Marriage and other LGBTQ Rights

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

A direly low S/N ratio, even by your well-known execrably low standards of restraint in discourse.

Talk about hypocricy! I've seen some of YOUR flame wars with cheesehead.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by Zeta-Flux

What do you mean that this was a campaign about the right to love? This was never about that. Indeed, in the words of the founders of the United States, the right to love is an inalienable right, endowed to us by our creator. It can neither be given to us by government, nor taken from us.

I think the campaign for equal marriage is about the right to love who we love. Indirectly, but nonetheless very effectively. Without an equal basis for relationships in society, not everyone is free to love who they love. Society puts enormous pressure on everyone to conform to its ideals concerning family structure. A young person who grows up not fitting those ideals is under terrible strain.

Stop the psychological trauma. Stop the teenage suicides. Let people be the people who they are and love the people who they love. Equal marriage is a prerequisite.

[Zeta-Flux]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

I think the campaign for equal marriage is about the right to love who we love. Indirectly, but nonetheless very effectively. Without an equal basis for relationships in society, not everyone is free to love who they love. Society puts enormous pressure on everyone to conform to its ideals concerning family structure. A young person who grows up not fitting those ideals is under terrible strain.

You changed the goal-posts again.

You aren't talking about a right to love. You are talking about a right to freedom from social pressures about whom to love.

Yes, I agree that society puts enormous pressure on everyone to conform to its ideals concerning family structure. There is a very good reason for this. Because children (and hence society as a whole) are immensely harmed by broken homes, fatherlessness, infidelity, etc...

Stop the psychological trauma. Stop the teenage suicides.

So we are using marriage as a vehicle to accomplish these goals?

No matter that 55% of children in the US are raised in broken homes. No mention of their psychological traumas, or their suicides because they don't have intact families.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by Zeta-Flux

You changed the goal-posts again.

You aren't talking about a right to love. You are talking about a right to freedom from social pressures about whom to love.

It comes to the same thing. Children, being completely dependent, are certainly not free to go against what their parents, their schools, their friends, and their religious leaders, all tell them. Adults too have their dependencies which may well make it impossible not to conform. I insist that I am talking about the right to love.

Yes, I agree that society puts enormous pressure on everyone to conform to its ideals concerning family structure. There is a very good reason for this. Because children (and hence society as a whole) are immensely harmed by broken homes, fatherlessness, infidelity, etc...

So we are using marriage as a vehicle to accomplish these goals?

No matter that 55% of children in the US are raised in broken homes. No mention of their psychological traumas, or their suicides because they don't have intact families.

You think opening marriage to same sex couples increases the number of broken homes. I think it reduces the number. We've been through this ad nauseam. You and I will never agree.

[Zeta-Flux]

Brian-E,

Your first paragraph is so foreign to my way of thinking that I'm going to need some time to address it. But I do want to respond quickly to your second paragraph.

Originally Posted by Brian-E

You think opening marriage to same sex couples increases the number of broken homes. I think it reduces the number. We've been through this ad nauseam. You and I will never agree.

Actually, I hope we will be in agreement in about 10-20 years, after the social science on the subject becomes clearer. (And to be more precise, I have concerns on the issue. I don't pretend to know for certain whether I'm right.)

That said, you seem to have misunderstood my point. My point is not that I believe changing societal pressures may harm the fundamental family unit (which I do). My point is that those pushing for these changes don't seem to even see that there is a conflict of rights here. They are so focused on the rights of adults, they seem blind to the competing rights of children.

Children have a right to have laws which promote stable families, where it will be more likely they are raised by their biological father and mother. Laws which promote certain ideals which are important to the health of children, families, and society.

I would hope that you could see the validity of this argument, since you brought up teenage suicide, and you seem to believe (as I do) that social and government pressures are connected to them. Did you know that broken homes are strongly correlated with increased poverty, criminal behavior, suicide, depression, and a host of other serious issues? Did you know that 55% of children are currently being raised in broken homes? Do you see a "right to freedom from social pressures to love" as immediately trumping the rights of freedom for children? If not, why doesn't this seem to factor into any of your calculations regarding marriage laws? Indeed, your latest post seems to suggest that we should remove all social pressures related to issues of love, regardless of their effects on children, apparently because you believe people shouldn't feel social pressure.

[Brian-E]

I can assure you, Zeta-Flux, that I have the rights of children predominantly in mind when I advocate a society in which everyone is free to love who they love. LGBT teenagers are the primary victims of society's failure to acknowledge and accept diversity.

I don't advocate removal of all social pressure. Society needs certain social norms to function and - yes - to provide stable homes for children. But the rigid social norm of one woman and one man per family unit does not fall into this category.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

On the contrary. To say that someone is a liar is to say that they do so on a regular basis.
To say that someone told a lie is to say that they did it once.

I am a native English speaker, in that I was born and brung [sic] up in England. Around these parts the phrases "to be a liar" and "to tell a lie" are essentially synonyms. Whether one or more lies have been told is irrelevant, though someone who "regularly" (I think you mean repeatedly, though I recognise that your native tongue is American which differs from English in a number of important respects) tells lies would be described as an habitual liar.

I now fear attack from those who really ought to have their irony detectors recalibrated.

[only_human]

I have briefly explored Native American descriptions of dissembling:
Speaking With a Forked Tongue

Speaking With a Forked Tongue
By Patrick Lockerby | July 4th 2013 02:01 PM

Speaking With a Forked Tongue

My regular readers will likely have noticed that I thoroughly enjoy chasing down the truth behind things which are commonly accepted as facts. I am fortunate to have the gift of being able to spot cracks in arguments as well as glaciers.

