bore me to tears

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bigotry, blogging, christianity, humor, marriage equality, memes, politics, prop 8, religion, religious word play, separation of church and state, skepticism, snark, woo | 19 Comments

19 Responses

1. on August 5, 2010 at 12:48 pm sam

   It’s not new to me. And I did marry someone of the opposite sex, and look where it got me.

   Okay, I do still have her as possibly my closest friend, and we do have two amazing children.

   We are still legally married as it just hasn’t seemed quite worthwhile just yet to go through the process of legally ending it. As a marriage however it has completely ended.

   To be honest, this argument just proves to me the inhumanity and coldness of the people so willing to devote so much time to forcing this culture war to happen and to continue. It’s such a bullshit and hurtful response.

   
   
2. on August 5, 2010 at 1:07 pm Floyd R. Turbo

   Engage the argument and you’ll get your 10 points back.

   Marriage “is” one man and one woman. Water “is” two hydrogen and one oxygen. Reese’s Peanut butter cups are chocolate and peanut butter — change the ingredients and the word or label is meaningless. I know progressives are into linguistic deconstruction, but words have meaning. Two homosexuals can join together in church before a judge or on the Internet for all I care. That doesn’t make it marriage (or illegal or immoral for many folks regardless of their religious views or lack thereof). You can have a civil union and give all the rights of marriage, but that’s not enough. The language is the key. It’s odd that a worldview that professes to not care about the absolute meanings of words fights so damn hard to change meanings so as to be included.

   And the reason your comment was “cute” was because it was not substantive. If you’d read my speech it is largely because of Baptists (Roger Williams, Isaac Backus, et al. and their political allies (namely James Madison and Thomas Jefferson) that instead of religious toleration we have true religious freedom. By putting “Christian” and the smarmy wink sign… you didn’t engage (since it looks like you didn’t read it) you sniped. Come back to me… come back to Cold Mountain… and we’ll discuss. We only have a couple of liberal folks drop regularly by and I hate echo chambers (which is what a lot of blogs are in any case) so drop on by any time and we’ll be civil (I can’t vouch for a couple of folks in there though).

   Best… Floyd

   
   
3. on August 5, 2010 at 1:46 pm Sardine Mama

   Cute is highly underrated :).

   
   
4. on August 5, 2010 at 2:26 pm Lynn

   sam: “To be honest, this argument just proves to me the inhumanity and coldness of the people so willing to devote so much time…”

   Yep, there’s nothing like a bunch of greedy, pretentious, self-satisfied bigots spending untold hours at their computers – balancing an encyclodedia on one knee and a dictionary of multi-syllable words on the other – composing reasons why others don’t deserve the same rights that they enjoy. It both chills my spine and boils my blood.

   
   
5. on August 5, 2010 at 2:27 pm Lynn

   Thanks Sardine Mama! I feel the same way! :D

   
   
6. on August 6, 2010 at 3:51 pm sam

   Floyd, it’s impossible to argue with people like you who insist on this being a game about semantics when what it’s really about is equality. Marriage is a commitment between two people, and there’s no reason it has to be only for the special heterosexuals. Gay people are just as good as you are in much the same way that blacks and whites are equal and men and women are equal.

   And that’s what it comes down to no matter how many cutesy little things your side says to try and keep us from attaining actual, real equality.

   We should have learned this lesson from Brown vs. Board of Education, separate is not equal.

   
   
7. on August 6, 2010 at 4:09 pm JJ

   Floyd? That’s right, isn’t it? Well then — every Floyd I have ever known is composed of three parts stodgy and two parts smarmy, with a dash of angusturo bitters. In a pretentious glass. Either you’re not really a Floyd or that’s you.

   
   
8. on August 6, 2010 at 4:13 pm Lynn

   Floyd,

   Just found you in my spam folder. I’ll get back to your points but, for now, I wanted to offer a quick snipe at:

   It’s odd that a worldview that professes to not care about the absolute meanings of words fights so damn hard to change meanings so as to be included.

   It’s the conservative Christian that fights so damn hard to redefine terms. One obvious example (among many) is the concept of “religious liberty.” For far too many comtemporary conservative Christians, “religious liberty” means depriving others of theirs.

   As far as “engagement,” how does one engage a group of people who write stuff like,

   There’s a reason marriage was established as a formal arrangement, and thence encouraged and supported by our social institutions, and that’s because heterosexual encounters have consequences (or at least they did until efficient contraception) – those consequences are called “children”, and as we know all too well today, those children need a stable structure – a family – to thrive.

   Homosexual relationships have no such consequences – the only likely consequences (and not in every case) are a greater preponderance of particular venereal conditions among male homosexuals, largely due to the anatomical nature of one common form of intimacy between them.

   Good grief. (I’d normally insert a smarmy sad face here for irony’s sake, but I’ll resist this time on your behalf.)

   
   
9. on August 6, 2010 at 4:24 pm JJ

   I think this is the appropriate juncture to clamor for Floyd’s absolute, scientific, unambiguous definition of words like love, compassion, fairness, life, liberty, education, American, and how about his definition of the Golden Rule?

   
   
10. on August 6, 2010 at 4:31 pm Lynn

    Well, I already took care of the word “liberty.”

    Liberty “is” for me and not for thee.

    
    
11. on August 6, 2010 at 4:32 pm JJ

    I once had sooo-oo much substantive fun with “what’s in a name” news and essays but the capper has to be what we went through with the clarity campaign to get an absolute definition of “home education” — it’s impossible and it’s a lie to even try:

    Another Cloud on Home Education Clarity Campaign Horizon?

    Let’s just chase that storm down, shall we, see if we can get a clear look at it by flying ourselves into its eye . . .

    The name Minnesota LITERALLY means “somewhat cloudy water!”

