TheAgitator.com
Mea Culpa. Sorta’.
Sunday, February 15th, 2004Loathe as I am to admit it, the notorious Richard Bennett has a point. In this post, I put up an AP picture of two innocuous looking old ladies who recently took advantage of San Francisco’s decision to issue marriage licenses in violation of state law. My point was that the two hardly looked like the type out to corrupt the institution of marriage.
As it turns out, the two very much are the type out to corrupt the institution of marriage. That is, they’re lifelong she-woman man-hating feminists. No, I’m not being cute. They’re both of the “all sex is an act of violence,” “you raped her if she changes her mind the next morning” crowd. The woman on the left, Del Martin, has said, among other silly things, that, “The door behind which the battered wife is trapped is the door to the family home.”
Of course, that the one couple AP snapped to represent the city’s act of gay marriage civil disobedience turned out, in that one instance, to validate conservatives’ worst fears about gay marriage doesn’t validate those fears in any broader sense. Marriage has been evolving and surviving for centuries. If 2-3% of the population gaining access to the legal protection of marriage threatens to undermine it, then it probably wasn’t all that strong an institution to begin with. And all the usual libertarian points about how marriage ought not be a matter of state intrusion to begin wtih still apply, too.
I might also add that Bennett, predictably, blows his short-lived victory. He goes on to bizarrely tie mine and Reason magazine’s opposition to the Iraq war to the gay stuff by saying we both supported “the marriage of Saddam Hussein to the Iraqi people.” Uh, okay.
(Side note: far as I know, Reason didn’t have an official position on the war, and in fact employs writers on both sides of the debate.)
Bennett also blames Del Martin for originating the widely discredit feminist myth about the phrase “rule of thumb” — which is sometimes said to have come from a law that a man could beat his wife, so long as the stick he used was no wider than his thumb. That’s not where the phrase comes from, of course. But Del Martin, for all her flaws, didn’t perpetuate the myth, either. Bennett also cites someone named Claire Renzetti who claims that 1/2 of all lesbian relationships are violently abusive. Lesbian domestic violence is certainly not a topic I’m well-schooled in, but that number sounds pretty ridiculous at first blush.
Bennett’s post (actually, much of the little I’ve read by him, for that matter) is fun to read, in the way that it’s fun to watch sports bloopers. He comes dangerously close to making a valid point several times, then stumbles over his biases, which causes his real motivation comes tumbling forth — and that would be raw, naked prejudice.
Still, he’s right about the photo.
Doesn’t matter. I still support the right of any consenting adults to get married, regardless of their sex or stupidity.
I don’t think those two will corrupt the institution of marriage and they provide a good social counter-balance to the right-wing fundamentalists who represents their antithesis.
I guess the phrase “man-hating bull dyke” is redundant after all.
You come close to admitting your error, Radley, and then fall back on the winds of fashion and ad hominem, alas.
Del Martin was in fact responsible for creating the myth that English Common Law permitted men to beat their wives with sticks for correctional purposes; Cecil Adams is obsessed with a particular figure of speech that’s not at all essential to the basic claim. This myth is one of many fabrications she developed throughout her career to smear men and those who marry us.
Regarding the Iraq War, your position was what it was and history will be the judge.
This quote is right on though-
” The sex act itself is neither male nor female: it is a human being reaching out for the ultimate in communication with another human being.”
Del Martin’s Mission
Lots of blogging people have sustained elbow injuries from patting themselves on the back over how inclusive and tolerant they…
I must take the opposite side with you on this, Radley, even though 92% of the time you are right on target.
A scientist would have to disagree with your conclusion that their is little or no correlation between sex-hate and same-sex marriage.
Fact One:
We have the above sample. The sample indicates there is a probability of a correlation between same-sex marriage and sex-hate of 100% with unknown variance. You know lesbian couples that are not man-haters? Feel free to include them in these equations. But consider that man-hating lesbian couples probably want nothing to do with you.
Fact Two:
There is a higher proportion of man-haters among lesbian couples than among heterosexual couples.
Fact Three:
Among lesbian couples, the man-haters are more likely to get married than the non-man-haters because the man-haters have more inspiration: their man-hate along with their desire to promote homosexuality.
Fact four:
At least some of the man-hating lesbians would know that they can send a man-hate message by marrying because they know society already associates a higher percentage of man-hating among married lesbians than other groups, whether it is logical or not.
We can conclude from these facts that the proportion of man-haters among married lesbian couples is notably higher than the norm.
