From “Public Opinion, the Courts, and Same-sex Marriage: Four Lessons Learned” by Brian Powell, Natasha Yurk Quadlin and Oren Pizmony-Levy, in Social Forces (2015) volume 2 pages 3-12. (Pdf link.)
Because I don’t believe God intended them to be that way. No. I think it’s a travesty.
I follow God’s commands. It’s beastly.
It’s like sickness, some sickness you know. Mental sickness, physical sickness or something, but it is mental sickness. So it’s not natural.
I mean, two—two girlfriends can live together as long as they’re friends. You know, if they don’t have nobody and they’re friends and they’re helping each other survive, if they’re friends, that’s fine. But when they cross that line of becoming lovers, then it’s sick, I think.
Because my religion believes that’s an abomination.
Because that, marriage, is a sacred thing between a man and a woman that is orchestrated by God, and the Bible clearly says that homosexuality is a sin, it’s perverted, and deviant. That’s all.
I don’t know what promotes that kind of garbage. Well, they’re sinners.
I think the reason why gays and lesbians want recognition of their marriage as being a valid marriage is because they want their dysfunctional sexuality viewed as normal, when I don’t think it’s normal.
The study authors go on:
These comments are not the exceptions. The overwhelmingly most common response (over 65%) among opponents to same-sex marriage is religious or moral disapproval. This animus (( The study defines “animus” as follows: “Animus broadly entails moral disapproval of an excluded group or the characterization of a group as “inferior” or “of lesser worth.”” )) toward same-sex couples is so prevalent that it crowds out any other concerns. Importantly, fewer than five percent mention children, while even fewer (not exceeding one percent) articulate a position that even loosely corresponds with the “responsible procreation” argument or the claim that children fare better with a father and mother than with same-sex parents.
This more or less accords with my experience talking to opponents of marriage equality on the streets (gathering signatures in support of marriage equality) and, briefly, on the phones (as part of a campaign attempting to persuade opponents of marriage equality). Virtually all the opponents of marriage equality I spoke to were polite, and many were very nice to me, but they almost always said that they were against same-sex marriage because of God, or because they had a moral objection to gay people.
Also, this goes along with the results of a Pew poll I’ve posted about twice before: Why do they oppose gay marriage? and Why they really oppose same-sex marriage.
The weird thing is, you can’t tell if you’re reading comments from random right-wing citizens or Republican legislators. At least the private citizens have the excuse that they’re not required to know that U.S. law is secular.
This “controversy” reminds me somewhat of the discussions of black voting rights in the South in the 1960’s. So, the reasoned argument that demonstrates that black American citizens should not have the right to vote is……… ?
Well, there isn’t one, so it came down to if you come down here and try to arrange things so that black citizens can vote we will beat you up.
About eight years ago or so I got into an internet discussion with a bunch of religiously-motivated right wingers about same sex marriage. Please tell me why the State (no one is talking about any Church here, ok?) should not recognize same sex marriages. I really wanted to hear what they had to say.
um……..it creeps me out….
That’s about it I’m afraid. Luckily the republic is not or should not be so arranged so that no one, however off-base he or she may be, should never be “creeped out.”
People have rights. You will not be allowed to compromise those rights simply because you’re easily offended at something that actually is none of your business.
And yet, they’ll be the first to complain that “there’s no right not to be offended*” when church/state separation issue show up in court. As if the basis of these suits had anything to do with being ‘offended’ in the first place.
*Unless somebody’s burning the flag, which should be punishable by death because America! Rumsfeld! U-S-A! U-S-A! Yeeeeeaaaaaaaahhh!!**
**Hmm, I seem to be free-associating today. Never mind. Have a good weekend, everyone.
Actually I’ve read some pretty funny stuff on this topic. One guy, a far-right-wing Roman Catholic, wrote a long analysis that I wish I could find and cite, in which he argued that accepting homosexuality at all (let alone same sex marriage, horrors!) would destroy society because, wait for it, sex with other men is in itself so much more attractive than sex with women that if the strictures against it were removed, every man would do that and the race would die out.
Seriously.
(I’ve also read some materials which, while they didn’t go quite that far, struck me as revealing rather more about the author and his real desires than was intended.)
Now I’m a woman and this guy doesn’t exactly know that women exist, so he didn’t address lesbianism, but my impression of straight male sexuality has never been that I’m being desired reluctantly as a sort of second-best.
Speaking mostly for himself I guess.
Susan,
I’m pretty sure I know the one you mean! I distinctly remember reading an article against same sex marriage in which the main thrust (hurr hurr) was that straight men would abandon women for the delights of gay sex, if social license allowed for it. Unfortunately I was nervous about Googling for “anti gay marriage unhinged closeted fantasy” on my work computer, so it took me a while to find it on my phone.
I think this might be it: http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/kingdomofpriests/2009/06/how-women-will-be-hurt-by-gay-marriage.html
Then again, I could be wrong. Contra your memory, the author of this piece does actually acknowledge that women exist, and pities them their ultimate fate: lesbianism.
“Of note here is that this expanded pool of partners accrues to gay men, but not to homosexual women. At the risk of getting too explicit, I leave it the reader’s basic grasp of anatomy to figure out why in ancient Rome a man who found pleasure in a woman, could also find pleasure in a man, while the record shows that a heterosexual woman rarely found sexual satisfaction in the company of another woman.”
Color me unsurprised that this guy is unfamiliar with the existence of the clitorus.
@Chris —
You remind me of something one of my college professors was fond of recalling — how Gabriele (Fallopius) Falopio (yes, he of the tubes) wrote that he’d discovered the clitoris at the age of forty-seven.
(I’m pretty sure Fallopius meant that he described it in his seminal, ha ha, anatomy manual, but hey, why spoil a good quip?)
This mindset has always completely baffled me, but I suppose that’s not terribly surprising. I have an Autism Spectrum Disorder (specifically, what used to be called Asperger’s Syndrome), which means I’ve struggled all my life to try and work out why people do the things they do, because honestly most everything anybody does seems entirely random to me unless I sit down and think it through.
More germane to this particular point, while I was raised a Christian it was as part of the United Methodist Church, specifically the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference. The minister who baptized me was, when he was the district superintendent, the man who managed to work around UMC official regulations (as some of you may know, Methodists in the West, Northwest, and New England tend towards the liberal to very liberal, while in the Midwest and South, they tend towards the reactionary) and made the official “punishment” for officiating at a gay or lesbian commitment ceremony (prohibited by the Church’s national body) a day off with pay. His eventual replacement was an openly gay man who oversaw First UMC Portland’s vote to officially become a reconciling congregation, where everybody was welcome regardless of etc etc etc. So, y’know. This is a viewpoint that has never made the slightest bit of sense to me.
I mean, it seems to boil down to “It’s yucky.” Because, I mean, for crying out loud — not that anyone here needs to be told this, it’s a well-known fact, but the number of rules written in the Bible that no one bothers to obey is enormous, to the point where it’s laughable. And rightly so, because very few of us are part of a nomadic people traveling through a West Asian desert living in the way pre-Judges Era Jews lived four thousand freaking years ago. I’m by no means an authority on Orthodox Judaism, but I presume that even the most strictly observant Orthodox Jews don’t, for example, walk a set number of paces from the place where they sleep and use a stick to dig a hole in the ground before relieving themselves, burying whatever it is, and then returning before they begin ritual purification. (I hope it’s clear I’m not trying to mock anyone for observing, say, ritual purification; I think that’s a fairly universal impulse, but… yeah.)
So… yes. God said we mustn’t, and it’s yucky. Well, God also said that anyone born out of wedlock is cursed, them and their descendents for nine generations, but I don’t remember anyone actually barring my grandfather from entering a church even though his parents couldn’t be bothered to get married before he was born. Certainly nobody’s ever mentioned anything like that to my father or me, and I assume my daughter and the next six generations after her would be welcomed into even the most conservative Christian house of worship (well, until my daughter mentions her lesbian grandmother and bisexual mother and how Daddy thinks almost all conservative Christians are a bunch of hypocrites, but I digress).
Makes exactly zero sense to me. I wish I could figure it out… but on the other hand, if I did, it would probably only make me unhappy.
Your anecdote aaligns nicely with what social scientists who study racism and politics teach. There are roughly two forms of racism in the electorate:
1. Old Fashioned Racism (think n-word squared in the famous Lee Atwater quote)
2. Racial Resentment (think “cutting taxes… blacks get hurt worse than whites” from the same quote)
In short, that Old fashioned Racism “…is linked to the emotion of disgust while racial resentment is rooted in anger.”
– Source: Michael Tesler: (“The Return of Old Fashioned Racism”)
So yeah, if this controversy reminds you of discussions of black voting rights in the South in the 1960’s, I’m pleased to inform you that there are mountains of data backing-up the accuracy of your observation.
1. If this post is about how primitive and childish some conservatives are – maybe it’s not the best place for the (primitive, childish) non-argument of taking Biblical verses out of context and ridiculing them.
Most feminist tracts and lotsa social “science” writings offer up a wealth of passages that are easily ridiculed out of context.
And Falstaff – if you’re gonna do it, at least have the backbone not to say “I don’t mean to mock”… when anyone can see you’re citing these verses with just that intent – without really having read what you’re mocking.
The commandment about digging a hole for defecation refers to a field camp of soldiers at war – as anyone who actually read the passage *in context* would know – and as such, remains pretty good advice 4,000 years on.
We’ll see if those feminist/social “science” tracts are still being quoted 4,000 years from now….. mmmkay?
2. There is no coherent rational argument in these statements because most moral codes are not based primarily on rational deduction.
It’s a fool’s game to mock a moral code you disagree with – and in the context of the progressive/conservative split in the West, such Alinskyite ridicule may work as a strategy (or to bolster a progressive’s sense of moral superiority) – but it’s not really an argument better than the other side’s argument….
