of normal people.
Not only are Republicans not obsessed with it, they never bring it up. They only respond to those who are obsessed with it. They respond with shock and disbelief that idiots can't figure out that marriage is about fusing gametes and the gametes have to come from opposite sexes. One egg, one sperm. It is exactly the same as one woman, one man. In fact that is where the gametes come from, huh, fancy that.
"So, what's the next stage beyond trans rights?
Fat people. "
Nope. They are now the majority so they deserve no special rights. Immigration has made fugly people a majority, too.
Welcome to fat, ugly, brown America. Are we having fun yet?
Peter Singer wondered why in the world we have taboos against bestiality. He waxes eloquent about the virtues of bestiality, going into great details about the joys of sex with horses, dogs, orangutans and donkeys.
Peter Singer said that "..as long as the animal is not hurt or exploited, what is wrong with it?"
Is that it? As long as the animal is happy, let's go for it? And this guy is a world-renowned ethicist and philosopher. As a strident vegetarian, all that he is really doing here is telling us that it is OK to have sex with animals, as long as we don't eat them afterwards.
Peter Singer on made these remarks on ABC's Q and A in Australia.
The amazing thing was that he was not booed off the show. This is incredible. A reputable prime-time debate program which allows some "intellectual" to tell us there is nothing wrong with bestiality. And most of the other panellists did not seem concerned at all."
For the complete report on "Australia Prime Time TV Endorses Bestiality"
http://tinyurl.com/3hyz7yo
"Back at ya: why deconstruct an ancient and salutary institution that pre-dates the State itself so a deviant sliver of the populace doesn't get hurt feelings?"
As usual, Anti-Gnostic, spot on.
its not about promoting homo right so or trannie rights it's about dismantling whatever is left of our Western Christian roots.
EXACTLY!
The goal is to create a society in which traditional, heterosexual, monogamous families are deemed equivalent to even the most unlikely and perverse social relationships.
Look at Chaz Bono. A female-to-male transexual "married" to a lesbian(?) now stars in a popular, primetime, network show. A decade ago, such a scenario would have been considered a very juvenile satire, at best.
Gay marriage matters a lot to two groups of people: long-term gay couples (more lesbians than gay men, I think, but there are certainly both) and Christian fundamentalists.
That's a leftist fantasy. Gay men don't much care about gay marriage, since only a tiny percentage of that already tiny group have even the slightest interest in marrying another man.
The people driving the gay marriage issue are heterosexual lefties. Why? Because lefties are what PJ O'Rourke once described as the "Perpetually Indignant". The essence of being lefty is see oneself bravely fighting the majority in order to secure rights for some persecuted minority.
Lefties are currently driving the "gay marriage" issue, and will eventually move on to driving bestiality or some other issue, because that's the sort of thing they do. They don't particularly gave a damn about gays or gay marriage. Lefties are always looking in the mirror. They only people they care about impressing are themselves.
I think one of the NR guys said necrophilia was next.
Realistically, probably polygamy. It's already practiced in plenty of other cultures, after all
One of the NR writers was arguing in favor of polygamy.
It's hard to believe that was once a conservative publication.
"I used to like Canadians. Now I think of them as ball-less wonders."
Except after hockey games. Then, even geeky Asians turn into thugs.
Wait a minute. If tranny rights are The Next Big Thing - especially if one can claim them just, essentially, by saying that one feels oneself to be a different gender that the biological reality dictates - can I hope that the same reasoning will apply to such things as race?
I mean, it's not a biological reality, even - just a social construct. So, if I claim that I feel myself to be Black, despite my blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin, and [as far as I know] 100% white ancestry, why SHOULDN'T I get to enjoy AA spoils?
Gay-Gay-Gay is the new KKK.
0.55%? Nah, that can't be correct. Every television show seems to have a gay couple these days, so I'm guessing it must be something like 25%. Right?
TV has similarly fooled most Americans into believing blacks are about one-third of the population, rather than the actual one-eighth.
Needless to say, I am against "gay marriage" all the way. It's all part of the Frankfurt School cultural Marxist corruption plan, which must be dealt with by ridicule and pushback, and not tolerated or apologized to in any way. After all, they don't show us any mercy. I think Reagan was slightly exaggerating in calling the Soviet Union the "Evil Empire", but cultural Marxism *is* pure evil, in my estimation.
@ anon 11:15 A decade ago, such a scenario would have been considered a very juvenile satire, at best.
it as a bomb, but there was an obscure movie called 'americathon' released around 1978 or so, that showed a future, bankrupt america - and as an aside, had a 'future sitcom' not unlike that.
As an eigth grader, i sat in the audience and thought, yeah right.
The only kind of bullying that's EVIL these days is bullying of gay kids.
But what about when gays bully others, as when some bald gay guy yelled 'youre mother is a whore' to Bristol at a bar? No media coverage of that.
Btw, what about fatness? Is that a condition or an 'identity'? What if some people have fat genes, like some have gay genes? What if they can't help but eat a lot just like gays can't help but to seek out anal sex? What if it's a part of their natural drive?
Then, is Michelle Obama bullying and shaming fat kids who are really victims? What if a fat kid commits suicide cuz he was called names? Should kids who called him 'fatso' be accused of fatophobia or obesophobia?
And this guy is a world-renowned ethicist and philosopher.
who's ethics? who's philosophy? I think he's 'world renowned' like Stephen Jay Gould and Franz Boaz were.
Votes for illegal aliens will be next.
If gays should come out of the closet, should fatties come out of the refrigerator?
Btw, if homos got to call themselves 'gays', should fatties call themselves 'jollies'? Fat people do look jolly wolly.
If homosexuality is gay sexuality, should real sexuality be called serious sexuality. I don't care too much for 'straight'. It sounds too square. Btw, are bi-sexuals squeers?
"At this point I oppose any goals liberals have that I do not explicitly share..."
My sentiments exactly.
"...I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire."
Agreed. And I would refrain from doing the same if they were dying of thirst.
The argument that gay men shouldn't have the right to get married because most people are against it is sophomoric. Sailer brings this point over and over again as if it has any validity. "Democracy" has nothing to do with it. Let me make this clear to you so that you won't use this argument again:
POPULAR VOTE CANNOT BE USED TO REMOVE OR REFUSE TO GRANT RIGHTS TO SPECIFIC GROUPS OF PEOPLE.
