Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Flame at the Heart of the Gay Rights Movement
The problem with the gay rights movement is that it is, in its very essence, insatiable.
A clear demonstration of this was on display with the recent LGBT primal scream in response to the Indiana law on religious freedom signed by Mike Pence and later “clarified” by additional legislation. The law was substantially the same (although admittedly broadened somewhat in scope) as the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” signed into law in 1993 by Bill Clinton and supported by a nearly unanimous legislature (three U.S. Senators opposed it). Nevertheless, the potential for business owners to be protected by the Indiana law from having to participate in business activities that violate their religious principles – specifically with regard to opposition to gay marriage – detonated an IED (Indiana Explosive Device) of furious destructive force.
The Democratic Party is, as a whole, a patchwork of grievance groups that seek government redress for perceived injuries. My friend, Boston area radio personality Todd Feinburg, argues all the time that the principle activity of the party is to appropriate the common weal and create bureaucracies whose functionaries are employed to study social problems and then distribute the dough to petitioners – in return for which said petitioners (to say nothing of said bureaucrats and researchers) vote and campaign for the election of the party. According to Todd, no one votes for the Democrat Party who isn’t paid to do so.
As scams go, this is not very subtle.
Critical to this whole enterprise is the identification of the petitioners with the grievance group. For example, not all of those who receive Social Security checks think of themselves first and foremost as Social Security dependents. They may rely heavily on those checks. They may vote for the continuance of those checks. But they are not obsessed Social Security true believers. They do not interpret every nuance of every article they read as a veiled threat to Social Security. They do not want to join in the grey grievance wing of the rainbow coalition of the Democrat Party because, frankly ,without the checks they’d find some way to get by after all.
But identification is stronger in some precincts. Social liberals are cut from a different cloth than groups with mere economic grievances and the LGBT movement is particularly monomaniacal.
Tucker Carlson, appearing on Fox News’ Special Report, recently put the case powerfully. He noted that exceptions have always been made for deeply-held religious beliefs, such as for religious groups like the Quakers, who are allowed to be conscientious objectors in time of war:
So you have a country where religious minorities get to choose which wars they fight in but not whether they serve cupcakes at a wedding that would violate their religious principles, it’s insane.
He goes on about the “tolerance” of social liberals:
These are absolutists, these are jihadis, these are people who want to make you obey. They don’t brook any opposition to their worldview at all. They will crush you…That’s not tolerance, that’s authoritarianism.
But why is that so? What makes social liberals and the LGBT community in particular so intransigent?
Why is the LGBT movement more obsessed with LGBT rights than Social Security recipients are with Social Security checks? Or unions are with union rights? Or even than African-Americans are with civil rights?
The question really answers itself. The process of becoming gay is (irrespective of social or parental tolerance) psychologically wrenching at the deepest levels. The identification with the desires and temperaments of the gender that is different from the one of the body you inhabit has to be an earthquake for any who undergo it. Sex, after all, makes up an enormous part of human existence.
Add to that the fact that many, if not most, gay people encounter resistance from their parents — who typically would prefer, all else being equal, that their children grow up to be heterosexuals — and that they then experience the subsequent guilt toward them, and you have the recipe for lifelong obsession with those choices made in adolescence (if indeed you want to insist that they are even choices).
In the end, political organization for gay rights in the public sphere is not about protection from discrimination (in hiring, for example), or visitation rights at a hospital, or tax-related rights previously reserved for heterosexual spouses, or any of the other legal, practical matters. Rather, the radicalism of the LGBT movement is a projection of the psychodrama of the inner lives of gays onto the whole of society who are forced forever to play the role of their parents.
It’s not about legal treatment. It’s deeper than that. It’s about acceptance. And nothing will ever be enough. Nothing can ever be enough.
This specifically explains why marriage is so important to the gay rights movement – and not just the practical benefits of marriage (as in “civil unions”) but the actual word marriage. Because marriage is a ceremony wherein society (or some sub-society like a religion) confers recognition onto a union. Gay marriage forces all of us, as members of society, to recognize and to acknowledge that the union of man and man or woman and woman is equivalent in every meaningful way with that of man and woman. Insisting on the word marriage — as opposed to simply being granted the complete set of legal benefits in a civil union — imposes an obligation not merely on our behavior, but on the beliefs of every member of society.
And that, as Tucker Carlson says, is authoritarianism.
Published in General
‘The problem with the gay rights movement is that it is, in its very essence, insatiable.’
