The Minister of Agriculture warily steps onto the field of battle
The Minister of Agriculture will reluctantly enter the field, but he does so with the sad knowledge that he is unlikely to influence anyone’s opinion on the matter through the use of reason – people seem to develop their position based on a gut reaction and build their “reasoned” defense from there.
REASON
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.
The issue of attitudes toward homosexuality has been one that has divided the Maximum Leader and this humble tiller of the soil since our halcyon college years. We suspected a mutual friend played for the other team and began a fifteen year-long debate on whether that would or should affect our relationship with that friend. Now I could care less. Particularly in college, as long as your partner wasn’t annoying, I was glad to have them join the group. But the Leader was caught up in moral disapproval.
THE RIGHT TO MORAL DISAPPROVAL
Friends, if you haven’t deciphered this from his blog site, the Maximum Leader is not someone who hides his moral disapproval. Shockingly, even I, virtuous church mouse that I am, have felt the righteous wrath of the Leader. My sophomore year he refused social discourse with me for over a week to register his disapproval of a liaison I had contracted with a girl who was a senior in high school. At the time I was hurt. Fifteen years of gradually reducing levels of testosterone later, I am willing to concede that I was in error and that the Maximum Leader was indeed correct. We now laugh about the story with great heartiness. Or the Maximum Leader does. I laugh with rueful sheepishness.
But I digress.
Ah – yes – gay marriage. The point of this missive is not to challenge the Maximum Leader’s right to his moral certitude. Everyone has the right to hold an opinion. It is to address – dare I say it? – the IMMORALITY of extending this moral feeling into the legal realm.
LEGAL DISCRIMINATION
My biggest frustration with the debate over gay marriage is the intellectual dishonesty of the anti-marriage forces. They go to great lengths to argue that they do not favor discrimination – even the Maximum Leader refers to his familial friendship with a gay man. But they refuse to acknowledge that the present system of laws that they defend IS DISCRIMINATORY. 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.”
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.
With apologies to Twain, if I was an idiot and did not make a will – but I repeat myself – and then died, my dear wife and daughter would inherit my (admittedly rather meager) estate. No ifs, ands or buts. But if my dear wife happened to be named George, he would receive nothing. This is not to say that a gay man who died without a will would be anything but an idiot. However, in our society, idiots are punished UNEQUALLY by the LEGAL system based solely on the fact that some idiots like idiottesses and other idiots like idiots.
We are not talking about isolated incidences here. And note that I am not talking about social acceptance or forcing people to change their religiously held opposition to gays. I am simply talking about stopping the unequal application of the laws. There are over 1,000 federal laws that have an impact on citizenry based on their marriage status.
Check out the site below. It is the GAO’s report of the impact of the Defense of Marriage Act (also known as the Let’s All Unconstitutionally* Pander to the Bigot Vote Act)
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/useftp.cgi?IPaddress=162.140.64.21&filename=og97016.txt&directory=/diskb/wais/data/gao
I am not sure how to make this a hotlink, but you can always cut and paste.
<* Footnote The DOMA openly violates the “full faith and credit” clause of the constitution and everybody in congress who voted for it knew it would not survive the first court challenge – witness the right-wing fervor at opposing legalization of marriage in any state – but boy did it make the Bubbas happy>
This summary only hits the federal laws and does not include the myriad of state laws.
Granted, some of these rights given to married couples are rather ridiculous and silly – if my wife should keel over in the good state of Maryland, I could bury her in the backyard and never even bother to inform the police or county coroner that she had died.
For those of you who don’t want to read a GAO document, here’s a quick list:
· Assumption of Spouse’s Pension
· Automatic Inheritance
· Automatic Housing Lease Transfer
· Bereavement Leave
· Burial Determination
· Child Custody
· Crime Victim’s Recovery Benefits
· Divorce Protections
· Domestic Violence Protection
· Exemption from Property Tax on Partner’s Death
· Immunity from Testifying Against Spouse
· Insurance Breaks
· Joint Adoption and Foster Care
· Joint Bankruptcy
· Joint Parenting (Insurance Coverage, School Records)
· Medical Decisions on Behalf of Partner
· Certain Property Rights
· Reduced Rate Memberships
· Sick Leave to Care for Partner
· Visitation of Partner’s Children
· Visitation of Partner in Hospital or Prison
· Wrongful Death (Loss of Consort) Benefits
Justice demands that we grant these benefits to gay couples. We don’t have to call it marriage. I am not particularly worried about the semantics of language – call it a secular contract if you wish. Gays certainly can’t force Baptists to acknowledge the moral force of their marriages, and shouldn’t be able to. On the other hand, a number of other denominations are willing to give a religious blessing to gay unions. Leave the definition of holy marriage to the churches. But the government should not play favorites between citizens.