As an Orthodox Jew, when engaging with progressives I’ve experienced waaaaay more unreasoned elitist dismissal than reasoned argument – on topics from gay marriage to the Palestinians. Each side is convinced it’s right, and that other opinions are fraught with moral – and in the case of the Palestinian issue, mortal – peril. And each sides’ confirmation bias feeds their own pet theories. It takes enormous, obvious disruptions (such as the missile fire from Gaza) to change people’ s concepts and opinions.
Gay-rights activists simply *know* that denying gays marriage “rights” is wrong – not because of any reasoned discussion, but because it flows from *their* moral certainties – which are not shared by many in the West, or in the rest of the world.
@Kohai, there are two of them! At least! This isn’t the same one I read but is equally rich in its own way, thanks! There might be many of them….I’d guess these are closet gays who are determined that if they can’t have any fun no one else can have any either and who think everyone wants what they want.
@Ben David an interesting argument. I gather that you would not enter a same sex marriage because the Bible prohibits it. You are well within your rights. Would you refuse to wear a wool-blend shirt on the same grounds? No problem by me, either way.
But would you go another step and prohibit other people from marrying someone of the same sex or wearing wool blend shirts? Should we picket LLBean? Are these things an offense to God only for Orthodox Jews or does everyone have to follow all those rules?
I really think these are important questions, because that is the nub of the matter. No one is talking about forcing heterosexuals into same sex marriages (or Orthodox Jews in to wool blend shirts). You are free to impose any restrictions on yourself which you feel that God is demanding of you or which you fancy for any reason. The real point here is to what extent, in a free secular society, are you justified in imposing your particular views on other people who do not agree with you?
I’d say this post is about… well, what it says it’s about.
But as to why I posted it, it wasn’t to mock conservatives. It was to point out that the arguments used by anti-SSM intellectuals in court filings and by academic authors like Robert George are not the reasons believed in by any but a tiny minority of Americans who oppose SSM.
From what I’ve seen and heard, the most effective argument to use when talking to most SSM opponents works best coming from a lgb person. Which is to start by saying “are you married?” and, if the opponent of SSM is married, to follow with “why did you want to get married”? Most people will talk about how much they were in love with their spouse, how they wanted to start a family. And then (if the SSM supporter is LGB) say “that’s exactly why I want to get married!”
That’s not like a guaranteed mind-changer or anything. Most people won’t change their mind after a single encounter, no matter what the SSM supporter says. But a lot of field experience seems to indicate that this approach is more effective than other approaches.
In other words, it’s not a logical argument that got people to oppose SSM, and what convinces most people to change their mind isn’t a logical argument either, but a human connection. Which is why knowing an (out) lgb person is highly correlated with people changing their minds and supporting SSM.
Another very common reason I’ve seen for people changing their minds is that they were persuaded by their teenage or adult children – often by a child coming out as lgb, but sometimes by straight children as well. Again, it’s a human connection. Or maybe realizing that is, for some people, the “enormous, obvious disruption” required to be able to really question old assumptions.
“Not shared by many in the West?” How many millions of people in the West will favor SSM before you concede it counts as “many”? At this point, the majority of Americans favor SSM, and there are similar or larger majorities in a bunch of other Western nations.
And a lot of that is because, when people do finally question their anti-SSM instincts (remember, most adults who now support SSM at one time did not), probably because of personal connections, there really are no persuasive arguments against SSM. There’s the religious argument, and then, basically, nothing. When put in a courtroom, where “Because my religion believes that’s an abomination” is not an acceptable argument, SSM opponents have been starkly unable to provide logically sound secular arguments in favor of their views. SSM proponents haven’t had the same trouble.
Susan, blends of wool and synthetic fiber are totally cool. Blends of wool and linen are problematic, and really scrupulously orthodox Jews won’t wear them. There are people in the orthodox community who certify wool suits to make sure the collar isn’t reinforced with a bit of linen.
And Jews generally don’t care about non-Jews observing Jewish law. I’m not sure if that’s because we’re not supposed to seek converts, or if we’ve been such a tiny minority for so many generations. As a general thing, when the secular government starts enforcing religious law, that’s a dangerous thing for members of minority religions. Especially members of *small* minority religions.
@Adrian thanks for the clarification. About the wool blend. I didn’t know that. Leviticus just says, as I remember it, two different fibers. But those who are more learned than I have considered this, I see. Also it is an interesting and very relevant point that Jews in particular, for obvious reasons, have tended to oppose the State’s imposition of religious laws on the population as a whole, since most of the time the religious laws in question would not be Jewish laws.
But religious convictions do carry a flavor of the absolute. For example, if I believe (whether on the basis of evidence or not) that gluten is bad for me, I can stop eating it, usually without feeling that it is necessary to remove all bread from the supermarket. But if I believe that God Himself has decreed something (especially, it would seem, something about sex) then I am saying that the very Order of the Universe is behind that decree. It would follow, then, that such a decree must be obeyed by everyone of whatever persuasion.
That is the kind of reasoning which the proponents of same sex marriage are up against. If it is GOD then the matter is not open to discussion and it is not subject to debate. And the rule is not, following this out, only for certain people, everyone should come into line.
I notice that Ben David does not come right out and say this, but it is implied (perhaps) in what he wrote. He says that proponents of same sex marriage, like opponents, are relying on unreasoned moral certainty, and perhaps this is true.
The difference, however, is that proponents do not propose to force anyone to engage in same sex marriage, or same sex behavior. People who feel on whatever basis that this is morally wrong are perfectly free to abstain. Opponents, however, would not allow their adversaries that same degree of freedom. Because the opponents think that God has forbidden this behavior NO ONE ELSE is to be free to engage in it, whatever their personal convictions may be.
“2. There is no coherent rational argument in these statements because most moral codes are not based primarily on rational deduction.”
It’s always revealing how quickly religious conservatives became moral relativists whenever they can’t rationally defend their moral values.
Not within Judaism. Judaism believes that the laws in the Torah are an agreement between G-d and the Jews. Other groups might have other agreements or other relationships with G-d, and that’s fine; these laws just apply to us. (Traditional Judaism does hold that the seven Noahide laws do apply to everyone, and one of them, forbidding sexual immorality, is sometimes interpreted as banning homosexuality, but I don’t really know enough about those to have anything useful to say about how valid that interpretation is.)
Judaism has a long and respected tradition of debate, discussion and analysis of the applicable law in its linguistic and historical context. It’s therefore particularly disgusting to see a practitioner of Judaism make sloppy ‘plague on both your houses’ and ‘well if you disagree with me you’re silly too’ nonsense arguments like this. And if you’re not familiar with the immense legal and social background behind same-sex marriage rights (no scare quotes needed), then maybe educate yourself, because you’re sounding about as educated and authoritative as the guy who says that the Bible means Jews aren’t allowed to wear cotton-poly-blend T-shirts.
Thanks for your replies.
Susan:
Let’s separate out the issues – the laws quoted here (and in similar conversations) are ritual/symbolic in nature, and in no way apply to gentiles. They aren’t really prosecutible offenses even in Judaism. There ARE parts of the Torah that are considered to be a general moral law proclaimed to all humanity – most scholars would point to the 10 Commandments, and related commandments that expand on that. And you may have heard of the 7 Noahide Laws – a sort of proto-ten-commandments that tradition says were given to Noah after the flood. Which brings us to…
Every body of law is the sum total of moral judgments under which a nation or community agrees to live. In democracies like America those laws grow from open discussion and debate among citizens, based on received precedent.
I am an American, and I participate in this process.
As are/do religious Christians.
So when you talk about “imposing” my opinion on the general population, there is more than a little editorializing in there – the Left loves to jump in and speak for “everybody”. Consider further that “my opinon” constitutes centuries of received wisdom in the West – and that many who support SSM do so because they think this opinion forms a continuum with traditional values.
So: I’m not imposing anything – I’m participating… and as you say, my attempts to convince others are “well within my rights”.
Mythago writes:
And Chris (from another angle):
That’s not my point. Pro-SSM people may be equally moral to me in THEIR own minds, but not to my mind – I certainly think my traditional anti-SSM opinion is validated by Divine moral law *and* my rational observations of the gay lifestyle and its effects on the individual and society.
I’d further remind Mythago that the debates in the Talmud take place among those who have already accepted the Torah and Oral tradition as axiomatically true… nothing like the discussion between pro- and anti-SSM opinions. This relates to what I wrote above about the law reflecting what a community has accepted upon itself.
My point is that those arguments aren’t going to convince someone who has articulated their own (perhaps even religious) validation of SSM.
And anyway, Amp has already let the cat out of the bag and/or implied that she agrees with me – people don’t change their minds (at least to support SSM) based on rational or moral thought:
From my perspective as a non-supporter of SSM – I interpret this (and much of the gay rights movement’s success) as use of cheap emotional manipulation based on PC victimhood tropes. I don’t think “I met a gay person at a party – they were so nice” covers all the moral issues to be discussed.
But for a pro-SSM or out-and-proud individual, this is perhaps their version of the Christian notion of “witnessing” and not at all manipulative….
The combination of certainty, progressive elitism, and the witch-hunt mentality that’s taken hold of the left – pretty much insures that my idea of reasoned discussion isn’t likely to take place – or influence anybody.
Again, I have seen this with well-meaning Israeli lefties – even when the discussion takes place while bombs are flying, it’s very hard to dislodge preconceived notions.
Ben David:
The American notion of individual liberty is essentially that, barring some harm to some other person, we should be able to do what we want. In the absence of a law to the contrary, a same-sex couple would be able to marry.
Advocates for same-sex marriage ask, explicitly, “Where is the harm? What harm does this restriction seek to remedy?” And some of the best and brightest legal minds out there, when asked to defend such laws and given plenty of venues in which to do so, cannot come up with an argument which holds water, to the extent that their best arguments earn nothing but eloquent scorn from conservative Republican appointees like Judge Richard Posner.
A legal limit is an imposition. If you’re going to impose on someone, there should be a good reason why.
In the case of restrictions on same-sex marriage, there is no good reason why, and the good reasons why not are legion.
