Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
While I‘ve been trying to take a break from all politics and news as I bask in the glow of my family staying with me this week, I’ve nonetheless been fascinated by the fall of Egyptian President Morsi, in what must be described as a military coup. I’ve never been a fan of coups as I expect is true of most of us, yet the fall of Morsi has raises issues that I think are far more nuanced than appear on the surface. The salient facts are that after too many years the corruption of the government of Hosni Mubarak (who had been installed by the Egyptian military) led to severe economic issues and dissatisfaction with totalitarian rule. This then led to such massive protest that the military felt compelled, or justified to remove him. Mubarak’s removal was cheered, but then the clamor for free elections arose and after 18 months of martial law elections were held, as the first step towards transitioning to democracy and formulating a constitution.
The Society of Muslim Brothers, or Muslim Brotherhood was:“Founded in Egypt in 1928as a Pan-Islamic, religious, political, and social movement by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna,” It’s stated purposes was to: “to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood In a country such as Egypt, with its’ long history of totalitarian rule, the concept of political parties was not strong. Through its 85 years history the Brotherhood became the most stable opposition faction in the Egyptian political scene and was the main focus for opposition to whoever ruled Egypt by dint of the Egyptian Military’s backing. Such has been the success of the Muslim Brotherhood that it has branched out to have a significant presence in 20 nations around the world, many without a Muslim majority, such as the Russian Federation, the Indian Subcontinent, Great Britain and the United States. Therefore when the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 took place, the now legal “Brotherhood” was in an excellent position to vie for political power and formed the “Freedom and Justice Party” as its electoral arm. It won more than 40% of the parliamentary seats and its candidate Mohamed Morsi won election as President with 51.73% of the vote. His chief opponent had been a man who served as Mubarak’s Prime Minister. The Egyptian voters were faced, I think, with a “Hobson’s Choice” of Presidential candidates and chose what they perceived to be the lesser of two evils. Sound familiar? What I will attempt to examine here is a question which is framed as: “Are Religious Fundamentalists capable participating in a pluralistic democratic society?”The stated objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood through its’ “Freedom and Justice Party” politically were certainly ones that few of us could complain about and perhaps soothed the secular voters of Egypt and its non-Muslim Egyptians.
“We believe that the political reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the peaceful rotation of power and the fact that the nation is the source of all powers. As we see it, political reform includes the termination of the state of emergency, restoring public freedoms, including the right to establish political parties, whatever their tendencies may be, and the freedom of the press, freedom of criticism and thought, freedom of peaceful demonstrations, freedom of assembly, etc. It also includes the dismantling of all exceptional courts and the annulment of all exceptional laws, establishing the independence of the judiciary, enabling the judiciary to fully and truly supervise general elections so as to ensure that they authentically express people’s will, removing all obstacles restricting the functioning of civil society organizations,etc”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood
However, that statement is belied by the following objectives openly acknowledged by the Brotherhood:
“In the group’s belief, the Quran and Sunnah constitute a perfect way of life and social and political organization that God has set out for man. Islamic governments must be based on this system and eventually unified in a Caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood’s goal, as stated by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna was to reclaim Islam’s manifest destiny, an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia.[21] It preaches that Islam enjoins man to strive for social justice, the eradication of poverty and corruption, and political freedom to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam. The Brotherhood strongly opposes Western colonialism, and helped overthrow the pro-western monarchies in Egypt and other Muslim countries during the early 20th century.
On the issue of women and gender the Muslim Brotherhood interprets Islam conservatively. Its founder called for “a campaign against ostentation in dress and loose behavior”, “segregation of male and female students”, a separate curriculum for girls, and “the prohibition of dancing and other such pastimes … “
“The Brotherhood’s stated goal is to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state.”
“The Brotherhood’s credo was and is, “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
This is then the dichotomy of beliefs that the Brotherhood’s political party presented to the Egyptian voter. On the one hand it had denounced violence and agreed to work within the framework of a democratic political process. Yet its’ core beliefs are that (at least within predominantly Islamic countries) they should be ruled by the beliefs of Islamic law and justice in accordance with their interpretation of the “Qur’an” which they believe is perfect. Part of the task of the Morsi government was to create and implement a Constitution for Egypt. It was also promised that his government would include all factions of Egyptian society including the large group of Egyptian Coptic Christians. What occurred though was that Morsi only brought in Brotherhood political allies into the various Ministries of government and created a Constitution that was decidedly Islamic in content. Egypt, which was one of the most enlightened countries in the Mid East in the treatment of women, was being pushed into a far more fundamentalist outlook. This decidedly religious obsession of the Morsi government failed to pay attention to improving Egypt’s collapsing economy, growing poverty and the social unrest that goes with those conditions. Rapes of women increased in alarming increments and crime soared as people sought the wherewithal to feed their families. Cairo, that great and venerable city, increased to a population to more than twenty teeming millions the majority living in horrendous slums. City services in Egypt’s capitol collapsed under the weight of those numbers. The elation of the 2011 Revolution led inexorably to the despair of 2013 as millions of Egyptians, many with nothing to lose took to the streets and gave the Egyptian Military the tacit permission to remove Morsi and arrest the top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is not my intent to paint the Muslim Brotherhood as evil, nor is it to give a litany of their history of violence and terrorism. Such a view is in my opinion one sided and ignores the reality that led to the Brotherhood’s creation and to its success in surviving for 85 years in a hostile Egyptian climate. Historically, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Mid East has been an area controlled by wealth and Western imperial power. While wealthy rulers lived in luxury, the middle classes were relatively small and the masses lived in abject poverty. No doubt from the perspective of the Brotherhood’s founders they were mandated by their beliefs to aid their brother Muslims and to return them to the “perfection” of Islamic Law. Intermingled with those beliefs was the memory of Islamic empire and the determination to return to its’ glory. However, noble their motives may have been and are, within their beliefs is this inherent problem. If you see that everything you believe is “perfect” and mandated by God, then the idea of compromising those beliefs is blasphemy and sacrilege. How indeed can you live in a pluralistic society, when those who reject your beliefs, are by your definition “evil” and “sinful”?
