Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has decided to sacrifice his valuable Sunday morning (pre-football) quiet time (while Mrs. Villain and the Villainettes are out of the Villainous Compound) to re-read the comments concerning his gay marriage post and finalize a response. Allow me to say that all of the comments on my original post, when transferred to MS-Word, fill 23 pages. (Viewed in 11pt. Book Antiqua Font. BTW, Book Antiqua is the official Font of the MWO.) That is a lot of reading. Also, the volume of words written by the Big Hominid (The Poet Laureate of the MWO) and the Minister of Agriculture (obviously one of people slated to take an executive position in the MWO) preclude (in my opinion) Fisking their responses. As much as I might like to Fisk in this instance, I really have to write an original post. Albeit an original post containing lots of block quotes.
So, that said, allow you Maximum Leader to dive right in…
My good friends (and one reader of the Big Hominid’s site) do not warm up to my assertion that reason is a destructive faculty. Indeed the Big Hominid writes:
There is, to my mind, an enormous difference between declaring that reason is a destructive faculty, and merely that it can be so. As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing inherently destructive about reason ("inherent destructiveness" is a stand taken by many postmodernists who view reason-- or "rationality"-- through a consequentialist lens and deem it the primary cause of the so-called "death event" that was the 20th century). Reason is merely a tool, and when the Maximum Leader introduces that auxiliary verb "can" into his argument, he's acknowledging this.
The Minister of Agriculture also objects to this assertion. He writes:
I am alarmed at my friend the Maximum Leader’s attack on reason. I think he is missing the point of the founding fathers. They were not rejecting reason and would not have seen reason and tradition as being in conflict. They were simply using traditional practices and experience to inform their reason – “this works” and “this doesn’t.” Reason is informed by tradition. Furthermore, the Maximum Leader’s examples that purport to show the destructive action of reason actually show the problems that arise from poor reasoning. I agree that there are many pie-in-the-sky “rational” theorists who arrive at ridiculous positions when they discard tradition. But their problem isn’t that they have fine reasoning and a poor grasp of tradition. Their problem is that their reasoning is poor because they fail to integrate experience into their thought process.
Why is the Maximum Leader, a child of the Enlightenment, suddenly turning on lady reason? Does the Maximum Leader suspect that at some level his argument does not hold up to rational scrutiny? Rather than deny the utility of reason, I would humbly suggest that his acknowledgement of this suspicion should lead to a reappraisal of his position.
My point obviously needs some refinement. Allow your Maximum Leader to start refining. First to address the M of A, as a Hobbesian I am pre-Enlightenment in many respects. Be that as it may…
I will continue to maintain that reason alone, outside of science and mathematics, is a destructive faculty. This is to say that in the sphere of civil/political society reason is imbued with a mainly destructive impulse. Reason is deployed, primarily, as the basis for the overthrow of tradition. Very few, if any, traditions will survive a completely rational examination. In this way, I do not believe I am missing the point of the Founders. When they said “this works” and “that doesn’t” they were tempering rationality in favor of tradition. Civilization is maintained not by reason, but by tradition.
To this point the Big Hominid writes:
When he writes, "It is custom and tradition that provide continuity to civilization and prevent us from sliding into the abyss of barbarity at any moment," I'm with him until the alarmist ending of that sentence. Sociologist Peter Berger used the Greek term nomos (law) to refer to the social order embodied in tradition, an order that in many ways appears to assume an objective reality. Berger contends that "objectification" is one of the steps we go through as we become more and more inculturated into our society: we come to accept that "society" and "the law(s)" all exist in some real sense outside our heads. Because these notions become objectified, they do indeed carry weight and momentum….
The Big Hominid continues:
And social order, whether we call it tradition or something else, has its salubrious aspect. Far be it from me to deny tradition's significance. But let it be known that traditions have beginnings; they come from somewhere, are made before they are passed on, and in the final analysis, traditions-- and the larger nomos-- reside in the mind. My metaphysical point is the same as it always is: we're talking about frangible, dynamic, impermanent realities. While tradition and law are important for the structure they provide to the system, that same system also requires dynamism to stay viable. An alarmist viewpoint that equates dynamism with collapse does not, in my opinion, contribute constructively to society. I advocate the abandonment of such alarmism in favor of a more balanced view of order and chaos (what process theologians politely call "novelty").
