Sex and God

That was also an issue in the election.

Joseph replies to our Cincinnati friend who explained the Christian view of the election results -

“You need to disengage your need to be right."

That particular piece of advice was leveled at me by Joel Silver himself. He was right. [Joel Silver’s Frank Lloyd Wright house in Just Above Sunset here.] Only Phillip and you, I believe, have truly understood the spirit of it. It is a waste of time trying to convince others that you are right, when you could more easily convince them of what they need to believe in order to believe you. In other words, if your ego can forego the satisfaction of being proved right, you are more likely to get what you want. The Republican leadership knows this. Sun Tzu would approve.

Activist judges: judges at the appellate level or higher are activist. That some are not is talk-radio hype. It's just that there are some kinds of activists I don't like, and some kinds don't like. You will be tempted to label them "liberal"; I would urge you to call them "permissive" instead. It's not the same thing.

Don't believe me? How about your cherished right to privacy? Not in the constitution. Lots of other things you and I both cherish (like the right to drink beer, for example!) are not in the constitution and are only rights because "activist judges" "created" them. I think you would be appalled by all that we would have to give up if we had a judiciary full of Antony Scallias. You wouldn't like it. So let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Having said that, I agree. When gay activists first began throwing a fit, now nearly a year ago, I smelled big trouble. For quite a while, we have been in danger of scuttling the party on their behalf, and I for one, do not approve. Their welcome at the table was tentative at best, and this is how they pay us back?

I don't give a shit how badly they want it, their "plight" has absolutely ZERO parallel to the civil rights movement. To make the comparison is absurd. I agree with you 100% that the state amendment story is the elephant in the room. As far as I'm concerned, they should be shown the door until they can prove that they can behave themselves. If that makes me a bigot, tough. Should I let my house burn down to save theirs? 90% of gays aren't going to vote Republican no matter what we do. Those "log cabin" Republicans (who picked THAT name, anyway?) are gonna do what they're gonna do.

True, I don't support gay marriage either, but my reasons have little to do with morality. (Have you noticed that "morality" these days is limited to matters of sex?) If you give them marriage, it's no threat to me or society at large. But there would then be no legal basis for denying adoption rights, etc. This is where I personally draw the line. It’s tough enough being a kid these days without having two daddies that shower together.

The whole gay thing is just a big yawn for me. Except that their collective impatient, impetuous sniveling has played a major role in this particular train wreck. Every sensible Democrat should feel betrayed by those who insisted upon their own little interests when it was important (and smarter) to keep it together, shut up and wait.

Wow.

Emma responds –

Look I think you guys are making a real song and dance about this gay marriage thing. Personally I don’t think there is anything wrong in gay couples wanting to get hitched and settle down - it might reduce their so-called loud and rampant promiscuity.

Furthermore, in a world where so many couples get hitched for all the wrong reasons I have the impression that gay couples looking to marriage might actually be doing it for far more admirable moralistic reasons than most of us heterosexuals would give them the merit for.

My one concern however with gay married couples is when it comes to having children. That would seem to be the more appropriate discussion to seriously debate.

And Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, takes that up -

Emma,

I agree about the marriage thing. Although I never cared that much about it before, I was forced to make a decision about this stupid issue since the Republicans made it a wedge-issue: I really can't see anything wrong with it, especially since it seems spousal benefits can't be handled any other way. (Would it "destroy the concept of marriage" as we know it? I can only imagine the day it becomes legal that, all over this country, husbands will smack their foreheads in a "V-8" moment, shouting, "Damn it! If I'd only waited! I coulda married a MAN!!")

But as for their raising kids thing, I very much disagree with both you and Joseph.

Phillip and I live in a town (Decatur, Georgia) that is apparently famous far and wide for being where lesbians come to live. (If you've ever heard of the Indigo Girls, the singing group, they grew up here, and I think still live here.) But I've noticed at my daughter's elementary school countless lesbian couples dropping off their kids, kids who seem as normal as can be. And studies have shown that adults that were brought up by gay couples are normal in every way, and also end up having about the same sexual preferences as those raised by heterosexuals.