Why, then, do we not yet have universal access to same-sex marriage? Because it squicks some people out, or because some people have religious views telling them that it’s wrong, AND they think it’s okay to impose those religious views on other people who do not share their religion.
We know those are the reasons, because people come right out and say it, which was the point of Amp’s original post.
Grace
Ben David,
I have to start out by saying that I am on the side of gay marriage – simply because I’m more or less a libertarian and I could care less who gets married. I am also not a religious person at all.
But I read through this thread and came up with the same feeling – that a bunch of “progressives” are beating down straw men because they can all feel morally superior. I really had that strong feeling.
Even I can come up with better arguments than they *attributed* as the sole arguments of religious people or “right wingers”.
Studies of identical twins who were separated (nope, no link, use your Google finger) show that there is around a 1/2 genetic component. So there is a genetic predisposition or tendency towards being homosexual, but part of it is also based on life influences.
If that is the case, and given that many people who are even for gay marriage and all the rest may still internally feel disgust but not say it, then a better course of action – if you are on the line about being homosexual – may be to tilt towards heterosexuality. Just like a person with a genetic predisposition to alcoholism should maybe tilt towards soft drinks. I don’t friggin’ know, and it’s none of my business really, but it seems that’s at least a slightly better argument than silly religious people saying it’s ucky. Yucky-ucky. And then everyone here has a good bellylaugh as they ponder their superiority.
Ben David, I respect your argument although I don’t agree with it. I doubt that many here respect your argument, and you are going to be treated accordingly.
Gotta jump in to add- if you claim that
1. Your opposition to same sex marriage is due to your religious views
2. You feel that outsiders have no business criticizing those views, and
3. You feel that it is appropriate for you to contribute your views to the body politic,
Then you have NO BUSINESS complaining about lefty witch hunts, being stigmatized, being treated as a moral leper, etc.
You signed up for that when you defected from the norms of political discourse. Moral debate occurs via the process of finding values we agree upon, and collectively reasoning from them. It’s called “public reason.” It’s imperfect, but better than the alternative. If you insist upon entering the field with private reasons that you feel should be beyond criticism, and you don’t accept secular norms of restricting the application of those private reasons to spheres inhabited only by like minded people, then you’re insisting on a conflict in which stigmatizing you as a bigot is the only available move, and you have no valid defense that won’t look like hypocrisy.
Grace:
Suuuuuure – except for:
what our kids eat for lunch
in what school inner-city kids are eating that lunch
whether our minor children get birth control
what kind of health insurance we want
whether we have to join labor unions to work in our chosen field
whether we can bear arms in cities governed by “liberals”
what we can publish/read on the internet (coming soon!)
… and the general impediment to free action that results from high tax rates… to pay for a buncha stuff others have determined is needed.
Progressives are quite happy regulating every room of the house besides the bedroom… and it could be argued that the current “rape culture” meme is pushing the regulator’s nose into that room as well…
You write:
1. This basically provides an example of my point – YOU don’t think the reasons are good. But many others do. See how this statement curtails any further hope I have of discussion? It’s basically the gay-rights version of Pauline Kael’s famous quote (worth citing here):
At least Kael was aware of her insular life.
2. Let’s try it this way:
The burden of proof is on the innovators. Those who want to change the definition of marriage have to prove their case, not the other way around.
3. Many of the responses by conservatives are lame because they have been a-priori crippled by the threat of politically correct denunciation. And as a conservative visitor to this site – who has been deleted and banned for stating my opinions too plainly – I am operating under the same restrictions. So I apologize if my response is less than complete….
Based on my past experience here and elsewhere, a conservative who said “The patterns of compulsive promiscuity in the gay community don’t fit my definition of healthy, well-adjusted adult behavior” would be deleted and denounced as “hurtful” or “hateful”. Yet that’s the gist of what many Westerners still drawing on their Judeo-Christian roots are thinking.
Mythago spoke earlier of the robust Talmudic debating style – but that requires a certain constitutional fortitude and commitment to process. Are progressives willing to stomach contrary opinions – or do we go straight to PC victimhood theater and the politics of the modern witch-hunt?
Again – the faith (!) that the other side has “no good reasons” and the my-way-or-the-highway “tolerance” may work in the short term as a political strategy, but it is no way upholding traditional liberal Western discourse. It’s just as doctrinaire as many Lefties imagine the Right to be.
Ben David:
Perhaps you can clarify what you think “the gay lifestyle” is…? Because I’ve known a decent number of homosexuals and as near as I can tell their lifestyles – at least as I understand that word – are as diverse as straight people’s lifestyles.
I’d hate to live in your world, Ben David. It must be a really stressful way to live. Conspiracy theories are less than convincing to those of us who aren’t into conspiracy theories.
Ben David,
It’s really hard to argue with you when you barely bother to articulate your position. I don’t see you as religious conservative who is clearly stating his positions and defending them with reason and evidence. You certainly don’t come off like a rational observer. I see someone who is mostly pre-emptively bellyaching about how gosh-darned intolerant and unreasonable lefties are.
If you have an argument you would like to make, make it. If not, then take responsibility for choosing not to engage. Or if you think that there’s no point in even trying since everyone else is an intolerant, closed-minded progressive, then… why do you even hang out here?
Ben David, this
and this
are mutually exclusive, if the bit in quotes is your opinion on the “gay lifestyle”. It’s not true, so it can’t be a rational observation. And if you get called hurtful or hateful or saying that, it’s not a PC-based argument that you’re being truthful but impolite, it is a factually-based argument that you are wrong.
(I mean, I also have a value disagreement with you that the parts of the community that are pro-promiscuity are bad; but that’s a separate argument from how much of the community can be reasonably described that way.)
So…describing what multiple surveys have found to be the reasons people don’t like SSM, and having a good knowledge of the arguments that have been advanced in legal arguments about SSM (as most people around here do, certainly including Grace), and saying we find those arguments unconvincing, is taking it on faith that the other side has no good reasons? It doesn’t count as discourse? It rather sounds to me like we listened very carefully and still were not persuaded.
Ben David:
“Based on my past experience here and elsewhere, a conservative who said “The patterns of compulsive promiscuity in the gay community don’t fit my definition of healthy, well-adjusted adult behavior” would be deleted and denounced as “hurtful” or “hateful”. Yet that’s the gist of what many Westerners still drawing on their Judeo-Christian roots are thinking.”
To be fair, Ben David, saying that a certain group should not be allowed to legally marry because they are too promiscuous is about the worst and most counter-intuitive argument I’ve ever heard.
What other demographic groups do you–er, sorry, your hypothetical conservative friend–believe should not be allowed to marry on the grounds of “compulsive promiscuity?” Men in their early twenties, perhaps?
Since promiscuity has never before been used to disqualify anyone else from marriage, do you see why your hypothetical conservative friend’s reasoning sounds like a pretext meant to exclude gays while holding them to a different standard than any other group?
Ben David:
Whether you agree with them or not (and I don’t agree with them all), all of those are supported by rational, secular arguments that the restriction (the harm) is justifiable because of a good that it achieves, and those rational, secular arguments have been tested in court and found to hold water. The rational, secular arguments in favor of outlawing SSM are so weak as to be laughable, which means that they can’t be why people care so much, so they must care for other reasons… which is the point of the original post.
Sure, many others do. But some things, like fundamental rights, we don’t put to a popular vote. We have judges to decide which things are in that fundamental category and which aren’t. In the case of SSM, the judges are overwhelmingly ruling that the reasons are, in fact, not good.
A bunch of people can get together and pass a law saying that Ben David’s and Grace Annam’s houses should be searchable without a warrant anytime the police feel like it, but such a law will properly die a Constitutional death when in reaches the courts. That’s what’s happening to SSM bans.
…implying that I am not merely disagreeing with you, but that I am actually unable to perceive your argument. Well, at least I do you the courtesy of assuming that your disagreement does not arise from incapacity.
I know plenty of people who don’t vote as I do on many issues, and who think that bans on SSM are hunky-dory; I work in a field which runs conservative, and on some topics, downright reactionary. Many of these people had nothing good to say or think about trans people… until they discovered that they knew one. Then they had an opportunity to examine their prejudices, and some of them did so. That’s the sort of thing Amp is talking about when he talks about face-to-face interaction being so effective, being a process of humanization of a demonized population.
Sure. And, sometimes, that proof comes when you ask, “Why do we do it this way?” and the response is the sound of crickets. I’m sure you’ve had that experience, at work. At my workplace, awhile back, I was in the habit of photocopying a certain form, which was already a quadruplicate form, and putting a photocopy with the arrest paperwork. Another officer asked me why, and my only answer was, “Because that’s what I was trained to do. I think the Prosecution office wants it that way.” So the next time I saw the Prosecutor, I asked him. And he said, “Oh, no. We did that because there was a legibility issue on the carbons, but that’s been fixed, now.” I asked if I could stop photocopying the form, since there seemed to be no good reason to keep doing it. He told me that I could.
I didn’t have to prove a case. I just had to wonder if the reason for the SOP was gone, and ask the obvious question.
That’s what our society is doing right now with SSM.
You think that conservative lawyers are being crippled in the courts because they worry about threats of political correctness? They would have brought their A-game to the various state supreme courts, if only people would not denounce them in the blogosphere? I don’t find that credible. I think that good lawyers are made of sterner stuff than that, and I can’t imagine why conservatives who are passionate on this issue would not be hiring good lawyers.
I think it’s pretty clear that conservatives are bringing it with the best they’ve got… and that the best they’ve got is pretty weak tea.
Yeah, that’s not why you’ve been moderated, which you should know perfectly well and everyone else can judge for themselves, since the moderators have moderated you publicly.
Which was the point of Amp’s post: opposition to SSM is based in religious belief and/or irrational dislike of gay people and the things which the dislikers believe about us.
There’s some sampling bias going on, there, by the way, when you talk about “patterns of compulsive promiscuity”. I’ve learned a lot which I didn’t particularly care to know about the sex lives of my conservative, heterosexual coworkers, simply by being present during conversations on the topic. A lot of what I heard seemed dysfunctional, to me, and certainly does not fit my definition of healthy, well-adjusted adult behavior.
