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Matt Walsh Is My Hero
I just finished listening to Matt Walsh’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast, episode #1895. I listened via my Spotify subscription so I’m not sure if I can provide a link. Interesting discussion, worth the time. They spoke about two issues: what is a woman and gay marriage.
The “What Is A Woman” discussion was great, as usual, even though the two largely agreed. It was interesting to hear the agreement from Rogan’s perspective, and I’m glad people like Rogan think it important enough to provide the platform to Matt Walsh and to the bigger idea about contra-gender-ideology.
What really brought me here to share my thoughts was the gay marriage part, which I believe ended up being a third to a half of the three-hour running time. First things first: Matt Walsh must have immense adrenaline control. Throughout, he remained calm, thoughtful, and articulate. That’s hard to do with a subject like this, complex with disagreement at just about every level of the argument. I want to be like Matt when I grow up.
Another part I found interesting: Matt Walsh rehearsed just about every response to just about every objection that I’ve encountered here at Ricochet and that I’ve used myself. Was Matt listening in since 2012 and taking notes from all of us? He may have been. He gave the response I would have given to just about every one of Joe Rogan’s questions or challenges, although he did so more articulately and appealingly than I ever could. The only weak spot, and it wasn’t all that weak as it was, being articulating the distinction between the institution of marriage and individual marriages, between the reason there is an institution and the reasons individuals might have for wanting to participate in the institution. Following that, discussing why society should create legal entanglements for a relationship that is, according to Rogan’s way of explaining things, ephemeral and highly subjective.
Anyway, I don’t want to rehash the SSM arguments. I’m here to declare my admiration for Matt Walsh. Joe Rogan is alright too, but Matt Walsh says things that I would say and have said; that makes him incontrovertibly correct and probably more handsome too beyond what the glorious beard does for him.
Published in General
I think you’re making a different point. Or maybe it’s just going over my head.
I think much of the support for same sex marriage is practical, not ideological. They just want their gay and lesbian friends and relatives and co-workers to be able to enjoy the legal protections and the recognition that comes with civil marriage.
I think people see transgenderism as a different issue.
Martina Navratalova, the lesbian female tennis champion from decades past, has said she is completely opposed to allowing men who think they are women compete in women’s tennis events. She has received lots of blowback for saying this.
Many homosexuals are opposed to the radical transgender movement because they think this movement is telling young men who are attracted to men that they are actually women, so they should subject themselves to surgery and drugs rather than simply accept that they are gay. And that young women who are attracted to women that they are actually men and should “transition” to being a man rather than accept that they are lesbian.
In other words, many homosexuals see the radical transgender movement as being anti gay, anti lesbian.
Many left-wing feminists are opposed to the radical transgender movement too, because they see it as primarily a men’s rights movement, giving men the “right” to “become a woman” whenever they please.
Only Ron DeSantis has really taken this issue on, by inviting that woman swimmer who was denied a victory because she was forced to complete against a transgender ‘woman.’
Being unwilling to admit you are wrong is not a virtue, in my opinion.
Imagine a Muslim who was raised to believe that it is morally acceptable for a husband to beat his wife because that is what the Quran and religious authorities tell him.
If this Muslim has the courage to question his religious authorities and ancient texts and eventually realize that wife beating is immoral, that’s a sign of moral probity, not moral weakness.
Is it possible to be wrong twice? Many of the positions laid out against SSM during discussions here and previously, you seem to understand and generally accept as logically valid. Yet the repeated retort is invariably “I used to oppose same sex marriage. But I support it now.” without much defense as why…other than producing statistics that the majority of the country now supports it.
I’m just wondering if your astute observation on virtue, has any chance to resonate with your change of opinion with SSM, if the evidence ex post facto leads to that conclusion?
When I opposed same sex marriage, it was based on the idea that while a man and a woman can procreate, two men can not and two woman can not. Obviously, this is the case and has always been the case.
If one thinks of marriage as being primarily about procreation, then it is understandable that one would think that marriage should consist of one man and one woman.
However, if one thinks of marriage as being primarily about romantic love between two consenting adults, then two men or two women getting married seems perfectly reasonable.
As I see it, the question to be asked isn’t “Why same sex marriage?” But instead the question could just as easily be, “Why not same sex marriage?”
Of course, inevitably someone will ask, “Well, then why not support polygamy?” It’s a great question, but it’s a question that could be put to those who oppose or support same sex marriage.
In other words, the question of how many people a marriage should consist of (two, three, four, five) is a question that can be asked of those who who think that marriage should be exclusively heterosexual and also those who don’t exclude homosexuals from marriage.
Well maybe your question should be why marriage at all?
We are talking about romantic or any sort of love. Government does law, legal, rules, regulations and contracts but not feelings like love.
So how did we get here – making the jump that the fundamental principle behind marriage is romantic love? Where did this conclusion originate from and what exactly do you mean by “romantic love”?
Traditional marriage supporters never denied the appeal to romance and understood it as a benefit. But it is a secondary benefit, at best. Detaching marriage from it’s fundamental premise, commitment to procreation, has profound psychological and sociological effects. Ask nearly any honest psychologist, at least until 10 minutes ago.
