TheAgitator.com
Julian vs. Kurtz
Friday, November 29th, 2002Julian rightly adminsters a blogified dress-down to Stanley Kurtz, who’s apparently been assigned to National Review’s ever-important “gaybash” beat.
NR continues to make itself look hopelessly foolish (but I’ll bet it helps w/ subscriptions) by keeping close tabs on those devilish sodomites.
Expect more of the same. Freshly minted NRO editor-in-chief Kathryn Lopez has recently written urgent, alarming (I hope you can smell the sarcasm) “investigative” pieces on how the Girl Scouts has become a de facto sex slave ring for militant lesbians (based on one unfortunate incident), and how, gasp! collegiate women’s softball teams sometimes have lesbians on the team, and good, all-American, heterosexual softball players sometimes feel uncomfortable showering near them.
This, friends, is high-caliber journalism.
I’m awaiting Lopez’s next hard-hitting expose: “Boo-Hoo for Subaru: There’s Lesbians in Them Troopers!”
Yeah, I can see where you are coming from on the softball teams/Girl Scouts articles. But I think both you and Julian are a bit too quick and cavalier in your dismissals of Kurtz’s arguments about marriage.
Julian simply brushes aside the idea that marriage might be an institution that exists for a specific purpose that might amount to more than simply a “romantic partnership.” This is why he can make his analogy to segregated public education and still not actually engage Kurtz’s central point: What is marriage for? Once he defines this, he may be able to argue that the gender or number of people involved in relationship is as irrelevant to marriage as the race of children is to education, but until he does so all his argument really amounts to is a curt but meaningless analogy.
Secondly, the reality is that there is already overwhelming evidence that the two-parent, marriage-based family is a child-rearing arrangement that offers concrete benefits other arrangements have not demonstrated. You can argue on libertarian grounds that this does not matter or is not a legitimate concern of public policy, but it is simply dishonest to pretend that these advantages don’t exist.
Reducing the issue to some arbitrary desire to harrass “devilish sodomites” might seem clever, but it does not seriously engage much less refute the arguments for keeping marriage as it is currently defined.
Ok, the two parent family is good for child rearing. Granted. So what? Give me an actual argument here, not some vague handwaving about the value of marriage and its great social purpose. Without fail, this line of attack makes that same move — marriage is important for X, Y, and Z… therefore… what? You want me to take you seriously, say something that merits it.
…and what is your 12 year old daughter learning on Wednesday afternoons…macrame?…not anymore.
Don’t you just love how organizations fall victim to political correctness and other individuals have all the flexibilty of a Kbar knife between the 3rd and 4th vertebrae.
Subaru makes the Outback and the Forrester. Isuzu makes the Trooper.