There are two thoughts that arose in my mind and caused me to write this piece. The first is that the entire concept of “Democracy” has been deconstructed through the years by ours and other governments to mean the ability to vote and little else. How often throughout the world have we seen dictatorships legitimized simply because elections were held? A democratic government needs to be supported by democratic institutions and the agreement of its citizens to abide by the results of the electoral processes. Beyond that it needs an overall conceptual structure that provides the framework for the existence of a government that will protect the rights of all the people, not just the ever changing majority. It requires a legal system and a judiciary that protects its conceptual framework (constitution) and with it the rights of the individual. It’s of course more complicated than that, but if you’re a regular visitor here I’m sure you get my meaning and could on your own flesh it out beyond my brief offering. The point is that when the world saw the welcomed upheaval of the “Arab Spring” it had been conditioned by years of propaganda that made simply holding a vote appear to be the acme of a democratic process. There is much more to developing a democratic society than simply voting for a “leader” and the election of Morsi, given his subsequent actions, did not a democratic Egypt make. This leads me to my second thought on this subject.
I seriously wonder whether it is possible for Fundamentalist religionists to actually be able to take power in a democratic society and wield it in a way that allows people of differing beliefs their freedom to have those differing beliefs? When you have a belief system that you not only see as “perfect”, but as the road-map for a perfect society, how can you make the compromises that are necessary to maintain a pluralistic, democratic society? From the perspective of the Muslim Brotherhood, indeed it is their stated goal; you can only build a “perfect” society based on Islamic law and justice. In this respect they are not really very different from other Fundamentalist true believers that see “their way” as the only way towards true righteousness.
When we apply this to America the abortion debate comes to mind. There is no doubt that the majority of Americans do not believe that women should be denied the right to choose what they do with their own bodies, yet in the years since Roe v. Wade this has been one of the flashpoints of the American political scene. The only conceivable, immutable ending for those anti-abortionists to this national controversy, is the complete end of abortions. Compromise of positions can only be temporary and must include small gains for their side. If and when those opposed to abortion finally gain power they will not hesitate to end it completely, regardless of the equity of the situation and a sizable opposition to their actions. I use abortion though as merely an illustration of this problem. There are many other areas, prayer in schools for instance, where the same dynamic would apply. The problems is that when someone sees their views not only as perfect, but also as the only way to live, compromise becomes ugly and unacceptable.
My contention is that without the ability of people to compromise, maintaining democratic institutions becomes impossible. This is true whether in Cairo, or Washington. The nature of much of today’s religious fundamentalism, be it Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Judaic, is that compromise is impossible, because one cannot compromise “God’s Word”. If you are a true believer than that is an obvious fact of existence and you would cease to be a “true believer” without that philosophy. This brings me back to Morsi and Egypt. I hate the idea of military coups anywhere, but what was to be done in Egypt. There is strong evidence, that contrary to their platform, once in power those of the Muslim Brotherhood returned to their stated principles and were moving quickly to establish the version of Muslim Law upon Egypt, while at the same time denying equality of treatment to others. This fanaticism in the application of their beliefs distracted them with dealing with the economic and social problems that plagued most Egyptians and led inevitably to the Egyptian Military’s coup. I think this is a quandary that is at the heart of the difficulty of maintaining a democratic, pluralistic system in many countries, including ours. While is certainly is not the only difficulty, it ranks high on a list of contributors to political dysfunction. The question is what to do about it and the answer is quite difficult. The problem is that if you exclude religious fundamentalists from the political process due to their authoritarian views, then you no longer have a pluralistic society because of that exclusion. In a pluralistic society religious fundamentalists should also have a voice, or when do you stop excluding. Please help me out here because while I can frame the problem I admit that I don’t have the “perfect” answers.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Actually, David, the reasoning the Court used in Loving relied upon finding that the Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. When they cited Skinner, it was in relevant part to say “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535, 316 U. S. 541 (1942).” However, Skinner was in the context of finding an Oklahoma law allowing the forced sterilization of “habitual criminals”, not the context of marriage as civil contract. They were dealing the removal of the ability, and therefor the right, to procreate. Procreation is a right every bit its own and every bit the equal of marriage, but the state has no valid interest in requiring that procreation be the goal of marriages. Tony already dealt with that aspect of your assertion here: http://jonathanturley.org/2013/07/05/morsi-democracy-and-problem-with-fundamentalist-politics/#comment-605128
The idea of marriage being about procreation is a religious definition of marriage, not a civil one.
Gene H wrote: “The idea of marriage being about procreation is a religious definition of marriage, not a civil one.”
