Conservatives Proliferate in the USA

Welcome friends!

So many types of conservatives trying to do a number on the old USA these days it’s getting a little hard to keep track of who’s who.  Fortunately I ran across an article this week that discussed a little political typology prepared by the Pew Research Center based on some opinion surveys they conducted this past summer.  According to their interpretation of the results conservatives of one sort or another comprise 42 percent of the American electorate compared to 51 percent who lean more toward the liberal side of the aisle with an addition 8 percent classified as bystanders, which adds to 101 percent so I suppose must be a bit of rounding in there somewhere.  That bit isn’t exactly news.  I think we all figured out some time ago we weren’t really all on the same page.  No, the interesting bit for me was the way Pew divided conservatives into four separate groups based on distinctive and sometimes contradictory attitudes and beliefs.  If you’ve been reading my little blog at all you’ll know that trying to figure out the various types of conservatives and what they really think is something of a hobby of mine.  Indeed I’ve previously come up with three types of conservatism based on what appear to me to be different intellectual frameworks as opposed to shared attitudes or beliefs although I suppose they might equally represent simply different styles of talking: economic conservatism, political conservatism, and social conservatism.  This week I thought I’d take a quick look at the Pew classification scheme and compare it the scheme I’ve been using in my previous posts.  So let’s get to it... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Marriage Equality

Welcome friends!

Did you see the Supreme Court finally got around to deciding whether the US Constitution allows state governments to discriminate against gay people in the context of marriage?  Thankfully they affirmed what I hoped they would affirm, which is that it does not.  The majority, consisting mostly of the justices considered the more liberal, affirmed that in their professional opinion the US Constitution is not consistent with people passing punitive laws against random people they don’t like at the state level no matter how many rural Confederate flag waving conservative yahoos, arm waving holy rollers, blinged out Catholic bishops, and ranting mullahs might be on board.  Turns out most of the justices felt the Constitution respects the rights of the individual after all.  Of course, all four of what are considered the more conservative justices dissented and vented, as one might have expected, while Republican presidential candidates predictably got their rage on and immediately starting talking about amending the Constitution to enshrine their particular prejudices in the law of the land.  Like that’s ever going to happen.  But with conservative Republicans it’s all about political grandstanding and speechifying; when it comes to actual governing and serious statesmanship they really couldn’t give a damn.

Justice Scalia, the troglodytic progeny of the 1980s conservative counterrevolution and Ronald Reagan’s legacy to the nation, fretted over the Court’s “threat to American democracy” and characterized it as a “judicial putsch.”  In case you’re wondering why he used the rather unusual word “putsch,” which is a word of rather obvious Germanic origin and defined in Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a government,” that would involve the long standing conservative conceit that everyone who disagrees with them is a Nazi.  (If history is not your cup of tea the allusion here is to an event known colloquially as the Beer Hall Putsch that occurred early in the career of that paragon of mid-twentieth century social conservatism, Adolph Hitler.  Seems he got a posse of two thousand armed goons together and marched into central Munich to seize power by force one day, similar to what I think arch-conservative Donald Trump might have had in mind when he suggested we all march on Washington after President Obama was elected.  Herr Hitler was promptly tossed into jail for treason but then released a mere nine months later as the conservative powers in Germany realized how useful a violent racist nut job could be for their cause of keeping alles in ordnung.  Sort of similar to the way the Republican Party courts neo-Nazis, skinheads, racists, “militias,” gun nuts, and every manner of conservative lunatic in the US today.  I know, Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch is just like the Supreme Court ruling, right?  Can’t really see it?  Yeah, me too.  I think it must be more of the juvenile Republican word game “I know you are but what am I?”)

Justice Roberts, one big step up the evolutionary ladder from Mr. Scalia and the legacy of conservative comedian George W. Bush, commented that in his opinion the decision “had nothing to do with the Constitution.”  Really?  Is he reading the same document as everyone else?  And while it’s completely fine and expected that justices have somewhat different interpretations of the Constitution, which is why we need a Supreme Court in the first place, how monumentally irresponsible is it for him to claim the decision has nothing to do with the Constitution!   No respect for the institution at all.  The Attorney General for Texas Ken Paxton wasted no time backing up Justice Roberts by describing the decision as a “lawless ruling.”  As Mr. Paxton is the top law enforcement official in Texas one might have expected him to announce he would therefore not comply with the ruling, it being lawless and all, but he didn’t go so far as bald faced treason.  Apparently he still intends enforcing the law even though he believes it’s “lawless.”  I know.  Doesn’t take his job very seriously, does he?