Whenever you defend an institution, you also defend the people participating in that institution. By defending same-sex marriage you defend a disproportionately high number of man-haters.
—
Somebody said:
> The sex act itself is neither male
> nor female: it is a human being
> reaching out for the ultimate in
> communication with another human
> being.”
The sex act is not the ultimate communication among humnas. It is a physical action orchestrated by one of the most primitive parts of the brain. If this is the ultimate communication between people, then pass me the cyanide, please.
If the author now defends himself by saying “Well, by ‘sex act’ I meant ‘a meaningful relationship between people, which also includes sex’”, then I have to ask, why did you choose such a grossly innacurate phrase as ‘sex act’ to describe ‘a meaningful relationship that also includes sex’.
The reason, obviously, is doublespeak. The author had hopes of defending ‘sex act’ by pretending the good things about ‘meaningful relationship’ also applied to ‘sex act’.
I must also ask why he even needed to type a sentence that said, in essence, “A meaningful relationship is a meaningful relationship”.
Kelly wrote:
“Whenever you defend an institution, you also defend the people participating in that institution. By defending same-sex marriage you defend a disproportionately high number of man-haters.”
When we support drug rehabilitation clinics do we also support active drug use? I feel that moveon.org and vanguardnewsnetwork.org should have freedom of speech, am I defending Nazism and Leftism? Your argument is an extreme fallacy to say the very least. A defense of rights does not imply a defense of the people who exercise those rights.
Photographic coincidence?
I think not.
Sephiroth-
“When we support drug rehabilitation clinics do we also support active drug use?”
No more than when we support hospitals do we support heart attacks and cancer. There’s a difference in the voluntary nature of having to go to a clinic and wanting to go before a justice of the paece.
“I feel that moveon.org and vanguardnewsnetwork.org should have freedom of speech, am I defending Nazism and Leftism?”
No, you’re defending those who have opinions of any sort. The content of those opinions is irrelevant. You’re defending the institution of the unfettered marketplace of ideas.
The news organizations photographed Martin and Lyons because they were the *first* gay couple granted a marriage license under the Frisco policy. That they were at the head of the queue is no coincidence, but the culmination of a 40 year effort on their part.
You know, that lesbian domestic violence stat might have some merit. I recently saw an episode of COPS where the manly-girlfriend beat the tar out of the femme-girlfriend. The she-man went to jail. As they were putting her in the cop car, she didn’t ask if the girlfriend was okay; she just asked how she could pick up her truck without violating the restraining order. So, I believe this teaches us that no matter which sex you date, there are arseholes everywhere.
I don’t get it.
It seems to me that these women were as much of a threat to heterosexual marriage before they were officially married as they are now.
How does their marriage add to their threat?
Sephiroth wrote:
“When we support drug rehabilitation clinics do we also support active drug use? I feel that moveon.org and vanguardnewsnetwork.org should have freedom of speech, am I defending Nazism and Leftism? Your argument is an extreme fallacy to say the very least. A defense of rights does not imply a defense of the people who exercise those rights.”
In every law we make, or lack of law, we are fully responsible for weighing both the bad and the good that will come of it–even if we won’t personally be the ones doing that bad or that good.
If we do not make the law that gives us the best ratio of good/bad, then we are responsible for the difference in that good and bad from the ideal law.
For example, if I know that legalizing guns will reduce crime, but I choose to prohibit guns and crime increases, then I am responsible for that additional crime.
Sometimes we can make exceptions to general laws. For example, I can make guns illegal for children and criminals. If I knew that doing so would decrease injuries but I chose not to do it, then I would be responsible for the difference. For another example, I may see that censoring certain things on a childrenâ??s TV channel would be a good thing.
Exceptions to general law should be made only when it is opportune, of course. Admittedly some politicians like to make exceptions for ignoble reasons, but that doesnâ??t mean exceptions are all bad.
There is, however, something wrong with NOT writing an exception to a law when you know that doing so would improve the good/bad ratio.
So now we must weigh the good and the bad that will come from legalizing same-sex marriage.
Somehow I just don’t see how “freeing” these couples from the pain of not being allowed to put piece of paper from the county clerk on their den wall is oh-so-much more important than our government all but publicly promoting the messages that any reasonable historian would agree are the classic signs and cause of the death of a nation.
Now I will say that I’m not speaking here of the IRS interpretation of various ways to file tax returns. That’s a different subject and an equivalent of â??married filing jointlyâ? is fine with me.
