Gay marriage has been put to a vote in 32 states. It is currently 0-32.
Of course, while it fails democratically, it also triumphs legally. Being on the anti-democratic winning side helps make it the central issue of contemporary liberalism.
I stumbled upon this comment somewhere, but have lost track of who said it:
Of course, while it fails democratically, it also triumphs legally. Being on the anti-democratic winning side helps make it the central issue of contemporary liberalism.
I stumbled upon this comment somewhere, but have lost track of who said it:
"To be against gay marriage, at least in the views of most liberals ..., is to disqualify oneself from society as a hateful bigot."
I think that exemplifies the main driving force of modern liberalism. It's not intellectual. In spirit, it's more like the caste system in India. It's a system for identifying new Untouchables whose very existence lifts the social status of the liberal. India is a pretty crummy place, but Indians like it because hundreds of millions of Hindus have hundreds of millions of lower caste Hindus to look down upon. So, they've got that going for them.
Gay marriage, for instance, is a trivial issue in real world terms, but it has become incredibly important to liberals precisely because it brands huge numbers of their fellow citizens as Dalits for them to hate and feel morally superior to.
Gay marriage, for instance, is a trivial issue in real world terms, but it has become incredibly important to liberals precisely because it brands huge numbers of their fellow citizens as Dalits for them to hate and feel morally superior to.
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If we returned to sumptuary laws (laws that forbade people below a certain status to wear specified colors, fabrics, furs, patterns, or accessories), maybe we could have out own opinions again.
Steve,
Off topic, but about politics and appearances.
Watched Paul Ryan's entire speech and I had never watched him for any great length of time, especially straight on.
His good looks, especially his eyes when he wants to make a point, are literally distracting for me.
No lust or anything like that, just the same feeling one gets from contemplating the face of a good-looking person of either gender.
I'd be following what he was saying and then Paul would at times widen his eyes and look down just a little to emphasize some point and my thoughts would immediately stop and all I could think was, "My, Lord, he's good looking."
Thune, who spoke tonight, Scott Brown, Obama, etc. are handsome, but Paul is on a whole other plane from any politician in my memory and I wondered what your thoughts were on that. Sarah Palin was good looking, but only for an older woman. Paul is good looking, period.
Oddly, Paul has a penchant for making cornball facial expressions, but if you watch long enough...
http://www.tmz.com/2012/08/17/paul-ryan-shirtless-abs-photo-tmz-tv/
Forget the body, the face!
I keep thinking one day there'll be a riot over some judicial decision that comes down.
After all, the Dems have learned if you can't win in the legislature or through the initiative process, you can win with lib judges. There is virtually nothing they think they don't have a right to legislate from the bench.
Gay marriage mostly only matters because the Left is abusing the 14th Amendment to get it through undemocratically - just as they have abused the 14th Amendment for forced integration, ending the death penalty, and undermining immigration enforcement.
Every victory regarding gay marriage at the ballot box is a blow against the nuclear warhead of the Left known as the 14th Amendment, and a blow against the unrestrained power of leftist judges. For God's sake, the damn thing didn't even give women the right to vote, and yet they argue that it demands "equality" for all sorts of groups no one even thought of as groups in the 1860s.
Here's a big problem. Modern Liberalism is almost pointless and Modern Conservatism is almost non-existent. We're left with neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism and a lot of people who don't bother showing up to vote.
--Risto
I don't see why people get so worked up over gay marriage. Are they afraid that married gays will have gay babies?
--Risto
Have you read Moldbug, Steve?
Sadly, it would be respecting the wishes of the population to pass gay marriage. Which just goes to show the value of anti-democratic measures when everyone is crazy.
Turning to the General Social Survey, there's a question (MARHOMO) that asks whether you agree that homo couples should be allowed to marry each other.
In 1988, 12% agreed -- yeah, there were screwballs even back in the good old days.
But it's been climbing during the 1990s (by inference) and the 2000s. By year, here is agree vs. disagree, leaving out those who feel totally neutral:
2004 - 31% pro, 55% con
2006 - 35%, 51%
2008 - 39%, 48%
2010 - 47%, 41%
That's right, in 2010 the supporters out-numbered the opponents. The 2012 GSS data aren't available, but obviously it will show an even worse picture. The supporters may have an outright majority.
This is the way the wind is blowing among the general public. Heck, even among self-identified conservatives, 25% are in favor vs. 65% against, as of 2010. You believe that? One in every four cons is a homophile.
The top levels of government, including the Supreme Court, respond to prevailing public sentiment. If something huge goes wrong, and isn't a fluke but a persistent push, then blame your fellow Americans.
My father was gay. I used to keep it secret, but I have noticed that it now confers a certain social status. It also allows me to shut down liberals when they start telling me I am ignorant. My father was always discreet and remained married to my mother who was an even bigger fruit-loop than he was. It took me years to figure out that Uncle M was his boyfriend.
There is now a group of people out there my age and younger who have been raised in gay settings.
The Inductivist is the only commentator I have come across who has asked what affect gay marriage has on the children. No one ever asks our opinions. Why not?
My father was in many ways quite prescient, but like most gays his intellect was hamstrung by the fact that "living a lie" was the only thing that really mattered to him. His mind rarely strayed onto other subjects. He also believed that homosexuals should remain in the closet and would eventually regret becoming quite such an aggressive interest group. They have always been a corrupt and powerful freemasonry. He told me that I would have found employment much more easily if I had followed his advice and worn a lavender-coloured shirt for my job interviews.
The main result of all this is that we now have yet another group who will expect further quotas and special treatment. The burden on the shrinking non-gay, non-ethnic portion of society is now unbearable.
P.S. Has noone noticed we're broke.
P.P.S. There's nothing romantic about a bleeding anus.
thank god i dont live in the states anymore... these people are pathetic honestly...i live in a country where the liberalism is the most accepted belief, but they haven´t gone crazy to the point that if you disagree you are ostrasized... and most people know its all a crock o´shit anyway,, at least i hope they know....
The reason gay marriage is becoming increasingly likely is only partially because homosexuality is more socially acceptable and more heavily and sympathetically promoted in popular culture. The other key reason is that marriage has never meant less. No-fault divorce and the legal status applied to de facto relationship means there is only a vanishingly small difference in the legal status or married and non-married couples.
Gay marriage? Why not, who cares? Steve is right. Support of gay marriage is really like expressing love of crap abstract art or nonsensical Keynesian economics - its merely to mark out your membership of an enlightened group and disassociation with common people.
This is another off-topic comment, but I caught the re-run of Condoleezza Rice's address to the RNC earlier this evening, and besides the usual phony, cliched Neo-Con rah-rahing about how the United States must be actively engaged everywhere on the planet if it is to have a shred of influence anywhere ("My fellow Americans, we do not have a choice. We cannot be reluctant to lead – and one cannot lead from behind"), there was a predictable swerve into talk about the "civil rights struggle of our day."
It had to do, of course, with zip codes and schools and how poorly those two constants tend to fare when you add the variable of "minorities" into the equation, by which she meant NAM's: these conversations are familiar, and the code easily deciphered & translated for living-room use. They - "minorities" aka NAM's - are "trapped," you see, and we know the rest, having heard the sad, sad story many times before.
The applause was wild; a brief perusal of mainstream conservative blogs confirms that the consensus is that Condi is the greatest Republican EVAH; and John Dickerson commented on his FB feed "And Condi is now on every GOP list for president for the next 40 years."
Dickerson, of course, gets the joke: being on the Right Side of History means your side gets to enjoy the spectacle of the loser's side scrambling to belly-flop into the middle of your ideological mosh pit at every opportunity, eager to abase themselves under the heels of your corrective, curb-stomping boots, and the Republicans in Tampa did not disappoint: they wildly cheered their own public classification as the sons & daughters and grandsons & granddaughters of (implicitly) Bad White Persons, still responsible, sixty years after Brown v. Board and almost fifty after the opening of the mighty Great Society-welfare spigot - through which literally trillions have flowed - for the failure of NAM's to do better in public schools.
Tucked into that all-too-familiar J'accuse indictment - essentially: trillions in largely non-NAM taxpayer dollars spent since the Great Society spigot opened amount to nothing more than a preliminary non-NAM start on that "long way to go" till it's all good - were the following lines by Rice: "To do anything less is to tear apart the fabric of who we are and cement a turn toward grievance and entitlement."
That is the polite equivalent of "No Justice! No Peace!" uttered not to a return chorus of boos and hoots and derision - as such a palpably absurd set of assertions should have been met with when uttered by a speaker known to be sane and intellectually lucid in public by a crowd equally known to be so - but with much ooohing & aaahing and giddy burbling from the GOP audience.
There you had it: "the civil rights struggle of our day" needs more trillions, apparently. More decades of the spigot's flow unchecked, lest "a turn toward" the implicit civic unpleasantness - summers can be long and hot, folks! - of doing anything "less" than continuing to do what we have been doing on the same front, more or less, since 1965. So says Republican icon and conservative-blogger hero Condoleezza Rice. And a convention hall full of supposed American right-wingers cheered, loudly & sincerely.