I am currently heavily engaged in a legal matter concerning a witness in court who, shall we say, seems to have been somewhat uninterested in assisting the court in its determination of the true facts.

There is a phrase about not telling the truth, not now so common as when I was a child, but still in frequent use: "he speaks with a forked tongue".

It is often suggested that the idea of a forked tongue comes from the snake and the Garden of Eden story. I suggest that it does not.

There is an expression in the French language: "Ma langue a fourché". It appears that this reference to a 'slip of the tongue' is a pun. The French term 'ma langue' can mean either 'my native language', 'my use of language' or 'the strong, flexible muscle that is anchored to the floor of my mouth'. The term 'fourcher' applies to forking or bifurcation. The phrase: "Ma langue a fourché", as used by speakers of French, means: "I have used one word in place of another".

I suggest that the phrase "Ma langue a fourché" was at some time in the 1700s wrongly translated into the English as pertaining to, not a mere substitution of words, but a literal forking of the tongue. The association of a forked tongue with the snake-as-symbol would have soon anchored the phrase to its English meaning, the French origins having been long since forgotten.

That, then is my suggested etymology for any phrase which expresses a lie as "speaking with a forked tongue".

A comment to the article:

Interesting observation, however it may be relevant that the reference to "forked tongues" does occur in a 1775 description of Native Americans with specific references to snakes.

In one example they refer to the attorney's in our legal system as "hired speakers, who use their squint eyes and forked tongues like the chieftains of the snakes [meaning rattle-snakes], which destroy harmless creatures for the sake of food."

Obviously since this is a book that undoubtedly required translation into English, it's equally plausible that the author substituted idioms that he was familiar with. However, it seems that when it occurs in Native American speech it is expressly related to snakes, but not the Garden of Eden.
—
Mundus vult decipi
Gerhard Adam | 07/04/13

Looking for more contemporary decorum and accusations of dissembling, I find:
Congressman's 'You Lie' Claim About Obamacare Debunked By Reality

Five years ago this month, President Barack Obama delivered a rare speech to Congress about health care reform in which he took on the "bogus claim" that "our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants."

"This, too, is false. The reforms — the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally," he said.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) infamously interrupted and yelled, "You lie!" The outburst sparked a firestorm and prompted a House vote to admonish him. Wilson called the White House to apologize, and said in a statement his flare-up was "inappropriate and regrettable."

I suggest that regrettable accusations of lying occur during incidents of anger. To explore anger further I have found an anger translation of a different Obama speech:
President Obama, Anger Translator in White House Correspondents Dinner 2015 Speech |Full VIDEO 5 minutes

[only_human]

The Ban On Transgender Individuals In The Military May Soon Be Lifted

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pentagon leaders are finalizing plans aimed at lifting the ban on transgender individuals in the military, with the goal of formally ending one of the last gender- or sexuality-based barriers to military service, senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
/.../
Military leaders have pointed to the gradual — and ultimately successful — transition after the ban on gays serving openly in the military was lifted in 2011. Although legislation repealing that ban passed Congress in late 2010, the military services spent months conducting training and reviews before the decision actually took effect the following September.

The latest Pentagon move comes just weeks after the Supreme Court upheld the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Officials familiar with the Pentagon meetings said the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force did not express opposition to lifting the ban. Instead, they said the military leaders asked for time to figure out health care, housing and other questions and also to provide information and training to the troops to insure a smooth transition.

Although guidelines require that transgender individuals be dismissed from the military, the services in recent months have required more senior leaders to make the final decisions on those cases, effectively slowing the dismissal process.

The transgender issue came to the fore as the military struggled with how to deal with convicted national security leaker Chelsea Manning's request for hormone therapy and other treatment while she's in prison. Manning, arrested as Bradley Manning, is the first transgender military prisoner to request such treatment, and the Army approved the hormone therapy, under pressure from a lawsuit.

[Zeta-Flux]

Brian,

Thanks for your recent post, it helped clarify a few things for me.

I'd like to take two steps back and see if we can't build some common ground, or at least see how quickly our views diverge.

Do you believe, as I do, that children have a right to be raised by their biological parents in a stable, happy home?

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Zeta-Flux

Brian,

Thanks for your recent post, it helped clarify a few things for me.

I'd like to take two steps back and see if we can't build some common ground, or at least see how quickly our views diverge.

Do you believe, as I do, that children have a right to be raised by their biological parents in a stable, happy home?

Brian will undoubtedly answer for himself but my answer is: No, they do not have an absolute right to such.

You seem to presuppose that a child has two identifiable biological parents, a mother and a father, and that those parents are willing to and capable of providing a stable happy home. In the real world neither of those conditions are universally satisfied. There are so many counter examples that I'll only give a selection. By "biological" I assume you mean genetic, but please correct me if that's false.

• At least one genetic parent may be dead or mentally incapable.
  
• At present a child may have two genetic parents or three, the latter having two mothers, one of whom provided the mitochondrial DNA.
  
• In the near future, a child may have only one genetic parent, that is, he or she would be a clone.
  
• At least one parent may demonstrate abusive qualities to a child.
  

I most certainly believe that children have a right to be raised in a stable happy home. For most of human history, I believe, the institutions of fostering and adoption have been available to make that right more attainable than it would otherwise be.