Why? Sailer has not even the slightest knowledge of jurisprudence. Laws are HIERARCHICAL. At the top of the food chain are what are called axiomatic laws, or negative laws or also Constitutional laws. These are laws that establish what kinds of laws can and cannot be created. For instance, a state cannot pass a law forbidding citizens from buying weapons because there is a higher law, a constitutional law, a negative law, that precludes the right to any state to pass such a law. Likewise, the right for gay men and women to get married MUST be passed into law because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law. This is the absolute highest law not only of the United States, but the most cardinal principle of Western Civilization. I am sure that, if left to popular vote, there are cities in Mississippi that would re-instate slavery of black people. Likewise, if left to popular vote, there are cities in Utah that would take away from women the right to vote or own businesses. Just because there is a popular desire, it does not make it so. Rule by the mob is the worst kind of rule. Also, the fact that there is only a tiny minority of gays who would want to get married is completely irrelvant. Even if there were only SINGLE gay couple wanting to get married, they should have the right to.
Also, what is the problem of giving gays the right to get married? This is something that is a private matter that doesen't affect other people negatively in any way. What difference does this make in your life? Live and let live. Even if gay marriage somehow affected heterosexual people negatively, which it doesen't, denying gays the right to get married whilst granting it to straight people would be saying that heterosexual people are innately more valuable than gays and thus gays should be deprived of a right that straight people have to protect the straight people. A complete and utter value-judgement.
I think that articles like this indicate that Sailer is not a libertarian. This is now obvious. He is clearly an authoritarian type who wants to mold "Society" into a pecking order where certain groups are innately deemed to be more valuable than others. In this case, white heterosexual males and heterosexual families. Authoritarianism always fail, as the groups being deemed lesser always revolt against them. We have seen this with fascism, communism and conservatism in America. But you'll lose. The history of the West over the past 200 years since the Enlightment has been one of increased value of the individual Human Being over groups or abstract concepts like "Society" or the "Nation". The U.S is a special case because Americans are unusually religious - because the country was colonized by religious nutters -, but even in the U.S libertarian trends are winning over long spans of time - and the U.S' FoundingFathers were not conservatives but libertarians. On a final note, since Sailer is so against genital sexual mutilation, why don't you start condemning the sexual mutilation of over 60% of American boys as soon as they are born?
"Likewise, the right for gay men and women to get married MUST be passed into law because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law. "
Since you don't like religion it probably hasn't occurred to you that marriage exists as a blend between religious and secular law. I'd vote to change the name of the legal aspect of unions between two people who intend to set up household together until "death do us part".
The real problem here is that gays are inadvertently using secular law to intrude upon the rights of religious people. I'm certain they don't intend to do this. Leave "marriage" for churches to define and call the contract recognized by the courts something else (like Civil Union). Sure popular culture will lag in using the newer more precise term but why would that matter to homosexuals? They get their legal rights; churches get their freedom to practice their religion. It's a win-win situation.
"Nearly every failed marriage in my peer group ended because the wife was unfaithful. At the risk of inciting Whiskey, let me say it seems as though the feminists have managed to convince middle class women that their personal sexual fulfillment is the peak of Maslow's hierarchy."
Chris Christie for president!
Libertarians may agree that same-sex "marriage" ought not to be a state interest but the WOULD NOT use "'gay' marriage" as a bludgeon to fine photographers who refuse to work at a "gay" wedding.
Leftists want to use the issue to FORCE their "morality" on children.
They use the libertarian "live and let live" argument but use the fist of the state to smash Christian groups such as Catholic charities adoption agencies
"Authoritarianism always fail, as the groups being deemed lesser always revolt against them. We have seen this with fascism, communism and conservatism in America. But you'll lose. The history of the West over the past 200 years since the Enlightment has been one of increased value of the individual Human Being over groups or abstract concepts like "Society" or the "Nation".
I support gay marriage. But you make the mistake of thinking that we are trading in past authoritarianism for a future devoid of such. In reality, we are trading authoritarianism for authoritarianism. Why shouldn't it be so? Human nature is human nature. It doesn't change. Now, and probably to a greater extent in the future, it's whites who are at the bottom of the pecking order. Or did you not notice that we are not only routinely discriminated against, but taught that it is somehow a sin for us to even stand up for ourselves as whites?
"Also, what is the problem of giving gays the right to get married? This is something that is a private matter that doesen't affect other people negatively in any way."
Of COURSE it does. Anything that becomes associated with gay men (like, say, Broadway musicals) makes straight men scramble to distance themselves from. If getting married becomes a "gay" thing, good luck getting any straight guys to EVER marry a gal again.
"What difference does this make in your life? Live and let live."
If straight men decide marriage is for sissies, then that means all the children will be raised in single mother homes. The best predictor of sociopathology is illigitimacy. All the extra criminals you just created? You may enjoy being mugged, but *I* don't.
"Even if gay marriage somehow affected heterosexual people negatively, which it doesen't,"
Horsepuckies. It affects children BADLY, by discouraging straight men from marrying the kid's mom, so the kids don't get to have a dad around.
"denying gays the right to get married whilst granting it to straight people would be saying that heterosexual people are innately more valuable than gays"
They are. Straight couples are the only ones who can reproduce the species.
"and thus gays should be deprived of a right that straight people have to protect the straight people. A complete and utter value-judgement."
And a good one, as the reason that heterosexual couples have a right that gay people don't is because straight couples have a biological capability that gay couples don't.
Is it a "value judgment" to deny blind people drivers' licenses? After all, they are nice people, right, who want the convenience of going where they wish, whenever they wish, right?
Of course, it's a value judgment. Blind drivers kill people, and that's wrong.
Same reason to deny gay couples "marriage." Because gay couples can't conceive children, and gay "marriage" makes straight marriage less likely.
"POPULAR VOTE CANNOT BE USED TO REMOVE OR REFUSE TO GRANT RIGHTS TO SPECIFIC GROUPS OF PEOPLE."
That is true. But marriage is not an individual right. It is an institution that has been created and established as a meaningful union between man and woman.
Gays as individual have the right to be gay. But they have no right to demand that an institution change its meaning and laws to accommodate gays. Similarly, a man can pretend to be a woman, but he has no right to enter a woman's washroom. And a white guy can pretend to be black, but he cannot demand the right to be legally accepted as black. Rights means freedom for us to do as we please as individuals. It doesn't mean we have the right to force entire institutions to change their rules to accommodate our fantasies and peccadilloes.
It's like not everyone has the right to use veteran's hospitals or be buried in the Arlington cemetery. One needs qualifications, such as having served in the military.
And though everyone has the right to apply for the military, there is no guarantee everyone will be accepted--such as blind people or midgets. MIlitary has its rules of what makes a soldier. (Personally, I don't mind gays serving in the military, but I do have problems with soldiers ACTING gay in the military. What the military needs to do is not just teach soldiers to be tolerant of gay soldiers but to teach gay soldiers that gay behavior is out of place in the military. Also, what if cross-dressing transsexuals say they wanna serve too and dress weird?)
Marriage has been defined meaningfully as union of man and woman to lead a family. That is not an arbitrary definition but a very sensible one based on nature and nurture. To undermine it just to pander to gays is ridiculous, demented, and cowardly.