I am not aware of any substantial religious argument that defines marriage on the basis of reproduction. Virtually every argument I have read that uses the reproductive aspect of marriage as the basis for defining it as a fundamental right of mankind has come from court documents.
Religion is more concerned about lining up with God’s will than defining the fundamental rights of men. It is more concerned about fulfilling personal responsibility and one’s destiny than about identifying the things that government should never be allowed to prohibit or regulate. Most religious arguments on based upon Scriptures that define God as having a purpose in creating mankind as male and female, as Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. The religious arguments are based upon a purpose in bonding and unity between male and female that is unique. They are about a divine message conveyed through the actual experience of marriage about the Godhead, about the unity of Christ and God, about relationships between Christ and members of his church.
The closest the religious arguments come to discussing the role of reproduction in marriage have more to do with homosexual behavior in general rather than marriage per se. For example, some argue from religious texts that the motivation of homosexual behavior is sexual lust and that turning the sex drive toward a person of the same gender is a perversion of the design intended by God in creating the sex drive. For example, it is argued that if God created the male reproductive organ to be put into the woman’s reproductive organ, then society should not encourage others to put that organ into other orifices simply for the sake of pleasure. Coupled with this is a more basic line of religious thought that happiness comes through the spirit rather than the physical flesh, that discipline is more virtuous than carnal pleasure, that a person would be happier if he keeps his physical pleasures under control through fasting and self discipline in contrast to the more Epicurean line of thought that happiness comes through indulging in pleasure. I have purposely stayed away from the many religious arguments against homosexual marriage because this is a legal blog based on secular reasoning. For you to label the reproductive aspect of marriage as being a religious argument not based in court law appears very disingenuous to me.
My point about Loving was not about the reasoning basis for outlawing miscegenation laws in general, but about the reasoning used to argue that marriage is a fundamental right of all persons. When the courts identified marriage as a human right, they did so on the basis of reproduction. I can find no other legal argument by the courts for defining marriage as a fundamental right. Can you?
Following the trail of court citations leads ultimately to Skinner v. Oklahoma, and they connect marriage to it based upon its role in responsible reproduction. Whether right or wrong, that is the arguments of the courts. Some later courts might cite only Loving and focus only on the 14th Amendment argument, ignoring how they came to establish marriage as a fundamental right in the first place. Nevertheless, their reasoning concerning the right to marry was based upon the right of a person to reproduce. You want to depart from that reasoning and claim that the right to marry and the right to procreate are two different things, but the courts have connected the right to marry to the right to procreate in a responsible manner, and virtually no other reason has been identified. Now the common public basically interprets a right to be whatever someone wants to do as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, but this has not been the traditional way courts have defined rights, and IMO such an approach is not very useful in establishing laws.
Gene H – my last post got lost in spam filter again. Maybe moderator will release it.
David,
Reproductive? Really? Well, that takes everyone who has had a vasectomy or hysterectomy out of the marriage eligibility picture. And old folks too, that are well past the age of reproduction.
Your reasoning is such that only people who plan to have kids should be able to get married. I don’t know anything about the Loving couple, so I have no idea if they had children or not.
David, if you want to fall back on civil law, that’s fine. Civil laws are changed all the time. Some by lawmaking bodies repealing or amending them, some by courts striking them down. Some civil laws on the books are simply not enforced. But you are being disingenuous. You are engaging in all kinds of logical gymnastics to avoid admitting you just don’t like the idea of gay people getting the same legal rights as everyone else, that your idea of fairness is to create a class of second class citizens.
And speaking of civil laws, did you know that in California, women may not drive a car while wearing a house coat. In Tennessee, you can’t shoot any game other than whales from a moving automobile. Oh yeah, interracial marriage is still illegal in Tennessee, because the law was never repealed.
Iowa is concerned about kissing. Kisses may last for no more than five minutes. Also, a man with a mustache may never kiss a woman in public.
See how all those civil laws work?
Gene H – One other point. Contrary to your assertion, I never used any religious definition of marriage. I used the traditional definition defined in civil law. If you read the cases on marriage, you would find that more than just contract law is involved with marriage. I referenced those cases in another thread. If marriage were only about contract law, then I would agree with you, that anybody should be able to marry any other person of legal age.
Gene, using David’s logic, the couple in the Loving case could have gotten married. One to a black person and the other to a white person, but not to each other. Got it. Makes perfect sense. Not!
It is always surprising to me how bigots cannot see their own bigotry. Selective blindness.
No Mr. Scribe. My logic is based upon the functional biology of the sexes and not upon racial purity. I agree with the decision of the Loving case, which based their decision upon the reproductive rights afforded in marriage as defined in the Skinner case.
“I do think the legal rights and protections afforded by civil government for same sex unions should be different than for opposite sex unions, but that is because the unions are not equivalent.”
Displaying your staggering hypocrisy by using a religious definition of marriage instead of a civil contractual definition.
Try to hide behind biology all you like. You’ve demonstrated more than once your understanding of biology is superficial at best. The scientific biological fact is that homosexuality is a normal biological behavior in a small but statistically significant portion of the population. The psychology of it that they can (and do) pair off just like heterosexual couples. You say you want the law to apply equally and yet think homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to marry? That’s contradictory nonsense and contrary to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment that relies upon a religious definition of marriage, not a civil one.
I read you just fine.
I’m just not buying any of your bullshit, David.
You try really hard to perfume it up, I’ll give you that, but it still reeks of the barnyard.