One thing I should point out since Balko has seen fit to label me a bigot and a liar for quoting Del Martin’s work that created and perpetuated the Rule of Thumb myth is that I’m not opposed to gay marriage personally. I fully support gay marriage, because I think it would be wonderful for the family court judges who currently issue child custody, alimony, and domestic violence orders on the basis of gender to deal with cases where they’re forced to look beyond that standard to more meaningful dynamics.
As Gil points out, the damage to the institution of marriage has already been done, so we may as well enjoy the benefits, so to speak, from gay marriage. Of course, there really aren’t that many gays clamoring to get married, but that’s another story.
Richard Bennett:
I don’t see where, in this case, Radley calls you a “bigot and a liar” as you accuse him of doing.
“He comes dangerously close to making a valid point several times, then stumbles over his biases, which causes his real motivation comes tumbling forth — and that would be raw, naked prejudice.”
That should cover the “bigot” part anyway.
Radley, I usually let your dumber posts go by quietly into your archives without comment, but this is ridiculous.
What the FUCK do YOU CARE about the nature of the relationship between those two women? How do you square your purported libertarian ideals with the utterly repulsive act of investigating, and reporting on, the character of those two women?
What is the purpose of reposting such slander? To draw homosexual marriage into contempt? To smear all gay/lesbian couples with that very tired (and utterly unproven) idea that g/l couples are more likely to engage in domestic abuse?
Every once in a while I think you’ve finally abandoned the social conservative impulse that strikes you at odd moments. (what about that pro-life thing anyway? why should the federal government be able to regulate how women control their bodies when they’re bearing a non-viable fetus?)
but then posts like this remind me that your libertarianism is a thin veneer over a strongly conservative impulse (or so it appears).
this was a contemptible post. you should be ashamed.
Francis
fdl –
I think you’re looking too hard to get angry.
I have no opinion on the personal relationship between the two women. I originally posted the picture because the two looked innocuous to me, and so I used it to poke fun at conservatives who said that people like those two women were out to undermine marriage as an institution.
I think most gay people who want to get married wnat to get married for all the right reasons.
But as it turns out, those two women very much *do* want undermine marriage as an institution. Martin has built an entire career out of publishing books and articles about how heterosexual marriage is oppressive, and an excuse for men to beat their wives (that’s overly simple, but this is a comment, not a treatise).
The AP photo was a publicity stunt. These weren’t two sweet little old ladies. They’re lifelong opponents of hetero marriage.
They’re allowed to have that opinion, of course. I was just merely pointing out that on this one occassion, with this particular photo, the conservatives were right.
And I thought it only fair that I point out they were right because I originally posted the photo to imply that they were wrong.
You’re obviously angry, so I’ll let the rest of your invective slide. Suffice it to say, though, if you think I’m a secret social conservative, you obvioulsy haven’t been reading this site very long.
Francis,
I think you should reread the post objectively, because it doesn’t seem that you got the point. I can’t see any way it can be construed as socially conservative or smearing in any way, when in fact he calls the domestic violence claim “pretty ridiculous at first blush.”
Kelly:
Who is to be this determiner of “good and bad” which you need in order to make your political philosophy work? Is it going to be a conservative Christian, a libertine anarchist, or a radical leftist who wants us to return to the golden age of hunter-gatherer subsistence? There is nowhere near as much consensus as you think on these issues.
corquando – I was posing rhetorical questions, not arguing in favor of those positions.
These two old bags are perpetually pissed because even when they were in the prime of their lives no guy would have even thought of throwing them a bone. Well sorry, maybe a real bone right off a juicy prime rib, mmmmmm. On second thought, I’m keeping the prime rib bone, they can have the cheap ones.
They have no reason to hate men cause they are scary looking, they should hate people in general, it is society that makes them undesireable, it is other women who look better and spend more time on their appearance that puts them into the bottom of the “hot or not” scale. Hating everyone keeps sexual orientation out of the equation.
Francis, you have an interesting way of looking at the world. In your estimation it’s perfectly OK for Del Martin to spend a lifetime claiming that all men are abusers and rapists, but it’s wrong wrong wrong for anybody to talk about what she’s written.
If we ignore little ole Del’s life work, aren’t we marginalizing the poor little dear just as the patriarchy did in the bad old days of the Rule of Thumb?
In these enlightened times when city governments are free to pick and choose among the laws they’ll enforce, I think we should be beyond all that.
Pish tosh! Those women don’t pose any substantive threat to the institution of marriage simply because of their beliefs.
Of what concievable relevance is their androphobia? That doesn’t increase their danger quotient to the institution.