Btw, do you support incest marriage or triple-or-quadruple marriage? Do you support three or four gays getting married? You say it's ridiculous? Not long ago, the very concept of 'gay marriage' was ridiculous(and it still is to anyone with sense). In fact, when peole brought up the issue in the past as what might happen if gays gained more freedom, progressives mocked such concerns as ludicrous, laughable,and paranoid. They said the ONLY thing gays want is to be left alone to be gay, not to mess with mainstream institutions. but now, we are supposed to bend over for gays?
Also, we must not confuse equality of individual rights with sameness. Equality is not sameness. Equality of individual rights is not equality of worth.
A person with IQ of 70 and person of IQ of 130 has equal rights to study and apply for public college. But that doesn't mean low IQ is same as or of equal value as high IQ and that both have to accepted by the college.
Similarly, a gay person has a right to be sexually gay as much as a straight person has the right to be sexually straight. But that doesn't mean gayness is of equal value as real sexuality. It doesn't mean a gay couple's demands are of the same value as the needs of a man-woman couple.
Gays talk about their 'rights', but the idea of 'gay marriage' violates the rights of straight people to engage in what they deem and value as morally meaningful behavior. Marriage has meaning and value as defined. The radical egalitarianism behind 'gay marriage' violates the rights of decent pepole who truly qualify for marriage.
It's like people have a right to work hard, save, and buy a home in a good neighborhood. People also have a right to mess up, fail, and be poor. Suppose one family stays together, works, saves, and moves from a crime-ridden neighborhood to a safe community.
Suppose another family in that crime-ridden community is made up of louts, punks,and cretins; in fact such people were the reason why the good family worked and saved to move out. You see, both families have the same rights to succeed or fail. But suppose the government decides to provide 'justice and equality' to the crazy family by moving it(via section 8 housing)to the good community. Leftists might say poor families have 'an equal right' to live in good communities, but this is really a violation of the rights of good families to move away from cretins. Such policies go way beyond saying a person has a right to succeed or fail; it says failure = success, laziness = hard work.
When a man and a woman get married, they are doing something more than living together, having sex, or etc. They are making a moral commitment to distinguish themselves APART from people who refuse to make such moral commitment. There are rules for such commitment. Now, one may laud gays who wanna love one another and commit to one another too, but their notion of 'gay marriage' a mocking parody of the real thing(even if they sincerely have good intentions). Gay sex is not the equal of real sex. In fact, it's perverted. And gays cannot have kids through gay sex, so why do they even need to get married? It's all so vain. 'Gay marriage' is parody marriage, just like pro wrestling is parody wrestling(and has no right to demand that it be recognized as an Olympic sport). It is an insult to the true meaning of things. It's like one has the right to market or enjoy imitation crab meat, but one has no right to say we must all recognize it as the real thing or the equal of the real thing.
Perhaps the next "leftist" issue will be marriage with sheep, so long as the sheep appear consenting.
Baaa!
"FoundingFathers were not conservatives but libertarians."
Obviously someone hasn't read all the way through the Declaration of Independence. Half of its 'complaints" are that King George is preventing the colonial *governments* from working. Jefferson also complains that the 'free system of English law has been abolished in a neighboring province," what sort of libertarian complains about that. The first congress required militia duty of all 'free white males'. And of course every single colony/state had sodomy laws.
The idea that the Founders were libertarians is bunk.
"POPULAR VOTE CANNOT BE USED TO REMOVE OR REFUSE TO GRANT RIGHTS TO SPECIFIC GROUPS OF PEOPLE."
that's why the homos tried to use that strategy at first, and then it backfired.
So what can be used to remove or grant rights? Leftist judges? line item legistlation??
Authoritarianism always fail, as the groups being deemed lesser always revolt against them. We have seen this with fascism, communism and conservatism in America. But you'll lose. The history of the West over the past 200 years since the Enlightment has been one of increased value of the individual Human Being over groups or abstract concepts like "Society" or the "Nation".
the left, and new atheist movement is very very good at creating false narratives such as this and posting them with the utmost confidence, the kind of 'confidence' that comes from complete lack of introspection.
"conservatism' is some sort of 'authoritarianism' but forcing people to accept gays or minorities in housing, jobs, etc, is not 'authoritarian'? Preventing freedom of association is not 'authoritarian' mandatory diversity is not 'authoritarian'?
The englightment.. you mean like the french revolution that murdered thousands of clergy and nobles for being who they are, destroyed countless ancient churches and monastaries, and at gunpoint, imposed 'equality and fraternity' on other countries, and collected a fee for their trouble?
The enlightment and its offspring: the first french republic, communism, socialism, facism, the Godless secular state with Reason as a "god" paved the way for the most barbaric, inhumane century known to man - the 20th. WWI and WWII people did things to innocent human live on an unprecendant scale, often with cold calculate 'reason' behind it.
your narrative is also BS because the secular 'enlightened' bolshiviks actually set russia back - prior to that the church and reformists were making good headway.
Ok, I could do a point-by-point reply, but I have better things to do with my time, so I will just address his general points. This is my reply to the poster, "JSM".
Saying that giving gays the right to get married is wrong because it will dissuade straight men from getting married is wrong on so many levels that I don't know where to start. For starters, you have no evidence for this. Who is going to think that a man getting married to a WOMAN is gay? But suppose it's true. So what? That is straight men's problem and not that of gays! So gay men should be penalized because straight men are so homophobic that they will refuse to associate with anything that is even extremely remotely associated with gays(extremely)? And why should they be penalized? Because straight men getting married is better for "Society"? Define "Society"? A "society" where gays cannot get married is, by definition, not as good for gays as a society that does - everthing else being equal. So you are pretty much saying that either gays are not a part of society or that the happiness of a part of society is more important than the happiness of another part of society. Why should gays agree to such a society? From the point of view of logic, it makes no sense for gays to agree to such a sacrifice, since it would only make sense for them to agree with such sacrifice if it made life better for THEM. So, unless you prove that banning gay marriage is, somehow, better for gays, your argument that it is better for Society is redundant because:
- It does not make life better for Society if you define Society as the total amalgamation of people that compose a civilization.
- If your definition of Society is that it emcompasses only married people with children, then it is a moot point for gays that banning gay marriage is good for Society since your definition of Society does not include them so they have no reason to care that it is good for Society since it doesen't make things good for them.
Now, putting aside all these ridiculous issues you have raised, all you have said is irrelevant. This is an issue of juridical principles and nothing more. The principal of equality before the law MANDATES that gays have the right to get married. Conservatives love to bring up stupid points like that granting gay marriage would open the door to allowing Humans to marry animals or children. We are not talking about categories here that should be allowed to get married: we are talking about individual adult Human Beings in the full possesion of their mental faculties who are in love and want to get married. The criteria should be this: an adult in full posession of his/her mental faculties. This is the criteria.