Hey, I don’t like any number of Supreme Court decisions myself.  As a random example, how about the Court treating corporations as people for purposes of campaign financing and just in general playing cozy with the economic big shots whenever possible.  But do I go around claiming their decisions have nothing to do with the Constitution?  No.  They’re obviously looking at the Constitution.  It’s just they’re looking at it through the eyes of people with perhaps more than an entirely healthy respect for wealth and power.  It’s their job to interpret the Constitution and because I accept our democratic political system I accept their decisions.  In those cases I guess we’ll just have to try to change the Constitution.  I clearly have a lot more respect for the Supreme Court than does Justice Roberts.  Ever wonder where all the violent conservative hate groups get their rabid anti-government rhetoric?  Ever wonder how domestic conservative terrorist Timothy McVeigh reconciled himself to murdering one hundred and sixty eight innocent people in his twisted war against the ostensibly oppressive US government?  Surprise!  It might very well be based largely on the irresponsible utterances of conservative Supreme Court justices like Mr. Scalia and Mr. Roberts.  According to them one needn’t respect the law at all.  After all, the Supreme Court is just a bunch of Nazis springing a lawless “putsch” on an unsuspecting nation.  The top law enforcement official in the state of Texas agrees.  Thanks Ron and George W.  You guys did a helluva job.

The Republican presidential candidates predictably went on a rampage as well.  Mike Huckabee called the decision “an out-of-control act of unconstitutional, judicial tyranny.”  Unlike Justice Scalia he chose to go with imagery from the Revolutionary War and denigrated the Supreme Court as an “imperial court” akin to the imperial British monarchy that a few centuries ago tried to get all uppity with British colonies in the New World.  (I know; it’s just like that, isn’t it?)  Once again we’re dealing with the conservative theme that he, and conservatives in general, are greater authorities on the US Constitution than the Supreme Court, a perspective Justices Scalia and Roberts would presumably heartily endorse.  Southern crackpot Bobby Jindal piped up to claim no “earthly court” could alter the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, evidently confusing the legal definition of marriage in this country, which like any other law is clearly under the purview of the judicial system here on planet Earth, with some sort of religious code that presumably can only be altered by some superhuman agency residing somewhere in the next dimension or more likely in some murky corner of Mr. Jindal’s own mind.  Huckabee and Jindal called for a constitutional amendment to enshrine the time-honored tradition of gay bashing as the law of the land, as though anyone but the most rabid conservative extremist would have any interest in defiling the Constitution in this way at all.

A few conservative candidates weren’t exactly happy but not quite as looney tunes as Huckabee and Jindal, which makes me think there might be hope for the grand old party after all.  Jeb Bush (yes, another one) stated flatly he opposed any effort to amend the Constitution over this issue and rather sensibly urged conservatives to turn their conversation to something a little more mainstream like religious freedom (including I hope a right I cherish in particular; the right to be free of other people’s religions).  The conservative governor of the excruciatingly Midwestern state of Ohio suggested conservatives respect the ruling (and implicitly the Supreme Court itself) and just drop the matter of same sex marriage once and for all.  He must know a little something about politics.

In marked contrast to conservative Republican leaders, leading Democratic candidates Hilary Clinton and Martin O’Malley joined with President Obama in expressing their support for the ruling.  Not a whole lot of parity going on in this case, that’s for sure.

If I can just step back for a moment let me just say I’ve watched this issue of how gay people are treated under the law here in the US develop over the course of my lifetime from the underlying assumption of the bad old days that both formal legal and informal oppression of gay people was a moral imperative, through the early attempts of a few brave individuals to stand up for themselves and to patiently appeal to science and the better side of us all, to the ranting foaming at the mouth conservative backlash of the 80s and 90s, to finally today in the second decade of this twenty-first century an official affirmation from the more liberal justices in the highest court of the land that yes, gay people are people too, and the US Constitution does not grant other people the right to withhold legal rights and privileges from them based on religious feelings and prejudices alone.  If you’re asking me, it’s a grand old day for a grand old country.

And if it’s not too irritating can I just give some words of advice and encouragement for all my conservative friends who see things differently?  Take a deep breath.  It’s OK.  I know there’s been a lot of talk, but your (straight) marriage will not really be destroyed.  No children will be harmed.  No one will force you or your loved ones to become gay.  No one will marry a horse.  The human race will abide.  Those were all just talking points designed to get you acting the fool and voting Republican.  They’re not real issues.  And look on the bright side: won’t it be nice to leave all the neurotic handwringing about sexual matters to places like Russia, Turkey, and the Middle East?  I think so too.  Let’s talk about something else for a while.

