Originally posted by JayDaDon
As a black guy, I don't like when people do this. It's not really the same thing.
Regardless, this isn't productive. If we get bogged down in a silly game of Oppression Olympics, it's hard to actually get change for anyone.
If there is an injustice, it should be addressed.
Originally posted by Q99
Long story short- it's ok to boycott people who support bad causes, and it's ok if stores do so too.
This whole "You're just oppressing the oppressor by calling him out on his bigotry! You're just as bad he is! dur" is just tiresome.
I seriously can't believe people still spout that nonsense.
Originally posted by StyleTimeThere are parallels [to racism], which I think is what he was getting at.
Gay "Marriage" (Part 1)
(Thomas Sowell, August 15, 2006)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now that a number of state courts have refused to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions, cries of "discrimination" are being heard.
The "equal protection of the laws" provided by the Constitution of the United States applies to people, not actions. Laws exist precisely in order to discriminate between different kinds of actions.
When the law permits automobiles to drive on highways but forbids bicycles from doing the same, that is not discrimination against people. A cyclist who gets off his bicycle and gets into a car can drive on the highway just like anyone else.
In a free society, vast numbers of things are neither forbidden nor facilitated. They are considered to be none of the law's business.
Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they said that the law had no business interfering with relations between consenting adults. Now they want the law to put a seal of approval on their behavior. But no one is entitled to anyone else's approval.
Why is marriage considered to be any of the law's business in the first place? Because the state asserts an interest in the outcomes of certain unions, separate from and independent of the interests of the parties themselves.
In the absence of the institution of marriage, the individuals could arrange their relationship whatever way they wanted to, making it temporary or permanent, and sharing their worldly belongings in whatever way they chose.
Marriage means that the government steps in, limiting or even prescribing various aspects of their relations with each other -- and still more their relationship with whatever children may result from their union.
In other words, marriage imposes legal restrictions, taking away rights that individuals might otherwise have.
Yet "gay marriage" advocates depict marriage as an expansion of rights to which they are entitled.
They argue against a "ban on gay marriage" but marriage has for centuries meant a union of a man and a woman.
There is no gay marriage to ban.
Originally posted by roughrider
If you substitute the term Black or African American for homosexual in his stance, there's no way [Orson Scott Card would] have a following outside the KKK.
Gay "Marriage" (Part 2)
(Thomas Sowell, August 15, 2006)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Analogies with bans against interracial marriage are bogus. Race is not part of the definition of marriage. A ban on interracial marriage is a ban on the same actions otherwise permitted because of the race of the particular people involved. It is a discrimination against people, not actions.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the life of the law has not been logic but experience. Vast numbers of laws have accumulated and evolved over the centuries, based on experience with male-female unions.
There is no reason why all those laws should be transferred willy-nilly to a different union, one with no inherent tendency to produce children nor the inherent asymmetries of relationships between people of different sexes.
Despite attempts to evade these asymmetries with such fashionable phrases as "a pregnant couple" or references to "spouses" rather than husbands and wives, these asymmetries take many forms and have many repercussions, which laws attempt to deal with on the basis of experience, rather than theories or rhetoric.
Wives, for example, typically invest in the family by restricting their own workforce participation, if only long enough to take care of small children. Studies show such differences still persisting in this liberated age, and even among women and men with postgraduate degrees from Harvard and Yale.
In the absence of marriage laws, a husband could dump his wife at will and she could lose decades of investment in their relationship. Marriage laws seek to recoup some of that investment for her through alimony when divorce occurs.
Those who think of women and men in the abstract consider it right that ex-husbands should be as entitled to alimony as ex-wives. But what are these ex-husbands being compensated for?
And why should any of this experience apply to same-sex unions, where there are not the same inherent asymmetries nor the same tendency to produce children?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2006/08/15/gay_marriage/page/full/
Originally posted by StyleTime
There are parallels, which I think is what he was getting at.Regardless, this isn't productive. If we get bogged down in a silly game of Oppression Olympics, it's hard to actually get change for anyone.
If there is an injustice, it should be addressed.
👆 Exactly.
This whole "You're just oppressing the oppressor by calling him out on his bigotry! You're just as bad he is! dur" is just tiresome.
I seriously can't believe people still spout that nonsense.