And finally, the argument that straight men refusing to get married would result in decreased amounts of children. This is probably true, but you cannot take away rights from people who already exist on the premisse that it will result in more children. Real people are what matters, and not people who don't exist. And even if true, the rights of people who are already here STILL would be more important. And is having more children a good thing? There were 2 billion people in the 1920's and now, less than a century latter, there are over 7 billions. Removing rights from people on the assumption that doing so will result in more kids is bad enough, but doing so in a World with overpopulation is asinine.
I think I now have Sailer figured out: he is an intelligent man with the soul of a simple one. He REALLY loves the U.S he grew up and wants to preserve it no matter the cost, even if the cost is being irrational.
JSM:
So your prediction is that gay marriage will convince lots of men not to want to marry women? Really? That just seems bizarre to me.
Svigor/Kylie:
So, when liberals propose a sensible policy, or at least one less nufs than the opposition, you'll oppose it for the sake of opposing liberals? How does that make sense?
I am probably deficient in the team-spirit gene or something, because this kind of reasoning just makes my head hurt.
So gay men should be penalized because straight men are so homophobic that they will refuse to associate with anything that is even extremely remotely associated with gays(extremely)?
There's that word "homophobic". There has been a strong reason the human race tends to be "homophobic", for the same reasons we tend to think that poop stinks. Homosexuality is associated with mental illness, despair, disease, and suicide, not to mention abuse of adolescent boys. You think that's healthy? Homosexuality used to be considered a paraphilia, or a fetish. And there are fetishes to all sorts of things. You seem to want men (and women) suffering from homosexuality to identify as "gay" and to fully indulge their lusts just because their fetish happens to be members of the same sex. Sorry, but your whole argument is ridiculous.
Gawd you guys are slow some times. Here I am, happily slapping Alpo on my dick while the dog licks it off, and I have to scroll down to like #40 before someone mentions the obvious, NAMBLA. That's old school in Canada though, as is the LDS at Bountiful, BC (Jeffs just got convicted in the U.S). What I'm really waiting for is marrying my corporation so that I can claim Spousal Exemption on the first, say $30 K, before I need to pay taxes. This was brought up years ago - I forget which group was claiming the right to penetrate the other.
It's all part of the Frankfurt School cultural Marxist corruption plan, which must be dealt with by ridicule and pushback, and not tolerated or apologized to in any way.
Here speaks a man who has never read any of the Frankfurt school (Adorno was a prig who thought rock music was barbaric and homosexuals were sick). What's up with so many obviously ignorant types namechecking this obscure philosophical school lately? Did Glenn Beck do a show about it or something?
cultural Marxism *is* pure evil, in my estimation.
Actual Marxists have been pretty culturally conservative (check out Castro on gays sometime), it's part of the traditional authoritarian thing.
There is a lot of weird paranoia in this thread. I get the distaste for homosexuality, it's a time-honored tradition with some justification. But I sense some isteve readers spend a lot of time worrying that 'leftists' will come barging into their house and actually make them fuck a sheep.
What an absurd, ridiculous argument you make here. So the French Revolution led to Communism and Fascism, huh? I mean, the last time I checked, the motto of the French Revolution was equalité, fraternité, etc, and against the monarchy.
Talk about your absurd, ridiculous arguments! The motto of communism was "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". Which sounds nice and cuddly. All political motto's sound somewhat appealing. You think some political faction is going to make their motto "Death and despair for all"?
The French Revolution and the Communist Gulag are directly linked according no less a scholar than Harvard's Crane Brinton.
Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn extensively described the essential simialarities between the USSR and the "Liberte',Egalite' and Fraternite'" that lead to the Great Terror.
Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn explained it all quite clearly in virtually everything he wrote.
Why are leftists so simultaneously arrogant and ignorant?
One is reminded of the reaction of Caffinhals, who replied to the uproar created by the defenders of Lavoisier, who cried, "You are condemning a great learned man to death," by saying, "The Revolution has no need of learned men."
"The amazing thing was that he was not booed off the show. This is incredible. A reputable prime-time debate program which allows some "intellectual" to tell us there is nothing wrong with bestiality. And most of the other panellists did not seem concerned at all."
Yeah, well, according to some poster up above, probably a gay guy, you and I shouldn't be allowed to have an emotional "ick" moment to such sexual liaisons.
A lot of people don't seem to realize that "ick moments" are rooted in our evolution, as protective reactions. I mean, come upon something which to one's sense of smell is foul, best not eat it. Some people don't get --and yeah, they get sick.
"denying gays the right to get married whilst granting it to straight people would be saying that heterosexual people are innately more valuable than gays"
********************************
They are. Straight couples are the only ones who can reproduce the species.
***********************************
So true, yet think about how many people's feelings you just hurt, you big bad meanie.
Maybe, but what about the Inquisition? They burned people alive because they believed it was God who commanded them to.
No you are pretty ignorant of the Inquisition. That's like the US judges hanged blacks because they were racist. And it's not an accident that it evolved from an ethnic conflict (Iberians vs Moors and Jews)
What about Osama? He killed Americans because he believed it was God's command.This is a big yawn for isteve readers. See Ropert Pape, the logic of suicide terrorism. No, he killed americans because americans are supporting israel which kills palestinians.
"Without religion there would be good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion." Empty, meaningless quote. again back to my original point about this simple 'narrative' it's a false story told by people with no self reflection. you haven't really taken the time to examine any of these thoughts have you? Or is it just self-validating like sam harriss who, when confronted with atheist communism's murderous record said .. "it's a form of religion'. Ok.
Saying that you need to believe in God to not kill a fellow Human Being is saying that most people are psychopaths who only respond to punishment. I am better than that. I do no harm because I wouldn't want harm done to me, and that is all the reason
I need. about that complete lack of self reflection. So there are no absolute truths. OK, I am an atheist. I believe there are no absolute truths. Why is human life special? It isn't we're just bits of chemical dna, I have a right to kill you if want, because all morals are relative. You're sucking up oxgeyen, emitting co2 gases, and you're bad for the planet. By what moral authority do you say i don't have the right to kill you or anyone else, anymore than i do a bug?
The French Revolution and the Communist Gulag are directly linked according no less a scholar than Harvard's Crane Brinton.
Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn extensively described the essential simialarities between the USSR and the "Liberte',Egalite' and Fraternite'" that lead to the Great Terror.
Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn explained it all quite clearly in virtually everything he wrote.
Why are leftists so simultaneously arrogant and ignorant?
That's what I find so amusing, like when I get lectured by Paul Krugman readers.
"Nearly every failed marriage in my peer group ended because the wife was unfaithful."
A lot of the men in my peer group have been unfaithful, sometimes multiple times, yet few of them have failed marriages. The only failed marriages are, as you say, where the wife was unfaithful. Interesting.
