Robert Oscar Lopez, a bisexual, Latino, lesbian-raised intellectual goes after critics of Mark Regnerus’s gay parenting study:
The problem with Sherkat’s disqualification of Regnerus’s work is a manifold chicken-and-egg conundrum. Though Sherkat uses the term “LGBT” in the same interview with Bartlett, he privileges that L and G and discriminates severely against the B, bisexuals.
Where do children of LGBT parents come from? If the parents are 100-percent gay or lesbian, then the chances are that the children were conceived through surrogacy or insemination, or else adopted. Those cases are such a tiny percentage of LGBT parents, however, that it would be virtually impossible to find more than a half-dozen in a random sampling of tens of thousands of adults.
Basically, Lopez argues, the self-appointed arbiters of legitimate sexual identity are furious that Regnerus’ study captured experiences like his own:
Most LGBT parents are, like me, and technically like my mother, “bisexual”—the forgotten B. We conceived our children because we engaged in heterosexual intercourse. Social complications naturally arise if you conceive a child with the opposite sex but still have attractions to the same sex. Sherkat calls these complications disqualifiable, as they are corrupting the purity of a homosexual model of parenting.
I would posit that children raised by same-sex couples are naturally going to be more curious about and experimental with homosexuality without necessarily being pure of any attraction to the opposite sex. Hence they will more likely fall into the bisexual category, as did I—meaning that the children of LGBT parents, once they are young adults, are likely to be the first ones disqualified by the social scientists who now claim to advocate for their parents.
I have some reservations about Lopez’s suggestion elsewhere that difference itself is a bad thing (“growing up different from other people is difficult and the difficulties raise the risk that children will develop maladjustments or self-medicate with alcohol and other dangerous behaviors”), but that’s easy enough for me to say as someone who was raised in a thoroughly traditional home.
The real thing that enrages Regnerus’s critics, of course, is not the design of his study but his violation of sexual orthodoxy. Lopez is another dissenter from the dogma of sexual liberationism, and, as he explains, he came by his heresy the hard way:
In the Bronx gay world, I cleaned out enough apartments of men who’d died of AIDS to understand that resistance to sexual temptation is central to any kind of humane society. Sex can be hurtful not only because of infectious diseases but also because it leaves us vulnerable and more likely to cling to people who don’t love us, mourn those who leave us, and not know how to escape those who need us but whom we don’t love. . . . That’s why I am conservative.
More here. Lopez also has a book that looks well worth buying.
August 6th, 2012 | 11:55 am
In terms of sexuality, gays who grew up in traditional households benefited from at least seeing some kind of functional courtship rituals around them. I had no clue how to make myself attractive to girls. When I stepped outside of my mothers’ trailer, I was immediately tagged as an outcast because of my girlish mannerisms, funny clothes, lisp, and outlandishness.
I have sympathy for Lopez, but he seems to blame every problem in his life on having been raised by two women. I don’t think that is credible. Lisping and effeminacy are not the result of being raised by women. There are millions of single mothers raising boys in the United States, many of them no doubt with the help of a mother/grandmother sister/aunt or other single mothers. Can any research be cited to show that such boys have lisps and are effeminate? Is it a characteristic of single mothers or lesbians to dress their boys in “funny clothes.”
I imagine Mark Regnerus’s study demonstrates exactly what it demonstrates—that the children he chose to study tended to have more problems than children from intact homes. As a study of people who answer yes to the question of whether or not their parents had a same-sex romantic relationship, I can only assume it presents its findings fairly and honestly. The problem is that it is being used as ammunition against same-sex marriage and same-sex parenting, and it is not a study of same-sex marriage or same-sex parenting. Only a very small number of subjects in the study were actually actually raised by “two mommies” or “two daddies.” Lopez himself actually did seem to have “two mommies,” but I don’t see any reason to attribute the problems he reports to the fact that he was raised by two lesbians. It is very tempting to blame the difficulties you have in life on those who raised you, whether they were a same-sex couple, an opposite-sex couple, or a single individual. But it seems very likely to me that Lopez would have had much the same experience as a child if he’d been raised by a man and a woman rather than two women.
August 6th, 2012 | 12:59 pm
“But it seems very likely to me that Lopez would have had much the same experience as a child if he’d been raised by a man and a woman rather than two women.”
Really? And how would you know that?
I read the article and a some of the Regnerus study and had some of the same questions you do – but I have no idea of what Lopez’s life would have been like and neither do you.
August 6th, 2012 | 2:28 pm
The real thing that enrages Regnerus’s critics, of course, is not the design of his study
They’re really angry at the design of his study because we’re supposed to take it as accepted and unquestioning that the only “fair” comparison between families headed by gay couples vs. straight couples is if you select idealized gay couples.
Controlling for race & income alone would be enough to wreck the narrative.
But most people weren’t even aware there was such a narrative. They thought that the scientific community was of course controlling for variables – how could it pass peer review otherwise?
But what does it mean to control for variables? This is where science gets problematic, because fair is a value judgment. Is it fair to include all gay and bisexual people in a study, or is it fair to select for only those gays who live the “right” way, even if that isn’t how most gays really are?
