I wonder if a useful analogy to those of us who, as Christians, are bound to love the marginalized that cultural liberalism seeks to help, but cannot get on board with cultural program of left liberalism would be the situation of those who sympathized with the plight of the poor in the late nineteenth century but refused to become socials or communists (esp. the Church). I suspect they were similarly denounced as heartless (and, in fact, in some places, it's still the case that anyone who doesn't get on board with radicalism is denounced as being anti-poor.)
The analogy may fail (in the case of the Church, at least) because the nineteenth century poor were seen as victims of capitalism, and the Church vigorously denounced the capitalism behind that development as much, if not more, than socialism.
But maybe the analogy does work--or it would if we could more clearly frame the isolation of the marginalized as a symptom of the broader breakdown of society--families (nuclear and extended), communities, etc.--and, within the Church, the celibate vocation. In other words, gay marriage is a radical solution like socialism that we must reject, but it arises because our society is atomized and has subverted the meaning of family and sexuality. The solution isn't more individualism and false liberation, but a return to a thicker, religious, society that doesn't make sexual fulfillment the highest good and companionate marriage the only permanent relationship.
Of course, it was easier to triangulate against capitalism and socialism because the Church was seen more a regressive obstacle--the opiate of the masses--rather than the source of oppression itself. In the case of gays at least, the Church is seen as the prime oppressor, and the left doesn't really identify social atomization as the enemy. (Or it equates society with the state, so when it opposes individualism, what it advocates is a larger, more invasive state rather than a thick society where people are directly responsible for their neighbors.)
So, not a perfect analogy. In the end, the Church's rejection of radicalism was vindicated when communism invariably led to oppression, starvation and mass murder. Communism openly advocated violent revolution from the beginning, so it's an exaggeration to compare the cultural left to it in that regard--whatever totalitarian tendencies it may have, it's not advocating violence. (Of course, being in control of the state, which has further consolidated its monopoly on violence in the last century, they don't really have to.)
Friday, July 31, 2015
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
The totalitarian logic of liberalism
Step One: Identify a shared common-sense understanding that guides social relations (E.g., "Human beings are born male or female as determined by their genetics and anatomy.")
Step Two: Identify a minority group that falls outside that understanding. (E.g., "There's a handful of people that don’t identify as the same sex as their anatomy would indicate.")
Step Three: Destroy the shared common understand by characterizing it as mere bigotry--causing grievous harm to the affected minority and having no positive social value in itself. (E.g., "Assuming that everyone belongs to one sex or another as determined by their genetics and anatomy is just cis-normativity. It hurts the transgendered and distorts social reality.")
Step Four: Propose an expansion of managerial liberalism as the only way of keeping social peace in the absence of the shared common-sense understanding. (E.g., "Sexual identification is now determined by each individual for him or herself--children included. Programs, policies and protections must be put in place in all institutions and inculcated into everyone to ensure that self-identification is always respected. No one who accepts the common-sense understanding as meaningful can be entrusted with any kind of authority.")
Repeat.
Step Two: Identify a minority group that falls outside that understanding. (E.g., "There's a handful of people that don’t identify as the same sex as their anatomy would indicate.")
Step Three: Destroy the shared common understand by characterizing it as mere bigotry--causing grievous harm to the affected minority and having no positive social value in itself. (E.g., "Assuming that everyone belongs to one sex or another as determined by their genetics and anatomy is just cis-normativity. It hurts the transgendered and distorts social reality.")
Step Four: Propose an expansion of managerial liberalism as the only way of keeping social peace in the absence of the shared common-sense understanding. (E.g., "Sexual identification is now determined by each individual for him or herself--children included. Programs, policies and protections must be put in place in all institutions and inculcated into everyone to ensure that self-identification is always respected. No one who accepts the common-sense understanding as meaningful can be entrusted with any kind of authority.")
Repeat.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Must we harden our hearts?
I am not sure if my cynicism is more a cause of my conservatism or a defense mechanism I've developed to withstand the sentimentalism employed by liberalism to shame its opponents, but it runs deep.
As a Christian, I think this is a spiritual problem. The universalism and concern for the poor and marginalized that characterize left liberalism are features it inherited from Christianity. The conservative Christian would say that liberalism exaggerates and distorts these features, having taken them out of context, but he cannot deny they are a part of his religion, too. Thus, he must both maintain enough objectivity to critique liberalism's claim to be the only morally upright response to the poor and marginalized, yet not actually let his heart be hardened against them.
It is not easy to do--particularly when you generally agree with liberals that the thing they're campaigning against is bad, and you don't have your own easy alternative solutions on hand. So, for instance, I agree that the modern market is creating great disparities in wealth and power and that this a problem for society. I largely agree that racial and sexual minorities often have it rough (though I don't entirely agree with them about the causes of this). And I don't really buy the official conservative rationalizations or solutions for these problems. Getting the government out of the way so that personal liberty and market economics can work their magic won't solve much of anything. The result is that my politics are largely negative--engaged in bursting the moral pretensions of the left, but without offering much of substance to replace it.
I would like to think that, fundamentally, this view of the world is not so much cynical as it is tragic. There are certain evils that cannot be eradicated from the human heart or human society because what is good and what is wicked in man are so tightly involved in each other that we cannot stamp out what is wicked without also crushing what is best in man. The wheat and the tares cannot be sorted out until the end.
So, I view the lot of the poor and the marginalized as, in some ways, built into the structure of reality, and I oppose efforts to alleviate their suffering that deny reality because these can only end by constructing an order that is fundamentally inhuman and insane. This means, sometimes, we have to say, "no". We do have duties to the poor and marginalized. Our hearts should be open to them, but their claims (or the claims of those who advocate on their behalf) cannot be unlimited. They have to evaluated critically and weighed against the claims of other goods.
In theory, that is not the same as indifference. In practice, it is hard to keep it distinct. This is particularly so in the face of the unending onslaught of guilt trips emanating from the moralistic zealots who speak on their behalf. Saying "no" in the face of a guilt trip takes some spine and maybe even a certain kind of callousness--or whatever it is that parents develop to avoid being manipulated by their children.
In parents, this callousness is (usually) countered and kept in check by a deeper natural sympathy--in fact, the callousness is usually in service to the deeper love. Most of us don't have that kind of natural sympathy for the poor and marginalized--so saying "no" without slipping into indifference (or worse) is a moral challenge.
As a Christian, I think this is a spiritual problem. The universalism and concern for the poor and marginalized that characterize left liberalism are features it inherited from Christianity. The conservative Christian would say that liberalism exaggerates and distorts these features, having taken them out of context, but he cannot deny they are a part of his religion, too. Thus, he must both maintain enough objectivity to critique liberalism's claim to be the only morally upright response to the poor and marginalized, yet not actually let his heart be hardened against them.
It is not easy to do--particularly when you generally agree with liberals that the thing they're campaigning against is bad, and you don't have your own easy alternative solutions on hand. So, for instance, I agree that the modern market is creating great disparities in wealth and power and that this a problem for society. I largely agree that racial and sexual minorities often have it rough (though I don't entirely agree with them about the causes of this). And I don't really buy the official conservative rationalizations or solutions for these problems. Getting the government out of the way so that personal liberty and market economics can work their magic won't solve much of anything. The result is that my politics are largely negative--engaged in bursting the moral pretensions of the left, but without offering much of substance to replace it.
I would like to think that, fundamentally, this view of the world is not so much cynical as it is tragic. There are certain evils that cannot be eradicated from the human heart or human society because what is good and what is wicked in man are so tightly involved in each other that we cannot stamp out what is wicked without also crushing what is best in man. The wheat and the tares cannot be sorted out until the end.