Just when I begin to suspect that there truly is a limit to which my cynicism can bloom, an Republican National Convention comes along. And the Orwellian Outer Party does not flinch from its task of proving me wrong.
Well I think it's going to be on the ballot in Washington, Maryland, Minnesota, and Maine this year(or soon)... so traditional marriage will probably lose it's first ballot this year... probably more than once.
The essence of government is to tell people what to do, and tell them good and hard. If you accept the peculiar modern notion that the government's first priority is assuring equal freedom for all, then there must be - existentially there must always be - an oppressor class to overcome. Each and every one of us is somebody else's untermensch. When this reaches the Supreme Court, regardless of how the Court rules, the next battle against oppression will already be underway. Who are you to say an old maid can't marry her cats?!
The depressing thing is that conservatives fall for it.
Sure, it's quite reasonable to be a social conservative and sincerely desire that homosexuality be discouraged.
But, in a country where half the kids born are bastards and half the marriages end in divorce*, why would people who care about the traditional family get so obsessed over 1% of gays?
Answer: because their enemies want them to. It's a nice clean way of fixing conservatives onto a position where they can be demonised, and where it won't matter even if they win.
* Source of statistics: originally pulled out of my ass. Actually I just checked; seems it's 40-50% for both. 1 2
"Have you read Moldbug...?"
Not lately. Where is he? It's not like things have been unMoldbuggian in the real world lately.
Gilbert P.
"My, Lord, he's good looking."
Thune, who spoke tonight, Scott Brown, Obama, etc. are handsome, but Paul is on a whole other plane from any politician in my memory and I wondered Paul is good looking, period.
http://www.tmz.com/2012/08/17/paul-ryan-shirtless-abs-photo-tmz-tv/
Forget the body, the face!
He has a Balkan look methinks. Both his face and body type. Looks a bit like Djokovic:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lXyJl-Qiw-M/TslrSiZ7GnI/AAAAAAAAAN4/cnNHL1LBr0U/s320/novak-djokovic-shirtless-naked-torso.jpg
The parasite will not be limited by marriage. It refuses to be limited by the host's sentimental desire for acceptance. The parasite will continue to travel as it has always done.
"Gay marriage, for instance, is a trivial issue in real world terms, but it has become incredibly important to liberals precisely because it brands huge numbers of their fellow citizens as Dalits for them to hate and feel morally superior to."
Steve, are you really this naive? The gay agenda shares a common goal with the abortion agenda, the feminist agenda, and the immigration agenda, namely the suppression of the birth rate of the traditional people of America.
After they figure out how to get it legalized the next step will be promoting it to children in public schools and TV shows. Homosexuality will thus become completely "normalized".
There's really no other reason for it. Liberal's already feel superior to the rabble and gays themselves aren't powerful enough to form an effective lobby.
P.P.S. There's nothing romantic about a bleeding anus.
If the truth of the AIDS epidemic were widely known, there would be a return to sodomy laws.
I can only dream.
I've been reading lots of local stories about the heinous crime in my neighborhood. (http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/08/man-severely-beaten-near-eastern-market--78963.html)
Roughly 50% of the comments to these stories are "flagged for abuse" and then deleted. The reason is always race.
Not only are you a bigot for expressing the wrong opinion, but your opinions are classed as abuse and erased.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about this is certain people spend their free time monitoring the Internet for comments they don't like and flagging them for abuse. The brownshirts of yesteryear were at least paid for their work.
"Gay marriage? Why not, who cares? Steve is right. Support of gay marriage is really like expressing love of crap abstract art or nonsensical Keynesian economics - its merely to mark out your membership of an enlightened group and disassociation with common people."
"But, in a country where half the kids born are bastards and half the marriages end in divorce*, why would people who care about the traditional family get so obsessed over 1% of gays?"
I guess Steve isn't alone in his ignorance. I'm truly astounded, especially considering this blog is all about demographics.
This fight has absolutely nothing to do with "marriage" at all. It's about the NORMALIZATION of homosexuality, which needs gay marriage to be legalized as a prerequisite.
The ultimate goal is to get a much larger percentage of the population to be homosexuals, thus depressing the birth rate. This is why they say gays are "born this way". It's to lay the basis for propagating homosexuality in early youth and then claiming there is nothing they can do about it later in life.
Its similar how the 1960s civil rights movement led to the mass indocrination of youth toward bogus racial equality and race mixing.
Possibly your best post ever.
I think you saw it on Rod Dreher's blog at The American Conservative.
Another thoery I thought of: this is a way to recruit more elite white men into liberalism. White men are so demonized that they are naturally repelled by liberalism, but if the are gay they can be mobilized by the left based on manufactured grievances.
But I still say the primary goal is to suppress the birth rate.
Steve, gay reader here. I enjoy your blog because you seem to be genuinely curious and willing to say inconvenient things.
And so I found your comparison of gays and lesbians fascinating; it seemed much more useful than the sort of information I would get from LGBT sites, and matched my experience as I met more and more queers. Similarly, hypotheses like gay liberation aiding the spread of AIDS are hypotheses that I would like to consider and take seriously, but are not the sort of things I'm likely to find elsewhere.
And so I'm curious what your stance is on gay marriage, and why you have that stance. It looks a lot like you are opposed because liberals are for it (and will use the courts to get it) but that seems like an unsatisfactory reason to someone who cares about this issue for non-status reasons.
These discussions of public opinion versus anti-democratic elite policies will soon become obsolete. I for one welcome the impending return of majority rule to our country. For too long, we have been subject to a floating constitutional convention of a Supreme Court, an arrogant and insulated bureaucracy, highly selective pick-and- choose enforcement of our laws, and legislation by executive fiat. We have been on this path for quite some time, and at a seemingly quickening pace. Brown vs. Board of Education might serve as a convenient kick-off marker.
But now at last, with the non-white coalition on the verge of demographic victory, we can expect to see most aspects of public policy aligned with majority opinion for the first time in over fifty years. Majority rule triumphs in the end. That wasn’t so hard. You just had to bring in the RIGHT majority.
Of course, this will not be The End of History. Yes, hapless, lumbering traditional America has been brought down. But what happens after the striping of the carcass by the jostling, ravenous packs of scavengers?
Didn't the marriage amendment-- or "Duh! Amendment" to many of us-- lose in Arizona the first time around? So "0-for-32" at least requires a Maris-esque asterisk.
Anonymous 8/29 11:53 :
Ok, I,m asking. What effect do you think having a homosexual parent(s) has on kids?
That's right, in 2010 the supporters out-numbered the opponents. The 2012 GSS data aren't available, but obviously it will show an even worse picture. The supporters may have an outright majority.
This is the way the wind is blowing among the general public. Heck, even among self-identified conservatives, 25% are in favor vs. 65% against, as of 2010. You believe that? One in every four cons is a homophile.
The top levels of government, including the Supreme Court, respond to prevailing public sentiment. If something huge goes wrong, and isn't a fluke but a persistent push, then blame your fellow Americans.
I agree that trends are pointing towards support of this issue. And it is because of the media pushing it twenty-four seven in our faces. In fact gays are covered so much that many Americans believe homosexuals comprise a fourth of our population. So it is not surprising that people are more accepting of an issue that effects '1 in 4 Americans'.
What I find troubling about the so-called democratic treatment of this issue is that the will of the people will only be respected once the desired outcome is obtained. After that, the issue will no longer be up for discussion even if the attitude of the people changes over time.
It is sort of like the EU vote in Ireland. They lost, but then decided to hold another vote until they got the answer they desired. At that point, the people were deemed to have spoken, the issue settled and further debate tabled.
The thing about gay marriage is, we really don´t want them(swpl, liberals in general) to win. However, I am currently residing in a country where gay marriage is legal and, NYC is closer to Sodom and Gomorrah than here.
It truly won´t change a thing in anyone´s lives. So, I say let ´em have it... to much wasted energy,, we should be talking about the 20 million illegals, not butt buddies...
The comment at 11:53 pm makes a very good point. Why doesn't anybody ever bother to ask those directly affected by these situations what they think about it? The morally superior don't give a hoot about real people but just care about grabbing a spot on the pedestal.
The source of the quote is likely Maggie Gallagher.
I agree with other comments that SSM is a symptom not the disease. But I also think that if no-fault divorce and cohabitation are the coffin, then SSM is the nails.
The deeper meaning of SSM is two fold:
(1) to eliminate any opprobrium against homosexuality from the law; and
(2) to lengthen the barricades of the public square against religion.
""To be against gay marriage, at least in the views of most liberals ..., is to disqualify oneself from society as a hateful bigot.""
Or, to paraphrase: "To believe what virtually every single person believed 30 years ago, ..... is to disqualify oneself from society as a hateful bigot."
Sadly, it would be respecting the wishes of the population to pass gay marriage.
Sadly, you're innumerate. The "wishes of the population" as shown by the actual votes of the poplation show that the population opposes "gay marriage".
What next - we dispense with elections and make somebody President based on the GSS survey?