    A Dakota word as it happens, which confuses itself right off the bat with our official names for two other states, you know, the Dakotas?

    Muddy Water of Dakota would be clear if muddy water CAN be clear, but wait, the Sioux arguably had more to do with MN’s history than the Dakota, and “Muddy Water” means Boston and the Red Sox, doesn’t it? — a song not sung, oddly enough, by Muddy Waters himself, who was in fact born in a (Mississippi, not Minnesota) town with a tribal name — Issaqueena Falls — but redefined himself as a native of Rolling Fork instead and then changed his name and birthdate to suit his public persona . . . and oops, I just confused Muddy Waters and Dirty Water!

    
    
12. on August 6, 2010 at 4:33 pm JJ

    Sorry Lynn, it’s suppertime here and I’m typing too fast to get done so we can go sit down. You get the gist.

    
    
13. on August 6, 2010 at 4:40 pm Lynn

    Enjoy your supper. May I suggest Reeses peanut butter cups paired with ice-cold H2O in pretentious glasses for dessert?

    
    
14. on August 6, 2010 at 4:45 pm JJ

    (Hey, if I put peanut butter and chocolate in my bra, wouldn’t it make peanut butter cups — btw bigger and more personally meaningful than anything cooked up to be mass-marketed for profitable public consumption and political effect?)

    
    
15. on August 6, 2010 at 6:17 pm Chris

    Since we are so into defining words, I have one for Floyd.

    Asshole.

    
    
16. on August 6, 2010 at 9:13 pm Lynn

    Gosh, back-handspring, forward-roll, curtsey, double-Hat-Tip to Dean for his insights on the matter:

    Lynn, your commenter has a great point, since peanut butter cups are as nearly identical as modern manufacturing can make them – just like marriages should be.

    Oh, wait:

    In recent years Reese’s has experimented with different types of peanut butter cups. Some variations have used white chocolate, dark chocolate, chocolate-flavored peanut filling, and banana peanut butter in a chocolate cup sold as the Elvis Special Edition (all by Reese’s).

    Another brand is Palmer, which specializes in holiday peanut butter cups. There are various forms that the peanut butter cups take for the different seasons. Each holiday has a different color of foil for the season. They can also come in different shapes such as Christmas trees during holiday seasons.

    Some of the holiday versions sound rather festive, almost gay*, no?

    *Here I use gay in one of the old meanings, bright and showy…

    
    
17. on August 7, 2010 at 8:11 am JJ

    Seriously and not as not I-told-you-so — well, maybe a little — Floyd’s untenable position is EXACTLY like authoritarian conservatives as self-appointed homeschooling defenders, trying to protect the institution by fighting against public program changes evolving to recognize and accommodate the diverse needs of other families. They waged their singleminded war over the word itself. They insisted (and no doubt desperately felt) that they earned it and owned it, and that both morally and legally, extending any part of that word or concept to others as equals would harm THEM, somehow.
    Diminish or or dilute the institution, maybe themselves and their families too.

    To the Word Defenders of the World, from Daryl’s in 2006:

    . . .I wonder if homeschooling/home education understands anything more of its own wonder and power, than all this simple-minded schoolish labeling and forced choice, legal definitions and penalties, rote drilling at the lowest kind of knowledge Bloom described.

    Collect all the data and authority in the world and it still can’t prove there’s only one way to view planets, or Holt, or homeschooling, or the Constitution and truth, beauty, justice and the American way, while all the other ways are wrong . . .and would you really want it to?? That’s what home educating as we see fit is supposed to MEAN –and if I were writing a definition for us all, it would!
    (But I don’t define, don’t ask me. . .)

    
    
18. on August 7, 2010 at 10:17 am JJ

    I had a scholar-author visitor to Snook today on this issue, who left an abstract of his book:

    Christianity is the privileged religious perspective in the United States since Christian groups, people, and organizations often have the power to define normalcy. Christian privilege comprises a large array of benefits that are often invisible, unearned, and unacknowledged by Christians. At times overt while at other times more subtle as Christian religious practice and beliefs have entered the public square . . .

    The effect of the so-called “secularization” of Christian religious practices and beliefs not only fortifies, but strengthens Christian privilege by perpetuating Christian influence in such a way as to avoid detection as religion or circumvent violating the constitutional requirements for the separation of religion and government.

    Christian dominance, therefore, is maintained often by its relative invisibility. With this invisibility, privilege is neither analyzed nor scrutinized, neither interrogated nor confronted.

    
    
19. on August 20, 2010 at 7:47 am Rufus T. Firefly

    Wow! Talk about an echo chamber!

    Actually, I can’t blame you for that, anymore than one should blame threedonia for attracting like minded folk. That seems to be what happens with media. Folks interested in a particular strain tend to patronize it.

    I didn’t notice your link to Floyd’s post until today, so I’m sorry I’m so late to the party. I echo (isn’t that punny?!) Floyd’s invitation to spend time in Threedonia debating the locals. We sincerely do encourage other views, and I think you’ll find our views less monolithic than you imagine. For example, if you read my comments to Floyd’s post I disagree with him on this topic.

    My stance is the state has absolutely no reason to be involved with marriage, and it’s the government’s insistence on involvement in the subject that leads to all this foolishness about definitions. What business does the state have in telling consenting adults who they can do with whom, or how often? It’s nonsense. I am a married, monogamous heterosexual and I don’t want the government in my bedroom any more than a polygamist does. If the government is going to make certain government benefits extend to 3rd parties (social security, for example), let folks designate anyone they wish to receive those benefits and stay out of the rest of it.

    So, I think you and Floyd are both wrong. Any attempt at a government definition of “marriage” will devolve into silliness, as we see in the comments above. The government has no jurisdiction in matters of the heart.