In contrast, they know nothing about my sex life, apart from the simple fact that I am a lesbian, which I have said out loud in response to a direct question. They may have inferred some things and believe that they know them, but since I don’t talk about my sex life publicly, and especially not at work, they don’t know them. I’m part of your “gay community” which doesn’t show up on conservative radar precisely because I keep my sex life private. In fact ALL gay people who keep their sex lives private don’t show up on conservative radar. Which is what leads to the sampling bias.
I could judge conservatives generally as unable to hold to an oath on the basis of public accounts of marital infidelity. But I don’t. Because I’m aware of the sampling bias, and I know that the conservatives in happy, faithful marriages aren’t making the news for it.
That you can ask this question on this blog, where we have had conservative commenters participating for years without being moderated, speaks volumes.
Grace
[edited to fix a tag]
Yes, teh gayz keep having teh sex.
But since you want to get all rational about it, teh straights are also having teh sex. And plenty of it.
So if you would have let 19-year old me get married while telling my near-50 sister she can’t get married; and if you’re claiming “compulsive promiscuity” as the reason why; then you have a rationality problem.
Frankly I’m one of the people here who is very likely to fight for your right to say whatever you want about gay marriage, including statement which are both “hurtful” and “hateful” to gay folks. But don’t waste my time waving the “rationality” and “repression” flag unless you actually have some damn rationality, K?
To correct Grace: Ben David was unwilling or unable to comply by the commenting requirements here, and so, after publicly-appearing warnings did not help, was placed on “permanent moderated” status, in which all of his comments require individual moderator approval before they appear in public. Since that point, there have been a couple of comments of Ben-David’s which haven’t been approved, and have thus never been publicly seen.
Since as far as I know Grace has not made the decision in any of those cases, there’s no reason for Grace to have known that.
That said, the large majority of Ben-David’s comments have been approved.
Perhaps I’m not reasoning very well this evening. Ben David seems to be bobbing and weaving an awful lot. I’m getting the notion that he opposes allowing people of the same sex to marry, but he won’t come right out and say so. Still less will he provide a reason for that position.
Except, I guess, that gays are promiscuous, of which promiscuity Ben David disapproves. As Chris points out, opposing marriage because the unmarried people in question are promiscuous is about as self-contradictory an argument as anyone can come up with. I’m not even sure that is his argument. (Another candidate would seem to be his general distaste for “progressives,” which comes close to simple neophobia.)
As I say I am having trouble figuring out what exactly Ben David’s position is. He seems curiously reluctant to come out and enunciate it. I am suspecting that that is because in fact his position doesn’t make any sense, and he suspects that stating his opinion and the reasons for it clearly will reveal that.
In any case Ben David, like all those who oppose same sex marriage for whatever reason, is perfectly free not to marry someone of his gender. I can’t see any reason why he should be able to prohibit someone else from doing so, however, and I won’t see it until he tells us what his reasoning might be.
(Thank you for the reassurance Amp. I suspected that that was the case.)
“As I say I am having trouble figuring out what exactly Ben David’s position is. He seems curiously reluctant to come out and enunciate it. I am suspecting that that is because in fact his position doesn’t make any sense, and he suspects that stating his opinion and the reasons for it clearly will reveal that.”
But don’t you see, Susan? Ben David can’t tell us his true reasons for opposing same-sex marriage, because if he does the gay mafia will bully and intimidate him with their PC victimhood!
The real reasons for opposing same-sex marriage are just so great and rational that no one has ever been able to express them for fear of swift retribution! Alas, they are stuck having to give absurdly terrible reasons, for which they are subject to only mockery and disdain. If they were ever allowed to give us their actual, logical reasons, the consequences would be far more dire.
Dire!
The debates about same-sex marriage in the legal sphere are also taking place among people who have accepted the existence of civil law, and its binding effect separate and apart from personal religious beliefs, as axiomatically true. So your interjecting modern Orthodox religious thought here is just as useful as Robert George trying to argue what the Torah ‘really’ means.
Regarding constitutional fortitude and robust debate – my goodness, did that pendulum swing again? Last I heard, it was progressives who were shouting everyone down with their “callout culture” and public shaming and silencing of poor victimized conservatives.
Or, what Patrick said. The debate equivalent of punching somebody in the arm and then shrieking NO TAGBACKS is pretty pathetic, not to mention transparent.
I should note that Ben David’s idea of appropriate marriage laws is one in which husbands can unilaterally divorce their wives but not vice versa, such that a spiteful husband can ditch his wife, go off to remarry and have a second family, and leave his wife in limbo, unable to remarry or have additional children. Don’t think that would fly with most people in the US, and civil law wouldn’t permit it.
@SWA: You’ve just said, in essence, that you’re too lazy to use your Google finger to provide any evidence of your own argument. That suggests you don’t really put much stock in it; why should anyone else?
@Ben David: I assume that at some point you’ve attempted to explain your actual position. In which case, progressives may be choosing not to engage with your arguments because you’re a tiny splinter of a fraction of the population. Politically, we can safely ignore you.
Let’s suppose you oppose same-sex marriage for reasons not touched on in the OP. If we did come up with an argument to answer you, it would appear to be completely useless for reaching the majority of SSM opponents.
@SWA: Again, I can’t quite work out what you believe you’re saying. If you mean that homosexuals have harder lives and therefore if you have a choice you should not be one, then you’re completely ignoring the observed cost of trying to do this. The idea that there exists an environmental factor (I think that’s what you’re saying) does not mean we can figure out how to use it to prevent homosexuality in practice, much less that we could do this without psychological cost.
Grace’s analogy about stapling the photocopy to the arrest record is perfect! Best one I’ve heard so far and I don’t think I’m likely to hear better. Yes, like the photocopy, there was at one time a reason (which seemed good at the time) for the old rules about SSM, but since the reasons have evaporated it’s time for a reconsideration. We’ve all seen similar instances all our lives.
And from her post I also see that my quest for a rational argument from the anti-SSM people is pointless. In the now-numerous court cases dealing with this controversy they have put forth the strongest arguments they could think of. Anyone who wants their best statement of their position has only to read the briefs in those cases; they are widely available. I don’t find these arguments particularly persuasive, but I am assured because of the circumstances that they took their best shot.
Finally Chris’s posts are very funny, and strike a welcome lighter note in this discussion.
Dear me.
Susan:
Aw, shucks.
Actually, though, we could probably do better. The thing is that the purpose of marriage has changed. It used to be largely a vehicle for transferring property — women themselves, and then, much later, their assets — and re-arranging or cementing social/political alliances. Now, it’s a legal vehicle for the expression of love and commitment, and for securing certain contractual rights which are otherwise complex or impossible to attain in our system, like the ability to make medical decisions, or freedom from being forced to testify against your life partner.
So, what we need for our analogy is an object or procedure which is now used for one thing, but used to be used for something quite different.
Wait, there’s the apocryphal story about cutting the end off of the roast. I’ve heard this told many ways, over the years. A woman (it could just as easily be a man, but I’ve never heard it told that way) is cooking a roast, and her daughter notices that she cuts the end off of it, and cooks the end separately. She asks her mother, “Why do you cut the end off?” And her mother says, “…I don’t really know. That’s what my mother taught me to do.” So she goes to her mother and says, “Mom, you taught me to cut the end off of a roast when you cooked it. Why do we do that?” And her mother says, “I don’t know — that’s just how I learned to do it from your Grandma.” So she goes to her mother and says: “Mother, why do we cut the end off of the roast, when we cook it?” And her mother looks at her like she isn’t sure she heard it right, and says, “…So it will fit in the pan.”
And here we are to this day, cutting people’s happiness short so that they’ll fit in where we want to put them.
Grace
This isn’t quite true, at least depending on how far back you go with ‘used to’. What really has changed are attitudes about the people in those marriages; it’s no longer widely accepted that a marriage shouldn’t exist if one or both people are infertile, or that a woman is legally subordinate to her husband, or that children should have inferior status if their parents weren’t married. Those are things that would actually give support to laws prohibiting same-sex marriage.
Of course, rather a lot of social conservatives do like the idea of returning to a time when a woman was in many senses her husband’s property, and when treating children as inferior was seen as an unfortunate but necessary and appropriate side effect of encouraging adults to restrict their sexual behavior. It’s just that it’s not popular to say so, and that’s why we get these bizarre ‘natural law’ arguments; it’s the closest they can come.
I’d say that one purpose of marriage has remained the same; marriage is the primary way that people who aren’t close kin, or aren’t kin at all, can become – for all social and legal purposes – each other’s closest kin. This is, as far as I know, true in virtually all human societies that have marriage. It is the single most universal trait of marriage across societies, as far as I know.
(There is another way non-kin become kin, which is when parents adopt children. But for obvious reasons, adoption and marriage, although they both serve the function of creating kin, are not interchangeable, and societies need to have both.)
As the twit who opened the door to the whole “mocking” thing, let me make a couple things clear.
Ben David, I actually did not mean to mock anything. It’s been quite some time since I reread that particular passage, and I’d quite forgotten the context. I think my overall point stands, though — I may be ignorant and I may not argue very well, but what I meant to say is that you and I and Grace and the artists working in Amp’s studio, we are not constrained by the rules of our society in general to follow every single rule in a given holy book. Not unless we choose to be.
Now, I see that that’s your choice. Fine, good for you. I have no problem with that. Except you don’t get to impose those constraints on other people, not in a pluralistic secular country like the U.S. You just don’t. That’s not the way we’re set up; if you want to live in a society based on those principles, as I understand it, Israel is the way to go. (I could just be ignorant, of course. It would hardly be the first time.)
Also, what I said I wasn’t mocking was the idea of ritual purification. What was going through my head at the time, to be honest, was something along the lines of “Well, surely even the most ultraorthodox person wouldn’t avoid using a toilet when given the opportunity” — as I say, I’m perfectly willing to admit ignorance on the intent of the passage in question — “but that’s not to say that that using a toilet is incompatible with all of those commandments and so on, surely, and then you could get on with whatever is required of you, if anything, to do right by your tradition.”