The top levels of government, including the Supreme Court, respond to prevailing public sentiment.
No, they do not. The top levels of government, especially the Supreme Court, think it is their job to shape public sentiment. They most certainly do not respond to it.
in a country where half the kids born are bastards and half the marriages end in divorce*, why would people who care about the traditional family get so obsessed over 1% of gays?
Typial left-wing projection. The people who are "obsessed over 1% of gays" are on the left. If the right seeks to block the left, the left responds that it is the RIGHT which is "obsessed over 1% of gays".
Same with abortion. The left are obsessed with the subject - and one aspect of their obsession is claimig that the right are obsessd with it.
The same applies to race.
For any topic "X" which the left are obsessing over, they will always exclaim in shock and horror that the right are obsessed with "X".
Here in Maryland, same-sex marriage was passed by the General Assembly in the spring and the people gathered enough petitions to put it on the ballot for a referendum in November.
Polls say it will be close. If the law stands, I'm absolutely certain the homosexuals will immediately declare that having a 1-33 record means they have won.
Another ballot question in Maryland involves whether illegal aliens should get in-state tuition at Maryland colleges and universities. Interestingly, homosexual and illegal alien groups have joined forces to mutually promote the two issues.
The naive person might think that homosexual marriage and in-state tuition for illegal aliens are independent and almost mutually exclusive. (How many homosexual illegal alien teen valedictorians can their be in Maryland?) But the common thread is that legitimizing same-sex marriage and giving illegal aliens benefits heretofore reserved for citizens are both excellent ways to destroy traditional American culture.
Advice to Steve Sailer: read less Tom Wolfe.
@Risto & Anomoly UK:
Collectivists have wanted to destroy the institution of marriage as long as there have been collectivists. They want everyone's love and fealty to be directed at the state, not at spouses and children.
However, the institution of marriage is so deeply engrained in human nature, that its outright elimination by fiat has proven impossible.
Therefore, the next best strategy is to demote heterosexual marriage to just one of many equally valid "lifestyles." Single and sexually active, single and celibate, cohabitation, single parent, 3 or more parents, same-sex, plural, man/boy, human/animal, human/machine...
If pushing gay marriage were to show how against-the-mainstream or anti-democratic you were, then over the past 20 years the elites and pundits should have gradually given it up as no longer fashionable, because the general public has only adopted it more and more.
It's more like their standard strategy of finding a grassroots change and trying to steer it in a wise and noble direction. That's what the Vanguard Party always was in practice, not them taking the initiative and the masses following their lead.
@Tom Regan:
In addition to the social climbing aspect, how about this: do you think many young people wish they'd been around to help liberate the Negroes, and want to feel part of some kind of "civil rights" movement?
Eh, marriage is not a trivial issue.
Overweight people who shop at Walmart and never went to law school have to organize themselves and support gay marriage.
That would kill it. SWPLs would immedialtely oppose the issue.
Best. Comments. Ever.
To have even considered that these conversations would ever have been anything other than comedic only 20 years ago, never mind inconceivable in my parents time is indicative of the speed of our free fall.
It is only a matter of time every exemplary thing will be considered anathema and we lap the event horizon.
"worn a lavender-coloured shirt for my job interviews."
Wait, really? Is that part of an actual secret code? Evidence?
Gay "marriage" is a feminist move and a sexual liberal move simultaneously. There are no differences between men and women anymore according to our dear leaders so what's the problem? Marriage has become a pleasure contraceptive feeeeeling institution as well.
"But, in a country where half the kids born are bastards and half the marriages end in divorce*, why would people who care about the traditional family get so obsessed over 1% of gays?"
Marriage is in such a state of decline because the social norms supporting it have softened and weakened to the point where there's little distinction between marriage and cohabitation. Only this watering-down of marriage has made gay marriage thinkable for most people, and legalizing gay marriage locks in this weak form of marriage. Since this weak form doesn't do the things we want marriage to do (e.g., provide an optimal environment for nurturing children), social conservatives oppose locking it in.
However, it's not as if resisting gay marriage will in itself reinvigorate regular marriage. L’humanité ne rétrograde pas, as Rousseau said. There have been dozens of movements to reinvigorate old moral norms, going back to Augustus, but most have been failures. Arguably, 19c evangelicalism was an exception, strengthening moral norms in the working class, but modern traditionalist face a far harder battle.
Cennbeorc
You see, Sailer, it is your comments on gay marriage that makes me want to neer read your blog again. We hae been oer this so many times. So, so many times. I have already explained to you innumerable times why this is NOT an issue that depends on ad populum. There are cities in Mississippi and Alabama where, if it were for popular vote, segregation between whites and blacks would be reinstated. So I ask you: would you be in favor of that?
For the upteenth time: gay marriage must be approved because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law, and popular vote cannot be used to decide this for the same reason that popular vote cannot be used to reinstate segregation between the races. The two most cardinal principles of Western Ciilization are these: first, that everyone is equal before the law, and two, that INDIVIDUAL rights are SACRED AND NON-NEGOTIABLE and cannot be legislated against. These are the principles of the Enlightnment, on which Western Civilization as well as the Constitution of the United Stated were founded on.
Conservatives do not like the principle of equality before the law. They do not like any limits on the people's ability to legislate about how their society should work, even if this would result in massie disenfranchisement of entire segements of people who would lose just for being in the minority. Popular vote über alles! Keep the queens beaten down even though they just want to live their lies! Ban the teaching of Evolution from schools! Bar all atheists from holding public offices! Reinstate segregation and put blacks in chains again! We can do everything we want by just being 51% + and too bad for the minorities. Conservatives hate the principle of equality before the law because all of conservatism is based on the premise that all of human society is divided into two groups: the elite and the enslaved. And that, as bad an unfair as that it, that this is the most Paglossian state of affairs possible.
And yes, Sailer, I am starting to see you as a hateful bigot. Gay marriage is something that does not affect you or conservatives negatively in any way, so why do you care so much? Why are you so hell bent on stopping people from enjoying the same happiness that you have with your wife if not because you are an a-hole? Who cares if two fairies get married? It is none of your business! Live and let live, dude.
"You see, Sailer, it is your comments on gay marriage that makes me want to neer read your blog again."
I always know to leave the room if I hear the words "hateful bigot".
1). Gays should not be pesrsecuted for being gay.
2). They should not marry or raise kids.
I grew up in this funky new world and I had a tolerably good relationship with my father. I acknowledge that he tried to be a good parent.
But a gay household is NOT the best place to raise kids. I know because I've been there. You are prejudiced and you are a hateful bigot.
P.S. I repeat, there's nothing nice about a bleeding anus.
...gay marriage must be approved because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law...
I'm 55 but I want to start collecting Social Security now. So I demand equality before the law. I'm being discriminated against because of my age.
I want to be able to change in the ladies' locker room at the public pool.
I want WIC checks to pay for my dog's food.
I want to enroll in the local elementary school so I can get free lunch.
The applause was wild; a brief perusal of mainstream conservative blogs confirms that the consensus is that Condi is the greatest Republican EVAH; and John Dickerson commented on his FB feed "And Condi is now on every GOP list for president for the next 40 years."
Dickerson, of course, gets the joke: being on the Right Side of History means your side gets to enjoy the spectacle of the loser's side scrambling to belly-flop into the middle of your ideological mosh pit at every opportunity, eager to abase themselves under the heels of your corrective, curb-stomping boots, and the Republicans in Tampa did not disappoint: they wildly cheered their own public classification as the sons & daughters and grandsons & granddaughters of (implicitly) Bad White Persons, still responsible, sixty years after Brown v. Board and almost fifty after the opening of the mighty Great Society-welfare spigot - through which literally trillions have flowed - for the failure of NAM's to do better in public schools.
What a load of crap.
The Civil Rights Act was largely opposed by Democrats not Republicans. The Jim Crow south that Condi referred to was thanks to the Democrat party.
Although Democrats had a historically large majority in the House of Representatives with 259 members to 176 Republicans, almost as many Republicans voted for the civil rights bill as Democrats. The final vote was 290 for the bill and 130 against. Of the “yea” votes, 152 were Democrats and 138 were Republicans. Of the “nay” votes, three-fourths were Democrats. In short, the bill could not have passed without Republican support. As Time Magazine observed, “In one of the most lopsidedly Democratic Houses since the days of F.D.R., Republicans were vital to the passage of a bill for which the Democratic administration means to take full political credit this year.”
A similar story is told in the Senate. On the critical vote to end the filibuster by Southern Democrats, 71 senators voted to invoke cloture. With 67 votes needed, 44 Democrats and 27 Republicans joined together to bring the bill to a final vote. Of those voting “nay,” 80 percent were Democrats, including Robert C. Byrd and former Vice President Al Gore’s father, who was then a senator from Tennessee. Again, it is clear that the civil rights bill would have failed without Republican votes.
"do you think many young people wish they'd been around to help liberate the Negroes, and want to feel part of some kind of 'civil rights' movement?"
This.
Gay marriage ain't the civil rights movement. It ain't.
