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Flaming Politics video blog (Episode 11): John McCain, you're the next contestant on "Fierce or Hot Mess?"!
Ever thought politics should be more like a late 70s game show? Well, so does Flaming Politics' Japhy Grant. This week, he invites you to "come on down" to find out the winners and losers of the Democratic Presidential Primary. Plus a story of cops who did nothing to stop attacks at a gay pride parade, and the launch of a new benchmark of queer-friendliness for hospitals. Check it all out after the break! Submitted by on Thu, 2008-05-15 11:51. |
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California strikes down ban on same-sex marriage!
You still have an open ballot measure to defeat
Hey Gang!
Obviously, I recorded this episode before the big news. Expect me to talk more about it next week, especially since I live in Cali. In the meantime, I've got a piece about the gay marriage decision over on out: http://www.popnography.com/2008/05/real-queers-cry.html
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* Check out my video column, FLAMING POLITICS, every week on After Elton (www.afterelton.com) and Visible Vote (visiblevote08.logoonline.com).
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Will be interesting to hear
California Supreme Court Decision
Getting married!
It's incredibly exciting news! Wow, I actually have the right to get married! Um, now I just need to find Mr. Right...any takers? lol
Let's have dinner first
Hey, if an insta-marriage is good enough for Britney...
then why bother with the dinner! lol :P
Maddow and Buchanan
Love the reference to Maddow and Buchanan, MSNBCs new it couple. They ARE the best. Well Rachel Maddow is. But I love her relationship with Buchanan, they're like a crazy conservative grandpa and super liberal lesbian granddaughter who disagree on everything but are willing to admit when the other makes a good point or laugh when the other makes a good joke.
When will they wise-up and give Maddow her own show though? She's the smartest, most sensible political pundit on TV.
Good to find another Maddow fan...
Did you catch her guest-hosting gig on Countdown a few weeks back? She's the reason I now record Race to the White House everyday (and if I don't see her on the panel the ep gets quickly deleted -- its an overall good show but without Maddow, I could hear the same opinions everywhere else). I even used to occasionally watch Tucker Carlson's The Situation for her, back in the day.
MSNBC really does need to give her a show, she's an amazing analyst, she's made some really sharp observations in the past few months.
Count me in
I'm a huge Rachel Maddow fan, too -- and I agree re: Buchanan (though I never thought I'd say this), that she makes him nearly tolerable. Much better to have him paired with her than with his sister Bay.
Another of my faves, though I don't get to see her often enough, is Nancy Giles. Watch for her -- I've seen her on Countdown and on Today, I think.
As a whole, I love Countdown and Keith -- my main source of news other than The Daily Show. I thought I would like 360 better, but I find it hard to watch --
eye candyrespected journalist though Anderson is. (Now, why don't they have Andy paired with Thomas Roberts? Talk about your dream teams!)The bells are gonna chime!
afhickman
"It takes a village (to make Village People)"
Incredible news. Break out the champagne indeed! It will be interesting to see which celebrities decide to tie the knot first.
Moral argument
I've often wondered why the democrats don't make more of a moral argument on why gays should have equality with straights, especially in a pluralistic society. It seems to me that even if you don't like gay people you should at least be able to understand that we are law abiding citizens who pay taxes and have the same responsibilities to our country as straight people.
I think democratic leaders could change a lot of hearts and minds if they made those arguments but perhaps they don't believe them themselves. Evidence would suggest as much.
If you believe that being gay is some sort of sexual fetish it's OK to dismiss us out right.
Moral Arguments
Moral arguments are highly convoluted things in America. Consider that we are a nation with an active anti-abortion "pro-Life" movement that is often simultaneously (and contradictorily) pro-War, pro-Guns and pro-Death Penalty.
So in the case of marriage the question (as seen from the Right) isn't one of equality and fair access to marriage, it's a question of what "marriage" itself is. This is how this issue is commonly approached by conservative writers and pundits, and especially by religious leaders.
Technically-speaking we, as gay men and lesbian women, are not in actual fact denied the right to get married. However, what we are denied is the right to marry who we want to marry, in this case a member of our own sex.
