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Post by Maggie on Nov 22, 2013 14:19:17 GMT -6
I suppose we are all familiar with the arguments for gay "marriage". Lemme see. 1) The government has no business telling people who they can and cannot love; 2) Marriage is not about children any more and 2 men or 2 women can parent just as well as a man and a woman; 3) It doesn't harm anyone and certainly won't hurt marriage; 4) Only religious people are against gay "marriage" and we have separation of church and state ... I am sure there are more that I am just not thinking about at the moment.
These have always seemed preposterous to me and I have argued at great length against them elsewhere. But atheists and their enablers have always moved the goalposts and defined the arguments of the upholders of the traditional understanding of marriage as bigotry, usually grounded in religion.
So you can imagine my surprise and my pleasure when I ran across an essay by Jane Galt (Megan McArdle) on the notion of gay marriage from a libertarian perspective, although I am more inclined to call it a common sense perspective. It was originally written in 2005 but I can't say that her argument has lost anything by being older. She starts out by saying something that I do not think can be said often enough:
... I am bothered by this specific argument, which I have heard over and over from the people I know who favor gay marriage laws. I mean, literally over and over; when they get into arguments, they just repeat it, again and again. “I will get married even if marriage is expanded to include gay people; I cannot imagine anyone up and deciding not to get married because gay people are getting married; therefore, the whole idea is ridiculous and bigoted.”
They may well be right. Nonetheless, libertarians should know better. The limits of your imagination are not the limits of reality. Every government programme that libertarians have argued against has been defended at its inception with exactly this argument. (Emphasis added)
She goes on to show how badly this argument has fared when measured against reality. For instance, when the income tax was first proposed, some congressmen wanted to cap at at a certain percentage (Galt says she thinks it was 10%) Others mocked the need for a cap because, they insisted, no American would accept any rate over a couple of percentage points. A cap would encourage taxes to grow as large as the cap permitted. Well, we know where income tax rates are now. It is hard to argue with her conclusion:
... the existence of the income tax allowed for a slow creep that eroded the American resistance to income taxation. External changes–from the Great Depression, to the technical ability to manage withholding rather than lump payments, also facilitated the rise, but they could not have without a cultural sea change in feelings about taxation. That “ridiculous” cap would have done a much, much better job holding down tax rates than the culture these Senators erroneously relied upon. Changing the law can, and does, change the culture of the thing regulated.
The law, as St. Paul observed, is a tutor. It is as true today as it was 2000 years ago.
She looks at welfare and divorce as two other fairly obvious examples of undesirable social change being brought about by radically manipulating the laws that had traditionally held them in check. I will return to that next time.
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Post by Maggie on Nov 22, 2013 18:50:48 GMT -6
Laws do codify what society deems moral or, if one prefers, what society deems acceptable. A law that permits, say, the selling and possession of marijuana teaches something very different than a law that sends you to jail for dealing drugs--even small amounts of pot. Galt points to welfare as her 2nd example of how laws can protect or corrupt society. This example alone could better be described in multi-volume books than in an essay! But I will let her speak for herself:
To sketch a brief history of welfare, it emerged in the nineteenth century as “Widows and orphans pensions”, which were paid by the state to destitute families whose breadwinner had passed away. They were often not available to blacks; they were never available to unwed mothers. Though public services expanded in the first half of the twentieth century, that mentality was very much the same: public services were about supporting unfortunate families, not unwed mothers. Unwed mothers could not, in most cases, obtain welfare; they were not allowed in public housing (which was supposed to be–and was–a way station for young, struggling families on the way to home ownership, not a permanent abode); they were otherwise discriminated against by social services. The help you could expect from society was a home for wayward girls, in which you would give birth and then put the baby up for adoption.
Actually, I remember this pretty well. When I was a young teenager, every town had a Florence Crittendon home for unwed mothers. And it was brutal in real ways. A girl who was sent to one would not be permitted to see her baby or be told even, whether it was a boy or a girl. These homes were likely a last resort because more typical, in my experience, was being sent to live with a relative out of town. If you were lucky enough to have waited until senior year to get pregnant, your "friends" would be told that you were establishing state residency in order to qualify for in-state tuition at the local university. Are any of you old enough to remember Loretta Young? She was a popular actress who also had a successful tv show in later years. In any case, she had an affair with Clark Gable (of Gone With the Wind/ Rhett Butler fame) that produced a daughter. Young went through machinations worthy of a dramatic film to have the child placed in an orphanage from which she later adopted her. She took that secret to the grave with her. The story, as I recall, did not come out until years later.
So what changed? Why did unwed motherhood become acceptable and, then, accepted? Well, economists tell us that if you tax something heavily, you get less of it. If you tax something lightly or not at all, you get more of it. Galt says:
Public housing was, in short, a place full of functioning families.
Now, in the late fifties, a debate began over whether to extend benefits to the unmarried. It was unfair to stigmatize unwed mothers. Why shouldn’t they be able to avail themselves of the benefits available to other citizens? The brutal societal prejudice against illegitimacy was old fashioned, bigoted, irrational.
But if you give unmarried mothers money, said the critics, you will get more unmarried mothers.
Ridiculous, said the proponents of the change. Being an unmarried mother is a brutal, thankless task. What kind of idiot would have a baby out of wedlock just because the state was willing to give her paltry welfare benefits?
People do all sorts of idiotic things, said the critics. If you pay for something, you usually get more of it.
C’mon said the activists. That’s just silly. I just can’t imagine anyone deciding to get pregnant out of wedlock simply because there are welfare benefits available.
Oooops.
Galt goes on to mention a less obvious outcome. Once substantial numbers of women were willing to have sex and bear children with no commitment from the men involved, the pressure was on for other women to do likewise. The pill made it possible to avoid the children (for the most part) but the social damage was still considerable.
By 1990, that (illegitimacy) rate was over 70 percent. This, despite the fact that the inner city, where the illegitimacy problem was biggest, only accounts for a fraction of the black population.
But in that inner city, marriage had been destroyed. It had literally ceased to exist in any meaningful way. Possibly one of the most moving moments in Jason de Parle’s absolutely wonderful book, American Dream, which follows three welfare mothers through welfare reform, is when he reveals that none of these three women, all in their late thirties, had ever been to a wedding.
Her third example of a well-meant but disastrous social experiment was destigimatizing divorce. I will talk about that next!
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Post by Maggie on Nov 23, 2013 15:23:55 GMT -6
Something new was in the air when I returned from 3 semesters of study in what was then West Germany. MS magazine had just started publication and I recall in one of its earliest issues the call for "no fault divorce" as a means of forcing women into the work place. Just as the 2nd generation feminist, Betty Friedan, had discovered when writing the Bible of the feminist movement, The Feminine Mystique, women still tended to choose staying home to raise their children, even though all professions were finally open to them. The 3rd gen, represented by such as Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer and Simone de Beauvoir could not allow this to continue. All of a sudden, seemingly, divorce was starting to dominate the public discourse. There were those who were truly appalled by the pain of people who could not end their marriages. As with those who wanted to ease the lot of unwed women, the divorce reformers saw people trapped in loveless marriages and wanted to ease their lot.
... Why not make divorce easier to get? Rather than requiring people to show that there was an unforgivable, physically visible, cause that the marriage should be dissolved, why not let people who wanted to get divorced agree to do so?
Because if you make divorce easier, said the critics, you will get much more of it, and divorce is bad for society.
That’s ridiculous! said the reformers. (Can we sing it all together now?) People stay married because marriage is a bedrock institution of our society, not because of some law! The only people who get divorced will be people who have terrible problems! A few percentage points at most!
Oops. When the law changed, the institution changed. The marginal divorce made the next one easier. Again, the magnitude of the change swamped the dire predictions of the anti-reformist wing; no one could have imagined, in their wildest dreams, a day when half of all marriages ended in divorce. While some reformers may have been clueless, the chattering elites who published MS and the like were not. They knew perfectly well that no-fault divorce meant men could walk away from their families at virtually no cost. Thus women would be forced into the workplace. The next decade was taken up with the hand wringing of the public pundits over the virtual instantaneous impoverishing of a generation of women whose settlements were paltry. I know this painfully well, too, because my mother was in the first wave of women dumped by a husband who walked away with the money she had brought to the marriage leaving her with nothing. A judge found equitable a small lump sum payment and $350 a month rehabilitation alimony for 18 months. The rehabilitation was to find a job. Well, with an associates degree and no work history (except for the 2 years when she worked 60 hour weeks in my father's business) she was lucky to find a minimum wage job. She was one of thousands of women for whom the world changed overnight.
The point, of course, is this. No one expected thousands of women to be impoverished by divorce. But they were. No one expected divorce, as Galt points out, to become normal and unremarkable. No one expected people to start delaying or avoiding marriage. But they did and do. That is the rational response to destabilizing it. Who but an idiot ignores reality?
The ills Galt examines, unwed mothers/welfare and easy divorce are prime instances of how we cannot be so bloody sure that we can mess with institutions that have been in place for centuries without doing serious harm. There really is such a thing as unforeseen consequences. She cites a wonderful quote from GK Chesterton on the subject:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. Is there any society in which marriage has not been between a man and woman? If not, why not? What does it mean that no one has ever thought that a good idea before now? Can we answer that question before deciding to destroy marriage as humanity has known it?
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Post by Maggie on Feb 23, 2014 9:13:17 GMT -6
India has re-criminalized homosexuality. The Independent (UK) reports: Five years on the euphoria has gone. In December, the country’s highest court overturned the lower court’s ruling, once again making gay sex a crime punishable by up to ten years in jail and putting tens of millions of Indians at risk of prosecution or harassment. Last month, that court – which had said gay people in India were just a “minuscule minority” – upheld its decision against an appeal and said it was up to the government to change the law. This is a lesson leftists and all the usual enemies of messy democratic rule fail to learn. You can't impose serious social and political changes on an unwilling population. That is what we do quite regularly in this country and how has that worked out? Our calm acceptance of infanticide in the form of abortion testifies ... WAIT! 50 years later that court imposed right still brings out thousands of protesters and has bitterly divided families and communities. Yes, that worked well. Let's see. The courts have also imposed gay marriage on 9 of the 17 states where gay marriage is legal. One or two state legislatures did the same-- imposed it over the vehement protests of their fellow citizens. How they dared, I do not know. The question will likely be settled in the Supreme Court. While I do not expect it to be an honest broker, surely Roe v Wade and its aftermath should give them pause. Lefties have got to learn to control their totalitarian impulses. Those impulses do no good and often backfire making things worse. Does anyone want to argue that 50 years of abortion protests, violence, and, even, murder have been beneficial to the US? |
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Post by Maggie on Feb 25, 2014 21:25:09 GMT -6
The news from abroad grows more alarming as more African nations institute laws against homosexuality while in this country a coalition of Black pastors is trying to get enough signatures to get Eric Holder impeached because of his stance on gay marriage. Frankly, this is long overdue. He is the most corrupt, racist attorney general in US history and should have been gotten rid of a long time ago. But we do not have an honest, competent government. In any case, CNSnews is reporting: A coalition of black pastors announced on Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that they are launching a campaign to gather one million signatures on a petition calling for the impeachment of Attorney General Eric Holder for violating his oath of office by trying "to coerce states to fall in line with the same-sex 'marriage' agenda."
"President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have turned their backs on the values the American people hold dear, values particularly cherished in the black community: values like marriage, which should be strengthened and promoted, rather than weakened and undermined," says a statement by the Coalition of African American Pastors that has been posted online with their impeachment petition. The group is particularly incensed by Holder's brazen defiance of the law, on display once more last Tuesday, when he urged a group of states Attorney Generals not to uphold the laws against gay marriage that their states had passed. No one can say that Holder is not a true son of Obama. Obama ignores or changes laws he doesn't like too. We have became a 3rd rate banana republic with very little protest. I hope we all want to learn Chinese. We are ripe for the pickin'. |
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Post by nabilbb on Mar 3, 2014 14:41:20 GMT -6
This topic really confuses me, What do you people think Homosexuality is:
1. Illness
2. Prohibited desire
3. others (What?)
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Post by Maggie on Mar 3, 2014 17:24:29 GMT -6
Homosexuality is a sexual attraction to someone of the same sex. It is probably not all one thing. There may be genetic components, there may be psychological components and there may be environmental components. I am not sure that there is any agreement on any of that. Whatever the case may be, it appears to be deep-seated and not something that can be easily changed, if it can be changed at all.
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Post by nabilbb on Mar 3, 2014 17:35:33 GMT -6
In Islam, it is one of the biggest sins, I don't think it is genetic, because if so, that means God created them that way, and He will be punishing them for being that way with no fault of them
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Post by Maggie on Mar 3, 2014 19:40:18 GMT -6
Are you sure? In Christianity it is not a sin to be a homosexual any more than it is a sin to be a blonde or to have blue eyes. But it is a sin to act on homosexual desires. It is equally sinful to act on heterosexual desires outside of heterosexual marriage. Adultery, homosexuality, heterosexual promiscuity, are all equally wrong since they violate the meaning and purpose of our sexual natures.
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Post by nabilbb on Mar 4, 2014 10:43:25 GMT -6
Yes, I am sure about the Islamic stand on that
Do you have the story of the Prophet Lut in the Bible? what do you say about that?
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Post by Maggie on Mar 4, 2014 10:44:47 GMT -6
No, sorry. I can try to find it online, if you want to talk about it. Wait! I just looked it up. You mean Lot, I think? If so, what story do you have in mind?
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Post by nabilbb on Mar 4, 2014 12:55:29 GMT -6
in the Quran, We have the story of Sadum (maybe not the correct spelling) the people in that city were homosexuals, and God punished them by killing them all with severe punishment
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Post by Maggie on Mar 4, 2014 14:14:09 GMT -6
Yes, the story of Sodom (as we spell it) can be found in the Old Testament. It is an ugly story and one that gets repeated more than once (with other people) in the Old Testament. We are not told explicitly that the towns men who attack Lot and his guests are homosexuals. Their conduct is very aggressive but doesn't clearly appear to be sexually motivated. It *could* be but it isn't obvious.
Some Jewish commentators see the story as the story of Lot's moral failure. Lot boasts of being a righteous man but why would a righteous man settle in Sodom in the first place? Lot was instructed to flee to the mountains to escape the wrath of the destruction of Sodom. The angels agree to allow him to settle in Zoar instead of fleeing to the mountains, but he decides he is still afraid and goes off to hide in a cave rather than trust God to protect him. His daughters, not realizing that they are not the only people left make plans to perpetuate the species. Thus drunk or not, Lot bears the burden of the blame for their conduct too.
In any case, I don't see how the story would justify a blanket condemnation of homosexuals. Just like heterosexuals, they can only be held accountable for their own sins. Not their orientation. I mean by that that a chaste homosexual stands on the same exact moral plane as a chaste heterosexual. God does not discriminate and, we believe, loves our homosexual brethren just as he loves us. He just doesn't love our sins.
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Post by nabilbb on Mar 4, 2014 15:06:21 GMT -6
Is this the opinion of All Christian sects? I am guessing no!!
HERE is the story of Prophet Lot in Islam |
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Post by Maggie on Mar 4, 2014 17:04:22 GMT -6
Is this the opinion of All Christian sects? I am guessing no!!
Do you mean interpreting the story as Lot's moral failure is not accepted by all Christians? or Do you mean that not all Christian sects would agree that the men are anything but homosexuals? I certainly think it is true that most Christians are convinced that the men are homosexuals. I think that is a stretch given how little we are told. I will take a look at your movie tonight. |
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Post by jstwebbrowsing on Mar 30, 2014 15:08:05 GMT -6
I am afraid to post my opinion. If too many people were to read it I might get hate mail or something.
For one there is more to it than choice because I could not choose to become homosexual. To me it is one of the most disgusting things I can think of. There is NO way I could just happily choose to do it. Therefore I must be different than those that do because they can happily choose to do it. So the fact is they are different through no choice of their own.
However, I don't think God created them that way. I don't think God created them at all. I think God created Adam and Eve and that's it. God did not create Cain and Abel. They were born. Christians believe Adam and Eve lost human perfection through disobediance. They believe this imperfection was passed on to all of their offspring. It is this imperfection that causes things like disease, mental illness, murderous tendancies, homosexuality, and a host of other things that lead us down destructive paths along with a tendancy to sin. If I understand what Woodrow has told me about jihad this is where our inner jihad comes from, the conflict of the desire to do good and the desire to do bad.
So homosexuality is no more of a choice than mental illness. Well let me change that. The homosexual desire is no more of a choice than mental illness, and in my personal opinion it is a form of mental illness. However there is the choice to act on it or not. Will they give in to sinful desires or will they obey God? For me, this is the pivotal point.
As a man I have had sinful sexual desires and most likely you have too. If you have, then according to Christianity that makes you as wicked as the homosexual. But we believe God will forgive us for these sinful desires if we repent and do not practice them. This means we must not act on them. And Jesus taught that we should not even allow ourselves to mentally dwell on sinful things because that is where sin is hatched.
And in the story of Sodom, God did not destoy the homosexuals until after they acted out their sinful desires, not only that but in a violent way. But if God destroyed everyone for sinful desires then we would all be dead. Homosexual desire is no worse than any sinful desire because they all lead to the same destruction.
Christians believe the whole world deserves destruction if our survival is dependant on a merit system of being without sin. Christians believe anything other than abosulute perfection and obediance is grounds for destruction by God, even one sin. It's a Christian's belief that were it not for the grace (undeserved kindness) of God that none of us would even be here. Therefore noone is any better off than the next. Our only hope is through repentence and forgiveness.
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