If the media did not cover the gay marriage issue, they just ignored it, it would have been forgotten by now. It is so incredibly stupid that most people would not even consider it. It is just a testament to the herd mentality of people. It is every bit as insane as worshipping the Emperor, which, I will remind you, the vast majority thought was a fine idea.
...gay marriage must be approved because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law...
Affirmative Action must be repealed because it violates equality before the law.
Fixed that for you.
I'm sure there are probably a lot of gay couples who'd like to get married, buy a house in the suburbs, wear khakis and polos, adopt some kids, mow their laws, go to church on Sundays (probably Unitarian, but hey at least it's church), listen to country music in their SUVs on the way to work, and sit at home playing board games with the kids on a Saturday evening. They might even try to shelter their kids from grotesque sexual imagery and hedonistic vulgarity.
But those gay couples sure are quiet. It's pretty interesting how quiet they are. Where is the gay equivalent of Bill Cosby?
Steve Sailer: India is a pretty crummy place, but Indians like it because hundreds of millions of Hindus have hundreds of millions of lower caste Hindus to look down upon. So, they've got that going for them.
You're right that Hindus enjoy looking down on people. But that's not why they have a caste system.
We have caste because Indians are so very heterogeneous and so very different in their capabilities and their habits. E.g. There are castes which are monogamous and there are castes which are polygamous and they all live side by side.
A caste system is what happens when you have a very large very heterogeneous society.
If you value whatever it is that you are, then you cannot and should not intermarry with people who are different and especially those who are more primitive than whatever it is you are.
I don't see how this is analogous to political views on gay marriage.
The status whores are going to find something else to statuswhore about if ground is ceded on gay marriage. It will not matter. All of you arguing why this matters have missed the point, the left has incessantly done this, and will continue until the cold hard reality causes their nonsense to collapse on itself.
A great deal more has to be done to fight back, but giving up serves no purpose.
gay marriage must be approved because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law
No, it does not.
Anonymous said...
You see, Sailer, it is your comments on gay marriage that makes me want to neer read your blog again. We hae been oer this so many times. So, so many times. I have already explained to you innumerable times why this is NOT an issue that depends on ad populum.
The quality of the comments section would improve dramatically if Steve ever bans anonymous comments.
India is a pretty crummy place, but Indians like it because hundreds of millions of Hindus have hundreds of millions of lower caste Hindus to look down upon. So, they've got that going for them.
There are some deep truths in that observation. The hereditary caste system persists despite its irrationality and its glaring failure (India is a miserable hellhole) because there is such a large number of Indians, the untouchables, that hindus of all castes even the low caste sudras can look down on and persecute. In fact some of the worst abusers of the dalits/outcastes are the lowest caste hindus.
it's not that trivial in practice. stopping it stops the tidal wave of liberalism. every time one of those "this isn't really that important, so let us win, and you lose" social issues flips to the left, they flip permanently to the left, will never be changed back, then the liberals move on to the next "this isn't really that important, so let us win, and you lose" social issue.
social issues are A LOT more important than budgets and money and the unemployment rate and so forth. once liberals flip EVERY social issue from conservative to liberal, it then becomes impossible to ever balance a budget or be fiscally conservative ever again.
these two issues are inextricably linked. it is IMPOSSIBLE to be socially liberal but fiscally conservative. once you start moving towards socially liberal, you move inexorably towards fiscally liberal, huge debts, bankruptcy, and a non-functional insolvent society.
the only reason we're even at the issue of gay marriage is because liberals have flipped almost all the other social issues permanently to liberal. they're marching down the line, flipping everything to liberal. it only took them 40 years of flipping issues until now we're at the point of being close to flipping a social issue that has been set to conservative for all of human history.
in theory this particular issue is not a huge deal, but in practice, it's a very big deal. i would, however, rather see gay marriage, than open homosexual behavior in the US military and the deliberate introduction of the gay agenda to the pentagon. i am gravely offended by this, and would gladly reverse these two situations. i'd allow US citizens to enter into homosexual marriages as long as open homosexuality were forever eliminated from the american military. it has no place there.
The two most cardinal principles of Western Ci[v]ilization are these: first, that everyone is equal before the law, and two, that INDIVIDUAL rights are SACRED AND NON-NEGOTIABLE and cannot be legislated against. --sodomanonymous
OK. If a man buggers a woman on their wedding night, that would not consummate a marriage in any state still using common law. So how can a man buggering a man consummate a marriage? Where's the equality there?
If a gay man walks into a restroom dedicated to those in the direction of his "orientation", it's no big deal. If a straight man walks into a restroom dedicated to those in the direction of his orientation, he's arrested, convicted, and possibly put on a sex-offenders' list for life. Where's the equality there?
On the other hand, both polygamy and incest need to be crushed to preserve civilization. If men take three wives, or marry their sisters or nieces, everything goes to pot in short order.
But if men take three husbands, or marry their brothers or (/and) nephews, what possible difference does it make? (Incest is sex, and buggery isn't, so buggery isn't incest.)
In a same-sex environment, those restrictions are now totally arbitrary. If you defend them, you concede that we can defend the opposite-sex requirement as well.
"After they figure out how to get it legalized the next step will be promoting it to children in public schools and TV shows. Homosexuality will thus become completely "normalized"."
although i don't really think outright suppression of heterosexuals is the goal, and it's probably all about normalization of homosexuality and especially of the deviancy some of them get into, there is no doubt that such as thing as a homosexual agenda really does exist, and the people pursuing it are absolutely, positively targeting heterosexual children for conditioning and brainwashing.
why else, for instance, would marvel comics be writing overtly gay comic book characters now, who kiss and have sex with same sex characters, and propose marriage to them. ADULTS DON'T READ THOSE KIND OF COMIC BOOKS, SO WHO COULD THIS BE AIMED AT?
yeah. exactly.
jody grew up collecting marvel comics starting in 1982 or so and actually remembers when watchmen first came out. i was too young to even understand or comprehend it, but i did read spider-man, the punisher, x-men, and silver surfer. so i can directly reflect, from a kids perspective, on the difference between comics meant for kids and comics meant for adults. even 25 years ago, NONE of them had homosexual stuff blatantly forced directly in there.
"What I find troubling about the so-called democratic treatment of this issue is that the will of the people will only be respected once the desired outcome is obtained. After that, the issue will no longer be up for discussion even if the attitude of the people changes over time.
It is sort of like the EU vote in Ireland. They lost, but then decided to hold another vote until they got the answer they desired. At that point, the people were deemed to have spoken, the issue settled and further debate tabled."
that's why i liken the situation to soccer. the liberals just keep shooting, and the conservatives block the shots and make save after save. it's free to attack, there's no penalty for shooting, so the liberals just keep firing shots, until eventually, one goes in, and the BOOM that's it. we won, the game is over, no need to play soccer over this issue anymore, it's settled, on to the next game of soccer over the next issue, remember, we only have to score 1 goal in 100 tries and the game is called in our favor, then on to the next issue, so on and so forth.
it's up to the conservaties to take shots at the liberals' goal, but now it seems like they don't even want to do that. how about, we allow homosexual marriage, but affirmative action is hereby irreversibly revoked utterly. this would result in a freer society for everybody. now there's a good trade. think conservatives would ever try to make that bargain? hell no. they're useless at this point. and liberals don't want that. they want marriage for homosexuals and then they want affirmative action for homosexuals too.
"There are cities in Mississippi and Alabama where, if it were for popular vote, segregation between whites and blacks would be reinstated. So I ask you: would you be in favor of that?"
yeah, we've encountered this argument before. the thing is, there was disagreement over slaving. there's no disagreement over homosexual marriage.
there is unanimous agreement that it's something we don't want. it cuts across all group distinctions. it's why it was voted down in NC, where africans voted against it. it's why it was voted down in CA, where mexicans voted against it. proponents there could not really grasp that it was mexicans also voting against it, so they had to make up a lie about out of state white people tricking californians into voting against it.
solid, life long democrats vote against it, when offered it as a single issue. you're wrong about it being the tyranny of the majority. more like, it's what all normal people of all races and religions think.
also, just so we can preempt this before you go there, there is no civil right for straight people to get married. so how can there be a civil right for gay people to get married. there is no federal language which says i have a right to marry a woman. so nobody's rights are being violated here. in fact, euro americans have a MUCH better legal case that the federal government and some state governments are discriminating against them institutionally because they are genetically european.
that makes me want to neer read your blog again. We hae been oer this so many times...
The two most cardinal principles of Western Ciilization... --anonymous (i.e., name not gien)
They're having a sale on the letter V down at the Keyboard Shoppe.
By the way, if two people of the same sex claim a right to create a child without the parent of the other sex, then it follows that the child does not have a right to the parent of the other sex.
The marriage-equality people leave that part out.
@Gay Reader above:
Can't speak for Steve, but let me relate the view of at least one gay activist in Berkeley in the early '90's. This guy posted hot pink posters in the law library building titled "The Gay Agenda." Item #10 was, "to turn western civilization inside out!" You tell us how representative of 'the community' he was.
