This video is a couple years old, but it makes a worthy point for those of us who sometimes get weary of hearing how foolish and vile we are when we are accused of these things by people who don’t even know us.
Foolish and vile atheists
- Post author:Erich Vieth
- Post published:February 22, 2009
- Post category:Bigotry / Religion
- Post comments:183 Comments
Erich Vieth
Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.
The bible refers to God as a he and those who are faithful should believe that God is masculine and therefor, he must have a penis. This line of thinking led me to my question: why does God need a penis? If this argument sounds pointless or silly, imagine what else many non-believers find as silly – like – a heaven filled with angels, a burning hell filled with demons, Noah gathering up ALL the animals and living to be a thousand years old…
Mindy,
You seem to forget that for all of Jesus' compassion and empathy for the downtrodden and outcsts, he still tells them to go and sin no more.
Was the sin spoken of real or was it imaginary? Did these people only have to love one another and care for the victims of societies outrageous standards, or were they accountable to anything/anyone besides what they thought were their own standards for themselves?
Did Jesus tell the "victims" who were certainly guilty of something themselves to reject their own role in the choices they have made?
This is where you misunderstand life by leaving yourself and others the escape route from personal responsibility by stating that society makes victims, but the individuals themselves are not a significant part of their own problems.
Mindy says
"But I am fully cognizant of the fact that my private choices are only mine, and that others make very different ones. How I discipline my children, what I eat, who I sleep with or don’t, who I choose for friends, what I read – all of those things are my own personal choices that I in no way expect anyone else to (necessarily) agree with or follow."
Except for those who you consider to be victims, who others must agree with you that they are being "victimized."
Are you at liberty to tell my how you define victimization? Or is it just a vague kind of out there label used for anyone who is not encouraged to do something that you believe they shouldn't be discouraged to do?
To me victimization implies the violation of laws, not just having a difference of opinion over perspectives.
Karl, you say, "This is where you misunderstand life by leaving yourself and others the escape route from personal responsibility by stating that society makes victims, but the individuals themselves are not a significant part of their own problems."
I don't misunderstand life. I don't advocate for any escape route from personal responsibility. Society DOES create victims. Many people are, yes, a significant part of their own problems – but that does not mean society shouldn't step in and offer assistance when much of the reason an individual is hurting is due to societal influences over the course of a lifetime. When a person, for instance, has been raised in by an uneducated drug user within a culture of non-education and violence, that person is not equipped to "pull herself up by her bootstraps" and make something of her life like the kid raised in home where education was valued and fear was not part of the landscape. No matter how much conservatives would like to believe that the playing fields of opportunity are equal, they are not. So we must work to change the insidious victimization found in the cycle of deep poverty that is too easily dismissed by those who "have."
As for my earlier comments on victimization, Karl, I was back to the sexual orientation issue because reproduction seems to be your mantra in the marriage discussion. I was refuting the ridiculous position of the far right that gay relationships are somehow dangerous to society at large, pointing out that they are not, and that no one is a "victim" of anything. Those who oppose homosexuals in general would have us believe that they are, by their very nature, predators out to convert the innocent to their evil ways, when nothing could be further from the truth – any more than you could generalize that about heterosexual people. Predators exist in both camps, yes. But the predatory need to victimize is rarely based in a need for sex. It is all about power and control, regardless of the orientation in which it manifests itself.
I have no problem with the stories of Jesus encouraging people to "sin no more," even as he supposedly knew full well that we can't help ourselves, by our very humanity. That doesn't mean that he judged and condescended, and it doesn't mean he thought being gay was a sin. Does it say anywhre, in the New Testament, that Jesus condemned homosexuality? I was under the impression those were Old Testament "rules," and once Jesus came along and died for our sins, the playbook, as such, was rewritten. And, as Mark pointed out, we no longer need to worry about procreation. We've done populated the earth to bursting – and based on the percentage of any given culture that chooses to remain childless, gay or straight or somewhere in between, we're at no risk of extinction, ever.
Karl writes:—"Are you at liberty to tell my how you define victimization? Or is it just a vague kind of out there label used for anyone who is not encouraged to do something that you believe they shouldn’t be discouraged to do?"
That is a damn good question, Karl. I like the way you phrase it, although there is an innate problem with the binary nature of it. Still, since much of what we do, personally or collectively, ends up reducing to binary choices, it's a valid way to state the problem.
It addresses the question of our responsibility in promoting behaviors. And it is a thorny one.
We take it as given that certain behaviors should be promoted. We should encourage people to be helpful, for instances. We should discourage stinginess or avarice. We should encourage politeness. We should encourage honesty, discourage deceit.
We should encourage creativity, discourage destructiveness…
Ah. There we start to have problems. Because we can all agree that creativity is a good thing but not that everything created is good. And sometimes something has to be destroyed because its very presence has a negative impact.