I read that gay men are far more likely to divorce than straight men, and lesbians far more likely to divorce than gay men.
All of which does not change the fact that, whether the children are found to be harmed (how many thousands of variables would have to be tested for a negative finding to mean anything or not?), either way, having a mother is a thing to be valued, and therefore no parent has the right to deliberately create a situation where the child is going to be motherless. Ditto in reverse fatherlessness. And no child should ever be forced into a parent’s narrative.
If we examine what children have reason to value – instead of just reducing their interests to make them fit into someone else’s narrative – there can be no doubt that the two steady relationships in a child’s life should be his mother and father, and for a gay man or woman that means the best thing they could do as a parent is to find a reliable, steady coparent to make children with – then let the child call their same-sex lover “stepmother” or “stepfather”, because that’s what they really are.
Marital benefits should be broken up similar to what stepparents get: the procreative benefits shared with the mother or father of your child, the life partner benefits going to whomever you designate.
August 6th, 2012 | 2:36 pm
And no child should ever be forced into a parent’s narrative.
This is going to be recognized as a new form of abuse. Probably pretty soon, now that I see multiple children of those supposedly harmless “alternative family structures” are starting to argue with the narrative.
It is normal, natural, and even right for a parent to indoctrinate their child into the parents’ values. People on both sides of the political aisle do this, and they’re supposed to. But when this indoctrination starts involving shame and guilt for the child if the child doesn’t deny reality, then it becomes toxic. Taboos aren’t healthy, and neither are lies. Where the line should be drawn between benign (sharing an ideology) vs. harmful (actively polluting the child’s sense of reality) is going to be a hot topic in the future.
August 6th, 2012 | 3:12 pm
Really? And how would you know that?
Steve Billingsley,
I wouldn’t know, which is why I said it seems to me.
If anyone can produce evidence that lisping and effeminacy are more common in boys raised by women (or lesbian women), then I would be interested to see it. But I have never heard such a thing, and if Lopez is blaming these two traits of his on his mother and her partner, I really don’t have any reason to accept it.
Nevertheless, I sympathize with him, since it is always difficult being “different” as a kid. The right father or father figure might have helped, but then again, the wrong one could have hurt. Fathers do not always embrace effeminate bisexual sons.
August 6th, 2012 | 4:28 pm
David,
I don’t have an issue with any of the rest of your comment – but you didn’t say “it seems to me” you said “it seems very likely”. There is a difference.
As I said, I have some of the same questions you do (lisping and effeminacy, the second of which is a very subjective term, what does that even mean?). And the study by Regnerus, although interesting in some ways – is by no means authoritative. I do sympathize as well with the author of the article. I just don’t have any basis to comment on what a different family structure would have meant to his development. A loving and healthy father figure couldn’t have hurt, however.
August 6th, 2012 | 5:24 pm
I don’t have an issue with any of the rest of your comment – but you didn’t say “it seems to me” you said “it seems very likely”. There is a difference.
Steve Billingsley,
For the record, I said, “It seems very likely to me.”
I just don’t have any basis to comment on what a different family structure would have meant to his development. A loving and healthy father figure couldn’t have hurt, however.
This is the problem. If we have no basis to comment on what a different family structure would have meant to his development, we also have no basis for concluding it was the family structure he described that was responsible for his problems.
August 6th, 2012 | 5:26 pm
Lopez’s account is very moving. It brought back a time in my life when my mother divorced my father and took up with a woman. I was 19. Fortunately the woman lived a thousand miles away so I didn’t have to see her very often. Later on my mother moved to the city where this woman lived, and shared an apartment for a while. I did not want to hear about any details of their relationship. I never asked, and my mother never told. It was horribly upsetting. Bad enough that my parents had gotten divorced, but then having to deal with this! I don’t believe my mother was a lesbian; the woman was not the cause of the divorce, and my mother had been obviously heterosexual all her life.
August 6th, 2012 | 5:31 pm
continued…
It was simply that she found someone who cared about her, someone who was, I am certain, a lesbian. And it was the 1960s, so she probably felt that she could do something as daring as what she did.
I cannot analyze very well why it was so devastating to me. The divorce turned me numb; my mother’s relationship unmoored me, turned my world upside down, makes me cry even now as I think of it.
August 6th, 2012 | 5:52 pm
Both the Regnerus study & Lopez’s article commenting on it reveal a problematic aspect of gay identity politics that presents difficulties in studying this phenomena. These problems are one of identity and fluidity.
Approaching the topic with a greater willingness to view the phenomena of homosexuality outside of the narrow confines of sexual liberationist dogma – allows one to understand that gay parenting as a subject will always be plagued by these problems of categorization.
“The point is subtle and powerful, and addresses a confusing false symmetry that
activists attempt to create between heterosexuality and homosexuality, as though they were somehow two equivalent poles or ends of a spectrum, the numerically minority status of one being an incidental and trivial fact. In other words, the data illustrates “just how normative heterosexuality is,” even for homosexuals. The converse—“just how normative homosexuality is, even for heterosexuals”—is false. Heterosexuality exerts a constant, normative pull throughout the life cycle upon everyone. (There is no parallel with race: One cannot say, “Findings indicate just how normative whiteness is, but not blackness,” nor its converse.)