So, I view the lot of the poor and the marginalized as, in some ways, built into the structure of reality, and I oppose efforts to alleviate their suffering that deny reality because these can only end by constructing an order that is fundamentally inhuman and insane. This means, sometimes, we have to say, "no". We do have duties to the poor and marginalized. Our hearts should be open to them, but their claims (or the claims of those who advocate on their behalf) cannot be unlimited. They have to evaluated critically and weighed against the claims of other goods.
In theory, that is not the same as indifference. In practice, it is hard to keep it distinct. This is particularly so in the face of the unending onslaught of guilt trips emanating from the moralistic zealots who speak on their behalf. Saying "no" in the face of a guilt trip takes some spine and maybe even a certain kind of callousness--or whatever it is that parents develop to avoid being manipulated by their children.
In parents, this callousness is (usually) countered and kept in check by a deeper natural sympathy--in fact, the callousness is usually in service to the deeper love. Most of us don't have that kind of natural sympathy for the poor and marginalized--so saying "no" without slipping into indifference (or worse) is a moral challenge.
Friday, July 24, 2015
Gender is complicated
"Gender is complicated" isn't argument. Yes, gender is complicated. (Though, 99% of the time, it's not, really.) So what? Why should the conscious subject's sense of its gender be more relevant than chromosomes or sex organs or the sex that society assigns it? We're social beings, and society "assigns" us roles and tells us how to act all the time.
If society has no right to tell Caitlyn that she's a man, then society has no right to tell me that Bruce is a woman.
If society has no right to tell Caitlyn that she's a man, then society has no right to tell me that Bruce is a woman.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Back to the office, mom! Motherhood is socialist.
Fred Schwarz at NRO reports that European laws and customs discourage employment of mothers. I guess this is supposed to be bad because it's Europe and "socialist", while America is good for being ruthlessly capitalist and putting moms right to work.
Granted, the damper that generous maternal leave puts on employment of mothers and expectant mothers may be an unintended consequence of policies with good feminist intentions and ignorance of how people actually make hiring decisions. Nonetheless, it seems like this isn't an uncommon European phenomenon--laws that are "socialist" in theory but, in effect, actually preserve social customs and economic ways of life that American capitalism has long since torn to shreds.
Europe is killing itself by other means, of course, so probably neither approach is ultimately sustainable, but it's a commentary on the stupidity of our politics that a conservative site agrees with feminists that stigmas that encourage mothers to be parents instead of wage slaves are bad things.
Granted, the damper that generous maternal leave puts on employment of mothers and expectant mothers may be an unintended consequence of policies with good feminist intentions and ignorance of how people actually make hiring decisions. Nonetheless, it seems like this isn't an uncommon European phenomenon--laws that are "socialist" in theory but, in effect, actually preserve social customs and economic ways of life that American capitalism has long since torn to shreds.
Europe is killing itself by other means, of course, so probably neither approach is ultimately sustainable, but it's a commentary on the stupidity of our politics that a conservative site agrees with feminists that stigmas that encourage mothers to be parents instead of wage slaves are bad things.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Is sex magic?
Contemporary arguments about sexual morality generally assume utilitarianism (or consequentialism) and nominalism. Consequentialism holds that the morality of an act is purely determined by the goodness or badness of its consequences; utilitarianism further specifies that this is to be evaluated in terms of net pleasure/suffering brought to society as a whole. Nominalism says that there are no universals. Universals are just convenient fictions of language allowing us to name groups of similar things, but there is no actual nature or essence shared by things named by the same universal. Thus, arguments about the meaning of "male", "female", and "marriage" have no meaning from which we can derive moral conclusions. There are only individual things which we classify as "male, "female", or "marriage" for convenience.
This combination has been used as a sledgehammer against traditional definitions of marriage and prohibitions against homosexual acts. Arguments that marriage or the conjugal act are different "kinds" of things, with inherent purposes are met with scoffing and reductio ad absurdum arguments: "If marriage is about procreation, why do we let infertile couples marry?"
This is just one instance of the broader movement to demystify sex. Sex has no essence, no nature, no meaning or purpose beyond the subjective meaning and purpose attributed to it by the participants. Sex is not magic. In itself, sex can't be distinguished morally from other kinds of physical activity, and different sex acts cannot have different moral meanings apart from the moral meaning attributed to them by the participants. So, for instance, there can be no inherent difference between the act upon which the continuation of the species depends and "an unnatural act of the Oscar Wilde type". To say otherwise is to be superstitious and bigoted.
The problem is that this proves too much. (And here comes my reductio ad absurdum.)
We're already seeing in some boundary-pushing publications that this approach to sexual morality can't really make a coherent argument against bestiality. Provided that no physical harm is done to the beast, the only arguments to be made would be that it is somehow "unnatural" or that it debases the human participant. But these all rely on bigoted essentialism. If the participant doesn't find it debasing, then it isn't debasing. (Maybe an animal rights advocate would make an argument based on consent, but this just shows that the idea of attributing rights to animals is absurd.)
Similarly with (consensual) incest. Again, arguments that it confuses relationships in a way that is "unnatural" depend on essentialism--taking seriously kinds of relationships and sex as a particular kind of act, regardless of how that act or those relationships are viewed by the participants. People will bring out arguments about the genetic risks of inbreeding, but this can no longer determine the question. For one thing, procreation can be easily avoided, and genetic screening and abortion could be used as a backup. Anyway, arguments about gay sex and parenting have already determined that such risks of general social harm don't count for much against individual desires. For example, the social cost of the AIDS epidemic and its causal connection to male homosexual buggery is about as clear as it gets, but any suggestion that take measures to limit this activity is denounced as bigoted. Arguments based on psychology can be similarly put aside--if there are no essential kinds of relationships and acts, there can be no clear cause and effect in psychology--or at least, nothing clear enough to rule out relationships and acts that are consensual and otherwise appear "healthy".
Ultimately, it is hard for me to see even how liberals can consistently uphold the age of consent and strictures against pedophilia, if they consistently evaluate sexual morals by this withering standard. Society has bunkered these strictures in the language and logic of consent, which makes them less vulnerable to the reductionist logic. Within liberalism, consent is the one remaining absolute when it comes to sex, and kids can't offer meaningful sexual consent to adults. Still though, this only makes sense if you presume that sex is magic--different in kind from other kinds of acts. Children can consent to giving handshakes and high fives and playing board games, can't they? So what sets sex apart? Or, for that matter, what sets sex between teenagers apart from sex between a teenager and an adult? If minors can't give consent to adults, how can they do so to each other? Ultimately, our arguments still rely on the belief that sex is something different in kind from other acts, and the age of consent protects the innocence of minors from being violated, even though, we've otherwise discarded the concepts of "innocence" and "violation". The backup argument would be claims of psychological harm, but, again, is the causal link strong enough to be proven definitively and distinguished from the harm caused by social stigma? Homosexuals and transgendered folks have all kinds of psychological problems, but if you argue that these are related to their sexual proclivities rather than caused by social stigma, you are a bigot.
I'm not arguing in favor of these disgusting acts, nor am I saying that the advocates of the acceptability of gay sex are actually advocating these things. I am only arguing that the rightful disgust we feel at these acts only makes sense within a thicker moral framework for sex than the reductionism that is brought out against traditional arguments against homosexuality. That reductionism is being used selectively and inconsistently. When applied consistently, it cuts at the logical foundations of sexual limits that most liberals still hold to.
Despite what we say when we want to justify certain acts, we still implicitly treat sex as if it were magic and inherently meaningful prior to the intentions of the participants. We still believe in innocence (in some form) and understand that some kinds of sex can violate it. We're only dismissive of those ideas when it suits us for the purpose of justifying our own actions or those of a sympathetic minority.
