As reported most recently in the New York Times, a small number of advocates are putting some of the nation’s largest retailers, including Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and Wal-Mart, on the spot for their indirect funneling of money to Christian non-profits that denounce homosexual practice and gay marriage.
Considering the hardly noticeable support given the conservative non-profits by the retail giants, we get some strong words: Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center are once again describing Christian organizations like the Family Research Council as “hate groups,” while in the other corner, Mike Huckabee has called the petition efforts “economic terrorism,” an infringement on consumer freedom. One wonders whether advocates are genuinely concerned that Apple and Microsoft’s negligibly indirect support of the Family Research Council is offending homosexuals, or they are simply reaping the benefits of our culture’s heightened sensitivity. Perhaps both.
Either way, the case points to something beyond itself. Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address reads: “If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality—its universality.” In a culture that is doing its best to affirm homosexuality as “right,” it does seem as though all efforts to oppose it are assumed to be “themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away.”
September 29th, 2011 | 11:23 am
Perhaps I misunderstand, but are you implying that the push for gay rights is morally equivalent to the institution of slavery? Sorry, but you don’t have to be a secular liberal to find that offensive. If you aren’t saying that, then your point is trivial. If I believe something is right then, yes, I believe those who oppose me are to some degree wrong and I try to counter them vigorously. But who doesn’t do that?
Is there something I missed?
September 29th, 2011 | 12:25 pm
Eric, I don’t believe that’s what he meant. The quote from Lincoln was, on my reading, only supposed to show that if x is morally wrong, then the state does have the authority to discourage x. The people who want the government to protect homosexuality are like the abolitionists, justified in using legal coercion if their cause is indeed right. There wasn’t really any comparison between slavery as such and homosexuality as such; slavery was only invoked to illustrate the legal point about restriction of speech.
September 29th, 2011 | 12:42 pm
Eric Mattingly writes:
Perhaps I misunderstand, but are you implying that the push for gay rights is morally equivalent to the institution of slavery?
*************
I believe what Misulia is arguing is that the “gay rights” movement is, in toto, intolerant of opposing views in a totalitarian fashion. The implication here is that any cultural, legal or political progress for “gay rights” leads to a lesser tolerance in society of traditional Christianity and, eventually (if not already), to the government-sponsored persecution of traditional Christians.
The problem I have with the argument is that “intolerance” is not defined precisely so that we can distinguish between the (A) verbal intolerance of a “gay rights” activism that produces speeches that criticizes/denounces traditional Christians, conducts boycotts, etc., and an (B) activism that resorts to harrassment, threats of violence, or violence that’s directed towards Christians and that becomes, over time, increasingly government-sponsored. There also appears to be an unstated (and unjustified) asumption that A necessarily leads to B.
I don’t buy either the argument or the implication.
September 29th, 2011 | 12:46 pm
He’s saying that gay rights people believe that in order to obtain full equality, any objections or protections of belief should simply be disregarded because the cause is vital. Like slavery, the objections of those opposed to change in the advocates eyes simply don’t matter.
Looking at the site, it’s just an affiliate program where people use it to buy things, and a small amount of the purchase is donated to charity. The vast majority of charities actually look to be single churches, so this outrage is a bit manufactured and could be argued to be more about punishing Christians and some Jews in general. While the FRC is there, it’s there more or less as an outlier.
Even then calling the FRC a “hate group” is a stretch, unless you think disagreement is hate.
September 29th, 2011 | 3:07 pm
I read many opponents of gay marriage/same sex unions who seem to not have a grasp on where the line is drawn between stating a moral position, insulting other people, or denying some basic human rights.
I point out yet again that a legal union is at worst morally neutral and in some instances is in fact a moral good. If the alternative to a permanent union is promiscuity, same-sex prostitution, alienation of adopted children, or legal quagmires about visiting someone in a hospital, then it would seem to be in the best interests of society to avoid such things.
The only leg Christian moralists have to stand on is the sexual act between two men or two women. And if that is the problem, they why don’t they advocate the criminalization of sex outside of one man/one woman marriage?
Without moral consistency on this point, I have a hard time taking the “Christian” argument against same sex unions seriously.
September 29th, 2011 | 3:28 pm
Well, funny. If my memory does not fail me, Christians have been boycotting Disney and other business with pro gay agendas, yet I never saw conservative politicians jump and cry “economic terrorism”.
Now, on the appalling comparison between slavery and homosexuality, yes, slavery is wrong as religious intolerance of homosexuals is.
September 29th, 2011 | 4:01 pm
@Todd,
Let me guess. You are not Christian.
I have no idea why you think government recognition of SSM has such moral power. It doesn’t seem to have it in the case of traditional marriage. But then such societal strictures preexisted government endorsement of the strictures. They have also faded in spite of the same.
Your first paragraph fascinates me. You’ve noted that SSM opponents are human and fallible. I wonder if you find SMM proponents equally human and fallible? Yesterday I learned the word “bulverism”, coined by C.S. Lewis. I believe this paragraph may qualify.
