Friday, August 28, 2009

More on gay marriage

Updated

DougJ finds an amusingly facile MSM mash note (MSMash note?) to an anti-marriage type. Evidently, the cause is all about history and tradition. None of that nasty bigotry. One might wonder why it is that the nonbigoted side believes that being gay is a sin and a hellworthy one at that, but this is evidently not a question that was asked.

As someone who has enormous respect for both history and tradition, I tend to find arguments saying that either one is sufficient reason to deny someone rights is going to be wrong. History and tradition are invaluable parts of peoples' individual and group identities, but if this is the crux of your argument, then you have no argument. Arguments on civil rights need to rest on balancing the rights of the minority with the rights of the majority--in the case of gay marriage, we seem to be talking about the right of people to enter into marriage against the right of people not to suffer the psychic stress of knowing people whose conduct they disapprove of are getting married. I don't think that's a sufficient reason to ban something in a free country, myself.

But I do think that, if a mainstream news outlet simply believes that challenges to history and tradition ought to be turned back on principle rather than on their merits, I will join them to be the first to bow to worship Queen Elizabeth when she rides through Washington, D.C., as our once and future monarch. At least we'll know the music to our new (old) national anthem. What rubbish our national dialogue has become.

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.