The White Peril 白禍

Sigh.

I realize this site has turned into GoReadClassicalValues.com, but I happen to think that Bill Quick is absolutely wrong about the point Eric makes here. That Eric didn't digress from his discussion to flesh out yet again why he doesn't support the push for gay marriage does not mean that his statement has "no logical support whatsoever."

Eric clarifies what he meant:

I agree with Bill that "percentages do not constitute logical refutation," and I did not mean to imply that just because 70% of the public disfavors same sex marriage, that this means they are not bigoted. However, if opposition to same sex marriage is defined as bigotry, then it flows that they (and most of the leaders of both parties) are. I just don't think that, considering all the circumstances, opposition to same sex marriage constitutes bigotry, and I'd say that even if only 20% of the country opposed it. I try to reserve the "bigot" label for people who want to do things like call me names, beat me up, put me in prison, or kill me.

I'm not sure that bigot has to be reserved for people who express their beliefs through confrontation; intolerance can be expressed by quietly cutting people socially or declining to employ them or the like. But I'm also not sure that Bill Quick has been following the gay marriage argument as it's developed over the last ten years.

It used to be that you had Andrew Sullivan and, for a few occasional paragraphs, Bruce Bawer arguing in favor of marriage or civil unions of some kind in the not-too-distant future, and you had the case in Hawaii, and that was pretty much it. At that point, most arguments from the opposition were confined to "gays don't actually fall in love and care for each other" and "most gay couplings are transient." Those arguments were, I think, often based on bigotry: people who didn't like gays much to begin with were all too willing to take Friday night in the Castro as representative of all gay life everywhere, pronounce us all sub-adult, and not dig any deeper before considering the issue closed.

But things really have moved on in the intervening decade or so. Skeptics began discussing how a legal change in the definition of marriage could affect the choices of straight couples who planned to have children. The most sound thinkers among gay advocates (Dale Carpenter and Jonathan Rauch, notably) deliberated over the same issues and often made good counter-arguments; but at the same time, the pro-gay side was frequently stuck in a "we DO TOO love our partners!" mode that the debate had moved beyond. And "self-esteem," that all but infallible indicator that malarkey is on the menu, was frequently invoked.

I realize that I haven't proved that, say, Maggie Gallagher and Stanley Kurtz aren't bigoted against homosexuals. But even if we could prove they were, does that mean much in policy terms? We're still left with the fact that they've taken the time to research and construct arguments for their positions, and that those arguments have to be answered on their own terms. I'd much rather see gays and those who sympathize with us keep at that than prolong the (already seemingly interminable) back-and-forth over who's a bigot.

An old friend sent me a link to this column from the St. Paul Pioneer Press. I agree with her that the angle it takes is interesting:

In every movement to right a perceived social wrong, a fringe element with no apparent social upside (who hence emphasize their differences from the traditional) becomes the image of the enemy to supporters of the status quo. In this case, these are the leather- and tutu-clad lads who wind up in defense-of-marriage literature and DVDs. Only after a movement has gained some visibility, some credibility and some respectability do suit-and-tie supporters, people invested in society with something material to lose, risk identifying with it.

Here's where the paradox of rising expectations kicks in. Even as overt public discrimination against same-sex couples grows smaller, the inequities of law loom larger. The Williams Institute study suggests same-sex couples are more at ease declaring their relationships. They do so, however, with expectations of expanding their participation in society on equal terms with heterosexuals. Taking a risk, they are impatient with barriers to fulfillment of expectations of equality.

Of course, that still begs the question of what "equality" looks like, and I don't think that Westover's seeming conclusion that it requires the legalization of gay marriage follows very well from his own argument. Nevertheless, one useful thing he does is to consider the push for SSM in the larger context of the American entitlement mentality and how interest groups jockey for government goodies. (Reading some opponents of gay marriage, you could get the impression that decent Americans were all self-effacingly going about their business when all of a sudden the fags and dykes burst in and introduced self-centeredness into public policy debates.) Anyway, it's worth a read if you're not heartily sick of the subject already.

*******

Speaking of tired subjects, music today is apparently tuneless, witless, and derivative. This is the opinion of Sting, which is pretty rich, considering the upscale adult-contemporary crap he's shoveled at the public on most of his releases over the last ten years. Boring and pretentious--not exactly a winning combination.

I guess I don't buy a whole lot of new music by musicians I don't already like, either, anymore. I was pleasantly surprised that Cassie's album lived up to the hype--though "Me & U" is getting the seriously-overplayed treatment here in Japan at the moment. The new Janet is okay, but the last week or two has been mostly a Full-Figured British Diva moment in my household: Alison, Kirsty, and some Gabrielle.