This combination has been used as a sledgehammer against traditional definitions of marriage and prohibitions against homosexual acts. Arguments that marriage or the conjugal act are different "kinds" of things, with inherent purposes are met with scoffing and reductio ad absurdum arguments: "If marriage is about procreation, why do we let infertile couples marry?"
This is just one instance of the broader movement to demystify sex. Sex has no essence, no nature, no meaning or purpose beyond the subjective meaning and purpose attributed to it by the participants. Sex is not magic. In itself, sex can't be distinguished morally from other kinds of physical activity, and different sex acts cannot have different moral meanings apart from the moral meaning attributed to them by the participants. So, for instance, there can be no inherent difference between the act upon which the continuation of the species depends and "an unnatural act of the Oscar Wilde type". To say otherwise is to be superstitious and bigoted.
The problem is that this proves too much. (And here comes my reductio ad absurdum.)
We're already seeing in some boundary-pushing publications that this approach to sexual morality can't really make a coherent argument against bestiality. Provided that no physical harm is done to the beast, the only arguments to be made would be that it is somehow "unnatural" or that it debases the human participant. But these all rely on bigoted essentialism. If the participant doesn't find it debasing, then it isn't debasing. (Maybe an animal rights advocate would make an argument based on consent, but this just shows that the idea of attributing rights to animals is absurd.)
Similarly with (consensual) incest. Again, arguments that it confuses relationships in a way that is "unnatural" depend on essentialism--taking seriously kinds of relationships and sex as a particular kind of act, regardless of how that act or those relationships are viewed by the participants. People will bring out arguments about the genetic risks of inbreeding, but this can no longer determine the question. For one thing, procreation can be easily avoided, and genetic screening and abortion could be used as a backup. Anyway, arguments about gay sex and parenting have already determined that such risks of general social harm don't count for much against individual desires. For example, the social cost of the AIDS epidemic and its causal connection to male homosexual buggery is about as clear as it gets, but any suggestion that take measures to limit this activity is denounced as bigoted. Arguments based on psychology can be similarly put aside--if there are no essential kinds of relationships and acts, there can be no clear cause and effect in psychology--or at least, nothing clear enough to rule out relationships and acts that are consensual and otherwise appear "healthy".
Ultimately, it is hard for me to see even how liberals can consistently uphold the age of consent and strictures against pedophilia, if they consistently evaluate sexual morals by this withering standard. Society has bunkered these strictures in the language and logic of consent, which makes them less vulnerable to the reductionist logic. Within liberalism, consent is the one remaining absolute when it comes to sex, and kids can't offer meaningful sexual consent to adults. Still though, this only makes sense if you presume that sex is magic--different in kind from other kinds of acts. Children can consent to giving handshakes and high fives and playing board games, can't they? So what sets sex apart? Or, for that matter, what sets sex between teenagers apart from sex between a teenager and an adult? If minors can't give consent to adults, how can they do so to each other? Ultimately, our arguments still rely on the belief that sex is something different in kind from other acts, and the age of consent protects the innocence of minors from being violated, even though, we've otherwise discarded the concepts of "innocence" and "violation". The backup argument would be claims of psychological harm, but, again, is the causal link strong enough to be proven definitively and distinguished from the harm caused by social stigma? Homosexuals and transgendered folks have all kinds of psychological problems, but if you argue that these are related to their sexual proclivities rather than caused by social stigma, you are a bigot.
I'm not arguing in favor of these disgusting acts, nor am I saying that the advocates of the acceptability of gay sex are actually advocating these things. I am only arguing that the rightful disgust we feel at these acts only makes sense within a thicker moral framework for sex than the reductionism that is brought out against traditional arguments against homosexuality. That reductionism is being used selectively and inconsistently. When applied consistently, it cuts at the logical foundations of sexual limits that most liberals still hold to.
Despite what we say when we want to justify certain acts, we still implicitly treat sex as if it were magic and inherently meaningful prior to the intentions of the participants. We still believe in innocence (in some form) and understand that some kinds of sex can violate it. We're only dismissive of those ideas when it suits us for the purpose of justifying our own actions or those of a sympathetic minority.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Natural revulsion, cont.
How do we distinguish the "objective" view that a surgeon has of human flesh from that of the hangman?
Monday, July 20, 2015
Snowballing madness
This week at Mass we sang a hymn written a by liberal nun twenty-five years ago. It has a verse about men and women, made in God's image, equally contributing to the Church.
Twenty-five years ago that was good because it sounded like feminism taking a shot at patriarchy
Today, it's suspect because when you put it that way it sounds like you're saying the human race can be meaningfully classified (and maybe even paired) as "men" and "women". Only reactionaries talk that way these days. It's exclusive and mean-spirited.
Surely this snowballing madness must consume itself? But how long?
Twenty-five years ago that was good because it sounded like feminism taking a shot at patriarchy
Today, it's suspect because when you put it that way it sounds like you're saying the human race can be meaningfully classified (and maybe even paired) as "men" and "women". Only reactionaries talk that way these days. It's exclusive and mean-spirited.
Surely this snowballing madness must consume itself? But how long?
Overcoming natural revulsion
Rod Dreher comments on the metaphysical commonalities in Planned Parenthood's harvesting of fetal tissue from the aborted unborn and the celebration of Bruce Jenner's "triumph" over biological reality. Man's triumph over nature must extend to triumph over (what was once called) human nature. We are beyond that. All that counts now are the arbitrary desires of conscious subjects. There is no external standard for evaluating those desires--certainly no standards arising from the biological nature of the human person.
Eliminating such standards requires overcoming our instinctual revulsion toward things that are disgusting, ugly and shameful, and this is another common element to the justification of Planned Parenthood's fetal organ harvesting and the normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism.
In an earlier article, Dreher links to Amanda Marcotte, arguing that, well, of course harvesting organs from the unborn human beings we're killing is "gross". But lots of things are "gross"--childbirth, abortion itself, etc. and we don't let "grossness" stop us from defending those things. People who work in medicine (driven by scientific objectivity) have inured themselves to these instincts in ways that might shock us sometimes, but "gross" has no rational meaning.
It is the same, we are told, with any instinctual revulsion toward homosexual sex acts or the falsified or mutilated bodies of the transgendered. It seems reasonable to me that, with the evolution of distinct orifices for reproduction and defecation, humans and other mammals would naturally come equipped with instincts directing us toward their proper use and that such instincts--while not absolutely determining the moral question in themselves--might meaningfully point us toward some sense of what it means to use our bodies properly.
But this is all swept away and condemned as prejudice. If a man wants to show his love to another man by accepting his reproductive organs into his rectum, then this is truly love, and my instinctual revulsion is just prejudice--hatred. If a man wants to express his true inner self by presenting himself as woman or even mutilating his body to remove his male reproductive organs and create a wound that mimics female reproductive organs, then this is true self-expression, and my instinctual revulsion is just prejudice--hatred.
Such instincts must be subverted if all desires are to be considered equal, if the triumph of subjective desire over human nature is to be complete, and we're hard at work subverting them--from popular entertainment which gets a laugh or a reaction through "gross out" elements that undermine modesty to pornography which twists the sexual desires of young men toward progressively more deviant sex acts.
Absent some kind of reaction, we're headed toward transhumanism and That Hideous Strength.
Eliminating such standards requires overcoming our instinctual revulsion toward things that are disgusting, ugly and shameful, and this is another common element to the justification of Planned Parenthood's fetal organ harvesting and the normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism.
In an earlier article, Dreher links to Amanda Marcotte, arguing that, well, of course harvesting organs from the unborn human beings we're killing is "gross". But lots of things are "gross"--childbirth, abortion itself, etc. and we don't let "grossness" stop us from defending those things. People who work in medicine (driven by scientific objectivity) have inured themselves to these instincts in ways that might shock us sometimes, but "gross" has no rational meaning.