If they were lifelong republicans (as astronomically unlikely as that would be) would that make them less dangerous?
No, lets not judge them on their belief systems. I’m surprised an analyst for Cato would stumble like that.
Ugh.
Where did I write that they’re a threat to marriage?
My point was merely that these are not two old ladies who want nothing more than the protections of marriage, as I had originally implied. I was correcting myself. On the contrary, they’ve both built careers on underminding hetero marriage. They’re free to do that.
Do I think their new license is a threat to the institution? No.
Do I think gays are a threat to the institution? No.
It’s just in this one case, conservatives are correct. These two women were motivated by more than their desire to spend their lives together. They’ve published volumes on their contempt for hetero marriage.
One case. One incident. Says nothing about the broader debate.
I’m going to bed.
“That they were at the head of the queue is no coincidence, but the culmination of a 40 year effort on their part.”
Uh, yeah, so?
What’s your point?
When women or blacks were given the right to vote, should the people who worked for that goal have abstained for some reason? Would you have imputed evil motives to them?
I can just imagine your response to a suffragette exiting the voting booth.
What’s the ulterior motive? I don’t see how it’s even worth noting.
I don’t get your point. Your bigotry is clear, but your point is not.
Also, I suppose Richard Bennett would see something suspicious in the fact that Vaclav Havel was elected to office in the Czech Republic, and Mandela was elected to office in South Africa.
It’s no accident, after all. They’d been working towards it for decades.
Must be some evil perverted subterfuge.
Jon H, you sound like the kind of person who calls terrorists “freedom fighters”. Martin and Lyon’s life work calls their motives into question.
Did they want to get married to affirm their love for each other? That hardly seems important after 51 years of cohabitation.
This isn’t bigotry, dear, it’s research.
My theory, based on my reading of their published work and what I’ve been told by people who’ve known them for years, is that they wanted get married in order to crap on the institution of marriage.
sephiroth wrote:
â??Who is to be this determiner of “good and bad” which you need in order to make your political philosophy work? Is it going to be a conservative Christian, a libertine anarchist, or a radical leftist who wants us to return to the golden age of hunter-gatherer subsistence? There is nowhere near as much consensus as you think on these issuesâ?
This response of your’s compels me to ask two questions of you:
1. What, exactly, was it I said that made you think I believe there is a consensus on this issue? I recall making no such statement.
2. Why are you changing the subject of this thread from â??is same sex marriage good for our societyâ? to â??letâ??s debate about who should make decisions in our societyâ?? Maybe I made the mistake in presuming you belived as I, that ideally, the people decide what is good and what is bad for society through forums exactly like this, by discussing the various advantages and disadvantages of the issues. Apparently you believe something different.
Kelly, something you wrote sparked a thought, so this is in reference to what you said but not excactly directed at you.
Kelly said, “the people decide what is good and what is bad for society.” That’s scary. Remember the “mob” in the movie “Gladiator”? Did the mob decide well? The mob-rule was the ruin of the Roman empire. Sephiroth’s question “Who is to be this determiner of “good and bad” is at the heart of this entire matter. I believe that is why (he/she) asked it.
If “we the people” get to decide collectively what is good and what is bad, then where is the bar, where is the standard? Has anyone noticed that decade after decade the bar gets lowered, the standard drops? If this decline continues I don’t want to be around in 50 years, much less, God forbid, my children and grand-children and so-on.
Sephiroth’s question is undeniable. Who is the determinor of good and bad? There has to be a standard or our society as we know it will no longer be (eventually).
I’m not terribly worried about the corruption of marriage by these two women, I do have one serious concern.
How did “RULE OF THUMB” originate? This is now going to bother me for the rest of the day.
Big sigh.
Ms. Dani,
In my last post, I did not intend the word “ideally” to refer to democracy in general. I was refering to the ideal of our current so-called democratic republic here in the United States.
The way I look at democracy is like this:
Democracy is based on the assumption that a people deserve what a majority of them ask for.
Iâ??m not suggesting I think that is utopia.
Anyway thanks for the comment.
Kelly,
The point (the important one, that is) is that these women have done no one any harm by seeking and attaining a marriage license. I dare you to show how allowing them to do so constitutes an endorsement of all their ideas any more than allowing them to eat at the restaurant of their choice or rent the apartment of their choice or simply to live for that matter do! I agree that one has to consider all the pros and cons of any public policy, but what con has been reflected by the revelation of these women’s agenda? That something good happened to two people with ridiculous ideas? BFD!!!!
corquando,
I couldn’t tell which side you were taking, but you’re correct that when someone defends the rights of Stalinists or Nazis to speak, one is defending the rights of all to speak. And likewise, in defending the rights of man-haters to marry, one is defending the rights of all competent consensual adults to marry.
