As of this moment Rod Dreher has written about ten million words arguing that Andrew Sullivan cannot possibly understand what it feels like to be surrounded by people who might disapprove or even discriminate against you at work when your embarrassing secret comes out. The secret being that you hate gays.
Yes, that is basically his argument. Let it sink in for a minute.
Except that Rod does not just need to hate gays. Disapprove all day every day dude, no one cares. Rod mourns better days when he and his cultural majority could tell negroes gays how to live and he could feel like a hero for doing it. Power over other people’s life feels really great and it sucks when that fades away. Still for the life of me I cannot understand why he keeps pestering Sullivan to acknowledge that he and his people are one arched eyebrow away from yellow stars and yarmulkes. Sullivan is being unbelievably polite as is his way, but seriously Rod. Grow up and move on.
***Update***
Link fixd.
Corner Stone
I never understood what the hell a “crunchy con” was supposed to be.
BrianM
Link to Sullivan is bad.
burnspbesq
Bad link.
aimai
Rod is a narrow, pinched, busybody of a man and I grasp that it is really a serious personal loss to him that no one gives a flying fuck what he thinks about anything. He’s a would be arbiter of taste with horrible taste. He would like to be a priest but doesn’t have the stamina for it. He wants to be in the majority but he finds himself in the majority. He can STFU now because he has nothing intersting or new to say.
kc
@BrianM:
I think this is the right one.
kc
Rod Dreher vs. Andrew Sullivan: Is it wrong of me to root for injuries?
David M
There are some special commenters over there as well. I think most of the hissy fit is over the fact that their “But it’s a sin” claim doesn’t mean they get their way.
burnspbesq
You go, Andrew. Dreher is being ridiculous. Yes, we are intolerant of intolerance. Too damn bad. The Christ I know and love is not on your side, Rod. And neither is the First Amendment.
Tim F.
@David M: Yeah, so is divorce. I don’t see a constitutional amendment.
jl
What if you can’t think of any new jokes to tell? What then?
ulee
Sullivan is alright. Jane Fonda made a mistake. Sullivan made a mistake. Cole made a mistake. It’s made it..not lived it. Let it go. Move on.
Tiny Tim
Years and years ago someone in a position to know told me of Rod’s, um, “crunchy” bisexual life in college. Is this true? Would it be irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to.
SatanicPanic
Won’t someone think of the assholes?
aimai
@kc: Its mandatory.
Cassidy
Basing your treatment off others on a book of myths and legends is a poorly thought out idea.
another Holocene human
@kc: No.
Forked Tongue
I gave up years ago trying to understand why Sullivan still thinks enough of this guy to keep engaging him. I think they should just get ghey-married already.
WereBear
Can’t care.
Granted, I only gave it 15 seconds, but I feel more time would not change anything.
ulee
It seems it is mandatory to dump on Sullivan. I’m not buying that product. He is not a perfect human being but he seems pretty decent and trying to figure out the truth.
Corner Stone
@ulee: No, on both counts. He’s not decent and he has no care for the truth.
Violet
@WereBear:
OT, but wanted to mention that luc posted to you in the thread where we were talking about your adrenal issues. Said they’d used potato starch as a prebiotic and it helped their similar issues.
Jamey
Sully:
Well, he’s got you there, Andy.
Mandalay
Actually Sullivan goes way beyond being polite – he is unacceptably tolerant of intolerance. Following their conversation backwards, Sullivan made this astonishing statement:
So Sullivan opposes the removal of tax exempt status for “institutions that refuse to include gays for theological reasons”. With friends like Sullivan the LGBT movement doesn’t need enemies.
scav
It’s sooooo sad that religious freedom has been so oppressed in this once great shining nation on the hill. We haven’t had a hussy-stoning or witch-burning in ages! Nor have we fed the lions in the area with their preferred tender, martyred, crucifix-clutching prey, for that matter.
