What Do Cultural Traditionalists Offer LGBT People And Abused Women?

There’s a teapot tempest going on over this Washington Post column.

I basically agree with Conor Friedersdorf when he says “There Probably Isn’t Any Neutral Way to Report on Homosexuality.” A person who complains that the Washington Post’s “Date Lab” – a fluffy blind-date series that almost never includes lesbian or gay couples – is biased towards gays, is a person who objects to same-sex couples ever being presented in a neutral light. (How is the Post supposed to “balance” a “Date Lab” article, anyway – should the reporter alternate describing the date with quotes from John Piper on how gay marriage means America has lost its soul?)

But I thought “Nathan” in the comments of Rod Dreher’s blog, made a good point (I’ve added paragraph breaks and corrected typos):

And while we’re on the topic of biased accounts of marriage (and sex), it’s worth noting the traditionalists’ own biases. There is a tendency for traditionalists to paint the modern conception of marriage as motivated largely by individualism and hedonism run amok. America got rich and then America got immoral. And there is, to be fair, some of that. People do like that they can indulge their sexual peccadilloes (or perversions, as some traditionalists would have it) so long as they can find a consenting partner.

But it is not as if the traditionalist conception of marriage was never tried. It was tried and abandoned. And it was abandoned, in large part, not for reasons of hedonism but as a response (and admittedly, perhaps an overreaction) to genuine injustices abetted by the traditionalist understanding of marriage. Arranged marriages resulted in poor pairings or marriages for the wrong reasons. The unavailability of divorce resulted in much mistreatment of women. Homosexuals suffered grinding persecution. These are not small problems.

It is not clear to me, for example, how you safeguard against the abuse of women in bad marriages in the absence of permissive divorce laws. Nor is it clear to me what sorts of lives homosexuals can have in a resurgent traditionalist society. The modern conception of marriage is the answer to a set of questions. What are we to do with someone trapped in a marriage not of her own choosing? What are we to say to a woman who is badly mistreated by her husband? What are we to do with homosexuals? If traditionalism is to have any chance in the marriage debate, it has to compete with the modern conception. It has to answer these questions more compellingly than the modern conception does.

It’s not clear to me that traditionalists have met that burden. And if they don’t, then the victory of the modern conception is justified, is it not?

To that last question, I suspect that many cultural traditionalists would say “no.” I think many cultural traditionalists are simply indifferent to the fate of lgbt people, and don’t see anything wrong with that indifference. It’s not that they lie awake in bed shaking clenched fists in the air and going “grrr, grrr, gays, how I hates them!” in the manner of Gollum hating Baggins. It’s that as long as they get what they want – in this case, no legal recognition for same-sex marriages – they genuinely aren’t interested in what that does to lgbt people.

In their eyes, this indifference makes them neutral. In my eyes, it means they’re prejudiced against lgbt people. Prejudice isn’t only overt hostility; refusing to treat the interests of lgbt people as fully legitimate and equally important is also a form of prejudice.

Similarly, sexism doesn’t require someone to overtly hate women (or to overtly hate men). I’m sure that most traditionalists love and hold dear many women in their lives. That doesn’t change that permissive divorce laws give abused women a better shot at leaving bad marriages, and getting rid of permissive divorce laws will be harmful to those same women. And indifference to this outcome isn’t something I can sign on to.

I think of myself as pro-marriage. I want marriage to be stronger. I’m convinced by the evidence I’ve read that many people want but can’t find happy marriages; that marriage makes many people happier and healthier; and that for many people, marriage is a good way to form a family (including raising children). We’d be better off if fewer people decided they’d be better off divorced.

But I’m not and will never be indifferent to what’s best for lgbt people, and for abused women. If being pro-marriage means accepting laws that hurt those folks, then I can’t be pro-marriage. And I’m not alone in that view.

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45 Responses to What Do Cultural Traditionalists Offer LGBT People And Abused Women?

  1. 1
    Gunnar Tveiten says:

    It’s absurd to say I’m “anti-marriage”, to the contraty, I’m married myself, and I want more people to get to enjoy the many benefits of marriage. “people” however include lesbian and gay people, not just a subset of people.

    I think easier divorces do strengthen marriage. When a couple in a culture where it’s legally and socially acceptable to divorce, nevertheless stays together, this says a lot. It’s a pretty good indication that these marriages work well. When my Iranian friend has parents who stay together despite having had separate bedrooms for 2 decades, and never exchanging two sentences with eachother, this hurts marriage — because that sort of marriage is meaningless, it’s no marriage at all in my mind, but instead a mere upholding of appearances.

    Pretending to be something you’re not, doesn’t help. And a culture and legal environment that demands that you pretend, is not a healthy one and not good for marriage.

  2. 2
    Grace Annam says:

    Ampersand:

    It’s not that they lie awake in bed shaking clenched fists in the air and going “grrr, grrr, gays, how I hates them!”

    I actually do know a person, a co-worker, who is reported to have said, out of nowhere, non-ironically, “God, I hate gays.” Another co-worker, who was working nearby, looked up for the cause of this comment, saw nothing, and thought, “Dude. Really? Where the hell did that come from?”

    This is the same co-worker (the first one, above) who once earnestly explained to me that he has nothing against gay people, he has an uncle who is gay, it’s just that his church teaches that “that lifestyle” is sinful. At the time, he did not know that he was speaking to a lesbian; I had simply taken him aside to point out that some of the things he was saying were offensive to me and I’d like him not to say them around me.

    Now he knows, of course, but he has declined to discuss anything relating to my transition and is treating me professionally, at least to my face.

    One anecdatum, for whatever it’s worth.

    Grace

  3. 3
    Ampersand says:

    Grace:

    I didn’t mean to imply that there aren’t some straight-out haters among who are part of the anti-SSM rainbow. Of course, there are. I just meant to say that many people who oppose SSM, aren’t going around saying things like “God, I hate gays.” They’re just indifferent.

    Not that indifference is okay. There’s a reason the phrase “depraved indifference” exists.

  4. 4
    Grace Annam says:

    Oh, I didn’t take it that way, Amp. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to give that impression. I was just musing.

