The White Peril 白禍

A friend says he thought I might enjoy this bit of a Houston Chronicle editorial (which is fileted by James Taranto in the 15 November Best of the Web). I assume he means "enjoy" approximately in the sense of "be driven to punch through the monitor by." This is the operative paragraph from the editorial:

Inner city black voters in Harris County, many of whom have long experience with the denial of civil rights, favored the marriage amendment by an even higher majority than the general Harris County voting population. Black discomfort with homosexual marriage is rooted less in conscious discrimination than in religious belief, but support for the amendment brought blacks into incongruous accord with members of the Ku Klux Klan, whose members rallied in Austin in support of Proposition 2.

I don't agree that the civil rights and gay rights movements are comparable all the way down--and what civil rights have black people been denied for the last three or so decades, one wonders?--but I do think that gays and other minorities are very similar in the ceaseless way our soi-disant allies manage to patronize us. As Taranto says, "If you're a person of pallor and you oppose same-sex marriage, you're guilty of 'conscious discrimination,' whereas if you're black, you're following 'religious belief' and presumably discriminating unconsciously. Oh, and does this mean people who favor same-sex marriage are religious unbelievers? Seems to us the Houston Chronicle has just managed to insult pretty much everybody."

As a homosexual unbeliever who doesn't favor same-sex marriage, I think the most insulting part is unmentioned by Taranto: the attribution of any opposition to that boneless PC animating force, "discomfort." People can't believe things are right or wrong, or constructive or destructive, anymore, apparently--the only opposition sympathetic characters are to be permitted is decorously vague unease.

At Romeo Mike's Gumption, Ross notes an example of psycho-PC-ism via the Telegraph:

"Paintings of traditional wedding scenes have been removed from a register office in case they offend gay couples, it has emerged.

The pictures at Liverpool Register Office are being replaced with landscapes ahead of the introduction of "gay weddings" later this year."

Two problems with this. If homos are supposed to be genuinely equal then we should be able to meld in with the mainstream. Ditching traditions to humour us defeats the purpose, so the removal of the pictures is actually the offensive part.

Secondly, it's also offensive that the Telegraph has to include a pic of a couple of queens kissing to illustrate gay marriage. Ordinarily, news photos of newlyweds have them smiling proudly at the camera. That photo only serves to reinforce the stereotype of minorities' 'differences' requiring 'special' treatment.

Question 1: Did the guy on the right burst into tears immediately after the photo was snapped and yell, "It's our wedding, darling--couldn't you have worn something more dignified than a turtleneck?!"

Question 2: Given the Telegraph's generally approving spin, what's up with the scare quotes around "weddings"? Does it (editorially) agree that gay ceremonies aren't genuine weddings? I'm just wondering.

Question 3: Why is the word gay so listless and dull, ending in that irresolute diphthong, while the insulting words for homosexuals can be written and spoken with such flair? Ross is presumably being sardonic in using homos and queens, but stripped of meaning associations and possible playground resonances, aren't they just cooler words? Personally, I'm very partial to faggot--I just can't help it. It's one of those words you can eject from the mouth with a little explosion, whether of playfulness or of anger. It is impossible to utter the word gay in an aesthetically pleasing manner. A real pity.

BTW, not quite on the same topic, but along those lines, an acquaintance asked me--very earnestly, which was what made it funny--a little while ago, "So, Sean, you call everyone 'honey.' And [my close friend, who's English] Alan calls everyone 'darling.' Is that, like, some kind of American-vs.-British thing?"

Dale Carpenter finished his guest-posting on same-sex marriage at the Volokh Conspiracy nearly a week ago. I tried to read everything, including the comments, but rapidly started to get the feeling I'd been hanging out a little too long at the corner of Lawyerview Boulevard and Old Libertarian Pike, if you know what I mean. I suppose I'm only posting this about it myself so that I'll have a link in my own archives if I ever want to go back and look at what was written. My own mind isn't changed. The gay marriage advocates, however articulate and sober they are, still always sound to me as if they were casting us as First Runner-up straight people, which is kind of humiliating. It just doesn't bother me that homosexuality and heterosexuality aren't the same thing and therefore may not have the same requirements or social effects.

This time around, it's Dale Carpenter guest-blogging (Here is the first post; I'd link the rest, but you can find them yourselves, and PowerBlogs sends an automatic trackback for every link.) Carpenter makes the best case I've seen--for example, he does a better job, I think, at arguing that community pressure will be brought to bear on gay marriages than Jonathan Rauch himself did in his book.

Well, Carpenter isn't perfect on that point, either:

In our culture, marriage is the way couples signal the ultimate commitment to one another; and through marriage they communicate this deep commitment to their families, to their friends and co-workers, and to their communities. That commitment is then reinforced by the web of familial and other relations, created by marriage, that they have around them. This reinforcement helps strengthen their bond, and therefore their family. It helps keep them together, especially in tough times.

Gay couples need this sort of reinforcement and suffer for the lack of it. As of now, no gay relationship can reach the cultural pinnacle signified by the words, "Will you marry me?" Telling your families and friends that you are "partnered" will not, usually, signal the same depth of commitment that marriage would. And if they doubt whether you have invested heavily in your relationship, why should your families, friends, and communities invest heavily in it?

Fine, but if people don't believe gay marriages are authentic, they're not going to invest in them heavily anyway. Some of these will be ignorant folks who don't believe there's genuine commitment within gay couples; others are the most gay-friendly types imaginable but believe the purpose of marriage is to ensure, as best we can, that children are provided for. In either case, I don't think the chicken-egg question is resolved as well as Carpenter appears to.

Be that as it may, Carpenter argues carefully, and his presentation is orderly. Of course, Britney Spears has already been mentioned in the comments, and embarrassingly, Eugene Volokh has been driven to gently pointing out the following [his emphasis]:

Folks, let me mention something that I hoped I didn't need to: If you don't like reading arguments that condemn homosexuality or homosexual relationships, don't read a debate on same-sex marriage. Conversely, if we were to exclude all arguments that you think of as "bigotry" against homosexuals, or that convey "moral disapproval" of homosexuality, it wouldn't be much of a debate, would it?

A few years ago, when Connie's site was in one of its former incarnations and Dean was still in his old World, I joined in a few discussions about gay marriage that frightened me in a big, bad way. One of them rattled me so much that I unloaded on Dean in very raw terms. (And cheese and crackers, was I PISSED that he printed some of it when I asked him not to. It was over two years ago now, so I don't really care anymore.) Several of the gay commenters that I disagreed with were people whose writing on other topics I've really enjoyed and been inspired by. I'd never liked lockstep gay leftism, but this was the first time that it was borne in on me how much question-dodging a lot of otherwise-reasonable gays were willing to do in order to get the Marriage seal of approval and have their relationships (glory be!) validated. Or they probably weren't dodging questions; they just didn't seem to understand what they were being asked, so they weren't addressing it.