Jeffrey Satinover M.D. Ph.D.
I remember back in the early 1990′s having a discussion with a philosophy professor about some of the dogma’s of the sexual revolution. He speculated that homosexuality would be sold to the American people as fixed and genetic for no other reason than anti-discrimination laws required an “immutable characteristic”.. His suspicion was of coarse confirmed by near history. The truth however is much more varied and the real world much more inconvenient.
This mirrors the argument over the total number of homosexuals in the population. A number that stood at 10% in popualr reporting as a trasparent attempt to inflate the numbers for a (again) poltical purposes. That researcher was pro-gay, yet still ran into steadfast denials and vitriol for gathering data that showed a much smaller percentage & a large number of “bi-sexuals” reporting fluidity.
“Gates is best known for his finding a few years back that only 3.8 percent of Americans are self-identified homosexuals, He was heavily criticized as a traitor to the cause. “The question to me has always been why Gates .??.??. wants to punish us so,” said the radical activist Larry Kramer. “
August 6th, 2012 | 8:12 pm
He speculated that homosexuality would be sold to the American people as fixed and genetic for no other reason than anti-discrimination laws required an “immutable characteristic”..
Fitzgerald,
In the federal courts, an immutable characteristic is one that is “so fundamental to the identities or consciences of its members that members either cannot or should not be required to change it.” Note that the law treats religion as an immutable characteristic, and also note the following from a Pew Research Center survey titled Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.:
Anti-discrimination laws do not require a fixed or genetic characteristic. The EEOC prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion and also pregnancy. Many state laws also prohibit discrimination based on marital status.
A number that stood at 10% in popualr reporting as a trasparent attempt to inflate the numbers for a (again) poltical purposes.
Of course, gay rights activists would like as large a number as possible, but the 10%, although attributed to Kinsey, is not what Kinsey actually said, and I don’t know anyone who takes it seriously.
August 7th, 2012 | 2:59 pm
David Nickol (writes)
“In the federal courts, an immutable characteristic is one that is “so fundamental to the identities or consciences of its members that members either cannot or should not be required to change it.” Note that the law treats religion as an immutable characteristic, Anti-discrimination laws do not require a fixed or genetic characteristic. The EEOC prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion and also pregnancy. Many state laws also prohibit discrimination based on marital status. “
#1. I’m afraid I have you at a bit of a disadvantage because I am an attorney myself well versed in this area of the law. The immutable characteristic language is only one prong of a multi prong “legal test” that is part of established Constitutional jurisprudence. Religion is also included because it is specifically singled out for protection by the U.S. Constitution; being it the first of our first freedoms mentioned in the bill of rights.
If a class of people is not specifically enumerated in our constitution than the legislature has to create a “protected class” who will be treated narrowly as the legislation is drafted. Regardless of how a individual state or piece of federal legislation treat a certain group, to be a “protected class” and subject to “strict scrutiny” it is always the courts themselves that need to run through an analysis were the “immutable” characteristic is only one prong.
These other categories, are included based on criteria that are thought to justify extending special protection:(a.) immutable characteristics, (b.)economic deprivation, (c.)political powerlessness, and (d.) a history of pervasive discrimination against the group.
Even African Americans needed to go through this test even though they were the subject of the 14th Amendment themselves and therefore its original intent to give them specifically “equal protection” under the law.
The idea was that due to the combination of these criteria the class in question was incapable of winning at the ballot box and therefore justified judicial intervention on there behalf.
Heretofore most courts agree now simply ignoring this test and it precedents when it comes to homosexuals as a class. One of the more laughable aspects of the Romer decision was its insistence that homosexuals were “politically powerless” – and were incapable of combating the state legislatures specific prohibitions of treating them as a protected class.
#2. Perhaps this helps explain my professors prediction about how homosexuality was now to be presented to the public. In era’s just past homosexual activists often portrayed homosexuality as a choice that they embraced, in part to overcome the stigma they felt when psychology had it listed as a mental disorder & they wished to highlight the idea that they embraced this as a positive identity based in their autonomous individuality and sexual self expression so popular in literature of the period of the early sexual revolution.
It was also a comment received as not simply a legal strategy but a public relations approach.. the activists understanding that they had to downplay the fluidity experienced by many who could fit under the homosexual label; much better to have it understood as an inborn trait (like race) were any attempt at change was impossible. Indeed many homosexual activists present this question as they deciding criteria …(i.e.) If homosexuals are “born that way” than its “not their fault” and all demands for what they call “equality” must be meet because they cannot “change”. Its an overly simplistic mantra but that’s part of its utility…it (paradoxically) plays on the emotions most people experience when considering homosexuality as an infliction that people suffer under.