References

Supreme Court rules in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide.  Ariane de Vogue and Jeremy Diamond.  CNN.  June 26, 2015.  www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/politics/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage-ruling/index.html.

US Supreme Court rules gay marriage is legal nationwide.  BBS.  June 26, 2015.  www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33290341.

Texas Officials Say They Can Deny Marriage Licenses.  U.S. News and World Report.  June 28, 2015.  www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/06/28/paxton-state-workers-can-deny-licenses-to-same-sex-couples.

Who came out against Facebook’s rainbow flags?  BBC.  June 29, 2015.  www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-33313807.

Turkish police fire pepper spray at gay pride parade.  Ashley Fantz, Gul Tuysuz, and Arwa Damon.  CNN.  June 29, 2015.  www.cnn.com/2015/06/28/world/turkey-pride-parade-lgbt-violence/index.html.

The Gay Marriage Threat to Marco Rubio’s Christianity

Welcome friends!

Speaking of clown acts did you happen to notice Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio’s recent frettings that gay marriage proponents may cast what he considers mainstream Christian teaching as hate speech?  I was about to chortle heartily and flip to another page as I normally do when I encounter conservatives wringing their hands over their universe of generally overblown if not entirely fabricated fears and concerns but I did find his statement intriguing in a weird sort of way.  I advocate gay marriage equality all the time (on the principle that gay people are people too) but at the same time I would hate for anyone to feel I’m attacking them personally because of their religious views.  So it’s not the sort of statement I feel I can really let go without comment.  Let’s think this through together.

First of all, let’s get one thing straight: I don’t believe any liberal in the country wants Christians who are morally opposed to homosexuality and / or homosexuals and who dislike gay marriage to either express a gay identity or to engage in gay marriage or even to say good morning to a gay person.  I wish all conservative to know that we liberals support you one hundred percent as far as that sort of thing goes... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Freedom Comes to Indiana

Welcome friends!

Have you heard about what may be the latest twist on gay bashing from American conservatives?  It’s been all over the news.  The Governor of Indiana (if you don’t know don’t ask, but I think it’s one of those states in the interior of the country somewhere near Ohio and Kentucky I would imagine), a Republican of course by the name of Mike Pence, has recently signed a law some critics say would provide legal justification for businesses turning away gay and lesbian customers.  How rude you say?  Well, for Midwestern conservatives it’s all about religious freedom.  Any rudeness is purely coincidental.  Say what now?  I know, it is a bit confusing.  Perhaps I should explain.

One popular take on what’s going on here is that many conservatives in what is known colloquially as the Corn Belt region of the US feel their religion requires them to avoid fraternizing with certain groups of what they consider less godly folk, including in their estimation gay people for example, at least to the extent of refusing to do business with them if they decide to do something outrageously offensive like marry one another.  As far as I know these people don’t feel their religion requires them to tell gay people to go f__k themselves or hit gay people on their heads with baseball bats, so I don’t think this new law allows those sorts of activities, but certainly rudeness in terms of we don’t like ‘yer kind here and git the hell out.  But it’s all a matter of degree right?  The underlying principle is the same: people should be free to abuse other people if that’s what their religion recommends, at least to the extent of embarrassing them and making their lives more difficult by refusing to serve them at one’s place of business.

If you’ve read my blog before you’ll probably have some notion of what I feel is probably going on here.  Some people are opposed to what is essentially an idea, in this case the idea gay people have civil rights and should be able to marry one another, but they don’t want to leave their opposition in the realm of ideas and discussion, they want to take it out on people, in this case gay people or at least gay people who are interested in getting married.  They feel they should be free to do so because they’re just expressing their beliefs and opinions and what’s wrong with that?  A Republican senator from Arkansas, Bart Hester, expressed this all rather nicely when he claimed these sorts of religious freedom laws are about discriminating against messages (i.e. ideas) and not about discriminating against people at all, which would be fine except we’re not talking about refusing to do business with messages, we’re talking about refusing to do business with people.  Senator Hester went on to explain requiring conservatives to do business with gay couples wanting to get married is like requiring a Jewish baker to make a cake with a Nazi swastika on it.  (I know, it’s a funny analogy right?  In other words for conservatives gay people are like Nazis but without I suppose the fascism, nationalism, jingoism, racism, murder, and war mongering, while the conservative Christians who dominate political life in states like Arkansas are similar to Jewish holocaust survivors.)  Hmm.  I sort of see where he’s coming from, but I’m not sure it’s really the same thing.  Or let’s just say I’d have to think about that.  I suspect Nazi symbols might fall into some sort of special legal category because, you know, all that stuff actual Nazis got up to.  And it seems to me the postulated Nazi sympathizer with the sweet tooth could probably come up with something else to put on his or her cake in place of the offending swastika, but I’m not sure gay couples have similarly obvious alternatives to getting married.  I suppose they could join the local Baptist church and throw themselves off a bridge or something like that, but it hardly seems the same thing.