It's as if they think the problem is words like 'intolerance' and 'bigotry', and not, y'know, the actual harm caused by intolerance and bigotry.
Originally posted by Endless Mike
I meant the part about rebelling against the government
Yea, that's pretty dumb.
Originally posted by bluewaterrider
Gay "Marriage" (Part 1)(Thomas Sowell, August 15, 2006)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now that a number of state courts have refused to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions, cries of "discrimination" are being heard.The "equal protection of the laws" provided by the Constitution of the United States applies to people, not actions. Laws exist precisely in order to discriminate between different kinds of [b]actions
.When the law permits automobiles to drive on highways but forbids bicycles from doing the same, that is not discrimination against people. A cyclist who gets off his bicycle and gets into a car can drive on the highway just like anyone else.
In a free society, vast numbers of things are neither forbidden nor facilitated. They are considered to be none of the law's business.
Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they said that the law had no business interfering with relations between consenting adults. Now they want the law to put a seal of approval on their behavior. But no one is entitled to anyone else's approval.
Why is marriage considered to be any of the law's business in the first place? Because the state asserts an interest in the outcomes of certain unions, separate from and independent of the interests of the parties themselves.
In the absence of the institution of marriage, the individuals could arrange their relationship whatever way they wanted to, making it temporary or permanent, and sharing their worldly belongings in whatever way they chose.
Marriage means that the government steps in, limiting or even prescribing various aspects of their relations with each other -- and still more their relationship with whatever children may result from their union.
In other words, marriage imposes legal restrictions, taking away rights that individuals might otherwise have.
Yet "gay marriage" advocates depict marriage as an expansion of rights to which they are entitled.They argue against a "ban on gay marriage" but marriage has for centuries meant a union of a man and a woman.
There is no gay marriage to ban.
[/B]
What you've posted is a homophobic spiel using semantics to rally support from bigots. It's logic is silly.
To put it into persepective, interracial marriage bans discriminated against an action, not people. Let's keep it illegal. dur
Yeah, do you see how dumb that sounds now? This is the parallel we were talking about. This isn't rocket science dude.
Originally posted by StyleTime
Also, I'd like to add a "lolThomas Sowell" to that.
These "LoL"s and "Dur" emoticons may be a convincing argument to you; I'd like to hear why you think they apply in this case.
Are you going to go with the traditional approach of taking perhaps 1 or 2 things Sowell's said or done in an unrelated field and try to say he's ridiculous concerning anything and everything he's done in his life? Sowell is actually known for solid historical research where economics is concerned. What specific statements of his here do you believe you can refute?
And "semantics" are hardly the laughing matter you're making them out to be. If they were, why would gays be concerned with having their relationships be termed "marriage" specifically, as opposed to "relationship" or "civil unions"? What difference does a word or two make, right?
Originally posted by Q99
It's as if they think the problem is words like 'intolerance' and 'bigotry', and not, y'know, the actual harm caused by intolerance and bigotry.
How dare marginalized groups ask to be treated as equals, amirite?
Originally posted by bluewaterrider
These "LoL"s and "Dur" emoticons may be a convincing argument to you; I'd like to hear why you think they apply in this case.Are you going to go with the traditional approach of taking perhaps 1 or 2 things Sowell's said or done in an unrelated field and try to say he's ridiculous concerning anything and everything he's done in his life? Sowell is actually known for solid historical research where economics is concerned. What specific statements of his here do you believe you can refute?
And "semantics" are hardly the laughing matter you're making them out to be. If they were, why would gays be concerned with having their relationships be termed "marriage" specifically, as opposed to "relationship" or "civil unions"? What difference does a word or two make, right?
No. I'm saying his views on LGBT rights are consistently hilarious. Seriously, the guy has actually used the age old "but then we have to let people marry their dogs!" defense. You admire his economic research. Cool. This isn't about economics though. The guy is pretty backwards when it comes to some things.
It isn't, at least not entirely, an issue of semantics. It's an issue of equality. "Relationships" and "civil unions" don't necessarily impart the same rights and protections, federal and state level, that a legally recognized marriage does. It's not surprising since segregation assumes that two or more groups are not equal, and must be separated. This is why the "equal" part of "seperate but equal" is rarely realized. In this country we often think of race based segregation, but this is another of the parallels I was talking about earlier.
I didn't start this thread to argue over who's more oppressed. I can't judge, being a member of the least oppressed group in the world - the White Anglo Saxon Christian Male, who's six foot & over, not obese and with a full head of hair( being Catholic, there was a time when I would have been oppressed in North America, but that's decades past.) Let's stay on topic; OSC and him putting his money where his anti-gay militancy is.
Re: Orson Scott Card - Scifi writer & Anti-Gay Militant
Originally posted by roughriderdidn't know until now he was such a militant about this issue ...
If you disprove of homosexuality and gay marriage ... you're entitled to your opinion. But being in favour of criminalizing such behavior?! Trying to keep old laws on the books for it??
What you're talking about is from an article more than 20 years old, according to your link:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In a 1990 article for Sunstone Magazine, Card wrote an essay in which he said:
"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."
While he did urge people to treat those who engage in homosexual acts with kindness, he wrote that the "goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There's no such thing as O. Scott Card being in favour of "criminalizing such behavior" back in 1990 when he wrote that, Rider -- it was already illegal.
Sodomy laws only got taken off the books in 2003 from the Lawrence Texas case, perhaps 10 years ago.
Card's article dates from more than 10 years before that.
Re: Re: Orson Scott Card - Scifi writer & Anti-Gay Militant
Originally posted by bluewaterrider
What you're talking about is from an article more than 20 years old, according to your link:----------------------------------------------------------------------
article for Sunstone Magazine, Card wrote an essay in which he said:
In a [b]1990"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."
While he did urge people to treat those who engage in homosexual acts with kindness, he wrote that the "goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly."
----------------------------------------------------------------------There's no such thing as O. Scott Card being in favour of "criminalizing such behavior" back in 1990 when he wrote that, Rider -- it was already illegal.
Sodomy laws only got taken off the books in 2003 from the Lawrence Texas case, perhaps 10 years ago.
Card's article dates from more than 10 years before that. [/B]
Has he changed his mind since then? - No. Has he publicity said he's for revolution if gay marriage is fully passed into law? - Yes.
Re: Re: Re: Orson Scott Card - Scifi writer & Anti-Gay Militant
Originally posted by roughrider
Has he changed his mind since then? - No. Has he publicity said he's for revolution if gay marriage is fully passed into law? - Yes.
Has he joined an organization that fights to prevent gay marriage from being legalized? Also yes.
I'd buy his stuff if it was any good. I read the original Ender's Game trilogy years ago and enjoyed it. But I've read a few of his other books over the years, including some later Ender stuff, but didn't really get into any of it. Haven't read anything of his for a while except maybe one of his comics.
Don't agree with his overtly militant views regarding gays. But anybody should be allowed to voice their approval or disapproval of gay marriage without fear of hate-filled reprisal. I don't get caught up in the whole 'marriage is a human right' misdirection. Marriage is a social convention that by necessity will always exclude some group or other, and I don't think the opinion of a gay outweighs the opinion of say a muslim, christian, or some other traditionalist in that area. I can accept that people have different views on what defines marriage as opposed to other unions. There is a lot of intolerance and bigotry on the extremes of both sides though.
Originally posted by basilisk
Don't agree with his overtly militant views regarding gays. But anybody should be allowed to voice their approval or disapproval of gay marriage without fear of hate-filled reprisal.
Mind, this isn't doing anything to hurt him- we're talking simply not supporting him.
I don't get caught up in the whole 'marriage is a human right' misdirection. Marriage is a social convention that by necessity will always exclude some group or other, and I don't think the opinion of a gay outweighs the opinion of say a muslim, christian, or some other traditionalist in that area. I can accept that people have different views on what defines marriage as opposed to other unions.
Legally in the US, marriage is a right, affirmed by the supreme court. Furthermore, plenty of Christian churches and even iirc some Muslim ones have said they're willing to perform gay marriages, so it's actually discrimination against some religions. Why would we grant some Christian groups priority over others in deciding who they can marry?
There is a lot of intolerance and bigotry on the extremes of both sides though.
In a completely disproportionate way where one side tries to trample on the others rights and the other mostly tries to be treated equal, sure ^^