Should kids be raised by a mother and father? It's probably best, but I personally believe children of divorce probably fare much, much worse than children with two mommies or two daddies.

One more note about this Republican wedge-issue, as manifested in state amendment ballot proposals: I know that in my state of Georgia, a lawsuit to throw an anti-same-sex marriage amendment off the ballot failed, despite the fact that it secretly also banned not only civil unions, but heterosexual civil unions. (Some claim the challenge will win on appeal, on constitutional grounds.) This whole damn issue was phony from the get-go, designed to get the evangelicals -- people who didn't care about the real issues we face -- out to the polls. And if worked, and we're going to pay the price.

Rick

We are paying the price.

Phillip Raines chimes in here -

Scuttling the party on the behalf of the gay thing, huh? Hmm. I recall a headline in the Atlanta Journal "Zell Miller: ' I tried to tell you.'" I didn't have the stomach to read his opinion, but I'm sure it danced around that very issue. I could be worse. A candidate like me might say "Not all church is good and not all dope is bad." Boy that would really scuttle the bonnie ship, eh matey.

I found solace in coming to the conclusion that their writing is better, more hypnotic, and better on things that are bullshit. That's it! THEY DO THE BULLSHIT BETTER. That's what we need. To be better at a bunch of bullshit - then we can pull in the vast pool of the gullible, who after all are real numbers. I feel like we actually got out all the reasonable Democrats there are. That's our whole team, and you're not going to get the artist and anarchist to vote, they're too distracted anyway. Now the next step is to get Robert Redford to run, ahh.. How the electorate would swoon, if there are better writers out there to slip him all cue cards. I see a real dork factor to the image makers in this party, it's not like we have our best talent on the job. And Kerry bore the burden for us, but was not himself overburdened with charisma.

But on the prohibition on gay adoption. Well, it already happens one way or another. A couple of gay guys up the street have a couple of kids achieved by artificially inseminating one or the other in a lesbian couple. All four parents make good money and they aren't pedophiles. In my small town such things don't even raise an eyebrow for most of the citizens. There's a big lesbian population here in downtown Decatur (code named Dick-hater). There are responsibilities like school conferences, who picks up who at after-school, who is sent grades, hospital privacy concerns and medications, and then a myriad of insurance issues, pretty much like families everywhere have to wade through. All the contractual obligations could fall under the umbrella of marriage, but that sounds too much like holy matrimony and then you get some moron wrapped in an idiot who ponders who would Jesus booger or some such shit and their wiring burns through the insulation and there is a melt down of outrage spread chicken little-like through the land. The critical error is really based on the connection of marriage and matrimony, which is well... grammatical bullshit, which like I said, we don't do as well. Always distracted by turning it into some sort of smart-ass joke - and hey, who can blame us. In a way it's funny like a fart, but you gotta keep a straight face and enlightenment is, we must admit, the higher path.

But the point is that there is some sort of family contractual agreement that for all us straight people is covered in marriage, but for gays it is more convoluted, if not impossible. And insurance companies just hate the idea because it means more pay outs, and without national health insurance people are looking for an angle in the same way I tell young musicians to marry a teacher. You can't beat the benefits. With gay couples it all gets distracted by the buggery issue, and the farmers in the red states aren't going to go for that. And apparently even the Amish will vote to stop things from going in the direction of such nastiness. And now it's a democratic issue, somebody’s sex life. Yeah, well maybe we should draw the line on constituency, but replace them with whom? Or as Joseph implies, should we say you can come to the party, but try not to speak and don't make a spectacle of yourself. If they're even sitting at our table we have to defend the question of why do you have a queer at the table. Then where is that bullshit reply? Don't ask me. I would say their table collapsed from the weight of all those dildos, and where is that going to get you?

Rick, The News Guy, adds this -

Decatur (code named Dick-Hater)?

Yeah, I thought of mentioning that, but passed on it because I was trying very hard to come off as serious. (Oddly, I first heard that joke from a guy who lived in Orange County, California, after my having lived in Decatur for maybe ten years.)