This, and the ability obliquely to connect the idea that ‘non-heterosexual behavior is abnormal for humans’ solely to Christian moral values, is why the Left has jumped in so wholeheartedly.
Bob Thompson
“And I never acquired the notion that heterosexuality being normal resulted from religious convictions. Do others here believe this is a norm for humanity without resort to religion?”
Yep. Known as natural law.
Not meant to slight Ted Cruz here, just that Paul made the news this week for backtalk.
It seems to me like the definition of normal is: the usual, average, or typical state or condition. Humans use norms to define and understand the world. It doesn’t mean they don’t accept or tolerate anything else, but it’s kind of necessary to have something to serve as a foil for everything else.
So we have two approaches to sexuality that are not the same. If we say the minority one is normal, do we then say the other is not normal? Is there no normal? It’s not OK to define normal? It seems to me like what we’ve got here is an attempt to say that homosexuality is normal but heterosexuality cannot be called normal because that would be resorting to “normativity” which is, of course, bigoted. So what is not technically normal is now normal, but what is technically normal is not allowed to be called normal.“Merina Smith
Bob Thompson:And I never acquired the notion that heterosexuality being normal resulted from religious convictions. Do others here believe this is a norm for humanity without resort to religion?
It seems to me like the definition of normal is: the usual, average, or typical state or condition. Humans use norms to define and understand the world. It doesn’t mean they don’t accept or tolerate anything else, but it’s kind of necessary to have something to serve as a foil for everything else. So we have two approaches to sexuality that are not the same. If we say the minority one is normal, do we then say the other is not normal? Is there no normal? It’s not OK to define normal? It seems to me like what we’ve got here is an attempt to say that homosexuality is normal but heterosexuality cannot be called normal because that would be resorting to “normativity” which is, of course, bigoted. So what is not technically normal is now normal, but what is technically normal is not allowed to be called normal.”
Normal may not be the best term, because it depends on numbers. Perhaps “consistent with natural purpose would be better.”
Bob W
Those who pushed for civil rights for African Americans knew that deep down, most people’s conscience would tell them that it was wrong to discriminate against black people by denying the vote and such. There was no need to scream and yell and intimidate people the way the LGBT movement does, and for the most part the civil rights movement didn’t need to operate that way.
You’re kidding. Right?
Not really sure what Kate Braestrup was getting at when she said ‘you’re kidding’. Bob, what it seems you are saying is that there are some civil or constitutional rights being denied LGBT (a position I don’t agree with) and that is why their push is so strong. Not sure how much support for that position is here, but I, for one, believe the broader Left movement is using the understandable disaffection within the LGBT community (something under 5% of the population, were there full participation), to attack the Christian religious community in a general effort to undermine the entire moral foundation of Western society. Easier to do this than to try to understand the science of human behavior, normal and abnormal (some more words under attack).
I’m so pleased to see this public backtalk. And I am pleased with Coach Harbaugh as well.
I don’t think Bob T. is arguing that some rights are being denied to LGBT. I think he is saying the opposite, or if not opposite then something contrary, namely that the need to scream by the LGBT community is based on the inadequacy of their claims (as compared to those of African-Americans during the civil rights movement); that many of the so-called rights which LGBT demands will never be recognized as rights by many people.
But of course Bob T. can speak for himself!
The Wikipedia entry for LGBT includes two Ts in the full acronym, for transgender and transsexual. I think that the difference between the two is beyond my comprehension.
Oh, Michael, that was me addressing Bob W, sorry to confuse it.
I think that KB’s point is that there was enormous resistance to the civil rights movement in many parts of the South. Calling-out-the-National-Guard level resistance.
I think that BW is correct as to the majority of white Americans at the time, who did “know deep down” that racial discrimination against blacks was wrong, not least because the Bible tells us so. This explains the ultimate success of the civil rights movement. But there was very, very serious resistance.
That’s right. The resistance was strong and heated at times, abetted by the politicians, but the actions of the Civil Rights Movement were typically calm and well-behaved in contrast to what is being done by the Left in the LGBT rights arguments.
I’m definitely not kidding, and my point was that the LGBT movement knows that it’s not even possible to talk about religious exemptions for racial discrimination laws, and they don’t want to be any different. But the fact that it is possible to talk about exemptions for LGBT rights makes them fear that they’ll never be on the same standing. So they try to paint heir opponents the in the same way as racial haters and therefore spew the same contempt upon them that Aryan Nation would receive. And no, I do not think LGBTs are denied any rights in America. They want SSM which is something new, not something that others have always been able to do. When you claim you’re being denied rights, it would help to be able to point to something you aren’t allowed to do that others are. SSM doesn’t fit that requirement.