Gay activists are quite open and adament about their desire to transform the culture and the concept of marriage–in particular as it relates to group sex, monogamy, sexual experimentation, notions of “age of consent,” etc. Why don’t you take them at their word and address their (essentially unprecedented) effort to normalize and regularize the destruction and reformation of the most basic social unit in society: more basic even then the notion of the atomistic individual, so near and dear to adolescent, arrested-moral-development libertarians.
Well, How About That
This is one of those stories that the Internet community loves to unearth; unfortunately, it might very well run too counter to the storylines that many of the big names like to promote. You’ve seen the picture of the first…
As I read Frank N telling Danno49 in another post concerning normality, we all have different perceptions of what “normal” is.
Roach said “Gay activists are quite open and adament about their desire to transform the culture and the concept of marriage” This is true. And what the activists are trying to do is redefine what pro-traditional marriage people already consider normal. Who’s right and who’s wrong? What IS considered normal and/or exceptable? How does this end?
acceptable
A (somewhat)rhetorical thought:
Does anyone REALLY think that if gay marriage becomes socially acceptable and mainstream, straight people will stop getting married, married couples will divorce and society will collapse? I say that as long as women love weddings, straight marriage will continue just fine. :)
Sweet Old Ladies
Several days ago Drudge posted a picture of two lesbians…
Richard, I honestly don’t think adults will do that. I think my children and/or their grandchildren will grow up seeing this as a social norm, another option, another alternative to their lives. And it’s not.
Hey maybe this is why the dinorsaurs are extinct… they all decided to marry the same sex instead of what was intended naturally. Hey! I could be onto something!
crap, dinosaurs
Ms.Dani-
I like the dinosaur theory. However, in regards to children seeing gay marriage as an alternative, that assumes that people choose who they are attracted to. I don’t know about you, but no amount of convincing or acceptance of gays is going to make ME attracted to a man.
To make and analogy- I love steak and hate seafood. I find seafood disgusting actually. However, they are both options on a menu at a restaurant. Now, my personal tastes will make me NEVER choose seafood, but I don’t begrudge people who enjoy seafood the option. And if they hate steak, they will simply not want it.
Gay activists are quite open and adament about their desire to transform the culture and the concept of marriage–in particular as it relates to group sex, monogamy, sexual experimentation, notions of “age of consent,” etc.
You’re thinking about queer theorists and Foucauldian liberationists, I suspect. They used to form the bedrock of the Gay activist community (and they still run wild in academia), but over the past two decades mainstream Gays have slowly pushed these radicals to the margins where they belong — and, I might add, where they seem happiest. Nowadays, Gay activists are likely to be corporate, buttoned-down types — fiscally conservative, socially moderate, and even a bit prudish. (Frisco is an exception.)
Del and Phyllis are strictly of the old guard. They may be revered as founders of the first Lesbian organization in the US, but no one has actually listened to them for years.
BTW, libertarianism as “moral adolescence”? Since when is it irresponsible, or immoral, to insist that if people are to be virtuous, they must choose it for themselves, and not have it imposed upon them by coercive government? Book X of Plato’s Republic (the “Myth of Er”) insists on this point, by the way.
This one’s for Kelly:
Whenever you defend an institution, you also defend the people participating in that institution. By defending same-sex marriage you defend a disproportionately high number of man-haters.
Let’s assume that your second sentence is true (a big assumption, considering that it comes from a statistical sample with a variation approaching 100%).
Are you suggesting, then, that man-haters (or woman-haters) should not have equal status and protection under the law? Should they be counted as “unpersons” because of their alleged thoughtcrimes?
When one defends the principle that everyone should be equal before the law, one must necessarily include the good and the bad, the just and the unjust in that principle. Otherwise, it’s not “everyone,” is it?
Richard, this is where we differ. I believe “gay” is a choice. You, I’m presuming from your comments, believe “gay” is genetic. We simply are standing on different platforms. There will be no common ground here. Oh well.
Ms. Dani-
Maybe next time. :)
Only a dinosaur (danisaur?) could possibly think “gay is a choice.” Who would want to make such a choice in a world full of bigots?
One may choose whether or not to act on the predilection, but one does not choose the predilection itself.