So right there we get into the fuzzy, wishy-washy kinds of equivocation that drives a hardcore moral absolutist nuts.
So obviously taking absolute positions on what should be encouraged—and how it should be encouraged—and on what should be discouraged and how runs onto the shoals of potential harm in both directions.
And here I have to quibble a bit with Mindy's absolutist take on personal choices. While we all would like to believe that's true, it actually takes a lot of work and inevitably we have to consider the feelings, desires, and intentions of others when we make choices. It's a sliding scale. I'm having lunch alone, what do I want? It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks, I'm going to eat such-n-such. It's safe to say that this is a decision that can be made wholly from personal preference and bears on personal responsibility, and there are no victims.
Really? What if you suffer chronically high cholesteral? You're pushing sixty and you've already had an angioplasty and two stints inserted and if you have too many cheeseburgers and fries this year you might end up in the hospital again. Suddenly your choice of what to eat, alone or otherwise, is not so simple and it does involve others. Firstly, it involves your immediate family, who would suffer if you continue to abuse your diet. But there are any number of layers of expanding involvement, from the EMT who carried you to the emergency room to the doctor who treats you to the insurance agent who has to determine how to pay on your policy, etc etc.
Who's the victim there? To greater or lesser degrees, you could characterize any and all as victims. We're all stuck in a system that tends to promote bad diets over good, overcharges for medical care, and never bothered to tell you at an early enough age the facts of living with…
And this can get absurd at a certain level.
But you see my point. We are not isolated, even in some of our simplest decisions.
In the matter at hand, however, the interconnections of behavior are not static. The effects the result from personal choices rippling through the community, beginning with the family, are not set in stone. We are responsible for our own hearts, in other words.
But it is a negotiation, between who and what we are and the world we grow up within. For the first couple decades, we are in the process of forming, so the information being fed us is all important. It goes into determining who we are. This is what makes education such a difficult thing, and why some folks feel that education to the facts is the only way to go. Arithmetic, reading, physical fitness—basic stuff—and leave all the philosophy for later. As Karl quite rightly points out, nothing is value-free, though. The fact that we find math valuable says something about the community we live in. The books we use to teach reading carry messages about what we think is important (which in my day in 1st and 2nd grade constituted really scary notions). Teaching people to take everything conditionally can, in some instances, lead to a few people throwing over the whole thing as a bad idea.
Now we get to this issue of gay rights.
Karl's premise is that homosexuality is learned behavior and that by crediting it with rights actually teaches certain people to be gay. I would argue that teaching people that homosexuality has the same basic acceptability as heterosexuality doesn't require behaviors so much as allows for them, but on some level that's splitting hairs. To someone who finds homosexuality less acceptable, it's a distinction without a difference.
So the question is at what point do we consensually determine when it is time to discard a set of previously accepted standards?
Questions of victimization certainly apply. On the one hand, if you can make as argument that everyone is a victim of something, you can create a forced moral equivalency that allows for all behaviors to claim due consideration and equal status, since no single set of values can claim ascendancy over the others. On the other hand, if no one is a victim, then logically there are no conditions under which special consideration ought to be given due to claims of maltreatment of oppression.
Neither position is workable.
So it comes back to a negotiation.
Obviously, different aspects of who we are manifest as more completely our own than others. We as individuals place values at different levels on different things. It is only when pushed do we bother to respond from a core set of attributes, but even then they may be filtered through layers of received behavioral expectation that comes from somewhere else.
It might well be argued that an attribute that maintains itself in the face of overriding oppression can be considered a core part of identity, of who we are. If it is not important or can be changed, I think most people would do so rather than tolerate the oppression. Deeply religious people like to assert that under extreme conditions, their faith will maintain as an essential element of who they truly are. I won't argue with that. But conversely, they may not dismiss attributes with which they disagree as somehow NOT essential elements of a core personality.
Until Stonewall, gays endured under considerable oppression in this society. Yet they remained gay.
I merely point that out as an argument against the tenuousness of the merely learned behavior that has no basis in core identity.
The negotiation begins when you accept that homosexuality exists as an essentially human characteristic. Now we can talk about everything else.
Have gays been victims? Certainly. Like every other minority than ran afoul of the established norms of society.
Are they still victims because they cannot legally marry in 44 states of the union?
We can argue about that. It's an arguable point.
Are they victims when they lose positions in public life because of their orientation? Absolutely. But they are not the only victim. We often lose valuable service from these people and society suffers as a consequence.
Does society gain anything by enduring such loss to maintain a standard of exclusion?
I can't see how, other than a few people feeling justified in their judgments about right and wrong.
Let's take an external example. In Saudi Arabia, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car. We of course think this is a silly restriction. We're used to women driving cars. What's wrong with those people?
