2009
By xJane
4 Comments
Music Monday: Blogs Require Thick Skins
One of the things I love about MoF is that we’re a pretty small community and don’t attract a lot of trolls. This is not to say we never attract trolls, but when we do, it’s a surprise. There are many sites whose comments I simply don’t read because I don’t want to deal with the douchebaggery that goes on. One of my favorite podcasts, This Week in Law (iTunes link) had an interesting discussion of the reasons why it’s easy to flame people when you don’t see them in person. It’s a long podcast, but I think it’s a good discussion of the many factors. And that may be why MoF is different: most of us, even if we don’t know each other in person, know each other on other sites: I know you from your own blog, from twitter, maybe we IM each other, maybe we’re in the same flickr group. And somehow, that manages to make us more congenial toward each other’s opinions. Or maybe we’re just nicer people than the intarwebs at large.
This vid is NSFW and ROTFL funny.
2009
By xJane
2 Comments
“a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and […] values”
This is how our president defined our country yesterday. Explicitly denying that it was a “Christian nation” and explicitly stating that this fact is one of our “great strengths”.
It’s nice to be reminded of this—and by someone so high in the administration! It is vogue for politicians to exclaim “God bless America!” Whether or not The Divine smiles upon us is not the issue, the issue is which Divinity is being invoked. Likely not mine, which makes me bristle. Change the invocation just a bit and even the Christian right will object: “Allah bless America” and “Goddess bless America” are nearly epithets.
I look forward to what the religious response to this will be—will our secular roots continue to be denied? Will this be further proof that Obama is the anti-Christ? Or will this be accepted as an endorsement of pluralism? An invitation to dialogue?
Our country is yet young and still going through growing pains. I see our insistence on religion in the public sphere as evidence of this. I think the Secular Coalition’s crowing may work against them, but this may indicate, not a turning away from religion but a turning towards acceptance of non-religion. A big step for us.
2009
By xJane
13 Comments
Texas & England: Creationism & Its Dangers
Texas is reviewing its science standards, specifically with the desire to remove them altogether. Skepchick has a great discussion of exactly what this means, but here’s the short version:
Now: what you can do:
Just to drive home the point that we need to actually educate our children, not just indoctrinate them, here is a recent BBC documentary (in 6 10-minute segments) about a 13-year old girl, Deborah, who lives on her parents’ farm with some of her 10 brothers and sisters (the ones who haven’t yet left home to spread the Good News.
Deborah and her siblings have been home schooled and rarely leave the compound. When she does, it’s to give tracts out to her peers while they’re waiting for the bus. Her oldest brother has moved out and is working toward a chef’s degree. Deborah leaves home to go visit him in the fourth segment.
The whole thing is worth a watch, even though it’s long. My favorite part (besides the general creepiness and the “omg, it’s my sisters!”-ness of it) is that her brother is specifically turned off by flirting women. I can’t wait for the follow up documentary after that one hits.
2009
By xJane
16 Comments
Spark: Conservatives are More Likely to Consume Porn
Late to the party on this one, I know, sorry. It turns out that conservative (read: religious) states have the highest porn rates in the country. Probably because they’re not allowed to have deviant (read: fun) sex at home.
Meanwhile, people living in enlightened areas of the country have other outlets for their sexual urges, since sex is not dirty and can be discussed rationally with one’s partner(s).
2009
By xJane
6 Comments
Spark: XBox Live (Microsoft) Homophobic
not a huge surprise, I suppose…
RT @pizzocalabro RT @consumerist: Identifying Yourself As A Lesbian Gets You Banned On XBOX Live : http://tinyurl.com/cc48g8
2009
By xJane
1 Comment
Spark: Pre-Celebrate Valentine’s Day
And watch this vid. An MoF favorite singer and an MoF favorite cause: Regina Spektor and No On H8. Do this before V day and enjoy your partnership on Valentine’s Day guilt-free (and full of hope).
Let’s dedicate this Valentine’s Day to love.