If you haven’t been around as long as I have I suppose I should mention this is all very much consistent with the traditional Midwestern American way of life circa the middle of the last century.  In the provincial small town where I grew up the local rednecks who ran the place refused to do business with all manner of people: blacks, Jews, Asians, foreigners, hippies, and so on.  Yes, they were opposed to a whole slew of messages in those days: the message that “black” people should feel free to mingle with “white” people, the message that the Jewish religion was as legitimate as the Christian religion, the message that Asian people belonged in the US as much as the ancestors of European immigrants, and so on.  All manner of messages.  Then the US government got all uppity and started all that civil rights nonsense and we lost a good deal of our freedom to abuse other people to clarify our positions on the messages they personified.  Talk about government overreach!  It was horrible.  No, wait.  What am I saying?  Actually it made the place a whole lot nicer than it used to be.  Sorry.  I got so caught up just then trying to think like a conservative I may have gone insane for a moment.  But I’m back now.  Yeah, as a liberal the freedom to abuse other people isn’t really one of my top priorities, whether it’s motivated by religion or not.  In my book it’s in the same basic category as the freedom to steal someone’s car.  I suppose it’s a sort of freedom but it suffers from the usual problem with conservative ideas about freedom: it fails to recognize the existence of other people and their countervailing claims to freedom.  But that’s conservatism all over, isn’t it?  Me, me, me.  No wonder the Me Generation laps this stuff up.

On the other hand maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick on this one.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  Republicans in Indiana have been loudly proclaiming the last few days that other people just don’t understand the law.  They claim it’s basically the same thing that was passed at the federal level by President Clinton back in 1993 and that now appears in various versions in nineteen other states.  They intend to clarify what they had in mind and add language to the law establishing it does not in fact allow businesses to discriminate against gay people.  That should be very helpful for people like Governor Pence, who was on television the other day defending the law but who refused to say whether he thought it would allow businesses to deny service to gay people or not.  He was asked that question and didn’t answer.  Four times.  One suspects he thought it probably did but didn’t want to say as much.  That’s how Republicans typically operate these days.  As the undisputed masters of traditional political double talk they often say one thing in front of their more rabid supporters then turn around and shamelessly tell some other audience something else entirely or in some cases nothing at all.  But I don’t know.  Maybe the man honestly just didn’t know the answer.  I mean we are talking about the Stupid Party after all.  It certainly seems within the realm of possibility the Governor just hadn’t bothered to look into those sorts of details, not being gay himself.  He just signed the bill into law and went on his merry way.  At least, if he had thought the law didn’t support discrimination one would have thought he might have mentioned it, right?  Some people were clearly interested.  But anyway his fellow Republicans should make everything clear soon enough.  Governor Pence has apparently gotten ahead of the game and declared the fact the law doesn’t support discrimination is so obvious any suggestion otherwise represents a “smear” campaign against the law.

While we’re waiting for Indiana Republicans to explain how the law actually works I suppose we might as well spend a few moments speculating about whether it allows discrimination against gay people or not.  I mean, the law is on the books so we might as well consider what it might mean, right?  Along those lines I was just reading an interesting article that was full of fun facts and opinions on the topic.  For example, a University of Virginia Law School professor made the interesting point that as far as he knew it was already legal in Indiana to refuse to do business with gay people because unlike many other states Indiana doesn’t have anti-discrimination laws relating to sexual orientation.  (And don’t hold your breath waiting for any such laws.  Governor Pence has made it clear he opposes that sort of thing.)  So even if the law were to allow discrimination much to the surprise and consternation of its supporters (just a bit of humor to keep things light) it would apparently not be adding anything new but simply codifying existing practice.  Another interesting tidbit I gleaned from the article is that Indiana lawmakers explicitly rejected amendments that would have made clear they did not intend the law to allow discrimination and similarly refused to add an anti-discrimination clause.  Which brings up a funny story.  Apparently conservatives tried to set up one of these religious freedom laws in another conservative stronghold, Georgia, but they pulled their bill entirely when someone managed to add an anti-discrimination clause.  No wonder Governor Pence was so confused.  And then of course we have the simple fact that advocates of the Indiana law have been touting the idea the law allows businesses to refuse business relating to same sex marriages, which incidentally it seems only one year ago Republicans were still trying to amend the Indiana constitution to ban.  Indeed, as I suggested previously that appears to have been the whole point.  (Wasn’t I just saying the other day I thought one of the top priorities of the Republican Party in the next few years would be to find some backhanded way to get at gay people now their marriage bans have increasingly been found unconstitutional?  What a call!)  So what’s the answer?  Was the law meant to provide a legal justification for discrimination against gay people or not?  I don’t know.  But it smells a little fishy to me.