Look at the bright side. Gay marriages with adopted or surrogate children, will give us enough data to determine if homosexuality is nature or nurture - if the gay parents can resist potentially spreading the parasite, if you know what I mean.
Gay and gay-ish kids are identifiable at a very young age. What kind of nurturing do you think could cause it? Laughing when a boy tries on mommy's heels, instead of giving a good scolding?
I don't see much chance of nurture being the cause. It is the parasite or a genetic anomaly.
A little off topic: why is gay rape so prevalent in prison, what ever happened to onanism? More work of the parasite?
"OK. If a man buggers a woman on their wedding night, that would not consummate a marriage in any state still using common law. So how can a man buggering a man consummate a marriage? Where's the equality there?"
The emergence of gay rights can only be understood as a product of the sexual revolution, which levelled all distinctions among consensual sexual activities. It's a weirdly abstract view of sexuality, and of the nature of human beings. But once you've accepted it, any legal or social distinction between gay and straight sex is just apartheid. And any biological differences are incidental and morally irrelevant:
"Hmm, spilling seed in this orifice is one way of creating a fetus, and spilling seed in that orifice is one way of communicating a fatal disease. Isn't science fascinating?"
Cennbeorc
"worn a lavender-coloured shirt for my job interviews."
Wait, really? Is that part of an actual secret code? Evidence?
My father always insisted that, as a transexual, he wasn't a homosexual. He did, however, associate with homos alot, back in the 1970's. Apparently, they had their own argot, which is probably now out of date. For example, if a man had "bona lallies" that meant he had nice-looking legs.
Fortunately, all my information is second-hand. All I know is that he bought me a lavender shirt for a job interview. I would ask him for more information, but he died in 2006.
And, no, he never abused me.
"Gay marriage, for instance, is a trivial issue in real world terms, but it has become incredibly important to liberals precisely because it brands huge numbers of their fellow citizens as Dalits for them to hate and feel morally superior to."
I don't know that its huge numbers, but true all the same...
go to church on Sundays (probably Unitarian, but hey at least it's church)
No it's not.
"I don't see much chance of nurture being the cause. It is the parasite or a genetic anomaly."
testosterone surges
"I don't see why people get so worked up over gay marriage. Are they afraid that married gays will have gay babies?"
It's just a good example of how modern liberals don't believe in democracy. They believe in a secular theocracy - like Iran but with a rainbow flag.
I think there was actually a domino effect (reverse domino?) from Calif. rejecting Prop 8. Now the other, less famously progressive states don't feel they have to stick their necks out
Going by the bare numbers, it's just not a winner under one-man-one-vote. Future historians may liken the fad to an attempt at radical veganism, or switching U.S. to the metric system
"The top levels of government, including the Supreme Court, respond to prevailing public sentiment."
No it doesn't. If that was true they'd defend the border.
The government responds to media pressure slowed by a generational public brake. The (living) public generally succumbing to media pressure over time as young kids growing up have their opinions changed from their parent's by the media and school / college.
The sequence since the 60s has been:
media / hollywood
government
public (generational via media and school manipulation of the young)
Mediacracy.
I'm strongly in favor of equal treatment under law, and don't think an adult should be denied the legal right to marry another adult just on the basis of sex. The opposition to allowing same-sex couples is frankly, either theistically motivated or just plain stupid, so, yes, I definitely believe that opposing same-sex marriage is a mark of stupidity/superstition and/or moral inferiority.
Being queer is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender, and seeking state approval for doing so. … Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society. … As a lesbian, I am fundamentally different from non-lesbian women. …In arguing for the right to legal marriage, lesbians and gay men would be forced to claim that we are just like heterosexual couples, have the same goals and purposes, and vow to structure our lives similarly. … We must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and of radically reordering society's view of reality.” -- Paula Ettelbrick, “Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?”, in William Rubenstein, ed., Lesbians, Gay Men and the Law (New York: The New Press, 1993), pp. 401-405."
more
here
"But I still say the primary goal is to suppress the birth rate."
I think the primary goal is to spread division - divide and rule basically. Take very issue there is (or was) a consensus on and one by one promote the exact opposite until you have the entire population at each other's throats - and therefore not at the throats of the instigators.
.
"stance is on gay marriage, and why you have that stance. It looks a lot like you are opposed because liberals are for it"
Personally i don't care about gay marriage in itself* but i care about cohesion and think a healthy society will always try and maintain a 90%+ plus consensus.
I think the people pushing gay marriage like to minimize cohesion and consensus either because they get a kick out of being the morally superior minority or because they think division is in their interests.
That does lead to a knee-jerk reaction when perhaps what would be better would be some kind of judo move.
*Personally i'd advocate two forms of marriage - a standard form which equalized pensions, inheritance and all that kind of stuff and then an optional form based on child-rearing where the couple got tax breaks or some other benefit in exchange for a marriage contract with rules like no divorce till the kids are eighteen etc.
So use the pressure for gay marriage to get the old marriage form - which was designed to provide the best foundation for families - back but make it an optional choice.
It really is amazing to see the power of the media to influence. I always laugh when I hear an actor or director claim the media doesn't influence people, usually in defense of a violent film they just made. But can there be any doubt now? This whole acceptance of homosexuality as normal behavior, and gay marriage as an equal right would not have happened if not for a sympathetic media.
In a little over 40 years, the attitudes of a nation have been completely changed. I wonder how long it would take to reverse things if somehow ownership of the media changed hands to people whose views were more to the right.
I also think what has happened over the last 40 plus years has shown that the media is a push-type supplier that gives the consumers what it wants rather than a pull-type supplier who supplies what the market wants. So contrary to apologists like Whiskey, a small group in control of the media has the ability to shape the nation and set the agenda, rather than a bunch of white women who will consume whatever they are fed.
"There are cities in Mississippi and Alabama where, if it were for popular vote, segregation between whites and blacks would be reinstated. So I ask you: would you be in favor of that?"
People have a right to free association.
Have you ever been to Chicago and see how segregated it still is?
Do you think white people want to move to a black neighborhood?
Most whites who live near many black people only do so because they can't afford to live elsewhere.
I'm strongly in favor of equal treatment under law, and don't think an adult should be denied the legal right to marry another adult just on the basis of sex. The opposition to allowing same-sex couples is frankly, either theistically motivated or just plain stupid, so, yes, I definitely believe that opposing same-sex marriage is a mark of stupidity/superstition and/or moral inferiority."
Stated as only a moron can.
there is no superstition in the fusion of gametes, dumbass.
"testosterone surges"
Very interesting. What causes the hormonal surges in the masculization process, pathogen possibly?
Stern " Anonymous said...
I'm strongly in favor of equal treatment under law, and don't think an adult should be denied the legal right to marry another adult just on the basis of sex. The opposition to allowing same-sex couples is frankly, either theistically motivated or just plain stupid, so, yes, I definitely believe that opposing same-sex marriage is a mark of stupidity/superstition and/or moral inferiority."
Don't get your morals in a knot. Maybe people aren't as "theistically motivated" as you might think - maybe we feel that homosexuality is an abnormality manifested by a disease, a purely scientific possibility, which could detract from the fitness of future generations; a disease which will no longer be researched once society has labeled it as being normal. You display a certain intellectual rigidity.
Both Mark Steyn and the guy from NRO (too lazy to Google his name) covered Gay Marriage. Steyn noted that it had been legal in Toronto for ten years, and with a gay population estimated at 500,000 in the greater metro area, less than ... 250 married in over 10 years. That's about 0.004% in over ten years.
Gays are about 3-4% of the population. Straight White men about 32% of the population. Straight White men are told they have to have limited rights, and sometimes another 32% of the population, straight White women, are also told this: that they are denied equality under the law for social policy and government objectives.
This is known as Affirmative Action. Where government may demand in HIRING, FIRING, SCHOOL ADMISSION, SCHOLARSHIPS, FINANCIAL AID, and other things (like school discipline) that Whites, both men and women, be harmed because they are not "protected classes" of whom nothing bad can happen. Legally.
White guys are told to shut up and take one for society and "the team."
Its time for Gays to do the same.
As for gay marriage, the agenda is to gay-up marriage, make it a social norm of a big gay party, then mutual flagrant promiscuity. In order to destroy the nuclear family which gays HATE HATE HATE.
And no, a Gay White guy with his gay Vietnamese "partner" adopting Bruno-like a Black baby is not a nuclear family. It is a grotesque gay parody of one.
In my view, Gays ought to have legal protection against being fired, or otherwise discriminated against, just for being gay. HOWEVER, society does not need to change the fundamental institution of marriage to suit the demands of a mere 0.004% of Gays.
You see, Sailer, it is your comments on gay marriage that makes me want to neer read your blog again. We hae been oer this so many times. So, so many times. I have already explained to you innumerable times why this is NOT an issue that depends on ad populum. There are cities in Mississippi and Alabama where, if it were for popular vote, segregation between whites and blacks would be reinstated. So I ask you: would you be in favor of that?
Lol, are you kidding? That would mean an INSTANT uplift in the quality of life.