September 29th, 2011 | 6:20 pm
“I read many opponents of gay marriage/same sex unions who seem to not have a grasp on where the line is drawn between stating a moral position, insulting other people, or denying some basic human rights.”
people may have a right to privacy, but no one has a right, say, to call 1+1=3. in other words, no one has a right to a metaphysical impossibility. and if you assume from the outset that metaphysical impossibilities are “basic human rights,” then you’re begging the question.
“I point out yet again that a legal union is at worst morally neutral and in some instances is in fact a moral good. If the alternative to a permanent union is promiscuity, same-sex prostitution, alienation of adopted children, or legal quagmires about visiting someone in a hospital, then it would seem to be in the best interests of society to avoid such things.”
only if you’re a strict consequentialist. for your analysis to be valid, you’d have to argue for consequentialism first.
“The only leg Christian moralists have to stand on is the sexual act between two men or two women. And if that is the problem, they why don’t they advocate the criminalization of sex outside of one man/one woman marriage?”
at least some “christian moralists” would defend the right of others to engage privately in, say, homosexual sodomy — i.e. that homosexual sodomy should not be criminalized. in constrast, no one in the universe, not even “christian moralists,” has the ability — much less the “right” — to call “union” what is clearly not “union.” without doing arbitrary violence to the meaning of the word, that is.
“Without moral consistency on this point, I have a hard time taking the “Christian” argument against same sex unions seriously.”
arguments are either valid or invalid. whether or not they’re “christian arguments” is irrelevant.
September 29th, 2011 | 8:51 pm
@ Mike,
Wrong guess.
And sure, all human beings are fallible.
@ andrew
I have no problem with two or more people seeking legal privileges that align with a moral good. I see nothing metaphysical in civil law. It’s pretty much all politics: bad-mouthing and discrediting opponents, spreading propaganda. Junk like that.
September 30th, 2011 | 3:40 pm
Todd wrote: “Without moral consistency on this point, I have a hard time taking the “Christian” argument against same sex unions seriously.”
Ah, that explains the quotes around the word Christian in this sentence. You think the “Christians” really aren’t.
Given that all humans are fallible, why did you single out the SSM opponents? No need to answer, it’s a rhetorical question. You need to make your case, Todd, not just claim it.
October 3rd, 2011 | 6:55 pm
I read many opponents of gay marriage/same sex unions who seem to not have a grasp on where the line is drawn between stating a moral position, insulting other people, or denying some basic human rights.
I don’t know you personally and I don’t want to respond personally to your personal comment, but speaking on a more general level, I will say the gay rights movement has made a tactic out of relabeling dissent as “insult”. It saves them the trouble of actually defending actions that they would like to have taken as merely self-evidently “their right” – it is easier to merely label their ideological rival with ad hominems.
But I think it is the gay rights movement that has is having the problem distinguishing boundaries.
They take an issue that is not yet resolved, act as if it were totally resolved – in their favor, natch – and then get offended if anyone has any belief that contradicts what they take to be resolved.
Gloria Steinem once said you could tell a great many things by reversing an analogy. While I take her advice with extreme caution – feminism frequently tries to compare things that are not directly comparable – it is a useful tool when you are comparing things that genuinely are comparable.
In this case, I would posit that what is comparable are the belief systems about sexuality, family, and marriage.
One side of the coin says that marriage and family are a “choice”, and sexuality involves no choice but is given as-is and must be indulged and accommodated.
The other side of the same argument says that marriage is a restricted choice and family isn’t a choice at all: biology (or sacred bonds, for those who believe that God plays a role in bringing people together) determine who is and is not related to you; your family in terms of descent is limited. And whatever sexuality is (opinion being extremely split on this point), it does not change what marriage is – and it would be a bad thing for many reasons (some practical, some moral, some spiritual) to try to explicitly outlaw recognition of the link between marriage and procreation, as would have to happen for gay marriage to become “equal” to real marriage.
I say real marriage, because whether or not gays are allowed to enter into marriage, they are not willing to honor what marriage is – they demand the right to change it, “blank check” style, so that whatever they find they quote-unquote “need”, they will be entitled to.
As evidenced by the frauds and cheats they use in order to get kids instead of respecting that their union is doomed to be inherently childless. A marriage that includes adultery, fraud, lies, and covetousness is not a marriage, nor can these things result in a real family.. Lies and betrayal and broken trust don’t ever go away – they’re always there, even when you aren’t allowed to talk about it. No child ever really has “two daddies” – the absence of the other real parent is always a presence, even if it’s just in the form of the taboo, what must never be spoken about.
The part about not living a lie cuts both ways. But gays don’t want to accept that. They want to not someone else’s lie, but they have no problem forcing someone else into living their lie. And that puts honest people in a position where these gay couples in their eagerness to violate the limits of reality are doing bad things, and therefore honesty and justice demands more than meek “live and let live” appeasement.
Appeasing that which is genuinely immoral is not a morally neutral act.
If that insults the “gay rights community” – well, maybe they shouldn’t rely so heavily on argumentum ad misericordium.
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