BIOLOGY
The Maximum Leader’s essay that denies the biological basis of homosexuality refuses to recognize the established influence of genetics in determining homosexuality (at least for men – as I understand it, lesbianism is generally considered to be more of a choice).
I wish to make a few points about the biology issue.
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 at the Big hominid blogspot so I won’t belabor this point again.
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?
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!) I would direct his attention to Big Hominid’s Blog.
4) Folks who advocate the “it’s a sinful choice” position never address the obvious consequence of their stand. Did they consciously choose to be heterosexual? I know I never made a choice. Chicks are neat – all soft and curvy and whatnot. Now, I will acknowledge that society can have a direct influence on the particular focus of our attraction – the Uber-minister-of-agriculture-frau is slim and blonde. But I am attracted to women in many different shapes, sizes, and colors. I can certainly appreciate the Maximum Leader’s taste in Hewitt and Hayek. Society has led me to a narrow attraction, but biology makes me willing to consider all sorts of women. I have never seen a man and said to myself, “self, you could use some of that.” Now I can certainly appreciate other men aesthetically – the Maximum Leader, for instance, is a good lookin’ fella. But there is no attraction there. My brain chemistry, not my intellect, seems to have made the underlying choice of my attraction.
CONCLUSION
The high esteem in which I hold the Maximum Leader heightens my disappointment with this essay. It fails to acknowledge the realities of discrimination, it fails to rationally persuade (partly because it does not attempt to use reason), and parts of the argument are based on erroneous assumptions.
And no, Big Hominid, I am not risking being dragged out and shot. I was already going to be first against the wall when the Revolution comes.
REASON
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.
The issue of attitudes toward homosexuality has been one that has divided the Maximum Leader and this humble tiller of the soil since our halcyon college years. We suspected a mutual friend played for the other team and began a fifteen year-long debate on whether that would or should affect our relationship with that friend. Now I could care less. Particularly in college, as long as your partner wasn’t annoying, I was glad to have them join the group. But the Leader was caught up in moral disapproval.
THE RIGHT TO MORAL DISAPPROVAL
Friends, if you haven’t deciphered this from his blog site, the Maximum Leader is not someone who hides his moral disapproval. Shockingly, even I, virtuous church mouse that I am, have felt the righteous wrath of the Leader. My sophomore year he refused social discourse with me for over a week to register his disapproval of a liaison I had contracted with a girl who was a senior in high school. At the time I was hurt. Fifteen years of gradually reducing levels of testosterone later, I am willing to concede that I was in error and that the Maximum Leader was indeed correct. We now laugh about the story with great heartiness. Or the Maximum Leader does. I laugh with rueful sheepishness.
But I digress.
Ah – yes – gay marriage. The point of this missive is not to challenge the Maximum Leader’s right to his moral certitude. Everyone has the right to hold an opinion. It is to address – dare I say it? – the IMMORALITY of extending this moral feeling into the legal realm.
LEGAL DISCRIMINATION
My biggest frustration with the debate over gay marriage is the intellectual dishonesty of the anti-marriage forces. They go to great lengths to argue that they do not favor discrimination – even the Maximum Leader refers to his familial friendship with a gay man. But they refuse to acknowledge that the present system of laws that they defend IS DISCRIMINATORY. 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.”
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.
With apologies to Twain, if I was an idiot and did not make a will – but I repeat myself – and then died, my dear wife and daughter would inherit my (admittedly rather meager) estate. No ifs, ands or buts. But if my dear wife happened to be named George, he would receive nothing. This is not to say that a gay man who died without a will would be anything but an idiot. However, in our society, idiots are punished UNEQUALLY by the LEGAL system based solely on the fact that some idiots like idiottesses and other idiots like idiots.