No, you dope, it's not about "hatred," it's about finding an effective means to deal with racial reality and the fact that racial diversity is a weakness, not a strength. Your (libtards') strategy of continuing to lie about it isn't working out so well so it's natural some people will look for other ways.
There are cities in Mississippi and Alabama where, if it were for popular vote, segregation between whites and blacks would be reinstated. So I ask you: would you be in favor of that?
In the cities of all 50 states, Whites are segregating themselves wherever they can afford it. Including liberals who would regard pro-freedom-of-association Southerners as sub-human.
jody grew up collecting marvel comics starting in 1982 or so and actually remembers when watchmen first came out. i was too young to even understand or comprehend it, but i did read spider-man, the punisher, x-men, and silver surfer. so i can directly reflect, from a kids perspective, on the difference between comics meant for kids and comics meant for adults. even 25 years ago, NONE of them had homosexual stuff blatantly forced directly in there.
Comic books have been devoutly leftist for a long, long time (although some writers were conservatives; today, I don't know). I read about a million comic books from 1986-1994, including a large number of back issues from the 70s. I read through quite a few of my favorites a few years ago and the leftist bias of many was unmistakable. But yes, pushing homosexuality either hadn't occurred to anyone or was considered 'too much' back then. I read a few each year still, just to sort of reminisce, and the liberal leftism is definitely even worse these days.
In my view, Gays ought to have legal protection against being fired, or otherwise discriminated against, just for being gay.
Conservatives don't have that protection. Why should homosexuals?
I think the primary goal is to spread division - divide and rule basically. Take very issue there is (or was) a consensus on and one by one promote the exact opposite until you have the entire population at each other's throats - and therefore not at the throats of the instigators.
MOO HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!
" Anonymous said...
I'm strongly in favor of equal treatment under law, and don't think an adult should be denied the legal right to marry another adult just on the basis of sex. The opposition to allowing same-sex couples is frankly, either theistically motivated or just plain stupid, so, yes, I definitely believe that opposing same-sex marriage is a mark of stupidity/superstition and/or moral inferiority."
The thing which worries me about gay marriage is that the norms surrounding gay long-term relationships will be imported into the concept of marriage.
http://www.sfgate.com/lgbt/article/Many-gay-couples-negotiate-open-relat...
(The above is a media write-up of a study that found that in a study of 566 gay couples, only 45 percent had made the promise to be sexually monogamous. This is an example of a different moral norm surrounding gay long-term relationships.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29sfmetro.html?_r=1
(In the above link is a NYTimes piece arguing that homosexual marriage could modernise (that is import different norms into) marriage as an institution.), specifically; "The traditional American marriage is in crisis, and we need insight,” he said, citing the fresh perspective gay couples bring to matrimony. “If innovation in marriage is going to occur, it will be spearheaded by homosexual marriages."
The importation of a moral norm like the one above surrounding gay long-term relationships would destroy the institution of marriage for heterosexuals who wish to pursue a long-term mating strategy. I don’t know many men who would sign up to an institution where the partners are expected/morally obliged to be emotionally faithful but not sexually faithful. It is much easier for women to get casual sex than men, so any man signing himself up to that deal would be signing himself up for cuckoldry and cuckoldry is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a man pursuing a long-term mating strategy, (and it is the evolved moral norms surrounding the long-term mating strategy which marriage as a cultural institution is/was developed around/for.)
Of course, if people became more knowledgeable about evo-bio/evo-psych and instead started calling marriage essentially what it is, the social-codification of the long-term mating strategy in humans, then this concern wouldn’t really matter. (No worrying about importing norms anti-thetical to the reproductive interests of one party in the relationship and subsequently which disincentivises the pursuit of the strategy from that party as its definition is strictly evo-bio/evo-psych.)
(On a side note, the reason I've given above is also why I think a lot of religious people are against gay marriage, they fear that it will change the institution and expose them to cuckoldry. This wouldn't be the first time that religious norms have been developed to prevent cuckoldry/ensure paternal certainty; see http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/uom-hrp060412.php
Of course, I doubt these fears will be allayed as doing so would go against the feminist establishments desire to create a matriarchial/matrilineal cad society where all men are cuckolds (if they aren't cads that is), but that's a whole different issue.)
Addendum:
More evidence of different moral norms surrounding homosexual relationships:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/gays-anatomy/200809/are-gay-male-cou...
see “In his book, The Soul Beneath the Skin, David Nimmons cites numerous studies which show that 75% of gay male couples are in successful open relationships.”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918360903445962
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19243229
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20635246
This is the link to the actual study from the newspaper reports.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20069497
This one provides a good review of the literature. But it is pay-gated.
This is pretty cool. I had thought that only me and a few other conservatives opposed gay marriage for non-religious, non-visceral reasons, but it looks like (at least among Steve's commenters) the wider social/political arguments against gay marriage predominate.
In my experience, it's exceptionally hard to convince gay marriage supporters that you don't simply hate gay people, no matter how purely your pro-traditional marriage arguments are based on social/political concerns. It's nice to see that many conservatives aren't just shrugging and giving up.
"The ultimate goal is to get a much larger percentage of the population to be homosexuals, thus depressing the birth rate. This is why they say gays are "born this way". It's to lay the basis for propagating homosexuality in early youth and then claiming there is nothing they can do about it later in life."
while the average gay or lesbian is not aware of the larger goals of their movement, this comment has much merit.
First, most average gays and lesbians really have begun to buy their leaders' meme that homosexuality is nothing more than biological variation, thus is "normal." In other words, to them, that means that just because it's a result of something biological, it's "normal development" which, of course, is ludicrous. They've learned that playing word games is successful, however.
It's a hit to fitness and nothing which is that is "normal" from an evolutionary standpoint. However, they have people believeing that because they don't choose to be homosexual, it's just common variation, like hair color, skin color, height, etc. NOr does anyone ever counter their claims by saying, "It's no more biologically 'normal' than is being born deaf or w/out an arm or without ovaries that will be healthy or sperm that will be healthy."
2) Their leaders really do believe that once the "normalization" meme has been accepted--that hey, being born gay is no different than being born with brown eyes, then hitting on other men is, after all, "normal" and one can't be held accountable for one's natural sex urge.
Ever listen to gays into this kind of thinking talk about ancient Greek society or their understanding of it? They believe they can create a society in which men and women will be totally loose in all things sexual, and they are truly looking forward to it.
It's not a silly thought. Who would have ever thought there'd be gay "marriage"?
I really should write a book on homosexuality. Just a week or so ago there was another news story about a new health effect of the Toxoplasma gondii parasite. It is the most widespread parasite found in the human brain. It causes a wide variety of behavioral effects in humans including bad driving and schizophrenia. It targets the amygdala and the hypothalamus where sexual preference are determined. And on and on...
There is a readily available medical test to see if you harbor the parasite. My challenge to the world is to produce a single woman who has had a homosexual child and has not had the parasite. So far no takers.
But I procrastinate. Firstly because I'm so good at procrastination and secondly for the reason Steve suggests:
Homosexuality is not important.
Gay marriage is indeed a trivial concern. You don't have to believe my hypothesis to appreciate the incontrovertible fact: there is no such thing as gay sex. Sex is a strategy for reproduction. There are other strategies but among large animals sex is the most popular. Currently most evolutionary biologists think it is as way for the hosts to stay ahead of the parasites. But in any case, it is a set behaviors designed to yield well adapted and viable progeny.
What homosexuals call sex - things like anal intercourse - are analogous to real sex and no doubt yield much pleasure. But pleasure is a consequence of a reproductive strategy it is not sex itself. Sorry all you gay guys out there.
Marriage is likewise a social institution to promote legitimate children. The Romans didn't rape the Sabine women, they married them. They didn't want just sexual thrills. They wanted children that could inherit their names and property. Gay marriage is a non-institution.
None of it matters. try this thought experiment. By some magic you can kill every gay person in America. And then consider that you can similarly kill every black person. In the former case it makes no difference. Virtually all gays die without issue. They all die out every generation anyway. They spring back from among normal families - because it's a disease.
If you were to magically kill everyone with Hantavirus it wouldn't matter much either. It's the mouse droppings that matter.
But black bad behavior is passed from generation to generation. Magically eliminate all black people and a number of things happens: better schools ceases to be an issue, murder drops precipitously, armed robbery, and most of all rape. Welfare rolls plummet. Housing Authority projects close. Food Stamps goes back to being a rare and obscure agriculture department program. The style of NBA basketball changes.
The more I have read about homosexuals the more I have been impressed with the fact that they are almost exactly the same as normals. They are different only in that they are sterile - behaviorally sterile not biologically sterile. But other than that they are the same. We only notice that they exist because like all good animals we are obsessed with sex.
Race is important. Homosexuality not.
Albertosaurus
@jody
"yeah, we've encountered this argument before. the thing is, there was disagreement over slaving. there's no disagreement over homosexual marriage."
You are missing the point completely(again).
The point is that POPULAR vOTE CANNOT BE USED TO GRANT OR REMOvE INDIvIDUAL RIGHTS.