Gene H – Just to be crystal clear. I have not argued against same sex unions, nor against benefits to same sex couples. I have only argued against lumping same sex unions in with laws created under the concept of traditional marriage. I see evil in hijacking laws created under different definitions, and you see evil in my objection to that legal sleight of hand maneuvering.
You know Dredd…..
I wonder how the US will be viewed by the military government once….. We withhold the 1.5 bil a year that we give them…..
I don’t miss the point.
You’re bigoted against homosexuals and think they deserve less legal rights and protections than heterosexuals because they don’t follow the religious edits you think they should.
I think your writing here has made that abundantly clear.
Gene H wrote: “You’re bigoted against homosexuals and think they deserve less legal rights and protections than heterosexuals because they don’t follow the religious edits you think they should.”
What religious edicts have I brought up? None! I’m not even religious. Whenever logic fails, turn to emotion. Accuse the other person of hatred and bigotry. I get it.
I do think the legal rights and protections afforded by civil government for same sex unions should be different than for opposite sex unions, but that is because the unions are not equivalent. My reason for not seeing them as equivalent is based upon biology. As for how the law applies to those who identify themselves as homosexuals or heterosexuals, my view is that the law should apply to both the same. Your assertion to the contrary is simply false and illustrates how you do not read me very well.
I know that many of you have heard Pat Robertson, Jerry Fallwell and others speak of the “Homosexual Agenda,” but no one has ever seen a copy of it.
Well, I have finally obtained a copy directly from the Head Homosexual.
It follows below:
6:00 am Gym
8:00 am Breakfast (oatmeal and egg whites)
9:00 am Hair appointment
10:00 am Shopping
12:00 PM Brunch
2:00 PM 1) Assume complete control of the U.S. Federal, State and Local Governments as well as all other national governments, 2) Recruit all straight youngsters to our debauched lifestyle, 3) Destroy all healthy heterosexual marriages, 4) Replace all school counselors in grades K-12 with agents of Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels, 5) Establish planetary chain of “homo breeding gulags” where over-medicated imprisoned straight women are turned into artificially impregnated baby factories to produce prepubescent love slaves for our devotedly pederastic gay leadership, 6) bulldoze all houses of worship, and 7) Secure total control of the INTERNET and all mass media for the exclusive use of child pornographers.
2:30 PM Get forty winks of beauty rest to prevent facial wrinkles from stress of world conquest 4:00 PM Cocktails 6:00 PM Light Dinner (soup, salad, with Chardonnay) 8:00 PM Theater 11:00 PM Bed (du jour)?
– http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/99/Sep/agenda.html
When your point of argument has become a common meme for jokes, it’s time to give it up.
There is no “homosexual agenda”.
There’s a human rights agenda seeking equal treatment and equal protection under the law though.
It’s a good one.
David,
As usual, when the plain logical flaw of what you state is pointed out, you respond with a bunch of long winded gibberish that almost makes it sound like you know what you’re talking about.
Almost.
I’m confident that my grasp on science and the scientific method is on much sounder footing than yours. I’ve tutored science classes at the collegiate level. I talk to actual scientists all the time about science. Almost daily in fact. Both for business and pleasure. Here even. Tony, the other guy tearing apart your nonsense, is a research scientist by day. Otteray Scribe is a forensic psychologist. They think my grasp of the method is considerably more than functional. If they didn’t, rest assured they are the kind of guys who would tell me so and not mince words about it. So I think I’ll defer to their opinion over yours, Mr. Can’t Differentiate Between A Species And A Sub-Species And Notorious Cherry Picker Of Data.
So now that we’ve addressed that distraction . . .
Let’s cut to the chase: “Nobody was ever denied a marriage license because they were a homosexual.”
Really.
http://www.arlnow.com/2012/02/14/gay-couple-denied-marriage-license-at-arlington-courthouse/
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-gays-go-to-court-after-wedding-licenses-1138971.php
So your assertion of fact is simply wrong.
Now, let’s look at your false equivalence again.
A false equivalence is a logical fallacy which describes a situation where there is a logical and apparent equivalence, but when in fact there is none – such as between homosexuality and bestiality. The form used is often: If A is the set of c and d, and B is the set of d and e, then since they both contain d, A and B are equal. It should be noted though that d existing in both sets is not required, only a passing similarity is required to cause this fallacy to be able to be used. In this case d is the commonality that you don’t approve of either homosexual marriage or bestiality in your fundamentalist ideology.
Carry on.
Gene H – You still miss the point on the homosexual marriage issue. They were not denied because they were homosexual. If they applied to marry someone of the opposite sex, it would have been granted. The fact that they are homosexual has NOTHING to do with it. The problem is who they want to marry.
What if a group of people began applying for marriage licenses to marry multiple women, and upon being denied, they rallied people to their cause that polygamists were a minority being unfairly oppressed because they were not allowed to marry all the women or men that they loved? Would you jump on that bandwagon? If a group of people started applying for marriage licenses to marry their pet, and being denied then claimed discrimination, should we be understanding and jump on their bandwagon? In none of these cases are they being denied because of they are a polygamist, or zoosexual, homosexual or heterosexual. The denial is based on what the law defines as marriage. The legal definition comes from the legislature, and the courts are foolish not to recognize a legitimate need the State has to treat same sex unions in a different way from opposite sex unions. The courts have become a political body, and just this year I have seemingly lost all respect for the judiciary and legal profession. I think my reading here has added to it. It is so discouraging to see how our lawyers think and act today, and how easily deceived they are by sexual activists.