I do have to say, though, I’m a little… not surprised, that’s not it… maybe “nonplussed” is what I mean… at your attitude. Why in the world do you care what other people do? In what way does what the government makes legal affect you personally?
I understand, I think, the argument you’re making — “gay marriage, like many things, is wrong, and you have no good arguments that it is not wrong” is, at least, part of it — but I don’t know, I think there’s a reasonably good case to be made here. Probably by people other than me. One of the reasons I stay out of discussion threads is that I’m bad at arguing, as witness what happened above.
But I mean, if we live in a country (and it seems obvious to me that we do) where every person is supposed to be equal under the law, and every person is supposed to have the same rights (and it seems obvious to me, though I Am Not A Lawyer, that that is so, as per the Fourteenth Amendment — I’m sure Mythago can correct me if I’ve not picked the right one here) then every person would have the right to get married, no? The state ought to be completely disinterested in a person’s sexual orientation. People are perfectly welcome to think this is immoral, and groups religious and secular can refuse to accept such things within their communities, as is their right. Nobody, as the tired old cliche goes, is going to come to your house and make you engage in same-sex marriage at gunpoint; no one can or should force rabbi, priest, minister or imam (etc., etc., etc.) to bless such a union if they don’t wish to. For heaven’s sake, this seems like the kind of thing we learned in elementary school civics class.
I wish you’d talk with us about why you feel the way you do, but reading your responses to others, it doesn’t seem to me like you’re really interested in having an honest conversation. Anyway, if you really were insulted and you really thought I was mocking you, I do sincerely apologize, because I didn’t mean to do that.
(NB: I think this is why I need to stay out of these arguments. I just cannot get my head around someone disagreeing with the stuff I’ve said above. I know lots and lots of people do, but I don’t see how they can possibly be right; it makes absolutely no sense to me.)
For purely informational purposes: Israel has secular law and is not subject to religious law. Much of the population are secular (i.e. non religious) Jews. There are also significant Muslim, Druze, Baha’i and Christian minorities. None of these groups are bound by religious law. Furthermore, religious Jews (of any stripe) are only bound by religious law as much as they practice it themselves. Nothing in Israeli state law stops, say, an Orthodox Jew from eating ham for Saturday lunch.
Thanks, Ben, I appreciate being corrected — although now I find myself wondering why I keep reading things on the Internet about the tensions between the secular and the religious in Israel, especially as regards divorce, military service, and who counts as a citizen (that is to say, who is Jewish enough to count as a citizen, that’s usually how it comes across) — not to mention what seems like the constant description of Israel as “a Jewish state.”
I think the strangest thing about this is that I knew some of the things you mention already, I know I did — but somehow they slipped my mind.
…I have this impulse to slink toward the wings of the stage, muttering “…I said I wasn’t very good at this.”
Israel criminal law is secular, but Israel’s family law is not secular – marriage and divorce are determined by the religious authorities, not by secular authorities. It would have been impossible for me to get married to my wife in Israel, as she is not Jewish and interfaith marriages are not possible there by law. My brother was married in Tel Aviv by a reform rabbi and his wedding was not officially recognised – he and his wife had to fly to the US and get a civil wedding there for it to count.
There was a recent court case where an Israeli woman refused to circumsize her son. There is no legal requirement to circumsize in Israel, so this was ok, until her husband decided to divorce her, which put her under the power of the Rabbinical court, which fined her $140 a day until she agrees to the circumcision (not sure how, or even if, it was resolved – here is a news article from 2013 about it.
In other words, the law in Israel is not secular in the sense you mean, Ben (Lehman). Sections of it are, but everyone (especially if Jewish, because the other religious authorities don’t have as much power) is subject to religious law as well.
1. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
2. The right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognized.
3. No marriage shall be entered into without the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
4. States Parties to the present Covenant shall take appropriate steps to ensure equality of rights and responsibilities of spouses as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. In the case of dissolution, provision shall be made for the necessary protection of any children.
Falstaff says:
Here we have the nub of the matter. The State exists to keep order. A secular State like ours does not exist to get us all into heaven or to please God or to enforce ritual or moral purity or any such goal. If a given action compromises the rights of someone else, that action may be rightly deemed illegal. But try as I might I cannot figure out how the fact that my next door neighbors, two men, are married to each other, has any effect whatever on me, good or bad.
Eytan: You know more than I do.
yrs–
–Ben
You’re assuming people have always been on either the left or right. Although I am very progressive now, I was raised Roman Catholic. It isn’t that I think conservatives have “no good reasons” for their views. I just think, despite protestations to the contrary, all of their compelling reasons are actually rooted in their faith in God. As such, they are not appropriate for decision making in governments in pluralistic societies, where people of many faiths need to interact. I know Catholicism best, so I’ll illustrate with that.
Catholic doctrine surrounding sexuality relies on “natural law”. They claim that natural law is basically common sense, arrived at logically, through observation of human beings and the world, without reference to God or scripture. Thus, they consider these arguments to be non-religious and therefore appropriate in political discourse in the U.S. and other secular societies. In their conception of natural law, the primary function of our sexual organs is procreation. Only PIV sex without contraception is open to that possibility. Therefore, each sexual encounter should culminate in unprotected PIV sex. Once you accept the premises about what natural law is and how it works, the logical chains are pretty sound. There are official answers for any objection one may raise. However, that first step is a doozy. The Catholic model of human sexuality is only accepted by a small sub-set of Catholics (roughly 20% of U.S. Catholics accept teachings on birth control – and the whole model unravels when that is taken out). It is a lot easier to accept if you believe that God created humans, and natural law was designed by God.
The natural law model can be beautiful and compelling in the abstract, particularly when one takes a broader view which includes topics like warfare, genocide and slavery. However, when looking at the sorts of decisions that are made when these abstract principles are applied to sexuality, the reality can be very ugly (eg. response to AIDS in Africa, prosecution of women for miscarriages in El Salvador).
The expansion of progressive views of sexuality, and in particular of gay rights, has not lead to comparable suffering. To the contrary, as being gay becomes more and more accepted it is becoming increasingly clear that pathologies which still sadly correlate with being gay (eg. higher rates of depression and teen suicide) are not inherent in being gay, but are effects of marginalization. As the marginalization decreases, so do the associated pathologies. Within the U.S. more progressive states have lower rates of teen pregnancy, out of wedlock birth, and divorce than conservative states do. In short, progressive policies produce the stronger families that people on the right ostensibly want.
However, for those with faith in God, immortal souls and the afterlife, what goes on in this world is not one’s primary concern. The ugly realities in this world are acceptable if your concern is for people’s souls, rather than their earthly bodies. In fact, enduring suffering is viewed as ennobling in Catholic tradition. What is the point of saving a woman’s life by giving her an abortion, if that abortion means her immortal soul will wind up in hell? Isn’t it worth even a few decades of misery trying to make a hetero marriage work, and going to confession when you inevitably slip up if it means going to heaven for eternity after death?
It may be technically possible to take God and the afterlife out of Catholic teachings. However, if you put them back in, they make a lot more sense – and often seem a lot less cruel (nothing mitigates the covering up of child sex abuse). Any system used to make decisions in a secular society ought to focus on the real world effects of policy. People who believe in immortal souls and afterlives have a different agenda, even if they choose to obscure it for political expediency.
@Kate, thank you, this is very clear. I too was raised a Roman Catholic, and you’re right, the RC position here makes tons of sense, but only if you include the “natural law” construct together with the view of the afterlife you enunciate so well.
Of course to swallow all of these assumptions is gigantic, and most 21 st C Americans do not. Everyone’s assumptions seem self evident to them if not to everyone else. The clear answer to the convicted Roman Catholic is the same answer I gave to Ben David, the Orthodox Jew: go ahead and live by your convictions, just don’t demand that everyone else (in a diverse, pluralistic society) live by your convictions. You must leave them the freedom to live by their own.
It really is not all about you.
I keep trying to get back to this thread – but as Passover approaches that is less and less likely.
The reactions so far have run the expected gamut – and largely confirm that people are talking past each other. I think only one person directly addressed the assertion that homosexuals are caught up in dysfunctional patterns of compulsive, promiscuous behavior – the rest simply dismissed this assertion out of hand, or restated their pet theories about what marriage does, or is supposed to do. Others played that favorite game of progressives, mind reading – asserting what social conservatives really think or want (“all youse broads should be barefoot and pregnant!”) instead of addressing what was actually said.
Perhaps the saddest reaction for me was the libertarian “so what – it’s none of your business” which in this case means “who cares if someone is ruining their life with compulsive, dysfunctional behavior”…. as if such indifference represents progress over the Judeo-Christian idea of human brotherhood…
Clarifying matters of Orthodox Jewish practice and Israeli law:
1. Mythago is wrong again – that’s 2 for 2! – in her assertion that Jewish law lets men divorce women at will. At the very least Judaism considers all property in a marriage to be communally owned, requiring a court or mediator to divide the estate. And the whole purpose of the Jewish marriage contract (rabbinically instituted in pre-industrial era when women were financially disadvantaged) is to impose further protections and support payments for the woman. In this context we also note that women owned real estate and property in Jewish law – at a time when Roman law treated women themselves as property – and that fathers were by default responsible for their children after a divorce.
2. Eytan is correct about marriage/personal status law in Israel. Technically, the secular law invokes Jewish law in this area, or says stuff like “shall be administered in accordance with Jewish tradition” so it’s all under the aegis of modern Israeli law. Offhand I can’t think of any other area where this is true – even laws restricting public transport and retail trade on Saturday are regular labor/blue laws in the modern law book, with no reference to halacha.
Happy Passover!
Well, Ben, it’s still not all about you.