So it doesen't matter whether people agree or diagree with gay marriage. Even if 99% of people were against it, it should still be legalized because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law and because the state and people do NOT have a right to legislate when it comes to individual rights.
The principle of equality of rights and the sanctity of individual rights is the cornerstone of Western Civilization, and the hallmark of a civilized society. These were established exactly to protect individual freedom and dignity against powerful political majorities.
What if the majority decided to reinstate segregation? What if the majority decided that atheists must be burned at the stake? What is majorities decides that women should be forced into marriage and barred from all private and public jobs because of their gender? Are blacks not human? Are atheists not human? Are women not human?
A society ruled by a religious/social conservative majority and with no respect for individual rights is the kind of society I want to live on. I am at the 99% earning bracket in America. So are many of my friends. We create jobs and wealth. If you get the kind of society you want, I am packing and leaving. And so will many of my friends.
Even if 99% of people were against it, it should still be legalized because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law and because the state and people do NOT have a right to legislate when it comes to individual rights.
Nonsense. You're inventing a violation of equality before the law where this isn't one.
So are many of my friends. We create jobs and wealth. If you get the kind of society you want, I am packing and leaving. And so will many of my friends.
Liar.
I also think what has happened over the last 40 plus years has shown that the media is a push-type supplier that gives the consumers what it wants rather than a pull-type supplier who supplies what the market wants. So contrary to apologists like Whiskey, a small group in control of the media has the ability to shape the nation and set the agenda, rather than a bunch of white women who will consume whatever they are fed.
Precisely. Deluded free-market types don't seem able to understand the concept of a supplier shaping the market.
There are cities in Mississippi and Alabama where, if it were for popular vote, segregation between whites and blacks would be reinstated. So I ask you: would you be in favor of that?
I can't answer for Steve - he's a public figure and a family man, he has to be guarded. Eric Holder has his name on file. Holder's allies the New Black Panthers have made death threats against George Zimmerman - a much less controversial figure. If I were were is Steve's situation I would be very guarded in what I wrote. Candor can get you killed.
But my situation is different so I can afford to be candid.
I favor segregation. I'm going to cease to be a Republican and become and Independent if I can't register as a reactionary. The evidence is in. We should consider rolling back the sixties. Sowell and other black scholars argue that black progress was set back by the social changes that came about in the sixties (roughly 1965 to 1975).
Soon someone else will notice that all this concern with school failure only began with school desegregation. We don't have to wait for Superman. We just separate the races in the classroom. Presto! No more school crisis.
Steve's essay on schools, test scores and race opened my eyes. We spend the most on schools and we have gotten our money's worth. Our East Asians students do better than the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans do in their own schools. Our European heritage students do better in our schools than the kids in the old country do. And our Africans do better than stay at home Africans in the Dark Continent. This wonderful result is obscured by the fact that we have school integration. Our schools aren't failing. Our black kids are simply failing to perform in the classroom like white or Asian kids. Someday we will solve that problem too, but for now in the interest of better learning and less violence, we should just separate them.
Obviously we should abolish Affirmative Action. It's a system for rewarding bad performance. It is as loony an idea as say - letting certain races have houses that they can't afford.
There has been a lot of progress in the past few decades. For example my Android tablet is far superior to the Altair computer I had back then. But on many fronts in the past few decades we have been marching toward false goals.
Almost every racial reform since the fifties has had a bad effect because they were based on false premises. Black intellectual inferiority and bad behavior was assumed to be a consequence of white attitudes. It's not. The black brain is about 40cc smaller where it counts. One day we'll fix that but we need to get to that day with the fewest casualties possible. School re-segregation is a good place to start.
Albertosaurus
A society ruled by a religious/social conservative majority and with no respect for individual rights is the kind of society I want to live on.
Spare us your selective concern for individual rights, you gun-grabbing, institution-marching, conservative-firing, Christian-blackballing, free association-hating, big-gov't liberal.
"There are cities in Mississippi and Alabama where, if it were for popular vote, segregation between whites and blacks would be reinstated. So I ask you: would you be in favor of that?" - Theres a reason it was made illegal. The entire country would basically flip back to the freedom of association model if it were allowed.
Anonymous 7:19 PM
"People have a right to free association.
Have you ever been to Chicago and see how segregated it still is?
Do you think white people want to move to a black neighborhood?
Most whites who live near many black people only do so because they can't afford to live elsewhere."
For the last time, freedom of association applies only to private life and not to PUBLIC life. You CANNOT have segregated STATE schools. The government represents the law, and the law states that everyone is equal before the law. Hence, segregation in public schools is illegal as well as the right to own slaves. Freedom of association applies to the PRIvATE but not PUBLIC spheres.
I agree that white people should have the right to create their own private schools and even towns and segregate themselves from blacks if they want to. I find that despicable, but I do think you have the right to PRIvATELY segregate yourself from other races if you want to.
Let me give you an example to illustrate the limits of freedom of associaion: You can have an all-white town that become white because white people there decide that in their PRIvATE property ony enters white people. But the PUBLIC parts of the town, such as the streets, cannot be barred to black people because that violates the principle of equality before the law. Also, the black people will have to have all their civil rigts upheld by the police. No municipal of state government can assign greater rights to specific groups of individuals.
I hope I have clarified to you why the argument of freedom of association cannot be used to segregate public schools, public transporation and public hospitals.
"Let me give you an example to illustrate the limits of freedom of associaion: You can have an all-white town that become white because white people there decide that in their PRIvATE property ony enters white people. But the PUBLIC parts of the town, such as the streets, cannot be barred to black people because that violates the principle of equality before the law"
They had whole towns that banned people in the 1800's. They also had signs that said who could be allowed in the town and who couldn't. This is according to the book Democracy: The God that Failed. It is written by a libertarian. He would limit the public sphere to as small an area as possible.
It's an interesting book. You might want to check it out.
Nobody thought that banning people was illegal when it happened. Of course,they thought slavery was ok too. We are more enlightened now about slavery. But not owning someone is completely different than not hiring them for any reason.
Even if 99% of people were against it, it should still be legalized because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law and because the state and people do NOT have a right to legislate when it comes to individual rights.
That's a bunch of baloney. I have a right to keep the money I earn...and the State legislates various restrictions to that right.
Marriage is a human right. Marriage is a heterosexual arrangement. The State affirms that through legislation.
A homosexual man can legally marry a woman. That is equality under the law.
"So it doesen't matter whether people agree or diagree with gay marriage. Even if 99% of people were against it, it should still be legalized because not doing so violates the principle of equality before the law and because the state and people do NOT have a right to legislate when it comes to individual rights."
So Western Civilization is solely a proposition, exclusive of culture and tradition. You should be very comfortable in the current atmosphere, no need to move, the zeitgeist has been at your back for quite some time. As a matter of fact as a one percent-er, you are the zeitgeist. Using wealth, or the withholding of it, to strong-arm people into abandoning their principles - is that another "Hallmark" of West Civilization?
You have no loyalty to your home. Please leave. There is no shortage of arrogant elitists, you will not be missed.
"What if the majority decided to reinstate segregation? What if the majority decided that atheists must be burned at the stake? What is majorities decides that women should be forced into marriage and barred from all private and public jobs because of their gender? Are blacks not human? Are atheists not human? Are women not human?"
In a Democracy they can do that.The people who founded the country thought slavery was ok. They thought that they could not allow certain people to marry. There were many other laws that forbade many private acts. They just thought the federal govt shouldn't make those laws.
I generally don't like telling others what to do, but the govt is now telling people who they have to be around. On top of that they take money from people and give it to people who have many children out of wedlock. They then give these same people money and let them live for next to nothing in my building.
Why should white parents be forced to have their daughters exposed to oversexed, black, male teenagers, especially when they have to subsidize it through section 8's and welfare payments?
"so, the black people will have to have all their civil rigts upheld by the police. No municipal of state government can assign greater rights to specific groups of individuals."
We can reverse the Civil Rights Act and repeal the Equal Protection Clause.
The public sphere will be reduced to almost nothing.
This is according to the book Democracy: The God that Failed. It is written by a libertarian.
It sounds very libertarian all right.
Too bad libertarians are unaware that their own god, totalitarianism, has failed even worse. A lot of countries have tried letting a small unelected elite makes the rules for everyone - which is the libertarian wet-dream, after all. It tends not to work out well.
The point is that POPULAR vOTE CANNOT BE USED TO GRANT OR REMOvE INDIvIDUAL RIGHTS.
ThE US ConstTtutIon sAys oThErWise.
The majority can, if they wish, execute all left-handed people. Individual rights come from the majority, not from judges.
For the last time, freedom of association applies only to private life and not to PUBLIC life. You CANNOT have segregated STATE schools. The government represents the law, and the law states that everyone is equal before the law. Hence, segregation in public schools is illegal as well as the right to own slaves. Freedom of association applies to the PRIvATE but not PUBLIC spheres.
I agree that white people should have the right to create their own private schools and even towns and segregate themselves from blacks if they want to. I find that despicable, but I do think you have the right to PRIvATELY segregate yourself from other races if you want to.