Both the legal and P. R. dimensions of this drive are confounded and challenged buy the lived experience of so many who identified as homosexual for certain periods of their life, by bi-sexual’s and there larger numbers, and by the general fluidity and multiple rational’s real people have for engaging in homosexual behavior. This is what I understand the controversy surrounding Mark Regnerus’s gay parenting study’s critics to be exploiting as a “fatal flaw” problems of categorization that homosexuality itself lends itself to by its very nature. Likewise; Robert Oscar Lopez plea centers on this demension. It is why it resonates with many people’s deeper understanding of the complexity of this issue outside activists narrow and self-serving framing. Terms he uses like the “forgotten B” and the insistence of his peer’s in college that he was “really gay” represent for many intellects a transparent attempt to downplay the problems of “immutability” (As I say above – a necessary component for inclusion in a “protected class”) and create a solidarity amongst the rank and file that plays into both the legal & public relations aspects of the campaign for “gay rights”
If you would compare the approach of homosexual discussion in the early 1960′s with that of today; you would see the irony of the “conservative” side of the debate being more like those early pioneers. It is us who bot appreciate and are willing to discuss the complexity and diversity within homosexuality; its degree’s, fluidity, and transience throughout life. By contrast the self proclaimed sexual sophisticates are now the rigid, inflexible and agenda driven group that insists on some labels and discounts others completely.
August 8th, 2012 | 5:14 am
Fitzgerald,
“These other categories, are included based on criteria that are thought to justify extending special protection:(a.) immutable characteristics, (b.)economic deprivation, (c.)political powerlessness, and (d.) a history of pervasive discrimination against the group”
Some gays, especially women, do report fluidity, but others report immutability. Until recently, being out did lead to economic deprivation and still does in many parts of the country. I don’t know why you mock the idea of political powerlessness. At less than 4% of the population, how much political power does this group have? And I notice you didn’t say a word about pervasive discrimination.
There’s clearly a number of good reasons to protect this class of people.
August 8th, 2012 | 10:44 am
I’m afraid I have you at a bit of a disadvantage because I am an attorney myself well versed in this area of the law. The immutable characteristic language is only one prong of a multi prong “legal test” that is part of established Constitutional jurisprudence.
Fitzgerald,
Your post seems to me to confuse the concept of suspect class with protected class. The four criteria you mention (including the immutable trait) help define a suspect class. So far, the only suspect classes under federal law are race, religion, and national origin. Your implication previously was that there was an effort (or perhaps conspiracy) to falsely define homosexuality as an immutable trait so that (I assume) sexual orientation would be a suspect class. As I pointed out, religion is a suspect class, is considered an immutable trait, and can be changed at will (and often is, in the United States). I don’t see how your explanation of suspect class, which you never actually identified, changes anything I said previously. It’s possible that sexual orientation might someday be considered a suspect class, but there has certainly been no campaign by the gay rights movement, psychiatrists, and psychologists, to twist medical or scientific findings about homosexuality in order to get sexual orientation recognized as a suspect class.
As for protected class, all it takes for a group to be a protected class is for government to pass anti-discrimination legislation to protect that class. People over 40, the disabled, and veterans are covered by federal anti-discrimination laws, and so are protected classes under those laws, but this has nothing to do with suspect classification.
Any anti-discrimination law that protects gay people is going to use the classification sexual orientation, which will include bisexuality. Bisexuals are not forgotten. The B in LGBT is for bisexual. All the way back in Kinsey’s research in the 1940s, he devised a 7-point scale for sexual orientation, with 0 being exclusively heterosexual and 6 being exclusively homosexual. Kinsey said, “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories… The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.”
If you would compare the approach of homosexual discussion in the early 1960′s with that of today; you would see the irony of the “conservative” side of the debate being more like those early pioneers.
I am not really sure what you are talking about, but I don’t think anyone has ever denied the basic concept that sexual orientation is a continuum and that there are men and women who have homosexual experiences when young and go on to marry and have children, and also that there are men and women who marry and have children and who later discover or acknowledge homosexual impulses and act on them. What gay people and psychiatrists do treat with extreme skepticism are claims that someone who would classify himself as a Kinsey 5 or 6 is going to go through some kind of conversion process and turn into a Kinsey 0. But certainly someone who is toward the middle of the scale and has had nothing but homosexual experiences all his life can certainly begin having heterosexual experiences, marry, and (hopefully) be faithful to his wife. And it can go the other way around. Someone who has had exclusively heterosexual experiences can start acting on his homosexual impulses and choose to live as a gay person. What seems extremely unlikely, however, is for someone who is exclusively homosexual in orientation (Kinsey 0) or someone who is decidedly bisexual (Kinsey 3 or 4), to have some kind of switch and never experience any same-sex attraction at all.
August 8th, 2012 | 4:22 pm
Michael (writes)
“I don’t know why you mock the idea of political powerlessness. At less than 4% of the population, how much political power does this group have? And I notice you didn’t’ say a word about pervasive discrimination. “
One needs to understand the context that this test was developed under and the lengths the court had to go to in order to apply this suspect class designation. The political powerlessness aspect included poll taxes, voter intimidation across entire regions, gerrymandering, literacy tests unequally applied (like guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar) & organized campaigns to suppress voter registration among African Americans. The remedy was the voters rights act.