My neighbors, whom I have known for years, are two married men. They live a very solid life pretty much indistinguishable from my own. They are not “caught up in dysfunctional patterns of compulsive, promiscuous behavior.” I have seen such behavior from a few people in my life, but homosexuals do not stand out, particularly. People like that have other problems. (Which are still none of my business!) You are stereotyping, probably because you actually have very little experience with the range of gays, male and female. (Funny how women, lesbians, always drop out of these discussions. Women really are not very important to a lot of men, not very important to you, apparently…just sort of extras on the stage. The stereotype of lesbians is of people who are if anything too stodgy and stable. That gets brushed aside. If we’re talking about homosexuals, it’s male homosexuals, since males are the important people.)
Even if your “they are hurting themselves” premise were correct, I don’t see it as your job or my job to intervene. I might believe that Orthodox Jews lead lives of stultified rule-keeping, with all those sets of dishes….that you oppress women. That belief, even if true, does not give me the right to interfere, not in a secular society.
I think I can do without this sort of interfering “brotherhood”.
If you really feel strongly about this, a free Western secular democracy will not be a happy place for you, since we restrict your ability to interfere in the affairs of other people rather stringently, yes, even if you sincerely believe that they would be better off if they ran their lives according to your ideas. It is only if they are hurting innocent third parties that we will allow you to intervene.
I don’t know much about Israel, but I hear that the Orthodox have quite a bit to say about the behavior of the general, non-Orthodox population. You might consider relocating.
How exactly do you expect people to “address” it? It’s an assertion you’ve provided zero evidence for beyond your own subjective anecdotal observations, and it directly contradicts the subjective anecdotal observations of myself and (as near as I can tell) pretty much everyone else who’s commented on it here. There – consider it addressed.
“I think only one person directly addressed the assertion that homosexuals are caught up in dysfunctional patterns of compulsive, promiscuous behavior –”
Gee, I simply can’t imagine why people would refuse to address such a point.
That said, I think I was the one who addressed it–by asking you why you don’t try and prevent other allegedly promiscuous groups, such as college-aged heterosexual men, from getting married.
You didn’t address that question at all, even though it was specifically directed at you only, so you really have no grounds to complain that your bigoted stereotypes about gay men aren’t being properly acknowledged by enough commenters here.
I donno. Suppose I posted on here that since Orthodox Jewish men are perverts who beat their wives, Orthodox synagogues should not be eligible for property tax exemptions.
Would anyone like to "address" that? What's to address? I haven't provided any evidence for my assertion about Orthodox men. I guess you could contradict it by saying, No, Orthodox Jewish men do not beat their wives, but that statement is as pointless as the original. Unless I can provide some support for my original statement I would think that the best strategy would be to ignore it.
My guess is that some Orthodox Jewish men beat their wives and others do not, just as some homosexuals (and, some heterosexuals) are caught up in dysfunctional patterns of compulsive, promiscuous behavior and some are not. The longer I go on trying to rebut pointless, baseless statements about the behavior of huge groups of people without getting any evidence at all, the more stupid the discussion becomes.
I do think you gave it your best shot, Ben David, and I learned a lot from you, from the discussion, and from other people’s comments here. Mostly I learned yet again that my previous impression that there is no rational or logical reason to oppose same sex marriage was correct.
It no longer surprises me to watch Ben David flat-out lie, but you think he’d be cleverer about it.
For example, Ben David’s claim about how Jewish law handles the distribution of marital property is the equivalent of saying “Of course California doesn’t have no-fault divorce! Why, sometimes there is spousal support, and property has to be split equally!” Under Jewish law, a woman has no right to divorce her husband against his will. If he refuses to, or cannot, grant her a divorce, she cannot force him to accept it. Such women cannot remarry; if they have sex with a man, they are committing adultery; and any children they conceive with another man are mamzerim (bastards).
It defies belief that an Orthodox Jew living in Israel would pretend to be unaware of this.
BTW, the link again at @33 that Ben David mysteriously did not “address”:
https://jofa.org/Advocacy/Agunot_Overview
The Lubavitchers, not a notably liberal group, also apparently are liars in Ben David’s eyes:
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/613084/jewish/The-Agunah.htm
Regarding the silly argument about how all LGBTs are sad and slutty, one would think that if such a thing were true, they would be in desperate need of marriage.
Mythago:
Nope.
Women can release themselves from the marriage contract by demonstrating that their husband is not fulfilling his obligations under the contract – which includes everything from financial desertion, to emotional abuse, to impotence.
The problem is the unwillingness of modern Jewish courts to enforce these precedents.
And since Mythago’s started in quoting Chabad-Lubavitch:
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/560111/jewish/The-Wifes-Grounds-for-Divorce.htm
Key sentence from that:
The strength of the Jewish marital laws is that they are based on a contract between two parties and NOT on a sacrament administered by a third party…. which many of the libertarian-leaning types here should applaud.
This strength is also the problem when the marriage breaks up – the court is limited in its ability to coerce either side, nor can it revoke a “marital status” that it did not bestow.
To (briefly!) answer several other posters:
Evidence that compulsive promiscuity is the norm in the gay “community” abounds (quotation marks because these patterns of behavior do not match my definition of “community”).
We can go all the way back to the first survey of gay couples in the 1970s – which was intended to prove how normal they were, but wound up admitting that not one of the couples surveyed maintained sexual fidelity beyond 18-24 months. That is: gay couplings either dissolve under the pressure of sexual compulsion, or accommodate it.
This finding is confirmed by every other study since, including the Gay Couples Study by San Francisco University:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2906147/
Also well-known was Xiridou’s study for the Dutch Ministry of Health, which showed that most new AIDS cases were occurring in “committed relationships” – and wound up documenting that these “married” couples had between 10 and 50 additional partners per year… these findings have since been confirmed by studies by other health organizations from Sydney to San-Fran.
(So much for the eye-rolling, pearl-clutching assertions by progressives that “we don’t want to change the fundamental structure of marriage.”)
And that’s just the minority of gays that manage to keep some sort of steady relationship going. Compulsive promiscuity, porn consumption, and relationships that dissolve within 18 months are the norm for the rest of out-n-proud gays.
Another group of studies clearly documents psychological distress – with rates of depression, drug and alcohol abuse 4-5 times the normal population. A similar statistical profile was used to push for classification of anorexia as a disorder, but in the topsy-turvy world of left-wing pseudoscience the same statistical evidence of distress is dismissed as “internalized homophobia”…. even though the numbers haven’t gone down in Holland, Sweden, and other places where I would feel more uncomfortable walking down the street with my skullcap than most gays do.
From an epidemiological perspective, coming out as gay shortens one’s statistical life expectancy by 20-30 years. Although the pure libertarians would no doubt shrug and say “so what” to that…
You can find this information quite readily on the internet… and many who have lived in a major urban center and/or worked with homosexuals have experiences that confirm this profile of dysfunction… that’s certainly been my personal experience living and working with gays in New York, London, and Tel-Aviv.
This information is what skeptical thinkers outside the PC echo-chamber are using to form their opinions.
@Ben David, do your generalizations about wild promiscuity apply to lesbians? Or should we just ignore the existence of women, as usual?
Ben David, are you at all capable of making an argument in which (1) all your controversial factual claims are backed up by links, and (2) you don’t constantly make your arguments in the form of expressions of contempt for people who disagree with you?
Are you aware of how laughable a statement like “This information is what skeptical thinkers outside the PC echo-chamber are using to form their opinions” is?
First of all, you say “this information” as if you’ve provided citations to actual information that other people could look at and examine. But of course, you haven’t, apart from a single study. You say things like “another group of studies clearly documents psychological distress….” without providing any links or citations to allow readers to identify or examine this alleged group of studies. This is cheating, because it gives you the opportunity, if someone points to a study and refutes it, to say “nuh-uh, that’s not the unnamed study I was thinking of with my non-citation. Try again.”
Intellectual honesty required backing up claims like “another group of studies…” with actual citations. You make a lot of bold claims about what a lot of studies allegedly say, but you actually provide only a single link to a single study. And it’s hard not to suspect that’s because you know that your actual studies, if you had the integrity to provide links to them, would not withstand skeptical examination.
The one link you provide is to a study which doesn’t describe it’s own sampling methods, instead telling readers to refer to the author’s past studies. When I did, I found that they used a convenience sample of subjects in San Francisco by putting out fliers in places that included night clubs and HIV clinics – “unrepresentative sample” is a phrase that doesn’t even come close to conveying how unrepresentative the sample here is. No lesbian couples were included, nor were any straight couples included (meaning the study provides no comparisons). The “couples” studied included people who had been dating as little as three months. The results are useful for some purposes, but they definitely cannot tell us anything about gay couples in general, because the study is not a representative sample of gay couples in general.
(For a more thorough critique of the ongoing study Ben David cited, see Timothy Kinkaid.)
So the one and only link you provided, when used to support your argument, is absolute bullshit. And since that’s the only link you provide, presumably it’s the single best study you found to cite. Wow, your case must be weak.
You can’t possibly believe that your undocumented anecdotal memories of the gay (and lesbian? and bi?) people who you know (or rather, that subgroup of lgb people you know whose sexual orientation you’re aware of) comprise a representative sample of anything.
* * *
That said, even if gays are more promiscuous – something that might or might not be true, but which you certainly haven’t established – how is that an argument against marriage equality? As Mythago points out, even if we accept that non-monogamy is bad (and I don’t), it could just as easily be an argument for marriage equality – why withhold medication from those who most need it?
I’ve never heard anyone say that promiscuous straights should not be allowed to legally marry. Is anyone suggesting that a commitment to monogomy should be a legal requirement for straight couples, and if so, then why are all those “open” marriages between straights (you can find thousands on Craigslist) allowed? What about lesbians, who are according to common belief (which is apparently where you get your info from) as or less promiscuous than straight couples?
We don’t normally distribute the right to equal treatment according to demographic averages. Even if it’s true that gay men are more promiscuous on average, isn’t it unfair and unjust – and legally dubious – to say that therefore we are going to withhold marriage rights from gay couples who are monogamous?