But to them, it is symbolic of the potential for their entire society to change and possibly be ruined. Women driving cars implies that women may go somewhere on their own, which implies that they will have interactions that are not monitored by their husbands, which implies that they may be influenced by things outside the home, without the guiding hand of the household, which implies that they could, under the right circumstances, begun disaffected by life as they know it, which will lead to all manner of disallowed behaviors. It is such a simple thing that can lead to the destruction of social norms which are valued by many people in those societies.
Should we support the idea that they should prevent their women from driving cars?
We have to ask if we consider the individual choice—the freedom—these women are denied outweighs the stability of their society or not. To us, of course, this would be an intolerable oppression, because it goes to Self. The freedom of mobility is as much a part of our core identity as any other attribute we embrace.
But we have to recognize the cost of supporting the overturn of a society norm to that society.
I will agree with Karl that there will be a large cost in terms of who we see ourselves as by granting homosexual right to marry. We will change. And how we talk about marriage will change. There will be a shift in value.
But it's a negotiation. And part of that negotiation lies in a question I put earlier—is the potential damage to our society by granting this greater than the damage already done to our sense of Self by being oppressive and denying this right? How much does it cost us to say No and what exactly does it preserve?
When we granted women the right to vote in 1920, the people who declared that the country was going to change in a big way were right. And we probably lost of few things as a result. It was revolutionary. Things were different. For one, we began the long and difficult journey of realizing that having a penis did not bestow wisdom or conversely that not having did not guarantee brainlessness. (We're still working on that.) Was the country better afterward? I'm sure some would say no, but I think most people would rather not ever go back.
I've rambled on long enough. Let me leave you with this little observation, though:
I've always found the Biblical consideration of sex kind of interesting. Do you realize that sex is the only sin with an escape clause? It's a venal sin unless you marry. There's no other sin that has an out. Theft is theft, murder is murder, lying is lying, etc is etc. But sex can become Not A Sin by a simple, ritualistic expedient. I always found that curious.
Mark,
Thanks for taking the time to consider your ideas on victimization. It's fairly clear from your thoughts that victimization is also a societal term which can only be discussed from the perspective of prevailing social norms.
Most changes in societal norms basically occur through the gradual acceptance that people's ideas about societal created inequities are really artificial when they attempt to establish or maintain that some people are created more equal than others. This is directly framed as the problem addressed in the Declaration of Independence of the colonies from England.
I would say this sort of view for victimization is readily agreeable to most people. When other people seek to impose their "out of the norm" interpretations onto their own, or another existing society with different norms for expectations and behavior the conflict of values will cause social unrest until the issue can be resloved, if it can be resolved.
Here is where I picture the reality of such conflicts.
If people must be forced to abandon their existing values because others accuse them of trying to maintain an artificial elite group of "created more equal than others" mentality this is wrong.
Peace can never come through the love of power. Peace will only come through the power of love.
People who want to show the superiority of their ability to love will indeed not insist that others change their ways until these people want to change themselves.
Karl,
I could say a few things about your response, but I'll limit it to this observation for now: people never WANT to change. Left alone, most people think they're just fine as they are. People change when they are dragged, sometimes kicking and screaming, to the place where they can see that they SHOULD change. Change is a reluctantly manifested virtue. This is made manifestly clear by the same document you cite;
"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary…"
and:
"…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
Hmmm. Mark, I admit to feeling a hackle or two rise up when I read you saying I was being "absolutist," since I don't feel absolute about hardly anything at all. BUT, I can see your point, and your comments are right on the money. I was actually arguing against the absolutist position that everyone in our society has exactly the same opportunities to succeed, etc. Yes, technically, that is true. Yet access to those opportunities can be blocked at every turn for many. Are they truly victims? Not always, of course not. But sometimes, what blocks their access to education, etc. must be considered, so absolutist, minimal-government thinking simply can't work.
You are quite right, of course, that by granting gay marriage as a right across our country, we will change societal norms, standards and definitions. This shift will be more difficult for some than others, and many simply won't make the shift. There are those who remain comfortable with their own blatant white-supremacist ways even though racism as a legal construct was abolished long ago. And so it goes.
And yes, change sometimes only comes after the kicking and screaming of the opposition. Being intrinsically afraid of change as we are, us humans fight it tooth and nail. And yet, we learn repeatedly that 'change' does not necessarily equate with 'bad.'
Now, Karl, help me understand something. You said, "If people must be forced to abandon their existing values because others accuse them of trying to maintain an artificial elite group of 'created more equal than others' mentality this is wrong."
Which is wrong? Maintaining the "created more equal than others" mentality, or being forced to abandon values based on that mentality? I can't respond yet, because I'm not certain what you mean.
Mark,
Be careful how you try to use the analogy that the people don't want change. Those who are the lovers of their own power, monetary status, worldviews, and political schemes, resist changes that force them from societal prominence.