    Grace

  5. 5
    Robert says:

    I agree with much of what you say here.

    First, a nitpick: being indifferent towards someone is not prejudice. It might be bigotry, might be cruel, might be a sign that you’re a fucking evil monster who should be fed to dogs – but prejudice means prejudging, determining your views on someone without reference to anything about that person other than a label. You can be prejudiced but not bigoted (“Johnny had always thought that Jews must be good cartoonists, but when he got to knew Amp he realized that there was just as much variation there as among normal Americans, because Amp was truly godawful.”) and you can be bigoted without being prejudiced (“Every time Johnny met another cartoonist, he reveled in the discovery of the unique and personal ways he could find to totally hate those guys.”)

    I think there is one possible argument for the traditionalist view (which, ironically, I don’t hold anymore.) You say:

    “That doesn’t change that permissive divorce laws give abused women a better shot at leaving bad marriages, and getting rid of permissive divorce laws will be harmful to those same women. And indifference to this outcome isn’t something I can sign on to.”

    But this is a bit like early cancer detection and testing – yes, if you identify the group of people who are being helped by an earlier diagnosis, stop your analysis there, and cast a balance sheet, the early detection is saving lives! But depending on the cancer and the population, the early screening may end up netting negative lives saved. (If you have 100 false positives for every early negative that you catch and save, but 2% of the false positives get unneeded treatment that ends up killing them, you’re adding to the death rate, not reducing it.)

    In other words, you have to analyze the harms on all fronts. It is likely that at least to some extent, permissive divorce laws incent some people who are *not* being abused to terminate marriages that were OK, and incent some people who had bad (though non-abusive) marriages that could have been worked on and turned into OK or good or great marriages. In addition, there is collateral damage to children from divorce; there are some marriages where the abuse is so severe that any kind of divorce or separation will end up being a net good for the children, but there are undoubtedly other levels where mom or dad is miserable, but the kids are doing ok or at least better than they would be doing post-divorce. Note I am NOT saying ‘people should stick it out even if they’re being abused’ – just noting that in the calculation of the total harms to parties, the people who DO do that exist, and need to be counted.

    Once these possibilities are on the table, it isn’t hard to see how a strict divorce regimen COULD end up causing less harm overall. It’s going to be contingent on what the laws actually are and what behaviors they genuinely incentivize, and probably different for every population.

    But just to illustrate how it could happen, simply and ignoring a lot of the finer breakouts that could be done:

    We have 100 married couples with an average of 2 children apiece. 80 of the marriages are OK or better. 10 are mildly abusive; one partner is not happy and feels ill-used, but they waver about whether the abuse is awful enough to justify a divorce. 10 are strongly abusive; the abused partner is in hell.

    Restrictive divorce law: 10% of strongly abused and mildly abusive couples get divorced; it’s just so hard and expensive and embarassing. 5% of non-abused couples divorce, because they’re idiots or someone misunderstands a Valentine’s Day joke card or some similar BS reason.

    Permissive divorce law: 80% of strongly abused, 50% of mildly abused, and 20% of non-abused couples divorce.

    Assessing harm, let’s say that someone who is definitely being abused and has to live with it suffers one unit of pain. Someone who is maybe-kinda being abused suffers 0.5 units of pain. Someone who is divorced by their partner suffers 0.25 units of pain. Children who go through a divorce suffer 0.15 units of pain. We do not count the pain of definite-abusers who are divorced, because they deserve it. We assume that people who initiate the divorce are at least neutral with the decision and we don’t count their pain either.

    Under the restrictive law, the harm is: 9 strongly abusive couples don’t divorce so 9 units, 9 modestly abusive couples don’t divorce so 4.5 units, 1 modestly-abusive person is divorced so 0.25 units, 4 non-abusive persons are divorced so 1 unit, 12 kids undergo divorce so 1.8 units. Total harm, 16.55 harms.

    Under the permissive law, the harm is: 2 SA couples don’t divorce (2), 2 MA couples don’t divorce (1), 8 MA persons are divorced (2), 16 non-abusive persons are divorced (4), 58 children undergo divorce (8.7). Total harm, 17.7 harms.

    Of course I recognize that this is not a strong model of reality and I don’t assert any of the relative weights or measurements as being objectively right; the point isn’t ‘traditional marriage law is better’, the point is ‘it is possible that traditional marriage law does less harm overall’. And from a societal perspective, I think it is at least possible that the cure might be worse than the disease. That is little comfort to someone suffering in a bad marriage, but “some other mommy or daddy who you don’t know is happier now” isn’t much comfort to a kid who hates the fact that their own family has disintegrated.

  6. 6
    blue duck says:

    I read blogs by ex-quiverfull, ex-patriarchy, ex-dominionist writers (such as Nolongerquivering and lovejoyfeminism, both at patheos.com) and “traditionalists” influenced by these theologies would be, at best, indifferent to women in abusive marriages. In their view, if women are always submissive to their husbands and are Christian, husbands will stop abusing them. So, once again, it is always the victim’s fault and divorce is frowned upon in these movements.

  7. 7
    mythago says:

    In other words, you have to analyze the harms on all fronts.

    Indeed, you do, and that’s what cultural traditionalists aren’t doing. Nathan’s point is that “traditional” marriage was abandoned because of certain harms. If cultural traditionalists are saying that modern marriage should change because it causes other harms, they need to explain how that change will not just put us back at square one, so to speak.

    Some ‘traditionalists’ believe that their changes will alleviate or at least somewhat minimize those harms – lessening divorce requirements for abuse victims, for example, or allowing civil unions for same-sex couples. Some believe that those harms are an acceptable trade-off (yes, it’s harder for abused women to get out, but that’s a small price to pay for making sure more low-conflict couples stay together). Some are indifferent to the harm (who cares about gays)?, as Amp points out.

    I think Amp is conflating some things here; cultural conservatives are much more sympathetic to abused women than to LGBTs, even if their offered solutions are ineffectual or useless.

