Because I am busy at work on a paper, I will unfortunately not be able to blog as regularly as I would like for the next couple of days. And this while I have a number of thoughts about several issues of the day. Wall Street rallies as the Federal Reserve Chairman says that while economic growth is slowing, the economy remains strong. Hezbollah continues to fire rockets indiscriminately at Israel while Israel attacks the terrorist’s infrastructure in Lebanon. (Keep your eyes on Pajamas for regular updates on the situation in the Middle East.)
So preoccupied was I with my paper (and other obligations) as well as the news from the Middle East that I almost missed the defeat in the House of Representatives of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
While I was delighted that this pernicious proposal was once again defeated, I was saddened (once again) at the shallowness of the debate — on both sides. While most of the releases I read from the gay groups were filled with the same angry rhetoric, there were two notable exceptions this time.
Log Cabin’s latest release was far less angry than the organization’s statement at the time of the Senate debate. Indeed, while I have a few minor quibbles with the release*, it pretty much sets the right tone. I particularly liked Patrick Guerriero’s line that “The House spoke very clearly and again said that marriage is an issue the states are perfectly capable of handling.” A small step in the right direction.
The other interesting exception this time was the one from the National Stonewall Democrats (NSD) which was half-brilliant, half-angry partisan. NSD Executive Director Jo Wyrick said:
Marriage is an institution that strengthens the American family, and it should be legally extended to all couples. . . . Americans should be allowed the freedom to discuss this issue at their dinner tables and in their houses of worship. Instead, Republicans would rather use this debate to divide the public through poor policy that attacks the Constitution. House Republicans have twice failed to force through this discriminatory amendment, just as they continue to fail the American public through their misguided priorities.
Wyrick was right to note that marriage strengthens the family and to welcome a discussion of the topic. Yet, I just don’t see how anyone can see putting a topic on the calender of an elected, deliberative assembly as an attempt to “force” it through. The House Republicans debated an important issue, then voted on it — and saw it defeated.
By putting the topic up for a vote, House Republicans encouraged debate. That they achieved a majority indicates that there is still strong support for this gratuitous (and potentially dangerous) amendment and that we still need to keep the conversation going — in order to change the minds of those who support it. That they failed to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to amend the constitution should make us grateful for the wisdom of its framers, particularly James Madison, who made it difficult to amend this august charter.
That those — on both sides — did not see this debate as an occasion to better understand their adversaries’ ideas suggests that some minds remind perpetually closed to those with whom they disagree. For as much as I’ve blogged on civil discourse, it doesn’t seem to make any difference to our most ardent critics. They will continue to see us not as we are, but as the narrow-minded demons of their imaginations.
While I have been delighted to reply to e-mails from liberal readers, eager to better understand gay conservatives, some (in e-mails and in the comments) persist in insulting us. One writer even accused me of being “all flustered” that I get hate mail. Yet, in the very post to which he attached his comment, I noted that the latest batch of hate mail “brought a smile to my face.” A smile suggests that someone is happy and/or amused and not upset as someone would be if flustered.
It is unfortunate that those who who write on controversial blogs are subject to this kind of abuse. But, I’ve learned to expect that nowadays. In an ideal world, we would receive honest and civil criticism, rather than mean-spirited barbs. Alas that all too many would rather insult than debate. And such behavior is not limited to my ideological adversaries.
-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com
* I would have just deleted a few words and tweaked one sentence.
Your more than welcome to find that gay gene. Once you do, I’ll reconsider my views.
I doubt you’ll have any luck though.
How you live your life is your business. But don’t try to redefine marriage for the rest of us.
O.o ? Debate!?
If you can actually find even two sentences of actual “debate” from Congress, I’d like to hear them. Whether they are voting on gay marriage or on any other issue. Debate does happen I suppose, but rarely, and this wasn’t one of those times.
They were not debating ANYTHING. What they were doing, either side, was indulging in a taxpayer funded commercial aimed at whichever particular interest group they were trying to court.
I know you have read the autobiography of John Adams by McCullough, so compare the debates that took place in Philadelphia with what takes place today. They fare pretty poorly, don’t they?
Today, regardless of which side you are on or which issue, “debate” in Congress mainly consists of members strutting to the floor and pontificating for the gratification of their own egos. – Not the serious examination and cross examination that is a hallmark of a true debate. Members of Congress do not change their votes as the result of what they have heard on the floor of Congress.
As a matter of fact, if you look at the speeches themselves, they sound more like cookie-cutter editorials. The narrative goes something like: “(fill in the blank), yada yada yada….. and that is an outrage!”(yawn).