2009
Blog for Choice 2009: My Top Pro-Choice Hopes
It’s Blog for Choice Day and I encourage everyone to visit the blogroll of bloggers taking part and to visit their blogs, if only for this one post. Also, feel free to revisit my posts from ’07 and ’08. This year’s topic is “What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress.”
I always find these kinds of things difficult. I don’t have a favorite band/book/movie, but I could give you a top five. So I think I’ll take that approach. These aren’t in any order except the order they come in, but they’re all up there.
1. Repeal of the Bush doctrine of the “conscience clause”. This is near the top of my brain right now because I recently read (and was subsequently incensed by) this, the story of a woman whose IUD was removed by a religious nurse, who then proceeded to lecture her about why she was morally opposed to it and then refused to put it back in. The nurse stated, “Everyone in the office always laughs and tells me I pull these out on purpose because I am against them, but it’s not true, they accidentally come out when I tug,” which suggests to me that she’s a serial assaulter.
The medical profession is different from most professions (it’s usually lumped in with the legal profession) in the sense that certain things are required of medical professionals that are not required of anyone else. I’ve likened conscience clauses before to a vegetarian working at Subway and refusing to serve meat. That was probably a wee bit flippant, but I do believe that, since the medical profession is so specialized, when one goes to an doctor, one is entitled to the best medical care that doctor can provide. Having an surgeon refuse to provide a patient with an appendectomy because the surgeon is a Christian Scientist should be illegal. Sure, where it is possible, allow the surgeon to find another surgeon who can provide this (often emergency) procedure. Where none can be found, the trained surgeon employed in the capacity of a surgeon at the hospital the patient has been admitted to may be expected to provide that surgery, regardless of the surgeon’s religious beliefs. The fact that it’s even being considered is repulsive and baffling to me. We require attorneys to provide legal service to criminals, regardless of the attorney’s belief of guilt or innocence. Where attorneys don’t want to face that kind of situation, these attorneys choose a different area of practice.
Replace “appendectomy” with “abortion” and my views do not change.
2. Codification in some way of the right to reproductive health services nationwide. This probably involves both the Congress and the President, since we all know Bush would have vetoed anything that allowed women to have a shot at doing anything for themselves. Roe v. Wade objectors are working their way up the courts inch by inch in an effort to get it repealed. Many states have laws-in-waiting that will go into effect as soon as it is repealed. With a Supreme Court stacked against reproductive rights and a rabid base who routinely files cases intended to make it to that Court regardless of the success of the last case, having a statutory law, rather than a common law, is a necessity.
The oft-quoted fact that Viagra is covered by many insurance companies that do not cover birth control pills is proof positive that there is a problem in this country with treating women as full humans when it comes to health care. Codification of this right would solve the insurance issue as well as the access issue. It may even solve the education issue, since more and more medical schools are removing certain reproductive health care procedures from their required curriculum making them instead optional.
3. Age-appropriate sex-ed classes that have a medical, rather than a religious, basis. How are we even having this conversation?! If I want to learn about god, original sin, or hell, I will go to a religious teacher. If I want to learn about oil, the periodic table, or sulfuric acid, I will go to a chemistry teacher. This is not rocket science, folks: if we want our children to learn about penises, ovaries, and menstruation, what is required is a biology course. Perhaps a sociology course to cover things like “no means no” and the etiquette of being sexually active in a world of STDs. And yes, abstinence should be included in a sex-ed course; but not exclusively. Options and consequences should be truthfully (I know that’s hard for religionists…and some parents) and openly discussed, explored, even debated. Each person will then be able to decide for him or herself what choices will be made. But choices cannot be made if options are not given.
And yes, as indicated above, I think that a rudimentary course in how men and women should act toward one another in a sexual context (“no means no” and epithets like “slut”) should be included.
4. Support for parents in the workplace. Note the plural. Women may well need some physical time to recover following childbirth, but the child itself requires more attention when it is first born than later in life. Whether the parents are two gay men adopting, a het couple having a natural child, or a lesbian couple with a sperm donor (or any of the myriad other options and combinations), both parents should be assured of paid leave to care for the new addition to their family. And, upon returning to the workplace, they should be assured that they have a job.