    It’s also worth noting, I think, that cultural conservatives seem to have a very strange view that any social practice they dislike is “too easy” and that people can obtain it with too little thought, too quickly.

  8. 8
    chomiji says:

    Mythago

    It’s that old Puritan tradition at work. Life should be hard work, aided by love of a traditional God, with the eye on the reward of Heaven at all times. The pleasures of this life are fleeting. Things that make us happy on the sensual level are always suspect, and the fact that those things are easy to like is just another of the Devil’s wiles.

    I should note that I’ve known atheists who run their lives work on essentially the same model, minus God. They always promote taking the tougher path. It’s not enough to read for pleasure: one must read challenging works to improve the mind. It’s not enough to take the daily walk that sustains one’s health: one should be training for a race, preferably a marathon. And so on. It’s a big part of our culture in the U.S., I think.

  9. 9
    Ampersand says:

    Robert:

    First, a nitpick: being indifferent towards someone is not prejudice. It might be bigotry, might be cruel, might be a sign that you’re a fucking evil monster who should be fed to dogs – but prejudice means prejudging, determining your views on someone without reference to anything about that person other than a label.

    I agree. I would have preferred to use the word “bigotry” or “homophobia,” but my experience with those words is that many opponents of SSM will only want to discuss how it’s horrible and “silencing” of me to use words like “bigotry” and “homophobia,” if I use those words. (I wrote about that here.)

    Mythago:

    In other words, you have to analyze the harms on all fronts.

    Indeed, you do, and that’s what cultural traditionalists aren’t doing.

    Thank you! Well said.

    I think Amp is conflating some things here; cultural conservatives are much more sympathetic to abused women than to LGBTs, even if their offered solutions are ineffectual or useless.

    That’s a fair point.

    It’s also worth noting, I think, that cultural conservatives seem to have a very strange view that any social practice they dislike is “too easy” and that people can obtain it with too little thought, too quickly.

    I always find this strange when it comes to divorce. I don’t doubt that there are a few people out there who found divorce quick and easy, but as far as I can tell, that is not typical. Everyone I know who has gotten a divorce has found it to be a horrible and drawn-out experience.

  10. 10
    Kai Jones says:

    Divorce is like abortions: other people’s are too easy, mine is necessary.

  11. 11
    Robert says:

    Some people do think that divorce is a great solution for relatively trivial ills, but that’s because they haven’t lived through one.

    I bet that attitudes shift after a divorce; whatever component of “divorce, what a lovely idea to solve all my problems” that did exist, vaporizes. Hard to test it, though; can’t really just compare divorce rates in first marriages with divorce rates in second, because maybe (probably) the divorced-once population has a higher frequency of people who are bad at relationships, people with toxic personality problems, etc.

    Prospectively, though, divorce represents future pain while the problems in the current marriage are usually happening here-and-now. That’s a bad calculation to ask a monkey brain to resolve; we’d like the banana now, please, never mind tomorrow.

  12. 12
    RonF says:

    Hm. So what’s a “cultural traditionalist”? Does it mean someone who belongs to a specific kind of group – which is what I presume “ex-quiverfull, ex-patriarchy, ex-dominionist” refers to? Does it also apply to people of specific religious backgrounds (say, fundamentalist Islam or Christian) but doesn’t belong to those groups? Does it apply to someone who doesn’t belong to any such group or religious tradition but who thinks that current attitudes towards, say, having children without getting married to the child’s parent is a real bad idea and ill serves society? This discussion is about a group that I don’t think is particularly well defined.

    Or – am I wrong, and there IS in fact a definition of this term generally accepted among feminists, etc.?

  13. 13
    Myca says:

    I’d say that “cultural traditionalist,” like “conservatives,” “liberals,” and “tall people” is a fairly broadly defined or ill defined group that nonetheless has plenty in common that it makes sense to discuss.

    I think ‘cultural traditionalist,’ in this context, anyway, would encompass things like opposition to homosexuality, opposition to SSM, a belief in the importance of traditional gender roles, opposition to easier-to-obtain divorces, etc.

    It might encompass other things in other contexts. “Tall” also means something different in the NBA than it does in discussions of members of my family.

    —Myca

  14. 14
    RonF says:

    Hm. Well, if two people of the same sex want to have sex together it’s a private matter. Ask society to grant a relationship between two people of the same sex the same status as that of a heterosexual relationship (of a particular kind) and now you’ve made it a public matter, and I oppose that for various reasons that have been hashed over time and time again here. I think that if a husband wants to stay home and raise the kids while the wife goes out and works to support the family, or if a woman wants to stay single (or married and childless) it’s none of my business either – or by “traditional gender roles” are you talking about transgender people? Which is a whole ‘nother discussion that frankly I have no particlarly well-thought-out positions on. On here I guess that makes me a cultural traditionalist. In the context of other people I know that makes me middle of the road. A few figure I’m a heretic.

    Like you say – most people would call me a “tall person” at 6’ 2″; but not in the NBA ….

  15. 15
    RonF says:

    Off thread, but somewhat germane –

    I was at a Scouting meeting last night of some fairly experienced Scouters whose duties include working at the Area, Regional and National level. People who have been in the movement as adults longer than my paltry 20 years (at the Council dinner last Thursday night there were two people who had been in 62 years). I got into a discussion of the issue of the day with one who I know quite well. He said he’d heard from the National Order of the Arrow Lodge Chief and the National Venturing President. These would be two young people (the OA one definitely male, the Venturing one possibly or even likely female) who are VERY active in Scouting and have been for a while. He said that they were asked about the issue and responded that they basically didn’t see any big deal with having gay kids in Scouting.

    Which sounds good from their viewpoint – but you have to understand their viewpoint. The OA members that the National Chief is going to be working with are Scouts that are at least 15 years old. The Venturing President would be in the same position. Neither one has the viewpoint of having to worry about the security of a gay 12-year old or 13-year old on a campout. Neither one has to deal with parents. Neither one has to think about what happens if a quarter or a third or more of the membership leaves.