Addendum

I saw even more recently conservatives in the Arkansas state legislature made the national news for trying to pull the same stunt in that state.  (One might have thought they’d reconsider their timing given all the concerns about the Indiana law, but that’s how Republicans operate these days, always flying to the extremes.  Witness the motley crew of Republican presidential candidates rushing to support the Indiana law including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz.)  I was all prepared to make some hilarious comments about Arkansas, which I remember from my youth for all manner of ugly scenes involving racial issues, but the Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, refused to sign the bill and instead sent it back to state lawmakers with a request they ensure it mirrors federal law and cannot be used as a legal justification for discrimination.  Whoa!  Didn’t see that one coming!  Just when I was about to launch into my usual tirade against Republican bullying he goes and spoils the punchline.  Just joking.  It’s always gratifying to meet the honorable opposition.  You know, I have no problem with religious freedom at all.  It’s just that I think we need to consider the freedom of other people as well.  I suspect Governor Hutchinson might just agree with that.  Maybe we can get together and work something out.  I know.  It’s weird.  Do I need to amend my mental map of the US?  Has the Midwest overtaken the Deep South in terms of conservative extremism?  We have the counterexample of Georgia of course, where as I’ve already discussed conservatives dropped their support for their own religious freedom law when opponents added language making it clear it could not be used to justify discrimination, but this story about Arkansas suggests a certain amount of change may be in the air.  I’d like that.

References

Indiana's Pence to sign bill allowing businesses to reject gay customers.  Eric Bradner.  CNN.  March 25, 2015.  http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/25/politics/mike-pence-religious-freedom-bill-gay-rights/index.html.

Gov. Mike Pence: Indiana “ not going to change” anti-LGBT law.  Eric Bradner.  CNN.  March 30, 2015.  http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/29/politics/mike-pence-indiana-anti-lgbt-religious-freedom-law/index.html.

Indiana to ‘clarify’ religious freedom law.  BBC.  March 30, 2015.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32121317.

Is the controversial Indiana law ‘the same’ as a law backed by Obama?  Glenn Kessler.  The Washington Post.  March 31, 2015.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/03/31/is-the-controversial-indiana-law-the-same-as-a-law-backed-by-obama/.

Indiana uses religious freedom against gays.  Tim Holbrook.  CNN.  March 31, 2015.  http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/31/opinions/holbrook-indiana-law/index.html.

Arkansas lawmakers scramble to change ‘religious freedom’ bill.  Eric Bradner.  CNN.  April 1, 2015.  http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/31/politics/arkansas-religious-freedom-anti-lgbt-bill/.

Republican Proves Saying Stupid Things Is A Choice

Welcome friends!

Once again I find myself driven to set aside more substantive issues to address the news of the day.  Well, never mind.  It’s fun to mix things up now and then.  So did you catch the latest bit of claptrap spewing forth from the Stupid Party, sorry, I mean the Republican Party?  In case it’s not obvious which noteworthy utterance I’m referencing this week let me just specify that I’m talking about 2016 Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson’s theory that a “a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight ... and when they come out, they’re gay,” which according to Mr. Carson proves that one can choose to be gay or not.  Honestly, where do they get these people?

Let me start by taking a few brief moments to address Mr. Carson’s theory and get that out of the way and then I’ll say a few words about what I personally find the much more interesting element of this story... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Conservatism and Egotism

Welcome friends!

