Let the adults do the blogging

I have never seen a good argument against gay marriage. This is my word of caution to you: if you ever see an argument against gay marriage, be very skeptical.

Here's an illustration: Erick Erickson's recent post "Why Not Incest?" defending Jeremy Irons' recent comments on gay marriage. The argument is that if gay marriage is acceptable, then so must be homosexual incest:

If life comes down to who you love and who loves you back, if a father and son love each other so much they want to get married, there is little moral difference between two people of the same sex getting married who are not related and want to be and two people of the same sex who already are related becoming closer.

Notice that Erickson is attributing to those of us who support gay marriage something like the following argument:

1. If two people love each other, then they should be allowed to marry. 
2. Many persons in homosexual relationships love their partners. 
3. Therefore, homosexuals should be allowed to marry. 

The problem is that supporters of gay marriage do not endorse this argument. To deny the right to marry to persons who love each other is wrong, but certain other conditions must obviously be met if they are to be allowed to marry, and those conditions are met by many homosexuals in committed relationships. One condition is that both partners freely consent to the marriage. So gay marriage supporters would reject (1).

Erickson is doing what many who oppose gay marriage have done for years: attribute straw men to the opposition. Either Erickson knows that his argument is fallacious, or he lacks to intelligence to see that it is fallacious. So, for his edification, and the edification of all those who are manipulated by Erickson's argument, allow William Saletan to explain how someone could support gay marriage but oppose same-sex incestuous marriage.

According to Saletan, "[Six] years ago, Ohio's Supreme Court upheld the incest conviction of Paul Lowe, a former sheriff's deputy, for what the court called 'consensual sex with his 22-year-old stepdaughter.'" The conviction was upheld because "'a sexual relationship between a parent and child or a stepparent and stepchild is especially destructive to the family unit.' This destructive effect, the court reasoned, occurs even if the sex is adult and consensual, since 'parents do not cease being parents … when their minor child reaches the age of majority.'" This puts same-sex incest and gay marriage on a different moral plane. As Saletan explains:

Morally, the family-structure argument captures our central intuition about incest: It confuses relationships. Constitutionally, this argument provides a rational basis for laws against incest. But it doesn't provide a rational basis for laws against homosexuality. In fact, it supports the case for same-sex marriage. 

When a young man falls in love with another man, no family is destroyed. Homosexuality is largely immutable, as the chronic failure of "ex-gay" ministries attests. So if you forbid sex between these two men, neither of them is likely to form a happy, faithful heterosexual family. The best way to help them form a stable family is to encourage them to marry each other. 

Incest spectacularly flunks this test. By definition, it occurs within an already existing family. So it offers no benefit in terms of family formation. On the contrary, it injects a notoriously incendiary dynamic—sexual tension—into the mix. Think of all the opposite-sex friendships you and your friends have cumulatively destroyed by "crossing the line." Now imagine doing that to your family. That's what incest does. 

So how can the supporter of gay marriage oppose same-sex incest? By appealing to this or that utilitarian moral principle. Gay marriage maximizes happiness, and same-sex incestuous unions do not. Gay marriage is therefore permissible, and same-sex incestuous unions are not.

Let's suppose that Erickson, for some reason, does not understand this important difference between gay marriage and same-sex incest. Perhaps he simply lacks the intelligence to grasp it. Or perhaps, due to the influence of religious indoctrination, he refuses to attempt to grasp it. Or maybe he's simply phoning it in. In any event, he should consider a career change. And let's suppose that Erickson does understand this difference but writes posts like "Why Not Incest?" anyway. Again, I say, he should consider a career change, because he is manipulating his readers with bullshit. He's clearly not someone to be trusted.

Erickson closes by saying, "The truth is, many, many, many of the same people who are now in support of gay marriage, but would oppose this or polygamy will, once the next step is advanced, support these things too." No, they won't, asshole, as I have just explained.

Erick, why don't you go away and let the adults do the blogging, all right?