    My friend – who has no vote at National – said that if he did he’d vote for changing the policy. But, again, he does little work at the unit level, he works at the Area and Regional level, mostly with other Scouters who also do not work at the unit level (e.g., they don’t work much directly with kids). I told him I would not vote for the policy change. Not because I have moral issues with gay kids in Scouting, but because I think some gay kids are going to be beat up or killed and I don’t see how I can secure against that.

    There’s no telling how this is going to go. There are blogs (reserved to registered Scouters) where discussions are going on. People have strong feelings both ways. The decision will be made in broad daylight, though, not in a board room. I think there’s about 1500 people eligible to vote. This is going to be the best attended National Council meeting in a long time, I’ll wager.

  16. 16
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Regarding the question of whether it’s correct to identify indifference as prejudice, it’s worth thinking about the question from the opposite perspective. The people who simply do not care about homosexuals may not seem to be prejudiced against them – simply not caring about someone is not a prejudice – but I think it’s quite clear that they are prejudiced in favour of heterosexuals. After all, they do care about what happens to heterosexual marriage; that is the motivation behind the argumentation for maintaining traditions.

    The world isn’t just divided into pro-SSM people and people prejudiced against homosexuals. There’s a third group – the group of people who genuinely don’t care about anyone’s marriage. If someone tells me they don’t support SSM because they oppose all marriage, or if someone says “I can’t be bothered to care about this because marriage as a concept is meaningless to me and I don’t care who is allowed to be married”, that’s unbiased indifference. But saying/thinking “I’m indifferent to one group’s needs and desires but not indifferent towards the other” is a type of prejudice.

  17. 17
    Another Alex says:

    But it is not as if the traditionalist conception of marriage was never tried. It was tried and abandoned. And it was abandoned, in large part… to genuine injustices abetted by the traditionalist understanding of marriage… The unavailability of divorce resulted in much mistreatment of women.

    Is that really true? The stuff I read says that no fault divorce was pushed through by lawyers mainly as a technocratic solution to people having to perjure themselves to get a divorce; rather than from outraged at batter wives. (i.e. If anything the worry was that women who were well-treated were having to falsely claim ‘cruelty’ to divorce, rather than being mistreated and unable to escape).

  18. 18
    AMM says:

    @17

    And it was abandoned, in large part… to genuine injustices abetted by the traditionalist understanding of marriage… The unavailability of divorce resulted in much mistreatment of women.

    The stuff I read says that no fault divorce was pushed through by lawyers mainly as a technocratic solution to people having to perjure themselves to get a divorce; rather than from outraged at batter[ed] wives.

    I think you need to find less biased sources. And you need to understand the point the OP was making.

    First of all, the source of no-fault:

    The main push for no-fault, in its various forms, came from people, both lawyers and non-lawyers, who saw how the necessity to prove fault was simply adding to the cost and rancor of divorce with no benefit whatsoever to anyone. Having to prove fault was definitely not preserving any marriages, but it was making it a lot harder for the exes to deal with one another in the future.

    But I don’t think no-fault was the main thing the OP was talking about. Much more relevant to allowing women to escape mistreatment is the fact that society now offers a lot more options to women outside of marriage. I don’t think it was the difficulty of getting divorced that trapped women in marriages so much as the absence of any way to make a living or finding a place in society if they left.

    In fact, I think it is this change — that women are no longer compelled to attach themselves and submit to a man simply in order to survive — more than anything else that supporters of “traditional marriage” resent.

  19. 19
    AMM says:

    Re: whether indifference is “neutral.”

    If you see abuse or oppression going on, and are indifferent to it, you are not being neutral, you are tacitly supporting that abuse/oppression.

  20. 20
    Robert says:

    Depends on your level of power in the society, and your discretionary control over your free time. Bill Gates is tacitly supportive; some poor gal or dude working three shifts trying to keep the rent from being too many days past due, juggling the electric bill with the kids’ medicine, not so much.

  21. 21
    KellyK says:

    My friend – who has no vote at National – said that if he did he’d vote for changing the policy. But, again, he does little work at the unit level, he works at the Area and Regional level, mostly with other Scouters who also do not work at the unit level (e.g., they don’t work much directly with kids). I told him I would not vote for the policy change. Not because I have moral issues with gay kids in Scouting, but because I think some gay kids are going to be beat up or killed and I don’t see how I can secure against that.

    I’m glad you are concerned about this, and I think it’s a hugely important thing to be concerned about. But the thing I don’t get is how you’re going to secure against it *right now.* Closeted gay kids, kids who view themselves as having sinful same-sex attractions that they’re praying to get rid of, and kids who aren’t gay but are perceived as gay are all allowed to be in Scouts, and they’re all still targets of bullying.

  22. 22
    mythago says:

    @Another Alex, you’re conflating a few things in that comment. The ‘traditionalist’ concept of marriage is not simply about no-fault divorce, but about coverture and tolerating things like abuse and adultery in the name of saving the marriage.

  23. 23
    RonF says:

    Kids who are closeted gays are much less likely to get bullied or worse than an openly gay kid would. Kids who are perceived to be gay (regardless of whether they are or not) get picked on some but we can usually control that – or they leave Scouting. There’s one kid in my Troop right now who fits that category, I suspect. Kids who feel a same-sex attraction and are praying for it to go away? I’ve never heard of any kid doing that to the point that anyone else was aware of it.

    A kid who is openly gay will attract a lot more attention in that regard. And what I’m worried the most about is if he would make a pass at another kid, and said second kid overreacts. I was that second kid once. I didn’t overreact, but from what I’ve seen in the last 20 years that’s not something to count on.

    A lot of it would depend on a) the stage of the kids’ sexual self-awareness and b) the state of his relationship with his fellow Scouts. A kid at 16 who’s at terms with what he perceives as his sexual orientation and who is in a Troop with a bunch of kids who know him outside of Scouting as well is unlikely to have an issue. A kid who is 13 and is not at all at terms with his sexual orientation and who is not known well to the other kids in the unit (say he’s from another school or is home-schooled) could end up in big trouble.

  24. 24
    Myca says:

    I told him I would not vote for the policy change. Not because I have moral issues with gay kids in Scouting, but because I think some gay kids are going to be beat up or killed and I don’t see how I can secure against that.