There are those who want change, (the powerless victims as you and Mindy would call them) and there are those who would see change as a threat to both the status quo and/or their own existing positions of power or dominance of ideas and values.
Strange thing about change is that there is often a backlash when the once powerless get the opportunity to move towards the change they want. By wanting it too quickly and in ways that snub their noses at the pre-existing values throughout a social organization, they end up moving many other societal organizations which often include the prevailing majority against them under protest.
I think the majority of Americans are willing to permit any one that wishes to enter into a civil union to do so, but by wanting to redefine marriage itself, there is a fairly large backlash as we saw with proposition 8 in California. I suspect other states like Iowa will take similar measures as well.
People in America are willing to give people their privacy, but when their privacy no longer wishes to be privacy, it can become a matter of public concern. Frankly Mark, the way you discuss sexuality, some would hope that young people under fourteen ot fifteen aren't reading your comments.
Some want change badly enough to force the issues through open conflict and activism, others don't want change so eagerly to the extent that they will wait patiently for their points to get across.
It is obvious in America how the people respond to leaders who call for change, but then witness almost dictatorial change by pushing public discourse away because of time concerns. When someone even states they are using a crisis as an opportunity to effect change, this is not looked upon well by most Americans.
Look at the New York State Senate where the Democrats just had their leadership power pulled out from under their position of control. They refused to treat the system as two parties and so they have now paid for such arrogance. Believe it or not, most Americans like a system of checks and balances and they get nervous when there appears to be no check upon those who claim they know what's best for the rest of us.
Hitler started out agreeable to enough Germans to get his agenda underway, then he quickly removed any opposition party and dissent from public discourse. I'm glad such people are pretty much held in check by our form of government.
I don't think either extreme liberals or extreme conservatives know what bi-partisan really means. To me it means if you don't agree on how to bring about change, or even what that change should be, you at least work for a compromise that pleases no one fully or you don't take action. As hard as that seems, it is the best road for civilized people to take.
When people's points aren't getting across, there is recourse in our country as was just demonstrated in New York. I personally think the same is soon to happen to the Congress of the US itself, if not before midterm elections at least by the midterm elections.
Question –
Was the U.S. fully justified in the manner of their revolution against England? I think in some ways yes – but in other ways, not so much.
There was a mix of opinion in the colonies, some wanted change while others didn't want to be labeled as revolutionaries. I really believe England wouldn't have minded change so much if their financial interests were looked after properly. The British Empire was run politically by their business ventures and global capitalistic corporations. The patient peaceful way to affect the type of change that the colonies wanted was to put the corporations out of business by buying out their interests in the American markets.
The sought after changes might not have had to enter into full revolt if they were patient enough. The grand experiment would have had a much better footing across the world if we had been more patient in how our forefathers brought forth the existence of the United States.
As a Christian, at times I wish the colonies could have done it better, and that the signers of the Declaration of Independence could have shown more restraint in their timing. But then I wasn't there, so I don't know how obnoxiously and King and his governors really treated common people.
At the time of the revolution there were still many that had no problem with English involvement in the colonies. Significant numbers of wealthy colonists wanted freedom from tyranny, no taxation without representations and the like. These are trademarks of a democracy, not an aristocracy or even a corporate board of directors.
I believe these colonists wanted change and they forced the issue in some ways that did not show their "love" for their fellow man. Some of British undoubtedly didn't deserve the respect they demanded of others. Mindy would not have thought these men were Christians, thou no doubt many were.
All this to say, it was the expression, "all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights by there creator" that has been the hallmark of American democracy. The republic they brought forth to further these ideals will only be threatened not by changes in the values and ideas of its citizens, but by any group that fails to surrender their power to the next duly elected governing authorities. The appointing of unelected and non-confirmed leaders to new positions of governmental authority is not how our government is supposed to operate.
Our executive and legislative branches of the federal government have run far a field from their original authorized limits and empowerments. This is why we have the ability as citizens to throw the rascals out of office. When those in office will not abide by the votes taken by their own governing bylaws there is indeed much to be concerned about. These are the people who do not want change, because they refuse to surrender their power and beliefs to properly constituted authority.
Karl writes (June 9th):
"If people must be forced to abandon their existing values because others accuse them of trying to maintain an artificial elite group of “created more equal than others” mentality this is wrong."
Nobody is forcing anybody to "abandon their existing values". This is sheer paranoia (based, I suspect, on your own desire to impose your Christian values on the rest of us–but I digress.)
Legalizing gay marriage–which is what this conversation seems to be about (as best as I can tell) is not about telling you what to believe, value, or do. It is about your not being allowed to prevent other US citizens from enjoying their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
On June 8th, Karl wrote: "If you still think allowing people to live the way they want to doesn’t eventually affect those who don’t wish to live that way you are somehow mistaken that society is full of separate but equal moral beings (arranged into collective groups) who have the right to make their own decesions based upoo what they want, even ones that give other colective groups, no recourse."