I said it a while back that the traditional marriage argument was lost for good and it was from then on a process of being steamrolled into complete submission. What I think you’re missing in your post is that the gay marriage lobby isn’t just looking to have won a supposed right. What they want is to squash Judeo-Christian notions of homosexuality all together. They’ve won the right but now they want complete acceptance as normality, so that when we dissent as a conscientious objection they want to destroy that notion in our conscience. They want to alter our minds and thoughts and hearts. They want us to reject Judeo-Christian principles on the matter and in essence want us to eat our theology.As long as I have living breath, there is no way anyone will force me to accept homosexuality as normal.
I think that BW is correct as to the majority of white Americans at the time, who did “know deep down” that racial discrimination against blacks was wrong, not least because the Bible tells us so. This explains the ultimate success of the civil rights movement. But there was very, very serious resistance.
Yes—thanks, A.P.
Manny, I think this is kind of what I said (without the reference to Judeo-Christianity, which I don’t think is the real target so much as all societal norms about sex).
Normal is what normally occurs. In this case both heterosexuality (which is more common) and homosexuality. Neither of them is abnormal, though one is less typical or usual than the other.
For example – red hair (which is not common) is as normal as black hair (which is). Being left handed is less common but as normal as being right handed.
The issue with the terminology is that there’s an assumption (perhaps I’m wrong) that while what is unusual or atypical is fine, what is abnormal should not exist. Unusual is value neutral, abnormal is bad.
So, with these ‘variations’ of normal drives and behaviors, how is the issue of procreation addressed. My take is that it is taken care of in only one of your normal forms. There seems to be more at stake than hair color.
That’s right. The resistance was strong and heated at times, abetted by the politicians, but the actions of the Civil Rights Movement were typically calm and well-behaved in contrast to what is being done by the Left in the LGBT rights arguments.
It might not have seemed so to the white restaurant owner when black protesters sat down at the whites-only lunch counter and provoked the violent, disruptive reaction of whites (who basically trashed the place). Might not have seemed all that “well-behaved” to the white bus driver when Rosa Parks refused to yield her place. Probably didn’t seem “well-behaved” to clog up half a highway with a march, even when they knew they’d probably cause a riot. Well-behaved, calm people whose rights, deep-down, you believe in don’t get set upon by dogs, tear-gassed, beaten with truncheons and threatened with death. Their churches don’t get bombed.
What the GLBT movement has going for it that the Civil Rights movement did not is that many, many gay sons and lesbian daughters began coming out to their families. When it’s your own, beloved brother, sister, child who is both gay and exactly the same person he or she always was…it is difficult to think him unnatural, difficult to disdain or condemn her or to tolerate the disdain and condemnation of others.
This—not some stupid television show—is what changed the minds and hearts of of Americans.
To wit: Dick Cheney.
One of the problems I have noticed in these conversations is one side speaks of people (homosexuals) while the other speaks of actions (homosexuality). One side considers certain acts to be abnormal (atypical, irregular, aberrant, etc…) while the other hears those words and believes the person is being called abnormal.
I do not know if there is a way around this, it seems to me one side is so invested in the acts they have defined a whole class of people in terms of them.
what flavor, and it better be buttered!
Sure, but that doesn’t make the other forms abnormal.
Or if it does, you’ll need to explain why.
Are post-menopausal women abnormal? I think not. Fertility doesn’t seem to be a reasonable proxy for normal.
I’m sorry Zafar but I have to say that I don’t agree with your definition of normal and abnormal. I understand your point about the connotations of those two words and I agree that abnormal does hold a negative one. This though does not change the words meaning nor should it. If one is to speak in term of normality I think it is fine to say that any rare or uncommon trait is abnormal, though considering the words connotations I would favor using terms like common and uncommon.
I think the problem that we have with normal and abnormal comes from viewing these two terms as interchangeable with natural and unnatural. With the idea being that abnormal things are unnatural and therefore disordered or man made (ie. discretionary). This though in my opinion is not the case. The two words are not actually interchangeable or at least they shouldn’t be.
So what I would say is that homosexuality is abnormal but not unnatural, as apposed to nylon which is normal (at least in the human experience) but is unnatural (that is not found in nature outside of human manipulation).
Normal and common mean two different things – if I say homosexuality is uncommon it means one thing, when I say it’s abnormal it means quite another.
I actually think that’s true – but that’s the case with any group that genuinely believes itself to be equal and is seeking equality.