    I’ve run a youth organization with straight, bi, and gay kids of various genders for more than a few years now. We’ve gone on weekend retreats and overnight campouts regularly, and this has never been a problem.

    Of course, my organization isn’t institutionally homophobic, so I guess we’ve taught our kids that that kind of bullying isn’t acceptable. Your mileage may vary.

    —Myca

  25. 25
    Robert says:

    Or they aren’t telling you.

  26. 26
    mythago says:

    So, RonF’s point is that while the BSA can teach a young man all kinds of amazing and useful skills and build great character, the one thing it can’t teach him to do is to avoid gay-bashing? And the proof of this is that decades ago, RonF would have freaked out if a guy hit on him?

    If this is supposed to persuade me that Mr. Mythago’s decision to end the family tradition of Scouting with our son was perhaps too hasty, it ain’t workin’.

  27. 27
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Not because I have moral issues with gay kids in Scouting, but because I think some gay kids are going to be beat up or killed and I don’t see how I can secure against that.

    Did you seriously say that? You don’t think that you can protect your own troops from BEING KILLED? And you think that is the fault of someone else? WTF?

    Or is it an (unjustified) belief that “I’m gonna beat your head because you admit you’re gay” bullying is somehow fundamentally different from all of the other “I’m gonna beat your head” reasons, ranging from “…I think you’re smart” to “I think you’re fat” to “…I don’t think you’re gay but I’m just an asshole?”

    I mean hell, I was never gay. But I got beat up once anyway.

    Either you protect against bullying or you don’t. Full stop. Gay bullying isn’t different from any other kind, other than it apparently skeeves you out.

  28. 28
    Robert says:

    G&W – Ron is saying he cannot prevent it absolutely. Undoubtedly he or other leaders could mitigate it, educate against it, strive for perfectibility. But it is, or ought to be, evident to everyone who has dealt with the species, that teenaged children are not morally perfectible.

    The ‘you dare blame others for your failure to protect’ outrage is similarly obtuse. Hey, kids died in your city, preventably in many cases. I have no doubt that you and other decent adults in the community have done all that was conveniently possible and much that was possible only at great inconvenience to safeguard childrens’ lives.

    But kids still died. I could assume that your blithe tolerance for, and blame-shifting of, youth mortality cones from you hating the youths and wanting them to suffer. Or I could assume that, even after people put their best effort forward to reduce a pervasive problem, something survived of the problem that continued to pose dangers.

    Either way it goes without saying, G&W that as one of the people society tasked with the seeking of justice and the protection of children, you would be claiming primary fault in each remaining child death, right?

  29. 29
    mythago says:

    @Robert: RonF cannot “absolutely” prevent any kind of bullying. As g&w pointed out, RonF can’t “absolutely” protect the boys from beating up on the fat kid, or a bunch of Christian scouts from beating up on the one Muslim kid, or….. And yet, I find it difficult to believe that RonF would ever say that he disapproves of allowing fat boys to join Scouting, or Muslim boys to join a predominantly Christian troop, because golly gee, it’s for their own good.

  30. 30
    Robert says:

    Is there a lengthy history of fat or Muslim kids, in large numbers, being bullied to the point of death by their peers? Because, “golly gee”, there is such a history for gay boys, teens, and men. I don’t think Ron is concern trolling here. I DO think he overestimates the danger, though not by much, because cultural trends are defusing, slowly, the pathologies that teach, valorize, or trigger such bullying.

  31. 31
    mythago says:

    While I would be willing to bet there is a lengthy history of fat kids being bullied to the point of death, and there’s certainly a lengthy history of, for example, Jewish kids being bullied physically and mentally because of their faith, you’re trying to change the subject. What RonF is saying is that if he cannot prevent a type of bullying “absolutely”, then it is appropriate to excuse the possibly-bullied as a group from Scouting. And let’s be clear – he is not talking about verbal harassment or snubs, he is talking about violence and murder, and saying that he “cannot absolutely” prevent the boys in his charge from engaging in such acts towards gays. He can, apparently, prevent his Scouts from beating up the fat kid a la Full Metal Jacket, or prevent them from killing a boy who is actually heterosexual but who some of his peers mistakenly think is gay, because RonF is not saying that fat kids or “effeminate” straight kids ought as a group to be banned from Scouting.

    And the “absolutely prevent” standard is very strange, given that it is mysteriously unnecessary in any other aspect of Scouting. BSA does not claim that it can “absolutely prevent” any injuries on a camping trip. BSA does not refuse to allow Scouts to go on hikes because it cannot “absolutely prevent” deaths.

  32. 32
    Robert says:

    It’s not the BSA standard, it’s Ron’s proffered rationale – I have no doubt of its sincerity – for his own vote. Ron didn’t make the world; he doesn’t feel responsible for ills that have existed since the dawn of time. But if one makes a policy change and is a responsible person, then if harms come from that change, one is going to feel guilty, or at least have some sleepless nights staring at the ceiling. I would not vote the same way he plans to vote, but I can certainly understand the position of someone who would. If I know that 50% of the people in my town would kill a lawyer on sight, I’d think twice before sending lawyers an invitation to visit. (I’d want to make sure they arrived on a day when the haters were having a convention, at the airport.)

    No, it isn’t fair to the gay kids to be excluded because some others don’t like them; on the other hand, I’ve been privy to the lives of teenage boys (as has Ron) in a way that, unless you’ve had a more interesting life than you’ve disclosed, you almost certainly have not. And they’re vicious little fuckers, or can be, even the ones that more mature adults are attempting to straighten out and train into adulthood. That’s a hard and slow process; I can totally comprehend why one of those adults might shy away from pouring some gasoline onto the fire in the form of a group of identifiably different boys who a lot of acculturation tells the other boys to beat the shit out of.