Of course we're all interconnected. Duh. That doesn't mean that everybody has to live the same way. Last time I checked, the USA was still a pluralistic and heterogenous society. A majority cannot prevent a minority from exercizing their rights just because doing so would make the majority unhappy and "force change" upon them.
From noting that we're all interconnected, Karl jumps to the utterly unwarranted conclusion that allowing people to order their own sexual lives will somehow lead to everybody becoming gay (or, in his amusingly paranoid fantasy [of May 12th], everyone being required to be bisexual).
And notice this, buried at the end of a sentence in the 6/8 post: "…even ones that give other colective groups, no recourse". No, Karl. Nobody is suggesting that. Another unwarranted leap into paranoid fantasy.
And speaking of the U.S.:
Karl, 6/8/2009: "Just as I said, societies are not formed simply by individuals with their own rights to do what ever they think is okay for them and their close significant others." Uh, I sorta kinda thought that was the basis of the society called the United States of America, and of liberal democracies in general. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; remember Karl?
Here in the good ol' U.S.A. we have that tricky old Constitution, that limits what laws can be made RESTRICTING the freedom of others. Pretty much the only qualification I can see to the extension of individual liberty is when it causes harm. Karl has failed to offer any convincing evidence that allowing gay marriage will harm society (his own fear seems to be that gangs of politically correct gay guys will force him to be bisexual. And then nobody will have anymore children. Or something).
(What any of this has to do with the video is beyond me. But, once again, I digress.)
Mindy states and asks –
That doesn’t mean that he judged and condescended, and it doesn’t mean he thought being gay was a sin. Does it say anywhre, in the New Testament, that Jesus condemned homosexuality?
Concerned as He was with the motivations of the individual's heart rather than mere outward conformity to accepted social norms or the code of the Law, Jesus spoke of sexual sins as originating in the fallen nature of man's innermost self:
"And he called the people to him and said to them, 'Hear and understand: not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.' Then the disciples came and said to him, 'Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?' He answered, 'Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.' But Peter said to him, 'Explain the parable to us.' And he said, 'Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and so passes on? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries (moicheia), fornications (porneiai), thefts, false-witnessing, blasphemies. These are what defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.'" (Matthew 15:1-20)
"For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness (aselgeia), envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man." (Mark 7:21-23)
True the word homesexuality isn't directly mentioned by scripture, but neither is incest or pedophilia.
Terms like adultery, fornication, licentiousness and the like certainly include enough to give unmarried heterosexual activity labels as coming from sinful motivations. What makes you think that just because Jesus didn't use the word homosexual it was given a pass? The original apostles sure didn't give it a pass, and they had been with Jesus for three years.
Also the words of Jesus
"Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:17-20)
I don't see a lessening of external morals, I see a focus upon the motivations for sin like coveting amd imaginations.
Karl writes:—"Be careful how you try to use the analogy that the people don’t want change."
It's that people gladly embrace change, as long as they don't have to do it themselves, and that is the reluctance I addressed. It's easy to say "You should be different." Not so much to say "I should be different."
But otherwise your characterization is apt.
And:—"Frankly Mark, the way you discuss sexuality, some would hope that young people under fourteen ot fifteen aren’t reading your comments."
Which is pretty much exactly the problem with it. If we didn't try to pretend 14 and 15 year olds have no reason to hear frank talk about sex, we might have fewer problems with it. I would hope exactly that demographic is exposed to open and frank discussion of the topic.
There has ALWAYS been both a public and private aspect to sex, most often with regards to controlling it and repressing it in people. In this I have always found that those most eager to repress it in others are the ones who have the most difficulty dealing with it in their own lives. Isn't curious that the loudest voices in public against any kind of openness about sex are often those who get caught out indulging in some of the worst abuses of it? (Polls have shown that very rightwing people tend to have a bigger obsession with pornography than liberals. I do not think this is a statistical fluke, but there's no space here to really go into it. Another post or ten perhaps.)
If people TALKED about sex—as it is, not some sanitized, quasi-academic version of it—we might have fewer tragedies.
Your comments about the revolution interest me greatly. I'm researching that entire period now in preparation for a novel. Yes, I think the revolution could have been avoided, and yes, I think there were a number of "Americans" who were hot to trigger it no matter what—if Britain had granted parliamentary representation, they would have found another reason to break with England. In that vein, I believe the Constitution (and a good deal of the Declaration of Independence) was an instance of fortunate timing—that we managed to slip founding documents in that addressed philosophical matters at the level they did. Given that it took damn near two centuries before the full flower of everything implicit in those documents to manifest, despite the profound resistance to them at all levels of society, suggests that the Founding Fathers were taking advantage of a moment in history to try something they probably knew their constituents would never go for if they really thought about it.