I’ve probably mentioned it a number of times now but I’m starting more and more to think that the best way to make sense of modern conservatives is to view them simply as self-obsessed egotists and to treat all their various theories and pronouncements as just so much posturing and window dressing.  Why do I think that?  Well, a lot of reasons.  Like the way they’re always gushing about that doyen of egotism Ayn Rand.  Or the way they call anyone who shows concern for other people a socialist.  Or the way they’re always pouring scorn on anyone less well off than themselves.  Or the way they always suspect that everyone else is a self-obsessed egotist who can easily be bought off with a little help with his or her medical bills or what have you.  Or the fact that whenever they try to explain what they profess to believe in any more general or philosophical terms they can never seem to get their story straight.  (When I listen to conservatives trying to expound on anything of substance I sometimes feel like I’m watching one of those TV crime dramas in which the wily detective trips up the suspect by simply letting him or her talk too much.  Detective: “But didn’t you say you were at the dry cleaners on Monday afternoon?”  Suspect: “Oh damn!  Caught in my own web of lies!”)  And then, of course, we have the fact that every now and then one of them just stands up and blurts it out.  That’s basically what happened a few weeks ago when prominent conservative Saxby Chambliss, a US Senator for the infrared deep deep south state of Georgia, pretty much let it all hang out.  When asked whether his views on marriage equality had changed at all the Senator answered simply, “I’m not gay.  So I’m not going to marry one.”  You’re thinking he didn’t really answer the question?  No, he did, but you have to think like a conservative to get it.  Feeling a little confused?  Well, let me explain... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Conservatives Make Half a Point on Marriage Equality

Welcome friends!

Strange how often I end up writing these little sequels, isn’t it?  I always plan on just saying a little something about something and moving on, but I guess once you’re thinking about something you start noticing things.  This week is a case in point.  No sooner did I finish my post on the so-called “stupid party” than did Marco Rubio, conservative rising star and Republican Senator for the state of Florida, arrive as if one cue to illustrate the point with some rather less than entirely cogent comments at some sort of conservative conclave known as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).  But what I found even more remarkable was that he actually managed to say something I partially agree with, and you know that doesn’t happen every day... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Yahoos de France

Welcome friends!

Did you read about that big rally against gay marriage and adoption rights that took place in Paris a couple of weeks ago?  Paris, Texas?  No, I don’t think so, but let me just check to make sure.  No, not Texas.  France.  You know, The City of Light, The City of Love, capital of France, etc.  Yeah, that Paris.  Well, anyway, it got me thinking about how Americans (and especially liberal Americans) tend to view France and how we really ought to view France if we knew what the heck we were talking about and actually cared about such things.  And believe me that thought doesn’t cross my mind every day, so I suppose I might as well say a few words about it.

First a quick recap of the story.  In case you don’t know, France’s current Socialist government is planning to change the law to allow gay marriage and adoption, so good for them, but ... wait for it ... (I know, what could it be?  Oh, the suspense!) ... the Catholic Church and the right wing opposition including the Le Pen family’s infamous National Front are up in arms over the whole affair and held a big old protest march in Paris.  I’m not talking about a handful of wackos here.  French police put attendance at around 340,000.  Hardly a drop in the bucket.  And I’m not even talking about the other similar demonstrations in Lyon, Toulouse, and Marseille.  So what was the thinking behind all this rallying and marching, you ask?  Well, according to French conservatives gay marriage would “undermine an essential building block of society.”  Whoa, I haven’t heard that one before!  Just kidding.  American conservatives have been making that argument for years, unsuccessfully in the eyes of most people.  The theory is that if we allow gay marriage then straight marriages will be undermined because of ... something something ... and society will inevitably crumble to pieces because of ... something something.  OK, I’ve never really understood how it all hangs together but anyway that’s the argument.  Nothing new there.  I’ve already written about it a couple of times (May 27, 2011 and June 24, 2011).

Fittingly enough the Paris demonstrations were apparently led by some sort of comedian named Frigide Barjot (yes, very funny; but not as funny as the fact one can never find a good Freudian psychoanalyst when one needs one) who told French TV gay marriage “didn’t make sense” because “a child should be born to a man and a woman.”  I’m not entirely sure if she was being serious or doing a bit but it seems popular opinion has tended toward the former interpretation so let’s go with that.  (By the way, I think the pronoun she is correct, although the pictures I saw of the person in question were somewhat ambiguous, so please excuse me if I’ve gotten it wrong.  Yes, I admit it.  I don’t really keep up with French popular culture.)  I sure hope she wasn’t doing a bit; it’s so difficult to delve into foreign humor.  Reminds me of the time I tried to watch a Japanese comedy movie on TV one day.  There did seem to be an awful lot of hilarity onscreen, but why, oh why?