It is the same, we are told, with any instinctual revulsion toward homosexual sex acts or the falsified or mutilated bodies of the transgendered. It seems reasonable to me that, with the evolution of distinct orifices for reproduction and defecation, humans and other mammals would naturally come equipped with instincts directing us toward their proper use and that such instincts--while not absolutely determining the moral question in themselves--might meaningfully point us toward some sense of what it means to use our bodies properly.
But this is all swept away and condemned as prejudice. If a man wants to show his love to another man by accepting his reproductive organs into his rectum, then this is truly love, and my instinctual revulsion is just prejudice--hatred. If a man wants to express his true inner self by presenting himself as woman or even mutilating his body to remove his male reproductive organs and create a wound that mimics female reproductive organs, then this is true self-expression, and my instinctual revulsion is just prejudice--hatred.
Such instincts must be subverted if all desires are to be considered equal, if the triumph of subjective desire over human nature is to be complete, and we're hard at work subverting them--from popular entertainment which gets a laugh or a reaction through "gross out" elements that undermine modesty to pornography which twists the sexual desires of young men toward progressively more deviant sex acts.
Absent some kind of reaction, we're headed toward transhumanism and That Hideous Strength.
Friday, July 17, 2015
Ryan Anderson: keep fighting (nicely)
Ryan Anderson thinks that traditionalists can keep from being pushed out of civic life as bigots if we continue to engage civilly on behalf of marriage, thinking that the slow progress (or at least, holding pattern), we've achieved with regard to abortion by means of moral arguments and social science can be recreated.
He's right that this is a necessary part of the tactic of keeping from being pushed out of the public square entirely, though, absent major changes in trajectory it's hard to see it actually succeeding in reversing this thing (but maybe delusional optimism is a necessary component of staying engaged).
It's hard for me to imagine we'll really have much success in keeping the left from dismissing us as bigots. They're already doing so, and as they run the government, the education system, the communications system and the corporations, it's hard to see how that won't be the official view that people have to at least outwardly conform to. It might enough, however, to keep us from getting pushed out of the GOP and the "right-wing noise machine", which are key components in keeping before the public the fact that there are still two sides to be heard on this issue.
So, this strategy has its place. I don't think, however, that it's enough. We cannot keep pretending that the entire system is not already rigged against us; that the logic of liberalism that leads to gay marriage doesn't run deeper than we'd like to admit, and that engaging in battle on the terms set by classical liberalism, while the progressive liberals are bound by no such terms is a fool's battle. While there's something honorable in originalist principles that motivate Justice Scalia to say that he doesn't care how marriage is defined, that is, frankly, an insane statement. The constitutionalism of classical liberalism presupposes a sane society that doesn't do things like redefine marriage for political purposes. When society does that (even if it did so according to the rules of the originalist game), the game is over.
I don't know if we win by escalating the battle. There may not actually be much hope of winning, but at this point we are only fighting for the terms of our surrender. Constitutionalist principles and being nice aren't enough for this. Only power is enough. If playing by the rules and being civil serve the ends of access to power necessary for preserving our rights, then let's use them. But let's not forego other means available to us.
I'm not advocating violence (though I think we should be ready to take up arms to defend our family, property and churches if they come for them), but it seems like a certain form a fearless lawlesness is needed to stand up to tyrants and make their unjust laws unenforceable. We need to stop being cowed by PC or laws or social conventions that don't actually serve our communities or what's left of the common good. In public engagement, we need to top feeding the victim industry with apologies, stop avoiding uncomfortable topics for the sake of preserving coalitions. (For instance, we're not going to win the marriage debate while pretending that what we're saying has no bearing on the morality of gay sex.)
This might mean a division of labor--fearless extremists and trolls creating room on the right for the mainstream guys to carve out more respectable opinions: basically, using any and all means to break the conformist orthodoxy that the left is trying to smother the country with by making people aware that there is still a significant community of dissenters and we're not going anywhere.
Note: I'm personally preoccupied with political questions, but it's important to remember that we can't confuse means with ends. I'm mostly on the same page as Rod Dreher here. The purpose has to be, first of all, preservation of our way of life and extension primarily through personal evangelization. The political theory, coalition and strategy serves the shared way of life and not vice versa. If we're failing at actually living it out and passing it on to our children, the fight is completely purposeless and hypocritical. The fearless lawlessness and realization that things like constitutionalism are losing games are part of recognizing that the classical American political order that conservatives think they are defending no longer exists and is no longer possible given the disagreement over the proper meaning and end of human life. That regime has become something else and while advocates of the old order are still present in some parts of it and are still capable of exercising some good, it is fundamentally devoted to a way of life that is inimical to our own. It is a machine built by and for leftists and we look silly when we try to pretend we can operate and use it profitably for our own ends.
He's right that this is a necessary part of the tactic of keeping from being pushed out of the public square entirely, though, absent major changes in trajectory it's hard to see it actually succeeding in reversing this thing (but maybe delusional optimism is a necessary component of staying engaged).
It's hard for me to imagine we'll really have much success in keeping the left from dismissing us as bigots. They're already doing so, and as they run the government, the education system, the communications system and the corporations, it's hard to see how that won't be the official view that people have to at least outwardly conform to. It might enough, however, to keep us from getting pushed out of the GOP and the "right-wing noise machine", which are key components in keeping before the public the fact that there are still two sides to be heard on this issue.
So, this strategy has its place. I don't think, however, that it's enough. We cannot keep pretending that the entire system is not already rigged against us; that the logic of liberalism that leads to gay marriage doesn't run deeper than we'd like to admit, and that engaging in battle on the terms set by classical liberalism, while the progressive liberals are bound by no such terms is a fool's battle. While there's something honorable in originalist principles that motivate Justice Scalia to say that he doesn't care how marriage is defined, that is, frankly, an insane statement. The constitutionalism of classical liberalism presupposes a sane society that doesn't do things like redefine marriage for political purposes. When society does that (even if it did so according to the rules of the originalist game), the game is over.
I don't know if we win by escalating the battle. There may not actually be much hope of winning, but at this point we are only fighting for the terms of our surrender. Constitutionalist principles and being nice aren't enough for this. Only power is enough. If playing by the rules and being civil serve the ends of access to power necessary for preserving our rights, then let's use them. But let's not forego other means available to us.
I'm not advocating violence (though I think we should be ready to take up arms to defend our family, property and churches if they come for them), but it seems like a certain form a fearless lawlesness is needed to stand up to tyrants and make their unjust laws unenforceable. We need to stop being cowed by PC or laws or social conventions that don't actually serve our communities or what's left of the common good. In public engagement, we need to top feeding the victim industry with apologies, stop avoiding uncomfortable topics for the sake of preserving coalitions. (For instance, we're not going to win the marriage debate while pretending that what we're saying has no bearing on the morality of gay sex.)
This might mean a division of labor--fearless extremists and trolls creating room on the right for the mainstream guys to carve out more respectable opinions: basically, using any and all means to break the conformist orthodoxy that the left is trying to smother the country with by making people aware that there is still a significant community of dissenters and we're not going anywhere.
Note: I'm personally preoccupied with political questions, but it's important to remember that we can't confuse means with ends. I'm mostly on the same page as Rod Dreher here. The purpose has to be, first of all, preservation of our way of life and extension primarily through personal evangelization. The political theory, coalition and strategy serves the shared way of life and not vice versa. If we're failing at actually living it out and passing it on to our children, the fight is completely purposeless and hypocritical. The fearless lawlessness and realization that things like constitutionalism are losing games are part of recognizing that the classical American political order that conservatives think they are defending no longer exists and is no longer possible given the disagreement over the proper meaning and end of human life. That regime has become something else and while advocates of the old order are still present in some parts of it and are still capable of exercising some good, it is fundamentally devoted to a way of life that is inimical to our own. It is a machine built by and for leftists and we look silly when we try to pretend we can operate and use it profitably for our own ends.