    I’d be a little leery of the Islamic boys myself, unless I knew my troop. The fat kids, I know, would still come in for a lot of ragging but that usually falls well short of lethal, at least in the short run. I’d certainly want some discretion as a troop leader. That’s one consolation, Ron – I hope that the responsible adult leaders in troops where the danger would be highest, are wise enough to use discretion in their choices. (I also hope we don’t end up with a de facto segregation where one troop in an area is the designated gay troop, through overuse of that discretion. Although I’d rather see segregation than dead boys.)

  33. 33
    RonF says:

    Fat kids, small kids and other such get bullied in and out of Scouting. I happen to think we do a better job of controlling it inside Scouting than schools, etc. do out of Scouting. We don’t absolutely prevent it, but then a) I made no such claim (and arguing against my position on that basis is a “straw man” argument) and b) I don’t think anyone expects that is a reasonable standard. But my observation is that there’s pretty much a limit on it. Sometimes it can be physical, but the vast majority of it is verbal/emotional. In 20 years I’ve seen surprisingly few punches thrown among the kids, and only twice where a physical confrontation involved anything beyond fists. I’m not a child psychologist, but it seems to me that a lot of it is jostling for status – if that kid is on the bottom of the totem pole, then I’m not. Obviously an effeminate kid or a gay kid would be subject to this kind of thing as well. On that basis there’s no particular reason to worry more about a gay kid being threatened than a fat kid or a small kid.

    But despite assertions above there’s obviously a difference between a gay kid and all the others – that’s the element of sex. That has an entirely different emotional impact. This is something unique that doesn’t apply to other kids who might be bullied for one reason or another. A fat kid attempting to establish a relationship with another kid may be rejected by that other kid, but the other kid is not going to think that the rest of the group will suspect him of being fat. He’s not going to worry about what other kids will think of what goes on at night if he and the fat kid are tentmates. And there’s not going to be an issue of the fat kid mistaking the non-fat kid being nice to him as indicative of a different kind of feeling and attempt to return that only to find he’s wrong – and have the subject of his attention overreact violently.

    I see the last scenario as being realistic on the basis that it happened to me when I was a Scout. One of my fellow staff members entered my cabin one day when we were both off duty and there was no one else in the campsite, told me how much he liked me, made a comment about my physical appearance and the knelt down in front of me and offered to perform fellatio on me. I handled it in a non-violent and if I dare say so myself mature fashion. But from what I’ve seen it would be irresponsible to think I could count on that in the present day. Like it or not, the foundation of the kids’ reaction towards a gay kid != their reaction towards a fat kid or a weak kid or an irritating/immature kid, and neither are the reasonably expectable consequences.

  34. 34
    RonF says:

    A few individual comments:

    Robert, I don’t plan to vote because I don’t have a vote in the matter. I have not achieved such a lofty status in Scouting as to be a member of National Council.

    Mythago, I do have kids in my Troop with a Muslim father. He has accompanied us on campouts so the kids know a) he’s Muslim and b) those are his kids – 3 out of 4 of which kids have been elected Senior Patrol Leader each in their turn. I have no sense whatsoever that there would be an issue of a kid who was a practicing Muslim in the Troop. We’ve had a Hindu kid – that was a trip. In front of his parents he was all about being vegetarian, so we bought the tofu-based breakfast sausage, had peanut butter and jelly ready for lunch, etc. But once on the campout he woofed down pork sausage at breakfast and salami sandwiches at lunch, leaving the other kids to satisfy their curiosity about what the fake meat stuff tasted like. He ended up quitting when, to his dismay, he found he was going to have to take his turn cleaning up after dinner, etc.

    My Dad was a Cubmaster for about 4 years, a Scoutmaster for about 4 years and a professional Scouter for about 22 years. As part of his duties in the latter capacity he was often in charge of the Council’s summer camp for a season. Twice in his career he had to call a pair of parents and tell them that their son had died in camp. In one case I had previously spent a couple of weeks camping with the Troop and knew the young man who had died. I don’t ever want to have make that call.

  35. 35
    Ampersand says:

    It just seems ad hoc. The rational changes – once it was because gays were not “morally straight,” now it’s “can they be protected from bullying,” next it’s “what if the gay kid makes a pass at a bunkmate?” – but the conclusion always remains the same.

    By the way, at my summer sleepaway camp in the 1980s, I had a bunkmate that everyone knew was gay. He was popular – way more popular than me – and there was never any problem that I’ve heard of. Maybe that situation was unusual when I was a kid, but it’s sure not unusual now. There are thousands of summer camps – not to mention alternative Scout organizations – which happily admit openly gay kids, and somehow manage to solve the problems that Ron is saying cannot be solved.

    The Christian Right – and it is the Christian Right (plus the Mormon right, if you don’t count Mormons as Christian, which I do, but then again I’m Jewish so what do I know?) which is leading the cultural fight to keep the gays out of the Boy Scouts – is not a credible group when they talk about the well-being of gay boys. Even if we assume they mean well, they have a long track record of TERRIBLE judgement when it comes to what would be good for gay boys. These are the people who have opposed every policy that has actually helped gay boys (and lesbian girls, and bi girls and boys, and trans kids) for decades. There is absolutely no reason to trust that they have any idea what is or isn’t good for gay boys, because they have never once gotten it right in the past.

    Ron, with all due respect, the biggest thing the Scouts can do to help gay boys, help make bullying less likely, and help give boys the social skills they need to navigate romance as they get older, is to work to end the stigma. (The boy who hit on you probably would have had better social skills if he had grown up in a culture where being gay was treated as neither shameful nor remarkable).

    At the heart of everything horrible that people have done to hurt gay boys – the bullying, the gay bashing, the shaming – is stigma. The current Scouting policy maintains and encourages the stigma. Treating gay boys equally is a step towards reducing the stigma. If you genuinely want to make the world (including Scouts) better for gay boys, you should support ending the exclusion. It’s really that simple.

  36. 36
    marmalade says:

    It’s not as if the straight boys and the gay boys don’t know each other already. They’re in the same schools, after all. The gay kids already know that the lay of the land is dangerous and are learning how to navigate.