This is, in my opinion, the strongest argument against my position. I agree that society does need dynamism to remain viable. The position I advocate is one of gradual change where the benefit to society will be clear. I do not believe that gay marriage will clearly benefit society. Will it benefit gays? Of course. Am I afraid that a small percentage of a small percentage of people (the gay community) getting married will completely and immediately overthrow society? No. I will grant you that it will not completely and immediately overthrow the existing social order. But by removing this traditional taboo (members of the same sex getting married) from society one makes it even more difficult to maintain the taboos that remain; because there becomes less and less reason to maintain taboos. (More on this later…)
Inculturation of “the laws” and “tradition” in people is only as strong as the ability of people to be willing to uphold even irrational traditions. As the Big Hominid points out, traditions have beginnings. These beginnings are just as often irrational as they are rational. Regardless, traditions are made and passed on. I say that reasoned examination of tradition is deployed be people who want change the tradition. For example, why do various religious traditions prohibit the eating of shellfish? Probably because at the time of the first prohibition there was a food preparation issue that could cause shellfish be fatal. Is there a rational reason to continue this dietary restriction? No. Should you overthrow the shellfish restriction? That is the crux of the matter…
The use of reason alone to overthrow tradition was the core (perhaps not articulated clearly enough) of my equality argument. Once you start down the path of “Point A is completely rational and reasonable and no reasonable, rational person should object to it;” you don’t leave much room for experience and tradition. Indeed, when arguments are worded in this way one starts to sound particularly shrill. (More on shrill later…) To re-word, “Equality among all people is a completely rational and reasonable idea; and no reasonable, rational person can object to it.” My point it that it depends on what “equality” is. The way I would define equality is highly dependent on my historical understanding of the term. It is my contention that the historical understanding of the term equality is being overthrown, to the detriment of society.
I cited some examples in my original post which the M of A says are not examples of reason as being destructive, but show instead poor reasoning. Then he ends his paragraph by saying that their reasoning is poor because they fail to integrate experience into their reasoning. This is my whole point. My arguments were essentially sound from a logical standpoint. The M of A objects to the premises. While I know that objection to the premises is the heart of logical debate, our problem is that those who advance the reasoned argument against the traditional argument have to start with the completely rational premise. This is what I believe many people involved in this debate are doing divorcing tradition (historical experience) from their rational process.
Allow me to introduce what I will now describe as the “John Cleese Argument.” It is essentially the reductio ad absurdum philosophical tactic. I call it the “John Cleese Argument” because its genesis comes from an old interview with John Cleese by the BBC. (Which I have spent about 45 mins trying to find on the internet. Can’t find the link anywhere. If any of you find it, please send it on to me.) Cleese was asked by the Beeb interviewer if being a lawyer was important to his comedy. He said it was essential. One of the outcomes of a legal education was being able to take an argument to an extreme to make a legal point. If you apply this technique to a non-legal situation, you can get comedy. For example, take the Black Knight in the Holy Grail movie. You start off positing that the Knight would defend the bridge until death. Now start the reductio ad absurdum. If you cut off his arms what would he do? He would kick you. If you cut off his legs what would he do? He would try to bite you. And so on. The sequence is funny because of its absurdity. Unfortunately, we do not apply this technique often enough in civil life.
Why is this approach not used enough in civil/political life? The reason is that in some respects this approach is similar to the slippery slope argument. The problem with using the slippery slope argument in civil/political life is that one side denies that the end point of the slope is what they are arguing for. Take the gun control debate. (Which I believe is the only political debate in the US that does regularly use the reductio ad absurdum defence.) Those in favor of gun control say that their desire is to sensibly regulate guns and ammunition. Those against gun control say that the ultimate goal of the other side is to confiscate guns and make private ownership illegal. Because of this there is not a lot of room to compromise between the two sides.
To continue to use gun control as an analogy… The former Handgun Control, Inc side says, “We want to require that trigger locks are sold with handguns and that if owners do not use the locks they will be criminally prosecuted.” Why do the people at the former Handgun Control, Inc want to do this? The reason is simple, they want to reduce handgun violence and deaths. So what does the NRA (the other side) say? They object to the trigger lock proposal because it leads to outlawing private ownership of handguns.
So the argument concerning handguns unfolds thusly. The Handgun Control people say who could be against reasonable, rational, gun control? The NRA says “We are against what you call reasonable, rational, gun control because of the end to which it leads.” Why take this approach? Because once you cross the first “reasonable, rational” barrier you inevitably weaken all of the other “reasonable, rational” barriers. Once you get societal buy-in to “we must reduce handgun violence through trigger locks” you are not far at all rationally from “we must reduce handgun violence through eliminating private ownership of handguns.”
Ultimately, the NRA position boils down to our written Constitution as the embodiment of American tradition. The NRA’s (drastically oversimplified) point is that we’ve never prohibited handgun ownership. You can argue this point a dozen ways, but essentially it comes down to “this is the way it has always been, and that is good enough.”
So, let me start to refocus the argument back to gay marriage…
Put simply, my position is that I prefer the existing situation to change. (That much is clear.) To which the M of A says, rather shrilly:
I would once, just once, like to see an honest conservative get up and say that “homosexuality is wrong and practitioners of this vice should suffer societal disapprobation and LEGAL PENALTIES.”