Monday, July 13, 2015
More pessimism
On the other hand, Rod Dreher is decidedly more pessimistic about the ability of the Church to resist in any meaningful way when Christians will take their cues from the predominant culture against the clear teaching of Scripture and the Church. He uses the fact that Southern Christians saw no contradiction between slavery or segregation and the Bible as an example of culture triumphing over clear Christian teaching.
I don't know if the analogy completely holds. The Bible can obviously be invoked against the way blacks were frequently treated in the South, but the case against slavery or segregation per se (as opposed to what a Christian defender of them might term abuses) aren't quite so clear. The Bible is pretty clear about the ultimate unity of the human family and that unity in Christ trumps the division between slave and free, and from these you can make a strong case against the compatibility of slavery (especially race-based chattel slavery) and racial segregation with Christianity, but it's not really that straightforward. Brotherhood in Christ clearly relativizes distinctions of class and race, but the idea that it requires the abolition of their social manifestation is actually a recent idea that would probably seem revolutionary to most Christians of the past.
In contrast, it's pretty hard to get around the Bible's condemnation of gay sex. (In fact, even if we're right about the incompatibility of slavery and racial segregation with Christianity, the fact that we think that it's completely obvious, when clearly many Christians have not found it so, is a good demonstration of the dominance of the surrounding culture over us that Dreher is talking about. For our culture, racism is the worst thing, so obviously Christianity clearly condemns it.)
That doesn't mean he's not right about culture trumping Christian teaching anyway, but a closer analogy would probably be the compatibility of feminism with New Testament teaching on the submission of women. In practice, most people wiggle their way around that by contextualizing it. Not that most people actively accept such arguments to dismiss the Biblical teaching on male and female roles--but they mostly just ignore them in practice and if they run into something dismissing it, they accept it as fitting how they already live and think. It's not too hard to imagine the similar pro-gay-sex arguments gaining traction in the same way--though, even here, the Biblical teachings on male-female relations seem to either be so specific (cover your hair) that they seem obviously culture-specific, or broad enough (submission of woman-as-Church, self-giving love of man-as-Christ) to allow a fair amount of cultural specification.
Also, I think about the persistence of creationism. It's hard to think of something more uncool in our culture, but lots and lots of people still believe in a six-day creation--even though it means derision from opinion makers and even though (I think) not that many churches actually teach it or push it that hard. (Maybe I'm wrong about that. But I would bet that there are a lot of creationists in churches that don't actually teach it. For some reason, it's always news when the Catholic position on evolution gets restated.) Of course, creationism vs. evolutionism doesn't have the same day-to-day implications as marriage, and while creationists are dismissed as rubes, they aren't condemned as bigots.
I don't know. I basically agree that things don't look good for hard, popular resistance to gay rights, and this probably even holds for resistance to its enforcement against the Church. But maybe I have more hopes for at least the persistence of the kind of quiet obstinance we see with creationism--even if it's mostly ineffective politically.
I don't know if the analogy completely holds. The Bible can obviously be invoked against the way blacks were frequently treated in the South, but the case against slavery or segregation per se (as opposed to what a Christian defender of them might term abuses) aren't quite so clear. The Bible is pretty clear about the ultimate unity of the human family and that unity in Christ trumps the division between slave and free, and from these you can make a strong case against the compatibility of slavery (especially race-based chattel slavery) and racial segregation with Christianity, but it's not really that straightforward. Brotherhood in Christ clearly relativizes distinctions of class and race, but the idea that it requires the abolition of their social manifestation is actually a recent idea that would probably seem revolutionary to most Christians of the past.
In contrast, it's pretty hard to get around the Bible's condemnation of gay sex. (In fact, even if we're right about the incompatibility of slavery and racial segregation with Christianity, the fact that we think that it's completely obvious, when clearly many Christians have not found it so, is a good demonstration of the dominance of the surrounding culture over us that Dreher is talking about. For our culture, racism is the worst thing, so obviously Christianity clearly condemns it.)
That doesn't mean he's not right about culture trumping Christian teaching anyway, but a closer analogy would probably be the compatibility of feminism with New Testament teaching on the submission of women. In practice, most people wiggle their way around that by contextualizing it. Not that most people actively accept such arguments to dismiss the Biblical teaching on male and female roles--but they mostly just ignore them in practice and if they run into something dismissing it, they accept it as fitting how they already live and think. It's not too hard to imagine the similar pro-gay-sex arguments gaining traction in the same way--though, even here, the Biblical teachings on male-female relations seem to either be so specific (cover your hair) that they seem obviously culture-specific, or broad enough (submission of woman-as-Church, self-giving love of man-as-Christ) to allow a fair amount of cultural specification.
Also, I think about the persistence of creationism. It's hard to think of something more uncool in our culture, but lots and lots of people still believe in a six-day creation--even though it means derision from opinion makers and even though (I think) not that many churches actually teach it or push it that hard. (Maybe I'm wrong about that. But I would bet that there are a lot of creationists in churches that don't actually teach it. For some reason, it's always news when the Catholic position on evolution gets restated.) Of course, creationism vs. evolutionism doesn't have the same day-to-day implications as marriage, and while creationists are dismissed as rubes, they aren't condemned as bigots.
I don't know. I basically agree that things don't look good for hard, popular resistance to gay rights, and this probably even holds for resistance to its enforcement against the Church. But maybe I have more hopes for at least the persistence of the kind of quiet obstinance we see with creationism--even if it's mostly ineffective politically.
But how doomed are we?
I am not optimistic that this is just another Roe v. Wade or that we’ve reached Peak Leftism. The real question is whether the left is correct (at least on a political level) that we are the equivalent of the last defenders of Jim Crow. Are we the last gasp of a dying moral system that, in a generation, will be universally derided?
I’m not familiar enough with the civil rights debate to speak with certainty, but my general impression is that we do not need to be that pessimistic.
Realistically, I don’t think we’re going to be rolling back the Supreme Court decision, and it will remain the case that certain opinions will not be able to be given voice in public and will risk your job in some circles. Nonetheless, while we may not be there yet, I do think support for expanding gay rights will top out at some point—hopefully sooner rather than later, and that the sources of societal opposition aren’t going to be washed away or reduced to a tiny corner of the internet. We are still going to have a significant number of people who believe that—at least in their personal opinion—gay sex is a sin rather than a matter of pride, and marriage is between a man and a woman.
The major factor here is the Church. The civil rights movement was, in a lot of ways, explicitly Christian, and it had the support (or least, no significant opposition) from the entirety of mainstream Christianity--including conservative Southern denominations.
The Church is on the other side of this one. Is it winning over minds? Not really. Is it losing influence over society as a whole and over its own adherents? Yes. But it’s still there, and, outside of true-believing leftists and their institutions, it’s not (yet) being treated with opprobrium. And it’s mostly standing firm. Aside from the liberal Protestants, who were already completely coopted by secular humanism and a few flaky evangelical personalities, the Church is out there teaching (at least officially) the truth about human sexuality.
Similarly, the right hasn’t really caved. This is where Michael New is correct about the significance of social conservatism as a political movement. Its role at this point—at least for the time being—is probably not an offensive attempt to roll back what the courts have done, but to defend the rights of dissenters and keep social conservatism within the Overton Window.