As far as “persistent and pervasive” discrimination we have an entire regime of Jim Crow laws, segregated lunch counters, theaters, restrooms, public education, entire neighborhoods, city services as well as the abuses described above. The discrimination experienced was not isolated or antidotal, it had to be experienced an a “persistent & pervasive” way amongst the group as a whole.
Perhaps once you understand the extraordinary lengths that the Judicial branch went through in order to declare African Americans a suspect class you may better appreciate why many African Americans resent and are offended by the comparison of their struggle to the current push for same-sex “marriage”.
Earlier we had a conversation were I was attempting to convey that many pro-gay and pro same-sex “marriage” advocates seem to suffer from an inability to understand how their opposition views this argument. Your rejoinder was along the lines of “why do you accuse everyone of bad faith”. That was not my point, and goes to my point about the inability of the cultural left to understand the mindset of their opposition.
Towards that end, this article perhaps can go along way in aiding your understanding of your oppositions world view on this subject.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/07/5905
August 8th, 2012 | 5:01 pm
David Nickol (writes)
“Your implication previously was that there was an effort (or perhaps conspiracy) to falsely define homosexuality as an immutable trait so that (I assume) sexual orientation would be a suspect class…..[b]ut there has certainly been no campaign by the gay rights movement, psychiatrists, and psychologists, to twist medical or scientific findings about homosexuality in order to get sexual orientation recognized as a suspect class.”
On the contrary, many think there has been such an organized campaign to distort the data for the purposes of judicial decision making. The following is a brief submitted to the Supreme Court in the Lawrence v Texas case that directly accuses multiple prominent organizations of these bad faith efforts. The last two paragraphs of this brief demonstrate the world view of many traditionalists and conservatives regarding the politicized nature of what passes for science. I recommend at least reading that much if not the entire brief.
http://www.narth.com/docs/TheTrojanCouchSatinover.pdf
While it may not convince you, it may at least give you a better understanding of your adversaries world view.
David Nickol (writes)
“As I pointed out, religion is a suspect class, is considered an immutable trait, and can be changed at will (and often is, in the United States).”
You seem to have the cart before the hoarse here. Religion is an enumerated right, with the free exercise clause being the first of our first freedoms mentioned in article one of the Bill of Rights. The four prong “suspect class” designation came well after this was established. The fact that some government departments & agencies may classify religion as a “suspect class” for purposes of administrative policy is NOT to say that its mutability therefore becomes germane to the four prong test. The test for suspect class is the same regardless of religions inclusion, because religion has its own constitutional protections regardless of the later devised “suspect class” designation.
David Nickol (writes)
“Any anti-discrimination law that protects gay people is going to use the classification sexual orientation, which will include bisexuality. Bisexuals are not forgotten….but I don’t think anyone has ever denied the basic concept that sexual orientation is a continuum and that there are men and women who have homosexual experiences….What gay people and psychiatrists do treat with extreme skepticism are claims that someone who would classify himself as a Kinsey 5 or 6 is going to go through some kind of conversion process and turn into a Kinsey 0…. “
Honest and fruitful debate in a liberal democracy requires a certain “generosity of spirit” when it comes to adversaries arguments. My point about Mr. Lopez article and my philosophy professors comments was that the fluidity of human sexuality as well as the very presence of bi-sexuality was down played, forgotten, ignored and even denied by homosexual;l activists. This seems readily apparent to those who follow the popular press, gay activists arguments, or the gender left in our universities literature.
This tactic is down to simplify their narrative and brush over problematic categories in a fluid sexual environment. They avoid becoming bogged down by complexity when it comes to arguments ranging from same-sex “marriage” to the possibility of therapeutic change. I only wish that our national dialogue, professional organizations press releases, and gay activists were as willing to admit the complications present in human sexuality as you are.
I find it hard to believe that any honest observer has failed to miss the strident nature of gay advocacy. For example; this stridency forms the basis of the attacks against Mark Regnerus’s gay parenting study. Instead of admitting the categorization problems inherent in homosexuality as an outlier among human sexuality, and the difficulties of random sample social science in finding perfect categories; activists have instead used this very difficulty to dismiss and smear Mark Regnerus and his work as unscientific and fatally flawed.
I also think you could benefit from the article I recommended to Michael (above)
Many pro-gay and pro same-sex “marriage” advocates seem to suffer from an inability to understand how their opposition views there argument. One is constantly confronted with the inability of the cultural left to understand the mindset of their opposition.
Towards that end, this article perhaps can go along way in aiding your understanding of your oppositions world view on this subject.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/07/5905
August 8th, 2012 | 11:58 pm
Fitzgerald,
“The political powerlessness aspect included poll taxes, voter intimidation across entire regions, gerrymandering, literacy tests unequally applied (like guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar) & organized campaigns to suppress voter registration among African Americans. The remedy was the voters rights act”
What other groups have passed this rigorous test? In other words, it sounds like you are requiring a bar only one group has ever had to pass.