Anyway, if Ms. Barjot was indeed being serious then I think she may need a few remedial logic lessons.  Descartes must be turning over in his grave.  First of all, gay marriage is not some sort of logic problem, so I don’t think it’s literally a matter of whether it makes sense or not.  Assuming she meant to say that she feels gay marriage is inappropriate I’d just like to say I think a fairly common feeling nowadays is that allowing gay marriage is appropriate if one considers that some people are indeed gay (and not just straight people acting out to annoy other people) and one is interested in being fair to those people.  And, of course, allowing gay adoption is clearly a different issue from whether a child should be born to a man and a woman.  (On the latter issue: I know we’ve made a lot of scientific advances and so on but as far as I know a child cannot currently be born to two women or two men; I’m quite sure you still need an egg and a sperm from somewhere.  But whenever we overcome that little issue we can talk about whether kids should be born to a man and a woman as opposed to some other configuration of people and genders, although it’s not immediately clear to me why we would consider it a significant issue under those conditions.  In the meantime I think we’re essentially talking about adoption of one type or another, even if we’re talking about adopting a fetus in a womb.)  Setting aside the birth issue and as far as the real moral issues involved with gay adoption, I think they’ve found that kids raised by gay parents do just as well as other kids, but please do let me know if you find out otherwise because then we might actually have something to talk about.  But never mind.  I don’t intend to go back over issues I’ve already discussed just because some Gallic nitwits have started banging the drum.  Right now I’m just talking about the fact of this rally having taken place in Paris, France.  Well, and I guess it never hurts to talk about the funny bits.  Speaking of which, the funniest bit for me by far was the organizers’ contention that their movement was non-political, non-religious, and in no way directed against homosexuals.  If they were playing American baseball they would have struck out on consecutive pitches because their movement seems rather obviously political, religious, and directed against homosexuals.  (You’re telling me the National Front isn’t political?  The Catholic Church isn’t religious?  Trying to prevent someone from obtaining equal rights isn’t acting against them?  Oh get real.)  Which all sounds eerily familiar to American ears.  I wonder if they called some American conservatives for advice.  French conservatives: The Catholic Church wants to hook up with some right wing political parties, again, and this time make a big show of opposing equal rights for gay people, do you have any advice?  American conservatives: Have you tried lying and fear mongering?  French conservatives: C’est magnifique!

Well that’s the story from the papers, so I guess I can finally get to the actual point of this post, which is that reading about this whole affair made me think about how American liberals tend to have an unrealistically positive image of France.  I know that many people imagine if Americans are predisposed toward any European country at all then it would have to be the UK or Britain or Great Britain or the British Isles or England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, or whatever constellation of the preceding one may care to discuss.  (Let’s just go with the UK for now.)  And I suppose there’s probably something to that because of the obvious ties of language, culture, and to a lesser extent, history.  But I think one can easily overstate the case for a special relationship between the UK and the imagination of your average American.  Well, I suppose some Americans do indeed have a soft spot for a certain image of the UK one finds in old BBC programs: mature, polite people sitting about stately homes sipping tea from fine china and making gently witty conversation.  But these days that image is balanced out by another more modern and unfortunately probably much more accurate image of the UK that one can find in BBC programs of more recent vintage: that would be the UK of mean, snarky people; social classes; posh twits; binge drinking lager louts; hooligans; street punks; poverty; violent crime; one-eyed Muslim street preachers; and so on.  So I think it’s a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to how Americans think about the UK these days.

Now France, on the other hand, I think must be in a whole other league when it comes to your average American.  For most Americans, and of course especially for most liberal Americans, France is first and foremost the birthplace of the Enlightenment and hence of the better part of our own philosophical and cultural heritage.  And I suppose it doesn’t hurt that back when we were battling Great Britain for our independence France managed to throw in its two cents worth at a rather convenient moment and has remained an ally of one sort or another ever since.  Of course, I realize French involvement in the American Revolution had more to do with Louis XVI wanting to poke George III in the eye than with any prescient appreciation of the American experiment on the part of the French ruling class, but nonetheless, there we were, side by side.  We also have a long tradition in American film and literature of portraying France as a center for most of what one might find beautiful and enjoyable in life: art, music, fashion, food, wine, cinema, literature, philosophy, and let’s not forget about love.  And I don’t just mean in serious works but also in all those popular entertainments of the type in which one moves to Provence or wherever, starts up a garlic farm, renovates an old farm house, falls in love with a down to earth local, is rejuvenated, and just in general has a heck of a lot better time than one had dodging bullets and freezing one’s backside off in Detroit.  Wait, am I talking about Italy?  Well, Italy, France, whatever.  I guess we have that same trope with other countries but certainly France must be one of the main ones.  And above the image of France in general is the image of the city of Paris, surely the European city most Americans would still most like to visit if ever they got around to going to Europe at all, which is a pretty big if.  And the ultimate expression of all this generalized Francophilia for American liberals?  That would be the presumption that France will naturally take the lead on any liberal social issues flowing from our shared Enlightenment values, which we assume will emanate from the City of Light like so many rays of sunshine to penetrate all the backward villages, rustic provinces, and rough and tumble ports of the land.