Oops.

Remember Helen Thomas' retirement from Hearst Corporation back in June?

Remember Shirley Sherrod's forced resignation from USDA back in July?

Some writers are comparing these cases to the case of Juan Williams, with mixed results.

Parvez Ahmed writes:

Let us get one thing correct -- Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Octavia Nasr and Juan Williams are neither racists nor bigots. By all accounts they are good journalists. But by expressing negative stereotypes about a racial or religious group they are guilty of breaching the ethics of fairness, crucial ingredients to succeed in journalism. Thus their forced resignation or firing from Hearst, CNN and NPR respectively is the right action. Having publicly expressed their biases they could no longer be viewed has having the credibility to be impartial arbiters of news.

In June, I wrote, "I invite anyone to explain to me why Thomas ought to have resigned for her comments." In fact, the title of my post was, "Helen Thomas lost her job for this?" Ahmed has given me the explanation I requested. I was emphasizing the fact that Thomas's speech was legitimately political and not bigoted. The comments that got Williams in trouble, on the other hand, were. So I believe that Williams' speech was worse than Thomas'. But Ahmed is right. As a journalist, Thomas ought to have been fired, and Hearst had every right to do so. I screwed up. Consistency demands that I admit my error here, and I do.

Slate's William Saletan compares Williams to Sherrod:

Three months ago, right-wingers clipped a video of Sherrod to make her look like a racist. They circulated the video on the Internet, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture fired her. 

Now it's happening again. This time, left-wingers have done the editing. They clipped a video of Juan Williams, a commentator for Fox News and NPR, to make him look like an anti-Muslim bigot. They circulated the video on the Internet, and last night, NPR fired him.

Saletan came out against the firing of Sherrod in July, and now he comes out against the firing of Williams. Saletan writes:

The damning video clip of Williams, like the damning clip of Sherrod, cuts off the speaker just as he's about to reverse course. According to the full transcript, immediately after saying, "I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts," Williams continues: "But I think there are people who want to somehow remind us all as President Bush did after 9/11, it's not a war against Islam." That continuation has been conveniently snipped from the excerpt.

If Williams is guilty of anything, according to Saletan, it is for expressing his fears. Saletan writes: 

But admitting such fears doesn't make you a bigot. Sometimes, to work through your fears, you have to face them honestly. You have to think through the perils of acting on those fears. And you have to explain to others why they, too, should transcend their anxieties or resentments and treat people as individuals.

That's what Shirley Sherrod did in her speech to the NAACP. It's what Juan Williams did in his interview on Fox News. 

There are significant differences between these two cases, however. 

• The irrational fears Sherrod confessed to having were fears she had many years ago; Williams confessed to having irrational fears now. 
• NPR was well within its rights to fire Williams; since Sherrod's bigoted actions occurred so long ago, it's not clear that USDA was justified in firing her. 
• It is abundantly clear that Sherrod is a reformed bigot; it is not so clear in the case of Williams. Everyone is familiar with the phenomenon of bigots taking back their bigotry in the same breath in which they express it. Williams appears to be a bigot in spite of himself. It may be that we're all bigots. But we are smart enough to combat our own bigotry, and we can certainly avoid expressing it in public. Universal bigotry is no excuse for bigotry. 

In addition, it's not clear that putting Williams' comment in context helps. Even if Williams recognizes the irrationality of his bigotry, as the rest of the segment suggests, that doesn't show that he is not a bigot. Saletan admits as much in his defense of him. Saletan denies that Williams' fears are bigoted, I know, but he is simply wrong about that. 

But the fact that Williams is a bigot is not, strictly speaking, the real problem here anyway. The problem is that Williams chose to express his bigotry in a public forum. He didn't have to work through his fears in front of who knows how many viewers of The O'Reilly Factor. As a journalist, he should have done that in private. No one had a gun to his head, and there was plenty of material from the preceding Talking Points segment to talk about without confessing to this or that irrational fear. 