But I may have a longer answer for you later.
Karl writes:—"Terms like adultery, fornication, licentiousness and the like certainly include enough to give unmarried heterosexual activity labels as coming from sinful motivations. What makes you think that just because Jesus didn’t use the word homosexual it was given a pass? The original apostles sure didn’t give it a pass, and they had been with Jesus for three years."
Yes, well. The bottom line for me is that I don't accept this as the final word on anything. That's one of the reasons I counter your assertions. I think the whole obsession over adultery and fornication was born out of a time when it was not practical to prevent pregnancy, so rules had to be put in place to keep people from happily screwing—and then layered onto that was the patriarchal desire to guarantee progeny, because both women and children were property.
Shocking as it may be, this required that women and children be considered less than fully realized people. No matter how you slice it, functionally they were not equal to men.
Once you establish that fact and see that inequality as a greater evil than anything else—because it renders the object of such inequality powerless—then the rest of that gobbledygook about fornication etc just that.
Sexual prohibition is a control issue. Sometimes the controls make sense—-adults shouldn't diddle children, people should not be made to have sex against their will—but other times they make sense only within a kind of private property mindset—my daughter should be a virgin before she marries because she'll be worth more in the marriage arrangements that way; if a woman tries to conduct herself sexually with the same freedoms men assume for themselves we get to kill her.
So, just to be clear, I choose not to think that way. People aren't property. Or, perhaps, I should say, they aren't other peoples' property.
So in this instance I just don't accept it.
Karl, nothing you quoted from Jesus gives me any reason to believe that he would condemn gay marriage. Nothing. Lewd and lascivious behavior, just like predatory behavior, adulterous behavior (and by that I mean behavior based in the violation of trust) – all of that exists in all orientations. Jesus' version of moral behavior can exist within a gay relationship just as easily as in any other.
Stacy, I find it telling that so many conversations, both here on DI and in the blogosphere in general, that begin about religion or atheism wind up returning to the topic of gay marriage. Just seems to insert itself everywhere, as if it knows its time has come. Of course it is those who bring it up, on both sides, who know its time has come. Polls are showing a steady and fairly rapid rise in the support for gays in the military as well as for (at least) civil unions for same-sex couples. The time is nigh, as they say.
Of course, the conservative wingnuts continue to oppose it on the basis is its undermining the very fabric of our society, but that song comes from further and further out on the fringe. More conservatives are willing to support civil unions, just sort of comically wishing it not to be called "marriage." Which is silly, but not surprising.
My feeling is that if their particular denominations and churches want to refuse the sacrament of marriage to same-sex couples, well, good for them. That gives a place for those who wish to discriminate that way a place to band together in self-congratulatory adoration of their narrow-minded version of God, and those who don't are free to leave those congregations for those more in line with their beliefs. That doesn't mean gays can't be married, just that they won't be married in *some* churches. Too bad, but ultimately, the time will likely come that churches refusing gay marriage will be so marginalized that they will be more a nuisance and an embarrassment than some bulwark of piety.
Mindy states:
"Jesus’ version of moral behavior can exist within a gay relationship just as easily as in any other."
Please give your research and statistics to make such an assertion.
First define and describe what Jesus' version of moral behavior was/is and then describe how it is just as easy to exist in gay relationships as in any other.
Jesus' version of moral behavior raised the bar on relationships between men and women. How can you possibly consider it equally easy for men with men or women with women relationships that includes mutual sensual and sexual pleasuring as easy as heterosexual marriage? Without the added responsibility of conceiving, ongoing health concerns during gestation, birthing and raising children for many years their sexual relationship should be a much easier life to manage if they could somehow get the approval they are seeking.
You take the low road, and I'll take the high road and we'll all get to Scotland at the same time. Nope doesn't work that way.
Heterosexual marriage is not easy in this day and age. Marriage is under attack from so many angles that it probably should be totally removed from civil definition. This is an area where religion isd being trumped by the values and beliefs of the a-religious.
Let a person's religion define what a marriage is, but make certain that the civil rights of all people are not violated or abused by those who claim they are certain that marriage has to be defined to be the same thing for all people.
The state probably should only certify on paper which people have agreed to legally binding civil unions. Marriages should need both a religious ceremony plus a civil union. Others not seeking the blessing of a religion to sack up should be free to do so, but not at the consequence of breaking the existing linkages between heterosexual marriage and volumes of legal definitions and case law.
This may mean that the state goverments entirely get out of the marriage license business and only require lawyers and notary publics to verify and witness the documents that people agree to as binding upon their civil rights and unions. The medical field though should still have a few tests that are required to determine if a couple will ever be considered capable of having their own biological children and if so what degrees of separation should exist between potential mothers and fathers.