One issue that you didn’t address in your list of powerlessness was the phenomenon familiar to many blacks, passing. This is the kind of powerlessness that gays have faced. The smart play was to pretend you were straight, marry, have children, and learn to mock people just like yourself. To stop passing as straight, reveal that you love someone of the same sex, and you will be disowned by your family, lose your job, and be subjected to the violence not only of neighbors but of the law, polite society, and good Christians everywhere.
I hope you read my response to your last post in the First Thoughts article about Regnerus. You seem to have romanticized away the tyranny that made the 14th amendment possible.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2012/07/23/in-defense-of-mark-regnerus
“Towards that end, this article perhaps can go along way in aiding your understanding of your oppositions world view on this subject”
You would do better to lose the condescension and assume that maybe, just maybe, I’ve heard these arguments before. Readers of First Things tend to be well read, and as I said, I probably grew up more conservative than you.
So yes, I’ve heard Franck’s arguments before. I understand where he’s coming from, and he’s still wrong. He misunderstands the Bible. He misunderstands history. He misunderstands how societies work. Gallagher’s reflections aren’t as “deep” as he thinks. And his interpretation of Corvino’s “chilling honesty” is overblown. If Corvino agrees with Gallagher’s summary of the pro-marriage case, then I don’t agree with Corvino’s argument.
If you agree with Gallagher that “the strengthening of a culture of marriage that successfully connects sex, love, children, and mothers and fathers,” then I’d like to see you start with the Roman Church and ask it to turn off the annulment spigot. In what sense can it claim that my brother never married sacramentally when he had a papal blessing and his civil marriage lasted thirty years and produced three children? Didn’t Gallagher say something about how children are the reason marriage exists? Did my nieces and nephews lose their parents in this annulment?
The Roman Church should also stop accepting the remarried without a good, healthy public confession, complete with public acts of contrition. I want to see Gingrich make a pilgrimage before he can marry in the Roman Church and take communion.
If the Roman Church really believes that civil marriage is all so important to enlist in its cause, then I hope it will also deny communion to those who married first outside the Roman Church.
And then let’s have a little consistency in its adoption agencies and parochial schools. If you’re not going to let gay couples adopt or bring their children to school, then cut out not just the singles but the remarried and all other adulterers.
August 9th, 2012 | 9:54 am
And then let’s have a little consistency in its adoption agencies and parochial schools. If you’re not going to let gay couples adopt or bring their children to school, then cut out not just the singles but the remarried and all other adulterers.
While I agree that singles should not adopt, it must be pointed out that at least a single person could marry in the future, thus providing the child with a mom or dad.
Whereas “gay couples” are committed to the idea that gender, which is relevant to them, is not relevant to the child – a position that necessarily requires child abuse: the child must be forced to accept that a man = a woman, that it’s selfish for the child to want a father instead of a second mother, that no loss is in fact present – a proposition that requires the construction of taboos, forcing the child into protecting the parent in the act of telling lies, at the expense of the child’s well-being.
No child should ever be motherless or fatherless. But far more horrible is the motherless or fatherless child who is being used, and must pretend that being motherless or fatherless isn’t a horrible loss. The truth is, both relationships are necessary, and are among the most valuable things a human being can ever know.
Every argument the gay man or woman makes about how this or that is important to the gay person ought to be applied to the child as well, and stealing such an experience/relationship from the child should be viewed as hateful and bigoted just as it would be viewed as hateful and bigoted to prevent a gay person from experiencing the love of a spouse.
It is unfortunate that greed has driven gay rights leaders to persuade gays to covet more than is actually theirs by right.
August 9th, 2012 | 9:56 am
Many pro-gay and pro same-sex “marriage” advocates seem to suffer from an inability to understand how their opposition views there argument. One is constantly confronted with the inability of the cultural left to understand the mindset of their opposition.
I would argue that in many cases it is willful ignorance: given the chance to know how their opposition views their arguments, they choose not to look – and prefer instead to embrace the tactical over the legitimate.
August 9th, 2012 | 2:14 pm
Michael(writes)
“What other groups have passed this rigorous test? In other words, it sounds like you are requiring a bar only one group has ever had to pass”
It is not my test or my bar. It is that of Supreme Court precedent. The test is so seemingly high because what was being done was considered an extraordinary use of judicial power at the time.
The point is that homosexuals have every opportunity to win their demands through the democratic process. That like woman (who could not vote) or like the disabled (statistically small) or any other group…they need to go through legitimate democratic channels if they want their goals to have the sheen of legitimacy rather than be impositions and seen more like Roe.
Michael(writes)
“To stop passing as straight, reveal that you love someone of the same sex, and you will be disowned by your family, lose your job, and be subjected to the violence not only of neighbors but of the law, polite society, and good Christians everywhere.”
You seem to paint this as an ipso-facto result of coming out. I think that’s a little strong. Often it was “understood” by employers, family and the like and just kept quite. Regardless none of what you mention above was “de jure” or government discrimination. It was social stigma but not a regime designed to thwart political participation.
That is the point about the four prong test. It was designed to highlight that black Americans could not win equal rights through the political process. It was not a general plea for sympathy or designed to show victim hood.