The big question here is whether or when the Republican Party will officially sell us out. I’m not entirely pessimistic on this score. The GOP is lost without social conservatives. The idea that “socially liberal, economically conservative” is the way of the future has been thrown around forever, but it doesn’t actually work, and I think the GOP mostly knows this. The same folks who want gay rights are good-thinking people who also want an intrusive federal government to save the environment, protect the poor, and … protect gay rights! The idea that the cultural part of liberalism is “libertarian” only makes sense in the alternative reality of Libertarians. Sexual revolution = more broken families = more welfare (and more votes for Democrats). The GOP knows that ditching social conservatives means political death. While all we will get out of them is lip service and (hopefully) judicial appointments that will at least slow things down, that’s not nothing. Lip service helps keep the Overton Window from collapsing. Judicial appointments will be important for protecting the rights of dissenters and slowing down the next project of the left.
Of course, the GOP may be doomed, but this has little to do with the unpopularity of social conservatism per se and more to do with immigration and the actual decline of marriage, which is the decline of the traditional American middle class way of life that (at least in theory) the GOP represents in a way that distinguishes it from the pure technocracy of the Democrats. (And, of course, this decline isn't entirely unrelated to immigration.)
That decline is the larger issue behind all this. The question, when we talk about “peak left” or “peak gay”, is how long this can go on. I'm not holding my breath waiting for a reaction from the silent majority (because, unlike 1973, it's not a majority any more), but how much longer can the welfare state grow and grow to take the place of natural ties? How much longer can the native population maintain below-replacement birth rates without major social upheaval? It just doesn’t seem sustainable. If social conservatives are right, then, it’s not sustainable.
Of course, things can still get a lot worse, but the hope would be that the run-in with reality (and, one hopes, a signficant portion of the population that remains recalcitrant) will weaken the ability of the state to enforce its ridiculous dogmas.
I’m not familiar enough with the civil rights debate to speak with certainty, but my general impression is that we do not need to be that pessimistic.
Realistically, I don’t think we’re going to be rolling back the Supreme Court decision, and it will remain the case that certain opinions will not be able to be given voice in public and will risk your job in some circles. Nonetheless, while we may not be there yet, I do think support for expanding gay rights will top out at some point—hopefully sooner rather than later, and that the sources of societal opposition aren’t going to be washed away or reduced to a tiny corner of the internet. We are still going to have a significant number of people who believe that—at least in their personal opinion—gay sex is a sin rather than a matter of pride, and marriage is between a man and a woman.
The major factor here is the Church. The civil rights movement was, in a lot of ways, explicitly Christian, and it had the support (or least, no significant opposition) from the entirety of mainstream Christianity--including conservative Southern denominations.
The Church is on the other side of this one. Is it winning over minds? Not really. Is it losing influence over society as a whole and over its own adherents? Yes. But it’s still there, and, outside of true-believing leftists and their institutions, it’s not (yet) being treated with opprobrium. And it’s mostly standing firm. Aside from the liberal Protestants, who were already completely coopted by secular humanism and a few flaky evangelical personalities, the Church is out there teaching (at least officially) the truth about human sexuality.
Similarly, the right hasn’t really caved. This is where Michael New is correct about the significance of social conservatism as a political movement. Its role at this point—at least for the time being—is probably not an offensive attempt to roll back what the courts have done, but to defend the rights of dissenters and keep social conservatism within the Overton Window.
The big question here is whether or when the Republican Party will officially sell us out. I’m not entirely pessimistic on this score. The GOP is lost without social conservatives. The idea that “socially liberal, economically conservative” is the way of the future has been thrown around forever, but it doesn’t actually work, and I think the GOP mostly knows this. The same folks who want gay rights are good-thinking people who also want an intrusive federal government to save the environment, protect the poor, and … protect gay rights! The idea that the cultural part of liberalism is “libertarian” only makes sense in the alternative reality of Libertarians. Sexual revolution = more broken families = more welfare (and more votes for Democrats). The GOP knows that ditching social conservatives means political death. While all we will get out of them is lip service and (hopefully) judicial appointments that will at least slow things down, that’s not nothing. Lip service helps keep the Overton Window from collapsing. Judicial appointments will be important for protecting the rights of dissenters and slowing down the next project of the left.
Of course, the GOP may be doomed, but this has little to do with the unpopularity of social conservatism per se and more to do with immigration and the actual decline of marriage, which is the decline of the traditional American middle class way of life that (at least in theory) the GOP represents in a way that distinguishes it from the pure technocracy of the Democrats. (And, of course, this decline isn't entirely unrelated to immigration.)
That decline is the larger issue behind all this. The question, when we talk about “peak left” or “peak gay”, is how long this can go on. I'm not holding my breath waiting for a reaction from the silent majority (because, unlike 1973, it's not a majority any more), but how much longer can the welfare state grow and grow to take the place of natural ties? How much longer can the native population maintain below-replacement birth rates without major social upheaval? It just doesn’t seem sustainable. If social conservatives are right, then, it’s not sustainable.
Of course, things can still get a lot worse, but the hope would be that the run-in with reality (and, one hopes, a signficant portion of the population that remains recalcitrant) will weaken the ability of the state to enforce its ridiculous dogmas.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Peak Left?
Kevin Williamson thinks that the increasing insanity and intolerance of dissent of the left are signs that we have reached Peak Leftism.
I hope so, but I’m not so sure. They seem to me to be signs that the left is just finally consolidating its victories. What we’re seeing is their total control of the educational system, the communications system, corporations and the state manifesting itself in ever greater displays of raw power—enacting insanity, marginalizing the sane.
One can hope that this will provoke a backlash, but it’s hard to imagine where it would come from and how it would be effective when, as one commenter said, “The Left doesn't need to persuade you. They have your children, and you will be gone soon enough.”
Maybe something new will come up and surprise us all, but right now, the right looks … old. The left doesn't have any new ideas, but they're emboldened because they think they can win consistently without any compromise with the right.
Perhaps this is a symptom of the rise of the internet and social media, which have deprived a generation of the ability to think deeply and independently. They only feel, and they do so with an eye on the mob that’s watching them. You would think they would be kicking against the constraints of PC, but I'm not seeing it. (But I'm almost certainly not looking in the right places.)
I don’t know. The hope would be that the left will, at some point, cross a bridge too far and, make normal people become hostile, or at the very least, cynical about the latest cause for justice and equality. But if insisting that Bruce Jenner is actually a woman isn’t a bridge too far, I don’t know what is.
It may be that reality will only reassert itself when we burn through the advantages of our wealth and technology. Women on submarines and societal accolades for sexual misfits are luxuries you can only afford when you’re not facing real scarcity or an enemy who is a real threat.
I hope so, but I’m not so sure. They seem to me to be signs that the left is just finally consolidating its victories. What we’re seeing is their total control of the educational system, the communications system, corporations and the state manifesting itself in ever greater displays of raw power—enacting insanity, marginalizing the sane.
One can hope that this will provoke a backlash, but it’s hard to imagine where it would come from and how it would be effective when, as one commenter said, “The Left doesn't need to persuade you. They have your children, and you will be gone soon enough.”
Maybe something new will come up and surprise us all, but right now, the right looks … old. The left doesn't have any new ideas, but they're emboldened because they think they can win consistently without any compromise with the right.
Perhaps this is a symptom of the rise of the internet and social media, which have deprived a generation of the ability to think deeply and independently. They only feel, and they do so with an eye on the mob that’s watching them. You would think they would be kicking against the constraints of PC, but I'm not seeing it. (But I'm almost certainly not looking in the right places.)
I don’t know. The hope would be that the left will, at some point, cross a bridge too far and, make normal people become hostile, or at the very least, cynical about the latest cause for justice and equality. But if insisting that Bruce Jenner is actually a woman isn’t a bridge too far, I don’t know what is.
It may be that reality will only reassert itself when we burn through the advantages of our wealth and technology. Women on submarines and societal accolades for sexual misfits are luxuries you can only afford when you’re not facing real scarcity or an enemy who is a real threat.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Obergefell v. Hodges isn't Roe v. Wade
Michael New and a few others involved in the gay marriage debate are trying to encourage the right with comparisons of Obergefell v. Hodges with Roe v. Wade.