DavidM: Part of the problem in communicating here is the illusory creation of a hypothetical homosexual man or woman,
No, it isn’t. A hypothetical homosexual is a mental simulation that illustrates the problem without any of the “noise” of particularity or circumstance; just as you use the hypothetical heterosexual “man” or “woman.”
Part of the problem is your foolish insistence that men and women marry for the purpose of procreation; which is ludicrous, because in modern America fully 95% of Americans (a pubmed paper from 2003) have had voluntary pre-marital sex. If that is for procreation, then marriage is unnecessary; if it is not, then obviously sex has another purpose.
In 2009, 41% of births were to unmarried women; proof enough that marriage is not necessary to engage in procreation.
I have already pointed out that people get married despite being sterile; woman with hysterectomies get married; post-menopausal women get married, women that have children but have had their tubes tied get married, men that have had vasectomies (or various diseases that make them sterile) still marry.
The purpose of marriage is NOT procreation at all; there is no longer any significant stigma attached to being the child of an unwed mother (in America), and most people would never know. That was a religiously inspired bigotry designed to keep women subordinate and control their sexuality, but it is a fading bigotry rightfully consigned to the dust heap of history.
I know you have to hang on to that myth, it is the only thing you can point at that distinguishes a homosexual from a heterosexual. But look at the hypocrisy you engage in by doing so, because you permit so many sexual heterosexual marriages that cannot possibly be having sex for the purpose of procreation, because it is physically impossible.
Science will allow, today, two homosexual men to have a baby of their own; a proper mix of their DNA no different than a baby created by a man and a woman, and no less viable. Also male or female. (Because women have two X chromosomes; and men have an X and a Y. Because we know how to revert a cell to a stem cell, we can create an environment where a male stem cell, using instructions on the X chromosome normally used by females, can transform itself into an egg. That egg can be in vitro fertilized with a sperm cell from the other man; sorted (by mass) into sperm containing either a Y chromosome or an X chromosome; depending on whether the two parents want a baby boy or baby girl. After in-vitro fertilization; the fertilized egg can be implanted in surrogate mother that brings the baby to term.)
Your argument about procreation is false, but the fact that two homosexual man can plausibly marry for the purpose of pooling their resources and DNA for procreation should obliterate it completely.
Of course, for lesbians, procreation is easier (if they agree to a sperm donor) or harder (if we need to create a sperm cell containing an x-chromosome of one female parent; but that is more of a technical challenge, not exactly science fiction).
Marriage is not about procreation; procreation takes care of itself in the woods by the lake or wherever teens can find a little privacy and drop a blanket.
Marriage is about an emotionally committed partnership in life.
As far as your entire “definitional” argument is concerned, it doesn’t matter. I disagree with your definition, but in the end I do not think tradition matters because the tradition was oppression and bigotry for no valid reason. I presume the invalid reason is patriarchy, because without modern science homosexual offspring would typically not (by choice) reproduce and carry on the blood line of the patriarch. But that is just another form of slavery, demanding one’s children serve your desires and do what makes you happy instead of making their own choices for their own happiness.
You wish to deny people happiness in their life over a technicality that you apply selectively to them because of their sexual orientation. You do indeed deny homosexuals marriage because they are homosexuals, not because they cannot produce and raise their own children (they can, and others you permit marriage cannot). Does even that make a difference? Homosexuals of either gender can adopt, there are no shortage of kids that would be happy to exit the system, and they would be doing society a service by assuming that burden of support.
Your position is simply vile, petty, hateful, controlling autocracy; you want to use the law to force others to live their life by your beliefs, but of course would scream about religious oppression if the law required you to live your life by their beliefs.
Tony C – Whether you like to admit it or not, case law based their reasoning heavily upon marriage being a responsible path for reproduction. I referenced these cases for you in another thread. Pointing out the failing society and breakdown of the family does not justify acceleration of that breakdown by destroying marriage through making its definition more broad and inclusive. The institution of marriage has been under attack by much more than just the homosexual agenda, so implying that I think only homosexual marriage hurts it would be inaccurate.
Tony C wrote: “Marriage is not about procreation; procreation takes care of itself in the woods by the lake or wherever teens can find a little privacy and drop a blanket.”
This is not responsible procreation. Can you not see the enormous amount of societal problems created when you view procreation as being nothing more than the sperm and egg meeting up? The creation of children requires not just two opposite sex people engaging in sex in the woods or back seat of a car. Rather, children require the couple to cooperate for some 18 years for each child produced, to jointly provide and care for them, and to teach them values and responsible citizenship. Responsible procreation like this has traditionally been done through marriage because that is what has been successful through the ages in creating a strong civilized society.
Tony C wrote: “Marriage is about an emotionally committed partnership in life.”
Your new definition of marriage is demeaning and oppressive to women on many fronts. First, it tells men that it is just as proper to look at men sexually as it is to look at women. Forget about procreation, because science has fixed all this for you. Men do not need women any longer. They can reproduce without them, they don’t have to put up with all those differences they complain about. If you find women a little different, don’t worry about it, you can just associate with other men and have sex with them. No problem. You can be really happy this way.