If I was arguing this prong (persistent and pervasive discrimination) I would highlight how ordinances against gay “congregating” violated the right to free association and prevented them from organizing politically. Or I would argue that laws against pornography prevented the distribution of many gay magazines and was a violation of free speech. Sadly however, these efforts at both congregating (think stonewall) & gay magazines had as their obvious intent purely prurient interests and access to sex rather than any demonstrated political purpose.
There is no evidence to suggest that the government was suppressing active political association or speech to suppress homosexual political organizing.
Michael(writes)
“I hope you read my response to your last post in the First Thoughts article about Regnerus. You seem to have romanticized away the tyranny that made the 14th amendment possible.”
I really don’t understand how you see me as ” romanticized away the tyranny that made the 14th amendment possible” – Yes; we fought a civil war and the south was strong armed into adopting the mutiple amendment including the 14th. Despite this fact it still took the courts another hundred years to finally apply it correctly. In doing so they developed the four prong test for suspect classification necessary in their view for justifying such judicial intervention.
I am attempting to contrast other groups fights for what they considered equal rights, from woman, to blacks to the disabled. You keep bringing up different points that evade my general thrust. That thrust is that the American people can be persuaded and that the judicial activism that has propelled gay “rights” and same-sex “marriage” is unwarranted outside the fact that gay activists know any fair hearing of their arguments will not result in victory. So they prefer an activist Judicial approach that by- passes both established legal precedent & democratic debate and participation.
Michael(writes)
“You would do better to lose the condescension and assume that maybe, just maybe, I’ve heard these arguments before.”
I’m sure you have heard the arguments before. I am not trying to be condescending. However for the umpteenth time, its not important that you agree with the other side or even be aware of their argument. Rather it has been my point that you demonstrate in your posts that you understand these arguments. That way your adversaries don’t have to rehash worn ground and can get to the crux of issues without needing to answer a myriad of basic questions that should already be apparent to you.
August 9th, 2012 | 2:40 pm
Blake,
“I agree that singles should not adopt”
I’m glad to hear you take such a strong, principled stand. I expect you to follow through by routinely castigating Catholic Charities for robbing children of their rights to have both a mother and a father every time they place a child with a single person. And I expect you to follow through by accusing them of lying and dishonesty by doing otherwise all these years.
“I would argue that in many cases it is willful ignorance”
And perhaps many conservatives suffer from a similar disability and a similar willful ignorance. Present company excluded of course.
August 9th, 2012 | 5:46 pm
Fitzgerald,
“It is not my test or my bar.”
That’s not the point. The point is that you are describing a bar that was set for only one group. Perhaps a different bar is required for a different group that has different characteristics.
“The point is that homosexuals have every opportunity to win their demands through the democratic process.”
You act as if the courts are not part of the democratic process.
“disabled (statistically small)”
At any one moment, the disabled are small, but if you live long enough, you can expect to belong to that group. Women and blacks are large groups.
I thus repeat my question: can you name a small, despised group that has secured their rights through the legislative process?
“That is the point about the four prong test. It was designed to highlight that black Americans could not win equal rights through the political process. It was not a general plea for sympathy or designed to show victim hood”
I don’t want you to sympathize with gays and I don’t want you to think of them as victims. I want you to recognize their right to have their lifetime partner recognized as their next of kin and to have any children recognized as their family. In short, I want them to be recognized as married.
“If I was arguing this prong (persistent and pervasive discrimination) I would highlight how ordinances against gay “congregating” violated the right to free association and prevented them from organizing politically.”
But congregation isn’t the issue. Marriage is. And there is persistent and pervasive discrimination against the recognition of their sexuality, and that failure has led to a further failure to recognize their right to marry.
“the south was strong armed into adopting the mutiple amendment including the 14th”
Not just strong armed. When the democratic process didn’t produce the desired result, the federal government instituted martial law and conducted its own elections in order for “the people” to reach the desired conclusion.
“Despite this fact it still took the courts another hundred years to finally apply it correctly.”
Think about that. Even after federal usurpation of the democratic process, it took a hundred years for the courts to figure out some way to protect the rights of a group that made up 20-40% of the population in some states. And yet somehow you think the rights of 3% of the population will be recognized even though they are despised by most religious people and even though they have all of the usual civil rights of voting, assembly, etc.
“So they prefer an activist Judicial approach that by- passes both established legal precedent & democratic debate and participation”
They don’t “prefer” a judicial approach. They are working with governors and the President, with legislatures, and yes, with the judiciary. They’ve had successes and failures in each area. You might remember that the civil rights movement also worked with all three branches. You might remember that conservatives also decried their efforts as undemocratic and relying on appeals to sympathy and victimhood.
“That way your adversaries don’t have to rehash worn ground and can get to the crux of issues without needing to answer a myriad of basic questions that should already be apparent to you”
What are you talking about? When have I asked you to rehash worn ground?
August 9th, 2012 | 8:33 pm
Blake (writes)
While I agree that singles should not adopt, it must be pointed out that at least a single person could marry in the future, thus providing the child with a mom or dad.
