MIA On Gay Marriage

Believe it or not, often I can see the other side of an argument. I know that tough gun control laws save lives and make our communities safer, for example, but I also see clarity in the Second Amendment. I support affirmative action, but I realize that providing opportunity to some worthy individuals can mean denying opportunity to others. Thinking about some issues involves discerning among subtly graded shades of gray.

On some issues, though, I really don't see anything but black and white. Among them is the "question" of granting full equal rights to gay and lesbian Americans, which really isn't a question at all. It's a long-overdue imperative, one that the nation is finally beginning to acknowledge....

Favoring "civil unions" that accord all the rights and benefits of marriage -- but that withhold the word marriage, and with it, I guess, society's approval -- amounts to another dodge. I'm concerned here with the way the law sees the relationship, not the way any particular church or religious leader sees it; that's for worshipers, clergy and the Almighty to work out. Marriage is not just a sacrament but also a contract, and the contractual aspect is a matter of statute, not scripture.

Obama took the "civil unions" route during last year's campaign and has stuck with it. While I see the political calculation -- that was basically the position of all the major Democratic candidates -- I never understood the logic. If semantics are the only difference between a civil union and a marriage, why go to the trouble of drawing a distinction? If there are genuine differences that the law should recognize, what are they?...

Good Lord, I see that you are a far worse enemy of our culture than I had thought:

SISTERS OF THE GION (Japan 1936): Legendary director Kenji Mizoguchi had a fascination with prostitutes...
STRAY DOG (Japan 1949): Film noir style police movie about a stolen gun used in a crime spree....
EARLY SUMMER (Japan 1951): A very traditional Japanese family seeks to marry their daughter (the always sweet Setsuko Hara) to an older man....
THE LIFE OF OHARU (Japan 1952): Kinuyo Tanaka stars as an aging prostitute....

Sexcrime, anti-gun propaganda, cradle-robbing old pervs, more sexcrime, and I barely got a quarter of the way through the list before giving up in revulsion. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Rather than wasting a couple of hours “debating” you, when you obviously are psychologically incapable of letting anyone else ever have the last word, not to mention have failed for many years now to provide a real world example of your teen angst libertarian fantasyland, I'll leave you with this. It's a repost of something Lawrence Auster wrote after the Massachusetts same-sex “marriage” ruling. It doesn't contain any of the, “eh, you're a nanny state totalitarian sucking at the gubmint’s teat” rhetorical style you prefer, but maybe you can learn something from it. If not, I'm sure there are people here who will understand it, and won't see it as "just 'nother totalitarian nanny state do-gooder fundie tryin' to stop us from havin' fun".:

Fr. Seraphim Rose delineated four stages of Nihilism, defined by their ever-increasing indifference or hostility to truth. The first and mildest stage of Nihilism is Liberalism. The Liberal does not believe in truth, higher truth, absolute truth, or Christian truth. Yet he retains “the name of truth, and the names of those truths men once regarded as absolute.” The next stage of Nihilism is Realism. The Realist aggressively denies all higher truth, he says that only the material, the physical, the lower, the purely deterministic, is true. The Vitalist in turn reacts against the unbearably sterile world that has been created by the Liberal and the Realist. He seeks a revived meaning and vitality in life, but without challenging the Liberal’s and Realist’s assumptions about truth or seeking a restoration of the truths they have destroyed. On the contrary, since the truth offered by Liberalism is so weak and vague, and the truth offered by Realism is so deadening and depressing, the Vitalist rejects the very idea of truth:

“The falseness of an opinion,” said Nietzsche, “is not for us any objection to it.... The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving ...” When such pragmatism begins, Nihilism passes into the Vitalist stage, which may be defined as the elimination of truth as the criterion of human action, and the substitution of a new standard: the “life-giving,” the “vital”; it is the final divorce of life from truth. [Nihilism, p. 50].

In the Vitalist stage of society, people deliver themselves over to an unending search for sensation and excitement, for the exotic and the experimental, for ever-greater freedom and satisfaction of desires, for the “riches of diversity,” for the transforming “energy” that is produced by a society in constant change and motion—and with all these things being seen as, even explicitly promoted as, a substitute for any inherent truth and goodness in existence.
As Vitalism reaches its peak, the final stage of Nihilism starts to appear. This is the Nihilism of Destruction, “a rage against creation and against civilization that will not be appeased until it has reduced them to absolute nothingness.”

It strikes me that with the Massachusetts decision legalizing homosexual marriage, our society may be passing from the Vitalist stage of Nihilism to the full-blown Nihilism of Destruction.

Rather than wasting a couple of hours "debating" you

In your dreams. That's like imagining that you would spend a couple hours in the ring with Muhammad Ali in his prime.

