50 Million Frenched Men Can’t Be Wrong
Rod Dreher does an end-zone celebration in the first quarter of a losing game:
Do I think it always will be? No, I do not, in part because homosexuality is far more accepted by young Americans, and in part because heterosexual America has already conceded the philosophical grounds on which traditional marriage was based (which is why younger Americans are more comfortable with gay marriage). Nor do I believe that the voters are always right. But unless you’re prepared to call more than half the country bigots — and I have no doubt that many, perhaps most, gay marriage supporters are, and let that self-serving explanation suffice — maybe, just maybe, you ought to ask yourself if there’s something else going on here. And that maybe, just maybe, serious attention should be paid, instead of paying attention long enough to insult people who disagree with you as evil people who deserved to be excoriated and harrassed.
If you follow the “excoriated and harassed” link, you’ll find some very thinly sourced lists of stolen signs and vandalism, some of which is surely sort of true, some of which is probably even largely true. Hey, Loyal Readers, don’t steal people’s signs.
That said, why should I ‘”pay attention” to stupid, mean arguments? Why should I assume that a majority of people who vote on hot-button ballot issues must have a case worthy of respect, just because there are a lot of them? Their case is variously gauzy, mealymouthed or empty (“I believe it cause I believe it!”) and their actions blight the lives of real people I love, real people those people love, and real people I don’t know but who are loved by someone out there. For some of these people, the efforts of Dreher’s obnoxious little platoons to keep them from marrying counts as only a small ruin; for others, it’s a much bigger deal. I’ve heard all the apologias for gay-marriage opposition and lost patience with them years ago.
Meanwhile, Dreher himself espouses a religion based on the idea that we’re all sinners – meaning, we each in some way fall short of the standard of goodness we should meet. It’s the most appealing idea in Christianity. But it means Dreher already grants the premise that pretty much everybody can be wrong or evil in some way. So yes, opposition to gay marriage is wrong and evil, and popular. For now.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 5, 2009 @ 1:30 am
Yes, I know it’s the-worst-system-except-for-all-the-others, but sometimes it’s really just a long, sick joke that ends in “What you do you call it?” “It’s Democracy!”
I expect that in the next few weeks, we’ll have some Yankee variation on the Californian blame-the-gays-for-not-begging-properly-for-their-rights routine. Ultimately, though, the blame falls squarely on that ~53% of voters.
Comment by mch —
November 5, 2009 @ 7:29 am
“insult . . . you as evil people who deserved to be excoriated and harrassed.”
Sounds like a place to start finding common ground with gays.
Comment by Seward —
November 5, 2009 @ 9:49 am
The way I look at is that twenty years ago, a pro-gay marriage initiative would have lost in every state by a far wider margin than this. IMHO once these measures start passing it will add legitimacy to the issue in a way that we have not see with abortion rights. I don’t know if that is much comfort for the present situation, but at least there are places in the U.S. where gay marriage is possible.
Comment by Porgy Tirebiter —
November 5, 2009 @ 10:37 am
The work of destroying Western civilization is being slowed down by these damned voters!
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 5, 2009 @ 10:44 am
Okay, folks, time to vote: Is Porgy funning us, or is he/she a genuine troglodyte? I’m tending toward the latter.
Comment by mr.fun —
November 5, 2009 @ 11:22 am
latter.
Comment by Seward —
November 5, 2009 @ 11:49 am
I took it is a joke, but I could be wrong.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 5, 2009 @ 12:36 pm
No need to vote, Jim: eir’s an asshole, either way.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 5, 2009 @ 12:41 pm
Spivak pronoun fail! Ey’s an asshole.
Comment by Keith —
November 5, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
Gay marriage isn’t opposed by a vast majority of people. It’s opposed by a slim majority of people who bother to vote. The voting percentage is usually far less than half and has been for some time. While some non-voters probably also hate gays, they don’t hate them enough to actively try and stop them from getting married. The ones who do are maybe 27% of the voting public, mostly yahoos riled up by bigots and nincompoops like Dreher.
Comment by Seward —
November 5, 2009 @ 2:58 pm
Keith,
Roughly 45% of the population – voting or otherwise – supports gay marriage according to the polls I’ve seen recently. The 55% who are opposed split roughly evenly between those who are opposed to all forms of gay unions and those who oppose gay marriage but support some kind of civil union.
Comment by McKingford —
November 5, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
And that maybe, just maybe, serious attention should be paid,
If the case against gay marriage is so serious, then why do opponents constantly lie about it? Instead of debating the cons (whatever they may be I haven’t a clue) and pros of marriage equality, the Maine homophobes spent the whole campaign pretending it would lead to indoctrination of school children.
So, yeah, maybe when the haters stop lying, we can “take them seriously”…
Comment by dhex —
November 5, 2009 @ 3:37 pm
well, if your argument is cultural, you kinda have to argue that it’s going to affect cultural transmissions. which necessarily means teh childrens and the future and all that jazz.
think of it like adbusters (or “the adbusterian current” if you want to be fancy/retarded like me). the vast bulk of their agit-prop is directed at an intuition/memetic undercurrent that the truly true and good way of life is being perverted by outside forces which have turned the culture against itself. which is kinda typical false consciousness stuff and a general paranoia about the loss of control over the physical and mental landscape.
the effect all things corporate-y has on children is a useful and heavily-pushed topic among anti-advertising types. and for obvious reasons – who doesn’t want to help children?
(monsters, that’s who)
the parallel being that the gay marriage thing is also about a loss of control, albeit of a fanciful sort of control. the culture has been lulled into a false equivocation of what marriage is and is not. both sides accept this particular statement, as well as the underlying understanding that who gets to marry is a moral as well as legal question.
what i find genuinely puzzling about rod – ho ho ho – and his essay is the link to that listing of vandalism and other acts of almost-violence is sort of glossed over with a layer of confusion and puzzlement.
why would anyone be puzzled that someone would want to hurt someone who wants to hurt them, even if only indirectly via the state?
Comment by mpowell —
November 5, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
Dreher doesn’t make any sense at all. What exactly is he trying to say? Yes, we will eventually have gay marriage everywhere, but the fact that a slim and diminishing majority of voters still support it means that we should reconsider our position on the issue? That’s not a very compelling argument. Which isn’t surprising since anytime someone has to argue directly against gay marriage, they fail badly. Either way, I don’t really care. As he says, his is the losing side.
Comment by JasonL —
November 5, 2009 @ 5:23 pm
This kills me, too. One might almost be inclined to think that the views of the group in question are entirely irrlevant. Let’s see, we’ve addressed 53% of people who oppose, okay. Now, fair and balanced like we should touch on why other non gay americans are obviously missing something (what, the world may never know). That’s all the important views, lets wrap this argument up!
Comment by Dave Trowbridge —
November 5, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
Dreher needs to remember a core teaching of Jesus: if our religion tells us that God hates the same people we do, we got it wrong.
Comment by DannyK —
November 6, 2009 @ 3:40 am
Rod’s comments reflect what I’ve seen in a lot of other righty bloggers lately; continued opposition to gay marriage coupled with an admission that they sound like a-holes to themselves when they talk about it.
Here’s Ross Douhat as quoted in the Observer:
I’d feel more sympathy for these guys, but I’m pretty tired of the argument, argument “But God told me to hate!”
Comment by dhex —
November 6, 2009 @ 1:27 pm
well, the argument “god says [xyz]” is pretty irritating. i don’t care that god wants you to tax more or tax less or marry everyone or no one or give everyone healthcare or no one healthcare or whatever. let that motherfucker hold a press conference and tell me himself.
and that’s why i phrase everything in the context of of xipe totec, the flayed one. you gotta skin it to win it!
Comment by B —
November 6, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
But unless you’re prepared to call more than half the country bigots…
I’m prepared to assert that “more than half” is a conservative estimate. And I’d be quite happy to be proven wrong.
Comment by B —
November 6, 2009 @ 5:19 pm
Damn closing tags…the second line is me, just in case you were wondering.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
November 7, 2009 @ 7:29 pm
Yes, half the country are bigoted towards homosexuals. Yep.
Back in, say, the 1930s, over half the country was bigoted towards black people. Yep. I’ll say it. They were bigots. I doubt a referendum on inter-racial marriage would have passed in any state in the nation. Because people were bigots.
Comment by All Your Summer Songs —
November 7, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
Ross Douthat & AdBusters in the same comment thread. It’s a perfect storm for a cranial infaction (on my part).
Comment by Glaivester —
November 7, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
Dreher needs to remember a core teaching of Jesus: if our religion tells us that God hates the same people we do, we got it wrong.
Dave Trowbridge also needs to remember that Jesus not hating someone =/= Jesus saying that what someone does is okay.
The “Yes on 1″ campaign, by the way, was not lying about gay marriage being taught in schools. Ifthere is gay marriage, people will be taught about it.
Note that all of the ads that claimed that “Yes on 1″ were lying essentially admitted in the ad that yes, gay marriage would be taught in schools. After saying that the “Yes on 1″ campaigners were lying, they either said that “nothing inappropriate” would be taught in schools, which wasn’t really a denial of the “Yes on 1″ sides claims, or else they defended the book that was being taught in Massachusetts.
Apparently they didn’t have the cajones to say what they meant, which was “Hell yes it will be taught and only a bigot would disagree with it!”
The problem with gender-neutralizing marriage is that it continues the trend of converting marriage into nothing more than another private contract. If you don’t think that marriage really means anything in particular, I guess you don’t see that as a problem.
The goal here is ultimately just to extend the sexual revolution. Nothing more, nothing less.
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 7, 2009 @ 10:34 pm
So when you talk directly to gay people about marriage, is that how they represent it to you, as just another contract? Have you expressed this perspective to gay friends and family? Did they concur or disagree? Tell me about the last discussion you had with an openly gay person about marriage and coupling. I’m curious how it went.
Comment by All Your Summer Songs —
November 7, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
WE WANT PRE-NUP! WE WANT PRE-NUP!
Comment by dhex —
November 8, 2009 @ 1:13 am
The problem with gender-neutralizing marriage is that it continues the trend of converting marriage into nothing more than another private contract.
well, in a more libertoid-y world, my marriage would quite literally be nothing but a private contract as far as you were concerned – an llc of sorts. it’s obviously always going to be something more to me and mine, but…it basically comes down to a split: people either see marriage as primarily a legal convention or a social convention.
i have heard reasonable arguments for both views, but the real kibosh on the second is this question: how much say should the members of your community have in the arrangement of your private relationship? i don’t know about you but i don’t see how it’s really any of their fucking business.*
as for “teaching” gay marriage in school, i’m not really sure what’s to teach. that’s jack and that’s sven, and they’re married.
(the argument against both is the usual argument against state marriage, which though eminently fair is about as likely as a random branch of government spontaneously amputating itself as a breakaway republic.)
* on a social level – on the legal level the singles are forced to subsidize the married and everyone is forced to subsidize the breeders.
Comment by b-psycho —
November 8, 2009 @ 7:37 am
If that’s the case, then how about simply separating the contract aspect from the religious part? Why is the government in the business of sanctioning (or not) relationships at all??
Marriage can either be a legal recognition of a mutually agreed to codependency or a religious activity that has zilch to do with government. The latter has grounds for exclusion, the former does not. Pick one.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
November 8, 2009 @ 11:25 am
No, they didn’t. They stated quite truthfully that the law would having nothing to do with what local school districts teach about gay marriage, just as it has always been.
Comment by Oscar Mayer —
November 9, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
So, if over half the country is bigots, what does that make your smug, self-righteous, enlightened selves? Besides royal asshats, that is?
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 9, 2009 @ 5:47 pm
Smug, self-righteous, enlightened asshats who aren’t bigots? What’s your point here? Do you have an argument, or are you just offended that we (implcitly) called you names?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 9, 2009 @ 6:46 pm
What a wiener.
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 9, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
Heh. Careful, you’ll hurt his precious feelings.