Most single person adoptions are caused because of two reasons stemming from the death of the child’s parents. Either provisions are made to leave the child in the care of a particular individual who is not married because the parents determined (for any number of reasons) that this person was best able to care for the child or the child was familiar with the individual and less trauma would occur in a situation were unfamiliarity would compound a tragedy. Also, when provisions have not been made, the court awards custody to the next of kin automatically, unless that relative refuses..again..the legal rational is the same as above. Clearly this is not the law vitiating the need for both genders as both situations may place the child with a married couple. It is however seen as part and parcel of the right of the parents to award custody after death to whom they see fit and a practical consideration of courts that assume kin altruism.
Blake (writes in response to something I wrote)
“I would argue that in many cases it is willful ignorance: given the chance to know how their opposition views their arguments, they choose not to look – and prefer instead to embrace the tactical over the legitimate.”
Indeed. This builds up over time & reveals the authors to be incapable of establishing a basis for exchange. When you go wide they go narrow; when you go narrow (to follow) they go wide. Some are engaged (as you point out) in a mere tactical gambit. Others may be what Lenin called “useful idiots”. Often one gets the idea that we are dealing with what a psychologist friend of mine says is called “narcissistic personality disorder”; a condition linked to homosexuality & the preferred diagnosis since homosexuality was taken out of DMD.
Regardless of the cause one is presented over and over gain with a pronounced inability to demonstrate a real understanding of the oppositions world view. I donut see this on the side of proponents of marriage. To the contrary they seem well versed in their critics arguments.
Note the eight or so responses (from bottom up) to toadyish Public Square article on the rationality of arguments against changing the definition of marriage.
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/08/opposing-gay-marriage-is-rational-not-religious#commentContent
Not only are they riddled with historical errors, the progress as if they have not even read the article.
August 9th, 2012 | 8:36 pm
I’m glad to hear you take such a strong, principled stand. I expect you to follow through by routinely castigating Catholic Charities for robbing children of their rights to have both a mother and a father every time they place a child with a single person.
Well, I don’t think singles should adopt.
But I am not going to pretend it’s as bad as gay couples: the single parent is not forcing the child into noxious lies.
Single parenthood is neglectful. Gay couples forcing children into their fantasy world is abusive, as well as being neglectful.
August 9th, 2012 | 8:37 pm
“I would argue that in many cases it is willful ignorance”
And perhaps many conservatives suffer from a similar disability and a similar willful ignorance. Present company excluded of course.
You forgot to include what conservatives are supposedly ignorant of.
August 9th, 2012 | 8:48 pm
I am attempting to contrast other groups fights for what they considered equal rights, from woman, to blacks to the disabled.
The real problem with what we call equal rights is that everyone can’t have them. Only people in “deserving” groups. Gays, but not incestuous couples; if incestuous couple, then not people who object to incestuous couples.
The only way we can have true equality is to get away from identity as basis for claims and instead make the claims themselves the basis of claims. Instead of “black trumps gay trumps feminist” (where whose claim “wins” is based on a hierarchy of victimhood and special identity classification), we need to recognize that all human beings have certain rights, and that the rights – not the people – are what ought to be viewed as hierarchical.
For instance: Is the right to be respected by society higher or lower than the right to religious liberty?
Equality – that is, justice – demands that the answer be the same, whether the one claiming the right to be respect is a gay Unitarian and the one claiming the right to religious liberty is a member of Westboro Baptist Church – or the other way around.
One of my core objections to gay marriage is that gay rights advocates argue that what is precious to them is expendable to their children: intangible things such as “relationships”, “experiences”, “things people have reason to value”, “things valued by society”, “identity”, and “truth” ought to be the same – valuable or irrelevant – whether the person who has a right to these things is the parent or the child.
August 10th, 2012 | 9:24 am
Blake,
“But I am not going to pretend it’s as bad as gay couples: the single parent is not forcing the child into noxious lies”
Of course, you wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t ask you to. How could it be any worse that to have a gay couples be parents? But taking that as a given, you’ve complained loud and long that gay couples force their children to pretend that they’re happy and don’t miss having opposite sex parents (or stepparents, whatever you want to call them). And when those children turn out well, you explain that their very healthiness is evidence that they’ve been abused because they’ve had to parent themselves.
Isn’t it the case that single parents do the same thing, forcing not just their kids but you and me to pretend that not having a mother or father is just fine? Aren’t single parents forcing us to accept this noxious lie? And what’s worse is that people persist in their willful ignorance of the fact that successful children of single parents are also lying to protect their parent and have in fact had to parent themselves.
Isn’t this behavior by single parents also “forcing children into their fantasy world” making it “abusive, as well as being neglectful”?
“You forgot to include what conservatives are supposedly ignorant of”
No, I didn’t. It is quite clear in the context of my conversation with Fitzgerald.
“The only way we can have true equality is to get away from identity as basis for claims and instead make the claims themselves the basis of claims.”
But you’re the one talking about identity. We’re talking about two, unrelated people of age making a lifelong commitment to each other, including sexual fidelity, and possibly raising children. You recognize such a couple as married only after inquiring into their genitalia. For some reason, it matters to you what kind of sex they’re having.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact