That's especially true for figures on "the fluff right" like Jeff Goldstein and Dan Collins of the Protein Wisdom blog. Their main idea is to appear as cool, hip, and fashionable as they can while pursuing a conservative political agenda of continuing the war in Iraq, campaigning against affirmative action, and opposing gay marriage. Consequently, Goldstein and Collins (who is the better blogger these days) use a lot of literary and pop culture references while avoiding much mention of George Bush, Dick Cheney, or right-wing politicians. They also disavow any association with the homophobia of the religious right and Ted Nugent, the race-baiting of people like Lee Atwater, and standard misogynistic Hillary-hatred.
But it doesn't work.
Conservatives have justified their rear-guard actions against contemporary civil rights activists and feminists by claiming that Martin Luther King and "classical feminists" were closer to conservative positions today. I've recently shown that such a claim doesn't stand up in relation to King. I'm sure the same is true of 19th century feminists as well.
However, there are no "original" or "classical" gay rights activists who conservatives can plausibly claim as their own.
As a result, Goldstein is forced to embrace "tradition" as his key argument in opposing the recognition of the right to same-sex marriage. Needless to say, Goldstein arranges a number of cutesy but specious fluff ideas around his advocacy of tradition. For example, he claims that:
Still, even if marriage is seen as a fundamental right, there is nothing prohibiting homosexuals from marrying. They just can’t “marry” someone of the same sex, because that arrangement does not fit within the traditional and culturally-defined idea of “marriage.”
Obviously, this is meant to be funny and hip. Even on a surface level, however, it is easy to see that this is a gesture of smirking hostility to gay people who want to marry people of their own sex because they have the sense of love and commitment toward one another. That ideal of mutual commitment gradually succeeded the intergenerational transfer of family property as the main motivation for marriage in the West between the 17th and 20th centuries. Goldstein is cynically telling gay people that they can marry any person of the opposite sex whether they love or have a commitment to them or not. It's just that Goldstein does not want gay people to be able to marry the people they love.
Goldstein makes a more general statement about tradition in relation to gay marriage as well.
Instead, the argument is that the kind of arrangement the same sex couple is engaging in is different from marriage as it is traditionally defined, and so it makes sense to call this new arrangement something other than marriage. It is, of course, easy (and correct, I should add) to note that once we allow same-sex unions to be called marriage, we will have effectively changed the definition of marriage, making same-sex couplings “marriage” by dint of broadening the definition to accommodate the new arrangement . . . when dealing with a tradition as sacrosanct to many as the marriage bond, the government and the judiciary should tread lightly.
But Goldstein's efforts to articulate a "really, cool guy" opposition to gay marriage founders on the nature of "tradition" in relation to gay people. Gay people have been "traditionally" excluded from marriage because homosexuality was "traditionally" viewed as damned by God, unnatural, perverse, morally sick, and abominable. Excluding gay people from marriage was an integral part of the whole "traditional" package of prosecuting and punishing people (including executions) for gay sex, hounding any kind of regular meeting places for gays bars, firing anybody from employment who was revealed to be gay, and stigmatizing gay people in families, schools, workplaces, the military, and other institutions.
In other words, the traditional exclusion of gays from marriage was tightly bound with the intense homophobic bigotry of Western and other civilizations. By resting his case for continuing to ban gay marriage on the "sacrosantness" of tradition, Goldstein is arguing in effect that the homophobia of the past and present should continue to exclude gay people from the highest conventional expressions of their love and treat them as second class citizens. Goldstein is also valuing the homophobic bigots of the present over gay people seeking to express their love and live as normal people with jobs, marriages, the choice of having kids or not, and overly short vacations. Whether Goldstein is himself an active homophobe or just a fellow-traveler of the religious right whose too much of a snob to admit it is immaterial.
In fact, he's pursuing a politics of homophobia.
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On the surface,it seems like gays and lesbians can do all the things that straight people can do, society is saying "You are ok just as you are, just don't try to get married or anything!"
It's like when whites stole rock and roll from blacks in the 50's and the kids were all dancing to Little Richard. We love your music, but please don't use that drinking fountain.
What I find espcially egregious is that this religion is used to justify this discrimination. Opposition to same-sex marriage should not be labelled religious. It is a matter of public policy and civil rights.
Propoents of legislation or even a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage always claim that recognizing such unions would harm the United States. What they cannot do is give a logical sane reason why same-sex marriage is bad for the country.
Most of the reasons proposed against same-sex marriage are in fact arguments against homosexuality in general, which is a useless argument to be had in the first place (as if one chooses between homo or heterosexuality based on logic).
For instance,The claim that there is a "gay agenda" calling for “special rights”. What is "special" about gays and lesbians being granted the same rights heterosexual couples already enjoy? Recognizing same-sex marriage is a clear case of all citizens being treated equally.
One argument that the religious right utilizes is the idea that that same-sex marriage is an attack on family values, but this is incorrect. It is an attempt by a group of American citizens to be legally recognized as having families in the first place.
Our founding fathers said we have the right of persuing happiness.
Also, let's not forget that by neocons win elections by opposing same-sex unions.
At one time it was considered perverted and unnatural for black and white people to want to marry each other. Despite protests from the prejudiced, the Supreme Court defended the rights of the people. Now who would say that a black and a white should not be allowed to marry? It would be considered the height of bad taste and racial prejudice. It is no different with gay marriage.
I've recently shown that such a claim doesn't stand up in relation to King.
No, you didn't. You picked one brief work of King's and interpreted it to fit your position. Thin on proof at best. I would hope that you expect deeper, more documented argumentation from your students, but I suppose as long as the message is "correct" they shouldn't need to back it up.
I don't remember anyone going back into King's writing to develop a counter-argument. Goldstein certainly didn't do that. That's why I was able to declare victory in Round 1. But, it's obvious that Goldstein doesn't have much ability to break down arguments anyway.
Had you developed an argument in the first place, others may have needed to counter it. It's the development that is key. That's the stage of arguementation that you often skip over and, conveniently, leaves others with little actual argument to counter. When you begin, develop and end with biased, baseless, bigoted, hateful, incorrect, stereotypical assertions there's little more to do than point out you're clearly off your rocker.
You PW guys don't understand that you can't pursue the politics of bigotry without being tainted.
What I did in my 3-part series on race was take apart Goldstein's rhetoric of color-blindness.
If memory serves me correctly, I made three basic arguments:
1. that issues like affirmative action needed to be analyzed in relation to the history of racial oppression;
2. that the rhetoric of color-blindness was used to justify contemporary forms of racial oppression like racial profiling;
3. that the rhetoric of color-blindness was a "primary" form of racism because it posed "color-blind" right-wingers as morally superior to the vast majority of black people (who are highly conscious of race).
Right-wingers like to quote King, but King condemned "moderates" who disparaged black activism as worse than the crude bigots. That's because moderate acquiescence gave a respectability to segregation that it otherwise wouldn't have had. He would have condemned the William Bennett, Goldstein and the other purveyors of "color-blind" conservatism in the same way. The significance of color-blindness is that it provides a seemingly attractive new package for the age-old politics of white racism in the United States.
that issues like affirmative action needed to be analyzed in relation to the history of racial oppression
Like many issues, the history surrounding them is important to understand. But continuing a policy based on nothing other than historical reasoning looks an awful lot like sticking to a tradition since it was right at one time, regardless of the current effects. Now, I know I've read some comments on that somewhere....
Policies need to be able to stand on their own with or without historical context.
The rest of your crap was you asserting it's so.... I assert you're wrong. Must be true.
Does this mean that you support gay marriage?
"But continuing a policy based on nothing other than historical reasoning looks an awful lot like sticking to a tradition since it was right at one time"
Not that banning gay from marriage was ever right, but you seem to be ready to move away from homophobic traditions on marriage issues.
I don't think that arguments should be based on historical perspectives, which is separate from endorsing gay marriage.
1. that issues like affirmative action needed to be analyzed in relation to the history of racial oppression;
So you should support affirmative action for sake of tradition.
When exactly will you be done beating this dead horse call "gay marriage"?
The thing would be deader than the dead horse your side agreed to a nationwide referendum...I'd vote and be willing to abide by the majority...would you?
Ahhhhh...that is the difference between your side and mine. You would beat me to death to get your way whether it was fair, just and good.
I don't view affirmative action as a "tradition." Instead, affirmative action is a modest and reasonable mechanism for addressing the inequities caused by the history of segregation and continuing racial oppression in American society.
The exclusion of gay people from marriage is a serious matter of human rights. Given the way that human rights are embodied in the U. S. and various state constitutions, the courts are an appropriate vehicle for addressing these issues as a matter of constitutional law. Elections are also appropriate, but there is no reason that any group should have to wait for the outcome of elections to be allowed the basic rights and privileges of being Americans. That goes for gays as much as it goes for blacks, women, and disabled people.
I don't view affirmative action as a "tradition." Instead, affirmative action is a modest and reasonable mechanism for addressing the inequities caused by the history of segregation and continuing racial oppression in American society.
Sentence one: "I don't view affirmative action as a tradition."
Compare with: "issues like affirmative action needed to be analyzed in relation to the history of racial oppression."
Caric repeats this over and over, each time forgetting to mention that my response is that any "history of racial oppression" must necessarily include those fixes undtertaken by government to correct them. That studies (see, eg., Sander) show that affirmative action based on race may actually be hurting those it ostensibly claims to champion is somehow never allowed into these "historical analyses."
Sentence two: "Instead, affirmative action is a modest and reasonable mechanism for addressing the inequities caused by the history of segregation and continuing racial oppression in American society."
A. assertion: affirmative action is modest and reasonable. By what metric? Who decides on its modesty? It's reasonableness?
Can something that we continue to defend -- though studies show it has the opposite effect of its intent -- be considered "reasonable"? And if so, why? If the continuation of the program creates or inflames racial animus, or promotes racial divisiveness, how is it reasonable -- particularly in light of its real world failures? How is it "modest"?
You seem to arrive at these conclusions the same way you arrive at your self-proclaimed victories in arguments: simply by saying it is so.
B. red herring / assertion: affirmative action is indeed a "mechanism for addressing the inequities caused by the history of segregation". But so what? That is not in dispute. Instead, the question is, is it an effective program? Do its net social positives outweigh its net social negatives? If so, prove it. Make an argument, rather than tossing off assertions as if they were arguments. If not -- if, for instance, the studies turning up on "diversity" and affirmative action (by liberal scholars, no less) show that this "modest" and "reasonable" program is both immodest (it demands continuation despite its failures) and unreasonable (why continue it if it isn't accomplishing what it set out to accomplish, and in the process, causing fostering racial divisiveness?) -- how can you justify your support for such programs, or justify demonizing as "racists" those who support a new approach that THEY feel will bring about the very kind of equality YOU promised when you gave us race based affirmative action as an orthodoxy?
C. Assertion: continuing racial oppression in American society.
Again, you act as though I never addressed this. Prove that there is continuing racial oppression of the kind that is institutional and based exclusively on racial animus. Otherwise, you're going to have to accept that there can be multiple causes for continued disparity of outcomes, many of which have been detailed by reputable scholars like the Thernstroms.
As ef upthread noted, you don't argue. You assert, demonize, and then rely on shame mechanisms that appeal to progressive orthodoxies as if they were immutable truths.
Funny you would go on about religious fervor when it is use whose entire worldview is based on leaps of faith.
In other words, the traditional exclusion of gays from marriage was tightly bound with the intense homophobic bigotry of Western and other civilizations.
Prof Cancer, that is just plain silly (an such a 'modern lens' from which to view the subject).
Take ancient Rome, for one example, that gave all license for men to pursue their sexual appetites (while concurrently restricting women). No "homophobic bigotry" there, yet there were no legal same-sex marriages.
The public institution of marriage serves a legitimate public welfare interest. Like most non-leftists I have no problem with civil unions and eventually including SS couples into marriage statutes when it is accepted by the majority of this culture.
But by emotional whim masquarading as judicial reason?
No.
The exclusion of gay people from marriage is a serious matter of human rights.
What about the exclusion of bisexuals who want to marry both a man and woman at the same time? Or consenting adults who happen to be brother and sister?
Are their "human rights" to participate in a public institution being abridged?
If the continuation of the program creates or inflames racial animus, or promotes racial divisiveness
But, Jeff, if everyone was blissfully ignorant of the shortcomings of AA, then we wouldn't have to worry about disharmony. The ship may be sinking but let the musicians play on lest we alarm the guests.
He would have condemned the William Bennett, Goldstein and the other purveyors of "color-blind" conservatism in the same way.
Perhaps not speaking on behalf of King would be a good policy. I know, you are certain that you're intellectual bosom buddies, but you don't know what he would have said, and he's not around to say it himself. Instead of invoking his name you could actually provide an argument for what you assert.
The significance of color-blindness is that it provides a seemingly attractive new package for the age-old politics of white racism in the United States.
Whereas the author who promoted judging someone by the content of their character, who fought & died for equality of all races, would prefer his fellow blacks, his children no less, to be allowed into college or given a job based solely on their race.
Makes about as much sense as “prescribing” that a black, Southern born, registered Republican, Southern Baptist Minister w/ a BD & PhD in theology... whose very daughter has said he wouldn't favor it, would be in favor of gay marriage.
Let me guess, MLK's a homophobe now too? By your arguments or opinions expressed so far, surely he must have been. Care to produce any other Southern, black, Baptist Ministers who publicly are in favor of gay marriage, not rights or against discrimination of homosexuals, but in favor of marriage itself instead of against it, or are they all homophobes or racists too?
Convincing argument Professor, if one actually hasn’t read or studied MLK’s beliefs regarding race in America or attended any Baptist revivals. My guess, from your arguments, is that you have not.
Care to produce any other Southern, black, Baptist Ministers who publicly are in favor of gay marriage, not rights or against discrimination of homosexuals, but in favor of marriage itself instead of against it, or are they all homophobes or racists too
When victim groups collide... I saw an interesting article a while back, maybe linked at hotair or PW, about the problems gays encounter at predominantly black universities. Being victims of discrimination in the past does not, apparently, make them as welcoming of other "victim" groups as one might imagine.
if one actually hasn’t read or studied MLK’s beliefs regarding race in America
Well, if you're careful about what you read, and have the proper guidance of a narrative trained university professor, you can study his writings without "misunderstanding" the parts that some others might see as reason to question the "correct" legacy. It's when you go off thinking without proper supervision that society ends up with tension.
I would be interested to hear how Professor Caric defines homophobia.
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