I’d like to work into this some sort of acknowledgement that often, one parent quits their job and returns to the workplace some years later (above I was thinking more in terms of months), to find that her (it is most often a woman) marketability as a worker has vastly decreased, but I can’t figure out how to work this into legislation.
5. Repeal of the Global Gag Rule. I would hope that, if the above hopes come to pass, this would be an obvious inclusion. If we secure reproductive rights internally, we have no call to presume to infringe upon them externally. But it may slip through the cracks. Not only does the Gag Rule reek of imperialism and I-know-better-than-youism, it is inherently dangerous to men and women alike, especially in regions beset by an AIDS epidemic. People in need of medical care are entitled to the best medical care that society and current medical knowledge can give them—not the best care that the United State wants them to have (how is it that these are two separate things?!). Not only has the US no right to impose religiously-based medical care upon its own citizens, it has no right to do so for citizens of other countries.
Finally, as an aside that I don’t think either the President or Congress has much, if any control over, I think that (daily) birth control pills should be over-the-counter, since there’s no LD50 for them. For morning after pills, an argument may be made for keeping them behind the counter in the same way that cigarettes are.
2008
By xJane
No Comments
Sparks: I Couldn’t Keep Them to Myself
Obama’s first YouTube-Side Chat. I’d love to get the audio in podcast, since I have more time to listen than to watch. I’m so glad that he’s doing this (I’ve been saying for some time that the Fireside Chats need to be brought back, to increase trust and transparency; in this case, also to increase hope). I don’t think that this first one was very substantive (certainly he can’t really have done anything yet), but I do think it’s important as a gesture. via.
Education and Religion.
Two stories of interest, each proving the importance of the other.
In the first, an English Catholic bishop blames educated members of the Church for sowing dissent among the rest. He clearly has a low opinion of his own faith, that it is so easily thwarted; or a low opinion of his faithful, that the best of them are uneducated boobs.
[Third story, more of an aside: Letter to the Red States outlining the differences in the voting public for Obama and for McCain (as well as some others. Not sure where this started, I got it in an email. If someone would like to track down the true author, I'll link to that instead).]
The second, a horrifying story in which the Taliban agrees with the Catholic bishop above: education is a threat. Education of women an even greater threat, one that they are actively discouraging by acts of violence and terrorism against the women who teach, the girls who wish to be taught, and the parents and family members of both.
Education is a threat to faith. One Catholic bishop and a bunch of terrified Afghan men agree: only unthinking members of society will stay in their place and allow the power to maintain their stranglehold upon truth and freedom.
On a lighter note, a quick reference guide for religions, the Big Religion Chart. From Aladura to Zoroastrianism, it breaks down religions by name, origins & history, number of adherents, god(s) and view of the universe, human situation & life’s purpose, the afterlife, practices, and texts. It also provides helpful links to learn more. Christianity gets one entry, a fact which should sober all those people lobbying to enforce their world view upon the rest of the country (although outliers like Jehovah’s witnesses, Mormons, and Unitarians, who are only arguably Christian do get their own entries). I know I’ve got some additional research to do (after finals!, I have to remind myself) to learn more about religions I’ve never heard of as well as to see where I fit.
An infomercial for Religion tells you that, if you are easily led, then you need religion! The benefits are priceless and I won’t spoil the fun by telling you what they are. via.
Final quick hit: Another (do we need another?) Argument for the ERA.