Nobody is content with being less than equal. Certainly I doubt that African Americans felt less strongly about Civil Rights.
What gives the gay rights thing its edge, if you will, is that we literally are your sons and daughters or brothers and sisters. It’s not a metaphor. So when we assert something about ourselves we inevitably assert something very personal about “you” as well. It’s not like we fell here from the sky – you made us, far more intimately and immediately than White America (whoever that is) forged African Americans.
That importance we discern in equality, and marriage. Who taught us what it means and why it matters – not least by fighting so hard to deny it to us? You did.
Setting aside the ‘separate but equal never is really equal’ thing – or the fact that this is all a day late and a dollar short and pretty unconvincing wrt good intentions – don’t you think that insisting that marriage is only between a man and a woman also imposes a set of beliefs about men, women, heterosexuality and homosexuality on society? It’s not like it’s a neutral position.
Does anything meaningful ever get “Ricocheted” after the 50th comment is reached?
This comment proves the answer.
Kate, in response to your earlier post, I would say that there is difference between the Rosa Parks/MLK wing of the civil rights movement and the Malcolm X/Black Panther wing. The latter just scared white people. The former appealed to their consciences, and that is the one that brought about the change.
Maybe the LBGT movement realizes that appealing to consciences isn’t going to work for them. In fact the only talk of conscience seems to be in regard to whether to allow people, in the view of the LGBT movement, to continue to discriminate after they achieve their goals.
So I think this is a big part of the answer to why they are as vitriolic as they are. Michael Stopa’s explanation is another good reason.
You also said:
What the GLBT movement has going for it that the Civil Rights movement did not is that many, many gay sons and lesbian daughters began coming out to their families. When it’s your own, beloved brother, sister, child who is both gay and exactly the same person he or she always was…it is difficult to think him unnatural, difficult to disdain or condemn her or to tolerate the disdain and condemnation of others.
This is very true. I’ve always thought it odd though that many people who discover that a family member is gay seem to so quickly throw their support behind the movement as a whole. That reaction doesn’t seem natural. It would seem enough that you continue to show your support and care about your loved one. The move from “I realize my brother is gay” to “I want to change the meaning of words and institutions for everyone” has always seem to me to be motivated by either a lack of intelligence or a narcissistic self-righteousness.
Every modern “rights” movement seems to have two phases: acknowledgement and reparations. Acknowledgement is societal and legal entitlement to live without sanction for the status for which rights are sought, e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. Reparations involves affirmative acts that are discriminatory in nature that reflect society’s desire for the forgiveness of the offended group, e.g., hiring preferences, payments, mandates.
For whatever turmoil is involved, the acknowledgement phase succeeds fundamentally due to a change in perception and an ability to see how it would feel if places were exchanged between the contending parties. Once acknowledgment is achieved turmoil ceases.
In the reparations phase turmoil is assured because it is not enough to have your rights acknowledged, there must be some tangible negative consequence to someone else (arising specifically because of the status of the reparations recipient) to demonstrate that reparations are being paid. Nor is there a natural end point for those reparations, no point at which enough is enough.
The OP states that both phases will be short-circuited when a cure for homosexuality is found. If there is a “cure” and mothers accept the treatment, then there will be no status for which either acknowledgement or reparations will be demanded. But short of 100% application of the cure worldwide, sexual status will continue to be a source of rights debate. (Can we agree to an in utero treatment that will make everyone’s skin color the same?)
Classic liberal philosophy, if employed, will avoid turmoil over acknowledgement of status rights. “You are human, thus you have rights.” But reparations will continue to be a battlefield until we understand the fundamental wrong that attend indefinite reparations.
by “this comment” do you mean Zafar’s latest? If so I think it is very interesting. I disagree. But the comment is thought-provoking.
Zafar: Setting aside the ‘separate but equal never is really equal’ thing – or the fact that this is all a day late and a dollar short and pretty unconvincing wrt good intentions – don’t you think that insisting that marriage is only between a man and a woman also imposes a set of beliefs about men, women, heterosexuality and homosexuality on society? It’s not like it’s a neutral position.
Yes, I do think this and it is not a neutral position. This way of thinking has been a feature of Western civilization for a long time. In the English language, an expression, ‘consummate the marriage’, has been used to describe the actual event of sexual intercourse between husband and wife, an actual anatomical and functional act of completion. Do we now just dispense with this concept as well or do we just do some more work to somehow convince ourselves that anatomy and function have no place here anymore? What would such an expression mean in a SSM?