You can pretty much reduce any speech in Congress to that simple sentence. And they don’t even have to work to “fill in the blank”, they just insert whatever the lobbyists on that particular issue have handed them that day. So sorry, no, the Republicans do not get any points for “debating” gay marriage. Or not anymore than the Democrats got for “debating” our goals in Iraq.
The gay marriage “debate” is not taking place in Congress anyway, its taking place at the dinner table. And thats where we need to aim our lobbying dollars.
Fair comment, Patrick. A bit overheated perhaps, but a valid point nonetheless.
RE#1 Another one of your felloe conservative republican posters that reduce you to nothing with contempt and no response.
RE#2 “The gay marriage “debate” is not taking place in Congress anyway, its taking place at the dinner table. And thats where we need to aim our lobbying dollars. Comment by Patrick (Gryph)”
And we do this one bucket of chicken at a time?
Mark, your idea of marriage is going to be redefined even if not one more same sex couple is married. The greatest threat to so-called traditional marriage is infidelity, spousal abuse and divorce among married couples. Is the religious right going to ban divorce? And the second greatest threat to traditional marriage is the growing number of people who live together and have children outside of marriage. Is cohabitation the next wedge issue for the far right?
With the House defeating the political marriage amendment and the President using his first veto for the stem cell legislation, I am wondering:
If the Congress passed gay marriage legislation, would the President veto it? Seems so, even though the elected officials of the American people would enact that legislation. Doesn’t this make the President an Activist President?
#1 and #4. Wow. There really is no response, is there? Because the real enemies are the terrorists and ‘the liberal gays’.
Per my niece, who used to work for a Michigan Representative in DC: This amendment has been coming up every year for about 10 years (shortly after party control of the chamber shifted).
Every year it goes down to defeat, but with seeming slimmer margins. Time is on the side of the religious social conservatives, unless we can get our arguements for same-sex marriage in front of people who care and are willing to take a public stand.
Good article in The Washington Blade’s latest issue. I know GPW/GP are pretty down on Chris Craine, but I thought this article offered food for thought. He actually (somewhat) agrees with some of the gop posters on this blog…
http://washblade.com/blog/index.cfm?type=blog&start=7/19/06&end=7/21/06#8239
sorry, I don’t know how to highlight/link article on here
I’m not trying to re-define marriage for you…I’m trying to re-define it for me.
How does gay & lesbian marriage equality effects your marriage at all. If family is the basic social structure in the US it would seem in our mutual best interests to bring encourage gay & lesbian people to be part of that “family” structure instead of excluding them.
Additionally, why are you deserving of 1001 Special Rights (as determined by the Congressional Budget Office [I think]) by virtue of marrying someone of the opposite gender?
#1 Mark, first of all, they HAVE found at least one of the genes (some years back) which proves that homosexuality is genetic, and not chosen (Read Living With Our Genes: Why they Matter More Than You Think, by Dr’s Dean H. Hamer and Peter Copeland). More recently, aonther geneticist completed a study concluding that there are also fetal hormonal changes in the mothers womb which also plays a part. We all know that it is NOT a choice, and we deserve the same rights as everyone else to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which includes marrying whomever we damn well please regardless of sexual orientation.
Secondly, you’re bigoted ASShole, pure and unrefined!
Down on Chris Crain, ndovent in #9? Not at all. I have referenced him on several times, always favorably. He’s a fine writer with a broader view than most gay columnists.
I don’t always agree with Chris, but find that he tends to express himself quite well.
Some of us are skeptical that an issue as complex as human sexuality can be reduced to one single causative variable. Does that make us bigots?
Well said, V the K.
While I agree that we, most of us at least, do not chose to be gay, there appear to be a variety of factors at work in determining an individual’s sexuality. The examples of identical twins who have different orientations suggest there are other factors at play.
This is a great topic for further research and conversation.
But, even if it were a choice, would that mean that we should not be free to make it? Many people choose to change their religion while some even choose to change their gender. I guess these people took heed to the title of a celebrated book by an economist whose libertarian ideas I have long respected.
#1 Mark — July 19, 2006 @ 7:13 pm – July 19, 2006
Your more than welcome to find that gay gene. Once you do, I’ll reconsider my views.
I doubt you’ll have any luck though.
That’s sweet. I guess you would say the same about the black gene and the white gene. Have you found a black gene? A white gene? No? I doubt that you’ve been able to find a gene, unless it was a Wrangler’s.