We are not talking about isolated incidences here. And note that I am not talking about social acceptance or forcing people to change their religiously held opposition to gays. I am simply talking about stopping the unequal application of the laws. There are over 1,000 federal laws that have an impact on citizenry based on their marriage status.
Check out the site below. It is the GAO’s report of the impact of the Defense of Marriage Act (also known as the Let’s All Unconstitutionally* Pander to the Bigot Vote Act)
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/useftp.cgi?IPaddress=162.140.64.21&filename=og97016.txt&directory=/diskb/wais/data/gao
I am not sure how to make this a hotlink, but you can always cut and paste.
<* Footnote The DOMA openly violates the “full faith and credit” clause of the constitution and everybody in congress who voted for it knew it would not survive the first court challenge – witness the right-wing fervor at opposing legalization of marriage in any state – but boy did it make the Bubbas happy>
This summary only hits the federal laws and does not include the myriad of state laws.
Granted, some of these rights given to married couples are rather ridiculous and silly – if my wife should keel over in the good state of Maryland, I could bury her in the backyard and never even bother to inform the police or county coroner that she had died.
For those of you who don’t want to read a GAO document, here’s a quick list:
· Assumption of Spouse’s Pension
· Automatic Inheritance
· Automatic Housing Lease Transfer
· Bereavement Leave
· Burial Determination
· Child Custody
· Crime Victim’s Recovery Benefits
· Divorce Protections
· Domestic Violence Protection
· Exemption from Property Tax on Partner’s Death
· Immunity from Testifying Against Spouse
· Insurance Breaks
· Joint Adoption and Foster Care
· Joint Bankruptcy
· Joint Parenting (Insurance Coverage, School Records)
· Medical Decisions on Behalf of Partner
· Certain Property Rights
· Reduced Rate Memberships
· Sick Leave to Care for Partner
· Visitation of Partner’s Children
· Visitation of Partner in Hospital or Prison
· Wrongful Death (Loss of Consort) Benefits
Justice demands that we grant these benefits to gay couples. We don’t have to call it marriage. I am not particularly worried about the semantics of language – call it a secular contract if you wish. Gays certainly can’t force Baptists to acknowledge the moral force of their marriages, and shouldn’t be able to. On the other hand, a number of other denominations are willing to give a religious blessing to gay unions. Leave the definition of holy marriage to the churches. But the government should not play favorites between citizens.
BIOLOGY
The Maximum Leader’s essay that denies the biological basis of homosexuality refuses to recognize the established influence of genetics in determining homosexuality (at least for men – as I understand it, lesbianism is generally considered to be more of a choice).
I wish to make a few points about the biology issue.
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 at the Big hominid blogspot so I won’t belabor this point again.
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?
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!) I would direct his attention to Big Hominid’s Blog.
4) Folks who advocate the “it’s a sinful choice” position never address the obvious consequence of their stand. Did they consciously choose to be heterosexual? I know I never made a choice. Chicks are neat – all soft and curvy and whatnot. Now, I will acknowledge that society can have a direct influence on the particular focus of our attraction – the Uber-minister-of-agriculture-frau is slim and blonde. But I am attracted to women in many different shapes, sizes, and colors. I can certainly appreciate the Maximum Leader’s taste in Hewitt and Hayek. Society has led me to a narrow attraction, but biology makes me willing to consider all sorts of women. I have never seen a man and said to myself, “self, you could use some of that.” Now I can certainly appreciate other men aesthetically – the Maximum Leader, for instance, is a good lookin’ fella. But there is no attraction there. My brain chemistry, not my intellect, seems to have made the underlying choice of my attraction.
CONCLUSION
The high esteem in which I hold the Maximum Leader heightens my disappointment with this essay. It fails to acknowledge the realities of discrimination, it fails to rationally persuade (partly because it does not attempt to use reason), and parts of the argument are based on erroneous assumptions.
And no, Big Hominid, I am not risking being dragged out and shot. I was already going to be first against the wall when the Revolution comes.
posted by Anonymous at 9/10/2003 07:20:00 PM
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