Why are leftists so simultaneously arrogant and ignorant?
to be fair, think this is one ofthose 'free thinker' +Reason Magazine/Ayn Rand types.
But they are just stupid as leftists assuming their ideology is a panacea to everything, and that opening the borders (notice his anti-nation comments) would result in some sort of demi-paradise.
"You are condemning a great learned man to death," by saying, "The Revolution has no need of learned men."
I just got done reading "Natasha's Dance" a cultural history of Russia.
When a spontaneous standing ovation erupted for a dissident poet recently 'redeemed' Stalin turned to someone and said, who arranged this?
"Pretty much all the sex between gays happpen[sic] between fully consenting adult men. And yes, they should be allowed to do whatever they want to their OWN BODIES and with other CONSENTING adults."
Including paying all their own medical bills if they get AIDS.
"Svigor/Kylie:
So, when liberals propose a sensible policy, or at least one less nufs[sic, probably "nuts"] than the opposition, you'll oppose it for the sake of opposing liberals? How does that make sense?"
Svigor said, "At this point I oppose any goals liberals have that I do not explicitly share..."
To which I replied, "My sentiments exactly."
What part of "do not explicitly share" do you want me to explain?
Next time, try reading what I actually wrote, not what you "think" I wrote.
One of the many anonymouses (take a name for gosh sakes) posted:
"The principal of equality before the law MANDATES that gays have the right to get married."
It is sad that anyone posting here has such a low I.Q.
Sex with animals and sex with children will never be pushed by Progressives because these two groups can't give meaningful consent.
ssm works to force (traditionally xian) religious groups and individuals out of the public sphere, which diminishes the influence of familiarity and camaraderie, and weakens their leverage against more offensive policies to come. It doesn't matter if this is ncidental to their progressive transgressive etc. philosophy, not to me at least.
"What's up with so many obviously ignorant types namechecking this obscure philosophical school lately? "
You're right and wrong on this, MQ. Someone at some point realized AA or some other form of Marxist-type activism was based on teachings from one or more members of the Frankfurt School. What's important is which ones and how Americans interpreted these ideas. People who use the term are inadvertently blaming Europe for the behavior of American fanatics. Maybe they should be referring to the Bill Ayers School or the SLA School to be more accurate. Only advanced scholars who have a grasp of what's been done in the US over the past 50 years or so should be tracing these political/philosophical developments back to their roots in Europe and, as you mentioned, it won't be all the thinkers out of this group of intellectuals who are being emphasized.
Also, the Frankfurt School isn't all that obscure. It just seems that lower level universities especially in certain parts of the country never directly studied these intellectuals. Maybe it was the result of a McCarthyesque blackout of philosophies that might contaminate young minds, maybe something else. I don't know but will be sure to speculate endlessly on the matter.
The New Republic has been promoting ...
TNR of the '80's/early '90's may have been the best-written magazine in American history. But do you know, I've never seen one single person reading it, ever? I mean, I've even seen at least one person reading The Nation on the bus, but never TNR, anywhere. I understand their circulation peaked at around 100K in 1989. Leon Wieseltier should get the Medal of Honor for his pantsing of Cornel West.
Similarly, a man can pretend to be a woman, but he has no right to enter a woman's washroom.
What's with people and the toilets? Do straight guys really want genetically and developmentally typical males who've got sex changes to use the same toilets of them rather than women or something? Is there something upsetting to women about sex changed people using the same toilet as them? This has to take the cake for be the lamest *rights* dispute that has ever existed.
...
With the gay marriage thing, I get confused about whether we are debating the right of gays to exchange rings and go through a marriage ceremony and self describe as considering themselves married, which no can actually ban and which gays can do regardless of what the majority wishes, and the legal status of marriage, which is what the government can give to the marriage ceremony.
I think the latter can be legitimately withheld by the majority provided it is just some thing by which the majority agree to subsidise families (which are , and does not provide basic rights. And if marriage does provide basic rights, then there is a bigger deal than that it is bad for the gays, because that unacceptably harms straight singles (of which there are many more than gays).
I do also think that if we are going to make value judgements about gay couples as they cannot conceive, we should extend that value judgement to infertile couples - if we are scorning partnerships between gays because they are infertile, men with fertility problems and barren women should face the same scorn.
One Anonymous said:
*You think some political faction is going to make their motto "Death and despair for all"?*
Some Libertarian leaders might snap that one up as a real vote-getter.
If tranny rights are The Next Big Thing - especially if one can claim them just, essentially, by saying that one feels oneself to be a different gender that the biological reality dictates - can I hope that the same reasoning will apply to such things as race?
If people accepted that there was some way to be psychologically Black or White in the way that it is possible to be psychologically male or female, and there were some plausible mechanism by which this could mismatch with the general phenotype, this might happen.
Another example, of this, other than transsexuality, is of males castrated at a young age. They might claim desire to be an adult male, and desire to change their body in line with this, but this is not "what the biological reality dictates". But people would generally accept this anyway, because they find it plausible that there is such a thing as in imprinted male psychological body image and gender identity. We probably would not tell these castrati to "just accept what the biological reality dictates".
We don't really treat race like this. And it seems bonkers to treat race like this, given that there isn't really anything like the basis for a fundamental racial typing distinction deeply in our species along the lines of gender and biological sex. Until that happens, it is highly unlikely that this should ever happen.
To one of the anonymi:
The French revolutionaries didn't plan on having a Napoeon. Some would say he kept the revolution from destroying the whole damn country.
The Founders seem much more like libertarians than like neocons, hence the confusion. Probably best to call them paleocons.
"Talk about your absurd, ridiculous arguments! The motto of communism was "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". Which sounds nice and cuddly. All political motto's sound somewhat appealing. You think some political faction is going to make their motto "Death and despair for all"?"
They are two completely different things. Marx's quote refers to public ownership of property and the subjugation of individual talent to Society as represented by the State. The motto of the French Revolution talks about equality of POLITICAL RIGHTS. If you can't see the difference between the two, then I am sorry, but I can't help you.
>Herterosexual men actually committ well over 99% of all rapes, which makes them overrepresented in rape statistics when compared to gay men even though gay men are only 2% of the male population. Straight men are far more aggressive than gay men, and this includes sexually.<
Cites, please.
>Likewise, the right for gay men and women to get married MUST be passed into law because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law.<
Absurdity! "Likewise, the right for blind people to drive MUST be passed into law because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law."
"Likewise, the right for anyone to attend college MUST be passed into law because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law."
"Likewise, the right for anyone to belong to your yacht club MUST BE passed into law because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law."
"Likewise, the right for anyone to eat out of your refrigerator MUST BE passed into law because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law."
Gays are amazingly childish in their understanding. This is an observation I've made again and again over the years. Mentally, the average gay man seems to be on the level of a 12-year-old. ("Equality before the law means everybody MUST be equal !!!!") I have not met a single exception to this. Maybe the smarter homosexuals are just not into gay activism.