Karl, I based my statement solely on the passages that you provided. Avoiding adultery, lewd behavior – all that. My point was that Jesus does not specify that homosexual behavior is immoral. That's all I was saying. You find it immoral and offensive, you fall back on your bible to insist that you are right, and I disagree. I disagree that it is immoral, I disagree that the passages you provide indicate Jesus thought it was, I disagree that allowing gay marriage will in any way harm straight marriages, and I believe that people who use religion as their guise for denying those rights are discriminating and wrong. I don't disagree that it is complicated and marks a distinct change in the definition of marriage in our culture, but I don't agree that changing said definition to include same-sex couples is bad.
I will never convince you of that, however, and you will never convince me that your God, should he exist, thinks any less of gays than he does of any other person on this planet. I find your position extremely tiring, and I wonder why I continue to engage. Kind of like with my 14-yr.-old who wants to argue simply to hear her own voice . . . . I need to walk away.
You know, on a certain level (and not a trivial one) Karl has a point. Marriage has come down to us from an age (or ages) when it bore a profoundly religious context. What makes it difficult to tease it all apart is the fact that when it was formed into what we've come to know it as, religion and state functions were practically one in the same thing—back when there was no separation. Since the ratification of the Constitution, etc, we have simply chosen not to look too closely at the consequences of that thoroughly entwined and entangled morass because it frankly worked too well. But once we had reliable and cheap birth control, it was inevitable that more and more people would start questioning the basis for a religious element to marriage.
To my mind, that part of marriage is basically sentimental (and it fuels a hugely profitable sector of the economy). The legal aspect of marriage can be dealt with through, as he suggests, lawyers and legal instruments. We have "bundled" all that together under the heading Marriage so that we more or less sign one document, go through one public ceremony, and 1500 laws and protections are automatically in place. That is tremendously efficient.
But we call it marriage—not because it describes the religiously implied relationship Karl is arguing about, but because it describes the agreement two people have entered into that establishes how they shall live together. We are, actually, arguing over a label.
Except that for many people who have grown thinking about marriage in a particular way, it has tremendous emotional connotations that have nothing to do with religion. And since the majority of people get to indulge it, it becomes a de facto matter of public policy when we say that Those People Over There may not.
But I agree, I think people ought to just get over it. I didn't need anybody's permission to live with the one I chose. It's insulting.
But that's not the point. And just like Christmas, marriage no longer means what it did Back In The Day. You may moan about that and exercise a sense of offended nostalgia, but it's a fact. So I would suggest, Karl, that you're asserting an obsolete meaning of marriage. On the other hand, it might not be a bad thing to relabel it altogether. A lot of people get married at City Hall. Why call it marriage when there is no religious component? Maybe we're doing this the wrong way. Establish civil unions as the basic legal relationship across the board and tell all those heterosexual couples out there who didn't get hitched in a church that they can no longer claim to be "married." Then hand Marriage back to the churches, but then strip it of state recognition unless one then goes down to City Hall for the legal part. (This is, in fact, done in some countries—France, I believe, has a dual ceremony.)
Other than there is active denial of equality in status going on, this is really a silly debate.
Bingo, Mark. I hadn't really completed the thought in my dull little brain, I guess, that marriage as Karl defines it and marriage as I define it are really two different things. I imagine were your idea of two separate entities to be pushed forward – the civil union is for everyone and the marriage is the religious recognition of the civil union – many would rail against it as trivial and silly and why would we mess with something so wonderful that has been around for just ever? But that is exactly what should be done, honestly. Then the churches that wish not to condone same-sex unions can not do them, and their members can proudly say "We aren't just married, we're Evangelical-married!" Or whatever. Because SOME churches will, in fact, quite willingly welcome gay and lesbian couples in for a marriage ceremony in celebration of their civil unions, and every religion/denomination should be able to decide for itself whether it does or not. But the civil rights and responsibilities will be equally available to all who choose to make the commitment to each other.
Good luck, however, getting people to stop saying they are married just because it didn't happen in a church!
I support the idea that the state should really grant civil unions for everybody, straight and gay, and let the churches keep the word "marriage" to define however they choose.
I suggested as much to Eddie Tabash, of the Center for Inquiry, who co-wrote an amicus brief for the in re Marriage Cases in California, the case that prompted the California Supreme Court decision which in turn prompted Proposition 8.
Eddie said that in his opinion the civil-unions-for-everybody solution makes sense, but that (heterosexual) people who are unwilling to get married in a church won't give up the term "marriage". I wonder, though, if he's right–here in California, such an approach just might work.
Mark hit the nail on the head. The debate about "marriage" really comes down to religious vs. civil definitions. As far as I know, the Center for Inquiry (CFI, a secular humanist organization for which I volunteer) have been the only ones so far, in any of these cases, to argue that the arguments against gay marriage are all ultimately religion-based, and therefore invalid under the First Amendment.