In contrast, traditional marriage highly values women. It tells men that without the woman, the man is incomplete. It tells the woman that she has one of the most valuable assets a man wants… her ability to give him children. Traditional marriage empowers women. The man is taught that while marriage requires sacrifice and giving, it is an invaluable institution that binds the man and woman together into one complete whole. It teaches the man how to lay down his life sacrificially for the woman as long as they both shall live. Marriage is presented as a virtue to which a noble man will aspire toward, to successfully make a woman happy.
If the states decide to go down this path of degrading marriage to being just about two emotionally committed people going steady together or whatever, so be it. I would expect, however, that new societies and governments will arise to replace those that go down this path. Ultimately, society will not survive it. In demolishing our values of the past, we are moving closer and closer to looking like Egypt looks today.
” If I apply for a marriage license to marry another woman or to marry a poodle, I might be denied that license as well. ”
The fallacy of false equivalence. Homosexuality is not bestiality. Homosexuality is a normal expression of human sexuality in a small but statistically significant portion of our species as it is in other species. Between adults, it is a sexual relationship that requires consent to be valid. Animals cannot grant valid consent. Laws banning consensual homosexual sex and marriage are wrong under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Laws banning bestiality are valid do to the consent issue alone. Laws banning polygamy are a valid restriction on religious practice, not free exercise, and as such are permissible per Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. (8 Otto.) 145 (1878). Seeking to prevent other religious sects from carrying out marriages of homosexual couples who are willing to do so would be an impermissible limitation of religious practice as it prohibits others right to free exercise. Legal recognition of homosexual marriages in no way forces any congregation to perform said ceremonies if they choose not to.
Try again.
Gene H wrote: “The fallacy of false equivalence.”…
You missed my point completely. I was not arguing that homosexuality was equivalent to beastiality. My point was that when someone is granted permission to do something, it is within the definition under which they apply. I might just as well said that you don’t apply for a marriage license in order to drive a car, or that if I apply for a license to drive a car but if I am blind or hindered in some other way, I might not be given a license. It has nothing to do with me being a homosexual or not, or whether I am black or white, or whatever discriminatory classification you want to invent in order to oppress others in society. Nobody was ever denied a marriage license because they were a homosexual. You can probably find marriage licenses applied for and received by homosexuals in all 50 states.
David,
I’m not confused in the slightest.
You seem to be confused that you aren’t asserting a hypothesis though: namely that fundamentalism isn’t contrary to democracy. Again, a sample space of one is not sufficient to prove a hypothesis as being generally true. That is the primary flaw in anecdotal evidence. One data point is not a trend. Your hypothesis is fails to disprove or prove anything based on one data point. However, there is more than one data point to suggest that fundamentalism is contrary by nature with democracy. One’s that don’t rely upon scripture as “evidence”. You seem to have a general problem understanding what constitutes evidence.
Aside from the abortion issue, I could provide several such other instances where common fundamentalist beliefs are contrary to democracy, but Tony has a good line on the homosexual marriage issue so I’ll leave it at that since I like watching Tony dissect arguments almost as much as I like dissecting them myself. There is also the real world examples of the many real world attempts at theocratic government which almost to a one end in tyranny and oppression of those failing to conform with the ideological dogma of those in charge. Saudi Arabia. Myanmar. Egypt. India. Iran. Thailand. The list goes on and on.
As for your statements on the abortion video, you apparently fail to distinguish beliefs from scientific fact. For the majority of human history, whether or not a developing unborn human is a person or not has been determined by its ability to survive outside the womb. That’s a fact. Not a belief. Just because science has created technologies that allow a greater chance of survival for premature babies does not change that fact.
It’s not a person until it can survive on its own.
“Never did they use force to compel their position upon others.”
Except when they seek to overturn a law clearly favored by the majority in favor of asserting their beliefs as law. The saving grace of democracy is that it can serve to limit efforts like this to force religious beliefs upon others in contravention of the 1st Amendment.
Gene H – sorry, but you are confused. I encourage you to take some science classes, or study for yourself the writings of Karl Popper on how disproof is a way science advances more rapidly in knowledge than other practices like yours that involve confirmation bias. You ignore any facts that might contradict your theory because you feel that for the most part, your theory is the best explanation regardless of all the facts. A short paper written by John Platt in the 1960’s outlines a method of Strong Inference that can give you a better idea of how science works better by disproving hypotheses rather than proving a hypothesis. Unfortunately, most of the public have a misconception about this, and even our public school systems fail to grasp it. When I taught at the University, the public school teachers came during the summer and I tried my best to help them understand the concept. Nevertheless, today I continually have to deal with public school teachers who erroneously try to teach my children to conduct science by proving a hypothesis. The concept of a null hypothesis in statistical analysis seems completely foreign to them. I am not surprised that you do not understand the concept either.
Following is a public link to the classic paper by Platt:
http://256.com/gray/docs/strong_inference.html
The problem is that your theory lacks full explanatory power and is at this time unprovable. My single documentation of its failure, you called it an exception, is sufficient to have us look elsewhere to explain where authoritarianism in humans comes from. I think Brian brought up the example of Das Kapital and its adherents as another example. Clearly it is time to look elsewhere than to religious fundamentalism to understand why some act in authoritarian ways.
Gene H wrote: “As for your statements on the abortion video, you apparently fail to distinguish beliefs from scientific fact. For the majority of human history, whether or not a developing unborn human is a person or not has been determined by its ability to survive outside the womb. That’s a fact. Not a belief. Just because science has created technologies that allow a greater chance of survival for premature babies does not change that fact.”