I think people should have the right to do what there is good reason to believe will work best. In other words, empiricism over bs feel good theorizing that either fails in the real world or is else self-evidently suboptimal. Sure, people like you might burst a few veins over it, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a winner with the masses, particularly when you consider the astonishingly minimal harm any of it would do (not that you'd know that by what it's opponents claim). Anyway, surely at some point racial reality has to intrude in public life...doesn't it?
What if the majority decided to reinstate segregation? What if the majority decided that atheists must be burned at the stake? What is majorities decides that women should be forced into marriage and barred from all private and public jobs because of their gender? Are blacks not human?
Slavery was ended by the majority, you historically illiterate jackass.
Your desire for some power for "Good" which exists outside the people and serves to control them is what makes you a totalitarian.
Liar.
Nah, I believe him. I'd even bet he's already got plans to move to Detroit and start acreatin' wealth there and the blacks he couldn't possibly bear to be parted from.
"What if the majority decided to reinstate segregation? What if the majority decided that atheists must be burned at the stake? What is majorities decides that women should be forced into marriage and barred from all private and public jobs because of their gender? Are blacks not human? Are atheists not human? Are women not human?"
What if a minority demands that white men have to score higher than everyone else to get a civil service job? What if a minority demands that white men have to score higher to get into elite colleges? What if a minority determines that men will never get custody of their kids in a divorce, except in the rarest of cases? What if a minority demands special menus in public schools for some religions but bans Christmas carols? What if a minority demands that all men be smart enough to know that women are a numerical majority with voting rights?
"Race is important. Homosexuality not."
Gays will never band together to take the food out of your mouth or the roof from over your head- they'd like to but they don't have the numbers - NAMs soon will.
"Democracy is two wolves voting on what to have for lunch" Benjamin Franklin
A black wolf and a brown wolf.
Should have been:
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch" Benjamin Franklin
I'll chaulk the omission up to an unconscious anxiety about my place in the metaphor.
Gays (and their assorted allies) have been very clever in the way they have been able to FRAME the 'Gay marriage question'. They have been able to PRESENT it as a civil "rights" issue, to be supported by "moral" people and opposed by "bigoted" ones. Of course none of this is accurate and nobody ever imagined in 1964 that gay marriage had anything to do with civil rights. Just shows how a good marketing strategy can make all the difference in the world.
" Of course none of this is accurate and nobody ever imagined in 1964 that gay marriage had anything to do with civil rights. Just shows how a good marketing strategy can make all the difference in the world."
They didn't even think it applied to busing from what I have read.
Just like no one thought the Equal Protection Clause had anything to do with integration. Judges decided years later.
"Too bad libertarians are unaware that their own god, totalitarianism, has failed even worse."
The West is so free now right? People are jailed in England for tweeting something the powers that be don't like.
Govt is force and whites are now being forced to give up their societies.
In a libertarian society people are free to live and make their own rules locally. You can move to a town that suits you.
I really don't think gays are behind gay marriage. I mean women weren't the instigators of the "women's movement" and slaves didn't start the civil war. People without power cannot demand change. Period.
Those who run the media are the only ones with the power to push the gay agenda. If the media ignore it, it literally doesn't exist in public consciousness. Consider the obviously false equality crap. Everywhere at all times and in all places people have rejected the idea that people are fundamentally equal. No society, not even this one is actually organized that way. Liberals don't live as though they believe either. So we all know this stuff is bull.
Those who run the media can perpetuate the Big Lie, they just can't make it true.
Gays don't particularly want to marry and given the opportunity do not marry at any where near the rate that normal people do. Yet they divorce at a higher rate and have higher rates of infidelity. The fact that there is so little interest pretty well shows they don't really care about it. Those who control the media care because they are population control enthusiasts and their policies are extremely effective at lowering the birthrate.
If they were really smart they would export this crap to the 3rd world where folks live in squalor and are starving.
The principle of equality of rights and the sanctity of individual rights is the cornerstone of Western Civilization, and the hallmark of a civilized society.
Really? You think "Western Civilization" began in America in 1776, or maybe with the Magna Carta? That's funny enough, but to then go on to claim that that's when civilization itself began...
I am at the 99% earning bracket in America. So are many of my friends. We create jobs and wealth. If you get the kind of society you want, I am packing and leaving. And so will many of my friends.
What do you mean, the kind of society we want? You seem to be referring to a society in which gay marriage is not legally recognized. I hate to burst your bubble, kid, but that's exactly the kind of society you've been living in your entire life.
And yet, here you still are. Strange.
But you know, if it means that much to you, then by all means, leave. Maybe you could meet up with all those people who threatened to move to Canada if George Bush got re-elected in 2004. Start your own little expatriate community.
This whole debate is ridiculous, largely because of people like you who want to pretend that gays are somehow really being denied their rights. But there's absolutely no law in this country that says gay people can't buy a house, move in together, have a monogamous relationship, and act in every way as though they're married. You could even rent out a banquet hall and a couple of tuxes and have your own little marriage ceremony.
In fact, I know a few lesbian couples who have done exactly this, and the last I heard, the jackbooted thugs of the GOP hadn't kicked their doors down and ordered them to desist.
One of my gay co-workers has moved in with his little buddy, set up house, and even adopted a black kid, just like Sandra Bullock. Kid just entered middle school, and from all I've heard, seems pretty messed up. Having a bunch of your dads' random "friends" over to spend the night will probably do that do you. And now that the kid's old enough to know what they're doing together, well, you can't help but feel sorry for him.
But who cares about that? All that matters is that things are equal.
But do you know the funniest part about all this? We live in Illinois, which recognizes same-sex civil unions. These are exactly the same thing, from a legal standpoint, as a marriage, and yet, they haven't gotten one! In fact, none of the gay couples I know of has.
So you can't tell me that this has anything to do with having the same legal rights as anyone else, because once those are offered, most of them don't even take us up on the offer.
But we knew this was going to happen. The gay activists told us when they were talking about the civil union law that it wouldn't be enough to satisfy them. All that really matters to them is the symbolism of the thing. They just want to be told that they're normal and just like everyone else.
Well, they're not. And even if they were, you don't have any kind of right, under any code of ethics I'm aware of, to have your behavior approved of by everyone around you.
So part of the reason people are against gay marriage is just that they can see how utterly childish and stupid the reasoning for it is. When you have something that is legally identical to a marriage, but just isn't called "marriage", and that STILL doesn't satisfy you, you are just being a child.
It's like, if there was a guy in a wheelchair, and he wanted to call his wheelchair his "legs", then I suppose that's his right, and I probably wouldn't try to stop him. But I don't see what right he has to get pissed off at the rest of us for not playing along.
This doesn't mean I hate his wheelchair, or live in some kind of superstitious fear of it. It could be a perfectly nice wheelchair for all I know. It's just not his legs, so I'm not going to call it that.
Now, if our wheelchair guy was a reasonable, intelligent adult, he would understand this and quit pestering me about what I called his wheelchair and move on with his life.
But if he was anything like a gay activist, he would scream and throw hissy fits and call me a bigot and demand that I call it his "legs".
And honestly? The more he did that, the less likely I would be to want to humor him. Simply because I don't think that giving in to childish temper tantrums is such a good idea.
But anyway. There are all kinds of good reasons to turn your back on this country, but if you're willing to ditch it over something completely symbolic, that doesn't even REALLY matter to the people who are affected by it, then I don't mind telling you that we'll be better off without you. So leave.
Gays (and their assorted allies) have been very clever in the way they have been able to FRAME the 'Gay marriage question'.
Nah. They and their allies have been very clever in taking over the media. After that, clever counts for jack shit.
@jody 3:28PM
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/ would like to have a word with you.
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/forumdisplay.php?15-X-Books would like to talk to you as well.
At $3-4 a copy, comic books are too expensive for the average young reader. In order to keep up with whatever narrative is being spun by DC or Marvel, the average reader would have to buy between 12-20 books a week ($36-80 a week, averaging about $54 for any non-fanatic collector.)
For that amount of money, a child could buy a used video game and his or her fill of snack food on a weekly basis. Children don't buy comics (at a rate that would keep the business profitable), adults do. So, the comics industry pumps out what the buyers want: hyper-violence and anatomically impossible women for the guys, liberal amounts of subversive sex for the girls. And creators who don't toe the line (Dave Sim, John Byrne, etc.), are thrust aside for people who will.
I know I'm a fanboy, but who can resist sharing such an insight.
"The propaganda of perversion is forever reminding us that homosexual acts occur even in the animal kingdom. It neglects to mention, however, that these are very rare, and even then they are performed for simple relief or to assert dominance. Monogamy also occurs among many higher species of animals, but they never mate permanently with their own sex. Nature is trying to tell us something."
- Joe Sobran
That one's position on gay marriage is a proxy for "moral authority" is true for liberals, but it's also true that liberals sincerely believe withholding legal rights from same-sex couples is morally repugnant. That is, gay marriage is not merely symbolic, as is, say, voting for a black president.
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