Seanly
My favorite bit about Rod is that he went from some kinda Baptist to Catholic then to Greek Orthodox trying to find the most uptight & narrow religion to confirm his own assholery. Grow a pair & start your own cult.
aimai
Christ but Rod, and Sullivan, are stupid people. One of Rod’s arguments is that “people” are being prevented from “making the case” against gay marriage in a secular way. His proof–that some Heritage foundation guy had written a book about “natural law” on the subject. “Natural law” is not a synonym for secular, its a particularly pernicious form of religious dogmatism translated into the legal sphere.
Anyway, for fuck’s sake, no one is ‘preventing’ anyone from saying anything they want. If they don’t like the response, that’s another matter. No one said Free Speech meant no one could talk back to you or make fun of you or even, in the land of “at will employment” not fire you for being an asshole. Rod simply can’t stand that he and his buddies have been exposed for the cranky, religious bigots and busybodies they are and no one wants to sit at the table with them or stroke their wounded egos. Let me hunt around for the world’s tiniest hankie.
ulee
@Corner Stone: Well, I disagree. I think he is helpful rather than a hurtful influence.
Arclite
Goddammit, I went cold turkey on The Dish for a whole month, and now you’re making me go back.
schrodinger's cat
Doesn’t this Rod person change his religion like other people change their clothes? Why is Sullivan even engaging with him.
ETA: I see that, Seanly: got
their first.
Roger Moore
@Jamey:
Yeah, but it’s still the pot calling the kettle black.
Matt
Wow. Perhaps for a followup, Sullivan could just fag-bash HIMSELF. Tolerance is one thing, but pretending a guy like Dreher is interested in debate instead of merely petulant that it’s no longer OK to curbstomp gays is ridiculous.
One only needs to watch the videos coming out of places like Uganda or Russia to get a clear sense of what the Christianists’ endgame is.
Corner Stone
@ulee: Sounds good. We can agree to disagree, but you’re still wrong.
Mandalay
@Forked Tongue:
Because it presents him with a gold plated excuse to talk about the subject that is always closest to his heart – Andrew Sullivan.
drkrick
@burnspbesq:
It’s worse now, it goes to Sullivan’s site.
Corner Stone
@Arclite:
Just when you thought you were out and proud…
ruemara
Hmm. I’m not rooting for injuries, however I am now actively soliciting donations to fly to wherever these people are, beat them with my booted feet in sensitive pearls and feed them to sharks. I do not see this in conflict with my pacifist nature.
David M
@aimai:
He’s basically freaking out at the idea that there are now consequences for either being a hateful homophobe or making common cause with a group of homophobes. It’s ridiculous.
Botsplainer
Dreher is a miserable fuckface, the perfect example of the sort of middle American who converts to, and thereafter attempts to ruin Eastern Orthodox churches with an attempt to monasticize the laity.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: Me neither, don’t care for either Dreher or Sullivan.
burnspbesq
@drkrick:
My, aren’t you the clever one.
I haven’t been on Facebook all day. I can’t wait to see what David Ferguson has to say about this.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mandalay:
Isn’t Sullivan’s main schtick ‘Conservatives are totally dreamy and they’re good people who will stop hitting me any time now because they really love gays?’
cokane
@Mandalay: this x1000
schrodinger's cat
@schrodinger’s cat: there not their.
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear:
Totally O/T, but I loved your interview with Mr. WayofCats.
ulee
@Corner Stone: I’m often wrong. But my dogs think I am right. Good puppies. Yes, you are.
Turgidson
Everyone who has had the privilege of being anything other than a straight white man (full disclosure – I am one) in this country should point and laugh in unison at this dolt. Yes, dude, the fact that the unearned privilege you once enjoyed of being able to say loud and proud that you think gay people are gross is being taken away from you is just like being a persecuted minority. Fucking idiot.
And Sully is still a moran. Sure, he has a polite conversation with a whiny bigot like Dreher, who I assume he knows personally and therefore his good faith is unjustifiably assumed. Meanwhile, a Decadent Left that never existed was once a Fifth Column for thinking Bush’s great Mesopatamian adventure was a really fucking bad idea.