To conservative pundits this is little different than legal prohibition of incestuous marriages or marrying an animal. Indeed, these are usually the exact examples people opposed to same-sex marriage use. They focus on the definition of the word "marriage", arguing that it is, fundamentally, an institution for one man and one woman who are not closely related to one another. That's the modern defintion at least. In the Bible the patriarch Abraham was married to his half-sister. But that was upwards of 4000 years ago.
This is a difficult argument to counter. Especially since many people opposed to same-sex marriage also believe that homosexuals could "change" and live "straight" lives if they were willing to try hard enough. In their minds, a gay man is not being denied marriage, just marriage to another man. He could freely marry a woman and there would be no objections (except maybe from the bride's parents).
So the idea that gays are being unfairly denied something generally doesn't fit into the mindset of these people. If anything, conservative pundits and religious leaders argue that granting same-sex marriage removes any incentives that gays might have to try and "change" our sexual orientations and adopt "normal" lifestyles.
The way they see it, if a gay man wants to get married then he should find himself a wife and stop sleeping with men.
Because of that, the equality argument is a preaching to the choir kind of thing. The people who will accept it generally already do. It is the people who believe that marriage is specifically an institution intended for opposite-sex couples only that generally oppose same-sex marriage and for them equality is not an issue.
Easy argument
This is a difficult argument to counter. Especially since many people opposed to same-sex marriage also believe that homosexuals could "change" and live "straight" lives if they were willing to try hard enough. In their minds, a gay man is not being denied marriage, just marriage to another man. He could freely marry a woman and there would be no objections (except maybe from the bride's parents).
The way they see it, if a gay man wants to get married then he should find himself a wife and stop sleeping with men.
You already provided the best counterargument:
Would you want your daughter to marry a gay man?
No but...
In typical American fashion I probably wouldn't mind if someone else's daughter does.
Unless of course my daughter were already a lesbian, in which case I might want her to marry any man.
You got it
I think democratic leaders could change a lot of hearts and minds if they made those arguments but perhaps they don't believe them themselves. Evidence would suggest as much.
You hit the nail on the head.
Either that, or they don't understand the argument.
Just as there's a difference b/t empathy & sympathy, if you don't feel that something affects you personally, you won't fight for it (unless you're an exceptional human being).
But it's not as if gay leaders have done a good job reaching out to racial or other minorities on issues affecting them either.
Finally, it's supremely difficult if not impossible to make logical arguments to those who don't possess any logic.
Logic?!
See, there was a reason I raised the "pro-Life" point here, and you've hit the nail right on the head.
"Logic" is not being applied here. Americans as a people are famous throughtout the world for applying subjective truths to our decision making process. Tradition and history alone are often all the rationalization needed to form a basis for a decision. Also, the answer to any question can be subjective depending on whether it directly affects the person making the decision as opposed to not affecting them.
"Marriage", they figure, is for a man and woman. That's "the way it's always been" and therefore it is sufficient. To a heterosexual who holds this view, gays are not being denied anything, since (in the heterosexual's point of view) marrying someone of the same sex would be disgusting and not something anyone should want to do anyway. Not when they can marry someone of the opposite sex, which is "what God intended".
Most arguments against same-sex marriage are built upon a fundamental disapproval of homosexuality, which is in turn more a product of emotion and social indoctrination than the result of any logical basis to begin with.
Compare this with the whole Creationism versus Evolution debate. Evolution is heavily backed by piles of scientific evidence, yet a majority of Americans in most states reject it in favor of Creationism or Intelligent Design. Why? Logic? No. Because they prefer the version that conforms to their religious views more than the one backed by sterile facts.
The real reason gay rights have advanced so much in the last few decades is because many brave gay people stopped either living in the closet or caving to familial disapproval and just vanishing to some distant city never to be heard from again. When gays stopped being unthinkable perverts living in isolated urban ghettos and started being regular people that other people knew and cared about then things began to change. Because suddenly our rights became an emotional issue affecting people that many in straight America knew and cared about.