By accepting the existing social order, I am supporting the continuation of societal disapprobation and legal penalties. Does that admission advance or otherwise assist the M of A’s side of this discussion? The shrill tone of the M of A doesn’t faze me the way it would faze the various talking heads on TV and in the political sphere. I recognize that the bedrock of civilization is the notion that there are boundaries to behavior. Those boundaries are often codified in law. I will gladly support the ones that I believe have well served us up to this point.
The underlying element of the M of A’s point is that we should believe in equal application of the law. The M of A writes:
Society discriminates against gays in a legal fashion. As a conservative, I would expect the Maximum Leader to rail against the unequal application of laws. All citizens should be equal before the laws. And no, my friend with the clinically diagnosed case of megalomania, I am not traipsing down the slippery slope of equal outcomes. I believe the government has an obligation to provide a level playing field. If, after having a level playing field, you fail to reach the standard of living you desire, my response is to suck it up and work harder. Gays in this country do NOT have a level playing field and are not asking for equal outcomes; only equal opportunity. The perniciousness of equal outcome mentality is irrelevant to the topic at hand.
I believe the M of A is completely wrong on this point. (And furthermore, he is going down the slippery slope.) As a conservative I do seek the equal application of laws. What he is asking for is not equal application. What the M of A is asking for is a dramatic reinterpretation of the application of the laws in a way that was never intended. He is implying that marriage is a basic right of all people (regardless of sexual orientation) and thus there can be no rational reason to object to same sex marriage. This implication is close to basic civil right notion that was introduced by the Big Hominid. I say that the right to get married, like all rights, are the creation of the state and the civilization that the state is a part of. We can go on and on talking about the abstract right of marriage. My point is that marriage, until recently, was always a relationship into which a man and a woman entered.
The Big Hominid writes (and I will Fisk a little):
The reality of marriage is a human reality, not something inscribed in the cosmos. Marriage is as we define it, and to say it's rooted in biology/family is simply to define it in terms of biology/family. This is human arbitrariness which gains momentum as tradition. No cosmic imperatives enter the discussion.
I agree at this point. I am not trying to make a case for a cosmic imperative. I am standing up for tradition. However the Big Hominid will quickly try to dissemble that tradition…
To anticipate the typically dualistic response at this point: "So you're saying marriage can be defined any old way, irrespective of tradition, history, and the fact that the traditional definiton does imply biological reality, etc.?"
This cannot be stressed enough: when the nondualist notes the lack of essence in a term, concept, argument, or position, he is not therefore arguing that the term, concept, etc. has no value at all, nor that it should simply be ignored in favor of a "let's do whatever we want" style of living. The same "leap to extremes" tendency that produces the "hell in a handbasket" argument is operative when the dualist asks this question, because he assumes my position, like his, must oscillate between the stark black-and-white of P and not-P. Unable to see past his own dualism, he is often compelled to view situations in terms of their extremes.
So I would never argue that marriage should mean... just anything. When I acknowledge along with Sullivan that the reality behind the term "marriage" is always moving, I am not therefore implying that we can/should start marrying our livestock (to use a Scottish example... cough). If anything, I'm being a realist: the term "marriage" is in fact applied to a rather wide variety of scenarios already (including homosexual marriage, since plenty of gays have already gotten married!). Do you consider mass weddings in the Moonie Church to be "real" marriages? No? Well, too bad: they're called marriages, anyway. To argue specifically against gay-inclusive definitions of marriage is a high-handed attempt to legislate meaning.
Alas my friend, you are trying an equally high-handed attempt to change the traditionally understood legal meaning of the term marriage. By saying that there is no cosmic imperative behind the term we are free to alter or modify the arbitrary meaning of the word. This is what I disagree with. Have we gotten to the point where we need divine intervention to fix the definition of a word? I recognize that plenty of homosexuals have already gotten married. Without the support of the state and its laws those ceremonies don’t amount to much. I have already held a coronation ceremony in which I have crowed myself Maximum Leader and Emperor of the World. The very fact that I have had a ceremony doesn’t grant legal status (not yet at least) to my Maximum Leader status. We can dance all we want about the semantics here, but the term marriage has a specific and clear historical and legal meaning. It has been used to describe the legal relationship between a man and a woman. By asserting that the term is now applied in different situations now, thus the meaning has changed doesn’t advance your argument for legal recognition of gay marriage.
Never in the course of human history (at least to my rather broad knowledge of human history) has marriage ever been construed to include the relationship of a man and a man or a woman and a woman. Thus, if marriage is a right it is one that is guaranteed only to men and women. I am not denying equal application of the laws, because the laws themselves were never intended to be interpreted in the way that the M of A or the Big Hominid ask.