I am not sure what your point is here. Are you saying that only scientific facts are allowed in a democracy and that beliefs should be excluded? Are you saying that laws must be based solely upon scientific facts? Perhaps you can clarify your point.
Roe v. Wade established viability as what distinguishes personhood, but the case law is not quite as clear as you seem to imply. People have been tried for double murder and sometimes convicted of double murder when a mother and her fetus were involved. In fact, I think Scott Peterson in California was convicted of double murder when he killed Laci Peterson. And California has something called an Unborn Victims of Violence Act protecting the rights of unborn children from injury or death.
Gene H wrote: “Except when they seek to overturn a law clearly favored by the majority in favor of asserting their beliefs as law. The saving grace of democracy is that it can serve to limit efforts like this to force religious beliefs upon others in contravention of the 1st Amendment.”
Seeking to overturn a law is not contrary to democracy. Are you seriously trying to assert that citizens in a democracy are expected to be passive and not argue their case for what they believe to be good laws for society? These people are not forcing their beliefs upon you. They are using the art of persuasion and asking that laws protect the innocent and helpless, those who cannot speak for themselves. I truly cannot understand what kind of democracy you envision except one where all the people automatically without discussion already agree with your particular views.
Contrary to your assertion, the majority do not want abortion completely legal with no restrictions. The poll you linked to established that the majority of Americans want some kind of legal regulations concerning abortion. Only 25% of Americans want it completely legal. That means that 75% want some kind of restrictions on abortion. Why do you ignore plain facts and argue your case with falsehoods?
It seems like you try to pretend that there is little disagreement about abortion except from religious fundamentalists and that they are causing all the problems for society. Surely you don’t think that 75% of Americans are religious fundamentalists, do you?
Leading up to the not-a-coup coup in Egypt, the U.S. government tried unsuccessfully to intervene.
It was revealed that Egyptians have an interesting name for the U.S. government:
(NY Times). Why is it that foreigners see that nature more readily than Americans do (MOMCOM: The Private Parts – 3)? Mother America indeed (a.k.a. the nanny empire).
DavidM: Nobody has ever denied any homosexual the right to marry.
That is a lie, when homosexuals applied for marriage licenses they were denied; and would still be denied if they applied today in many states, which is why they don’t bother, they aren’t stupid.
DavidM: You don’t care that history and thousands of philosophers, lawyers, judges, and justices of the past have worked out the definition of marriage that we have today.
You are correct. The same people worked out their justifications for thousands of years of enslaving others and defining what it meant to be a “person” or who was allowed to be free, or sold, or tried for a murder.
The Bible specifically endorses slavery and the sale of humans; particularly women. Moses orders captured women and male children that committed no crime but being victims of his war of aggression to be put to death, he makes live sacrifices of virgins to God, and distributes 30,000 of them as prizes to his warriors. God orders his followers to put to death their disobedient children. Moses has a complete stranger to his religion stoned to death for collecting firewood on the Sabbath; for violating a religious rule he knew nothing about.
If you believe “tradition” is inerrant, you are insane and not fit for society.
It is wrong to force others to comply with your religious beliefs if their religious beliefs do you no harm.
And before you whine that it hurts your feelings or whatever, “Harm” is not defined as your emotional distress at their actions, any more so than their emotional distress at YOUR actions: You cause them severe emotional distress to preserve your own religious emotional tranquility; it is an unfair outcome.
DavidM: that it defines a biological basis of mankind existing as male and female and that a person becomes complete by the male and female coming together in the bonds of marriage.
No, it doesn’t. The Bible had no problem with men having many wives, it had no problem with men having mistresses and knocking them up, it had no problem with men literally selling their daughters to strangers, or letting strangers bang their daughters as a matter of hospitality; it did not punish Lot for sleeping with his daughters. (the excuse being he was drunk, an excuse I imagine the many jailed fathers that have raped their daughters, one of whom was a neighbor of mine forty years ago, believe should apply equally to them).
The traditional definition of marriage was a legalized economic transaction involving sex slavery; which still applies to many marriages today in traditional societies. Women are sold to men by their owners (fathers or brothers or slave masters), then used for sex and reproduction regardless of their choice.
Romantic marriage as the most common form of marriage is a relatively recent invention; for most of “traditional” history, most women were a commodity to be bought and sold by men. Even the Bible demands obedience in its vows, and the one-sided fidelity of a slave to her master: The woman shall cleave only unto the man; but the Bible makes it clear a man can cleave as many women as he wants (and marry as many as he wants) without committing any sin.
Your argument falls apart in the true light of “tradition;” we have rejected slavery, and rejected the traditional definition of marriage long ago.
Tony C – your last response is so wild, I really am scratching my head whether or not you want to engage in serious dialogue or just rant from an atheist playbook of twisted logic and misinformation.
To be clear about homosexuals not being denied marriage, please understand that I mean within the context of the way that the law recognizes marriage. If I apply for a marriage license to marry another woman or to marry a poodle, I might be denied that license as well. Why should the State grant permission for such a marriage when it defines marriage as between one man and one woman?
Many homosexual men do marry women, under State law, because they want to have children and a family. Some of them, while married, also engage in sex with other men and sometimes even other women. No State ever said to a homosexual man, you cannot marry this woman because you are a homosexual.