In terms of a political or socal movement, I dont see how TG or polygamy/polyamory could ever get much traction. The desire is just too rare to build much of a movement around.
Uh, muslims?
Cennbeorc
@ anon libertarian/freethinker/jacobite:
So the French Revolution led to Communism and Fascism, huh? I mean, the last time I checked, the motto of the French Revolution was equalité, fraternité, etc, and against the monarchy.
...back to my point that its the sort narrative that is said with a confidence that's the result of a complete lack of self reflection and introspection... and thought for that matter.
Sure, there was the terror of Danton and Robespierre, but they did not represent the ideals of the French Revolution. Yeah funny how that always pops up. Haven't read Burke, have we?
but I hardly think that Napoleon was worst than most kings of the time,
probably because you don't know anything about him, or most kings of the time.. just guessin'
and at least trying to impose ideals of FREEDOM by force is better than enslaving by force. about that lack of introspection. It's better to impose freedom by force.... ok.
And you think the secular state is heartless? Oh really? Then go live in Saudi Arabia and other non-laic states and see if you like it. Orthodox russia had more compassion than bolshivik russia. CHristian monarchal conservative, anglican England was a much freer place to live than revolutionary france, and until, via the 1960s the french revolution finally made it there, it always was.
Why don't you go live in Utah where a few men use the authority of God to live like kings and have as many women as they want?
As opposed to Liberal new york where a few men do the same and do it with my tax dollars?
All of the World's most primitive societies acknowledge God or gods and they are all terrible places to live.
"we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights"
Hmm the whole basis for our rights come from....
You think Communists killed all those people because they were godless? The 190,000 clergy in Russia and 50K in spain? Yes. The over 2500 ancient churches destroyed? Yes.
BTW fun fact Isteve readers, the French Republic wanted to destroy Chartres and Notre Dame they were only prevented from doing so because of the amount of rubble it would have created and the lack of manpower to clean it up.
So, when liberals propose a sensible policy, or at least one less nufs than the opposition, you'll oppose it for the sake of opposing liberals? How does that make sense?
I'm pretty sure I covered this already.
The argument that gay men shouldn't have the right to get married because most people are against it is sophomoric.
For the zillionth time, buggers have had the right to get married since there was the right to get married. They want a new, special right given to them and conflated with the right to marriage.
Most gay men, and by most I mean far more than 99%, don't rape adolescent boys.
This is always the defense, when some group is up to no good. Ashkenazis contribute a hugely disproportionate share of the cultural rot and do most of the heavy lifting in the culture war, but this gets turned around to "only x% of Ashkenazis do it." Italians have a sordid history of organized crime, but "most Italians are just regular, law-abiding Americans." Blacks (at 12% of the population) commit half the murders in this country, but "most blacks aren't criminals." Buggers have a little boy problem*, but "most homosexuals are not ephebophiles" (never mind that Catholic buggers are Catholics, but not really buggers, according to leftoids).
*Probably. I looked for stats a good while back and didn't find much, for (probably) obvious reasons; if they were doing okay with what a realist/cynic/pessimist like me would expect to be their inevitable problem, we probably would have ample documentation of the fact.
"do also think that if we are going to make value judgements about gay couples as they cannot conceive, we should extend that value judgement to infertile couples - if we are scorning partnerships between gays because they are infertile, men with fertility problems and barren women should face the same scorn."
Nonsense. Infertile men marrying does not make straight guys back off from the whole idea, as they will as soon as homosexual "weddings" lend their fabulous cachet.
Anyway, infertile couples occasionally have a surprise. Never, ever in the history of the whole universe has a gay male couple brought a fetus to term.
Anyway, infertile couples occasionally have a surprise. Never, ever in the history of the whole universe has a gay male couple brought a fetus to term.
Right; infertility is inherent to homosexual couples, and incidental to normal couples.
That's what I find so amusing, like when I get lectured by Paul Krugman readers.
I guarantee you that Paul Krugman knows a whole lot more than you do.
I often see the arrogant/ignorant combination on the right. The contention that the French Revolution led to the gulag is a casual historical analogy at best, and a somewhat silly one. You can play that game all day.
svigor:
Fair enough, I misread what you were saying. Sorry.
@mq The contention that the French Revolution led to the gulag is a casual historical analogy at best,
learn to read a bit more carefully - the ideals of the enlightenment led to both.
as for Paul Krugman 'knowing more than me' how do you know? Hubris leads to stupidity (see Long term cap mgt) and so does idealogy.
If you're blinded by ideology (free market open borders will solve california immigration problem when it gets to crowded at .. 300 million, or Krugman 'printing money doesn't lead to inflation') you start to believe (and do) a lot of stupid things.
"...And then gays expect me to paid for their AIDS medication..."
Of course not. A gay man who contracts AIDS should pay his own medical bills. Do you even know what libertarianism is? It states that, as long as you don't use force on others, you should be allowed to live your life as you want. This means you should do whatever you want as long as you don't harm others but that you also should live with the consequences of your decisions. That means that heroin should be legalized, but if you try it and get hooked, then you must pay your own treatment or support your own habit and if you harm others to get money to buy it, then you should PAY BIG WITH IMPRISONMENT. the same regarding sexuality. Fully consenting adults should be allowed to have as much sex as they want with as many people as they want, but if they contract diseases or other things like that, then they should fend for themselves and expect no one to help them except voluntarilly. This is libertarianism. The only truly rational system of Human interactions.
'svigor:
Fair enough, I misread what you were saying. Sorry."
So he rates an apology and I don't? You did address both of us.
I don't appreciate being called to account for what I didn't say any more than Svigor does.
the Illinois adoption agency that helped her and her husband adopt their four children is closing, thanks to the advance of special rights being granted on the basis of sexual orientation.
How is this possible? This past June, the Illinois Legislature legalized same-sex civil unions, including "religious protections" for those with deeply held religious beliefs.
Unfortunately, the protections simply weren't enough, and now faith-based adoption services in the state are being forced to either place children into homes with same-sex couples or face losing their contract with the state.
The driving forces behind all this are:
1) The individuals actually concerned e.g homosexuals, transgendered.
2) SWPLs who like to take positions on the opposite side of the majority when it comes to moral dividing lines as it makes them feel special. It's similar to the kind of music fan who only like bands when they're obscure and loses interest when they become famous.
3) Cultural marxists who, regardless of their personal beliefs seek to destroy social cohesion by attacking everything that is commonly held, whether it be a historical fact or a moral precept. If a majority think x is right, true or normal then cultural marxists will attack x.
Say you have six people and three topics x, y and z and initially all six people think x is right, y is true and z is normal. It doesn't matter what x, y and z are or whether the six people are correct in their belief it is the *agreement* between those six people that creates group cohesion.
