[extropy-chat] Re: White House To Seek Ban On Gay Sex On The Moon

Christian Weisgerber naddy at mips.inka.de
Sat Feb 28 15:22:11 UTC 2004


David Lubkin <extropy at unreasonable.com> wrote:

> [Orson Scott Card] recently presented his case against gay marriage in
> 
> http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-15-1.html

If I had to grade this, it wouldn't fare well.

The first half or so looks like an attempt by somebody with a deep
emotional investment against gay marriage to somehow justify this
position.

He manages to push a wrong button early on when he complains about
the semantic change in the word "marriage".  Well, calling this
computer peripheral under my hand a "mouse" is a much greater
semantic extension, but I don't see anybody advocating against it.
Words gain extensions in meaning, new metaphorical senses, lose old
semantics, and shift to new ones all the time.  Card knows and
personally employs this, he is a professional writer after all.  So
why does he spew this linguistic nonsense?

A large section follows that is concerned with the virtues, problems,
etc of child raising in the context of heterosexual marriage.  You
may agree or disagree, but what does the hardship of divorce have
to do with homosexual marriage?  Entirely irrelevant to the subject
at hand.

The "Propaganda Mill" shows somebody who has at the very least
witnessed strong homophobia and is now horribly afraid of being
treated in the same manner.  Not that I can see why this should be
a plausible scenario.  Your Freudian psychologist would immediately
diagnose this as an acute case of guilt over one's own rampant
homophobia, but I don't subscribe to that silliness.  (However, I'm
rhetorically nasty enough to mention it here.)

Around this part of the essay we also encounter the single actual
argument contained in the whole text:  Legalizing gay marriage would
encourage young people to turn homosexual.  Assuming for the sake
of argument that this is actually a bad thing, I'm afraid it doesn't
agree with what I have heard on the matter.

The rest of the essay then devolves into a nationalist rant and an
interpretation of democracy that asks for a tyranny of the majority--
you would think a Mormon had a finer understanding of what a minority
can be subjected to at the hands of a fanatic majority.

In summary, I find Card's essay intellectually dishonest, off topic,
and short of reasoned argument, and I'm sorry I spent the time
reading it.


What I find increasingly disturbing is how badly the socio-conservative
ramblings fail to impress me considering that I have *zero* investment
in gay rights issues.  Now that I think about it, I don't think I
even have any homosexuals among my acquaintances.  (Not that I make
it my business to know everybody's sexual orientation.)  If anybody
wants to argue against homosexuals, I should be an easy target.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy at mips.inka.de



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list