How you live your life is your business.
Not even your buddies at the CofCC (the Council of Conservative Citizens–the successors of the White Citizens Councils) would have said that, and their predecessors showed that.
But don’t try to redefine marriage for the rest of us.
I guess you really are too dumb to recognize the fact that allowing same sex couples to marry doesn’t redefine marriage for any of y’all. Y’all can still marry the wenches that you can get to marry y’all.
Racist. Sexist. Xenophobe. Homophobe. Same thing.
#9 ndtovent — July 20, 2006 @ 9:27 am – July 20, 2006
sorry, I don’t know how to highlight/link article on here
The HTML code for posting a link is as follows (note carefully what I tell you after the code):
(a href=”http://www.url.com”)linked text(/a)
(i) Substitute the linked-to web page for http://www.url.com. Keep the beginning and end “…” I do a copy and past from the address bar in Internet Explorer–simple, since you won’t make an error in transcribing the address.
(ii) Linked text is whatever text you want to use to refer to the web page. I usually use the title of the web page, but sometimes refer to it as something else.
(iii) Most importantly instead of open “(” and close “)” parentheses substitute angle brackets “” everywhere. (If I had done that in the example above, you wouldn’t have seen anything.)
I have a notepad text file solely for the fact that it has a number of these as templates, so that I don’t have to remember the arcane format. You might want to consider doing the same.
Oh, crap. ndtovent the angle brackets are
#14 GayPatriotWest — July 20, 2006 @ 3:18 pm – July 20, 2006
While I agree that we, most of us at least, do not chose to be gay, there appear to be a variety of factors at work in determining an individual’s sexuality.
Geez, this is amazing. So what if someone chose to be gay? Is he supposed to be denied his equal protection of the law merely because he chose to be gay?
I’m sorry, but even addressing the “choice” topic is akin to conceding the issue to the nutters. Why? Because most of them wouldn’t even believe that “homosexual” is not a choice even if they were bombarded with evidence that it was such. And, even if “homosexual” were genetic, what would you say about alcoholism, kleptomania, etc., etc., etc., for which there is more than a bit of evidence for a genetic basis.
I’ll stick to Virginia Postrel’s formulation in her 1998 article The Claims of Nature: The “can gays change” debate is dodging the main issues:
I wish that I had written it. She did, and there is nothing more to be said.
Actually, no, raj, addressing this topic is not akin to conceding the issue to the nutters. You may believe there is nothing more to be said, but this is a fascinating topic. Addressing it opens us up to the varieties of human sexual experience.
The “nutters” (as you put it) believe that with the proper “education,” we will all fit in to their neat little packages. I, however, believe that we should let each individual determine his own destiny.
Sorry that you see my broad-mindedness on this topic as an alliance with those who hold the most narrow views of sexuality.
I have talked to men in straight relationships who have once enjoyed sexual relationships with men and meet many lesbians who did not “discover” their sexuality until they met a particular woman or confronted it after dating men with whom many acknowledge they enjoyed having sex.
As one who once saw a psychotherapist to “cure” me of my feelings for men, I know that there are many other men like men, who do cannot change their orientation. I would daresay that the overhwelming majority of gay men can’t change. But, just because our sexuality is not so fluid does not mean that others are able to change. Some recent studies have suggested that a small percentage might be able to (change). Is it, I wonder, that they were not really gay to begin with, just open to sexual experimentation or that, for them, it was just a phase?
I am fascinated by the many ways our sexuality manifests itself. That you would see this fascination as akin to the narrow views of social conservatives says a lot about how you react to the ideas I have expressed on this blog.
Two points:
1. I agree that children out of wedlock, cohabitation, infidelity are out of control. You don’t fix these problems by allowing gay marriage. That would make marriage even more of a joke than it already is.
2. Again, I emplore any of you to find that gay gene (that we were all promised by the way). It simply doesn’t exist. And I’m not talking about the many “findings” of the 80s that all turned out to be hoaxes. Homosexuality is cause by environment, not genetics.
And while the rest of you resort to name calling (are we in the first grade again?), I would ask you to examine this: Why did I hit a nerve? Could it be that you YOURSELF have questioned whether homosexuality is genetic? Could it be that YOU have your own doubts, but you don’t want to think about/ackowledge them.
Mark,
Why are you hanging around a gay conservative site anyway? The Internet is a series of tubes that can take you many places. Certainly a straight man secure in his heterosexuality wouldn’t feel the need to prove anti-gay points on a blog like this. People who usually obsess about that (John Paulk) are trying to overcompensate.