Of course, there are a few smudges on this otherwise glowing mental picture to be sure.  I think most Americans are vaguely aware that the French went a little crazy with the head chopping during their own revolution and then eventually settled on Napoleon Bonaparte, who I suppose wan’t all bad but certainly generated some issues of his own, and then waffled big time and brought back the nobility for another go, and then went this way and that for much of the nineteenth century.  Hardly a straight shot in terms of a commitment to democracy.  And later they got up to their share of colonial shenanigans in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and had a great deal of trouble giving up power in Vietnam as well as in Algeria and other random bits of Africa.  (I guess from recent news reports La Francafrique lives on, which I suppose isn’t necessarily a bad thing given the alternatives, but I think they gave up some bits anyway.)  And they clearly weren’t what anyone would call diplomatic geniuses when it came to winding down WWI on a satisfactory basis and instead probably helped set the stage for round two, a political failing compounded by the fact that either by design or just plain old incompetence their military contributions to round two weren’t exactly what one might term outstanding.  And of course it later became rather obvious quite a few French were actually pretty soft on fascism themselves or at least couldn’t wait to jump into bed with the fascists both figuratively and literally, even to the extent of helping the Nazis round up little French kids to ship off to their murder factories.  Then more recently they seem to have developed some rather severe social and economic problems of the sort that have led to rioting in the streets and of course the reactionary call to get some pressure hoses in there to clean out all those damned slums.  (Sarko l’Americain?  Yeah, sure buddy, whatever.  But the guy was President of France, not President of America.  I’m just saying.)  And of course they’ve had a number of notably corrupt political administrations over the years.  And I suppose they haven’t been entirely helpful in any number of contemporary political and military situations where we really could have used a little help.  But I’m just rambling now.  You know, Americans understand these things happen.  We’re not all that ourselves sometimes, so no hard feelings.  No, I think for most Americans these sorts of issues just don’t have the psychic force to overcome the generally positive image of France we’ve always had in this country and that one can find in such delightful popular entertainments as Ratatouille or The Devil Wears Prada.

But you know what might really finally put a damper on American enthusiasm for all things French?  A few more stories about mobs of French yahoos parading around the streets of Paris in support of conservative causes, that’s what.  I mean, holy cow, what a colossal let down.  What sort of world would be living in if the US with its entrenched and powerful conservative elite had to take the lead on social issues like equality for gay people?  Of course, I understand there’s no fundamental reason things should be any different abroad.  International conservatism is just as alive and well in Europe as it is in the US, maybe more so in certain respects.  But what a cold blast of harsh reality on such a beautiful dream.  It almost brings tears to my eyes.  Vive La France!  (Of our collective imagination, that is!)

References

Mass Paris rally against gay marriage in France.  January 13, 2012.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21004322.

French protests against gay marriage bill.  November 12, 2012.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20382699.

Gay Marriage II: The Rebuttal

Welcome friends!

I wasn’t really intending to write much more on the topic of same sex marriage but I couldn’t help noticing a rather funny article in the paper recently so what the heck, I guess I can blow another post on it.  The article was about the former New York Giants football player and Super Bowl hero, David Tyree, making a video explaining his opposition to gay marriage for the edification of voters in the state of New York, which is belatedly trying to reclaim its rightful place as a leader on civil rights issues by finally passing a bill approving same sex marriage.  The main point of Mr. Tryee’s argument was that the bill’s passage would be “the beginning of our country sliding toward ... anarchy.”  Yeah, I know, that sounds serious.  I don’t think many people would look forward to sliding toward anarchy.  (Well, OK, some people probably would, but I’m talking about sensible people.)  Was this just conservative hyperbole or was Mr. Tyree being serious?  If the latter, what sort of thought process would lead one to that conclusion?

OK, now I know what you’re thinking.  Who really cares what some ex-jock has to say about it and why are you writing about it? ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Gay Marriage

Welcome friends!

I suppose I wouldn’t be much of a liberal if I never got around to addressing that most contentious and momentous of contemporary ethical issues: gay marriage.  (That was only partially facetious, by the way.)  The problem I’ve been having with this topic is that I don’t feel there’s really all that much to talk about.  This issue seems to be about how one feels about the liberal meta-ethic that suggests that regardless of one’s values one should allow other people to do what they want unless their actions significantly impinge on the welfare of other people, and I’ve already discussed that idea in a number of other posts.  However, for whatever it’s worth, here’s my take on the subject.

This is one of those issues that I think is very difficult to understand outside its historical context.  In this case, the original issue was about what, if anything, we should do about other people’s sexuality...  Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!