He argues that we're in a better position with regard to marriage today than we were with regard to abortion in 1973 because supporters of traditional marriage are better organized politically today than the pro-life movement was in 1973. Basically (I would say) Roe v. Wade nationalized social issues like this, and the conservative side of the marriage debate has benefitted from the example and existing political network of the pro-life movement. So, the pro-traditional marriage is better organized, is broader and more collaborative and has more political influence than the pro-life movement did in 1973.
That's probably true as far as it goes and is likely part of a good argument that opponents of gay marriage aren't necessarily headed for the same political fate as segregationists. It seems, however, that you would have to do similar comparison between the 1973 pro-abortion and present pro-gay-marriage side to get a complete political picture.
But even putting that aside, there are two big arguments against optimism based on analogies to Roe v. Wade.
First of all, the pro-life movement has persevered in the political debate because it has framed its argument entirely in liberal terms—it argues that abortion directly harms unborn children and that unborn children should be considered to be part of the human community. The second premise is disputed, but no one seriously disputes the first. There are also arguments that abortion harms the mother as well, but this still remains within the liberal framework. Nonetheless, the harm is less direct and obvious and can be considered freely self-inflicted, so these arguments are likely to play only a secondary role in convincing someone that abortion is a social evil to be opposed. I don't know if non-liberal arguments against abortion were ever commonly made (e.g., it enables fornication and adultery), but you never hear them now, and they are not likely to gain traction.
Unlike abortion, there's no really successful liberal argument (i.e. based only on direct harm) against gay marriage. At best, there are arguments for broad social harm or more weakly associated harms, similar to the harm suffered by women because of abortion. Even if we could make a solid evidence-based case that, e.g., gay unions aren't as good of an environment for kids and more gay unions raising kids is, on the whole, bad for kids (unlikely given how much the academic social sciences are in the tank for gay rights), the harm is too diffuse for the liberation-minded utilitarianism that seems to be operational in these arguments. You can't see any obvious harm in the nice gay couple next door raising kids, so broad statistics aren't enough to deny them legal equivalence with heterosexual married couples.
The other course of argument taken is over the meaning and purpose of marriage. But, in liberal discourse, these are don't actually count for anything against rights claims. Even if they were watertight as a matter of logic, engaging liberals on such matters of logic and definition is purely academic. You would at best convince an individual that his definition limits marriage to a man and a woman. Since the question would remain disputed, it could never stand as grounds for denying a supposed "right"--especially a right claimed by an officially recognized aggreived minority.
What's worse, these arguments get labeled as bigotry. While feminists have worked hard to tar the pro-life movement as anti-woman, it has never really stuck in broader society. An argument based on the moral status of the baby doesn't really have anything say about the mother, so feminists have had to claim that pro-lifers have been disingenuous in their concern for babies: "They won't admit it, but really, they just want to send women back to the kitchen". That doesn't really fly because, to most non-ideologues, the harm to the baby is obvious enough to be significant in its own right and worthy of consideration, at least something to be balanced against the rights of the mother. At best, the feminists can tar pro-lifers as being single-issue obsessed and unconcerned about the needs of the mother and children after their born, but it doesn't seem implausible for someone to be totally on board with women's rights, but hold that they stop at the killing of unborn children. And, in fact, the pro-life movement has always been made up of and led by women as much as by men (if not more), so feminists have also had to claim that half the pro-life movement is suffering from false consciousness. Again, not very plausible.
The arguments against gay marriage don't have these advantages. Even if you've got solid empirical evidence that we shouldn't encourage homosexuality, just reporting unflattering statistics about gays or any other officially recognized victim group (much less drawing policy conclusions from them) is itself considered bigotry, regardless of their truth. Similarly, engaging arguments about the meaning of marriage—since they're already automatically disqualified in arguments against rights claims--can only be excercises in justifying oppression. And, while there are a few gays against gay marriage (and probably a good number that don't actually care), they're not a significant enough portion of the movement to serve as an obvious counter-argument against claims of bigotry.
So, whatever advantages the traditional marriage argument has in the way of political organization, it suffers from serious rhetorical disadvantages. This seems likely to lead to waning influence within the Republican party and "respectable" opinion. Perhaps the best possible fate, barring an unforeseen serious change in trajectory, is something like creationism vs. evolution. Republicans have to make an embarrassing dodge to avoid offending the base when grilled by reporters trying to make them look stupid to the rest of the country, but, otherwise, it will have no political meaning.
The larger difference, though, separating the present from 1973 is that the rot of the sexual revolution, the dissolution of the Church and American society have progressed much, much further. That there even has to be a political movement for marriage shows how much worse things are than in 1973. In 1973, the theoretical and legal groundwork of the sexual revolution had been laid, and pop culture and elite culture were largely on board, but day to day life hadn't followed suit to the degree that it has today.
We're much further down that road now. Even if societal acceptance of abortion and divorce have plateaued or even declined somewhat, fornication, contraception, pornography, cohabitation, etc. have become universal and expected parts of the American way of life. Gay marriage has risen in popularity not just because of the non-stop propaganda, but because it's consonant with the way that most Americans already think about sex and marriage in their own lives.
We're not going to see a viable movement against gay marriage without a viable movement against that broader trend of which it is a part. And that is the only way support for traditional marriage is likely to persist—as a part of a broader movement in favor of traditional religion and sexual mores. The political opposition to gay marriage has tended to bracket the question of religion and the morality of homosexual acts in an attempt to build as broad a coalition as possible based only on the definition of marriage, but it didn't really work, and it won't work in the future. While natural law arguments are theoretically accessible to any reasonable person, in practice one's receptivity to them is highly dependent on religious faith and/or the actual lived practice of the virtues. Without those, they simply have no power to convict.
In practice, we won't have the restoration of traditional marriage without the restoration of Christianity and traditional sexual mores. And that is going to have to come primarily from people living it and witnessing to it. If anything, the public, political angle will have to serve primarily to protect our freedom to do so and defend the Gospel against charges of bigotry that prevent people from hearing it.
He argues that we're in a better position with regard to marriage today than we were with regard to abortion in 1973 because supporters of traditional marriage are better organized politically today than the pro-life movement was in 1973. Basically (I would say) Roe v. Wade nationalized social issues like this, and the conservative side of the marriage debate has benefitted from the example and existing political network of the pro-life movement. So, the pro-traditional marriage is better organized, is broader and more collaborative and has more political influence than the pro-life movement did in 1973.
That's probably true as far as it goes and is likely part of a good argument that opponents of gay marriage aren't necessarily headed for the same political fate as segregationists. It seems, however, that you would have to do similar comparison between the 1973 pro-abortion and present pro-gay-marriage side to get a complete political picture.
But even putting that aside, there are two big arguments against optimism based on analogies to Roe v. Wade.
First of all, the pro-life movement has persevered in the political debate because it has framed its argument entirely in liberal terms—it argues that abortion directly harms unborn children and that unborn children should be considered to be part of the human community. The second premise is disputed, but no one seriously disputes the first. There are also arguments that abortion harms the mother as well, but this still remains within the liberal framework. Nonetheless, the harm is less direct and obvious and can be considered freely self-inflicted, so these arguments are likely to play only a secondary role in convincing someone that abortion is a social evil to be opposed. I don't know if non-liberal arguments against abortion were ever commonly made (e.g., it enables fornication and adultery), but you never hear them now, and they are not likely to gain traction.