2008
By xJane
3 Comments
If you could be anything you wanted…
One of the more popular genre of games right about now is a cross between full RPG and general story game. The most highly anticipated was Fable, where you start out as a young boy and grow into a hero…or a villain. And this was the major selling point: a slightly more sophisticated Choose Your Own Adventure book, without the possibility of getting caught in an endless loop (that happen to anyone else?) or for some reason falling off a cliff face & dying, even though you’re on a pirate ship (seriously, continuity was not invented until after the 80s). Perhaps because it was so highly anticipated, Fable fell on its face (like me, off that damned cliff): the choices were either mundane (which is more evil: bread or chicken?) or bizarre (lessee: I can go on your mission or rip your head off & drink your blood); you didn’t grow up so much as wake one morning with muscles, a deeper voice, and a god complex; and clichéd (when you’re good, you glow and when you’re bad, you have flies circling your head). My major complaint about it, since all of those were actually rather charming in a strange way (one of the missions actually required that you stand in front of a cave and eat 50 live chickens to prove your evilness) was that, if you actually did all the missions before the final mission, it was far too easy.
But the point is this: I spent days playing that game. Crunchy live chicken bones and all. I’m the kind of person who explores maps in their entirety, just to make sure I didn’t miss the 3 gold that might be hiding in that garbage can. So when I got my hands on Fable, I played it through, thoroughly; but since you can’t do that and be good, I played it through again. Thoroughly. Jade Empire was my next good/evil game. I played that one through 3 times (once good, once bad, and then another two times half way through bad because there were four endings…).
The most popular is undoubtedly Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Morality game and you get to choose the color of your light saber’s crystal. Pure geeky fantasy.
This post came out of a comment about video games and exploration of morality. There are social rules that we live by on a day to day basis (most often not involving falling off cliffs, eating live chickens, or light saber dilemmas). The little moralities of “should I speed” or “whose pen is this” are petty next to the epic good vs. evil that’s waiting at home on a shiny silver disc.
Not only are these games popular as a genre, they’re starting to bleed into the other genres. Mass Effect, which as far as I could tell was a Halo-meets-EVN knock off had “being evil” an option in most of your choices. This caused my husband to play it through twice: once as a beautiful but tough woman with a nice ass (since the third-person perspective meant that was what you got to see of her most of the time) and once as a large man with a larger nose and a scar over his eye. Nothing subtle there.
What do these [socially acceptable] role-playing games show us about ourselves and others? In the safe space between the video game and you, the opportunity to do anything you want to exists. Will you fire at those ugly aliens and become humanity’s hero? Or will you negotiate with them and become the peacemaker? Either way, you’ll get XP and renown, so the choice really is completely up to the player. Incidentally, I don’t know anyone who plays these games down the middle: I’ll negotiate with these aliens but blow the next ones out of the sky. Everyone hits the extreme.
Is our world so grey that we need these little hits of good vs. evil? Or do we all secretly wish that we were saints (or satans)?
I know I have a (possibly not that hidden) dark streak: I’ve always been the black mage, the live chicken eater, the Marauder. I also don’t often work well in parties. I could go all sorts of places analyzing those two statements…
2008
By xJane
16 Comments
In the Dark about AFTERdark
So, we’ve got these posters up all over campus for an “event” tonight called “AFTERdark” and it’s pissing me off because I think this is a microcosm of the general bait-and-switch of religion.
The campus event of the year
AFTERdarkthe compelling drama of
Joe White
“a top 10 influencer of the century”
-New Man Magazine&
in concert
Jon McLaughlin
Island Records recording artistFree Event
[date/location/time]
www.whatsafterdark.com
It’s got photos of the two guys (actually looks like it was made on a Mac…) and some dark clouds & whatnot in the background. There are also students walking around with T-shirts that say “AFTERdark, [date/location/time]” along with our school mascot and the website on the back
A student came into our classroom one morning to write it on the board, so I asked her what it was.
“Oh, it’s just an event.”
“What kind of event?”
“Well, there’s a concert.”
“Is that it?”
“No, there’s also a reenactment.”
“A reenactment?” vague images of SCA come to mind, “What kind of reenactment?”
“Oh, like a play.”
“…What kind of play?”
“I think it’s about the Passion,” as she scurried away.