(My apologies to Ed G – I don’t think his intent was to dive, yet again, into this rabbit hole.)
BTW – loved your concluding statement @edg … I laughed so loud I woke up the dog :-)
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles are truly fearless culture warriors saying what should be said and championing what should be championed. Matt has made significant gains against school boards and transing the kids stuff.
What do I mean by “romantic love?” Human beings fall in love with each other. That’s not too controversial, is it? So, when a human being falls in love with another human being and the feeling is mutual, at some point they might want to get married.
As to “So how did we get here?” I think that is a bit like saying, “How did we get to the position where a man isn’t allowed to beat his wife?” Perhaps the question should be, “How did we get to the position where a man could beat his wife? The ancient texts say that a man has this option.”
One could say, “It’s a tradition that the man has the option of beating his wife when he suspects his wife is not being sufficiently obedient to him.”
Yes. But sometimes tradition isn’t enough to justify a public policy position.
Watching the What Is a Woman documentary, I was amazed at times at how deadpan he was asking some of the most ridiculous questions. There were times when most of us would have laughed or gotten mad but he was so mellow.
I’m not interested in your book, I’m interested in the Building and Loan.
I’m definitely not interested in conservatives who favor government/legal entanglement based on something so ephemeral and none-of-its-business as romantic love.
Apology accepted. I hear that nothing says I’m sorry like a good bottle of bourbon.
I like the cut of your jib. Your favorite bottle then? Right now I’m pleasantly finishing my Woodford Reserve, double oaked. Affordable and super Yummy.
Makers Mark, but I don’t get too adventurous once I find something I like. They’re all good as long as they get over a minimum bar. Bulliet, Buffalo Trace, Woodford, Jefferson, Four Roses, even Wild Turkey are all tasty when I’ve had them. I still have a giant bottle of Jim Beam about one third remaining that’ve have from my early twenties before I had a palate to speak of.
May I suggest Bulleit 10 year.
https://www.totalwine.com/spirits/bourbon/small-batch-bourbon/bulleit-10-yr-bourbon-whiskey/p/130847750
I’ll give it a try. Thank you
@heavywater Maybe I have missed it in the comments, as I am late to this thread, but my first response was to ask “why? what changed your mind?” I’m old enough to have been an adult throughout this massive shift in the definition of marriage and I often find it strange that most people who support it do not bother to articulate their arguments for SSM or even acknowledge their changed opinions.
Thank you for suggesting this. Previously, I’d only listened to clips of Rogan but I fired up Spotify to grab this one. I’ve been listening in chunks since yesterday. During my lunch break I got to the transition to the discussion about marriage. So far a line from Much Ado About Nothing keeps popping into my head during the discussion about couples deciding not to have children, “The world must be peopled.”. Looking forward to the rest of the episode.
Oh Lilly! Now you’ve done it. The short hand is because it’s popular now. No matter how many paragraphs you get in response, for HW this is essentially what it comes down to along with a childlike view of love and marriage.
I may need to unfollow my own thread just to avoid the deluge of emptiness sure to come.
I see you attempting to explain your changing views here, but when you keep saying the the questions can be just as easily reframed to support the new idea instead of the status quo. I wonder why you prefer to put the burden of proof on the traditional view?
Not all Rogan episodes are equal, and I skip quite a few of them. If the subject interests me or the speaker, then I’ll give it a go. Sometimes I’ll take a chance anyway, but there’s only so much attention I can muster for ininterst8ng topics or guests. He recently had Bjorn Lomborg, that was a good one too.
Not a Chesterton’s Fence man, I guess.
Awesome!! Except you stole my thunder Charlotte ;-) That was my first thought when I read:
(For the record, I don’t really care about gay marriage – it’s not my issue and the other side wore me down. But I understand and respect most of the arguments against.)
Fair enough…my appreciation was for the logical construction, less than the subject matter.
I think it’s because they get all the compliments from gay men without any of the sexual tension. If I complimented a woman at work like a gay man, I’d probably be hit up for sexual harassment.
I wish this were true, in every case that you wrote ‘many’ but I certainly don’t see it here in Seattle, where there are many that fit into that LQBTQAI2+ bucket. If they are then they are an extremely silent majority
I often wonder if marriage wasn’t lost beginning in the 60s with the explosion of the sexual revolution. that was cultural more than political. It seems to me fixing marriage and family starts in the culture.
Agreed, but that led to legal changes to the civil institution. Those changes (no fault divorce) severely damaged the effectiveness of marriage as a civil legal institution. However, the latest change redefining marriage to include gay marriage ends up redefining civil marriage out of existence IMO, if all it could be now is whatever the participants want it to be. It eliminates the crucial elements of any rationale for society to give benefits based on love let alone to enforce obligations and understandings on the participants.
I don’t want to re-litigate the SSM wars. Walsh and Rogan talk about the point you raise, and as I say Walsh is very articulate in doing so. Well worth your time.
Anita Bryant was right. When everyone stood by and watched her be destroyed by the cultural elites in the 70’s, it was over.