Unlike abortion, there's no really successful liberal argument (i.e. based only on direct harm) against gay marriage. At best, there are arguments for broad social harm or more weakly associated harms, similar to the harm suffered by women because of abortion. Even if we could make a solid evidence-based case that, e.g., gay unions aren't as good of an environment for kids and more gay unions raising kids is, on the whole, bad for kids (unlikely given how much the academic social sciences are in the tank for gay rights), the harm is too diffuse for the liberation-minded utilitarianism that seems to be operational in these arguments. You can't see any obvious harm in the nice gay couple next door raising kids, so broad statistics aren't enough to deny them legal equivalence with heterosexual married couples.
The other course of argument taken is over the meaning and purpose of marriage. But, in liberal discourse, these are don't actually count for anything against rights claims. Even if they were watertight as a matter of logic, engaging liberals on such matters of logic and definition is purely academic. You would at best convince an individual that his definition limits marriage to a man and a woman. Since the question would remain disputed, it could never stand as grounds for denying a supposed "right"--especially a right claimed by an officially recognized aggreived minority.
What's worse, these arguments get labeled as bigotry. While feminists have worked hard to tar the pro-life movement as anti-woman, it has never really stuck in broader society. An argument based on the moral status of the baby doesn't really have anything say about the mother, so feminists have had to claim that pro-lifers have been disingenuous in their concern for babies: "They won't admit it, but really, they just want to send women back to the kitchen". That doesn't really fly because, to most non-ideologues, the harm to the baby is obvious enough to be significant in its own right and worthy of consideration, at least something to be balanced against the rights of the mother. At best, the feminists can tar pro-lifers as being single-issue obsessed and unconcerned about the needs of the mother and children after their born, but it doesn't seem implausible for someone to be totally on board with women's rights, but hold that they stop at the killing of unborn children. And, in fact, the pro-life movement has always been made up of and led by women as much as by men (if not more), so feminists have also had to claim that half the pro-life movement is suffering from false consciousness. Again, not very plausible.
The arguments against gay marriage don't have these advantages. Even if you've got solid empirical evidence that we shouldn't encourage homosexuality, just reporting unflattering statistics about gays or any other officially recognized victim group (much less drawing policy conclusions from them) is itself considered bigotry, regardless of their truth. Similarly, engaging arguments about the meaning of marriage—since they're already automatically disqualified in arguments against rights claims--can only be excercises in justifying oppression. And, while there are a few gays against gay marriage (and probably a good number that don't actually care), they're not a significant enough portion of the movement to serve as an obvious counter-argument against claims of bigotry.
So, whatever advantages the traditional marriage argument has in the way of political organization, it suffers from serious rhetorical disadvantages. This seems likely to lead to waning influence within the Republican party and "respectable" opinion. Perhaps the best possible fate, barring an unforeseen serious change in trajectory, is something like creationism vs. evolution. Republicans have to make an embarrassing dodge to avoid offending the base when grilled by reporters trying to make them look stupid to the rest of the country, but, otherwise, it will have no political meaning.
The larger difference, though, separating the present from 1973 is that the rot of the sexual revolution, the dissolution of the Church and American society have progressed much, much further. That there even has to be a political movement for marriage shows how much worse things are than in 1973. In 1973, the theoretical and legal groundwork of the sexual revolution had been laid, and pop culture and elite culture were largely on board, but day to day life hadn't followed suit to the degree that it has today.
We're much further down that road now. Even if societal acceptance of abortion and divorce have plateaued or even declined somewhat, fornication, contraception, pornography, cohabitation, etc. have become universal and expected parts of the American way of life. Gay marriage has risen in popularity not just because of the non-stop propaganda, but because it's consonant with the way that most Americans already think about sex and marriage in their own lives.
We're not going to see a viable movement against gay marriage without a viable movement against that broader trend of which it is a part. And that is the only way support for traditional marriage is likely to persist—as a part of a broader movement in favor of traditional religion and sexual mores. The political opposition to gay marriage has tended to bracket the question of religion and the morality of homosexual acts in an attempt to build as broad a coalition as possible based only on the definition of marriage, but it didn't really work, and it won't work in the future. While natural law arguments are theoretically accessible to any reasonable person, in practice one's receptivity to them is highly dependent on religious faith and/or the actual lived practice of the virtues. Without those, they simply have no power to convict.
In practice, we won't have the restoration of traditional marriage without the restoration of Christianity and traditional sexual mores. And that is going to have to come primarily from people living it and witnessing to it. If anything, the public, political angle will have to serve primarily to protect our freedom to do so and defend the Gospel against charges of bigotry that prevent people from hearing it.
Monday, July 6, 2015
Extending marriage vs. marginalizing marriage
If Christian advocates of gay marriage were serious about wanting to extend the good of marriage to gays, then wouldn’t they be seriously working away to establish the moral underpinnings of marriage among gays?
I mean, lack of legal recognition is an obstacle to marriage, but lack of monogamy seems like a bigger problem. You do hear pro-gay marriage Christians talk about "stable, committed relationships" among gays, it's usually just a premise used in the service of equating gay unions with marriage.
Of course, the conservative argument for gay marriage is that the inability to marry is a major reason for the lack of monogamy among gays, and that gay marriage will have a civilizing effect on gay sexual mores. I hope it is so.
However, I don't see, nor do I anticipate, a gay "true love waits" campaign or any other serious efforts to convince gays that marriage (now that they've got it) is the only legitimate context for sex. And, with marriage in full retreat among straights, it seems unlikely that we're going to see it really catch on among gays.
Consequently, it's hard not to conclude that gay marriage is not so much about extending the goods of marriage to those formerly marginalized by its structures as it is about further marginalizing and relativizing those structures. So, the point isn't so much that gays can now aspire to the ideal marriage, but that marriage isn't necessarily better or worse than any other arrangement of your sex life.
I mean, lack of legal recognition is an obstacle to marriage, but lack of monogamy seems like a bigger problem. You do hear pro-gay marriage Christians talk about "stable, committed relationships" among gays, it's usually just a premise used in the service of equating gay unions with marriage.
Of course, the conservative argument for gay marriage is that the inability to marry is a major reason for the lack of monogamy among gays, and that gay marriage will have a civilizing effect on gay sexual mores. I hope it is so.
However, I don't see, nor do I anticipate, a gay "true love waits" campaign or any other serious efforts to convince gays that marriage (now that they've got it) is the only legitimate context for sex. And, with marriage in full retreat among straights, it seems unlikely that we're going to see it really catch on among gays.
Consequently, it's hard not to conclude that gay marriage is not so much about extending the goods of marriage to those formerly marginalized by its structures as it is about further marginalizing and relativizing those structures. So, the point isn't so much that gays can now aspire to the ideal marriage, but that marriage isn't necessarily better or worse than any other arrangement of your sex life.
Friday, July 3, 2015
False equality means perpetual violence
When the law asserts falsely equates two things that are, in fact, irreducibly unequal, it commits itself to perpetual violence.
Because such irreducible inequality will continue to manifest itself despite the best efforts and intentions of the law and the true believers, there must be continual universal coercion to suppress the manifestation of the real inequality and silence anyone who dares to point it out, along with the construction of ever more fantastical scapegoats to explain the distance between reality and dogma.
Because such irreducible inequality will continue to manifest itself despite the best efforts and intentions of the law and the true believers, there must be continual universal coercion to suppress the manifestation of the real inequality and silence anyone who dares to point it out, along with the construction of ever more fantastical scapegoats to explain the distance between reality and dogma.
Vanity of vanities
Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!
We are unlikely to change the tide of history, or even change many minds, but maybe we can enjoy ourselves and, perhaps, do our small part to keep our corner of the Overton Window from collapsing.
Behold, all is vanity and a chase after wind.
vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!
We are unlikely to change the tide of history, or even change many minds, but maybe we can enjoy ourselves and, perhaps, do our small part to keep our corner of the Overton Window from collapsing.
Behold, all is vanity and a chase after wind.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)