I have a great amount of respect for Saletan and the high quality of his work for Slate. On this one rare occasion, unfortunately, he dropped the ball. We all do at some point. 

Strike three, asshole.

Andrew Breitbart has changed his tune. Again.

At first, he said the video of Shirley Sherrod was evidence that a Federal employee was preaching racism. It is now clear that Breitbart's allegation, repeated ad nauseam by Fox "News," is patently false. Then, he claimed that Sherrod's speech was an endorsement of racism, when in fact it was the very opposite. Now, Breitbart is claiming that the audience's reactions to Sherrod's speech is evidence of racism in the NAACP. But this new accusation is also patently false, as Slate's William Saletan shows. Read about it here.

Strike three, asshole.

In related news, Ann Coulter is coming to the defense of Breitbart. According to New York Daily News,

"The whole key to this story is that Andrew Breitbart was set up," the fiery right-wing writer told Sean Hannity on Fox News on Wednesday.

She argued that the conservative blogger was the victim of a "fraud" by the person who sent him the edited video.

"The person who sent the edited tape has to know what the full speech said," she argued, noting that Breitbart should "reveal his source."

"He was set up," Coulter said. "This was a fraud."

You see, for the conservative sleaze merchant, when liberals make mistakes, there is no excuse. But when conservatives make mistakes, someone else is always responsible. If Fox "News" and Breitbart want to be considered news organizations, they have to start acting like news organizations. Breitbart and Fox are ultimately responsible for what they publish and air and what they make of it. Had they been legitimate news organizations, the first question they would have asked upon seeing the edited video would have been, "Where is the rest of the video?" But they were so intent on defending the Tea Party against charges of racism and creating a shit storm among Democrats and the NAACP that they didn't. They didn't because Fox "News" and Breitbart are not news organizations. They have zero credibility, and Coulter's lame attempt to make an excuse for Breitbart simply advertises that lack of credibility.

Anyone who is still interested in what these right-wing hacks have to say is a dupe.

The Smug and the Dead

Two especially interesting blog entries concerning the Tebow Super Bowl ad produced by Focus on the Family have appeared on Slate recently. Those of you who haven't seen the ad may see it below.



In "The Invisible Dead: The grisly truth about the Super Bowl abortion ad," William Saletan discusses the facts about Pam Tebow's medical condition when she declined to abort the being who would become Tim Tebow. Saletan writes:

Pam's story certainly is moving. But as a guide to making abortion decisions, it's misleading. Doctors are right to worry about continuing pregnancies like hers. Placental abruption has killed thousands of women and fetuses. No doubt some of these women trusted in God and said no to abortion, as she did. But they didn't end up with Heisman-winning sons. They ended up dead.

Read the entire entry here.

In "Tebow Ad All Smiles, Cruelty," Amanda Marcotte discusses the perhaps unintended suggestions of the ad. Marcotte writes:

When you argue that you survived a harrowing pregnancy because you're "tough," you imply that other women who die under similar circumstances were too weak to deserve to survive. It's already bad enough that the religious right shames women who choose abortion for choosing their education, careers, relationships, already existing children, or their own lives over the obligation to have another baby. But shaming women for being weak who die trying to fill the mandate (or who are deprived of the choice) to bear children at all costs? That's dark indeed, no matter how glowingly white the background of the ad is.

Read the entire entry here.

Marcotte's blog entry resonated with me. As I recall saying elsewhere in this blog, a loathing of human beings is an essential part of Christianity, no matter how vociferously any particular Christian might deny it. Some Christians, however, reserve a special loathing for those of us who dare not to conform to their Christian worldview. The Tebow ad is an insult to anyone who is not irrational enough to roll the dice with their own lives like Pam Tebow. The smiling faces delivering the underlying "misogynist ideology," as Marcotte puts it, aren't nearly as kind as they are smug. And if there's one thing I hate, it's smugness. How they hope this ad will appeal to the very people the ad insults is a mystery.