Tim F.
@ulee:
I genuinely do not know what you are talking about here. How does this post dump on Sullivan? I do not think unbelievably polite is an insult.
danimal
Conservative intellectual arguments have had a bovine odor for a decade or so (at least). They just aren’t honest or willing to grapple with policy details. They rely on grifters, cranks and charlatans to fool or rouse the populace while they themselves keep a veneer of respectability. You probably never heard the “Adam and Steve” joke from Dreher, but the failure of movement conservatives to reign in the bigots and haters has left him and his cohort tarnished. And that’s appropriate. Conservatives rely on symbolism and slogans and now they are hung by their own petard.
Dreher is certainly not the worst, but the intellectual collapse of his movement is something he will need to take into account if he wants to avoid being continually consumed by poutrage.
@Corner Stone: Crunchy con is just another brand name. It has no real meaning in the real world.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodinger’s cat:
They’re, they’re, it’s okay.
jl
@Cassidy: The problem with Xtianists is that they cannot even base their beliefs on a book of myths and legends.
As far as I know the most explicit passage is in Paul’s Letter to the Romans 1:26-27, which says that all problems with start with godlessness, then goes on to discuss resulting sexytime naughtiness, which is tied up in Paul’s mind with greed, cruelty, dishonesty, envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.And gossip, slander, arrogance and pride. Which pretty much everyone is supposed to be guilty of, as far as Christians are concerned.
Immediately following, Paul says at the beginning of chapter 2:
” You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. ”
Has Dreher read the whole thing?
IMHO, Xtianists don’t have even the sanction of their own book for what they want to do to other people they don’t like. It’s just tribal social prejudice, dressed up as religion, or to more precise, as James Madison would put it, dressed up in the doctrine and dogma of a specific and narrow religious sect.
WereBear
@Violet: Thanks! I went back and saw that. That sounds like a different wrinkle from what I’ve been reading about… I’ll check it out.
cokane
Btw, an obvious point but
Replace “gay marriage” with “miscegenation” in everything Dreher wrote and basically you have an argument that even most conservative christians can see is obviously revolting.
Calouste
@ulee:
He might be trying, but he’s not particularly good at it. No A for effort in this case.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone:
Are you secretly my sister?
ulee
@Tim F.: I was talking about the comments. Come here Joplin. Good girl, yes you are such a good girl. LIfe is good.
Calouste
@Mandalay:
Well, Sullivan is not against discrimination in principal, he’s just against discrimination that affects him. I doubt he even cares about gay marriage outside the state where he lives, and he sure as heck doesn’t care about discrimination against women and people of color.
Roger Moore
@cokane:
You sure about that, because I’m not. They may have given up on miscegenation as a major issue, but I think that’s more because they know they’ve lost and arguing it makes them look bad. I bet most of them would happily start denouncing miscegenation again if they thought it was a political winner.
schrodinger's cat
@SiubhanDuinne: I hope that Straine Coon forgives me for my grammatical sins.
ulee
Maybe I am just being too tolerant. I was over at the right wing sites and wow are they incensed and deluded. It’s scary. If the democrats win in 2016 I think we may be looking at a civil war. These people are ready and wanting it.
WereBear
@Seanly: What, he missed Opus Dei? Seems perfect for him.
cokane
@Roger Moore: You have a point. I’m not sure.
But I guess I’m just a little more optimistic about it is all.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Do you think Sullivan realizes that he’s “addressing” a completely imaginary problem, because the First Amendment would automatically block any and all such lawsuits?
I’m so freakin’ sick of this claim by conservatives. Let me know when a divorced couple wins the right in court to have a Roman Catholic wedding and then I’ll start worrying about rampaging gays infringing on people’s religious rights.
Mandalay
@Tim F.:
It doesn’t.