A cultural marxist will promote that x is wrong, y is false and z is abnormal to try and get those six people to have six different combinations of what is right, true and normal and through that destroy any group cohesion.
Lenin
Power = mass x cohesion
@@@
I'd say some of the contenders would be
transgender
polygamy
public sex / kinks
age of consent
paedophilia
incest
bestiality
I'd expect movement in all of these areas but looking at them in terms of the three groups listed above
- number of practitioners
- scope for SWPL moral superiority
- scope for social destructiveness
i'd suggest polygamy where there is a large muslim population and age of consent where there isn't.
So in terms of energy allocated i'd think
- polygamy (europe)
- age of consent (US)
- incest
- paedophilia
- public sex / kinks
- transgender
- bestiality
Also, a counter argument to all the cultural marxist attacks can be a generic social cohesion one.
If you imagine a society with six moral topics where 90% of the society agree a, b, c is good and x, y, z is bad that creates a lot of social cohesion and social cohesion is a public good separate from and regardless of the details of the six topics.
If that principle is accepted then i think you can make the case that changing any of those topics should only be done by consensus.
If someone thinks the social consensus on topic x is wrong they should be free to argue their case but any change must be consensual to maintain social cohesion i.e cohesion becomes the greater good.
What cultural marxists want quite specifically is the opposite of this. They want conflict and division and they go about it by deliberately trying to ram changes through before there is consensus because that creates the most division and conflict.
People in India, Japan, Taiwan etc should be starting to see the first stages of this process in their countries.
Also, what is the problem of giving gays the right to get married? This is something that is a private matter that doesen't affect other people negatively in any way.
As usual some clueless nerd appears to make a statement in denial of social cohesion or the importance to a community of controlling the deviant behavior of its members. WHAT IT'S JUST LIKE HETEROSEXUAL UNIONS YOU BIGOTED MONSTER *ignores mounds of data that homosexuality is maladaptive, coincides with other behavioral problems, is symptomatic of serious social corrosion, etc etc*
This is libertarianism. The only truly rational system of Human interactions.
I got a good laugh out of this one. Your first problem is that human beings aren't reliably rational. Your second problem is your crippling case of Aspergers.
This is something that is a private matter that doesen't affect other people negatively in any way.
illinois just banned catholic and christian adaption agencies who won't accept gay 'parents' in Mass. you can be in violation of the law for refusing to photograph a gay wedding. your five year old kid is now forced to read books with equal number of gay couples.
this is about homos, this about using homos to destroy western civilization a project that cultural marxists have been successfully engaging in since they came here after being booted out of germany.
Fair enough, I misread what you were saying. Sorry.
No sweat.
Of course not. A gay man who contracts AIDS should pay his own medical bills. Do you even know what libertarianism is? It states that, as long as you don't use force on others, you should be allowed to live your life as you want.
In which case, we have a reverse "No True Scotsman" thing going on, because, what, under 1% of libertarians acknowledge the right of individuals to form communities they way they wish? How many libtards oppose so-called "anti-discrimination" laws? I suppose they can be forgiven for falling short of their ideals precisely where they'd show the most courage in upholding them, just sayin', it's annoying. And it makes it impossible for me to take them seriously, since they make such a point of being principled all the time, right up until it point at which it takes some balls...
Having thought about it fit a few days, I'm not sure that the age of consent lowering is a winner for the lefties. The problem for them is that everybody has been a kid at some point and so 1) everybody inherently knows it's a bad idea and 2) they can't use the "you don't understand" meme. 1 is no big problem for them, they constantly convince people that what they know inherently is just irrational baggage, but 2 is a problem because that is their go to play "you don't understand what it is to be black, gay, trans, etc" but we all do damn well know what it's like to be young and so we are ok with saying 40 year olds can't have sex with 16 year olds.
So, I don't know. Swingers? Weird multi partner arrangements (much more pallatable to fems than polg)? Im sure gays will be pushing into recognizing gay kids earlier and earlier, but I don't know how big an issue it can be before puberty.
Ugliness and shortness are on the horizon. Ugliness really is going to take on class implications more than in the past with the advent of plastic surgery. Expect to see more activism for ugly, short and to a lesser degree fat folk. The problem for uglies is of course that as a group, they arent self aware and the smart, rich ones can buy their way out (to some degree)
My guess is biggest aim of activism will be the complete antithesis of your citizenship, the push for our government to give the same rights to everyone in the world that it gives its own citizens
"My guess is biggest aim of activism will be the complete antithesis of your citizenism, the push for our government to give the same rights to everyone in the world that it gives its own citizens"
I think we have a winner!
As usual some clueless nerd appears to make a statement in denial of social cohesion or the importance to a community of controlling the deviant behavior of its members. WHAT IT'S JUST LIKE HETEROSEXUAL UNIONS YOU BIGOTED MONSTER *ignores mounds of data that homosexuality is maladaptive, coincides with other behavioral problems, is symptomatic of serious social corrosion, etc etc*
Your anger is hilarious. See what I mean about making ad hominem invective? You guys simply cannot argue with me intellectually, so all you have left is calling me names or insulting my character. Pathetic.
Now for your "argument". What do you mean "deviant behavior"? How do you define it? What is deviant about two consenting adults having sex in the privacy of their homes? Just because you find it reoulsive, that is not reason enough to ban it. I find your conservatives and your prejudice and need to control your fellow Human Beings no matter how miserable that makes them for no reason whatsoever to be repulsive, and yet I respect your right to live conservative lifestyles as long as you don't interfere with my life. The problem is, you see, that you do. The need to control people is like a mental illness to you conservatives. You just HAVE to control people. It seems like you cannot be happy unless everyone is obeying your strict moral code, even if the violation of this moral code causes you or anyone else NO HARM.
As for your claim that homosexuality is maladaptive, what do you mean by this? Maladaptive biologically? Not true, otherwise it wouldn't exist in the first place. Secondly, even if it weren't, so what? Nowadays we have artificial inemination, and lots of straight couples don't have kids anymore. Also, it is a value-judgement that the purpose of sex for a Human Being is reproduction. I would say that the sensual and hedonistic aspect of it is as relevant or even more than the procreative aspect of it. As for it coinciding with other behavioral problems, what do you mean by that? Gays for the most part earn more money, are better educated and committ far less violent crime than heterosexual men. I would say that male heterosexuality correlates a lot more with behavioral problem, since straight men committ 99% of all homicides and rapes. As for it coinciding with societal decay, that is another value-judgement that you are making. Your paradise is another person's hell. Gay men for the most part keep to themselves, committ far less violent crime than straight men and tend to be more civil in general. Now, they do have much higher levels of promiscuity and thus venereal disease infection than straight men, but that is voluntary sex, and any adult should know that you should wear protection when you have sex and that having sex even with protection is risky. But as long as they don't force sex on others like so many heterosexual men do, this is a private matter and nothing more.