I'll leave you with this. It's a repost of something Lawrence Auster wrote

It reads like the sort of twaddle cranked out by totalitarians' kept scribes in order to justify the liquidation of the latest Enemies Of The State.

In any case, you are quite correct in saying that there's no point in your continuing to argue, and not merely because you have the far weaker case. You have already retired from the field, by ceding to the State the power to shape culture. I have not made any such concession, and the result is that I find myself engaged with a self-disarmed opponent. Hardly challenging, or even entertaining.

While I am sympathetic to what you have posted, the problem lies in the society itself. As John Adams famously said, â€Å“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.â€�

How does one construct a government for a society when every citizen has rights, including the right to vote, and then we face a segment of the population whose values we realize are hostile to our own? Well, I don't know, nor do I care what my neighbor does in private. I only care when his values animate behavior that seeks to destroy my own rights and liberty.

The problem is that we have allowed government to intrude into so many areas of our lives that we cannot live our lives outside of its approval or compliance with its tens of thousands of rules and regulations. It has come to the point that various groups seek to protect and advance their agendas, not by association or persuasion, but by seizing and manipulating government policy. This is very true in setting lesson plans for public schools. It is very true in health policy.

Your solution implies that social conservatives attempt to regain control over government and (re)impose their values via government policy. The day when this could succeed is now mostly in our rear view mirror. The day when, for example, government could force retail stores to close on Sunday (which was the case until about 20 years ago), is long gone. How many of us want to live where government imposes a day of rest? (I for one do not, for I observe the Sabbath, and I could not be in the retail business if I could not open my shop on Sunday.) In the state I live in, this law persists to this very moment. Automobile dealerships must be closed on Sunday.

No, the solution is to realize that was an improper use of the armed agents of coercive government policy. In order to prevent leftists, homosexuals, pagans and other people that social conservatives disagree with on a policy and values basis, from seizing government and doing to us what we did to them, we must scale back government to such an extent that it becomes impossible for anyone to do that.

This is not a "libertarian dream". We only have to reflect on how the Nazis, who were really National *Socialists*, used the progressive values of eugenics to justify sterilization and murder of many people they considered to be defective. Well, excuse me, we don't have to go all the way back to Nazi Germany, for our own *progressives* in our own states used state power to force defective people to be sterilized.

It was not that many years ago that progressives seized state power to destroy the unalienable rights of some citizens. Knowing what policy chaos that progressives can wreak in society makes it an urgent matter to roll back government to its rightful place in society- to protect every citizen, and make the country work, but very little else!

Either we will see the various states legally enshrine the rights of homosexuals to "marry", and thus use the State to take the next obvious step: to insist that public schools and public policy recognize those "unions", or else we get government out of the marriage business. For when homosexuals are "equal" in this respect, it is easier for their status to justify "hate crimes" when anyone speaks the moral truth about sodomy.

Even so, how does one deny a homosexual single woman the ability to adopt a child, a right that a heterosexual single woman? Upon what basis shall we discriminate one from the other based, not upon Christian values which carry no weight in court, but upon the equality implied and stated in the Constitution?

We cannot unring the bell. We must adopt policy that moves us towards being able to fully enjoy our rights irrespective of what other people may think of them. That gives us the ability to advocate for those rights, to tell others why morality is important, even as too many voices today think morality is old fashioned.

You're probably correct that it's too late. I think the West is probably finished. The future lies with Asia and the Islamic world.

A society of unlimited freedom does not exist and cannot exist. There has to be some accommodation of culture. This is where the libertarians always fail. They can't understand that people aren't individual autonomy units totally divorced from any societal influence. Thus, when leftists demand the "liberation" of homosexuals (as one example) they jump on the bandwagon, not realizing that liberated homosexuals will demand a government far bigger than the relatively mild laws and social restrictions placed on homosexuals historically.

When that happens, the only defense the libertarian has is to demand that government get out of the marriage business, or out of the education business, as if that would even be considered in a world in which homosexuals have political clout. You can't scale back government in a socially liberal society for any number of reasons.

First, the people empowered in such a society are homosexuals, feminists, Third World oriented racial minorities, and other groups which are non-competitive in our culture. In a true free market, based on competition, they'd fail. Second, the behavior of many of these groups creates a plethora of social problems which lead to more government (disease, illegitimacy, crime....).

This is why the left has spent so much time promoting social liberalism. Once they get that, all other areas of society will become liberal by default. Chuck Schumer isn't promoting the homosexual agenda because he believes in freedom, but because he doesn't.

I see us becoming more like Europe, which in turn is becoming more like the old USSR. Conservatives in Europe now refer to the EU as the EUSSR. Out of the ashes of the West's decline, something new will arise but without Christendom it won't be anything like our founding fathers created. It'll be an authoritarian Asian model, or a totalitarian Islamic model. The left imagines a secular totalitarian leftist EU and a similar regime here, but the very diversity the left has promoted in these regions will kill that as the parasites feed off the hosts.