No it isn’t at all, but Sullivan’s excessive politeness is also a failing. It is directly harmful to the gay rights movement because he says nonsense like this:
Well you know who is in complete agreement with Sullivan on that? George Fucking Will:
Sullivan is quite content to ignore human rights in the interests of winning hearts and minds. If Sullivan was in charge we’d still have separate drinking fountains because he wouldn’t want anyone imposing their uppity ideas on anyone else through laws. Fuck Sullivan.
WereBear
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks! He is a fine case of total assimilation.
—
We always think that suffering enobles, don’t we? (Krauthammer!) But here’s, Sullivan, apparently not learning much from being an oppressed minority, trying to show he’d make a fine Tory.
Total conservative… sexual orientation doesn’t matter. Still a jerk.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Calouste: This, This, This.
jl
I looked up the other detailed discussion of naughty sexytime in Paul, which is in First Corinthians, chapters 6 and 7. Paul is talking about church membership and how church members should conduct themselves. The problem with this discussion is that along with commands that Paul hands out wrt to homosexuality that Xtianists get so bothered about , also included are commands for heterosexuals that are almost universally ignored today.
I don’t see Xtianists running around demanding the right to discriminate against heterosexuals who are promiscuous, have sex before marriage, remarry after divorce, or have any sex at all outside of marriage. So, again, there is no real religious basis for their bigotry, it is just their tribe’s social conventions that they want to display as and when and how they want, regardless of consequences for other people.
Gex
@Calouste: I remember after Tiller got shot and he posted letter after letter from women whose lives were saved by late term abortions or men who lost their wife for lack of late term abortion. And then he concluded that because of his religious beliefs, it is proper that the government ban late term abortions. He’s a monster, listening to all that heart break and deciding that no, his religious beliefs compounded by the fact that he’s gay so this will never affect him, means that it is right that the government condemn women to death based on his religious views.
ulee
Jaws is starting on AMC. I’m happy now.
Turgidson
@Mnemosyne:
It’s the Tory in him. He is still wired to fear a liberal plot to impose secular/sockulist/[insert “zomg liberals” term here] thought on an unwilling populace under his bed and around every dark corner.
Gretchen
I enjoy Dreher’s comment sections. There are a fair number of liberals who frequent them, and he’ll publish comments that tell hiim he’s wrong and why, which is certainly something Sullivan would never do. Some of the conservatives have never encountered someone who disagrees with their world view, and they don’t know how to cope.
Roger Moore
@jl:
Only because they’re on the defensive. I assure you that they would dearly love to do those things, but they know they don’t have a chance if they can’t even force gays back into the closet. If they win on gay rights, though, you can bet they’ll be going after other forms of sexual conduct not approved of by the Bible.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@kc: Rooting for injuries is always wrong, as I suspect you know. A meteor, however, is entirely different.
@David M: My view has always been if they think it’s a sin, they should bitch to their g*d about those awful sinners sinning, like a small child saying Timmy’s hitting Suzie in the library, with a candlestick. Oops, wrong storyline. But really, isn’t their g*d the one who decides the fate of sinners? Why should they object to someone else losing out on getting their own planet. Wrong storyline again, but you can get the idea – why should they care?.
Violet
@WereBear: Caution to start slowly with prebiotics. You can end up with bloating and a rumbly tummy. I use potato starch but started with only a teaspoon every other day, not the two tablespoons I read about. I put it in kefir and yogurt. It’s a bit grainy, but works okay. If you heat it up it loses its prebiotic quality, so use it in something not hot.
ulee
Benjamin Franklin. There’s another guy…grrrr. Daylight Saving Time. I hate him and his Lennon glasses.
WereBear
@Gex: He did that?
Okay, I’m officially in the “total ass” camp now.
Botsplainer
@ulee:
Best scene is when Scheider is irritated over the boys with the shark dummy, and winds up running to the pond through the crowd when his wife reminds him that their kids are in the pond.
Chilling, every time.