Part of the problem in communicating here is the illusory creation of a hypothetical homosexual man or woman, who is supposedly someone who wants to have sex only with someone of the same gender and who earnestly desires to be married to a lifelong companion of the same sex. Very few if any homosexual ever fits into this nice imaginary box. Sexuality is better understood as being a gradation, with some individuals on one end of the spectrum being those who see the proper role of sex as being for reproduction between a man and woman with birth control, oral sex, anal sex, etc. being taboo, and on the other end of the spectrum having individuals being open to expanding sexual relations to include oral sex, anal sex, sexual interaction with someone of the same gender, sex with sex toys or other objects, etc. Snatching from this spectrum the classification two distinct categories of homosexual and heterosexual and claiming discrimination is nothing more than a ruse to destroy the concept of a man and a woman being completed through engaging in marriage.
Now because you have been indoctrinated to think that marriage is about romantic love between two people (you probably abhor the practice of arranged marriages by parents), and because you have been indoctrinated to accept the false idea that there is no difference between men and women, and because you erroneously think typical marriage has nothing to do with reproduction, you are led to the erroneous logical conclusion that marriage is an equal rights issue. Until you go back and reexamine the falsity of the premises your logic is built upon, you will never be able to understand why you and I disagree on this issue.
As for all your Biblical examples, it is clear that you have no understanding whatsoever about basic principles of Biblical hermeneutics. You are like a man trying to perform the functions of a Judge without ever having studied law. You seem to think that because something is mentioned in the Bible that it thereby gives its approval. Such would be like reading how Judas went and hung himself and from that you argue that the Bible supports suicide; therefore, you argue, the Bible is unworthy of our attention in any form.
The slavery practiced by the Southern Democrats was very different than the slavery practiced in the Bible which required the release of slaves every 7 years; nevertheless, the fact that slavery, polygamy, and divorce are practices mentioned in the Bible does not mean that such are practices sanctioned by God. You ignore all the passages that regulate or condemn such things in order to mock and ridicule the belief system of others. It would be more profitable for you to engage in serious dialogue, to understand how these issues are dealt with by intelligent persons rather than think mockery and ridicule is sufficient. Unfortunately, I have found time and time again that atheists hate the proper application of logic and reason to issues. Pretending to be champions of free thought and logic, atheists enslave the mind to empiricism and favor mockery and ridicule over logical dialogue.
J Brian: and then demonstrate that the accident or mistake that actually happened was actually avoidable because it was actually avoided
As I pointed out to you long ago, those are not equivalent states. You are engaged in word play because you equate ‘actually avoidable’ with ‘actually avoided,’ which is a false equivalence, and based on a redefinition of the words “avoidable” and “avoided” to be identical. Like the Aynish, you just redefine what words mean to suit your word play goals.
Paper is actually flammable. I do not have to actually burn a piece of paper to prove that piece of paper is in fact flammable; we have burned many other pieces of paper to show that material was flammable.
I am a mortal human being. I do not have to actually die to prove that I am mortal. I believe any two given integers can be added, I do not have to add every possible combination to prove that.
Avoidable does not automatically mean an accident WILL be avoided; it means in the dictionary sense that IF we had acted differently the mistake would not have happened; and furthermore that the difference in action required was plausibly possible to anticipate and execute prior to the mistake being made.
Your entire argument boils down to an overblown, unproven, purposely obfuscated hypothesis that man has no free will; that accidents and mistakes were fated to happen, and all future accidents and mistakes are fated to happen.
Anybody that believes we have free will would disagree with you, and that is the vast majority of humanity. That is why we punish choices that lead to harm, and reward choices that lead to good. There is no question, empirically and statistically speaking, that such punishment and reward does in fact reduce the frequency of harm and increase the incidence of good; we see that any time we house train a dog or teach him to stay out of the street.
lottakatz 1, July 6, 2013 at 5:24 pm
Excellent thread.
Juliet, your comment is a gem with a price above rubies. As I read down the comments I wondered how willing I was to listen to some ‘ad hominum’ yada yada (if you frame it properly you can call someone really awful names and not technically run afoul of that rule) but then there you were, a beacon of wit and wisdom. LOL. Thanks.
Dredd: re water wars, yea, Kashmir is the perfect place for WWIII to start. The protagonists are both nuclear powers, hate each other, have gone to war several times and both want the same patch of land which just happens to be the headwaters of the Indus river system- without which Pakistan just dries up and blows away. Water wars world-wide are going to be a serious future problem.
=================================
Yep.
Meanwhile the “news media” puppets of the epigovernment will continue to lull the citizenry into a stupor or trance like state as they have with the oil wars of the past century –which most Americans are utterly unaware of or in denial of.
A. Huxley predicted it more correctly than K. Marx did.
Karl Marx missed it, having a very positive attitude towards Americans, saying Americans would rise up and take their power back from Big Brother.
But Americans will not rise up like the Egyptians, as Marx predicted Americans would, but will learn to love their internment:
(The Impact of Toxins of Power On Evolution). No, Huxley is the one who got it right:
(Wee The People – 3, emphasis added). Like Mike alluded to as I quoted in a comment up-thread, Americans will accept a military intervention in their civil government like the Egyptians do.
Porkchop,
Yep. But I’m easily bored and play with my food. 😀
Gene H.
Well, some things really are self-evident — if you know what I mean.
God save us from people like davidm2575. He is 1/2 step from fascism.