To be fair, throughout this whole conversation, she was attempting to scurry, getting closer and closer to the door with each exchange. Perhaps she had thirteen more classrooms to write in before class started, I don’t know what her hurry was, but I definitely felt like I was getting the run around.
So I went to the website, since I was curious. It also doesn’t give much information (except that it’s “One night. One campus. One movement.” and some general testimonials: “best night of my life!” “changed my life”). So I Googled it and got this article from more than a year ago, “AFTERdark Deceives Students to Preach Gospel”. So, AFTERdark consists of a random up-and-coming artist and an evangelical speech by some other random dude. But that information is hard to get.
During our weekly announcements, a classmate stood in front of the class and invited everyone to it: “There’s a concert, it’ll be awesome, hope to see you there!” We didn’t really get a chance to ask him questions, so I didn’t then. But the next day, I saw someone with a shirt on. So I asked her:
“Hey, do you know what that is,” I said, gesturing toward the shirt.
She looked down, then made eye contact and said, “Yeah.”
We looked at each other for a moment. “…what is it?”
“Well, it’s a event.” I had had this conversation.
“Okay, what kind of event?”
“There’s a concert…”
“So it’s a concert.”
“Not just a concert.”
“Oh. Okay, what else is it?”
“…there’s a speaker.”
“Oh, cool—what’s he speak about?”
“Oh, stuff that’s relevant.”
“Like politics? Is it a rally?”
“No. Like the Gospel.”
“Oh! Okay, cool, thank you.”
“Yeah, no problem.” She looked at me shiftily.
“You know,” I said, keeping her a few more moments, “it’s really hard to get that information.”
“Oh?” She looked shiftier and laughed nervously, “it’s not supposed to be.”
Then she scampered off.
Now I have a mission: shanghai everyone with an AFTERdark shirt and get them to admit that it’s an evangelical preach-fest. I also have a tactic: the naïve idiot.
Employee in the cafeteria:
“Hey, do you know what AFTERdark is?”
“Well…it’s in Alumni Park!”
“Right, but what is it?”
“It’s a concert, Jon McLaughlin is this record-signed artist who’s really cool.”
“Oh, what kind of music does he play?”
“Just…music. Pop. Nothing Christian.”
“…okay.”
“My fiancee thinks he’s hot.”
“hehe, cool. So it’s just a concert?” I resisted the urge to assume or imply genders about his fiancee.
“No…you know, I really don’t know a lot about it. Some students asked me to wear the shirt. But I’m going to it!”
“Oh, okay. It’s just hard to find information about it.”
“Huh. I wonder why that is…”
Me, too, dude. Me, too.
Look, I go to a(n ambiguously) Christian school. I get that. I understand that they probably reserve the right to prosthelytize to their students. But I do expect them to be honest about it. “AFTERdark: concert and prosthelytization. Free cookies!” People will go, you don’t have to deceive them! Trust me, free food on a college campus plus anything = attendance. Homeland security plus In-N-Out = attendance. Prop 8 with Mormons plus ToGos = attendance. Torture and bloodletting plus pizza = attendance! The deceit makes me feel like they think they’re doing something shady by trying to get us to come to Jesus. The deceit turns it into something shady. I’m really uncomfortable with this religious bait-and-switch and feel that it’s endemic of the whole religious “thing”. They don’t want my soul to come honestly to a belief in a higher power that makes me want to be good, love my neighbor, and hate gays. They want to trick me into it.
2008
By xJane
10 Comments
Why I’m Against Proposition 8
or, xJane gets mushy
Yesterday was DH’s and my 3rd anniversary. It gave me a chance to reflect on love, marriage, and rights. Specifically on why I did (and did not) get married & what that makes me think about the rights of others.
I did not get married so that I could bear DH’s children. I did not get married so that his father’s name would be carried on. I did not get married because it was a “respected social institution” that I desperately wanted to be a part of. I did not get married so that I could be a “wife”, nor did DH because he wanted to be a “husband” (whatever those words are supposed to mean). I didn’t get married because my religion told me that marriage was good. I didn’t get married because marriage was the only way for me, as a woman, to be completed or live a full life.