WereBear
Because they are weak.
If all of this was illegal, and they couldn’t be tempted, then they would not succumb, and risk the Lake o’ Fire.
Bottom line.
jl
@Roger Moore: No way. Bible-belt has the highest divorce rates. All those divorced Xtianists and Fundies are not staying celibate or chaste or anything in that neighborhood, after they dump their spouses. Especially and very emphatically not the patriarchal menfolk.
WereBear
@Violet: Thanks! So often nobody passes on these little tips.
—-
Augh! Now I care that Sullivan is such a selfish entitled GIT that he would decide his religion trumps other people’s lives!
Now I’m getting PO’ed.
ulee
@Botsplainer: You got a problem with America?
Violet
@Gex: I remember that series. It was really heartbreaking as you said. I think I remember him saying that it made him rethink his views on late term abortion and that maybe early abortions were the really wrong ones because those were the ones where sluts used it as birth control instead of properly married couples making tragic decisions like happened in the later term abortions. In the end he still decided they were all wrong.
Fuck him and his inability to have any kind of sympathy or empathy for anything that doesn’t affect him personally. That’s the classic conservative/Republican/wingnut trait and he’s got it in spades.
Tim F.
@Gretchen: Sullivan publishes dissenting emails all the time. Sometimes they change his mind, sometimes they don’t.
@Roger Moore: Some folks like Cuccinelli prefer not to wait.
Turgidson
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I actually got a little bit of traction with that argument with a religious semi-wingnut. She was stridently anti-gay marriage because the Bible, of course. I just said something to the effect of, “if you’re so sure homosexuality is a sin, aren’t you confident God will handle it as He sees fit, and that will be punishment enough? Why should the government have anything to do with it? And can’t your church decide for itself who is allowed to marry on its premises?” She actually backed off, albeit without admitting she was changing her mind. But she’s not one of the people who think the Bible is the actual Constitution, so she was at least somewhat amenable to a separation of church/state argument.
Corner Stone
@Gex:
That was monstrous, in any and all definitions of the word. He posted heartbreak after heartbreak. Pure, raw, devastation by real people. People who were still in raw, unfiltered pain.
And he shat all over every fucking one of them.
Beyond all his stupid fucking “conservative” beliefs, that was irredeemable and he should be hounded from public discourse for doing what he did there.
Gex
@WereBear: Yup. I still read his site at the time. I never understood what the difference between early term and late term was with respect to his religious beliefs. It seemed so arbitrary. Actually it felt like he thought that allowing early term abortions made him seem reasonable and was in the spirit of not having the government be an arm of his religion while banning late term abortions were a thing that could really make him feel good about himself. Sort of like a lot of his fellow conservatives condemning sexuality makes them feel really good about themselves.
Gex
@Violet: Hmm. I remember he was moved by the stories of late term abortions. But in my recollection he came down against them but not early term abortions. So I recall differently than you. And to be honest, I am not interested in rereading anything he had to say on it, so I’ll just say that what I’ve written about it was what I took away from that series. I may have missed some posts or missed some conclusions. But it still seems like he feels in some way like his religious beliefs should be imposed on women by the government, whether it be early or late term abortions.
Turgidson
@jl:
I think you’re both right. The patriachs in the Xtianist groups would love to get back on the slut-shaming and anti-sexytime horse full throttle so long as they themselves were immune from the restrictions and continue to do whatever fuckall they wanted without consequence.
Francis
I’m one of the liberals who comment there. I just can’t help myself; it’s a weakness.
RD really has gone off the deep end in recent weeks. The success of the SSM litigation in Texas and the defeat of the Arizona bill now mean that the gays have won — and that the gays are now infringing on his religious liberty.
As best anyone can tell, the liberty being infringed is the liberty of knowing that gays are firmly entrenched in second-class status. The very fact that homosexuality is a protected class in certain states is, in and of itself, a gross violation of his religious liberty rights. But he is not (NOT!) a bigot, he will have you know. Bigotry is something completely different.