The challenge is that the low-hanging fruit have been plucked so to speak. America, as I think we all notice with our divided two-party politics, does tend to gravitate towards extreme sides. It's our cultural tendency. And many of the people who are a likely to support us already do, so it becomes progressively harder to win new allies, and it mostly occurs as young people who grew up with a more open awareness of gay people come of age and become a political factor.
Logic isn't dead
The real reason gay rights have advanced so much in the last few decades is because many brave gay people stopped either living in the closet or caving to familial disapproval and just vanishing to some distant city never to be heard from again. When gays stopped being unthinkable perverts living in isolated urban ghettos and started being regular people that other people knew and cared about then things began to change. Because suddenly our rights became an emotional issue affecting people that many in straight America knew and cared about.
The challenge is that the low-hanging fruit have been plucked so to speak. America, as I think we all notice with our divided two-party politics, does tend to gravitate towards extreme sides. It's our cultural tendency. And many of the people who are a likely to support us already do, so it becomes progressively harder to win new allies, and it mostly occurs as young people who grew up with a more open awareness of gay people come of age and become a political factor.
You're making the argument for me. Once straights learned that their friends or family who are gay weren't the sexual predators conservatives make us out to be, but instead are regular people just like everyone else, then the idea that we deserve equal rights became not just an emotional one, but a logical one as well.
I'm not convinced that we've exhausted our source of allies. I think that today's ruling will help more people come out of the closet. And should more states follow Cali's lead - as they did w/ interracial marriages - then even more of us will come out. The closet will never be totally empty, but it'll be really silly to stay there if states stop sanctioning discrimination.
The Original Topic
I'm trying to stay on topic here, and the original post I was commenting on was not your's.
The original comment I was responding to was the question of why political leaders, like the Democratic candidates, don't make an appeal based on "moral" principles for gay rights. I was answering that notion, not a general notion of of people in general.
As I've said in a lot of posts, the endorsement of the president in favor of our rights certainly helps, but it does not win the battle. Even during the reasonably gay-friendly Clinton Administration plenty of people dug in their heels on moral/religious stances against gay rightsin defiance of calls to their better nature. Practically speaking many of those same people also hated Clinton (and still do, with him and his wife).
So really it's kind of a moot point. The advancement of gay rights is really won at the grassroots level and not from the podium of the presidency. Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton making an impassioned appeal to the Southern Baptist Convention is not likely to result in much policy shift there. If anything it will just provide the SBC yet another imagined greivance to add to their list.
The original post touched on the idea of this being an issue of equal rights for people who contribute equally to society. So I presented the counter arguments that you can literally read right on the pages of books written by conservative political and religious commentators.
Don't for a second imagine that their opposition is based solely on "Well the Bible says". While the less sophisicated of them do used that tired old argument there are plenty of conservatives who have counter arguments that they consider just as "logical" and which are often carefully tailored to also produce a negative emotional reaction in their audiences.
Why do you suppose they consistently raise the specters of bestiality, incest and polygamy in any argument about same-sex marriage?
This is not to say that I don't think that politicians on our side could do a better job of articulating this issue, but in fairness so can we. A lot of people I talk to are oblivious to the finer nuances of the Right's counter-arguments against same-sex marriage and falsely assume it's all just quoted Bible verses. And even then, how often do you see gay people make incredibly hostile anti-religious and anti-Christian remarks (including here on the AfterElton boards) without considering that in many ways they're validating the arguments of those opposed to gay rights? Claims that we want to tear down traditional values and destroy Christian religion.
That's why this is such a hot button in politics, and why most politicians don't make such impassioned moral pleas. They know that they won't likely gain much in the way of results on the national stage. It's not a coincidence that many of the more strident voices who do try to make these arguments are more local players like Gavin Newsom in San Francisco. Who is, by the way, widely reviled on the Right and would certainly be a subject of vast hatred on the national political stage.
So I think that the moral argument is more effective coming out of our mouths dealing with the circles of people we know than it would be from the podium from a big name politician to an impersonal audience. Because like I said, I really doubt that an impassioned plea from some liberal politician is going to sway the minds people with entrenched anti-gay attitudes, unless they have the inspirational power of a JFK or MLK. Sadly, I don't think we've got one of those right now.