I grant you that gays do not have equal opportunity in the case of marriage. I realize that this is what they are asking for. The argument is that if you have two loving people willing to enter into a legally binding (and state sanctioned) matrimonial relationship they should be allowed to regardless of their sex. My point is where does it end? Should we allow a 45-year-old man to marry a 10-year-old boy? If they love each other and are voluntarily entering into marriage why object? You might say we could object on the basis of the 10-year-old being too young. Why? Aren’t current Age of Consent laws based solely on irrational and arbitrary age definitions? (Just like the voting age being irrational and arbitrary.) If you could prove to an official of the state that the 10-year old was mentally competent to make a decision to get married would you let him? What if the boy was 13 (the Age of Consent in some states) and had his parents approval to get married? Would it be okay then? To answer my question, where does it end? It doesn’t end. Because, in time, there will be no rational reason to object to any behavior, except that it infringes on the rights of another. And even that objection could be made tenuous, which is my next point.
Lets throw in the whole genetic disposition argument.
The Big Hominid writes:
Further, Sullivan is probably right that gays represent a "permanent minority," with his stress on "permanent" and my stress on "minority." Modern science is leaning heavily toward the idea that homosexuality is perfectly natural, and if you subscribe to evolutionary theory and grant that homosexual behavior has been occurring in life forms on "less developed" branches of the evolutionary tree, there is no justification for the irrational belief that homosexuality is a perversion, a disorder, or even a choice (save in a few cases).
The M of A writes:
1) The Maximum Leader is simply wrong. There is little disagreement among researchers about the established influence of genetics in determining homosexual orientation - at least for men – as I understand it, lesbianism is generally considered to be more of a choice. I think Big Hominid does a nice job taking the Maximum Leader to the woodshed…
I disagree that there is “little disagreement” among researchers about the influence of genes on determining behavior. I think the Big Hominid is a little clearer in saying that researchers are “leaning heavily.” I think if you ask any genetic researcher they would be very wary of saying that a particular human behavior is directly related to a genetic trait. They may say there is a correlation (and if you read what the Big Hominid is linking to I don’t think it is quite as definitive as the M of A is asserting). Let me Fisk a moment more and then make a broader point… The M of A continues:
2) So what? Ignore the evidence for a moment and assume that homosexuality is a choice. Does the fact that an action between two consenting adults that has no victims result in thousands of instances of governmental discrimination? Would the Maximum Leader deny me the right to take over a lease because of my aforementioned youthful indiscretion?
I think your argument that there are no victims is false. I think that society can be victimized by the behavior of people within society. As to the question of my denying the M of A to take over a lease… The question is vague, and not germane. But as I understand it, he is asking me if he had chosen to live as though he were married (but not married) with a woman and she had died; would I allow him to take over the lease on an apartment to which he was not listed as a leasee? I might out of kindness. However, there is no legal reason why I should allow him to continue the lease. Frankly if he were living with a man (as though he were married) in said apartment my answer would be no different. The M of A goes on:
3) The Maximum Leader, if he is basing his support of discrimination on the grounds that homosexuality is a choice, should be prepared to change his position if the scientific community does demonstrate the biological origin of orientation. He does not seem prepared to do so. If he is prepared to change in the face of evidence that undermine his grounds, (I like that phrase!)
This is where I would like to make the broader point promised a little while ago. I am a little put out by the underlying premise of the “my genes made me this way” argument. I have no problem accepting the few physical conditions that have been more or less conclusively linked to a gene or series of genes (like Downs Syndrome). I do have a problem with accepting that specific human behavior is attributable to a gene or series of genes. The root cause of the problem is free will. If you are saying that my genetic disposition is to be a homosexual and thus you can’t hold it against me, are you also saying that if we find some other (perhaps insidious) human behavior linked to a gene that we can’t hold a person accountable for the other behavior? What about the strong correlation between persons with the XYY chromosomes and their propensity to violent behavior? Should a man with XYY chromosomes be excused for getting into a fight with another person? It was, after all, just his genes. He couldn’t help it. He is genetically programmed to be violent.
I am very uncomfortable excluding free will from human activity. If we are behaviorally programmed to behave in a particular way then what is the point trying to construct an ethical or moral system? Regardless of what system you might come up with, you have to just allow people to act according to their genetic instincts.
I am open to the discoveries of science. I would be willing to modify my opinions about a lot of things in the face of conclusive scientific proof. But, I don’t see how, with our current level of understanding, one can conclusively and demonstrably prove that human behavior is genetically programmed.
Well, I have gone way longer than I thought. I have used more than the time in the morning before football. Indeed, I have worked on this intermittently throughout the day. (Much to the distress of Mrs. Villain and the Villainettes. What time I have spent away from football today has been spent blogging.) I am sure I will need to revise and extend my remarks. But, I will leave the ball in the court of others for the moment.
Carry on my minions.