    By excluding openly gay kids from scouting you’re not separating gay and straight kids, you’re saying to the straight kids “yeah, we know there are gay boys, but wink, wink we’ve got a special clubhouse where they’re not allowed.” Which would seem to increase the threat to gay kids in day-to-day life and into the future. . . having a sub-set of adults affirm that those gay kids are not our kind of people rather, than set an example of inclusion.

    Of course, as it is, status-quo . . . interactions between openly gay and straight kids doesn’t happen on scouting time, so it’s not your problem.

  37. 37
    Robert says:

    Amp, it IS ad-hoc. Not every organization is going to implement every improvement in a sudden searing blaze of total illumination and comprehension of a new reality; some have to muddle through. In the case of scouting, giving the troops flexibility lets the pioneers and the better prepared go into the vanguard and, not incidentally, lay down a track record that less progressive troop leadership teams will be able to look at and will respect the commonality of. Yes, your hippie commie alt-scout troops have done fine. None (well, few) of the people who are concerned in BSA give a damn about how the hippie commies have done with it. “It’s different here.”

    Even if they’re wrong about it being different, the expense of forcing them to learn now-and-on-our-terms is huge compared with the expense of just letting them learn it at their own pace.

    I understand the impulse to improve all of civilized life in the direction of greater tolerance and brotherly love, and I certainly take to heart the admonishment of Dr. King about always wanting to go slow and let things go at their own pace (he was against it)…but sometimes going slow and letting things go at their own pace is the right option. Not always, maybe not even often, but sometimes. In this case, the BSA, with some outside pressure and rhetorical siege warfare, but mostly on its own hook and mostly motivated by the changing consciences of its adult members, is fumbling towards what you would see as the right way.

    Do you think that maybe they could be given a little breathing room on timing and method of implementation?

  38. 38
    Ampersand says:

    Robert, as I understand the issue, it’s the reformers who want to permit breathing room, and want to allow Boy Scout troops to individually decide their own policies. It’s the conservatives who want an absolute rule that gays are not allowed to be Scouts, regardless of what the individual troop wants to do. So I think you’ve entirely reversed the roles, here.

  39. 39
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Robert says:
    March 3, 2013 at 7:56 pm
    No, it isn’t fair to the gay kids to be excluded because some others don’t like them; on the other hand, I’ve been privy to the lives of teenage boys (as has Ron) in a way that, unless you’ve had a more interesting life than you’ve disclosed, you almost certainly have not.

    Have you been a gay teen lately?

    If you and RonF are going to pull the “expert, because I have a penis*” or “expert, because I an involved in scouting” angle, then I would expect you to be entirely persuaded by the “more expert than you, because I was/am a GAY SCOUT” statements from those who are really, truly, experts.

    Expert minds don’t disagree. You’re wrong.

    *Which I assume is your reference. In which case: Amp and I disagree, hmm?

  40. 40
    Myca says:

    No, it isn’t fair to the gay kids to be excluded because some others don’t like them; on the other hand, I’ve been privy to the lives of teenage boys (as has Ron) in a way that, unless you’ve had a more interesting life than you’ve disclosed, you almost certainly have not. And they’re vicious little fuckers, or can be, even the ones that more mature adults are attempting to straighten out and train into adulthood.

    Look, if you’re going to pull the “neener neener I have contact with teenagers” card here, you don’t get to dismiss those of us who have far more specific and relevant contact with mixed groups of teenagers.

    Not to mince words, but part of what makes large groups of teenage boys ‘vicious little fuckers’ is that they believe that adults … adults like you and Ron … will work to make sure the world conforms to their vicious fuckery. And they’re right.

    You’re a conservative, so you believe that human nature is irredeemably flawed. There’s something to this, certainly, but it’s also mighty handy at exempting you from all personal responsibility when it comes to teaching kids what’s acceptable and what’s not. “I dunno how junior turned out all racist! We kept him away from the blacks and everything! Sent him to an all-white school, put him in all-white clubs, taught him that black kids were unclean and morally crooked … no idea how he ended up racist. Must be something wrong with him, deep down.”

    Maybe members of my youth group are bullying and beating each other up for being gay and nobody is telling me and neither me nor any of the other advisers are noticing? Sure, I guess that’s a (weird, unlikely) possibility. Here’s another, more likely one: homophobic organizations normalize homophobia and turn out little homophobes. Organizations that put a lot of energy into teaching acceptance don’t.

    —Myca

  41. 41
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Sorry, Myca: didn’t mean to exclude you from the “experts who disagree” list ;)

  42. 42
    Robert says:

    Amp, you’re right about the identities of who is saying what; I took your comments to indicate that you thought it should be gays-allowed, across-the-board. Is that not what you think should happen? I guess I come down advocating for the liberal-within-BSA-position of allowing troops to use their judgement and set their own policy, as conscience dictates.

    Gin and Whiskey, I’m bisexual, though I don’t make it particularly public. And I was an Eagle Scout. And I have a teenage son. Buddy, I’ve had teenaged gay sex in a tent on a Scout trip. Have you? So if it’s a dick-measuring contest you want, mine is about a foot long and as big around as a beer can, in this particular arena of discussion. I don’t dismiss Myca’s statements, and I don’t find them implausible; I think gay kids belong in scouting (they’re already there, after all) and I think that gay and straight kids can get along just fine, in organizations that are prepared and have the right resources for the adults. The fact that I am not sure that every single troop in America is there yet, and the fact that I do think there is reason to be concerned for the safety of some boys in the present atmosphere, are nuances, not contradictions.

    I don’t dismiss Ron’s point of view, OR Myca’s. They both have valid inputs.

    Myca, you’re having an argument with the conservative in your head again, not with me. If you think it weirdly unlikely that *teenagers* might hide parts of their lives from you…well, good luck with that. I think it’s great that your youth group successfully helps kids get along despite their differences; we need more of that, not less. Pro tip: the differences that seem to send you into a frothing rage are persistent differences that are gonna continue to exist, so you might want to take a page from the kids, and learn to get along even with us ‘orrible bigots.

  43. 43
    RonF says:

    My position is my position, not National’s. I’ve never been of the opinion that gays are not moral enough to be either leaders or participants in Scouting. So that hasn’t changed. But as far as the Mormons are concerned – and the Roman Catholic Church, and the Lutherans, although they’re quieter about it – gays don’t set the kind of moral example they want their kids shown. As far as they are concerned it’s still an issue of being morally straight. So that hasn’t changed either.

    The boy who hit on you probably would have had better social skills if he had grown up in a culture where being gay was treated as neither shameful nor remarkable.

    And maybe not. Young teens and pre-teens are not famous for great social skills. As a group, perhaps there have been changes. That’s speculation. But we’re talking about individuals, which means that even if there is such a change – which is not proven – you’re going to get some kids who don’t reflect that.

    And the fact that some gay kids successfully navigated Scouting is a good thing, but I’m not claiming that this never happens. It seems to me it’s like saying “Well, it was extremely rare for a kid to drown while boating or canoeing without wearing a PFD, so the kids don’t need to wear them.” Neither the average behavior of a group nor the experiences of some exceptional individuals means that other individuals will not end up in a hazardous situation under a given set of conditions.

    Myca:

    but part of what makes large groups of teenage boys ‘vicious little fuckers’ is that they believe that adults … adults like you and Ron … will work to make sure the world conforms to their vicious fuckery.

    Actually, I’m pretty famous for NOT letting kids get away with vicious fuckery. Or even non-vicious assholery. Shit, I was the leader in our Troop that made a big deal among both the adults and the kids out of stopping the kids of using “that’s gay’ as a synonym for “that’s bad/gross/undesirable”. I am, in fact, hands down the strictest leader in the unit.

    You’re a conservative, so you believe that human nature is irredeemably flawed.

    I’m a Christian, so I believe that humans are flawed, but redeemable. Go to a church for the next few Sundays through the 31st of this month and they’ll tell you the whole story of how and why. Go to an Episcopal church and you’ll even hear some decent music in the bargain.

    I’ve run a youth organization with straight, bi, and gay kids of various genders for more than a few years now. We’ve gone on weekend retreats and overnight campouts regularly, and this has never been a problem.

    What kind of organization would that be? How old are they? And might the participants be pre-selected or self-selected for already having certain attitudes towards these issues? Whereas we pretty much take people with any kind of political, social or religious attitudes and beliefs, and have no idea what they are when they walk though the door. Which leads into:

    So, RonF’s point is that while the BSA can teach a young man all kinds of amazing and useful skills and build great character, the one thing it can’t teach him to do is to avoid gay-bashing?

    Mythago, that’s a very interesting way to put words in my mouth that I never said. Now, I don’t know what your experience is with kids, but my experience is that if you want to teach a kid amazing and useful skills – and I do want to do so and have done so for a lot of kids – it’s going to take some time. They don’t come in with those skills, after all, do they? So sure, I can teach a kid knots. And I can teach him not to be a gay basher. Now, while he’s learning his knots, until he learns the worst thing that could happen is that a tent or a tarp falls down. While I’m teaching him not to be a gay-basher, though, failure could have some far more serious consequences. And I don’t have kids come into the Troop having parents that tell him that knots are bad things.

    And the proof of this is that decades ago, RonF would have freaked out if a guy hit on him?

    I’m really interested to have you quote to me where I said this. You know, if you want to debate this issue, why don’t you use the words I’ve written instead of making up stuff I never said?

    <blockquote.I don’t dismiss Ron’s point of view, OR Myca’s. They both have valid inputs.

    Myca, my guess is that if you started up a Boy Scout Troop or Venture Crew out of the kids you’re working with you’d have no problems at all. But I’m not working with those kids. My experiences don’t invalidate the ones you’ve had. But the experiences you’ve had don’t invalidate mine.

  44. 44
    Grace Annam says:

    I am reminded of the heartfelt pleas of anti-suffragists:

    Look at the hazards, the risks, the physical dangers that ladies would be exposed to at the polls.
    –Anti-suffrage speech, as quoted by Alice Miller

    Permit gay kids in scouting? PLEASE! Think of the gay kids! It’s for their own good.

    Grace

  45. 45
    Myca says:

    RonF:

    I’m a Christian, so I believe that humans are flawed, but redeemable.

    My “you’re a conservative, so you believe that human nature is irredeemably flawed,” line was a riff on Robert’s repeated “You’re a leftist and so you believe blah blah blah” bit, which most recently he stated as, “you’re a leftist and so you believe in the perfectibility of human nature.”

    RonF:

    Actually, I’m pretty famous for NOT letting kids get away with vicious fuckery. Or even non-vicious assholery. Shit, I was the leader in our Troop that made a big deal among both the adults and the kids out of stopping the kids of using “that’s gay’ as a synonym for “that’s bad/gross/undesirable”. I am, in fact, hands down the strictest leader in the unit.

    I have no doubt that this is true, and I’m not accusing you personally of leading any sort of anti-gay mob or anything. The “ensuring the world conforms to their vicious fuckery” I was talking about was the stigmatization and exclusion of gay youth, and that, rather than putting the burden of potential violence on the bigots, it’s put on the potential victims.

    That is, rather than insisting on a lack of bullying, it’s just making sure that there are no kids of the target group available. It’s literally shaping their world around their prejudice.

    Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that it’s a good thing to crack down on anti-gay slurs, and I appreciate that you do that, but … look … it’s like not letting any of the kids in the ‘Segregation Scouts” use the n-word. That’s awesome … but they’re the Segregation Scouts. N-word or not, I think they’ve pretty well been taught what to think of black people.

    Robert:

    I think it’s great that your youth group successfully helps kids get along despite their differences; we need more of that, not less.

    I’ll admit, I don’t even think it’s all that extraordinary. It just takes making that the explicit goal.

    Robert:

    Pro tip: the differences that seem to send you into a frothing rage are persistent differences that are gonna continue to exist,

    No frothing rage over here! :) And I’m sure that while there will always be differences between liberals and conservatives, the relative lack of segregationists, anti-suffragists, and anti-Chinese rioters in the modern era would tend to argue against your ‘gonna continue to exist,’ point in the specifics.

    —Myca