Did people watching online movies clog up your tubes so that your Internet and attention is stuck on this site?
😉
I think now would be a good time for GPW to play role model and reach out to Mark and demonstrate the sort civil discourse that he feels is effective in winning opponents like Mark to our cause. I’m sure that we would all benefit from witnessing this exchange.
Why did I hit a nerve? Could it be that you YOURSELF have questioned whether homosexuality is genetic? Could it be that YOU have your own doubts, but you don’t want to think about/ackowledge them.
Among some gays, you’re right, Mark; challenging whether or not homosexuality is genetic is akin to challenging a dogma of the Catholic faith.
The primary reason is because many of those gays, such as Raj, have spent their entire life using “it’s biological” as an equivalent for “it’s not my fault”.
Sexual attraction, like most behavioral traits, is likely a complicated interrelationship of environmental and genetic interactions. To say it is purely biological is not correct, but to state that it is purely a choice is also incorrect. The “choice”, in this case, is between being miserable due to sexual drives and unable to interact completely with one’s “expected” mate of the opposite gender versus honest acknowledgement that one is attracted to and much more able to form relationships with a member of one’s own gender.
In short, God did not allow gays to be created to be miserable. He allowed them so that through gays carrying out exactly what GPW talks about — demonstrating the virtues of loving, fidelity, and care for each other — that He would be glorified.
Could it be that you YOURSELF have questioned whether homosexuality is genetic? Could it be that YOU have your own doubts, but you don’t want to think about/ackowledge them.
For mine own part, I don’t give a good damn. I am and that’s that. Ain’t no since in wasting time worrying why. I already wasted a few years of my life a worrying about it a while back. What difference does it make why we are?
By my heal, I care not.
BTW, if it were environmental, my brother would be gay too.
#19 GayPatriotWest — July 20, 2006 @ 5:23 pm – July 20, 2006
Sorry, I see your purported “broad-mindedness” on the issue of “gay marriage” as basically caving in to the “nutters.”
Your comment is again fairly incomprehensible. What are you trying to say? The issue that I was addressing was state recognition of relationships of same-sex couples (so-called “gay marriage”) on the same basis that it recognizes relationships of opposite sex couples (so-called “marriage”).
You then go off and discuss issues of sexuality, people in straight relationships who might have had incidental sexual relationships with people of the same sex, a psychotherapist who tried to cure you of your same-sex attractions, etc., etc., etc. What do any of these things have to do with “state recognition” etc.? Absolutely nothing.
Let’s understand something. If you want to complain about psychotherapists who tried to cure you of your same-sex attractions, do a post on it–or go to exgaywatch.com and moan about it over there (it actually is a pretty good site). If you want to discuss people in straight relationships who might have had incidental relationships with people of the same sex, compose a post to that point (just to let you know, my first boyfriend was one such). If you want to discuss issues of sexuality, compose such a post. Your post was directed to same-sex marriage. Not to sexuality, not to incidental same-sex relationships, and not to psychotherapists. And it is your apparently inability to focus your posts that I, for one, find fault in. What are we supposed to comment on, if you continually change the subject matter of your posts in comments?
On your Actually, no, raj, addressing this topic is not akin to conceding the issue to the nutters I disagree, but with a caveat. It isn’t simply a matter of addressing the topic, it is also a matter of how the topic is addressed. You really should read some of the work by the linguist George Lakoff. Regardless of whether you agree with his politics, he is exactly right in his contention that the most important issue initially is how the issue is framed. By allowing same-sex marriage rights to be framed–as you and like-minded people do–as “gay marriage,” you have almost lost the battle. Why? Because it sounds like something other than marriage. You’ve ceded the debate to the opposition, and you continue to do so.
So, yes, you have conceded the issue to the nutters. Is that what you really want?
In short, God did not allow gays to be created to be miserable. He allowed them so that through gays carrying out exactly what GPW talks about — demonstrating the virtues of loving, fidelity, and care for each other — that He would be glorified.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty
================================
Would you please explain that to your fundie friends?
I totally agree but explaining to them that we were created to glorify God would get you laughed out of the revival tent.
Chandler the Pious, aka:
I think now would be a good time for GPW to play role model and reach out to Mark and demonstrate the sort civil discourse that he feels is effective in winning opponents like Mark to our cause. I’m sure that we would all benefit from witnessing this exchange.
Mark, did you find ND30’s comments helpful and supportive for your position on gay marriage?