I married DH because I love being around him. I got married because when I am with him, I feel like I’m with only myself—that I don’t need to be anyone else but the true me. I got married because his presence makes me smile. I got married because, when I come home & find him there, the tensions of the day disappear. I got married because I love waking up next to him & watching him sleep (in a totally non-creepy way). I got married because DH is a great cook and I’m a great baker. I got married because we are equal partners in life—each supporting the other. I got married because we love playing video games (separately and together), camping, judo, and computers. I got married because even when he pisses me off, I love him. I got married because even when I piss him off, he loves me. I got married because DH makes me happy.
I got married so we could own property together. I got married so that we would have enforceable rights if anything happened to either of us. I got married because he’s got great insurance benefits & I’ve got a great credit union. I got married because when we weren’t married, the world seemed to look at us differently, like we weren’t really in love. I got married because it made everything (taxes, renting, car ownership, illness, life insurance, nearly everything) easier. Just one document & so many issues simply evaporated.
And that surprised me. Social issues, family issues, governmental issues—completely resolved simply because I had a different last name, a legal document, and a [white] gold ring.
For these reasons and for all the reasons I didn’t list, I cannot condone restrictions on marriage between consenting adults of any gender. Nor can I sit idly by while bigots and homophobes attempt to restrict rights on the basis of religion at best and ill-articulated arguments at worst.
Marriage is not an institution I like. I think it’s misogynistic, religious, and unequal. I think it has been hijacked by people who still believe that women should be property and held in too high esteem by people who think a wedding means white dresses & expensive blood jewelry. I think it needs to be reformed or dismantled. But it’s what we’ve got. And it’s powerful—powerful enough to get my parents to talk to DH, powerful enough to allow me to speak for DH in forums where he is uncomfortable (and he for me), powerful enough to change part of my name for no good reason (but not his). And because of that power, it cannot be denied to people who want it.
2008
By xJane
7 Comments
Prop 8 on Campus 2.0
This time, Dean Starr introduced Monte Stewart, of the Marriage Law Foundation (or MLF). I bet I can guess which way this one will go. There were questions but no rebuttal.
It was sponsored by the J. Reuben Clark Society, who described its mission as exploring how religious belief influences practice of the law. Proposition 8, the student representative told us, is just such an intersection of religion and the law. I don’t know about you but that freaks me the fuck out.
After appropriate ego stroking (student saying how honored he felt to host this forum, Starr how honored he was to introduce Stewart, and Stewart how honored he was to be introduced by Starr), he began argument. One of the things that concerned me the most about his tone and some of his arguments was that it sounded exactly like my father. Overly calm but with an undertone that these are vitally important issues and that life as we know it will cease to exist if we don’t do [whatever they tell us to].
He started with an argument that the “man-woman” definition of marriage is completely compatible with the constitutional requriements for equality. He did not, however, expand this point, he merely asserted it. He did refer us to some papers he had written, which are conveniently available online! I’m not in any emotional state right now to read through them, but I’m calming down.
He continued by stating that he was going to present an institutional, or “wholly secular” (which I thought was an interesting choice of phrase) argument, not because he believes that faith is illegitimate in the public square but because some people do believe that religious perspectives ought to be excluded from the public square and these people demand a wholly secular argument. He wishes to address these people in such a way as to influence them as well as to provide arguments that can transcend faith for supports to discuss with those against the proposition.
He began by defining his terms and discussing social institutions. The “big five” social institutions in all societies are: politics, including government, law, & elections; education; religion; economy, including markets & money; and, of course, marriage & family). They are constituted by a unique web of interrelated public meanings. They teach, form and transform individuals in the society in an unconscious manner. He gave the example of two pieces of paper: a $20 bill and a blank printer sheet; he then invited an audience member to the state in order to choose one or the other (of course, the $20 bill was taken). The point being, of course, that social institutions teach us what things society values over what other things—and people. Social institutions, however, can change or even end (with scary voice “end!”). For example sometimes money loses its social value (as expressed economically) or private property ceases to be an accepted social institution (like in Russia).