Connecting a general claim about what “skeptical thinkers” are like with partisan stock phrases like “PC echo chamber” is self-refuting.
Tim Fisher provides a good page citing peer-reviewed studies that seem to show that most unmarried gay men are not more promiscuous than unmarried straight men, although there is a small minority (13%, according to Tim’s calculations from the GSS survey) who are highly promiscuous. Tim links to this page:
Still nothing on lesbians, darn it.
Note that these studies are quite old – in particular, they’re from long before getting married existed as even a plausible dream for most lgbt people, and (assuming an ordinary distribution of ages) would include many men who came of age before the AIDS crisis changed sexual norms. It’s plauisble, therefore, that even these figures overstate how much sex gay guys today are having. But in any case, it’s hard to understand how these results could exist if your stereotypes about gay men reflected general reality, especially when some of them are coming from large-scale representative samples like the GSS.
Similarly, look at these much more recent results from OKCupid. Clearly, a sample of a dating site’s users is not a random representative sample, and this is not a peer-reviewed study. But it’s still interesting, their sample size is huge, and it’s hard to argue that the people using an online dating are less interested in having sex than the general population.
Again, it’s hard to see how these results could have happened if gay men were really the promiscuous sex machines Ben David imagines.
Now, David, please see if your response can combine 1) Using fact-based analysis, posting links (or at least real citations) to all studies you claim exist, and pointing out when those studies are not from legitimate peer-reviewed publications, and 2) no expressions of generalized contempt for those who disagree with you. Thanks.
@Ben David 55
I’ll note that you only provided a citation for one of the studies that you claim support this notion of “compulsive promiscuity” (the 2010 AIDS Care paper), and unless I missed it that study includes no comparison between gay and straight couples – a comparison that I would hope it would be obvious is absolutely necessary if you’re claiming this “compulsive promiscuity” (whatever you think that means) is unique to or occurs at a higher frequency in homosexuals.
This claim is so wildly implausible that I’m going to assume it’s complete bullshit unless you can actually provide a citation to a legitimate peer-reviewed journal article.
Again, citation desperately needed, at least for the claim that homosexuals differ significantly from heterosexuals in these matters. Because, while I’m not sure how you’re defining “compulsive promiscuity,” I can assure you that porn consumption (or excessive porn consumption, depending on who you ask) and short, unstable relationships are kind of a thing for a lot of heterosexuals as well.
To the extent that’s true, do you think it might maybe have a tiny little bit to do with the fact that so many people like you refer to homosexuals as not “normal,” disordered, diseased, sinful, etc.?* Can you understand how having that be a common societal image of you might lead to some psychological distress?
…and many who have done the same will say it’s bullshit. So that’s not a really helpful argument, is it, unless you have something beyond subjective anecdotal observation (which so far you don’t)?
*ETA – not claiming you’ve personally used all those terms, but contrasting homosexuals with “normal” people is bad enough. In fact it’s pretty disgusting.
ETA2 – Or basically everything Amp said 10 minutes before me….
So in effect, you’re saying that Mythago is right for practical purposes.
Amp, not just for practical purposes. Ben David is pretending that a wife’s right to demand a divorce is the same as her right to obtain a divorce. Which she doesn’t have. A beit din can try to persuade him to give her the get – up to the use of physical coercion, under some interpretations – but unlike a husband, a wife cannot simply divorce her husband against his will. This is based on interpretation of the language about how a divorce is effected, and again, it is not believable that an Orthodox Jew living in Israel (particularly one who professes expertise in halacha) actually doesn’t know this. (Though, again, given how often Ben David changes his actual argument, it’s also not really credible that a lack of knowledge is the issue here.)
The point of this digression, of course, is to point out that Ben David’s championing of Jewish religious law as the template for civil marriage law is deeply problematic. It would also be flatly unconstitutional in the US, since we cannot have different rules for men than for women, and we don’t allow civil courts to order people beaten up if we don’t like the way they are exercising their legal rights.
Regarding his ‘evidence’, the NIH study looks at relationship agreements among a group of unmarried gay male couples in the San Francisco area. The Xiridou study, which Ben David carefully does not link to, was done in 2003 and excludes monogamous male couples from certain aspects of the study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12700453
It’s not even necessary to get into whether these studies are peer-reviewed, really. Ben David believes that gay men are bad, slutty people, and when pressed on something beyond anecdata, goes scraping for studies that he hopes, merely by citing to them, lend credence to his argument.
For someone who proudly claims to be observant, I find it interesting that the prohibition on lashon hara is the one Law that Ben David thinks is bullshit.
Recent results from a large-scale, nationally representative survey:
You guys know what the word gay means? Was it just a coincidence homosexuals adopted a word meaning carefree and uninhibited for their sexual identity? This is a pathetic attempt to erase the right to a gay sexual identity won during the civil rights movement, next you’ll be telling us they were never any gangbangs in bathhouses.
This is a pathetic attempt to erase the right to a gay sexual identity won during the civil rights movement
Do go on!
Pete Patriot–This is satire. Right? Tell me this is satire.
Pete Patriot doesn’t know the meaning of satire! His name is “Pete Patriot”, for thing’s sake!
What does this have to do with allowing or not allowing lgbt people to marry? Especially since at least the study I’m most familiar with shows better mental health measurements for lgbt people in monogamous relationships. And anyway, those mental health outcomes are also worse for people who are not out or people who have separate friend groups of straight and lgbt people, i.e., there is actual evidence that at least some of the difference is the internalized homophobia you so casually dismiss.
In any case,
And yet, somehow, allowing same-sex couples to marry has resulted in zero changes to the marriage or divorce rates of opposite-sex couples in those locations. If we were really changing the fundamental structure of marriage in the way you seem to mean, wouldn’t it destabilize everyone?
(The idea that there’s a fundamental structure of marriage to be changed is, of course, laughable. As is the idea that same-sex unions are some kind of modern invention.)
***
Pete Patriot, the relationship between the movement for marriage rights and the deliberately non-heteronormative sexual mores of previous generations of lgb culture is a very interesting topic, but that framing is not the right way to go about discussing it.
You may not believe this, but before gay rights it was called gay liberation. This was part of the sexual liberation movement – along with stuff like free love, swinging, bdsm, polyamory, etc – all explicitly anti-monogamy. That’s the reason why people at gay pride parades all dress like perverts and not like mormons.
Some interesting history for you all on why gays are called gays.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/02/how-gay-came-to-mean-homosexual/
I’m not sure I get what Patriot is up to, but if he’s suggesting that making stable monogamous pair bonds is somehow…backward looking, unacceptable, in a homosexual male, well, he can join the ever-increasing crowd, currently at this site led by Ben David, of people who think they are authorized (by God? by the spirit of rebellion?) to prescribe the sexual and other behavior of other people.
However I am still holding firm in my personal opinion that no one should force Ben David or anyone else to enter a same sex marriage, and no one should force Pete Patriot (if he’s involved personally) or anyone else to be monogamous (or, to be not monogamous, I’m not exactly sure what Pete is advocating). I do object to gang rape, whether in bathhouses or anywhere else, and to rape in general.
And to people sticking their noses, or the nose of the law which is worse, into other people’s affairs, absent some serious demonstrable harm to third parties.
“All dress like perverts?” I take it you’ve never actually been at a gay pride parade. It’s like most other parades – some people dress up, many or most don’t.
That said, yay for dressing like perverts at a pride parade! It’s fun and harms none. It an act of generosity, because dressing like that is a way of using your own creativity and energy to entertain anyone who happens to look at you.
Seriously, how spiteful and joyless must a person be to be against that?
Ladies and gentlemen, Pete Patriot: Critical Queer Theorist.
One of these things… well, you know.
You misunderstand, Amp. It’s like this joke, only not a joke:
Where do elephants hide?
In cherry trees.
Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?
“no”
See how good it works?
So. How do perverts dress?
Like everybody else.
Have you ever seen a pervert dressed like everybody else?
“no”
See how good it works?
We don’t normally distribute the right to equal treatment according to demographic averages. Even if it’s true that gay men are more promiscuous on average, isn’t it unfair and unjust – and legally dubious – to say that therefore we are going to withhold marriage rights from gay couples who are monogamous?
Yes. Maybe this would be relevant if the number of monogamous gay couples was insignificant, but according to Ben David’s own link, that’s not true. The San Francisco University study that Ben David links to says that equal numbers of gay couples in the study were monogamous or in open relationships. Even leaving aside the unrepresentative-sample problems, it’s not like an insignificant number of the gay couples in that study were monogamous.
For comparison, a little under 25% of heterosexual relationships involve cheating at some point, according to one source. Another article says 20 to 40 percent of heterosexual married men will have an affair during their lifetimes. The numbers for women are lower, but since Ben David cites a study of men, it makes sense to only look at the male numbers.
Obviously cheating and open relationships aren’t the same thing, but they both involve “promiscuity”.
It is notoriously difficult to determine human sexual behavior, since so much of it is private and since people lie a lot. This is yet another excellent reason for not determining rights and privileges on this basis.
I’ve been married almost 49 years, and we have a number of friends who have been married that entire time or close to it (we met in college and we’re still in touch with a lot of college friends) and I would say on an anecdotal, make-it-up-as-I-go-along basis, that the number of these married people, male and female, who have “cheated” at one time or another is way more than 40%. Is this sample representative of anything in particular? Quite possibly not. We’re all still married to our original partners, which isn’t representative at all.
So where does this bring us out? We should none of us have been allowed to marry because most of us screwed it up at one time or another in the half century since then? That seems to be what Ben David would tell us, but I cannot believe that his argument is honest.
Male homosexuals freak him out. I guess. Lesbians, and women generally, do not exist. (If an Israeli wife can sort of try to get a divorce but fail, that’s just as good as being able to demand one as her husband can. Right? Whatever. Women don’t matter.) Lesbians don’t matter either. They should be punished for the real or alleged sins of male homosexuals. (Sexism is right up there competing homophobia.)
Let’s not start. Let’s especially not start when our demographic information is this unreliable.