Phillips says, "That's it. THEY DO THE BULLSHIT BETTER. That's what we need. If [gays are] even sitting at our table we have to defend the question of why do you have a queer at the table. Then where is that bullshit reply?"

It's odd, but I think their bullshit, on one level, actually isn't.

In fact, the Bush constituency has this indelible image in its collective head of a strong leader, and their guy fits that picture perfectly. So when Bush and his crowd shovel what the rest of us may think of as bullshit, his followers just see it as the kind of thing the "right man for the job" has to say in order to keep it.

This is why all this stuff about Kerry - for example, making sure we see him goose hunting, to show he's not going to take guns away from conservatives ("There he goes, the Massachusetts liberal, pretending to be a gun guy!"); or emphasizing his war record, as opposed to Bush's ("There goes that liberal Kerry, pretending to be as tough as W!"); or admitting to all the world that he's against same-sex marriage ("There goes the liberal from Massachusetts again, trying to pretend he's not a liberal!") - is seen by them as making Kerry look like a big phony who will do and say anything to get votes.

And quite frankly, although "bullshit" is way too strong a word for it, it's hard to deny that so much of it came off as pretty disingenuous and baldly pandering. But no, I don't think it's necessarily Kerry's fault.

The truth is, just as Kerry gambled he might be able to win without carrying one Southern state, Bush took a chance and spent his whole campaign playing to his core fans, not even allowing anyone into his rallies who wouldn't sign a form that promised to vote for Bush. And his gamble paid off. Not once did he try any such stunts to appeal to liberals.

In other words, on that particular level, not once did Bush, the candidate, bullshit anyone!

Amazing, when you think about it!

(By the way, oddly enough, George Bush apparently isn't even a hunter. Then again, nor does he need to pretend to be one in order to impress his crowd.)

So, is there a lesson for our side in all of this? Here's one: Don't try to make yourself look like the other guy, since voters already have one of those, and he will inevitably be better at it than you.

A corollary lesson: Those Bush bastards are begging for an opposition, someone who proudly stands for something else, and it might as freaking well be you.

It can be argued, of course, that Bush was able to get away with playing almost solely to his base only because he knew his base was larger than Kerry's. Maybe so, although I'm still not convinced. I still think there are plenty of untapped smart people out there who have a different definition of "moral values," and who could be recruited to get off their asses if only they were shown some glimpse of hope, and who would be willing to go vote for, and maybe even work to elect, the good guys.

I think prominent among the reasons that Bush beat Kerry, as has been discussed here, is that conservatives are very much into image, while liberals are more into truth. But it's also true that liberals, who try to be open-minded and are always willing to entertain both sides of an argument, are that much more likely than the other side to wonder why their guy can't jimmy up a good image as well as the other guy. (And it's equally true that conservatives are entertained by the liberals' tendency to doubt themselves out of existence.)

But this is not to say the liberals should be tempted to abandon their beliefs, in the vain hope of becoming winners.

Try to remember the dark days of "Strange Fruit" - black bodies hanging from trees, alluded to in the Billie Holiday song of the same name. Because brave people fought, and sometimes died, to make unacceptable behavior no longer acceptable, those days have become a curious relic of the past. The lesson is, happily, that sometimes sticking to good principles ends up being not nearly as futile as all those cynics and pessimists claim.

Which is to say that, among other things, we should stop worrying about coming up with a "bullshit reply" to those who question why we have gays sitting at our table.

I suppose we could tell them to go ask Dick Cheney, but they would then only accuse us of "bad taste" in "outing" Cheney's daughter, or some such crap. Maybe the better approach might be to say that there's nothing wrong with gay people - very smart and creative folks who contribute plenty to society, thank you very much; and maybe that God obviously agrees, since he created so many of them; and, by the way, who the hell are you to go around, second-guessing God?

But if that doesn't work, maybe you should invoke Dick Cheney's wisdom once more, advising them to go do to themselves what Dick Cheney advised Patrick Leahy to do!