(How it’s different has something to do with the fact that the Bible apparently teaches that the true essence of marriage requires a man and a woman. That other people once relied on the Bible to prohibit interracial marriages was a mistake on their part. But he is absolutely sure that he is correct on this issue.)
WereBear
@Turgidson: Oh, they do these things, and they cry and pray to Jeebus and get forgiven.
We say these things aren’t wrong, and that’s what they can’t stand.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Corner Stone:
That says it all – I recall all too clearly reading that quite unfiltered pain that people were sharing. And then Sullivan says, in effect, “that’s awful, but my g*d says it’s sinful to do anything before the fetus crosses the cervical rubicon, so too bad for you.” I can never get past that.
@Francis: Huh. I thought the Bible mentioned marriages between a man and more than one woman, without noting that it was awfully sinful to do it that way. But my religious instruction has been woefully lacking.
Violet
@Gex: I don’t think our memories of that series are all that far apart. A few details varying, perhaps.
What I remember is that in the end he didn’t change any of his beliefs. The heartbreaking letters just “made him think”. Massive eyeroll to that. If that’s all they do, then fuck him. He can’t imagine being in any of their shoes because he never will be since he’s a gay man and won’t be either getting anyone pregnant or getting pregnant himself. And, as usual, zero empathy. Zero ability to imagine oneself in someone else’s shoes.
What I recall is that the heartbreaking stories of late term abortion made him think maybe there were good reasons for those–but in the end he decided they were still wrong. And that earlier abortions were maybe worse than he thought because sluts. But in the end, he would pat himself on the back and continue to think the law should allow those because he’s so broad-minded. Although he personally thought they were morally wrong.
In the end, all the heartbreaking letters changed his mind not at all. He learned nothing. He thinks abortion is wrong. He’s willing to let the law allow them for first trimester, but if he’d never choose to do that because Christianity or some crap.
Fuck him.
Villago Delenda Est
@Botsplainer:
Disagree. The best scene is when Brody informs Quint that he (Quint) needs a bigger boat.
Villago Delenda Est
@Turgidson:
Two words:
David Koresh.
Sexytime for me, but not for thee.
See also “fundamentalist” LDS types, who practice polygamy.
WereBear
@Villago Delenda Est: Legend has it that it was an ad-lib, too.
jl
@Turgidson: You are probably right, so I concede your point.
But then these guys would have the same right to a religious liberty claim as a bunch of meth heads claiming their shot gun shack was a church and their meth lab kitchen was an alter, protected the first amendment, because dude that shit is part of their religion.
Violet
@Turgidson: Oh completely. And Dinesh D’Souza and sharing a room with his young, attractive “fiancee” while still married to his wife is the perfect current example. He was the head of some Christianist college and was at some conference related to it and could not understand why people had a problem with what he was doing. How could it be a problem? He’s a Christian! He’s not sinning!
LeftCoastTom
@Francis:
Huh? CA’s Unruh Civil Rights Act has been around for a while, this moron just recently discovered he’s being repressed?
Maybe I could take these people slightly more seriously if they weren’t acting like they’ve been asleep for somewhat longer than Rip Van Winkle.
Mnemosyne
@Francis:
I think Dreher is mixing up Roman Catholic dogma and what’s actually in the Bible. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Tim F.
@Villago Delenda Est: Meh. It is subtle, but to me the best scene is about halfway through when Brody or his wife draws a bath and the camera lingers on the tap filling the tub. Somehow the framing makes you feel this dread, as if the shark could swim through the pipes and jump out at you. A non-supernatural movie which pulls that off has really showed up to work.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
It was — the screenwriter, Carl Gottlieb, says it was something Scheider came up with on the set.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tim F.: You do have a point. That’s the best thing about Jaws. There’s nothing supernatural going on, but it’s far more effective at scaring the bejeezus out of you than a lot of other movies.