The gay liberation movement was about the rights of lesbian and gay people, Pete Patriot. That’s why it wasn’t called the “free love” movement (which was primarily straight people), or the “swingers” movement (again, almost exclusively married straight people), or the polyamory movement (a pretty recent thing really). I’m not sure what you think BDSM has to do with monogamy or why it’s “anti-monogamy”, since it’s not about monogamy one way or the other.
As for perverts, indeed, here’s a picture from San Francisco in 1978 showing a pride parade where people dressed like…. Um. Okay, how about one from the 2011 parade, which includes a silly hat? Or my goodness, look at these two women in 2005, who don’t even have the decency to be showing their Sapphic affection in a performative way for the benefit of straight dudes? Or these promiscuous ladies from last year?
Of course, there are people who go around naked, half naked or otherwise in “pervert” garb at Pride – just like you can expect to see topless straight women at Mardi Gras, or naked drunken young straight people at Spring Break.
Ben David, can you explain what you’d like gay and lesbian people to do?
On the one hand, lazy libertarians are failing them because libertarians are cruelly allowing them to remain homosexual (which you’ve established is synonymous with unhealthy promiscuity and the absence of monogamy); on the other, allowing gay and lesbian couples to officially cement Good, Honest, Committed Monogamous Relationships with one another is futile and shouldn’t be allowed.
Again, since — like the bad lefties who wish to impose their fascist lefty-ness on everyone — you wish to limit the choices gay and lesbian people can make in the US, what is your solution? They’re committing, like so many het people before them, the grievous, “dysfunctional,” and anti-Judeo-Christian sin* of intercoursing one another outside of a marriage they’re not legally allowed to pursue. Meanwhile, they’re more likely to suffer from the very systemic inequalities and lack of resources you’ve documented in 55. It’s quite a bleak catch-22 you’ve constructed quite gleefully for them, and that glee is particularly jarring because heretofore you’ve represented yourself as a spiritual brother to all men**.
*I fail to understand why a minority of Americans (western Judeo-Christians) think they can impose their values on other people in a multi-cultural country; they must be those bad PC lefties I keep hearing about because only the PC brigade does this kind of thing
**Susan and mythago are quite right, of course: women are erased in this discussion because they never matter unless they can be demonized and because, in this instance, everything we know about your average, generalized lesbian completely disputes your boring, backwards, and hateful little fantasy about Violently Insatiable Gay Lust
As an addendum to the last comment, Ben David, what makes you think that repeating the same half-hearted, illogical, thoroughly unconvincing concern-trolling for the health and psychological well-being of gay men is anything but a risible and last-ditch effort to handwave away requests for further clarification about your anti-SSM stance? Can you address that directly, or is handwringing about (selective instances of) promiscuity all you have?
Since the stats are starting to fly, could we define “promiscuous”, at least for the purpose of this discussion? Ben David, since you brought it up, could you explain for us what you mean by it?
Some questions which might help define it: Is it number of partners, period, in the lifetime? Is it rate, that is, number of partners per unit time, in which case, how many over what unit of time? Do some situations count more than others? If you once participated in a three-way, are you that much more promiscuous, for life? Does only sex outside of marriage count? What does “sex outside of marriage” mean, in this context? Is it sex while unmarried, or sex while married, but not with your spouse? Both? Does it matter if all participants have discussed it and agreed that the marriage should be open? Does it matter if you have made a lifetime monogamous commitment but are unable to be legally married?
Is there a threshold age of maturity? Many people play the field when they’re young, and then settle down. Are they still promiscuous, or no longer? How long does it take for the promiscuity to wear off?
I’m not making fun. Many of these situations might seem facially obvious, but here are a few examples where people of good conscience might differ:
1. A faithfully married heterosexual couple has been happily sexual for twenty years. She comes down with a chronic condition which makes sex very painful for her, and as a result, she no longer wants sex and he doesn’t want to hurt her trying. She gives him her blessing to get his sexual needs fulfilled elsewhere. He has sex only with partners who are aware of the situation, have met his wife, and agree. This arrangement helps preserve a stable and loving marriage. Is the husband promiscuous?
2. A man dates, has sex with one or two people, then gets married. During the marriage, he has sex only with his spouse. A few years later, he and his spouse divorce. He dates, has sex with one or two people, gets married. During the marriage, he has sex only with his spouse. A few years later, he and his spouse divorce. Repeat ad infinitum. Is this man ever promiscuous? Is he promiscuous during the first marriage? After it? During the second marriage? After it? How long does it take to find the line, if there is one?
3. Same question, but for a woman. Is the line in the same place? If not, why not?
4. A woman goes to college and over the course of college dates many people and has sex with X of them. After college, during her post-graduate training, she meets someone, falls in love, they marry, and have a long and faithful monogamous marriage. For what value of X is she promiscuous? For that same value of X, is she still promiscuous twenty years into the marriage?
5. Same question, but for a man. Is the line in the same place? If not, why not?
6. In the case of 2 through 5, does it make a difference whether the couple is straight or gay, if the fact pattern is otherwise identical?
7. Two gay men fall in love and commit to each other, monogamously, but cannot legally get married. During their period of commitment, which lasts across decades, they have sex a lot, but only with each other. Are they promiscuous?
8. A trans woman presenting as a man and a pansexual woman get married, each making full disclosure to the other as much as possible at all times. After twenty years of monogamous marriage, the trans woman transitions and lives the rest of her life presenting as herself. The couple continues to be monogamously married for many years until one of them dies. Are they promiscuous? One, but not the other?
“Promiscuity” gets thrown around a lot, but I’ve never heard anyone say what they mean by it. It’s weird, because I’ve never heard Newt Gingrich, with his four serial unfaithful marriages, called promiscuous, but I’ve heard gay men called promiscuous without any description of their sex life at all, other than the apparent assumption that it must be non-stop orgies. That seems inconsistent.
So, Ben David, I ask in all earnestness. You brought the term up. What exactly do you mean by it?
Thanks.
Grace
I’m very interested to read Ben David’s responses to my and others’ comments and questions here – I hope you’ll be able and willing to respond after Passover if not sooner, Ben David.
I’ve been reading around on the internet and have come across some religiously based right wing blogs. These people are seriously arguing that they are being subjected to religious persecution – think, thrown to the lions – if this society insists that bakers of wedding cakes should simply do their job without inquiring into the gender (or virtue?) of the parties getting married. (And most of the writers couldn’t bake a wedding cake if their lives depended on it!)
These “religious” people are worrying me. They sound like they are very seriously off the rails. One must not suspect them of rational argument of course, they simply have the screaming horrors. Christianity itself (along with Orthodox Judaism, I guess, as per Ben David) is being Wiped Off The Face Of The Earth. Or of this nation at least. I read this stuff and I think, is this person OK? Should he or she really be running around unsupervised?
What is going to happen to these people when, as everything thinks they will, the Supremes rule that marriage is a fundamental right and must be recognized for everyone in this country? Will they eventually calm down, go back to their lives, learn to breathe again? If not, what will happen to them, and to the rest of us? Will we have to wait for most of them to die out, as (most) segregationists did a generation ago?
A friend said, well, these objectors are just being asked to absorb more change than they can cope with. But is it really change? There are suddenly, now, brand new thing, a bunch of gay people around, who want normal human rights? This is not new, they’ve been there the whole time. These gay people have been beaten down, sometimes murdered, made to suffer unspeakably, but they’ve been there. They will always be there.
The hole in Ben David’s argument that we must Save The Gays From Themselves is that prohibiting marriage will not cause all (or, any) gay people to evaporate. They will still be there, they will still have the same orientation, they will still be tempted to be “promiscuous” (whatever that means) just as the rest of us are, they just won’t have the right to marry. (The irrationality of trying to prevent sex outside marriage by – prohibiting marriage! – is too funny for words. Ben David, who is rather humorless, presumably does not see the funny side of this.)
Anyway, the fervor of the opposition is amazing and a little frightening. They are going to the scaffold! Christianity itself will be criminalized tomorrow! It is time for all Christians to stiffen up and face martyrdom!
I’m a Christian myself, but I’m not willing to die for the supposed right to treat other people like dirt. (What??!?) Whatever are these people thinking?
Hopefully this is all being overstated in the heat of the moment, and most of these people will be able to calm down in due course and go back to normal lives.
Since the stats are starting to fly, could we define “promiscuous”, at least for the purpose of this discussion?
Oh, you know that. I have an exciting love life; you sleep around; s/he is promiscuous.
Or, less glibly, I am the golden mean; anyone who has less stringent standards than I do is promiscuous, whereas anyone who has more stringent standards than I do is probably repressed.
Having just revisited this thread through a link to see what the big argument was, I cannot help but to post the
“How does your sexual history stack up” Patented Promiscuity Evaluator, courtesy of Slate. Note that it just counts sex partners, nothing more. Still, it’s amusing to see how one’s own “well, probably somewhere around ____” memories stack up to everyone else’s.
Fun link, G&W. I’ve done it with more people than 12% of my peers. I’m shocked that I’m in such a high percentile. I would’ve guessed I’d be 8 to 11 points lower.
I do have a former classmate who claims, based on his logging since 2004 and his estimates of activity before that, to be in the 99.999999th percentile.
My problem is memory. I haven’t slept with anyone besides my wife and I’ve been married almost 20 years, and the prior girlfriend was another ~3 years of monogamy. So I can’t honestly do much more than guess about how many people I slept with 23+ years ago, beyond remembering “plenty, or so it seemed to me at the time.”
If only you’d logged your partners, you wouldn’t have to rely on memory!
Is this a euphemism? I suspect it’s the partners that he logged that he can actual member….
You’d be wrong. He actually has kept a log since 2004. I suspect that he’s also got a spreadsheet going… Anyway, using that as a basis to estimate back several years, he says he’s at 525. This is a guy who doesn’t really have the ability to lie and he remembers ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. It’s an amazing combination of traits that he’s made of. I’ve only recently begun to really appreciate him.