Your anger is hilarious. See what I mean about making ad hominem invective? You guys simply cannot argue with me intellectually, so all you have left is calling me names or insulting my character. Pathetic.
"You guys" is a sloppy tactic. Grouping your opponents more narrowly is a usually a sloppy tactic, but "you guys" is really bad. You just rolled a very diverse group into "you guys," and we're pathetic?
Of course libertardianism can be opposed intellectually. E.g., like so: "personal freedom is not the highest good; ergo, a system that enshrines personal freedom as the highest (only?) good is way off-kilter." Libertardians ignore the group, at best, and are hostile to the group at worst. BTW, I call libertarians libertardians because so many of you fit the bill; I don't make an argument out of it. You think one sentence, one principle, sums shit up. It doesn't. I've tried a couple times to get even internal consistency from libertardians - no dice; never mind some flex.
As to your whining about control, see, that's how libertardians alienate people; you just rolled everyone arguing with you here up into "you people" and called them "conservatives" (I am not a conservative, period) and accused them of being control freaks. Fella, I'm so far from a control freak it's not even funny. And I share a lot of libertarian sentiments (I echo many of them in my line of attack against Big Government liberalism, authoritarian multicultism, and PC), but I have to pull up short because none of you guys actually believes in freedom, AFAICT. You all seem pretty PC to me. Do any of you guys acknowledge the right of individuals to come together and form communities as they see fit? Not that I can see. Do any of you guys acknowledge the right of individuals to form states as they see fit? How about control their own borders? Do any of you support the end of so-called "anti-discrimination" laws? Most of you seem content to see trampled the rights of people to discriminate and form their own communities, or police their own borders, while you bitch about drug laws.
No balls, IMO.
As for your claim that homosexuality is maladaptive, what do you mean by this? Maladaptive biologically? Not true, otherwise it wouldn't exist in the first place.
So, you're about as green as they come then. Naturalistic fallacy, now? Down's Syndrome wouldn't exist if it were maladaptive? This your first rodeo?
I noticed you just whistled right past the graveyard vis-a-vis my previous comment.
Libertards: no balls. Just a bunch of whining about homo and druggie rights.
After demise of ‘don’t ask,’ activists call for end to military ban on transgenders
With homosexuals now able to serve openly in the military, the gay rights movement’s next battleground is to persuade the Obama administration to end the armed forces’ ban on “transgenders,” a group that includes transsexuals and cross-dressers.
“Our position is that the military should re-examine the policy, the medical regulations, so as to allow open service for transgender people,” said Vincent Paolo Villano, spokesman for the 6,000-member Center for Transgender Equality.
The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), which pushed to end the military’s gay ban, is urging President Obama to sign an executive order prohibiting discrimination based on “gender identity.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/28/after-demise-of-dont-ask-activists-call-for-end-to/
This your first rodeo?
svig, you crack me up.
@anon libertard:
hat is deviant about two consenting adults having sex in the privacy of their homes?
whoa there bigot, why should have to be in their own homes? Its just between them, right? So they can boo-foo whereever they want.
@ anon libertariantard
so all you have left is calling me names or insulting my character
umm read back on your posts, calling everyone bigots, saying we're all intolerant and what to control everyone, demonizing Christianity and, indeed religion on the whole... then you say you're feelings are hurt?
Very typical super narcissistic ...what are you ... 19 or something?? result of the 'self esteem ' generation.
BTW I HOPE you are no older than 19..
@Youth
"Having thought about it fit a few days, I'm not sure that the age of consent lowering is a winner for the lefties."
Don't forget it's higher in the US than most other western countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe
@svigLibertards: no balls. Just a bunch of whining about homo and druggie rights.
and open borders - that's the other part of their 'brave' 'radical' stance.
Furries.
Sat next to one on an airplane once.
The flip-side: Why are Republicans obsessed with this marginal issue?
Same reason the Democrats are. They're being manipulated to distract them from the big issues. They're being manipulated to fight each other rather than their oppressive rulers.
POPULAR VOTE CANNOT BE USED TO REMOVE OR REFUSE TO GRANT RIGHTS TO SPECIFIC GROUPS OF PEOPLE.
Think about what you're saying. You don't have the "right" to force the rest of us to enforce any promises you make or unions you enter into with your homosexual lover. So of course we can't "remove" or "refuse" such a (non-existent) right.
Also, what is the problem of giving gays the right to get married?
Who gave non-gays the right to define marriage? Oh, yeah, you!
Gays can now, and always have been able to, get married on their own terms. Your problem is that others don't accept it. You're the one attempting to use force to get what you want.
Also, what is the problem of giving gays the right to get married? This is something that is a private matter that doesen't affect other people negatively in any way.
Bullshit. If it didn't affect other people, they wouldn't be able to confer a "right" to get married. You'd just do it. You'd exchange vows and try to keep them.
But you don't want the right to get married. You want the right to get married AND the "right" to have the rest of us force your partner to behave himself AND the "right" to welfare goodies from employers and government.
In other words, EVERYTHING you want is something that affects us.
While discussing the topic of proposition 8 and same sex marriage with a friend a few years ago, he explained marriage to me from a unique perspective that has stuck with me ever since. He said that marriage and it's definition is a religious concept that has been adopted into civil law from centuries of tradition and culture, that is not only accepted in America but is shared by the majority of the people in the entire world.
So supporters of same sex marriage are basically asking an entire culture to redefine its traditions and values, something which flies in the face of why cultures exist. Consider this definition of culture:
"Culture is a bond that ties the people of a region or community together. It is that one common bond, which brings the people of a community together. The customs and traditions that the people of a community follow, the festivals they celebrate, the kind of clothing they wear, the food they eat, and most importantly, the cultural values they adhere to, bind them together." (Oak)
By this definition there is no greater common community bond than marriage. It is the singular tradition that ties every culture in America, the basic definition of which has remained unchanged for thousands of years.
From this perspective no one should wonder why there is so much opposition to changing the definition of marriage. Not only because 'same sex marriage' in and of itself is an oxymoron, but because it is asking every culture in America to accept the redefining of a tradition that has been so valued that it is the only religious concept to be adopted into civil law while the state holds all others separate. To force the civil definition of marriage to be changed is the same as forcing the descendants of every immigrant who came to America for the purpose of escaping religious persecution to change their most deeply held religious belief - in this case the sacred bond between a man and a woman: marriage.
Perhaps, rather than redefine a sacred religious concept held by millions in America and billions throughout the world, the best solution is to remove marriage from the books of civil law altogether and replace it with a nonreligious term that can be universally accepted since redefining marriage would only be perceived as religious persecution. This way we still uphold one of the greatest principles upon which this nation is founded, the freedom of religion. And marriage would then be left to the individual to hold sacred as they choose.
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