The scene where Dreyfus is investigating the boat drifting in the water, and then drops the tooth because he’s startled by the dead guy’s head showing up in the hole in the boat was pretty effective at causing chair jumping, too.
I also really like the scene in the cabin where they’re trading war stories, and Brody at first thinks of showing off his appendectomy scar, then decides not to.
Ksmiami
@ulee: but they are cowards and stupid and will crumple if real fighting starts
Omnes Omnibus
You know what? Sullivan picked a team a long time. That team hates him. If he can’t respect himself, why should we respect him?
Both Dreher and Sullivan get their credibility from liberals who cite them as sensible conservatives; I’ve yet to see any evidence that anyone on the right takes them seriously. I say we let them snap at one another and ignore them. They are both assholes.
Comrade Dread
Seriously, how often does the subject of gay marriage come up for most people that they have to feel so oppressed?
I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation on the topic other than on internet message boards.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Could not agree more.
Roger Moore
@Turgidson:
There’s a reason it’s the sluts who get shamed, not the johns.
RaflW
@Corner Stone: Crunchy Con just means he eats granola. ‘Cause, y’know, hippies. So he’s cool like that.
(Barf bags are in the seat pocket in front of you)
PurpleGirl
@cokane: Nope, because a man is not supposed to take a wife from outside his own tribe. Race or tribe is equivalent.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Isn’t sensible conservative an oxymoron? Especially, now.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: That is central to my point.
Comrade Dread
@efgoldman: Okay, I take it back, I used to work with a great guy who happened to have a husband and we used to talk about our families and all the stuff that was going on with them. They were hoping to adopt a couple of kids and we both debated the pros and cons of childcare vs. losing one income from having a stay at home parent.
At no point, did I ever have the inclination to start discussing the religious, political, and socio-economic arguments for or against gay marriage. Fact was he was married, happy, in a stable relationship and was having the exact same hopes and challenges every other couple has, and I was happy for him. End of story.
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Dread: You weren’t having a conversation about gay marriage. You were having the kind of conversation that married people have. Some of the married people were gay.
jomike
@Francis:
Yup. He’s no bigot, heavens no! It’s just that some of the beliefs he holds are now considered bigoted by a majority of Americans (including a substantial percentage of his fellow Christians).
For a chuckle, see the awesome “I’m rubber, you’re glue” argument by TheWeek’s Damon Linker (to which Dreher links, with the command “read the whole thing;” he evidently thinks it’s quite something):
Yeah, well, so’s yer old man!
J.Ty
@efgoldman: I hear the most about gay marriage from my mother.
For example:
Last summer, after the Prop 8 and DOMA rulings, I got a text from her that read “Soooooo…”
burnspbesq
@Francis:
Rich Lowry was peddling the same line of crap on Left, Right, and Center a week ago Friday. I wanted to reach through the radio in my car and wring his scrawny little neck.
Assholes are trying to re-frame what is really an Establishment Clause issue (you don’t get to cram your religious beliefs down the throats of people who don’t share them) as an Exercise Clause issue (I’m being repressed for my beliefs). Bullshit, y’all. You can have your beliefs. You can sing them to the heavens (altho you damn well better do it in key).
300baud
Late to the party, but I find Rod Dreher’s position conveniently oblivious on the important distinction between his views on gay marriage and his views on the use of state power to keep a minority from marrying.
I know Christians who are certainly uncomfortable with gay marriage, or who believe that their religion forbids them to engage in homosexual acts. I’ve never seen or heard of a person like that getting backlash. Dreher’s examples, on the other hand, are people who believe in positive, organized discrimination against people based purely on their religious notions.
Does Dreher believe that religious white supremacists should be treated respectfully when they try to organize discrimination against blacks? Because if not, his position is basically, “Me me it’s different when it’s me me me.”
Mnemosyne
@jomike:
If marriage is a religious sacrament with a procreative purpose, why do you have to go down to the courthouse and get a license from the state to do it?