I'm afraid that libertarians who imagine a "live and let live" world in which homosexuals respect and tolerate Christians, in which Muslims respect and tolerate Christians & Jews, in which racial minorities agree to compete on an equal basis without government preferences, in which the schools and other things are privatized to allow the above to flourish, is a wild fantasy that can never be. As just one example, homosexuals have more political clout in California and in the New England states than elsewhere in America. Those areas are also more secular. Does anyone imagine a legislature in any of those states abolishing public education? If anything, they'll be the first to outlaw home schooling.

Your post is very good, by the way. Well-written and well-argued. I hope we can agree to disagree, if indeed we do!

A government that is so powerful that it can forbid two (homosexual) men from living together, can also forbid an unmarried male and female from living together. I dare say that a decent minority of people on this very thread are living with their “significant other” and not their mate in marriage.

God sets the idea, as amplified by Jesus, that He recognizes marriage only between a male and female. Yet even He recognized the many wives of King Solomon, a situation that many find revolting. (lest we allow Mormon plural marriage today)

I observe the real Sabbath, the one in the Bible, not the one imposed by the Roman Church many centuries later on Christianity. Those who observed Sunday as a day of rest (gradually becoming the hour of rest), did not hesitate to use the armed agents of the State to force stores to be closed on Sunday for many generations. Would anyone here want to give me the same power of the State to force stores to close on my day of rest? I don't think so.

A good start on this topic is to consider what aspects of the present tax system allow government to define things that government should not be defining. Who my heirs are should be none of government's business, except they need to know so proper taxes can be levied. Who my wife is none of government's business either! We only have to know so we can properly exempt some income from taxation.

The Fair Tax leads us away from this mess and towards more liberty and privacy. (so a caution here in how the “prebate” is structured!)

This is a wonderful topic for as we wrestle with it, the concepts of liberty can once again be brought to the fore and back into the public’s conscious. (hey! the left is always talking about “consciousness raising”! Let's do some of our own.)

lest we allow Mormon plural marriage today

The history of the Mormons presents a perfect example of how the "relatively mild laws"* excuse fails. Once the power of the State takes a side, brutality up to and including unpunished lynching may readily be brought to bear against the disfavored group.

*The other alternative -- "social restrictions" -- does not fall within the scope of this debate, unless and until agitators translate them into law so that they can palm off onto the State the work of upholding them.

Those who observed Sunday as a day of rest (gradually becoming the hour of rest), did not hesitate to use the armed agents of the State to force stores to be closed on Sunday for many generations. Would anyone here want to give me the same power of the State to force stores to close on my day of rest? I don't think so.

And, I gather, you do not want any such power. If so, that speaks well of your wisdom and morality, and shows that you have what it takes to lead by persuasion and example. Once the State is called upon, those qualities decay in the same way, and for the same reason, that the work ethic of habitual welfare dependents does.

The Fair Tax leads us away from this mess and towards more liberty and privacy. (so a caution here in how the "prebate" is structured!)

A simple per capita prebate avoids most potential problems, since it requires only information (how many citizens live where) that is legitimately needed for electoral purposes and is generally obvious public knowledge anyway.

No, indeed, I find that using the armed agents of the State to coerce compliance with the values that I hold dear violates those values. I can only demand the same liberty for myself that I am prepared to grant to others.

Since that liberty includes the freedom to speak in the public square, I hope to persuade others that there indeed are long term benefits to observing the Sabbath. Even so, I realize that each person must accept this truth as a matter of free will.

This is why it is essential that we get our children out of the government run indoctrination centers. Aside from their high costs, fewer and fewer are able to get away with teaching Biblical values. More and more, values that are hostile to those found in the Bible are advocated, and reinforced by peer pressure.

This also extends to both the accreditation apparatus, where a school must be given approval by the very libertine and progressive edu-crat establishment who firmly control the public school system.

Yes, liberalism in the modern progressive sense, is at war with Judeao-Christian values. Those who treasure and understand the later must take away every advantage their opposing forces have.

Happily, the present administration's high level of spending has scared a lot of nominal leftists. Maybe now is the best time in a generation to press for the case of smaller government. This worked for me, for in a conversation with an advocate of big government who got scared by the deficits, I remarked that being able to print an borrow an unlimited amount of money allows governments to go to a war that the public does not support. He almost jumped out of his chair, almost yelling, “that illegal war!”, by which he meant Bush and Iraq. I almost could not contain my laughter, for finally a big spending progressive saw the danger of big government.

It is time to restrain Leviathan, for even those who normally are glad to see the beast intervene for causes they cheer are getting nervous about the cost of feeding the beast.

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