When he brought marriage into the equation, he said it with the same scary “end” voice and immediately linked it to scary Russia, who apparently made a conscious effort to delegitimize marriage as an institution but found that the social costs were too great. Social institutions, he reminded us, provide social goods (like money, like law, like marriage) and in “all societies” man-woman marriage is a “universal social institution”.
He then indicated that he was going to list some social goods provided by man-woman marriage (but presumably not by same-sex marriage). He only, however got to two and referred us to his articles for more.
The first was “the child’s bonding right”, an internationally recognized human right that “a child has a right to know and be raised by his or her own mother & father with exceptions made only in the best interests of the child (not in response to the interests or desires of any adult).” So now we hear a different child-centered argument against gay marriage. Rather than that only one man and one woman may raise a child, that a child has a right to be raised by both of them. Again, I would like to play the adoption card—given that same-sex couples cannot accidentally procreate, they must intentionally do so. If they choose to adopt a child who has already been denied his or her own parents, are they adequate parents? If not, why not? Given that the child has a chance now to have two parents who love him or her, what are the arguments against allowing a same-sex couple to be those parents?
The second social good provided by man-woman marriage were the words “husband” and “wife”. He did not expand what exactly is “good” about those words. But he seemed to think that it was extremely important that they would no longer be the parties to a marriage. I don’t know if the thinks that “husband and husband” or “wife and wife” are poor substitutes or if we will all start calling each other “spouse” (I can’t see anything bad about that).
In California, he said, we have the opportunity to decide whether the meaning of marriage will be “the union of a man and a woman” or “the union of any two persons”. He went on to say that it cannot be both at the same time: that one meaning necessarily displaces the other meaning. He claimed that “genderless marriage” is the correct term, as same-sex marriage is a misnomer—”marriage” is always defined as either of the above. “Genderless marriage” will be the same marriage entered into by opposite-sex couples as by same-sex couples. And again, I fail to see what’s bad about that…
There is another alternative, however, to the two definitions above: no normative marriage institution. He alleged that many proponents of genderless marriage hope that it will lead to “no normative marriage institution”. Once again, I’m part of that group & don’t see anything wrong with it. All that will be left for him and his hangers on to “traditional marriage” is “a motley crew of lifestyle options” which “are to marriage what a Monopoly bill is to a $1000 bill”. Of course, “genderless marriage is radically different from man-woman marriage. There is some overlap but the radical divergence is evidenced by a difference in social goods that each will provide.” For example, the child bonding right.
He stated that, on the day of his marriage, the law did not make him a husband, a social institution did. “Socially positive statutes and identities will be desiccated, turning a husband into any male party to a legal marriage” (although again he does not define what other meanings for “husband” might be might be “positive”). “Equality for homosexuals will not come about by allowing genderless marriage.” This is quite an entertaining assertion, especially, coming as it does with absolutely no evidence. Apparently, “there is a price tag for allowing genderless marriage” and harm will result to man-woman marriages if genderless marriage exists. Future children will no longer be able to understand what the difference between genderless marriage and man-woman marriages. And that’s…bad?
Since the law is powerful, the law will suppress the current meaning of marriage and “we will lose the social goods it uniquely provides.” We take the definitions given us by social institutions for granted. A genderless marriage regime will have three powerful messages:
Enshrinement of genderless marriage will have “very negative consequences for religious liberties”. A fact that is not widely disputed by either side—but the pro-genderless marriage proponents think that it is a price that we should all be willing to pay. He ended by hoping that none of us is so blind to choose a genderless marriage regime because it will have no cost.
He then opened the floor to questions. I didn’t really catch a lot of them, so I’m not going to get into that.
UPDATE: the video is available online but only to students of Pepperdine through iTunesU. If there is interest, I’ll create & post a transcript. However, his arguments are just as well (or poorly) laid out in the articles available on his website.