But even they haven't gone that one step further, and asked why, if "marriage" is a religious concept, the government is in the business of marrying people at all.
Karl's fears aside, nobody I know, gay or straight, atheist or religious, has the least interest in telling the churches how THEY must define marriage, (which many of them–the churches–see as a sacrament). We just don't want their definitions forced on the rest of us(at least, not without some convincing secular rationale.)
Wow–does this mean that Karl and I actually agree on something–sort of?
Seems to me the main problem with the issue of homosexual marriage is that the institution of marriage has both a civil (secular) component and a religious (sectarian) one. People who feel strongly about the latter tend to conflate the two, whereas people who feel strongly about the former tend not to. Thus, religious zealots talk about "traditional" marriage or the "sanctity" of marriage, or claim (as Karl does above) that "marriage is under attack." In fact, the institution of marriage is supported (at least in the U.S.) by a wide range of financial, legal, procedural and other advantages that do not accrue to unmarried couples. It is further supported by (secular) social convention as well as by most religious organizations, many of which offer marriage and couples counseling at both the group and individual levels. Indeed, I doubt that any church, synagogue, temple or other religious meeting house in the U.S. goes more than two weeks without providing some sort of relationship advice to the attendees. Marriage, as an institution, is clearly not under "attack." What IS under attack is the narrow-mindedness of some religious zealots. And rightly so.
Ah, Grumpy, you must see it from their perspective to glean the full flavor of their fear. Marriage is under attack because…we no longer punish people for having "relations" outside of marriage and we are much too willing to grant divorce. I mean, how do you preserve the value of something when anyone can get all the perks at discount rates and avoid the commitment to the long haul? And what IS the long haul when anyone can opt out with a legal proceeding? Marriage is under attack because we don't make it mandatory.
I mean, if everyone is free to participate in something for their own reasons, the only "value" brought to it is that which the individual brings, and how are we supposed to rely on that? Without public approbation, opprobrium for misconduct, negative consequences for bending the rules how can we on the outside of a relationship be sure of what's going on inside it?
You have to plumb the full depths of what is being perceived here. Just calling them religious zealots doesn't begin to explain anything.
The establishment clause should tell all Americans they have no right to force a secular redefinition onto a religious but also legal term like marriage. This in essence is attempting to establish a new interpretation upon existing terminology which indeed does impinge upon existing religious terminology. This is pitting one religion (for some an assumed non-religion) against another form of religion through state decrees and judicial activism.
The second amendment explicitly rejects this intrusion of the government upon the rights of the people. You may do whatever you will to encourage civil rights for all, but you do not have the right to tell a people with a religious sentiment, how they must define the social constructs they wish to enter into, or how they must agree with opposing choices by making them of equal religious value and sentiment to those who have a long standing tradition for the definition of a term such as marriage.
Government can encourage that any group of people can define religious terms as they so choose as long as those definitions are not contrary to the existing laws and statues already existent by duly authorized constituted authority.
When polygamy was an issue for Utah, the real problem was the differences in existing state law with the consensus of other states laws. If they were going to call polygamy marriage, this violated the legal codes of too many other states to allow the federal government to guarantee that this would not create controversies that could be anticipated. Many in Utah still remained polygamists, but the state didn't have to force their sentiments and sensibilities upon the rest of the states because of this one states legal code.
This should also make it clear that majorities and minorities can not justifiably use even popular democratic or socialistic principles to limit the freedoms of it citizenry regarding the manner by which they wish to define such religious terminology.
Religious terminology does matter as does equality through equal civil rights, therefore new social and legal constructs with their accompanying terminology are the most reasonable way to accomplish the promotion of civil rights without interfering with existing freedoms of religion.
Secular attempts to redefine existing religious terminology are an open hostility to freedom of religion. If people wish to establish their own church or religion of the "homosexual/transgender lovers of Jesus and one another" there is nothing stopping them.
These or any other group of people with their own interpretations of a term such as marriage however should not have the right to redefine what another group should believe regarding their personal sentiments and sensibilities about religious terminology.
Religious groups should have the right to define marriage in their own context as long as it doesn't violate state health and criminal laws and the constitutional freedoms of others.
Mark –
Marriage is not under attack because we don’t make it mandatory.
No one forces anyone to get married if people want to live life as they please. Most "shot gun" weddings are miserable failures because people who lack self control seldom have it fall into their laps after they agree to tie the knot. These knots are actually slip knots that pull out under reverse pressure.
Karl,
Well, then all I can see that you're complaining about re this entire subject is Human Nature. And that's like bitching about the weather. It is what it is. We invite discomfort when we put unreasonable conditions on it, which we always do, and it always finds a way out of the constraints.
But I disagree, not about you personally, but about the Complainers At Large who make such a big deal about "marriage being under attack." It's become optional and they just can't stand that.