I felt many things as we waited in line for over an hour to get our marriage license issued by the state of California, but not that standing there was a “religious sacrament.”
Mnemosyne
@J.Ty:
Is that like the conversation I keep meaning to have with my brother-in-law along the lines of, “Isn’t it about time you found a nice boy and settled down? You’re not getting any younger, you know.”
Amanda in the South Bay
Rod’s a big fan of the late pedophile/rapist Archbishop Dimitri (Royster) of Dallas (Orthodox Church in America).
jl
@Mnemosyne:
‘ I felt many things as we waited in line for over an hour to get our marriage license issued by the state of California, but not that standing there was a “religious sacrament.” ‘
They are very confused people. I guess the next new frontier will be claims we are violating their religious freedom when we say that Christianity is not the official religion of the United States, or any of the several states.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
Fun fact: when you get your official marriage certificate in the mail, it’s printed on exactly the same paper as your car title. Because, as far as the state of California is concerned, the two things are pretty much the same — a piece of legal paperwork issued by the state.
Scott Alloway
@David M: Yep. Clear, concise and true.
J.Ty
@Mnemosyne: Kind of! Except I already found one and was/am living in… double sin, I guess.
ETA: if California gives civil unions the same lack of attention they do marriage certificates, that would explain why my name is spelled wrong.
Frivolous
@jomike:
I don’t post much on this site except to offer condolences and congratulations. Less than 10 posts, I think. Coming out of lurkerhood to post this:
It really really pisses me off when a self-righteous asshole believes that and acts as if being right and other people being wrong mean it is okay or even admirable to be an asshole.
I absolutely refuse to be on the same side as the self-righteous assholes. I don’t care who they are or what they support.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: My view of car ownership is that it’s a religious sacrament with a procreative purpose. Unfortunately it seems I have yet to truly own a car.
aleta
@Gex: Yes, that was a final breaking point for me (in addition to the baiting about race in order to proclaim he was “debating” TN Coates). Sullivan could not have been more callous when he encouraged and then stood in judgment of the women’s grief. Andrew Sullivan used those women’s hearts, and in my opinion his friend TNC’s as well, for his own page-view profit.
Bob2
Andrew Sullivan is a dolt and if you think he’s okay, you might want to read more closely. No one truly intelligent would take years to change their mind like he does.
Hilariously enough, he always wants to hawk that he uses empiricism, but fails to understand what empirical data is all too regularly because he has no educational background in science and math. Also he still links approvingly to McMegs in all seriousness.
And god forbid when he gets into one of his little emotional snits. A close reading of pretty much any post of his that isn’t about gay rights or torture usually reveals how tortured his thinking process is.
Bob2
Andrew Sullivan is a dolt and if you think he’s okay, you might want to read more closely. No one truly intelligent would take years to change their mind like he does.
Hilariously enough, he always wants to hawk that he uses empiricism, but fails to understand what empirical data is all too regularly because he has no educational background in science and math. Also he still links approvingly to McMegs in all seriousness.
And god forbid when he gets into one of his little emotional snits. A close reading of pretty much any post of his that isn’t about gay rights or torture usually reveals how tortured his thinking process is.
TerryC
@Calouste: I must disagree. I’ve been reading Sullivan every day for several years (as well as BJ and LGF). Your statement below is not supported by my observations and could be easily disproven by some Googling.
“Well, Sullivan is not against discrimination in principal, he’s just against discrimination that affects him. I doubt he even cares about gay marriage outside the state where he lives, and he sure as heck doesn’t care about discrimination against women and people of color.”
Medicine Man
I think Andrew Sullivan just takes his own gut feelings and works backwards to find a justification for those feelings. In this case, it is his loathing of liberals that he is processing. Sweeping victory on gay rights is an occasion for liberal triumphalism, which Sully cannot countenance, so thus he conjures up supposedly tactical and/or principled reasons for liberals to be magnanimous (but mostly to keep their fucking mouths shut).