Gay-Hatin' Gospel (pt. 3)

According to research by the Barna Group:

The most common perception is that present-day Christianity is "anti-homosexual." Overall, 91 percent of young non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians. One of the most frequent criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church has made homosexuality a "bigger sin" than anything else.

How did such a strange thing come to pass?

Theory No. 3: The Innocent Backlash

This theory requires our serious attention because it is so widely held -- or, at least, widely claimed.

Before taking a closer look at this explanation, we need to underscore the particular claims made by the respondents to the Barna survey quoted above. American Christianity has come to be perceived, first and foremost, as "anti-homosexual." This is not simply due to a moral/ethical teaching that precludes any sexual activity outside of monogamous, heterosexual matrimony -- Barna's respondents explicitly stated that the anti-homosexuality that characterizes American Christianity goes "beyond" that, into the realm of "excessive contempt." The meaning of the word "excessive" here is clear: the contempt for homosexuals that characterizes American Christianity exceeds mere ethical/theological objection; it is inappropriately severe; it is disproportionate, inordinate, intemperate.

Proponents of the innocent backlash theory thus have to begin by arguing that this perception is inaccurate -- that nine out of 10 young non-Christians and four out of five young churchgoers have somehow gotten the wrong idea. The contempt American Christianity displays toward homosexuals, these proponents say, is just the right amount.

Christians, this theory holds, do not regard homosexuals as particularly or especially deserving of condemnation, it's just that homosexual activists have become so vocal in promoting their radical homosexual agenda that -- purely in response -- Christians have been forced to become equally vocal in reply. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction -- that's elementary physics. Christians have simply been reacting to the radical homosexual agenda, and this reaction has been equal and opposite (and therefore not at all "excessive").

The explanation for the (mis)perception that American Christianity is inappropriately anti-homosexual is thus something that any grade-school child can understand: They started it.

"They" (the homosexuals) started this disagreement and we American Christians are merely reacting, responding, replying -- that is the essence of this theory. This explanation is almost universally cited among anti-homosexual leaders of the religious right, but it is also widely cited by go-slow "liberals" who urge homosexuals seeking equal rights to marry or to serve openly in the military not to push too hard for these goals. Push too hard, they advise, insist too strenuously that you be treated equally, and you invite just the sort of backlash that Barna records here.

This sounds a great deal like a warning to homosexuals to "remember your place" -- a warning that echoes similar counsels of caution against an earlier struggle for equal rights. The best response to such warnings is that of Martin Luther King Jr. in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail":

Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was "well timed," according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the [word] "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

But the more pertinent argument in King's letter is his correction of the confusion of cause and effect at the heart of every innocent backlash theory:

You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects, and does not grapple with underlying causes.

"They started it," is a claim of fact. The legitimacy and validity of the innocent backlash theory rests on whether that claim is true or false. And that claim is false. "Radical homosexual activists" pushing their "radical agenda" are no more the cause of the current disagreement than the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was the cause of the conflict in Birmingham.

The innocent backlash theory says that "excessive contempt" for homosexuals is a consequence -- a predictable, reasonable, defensible consequence -- of homosexuals refusing to remember their place. Or, in other words, refusing to accept their place as less than equal. The backlash is thus, inescapably, a defense of inequality. Even if the RHAs lived up to the rudest and most aggressively impolitic caricature drawn by their critics this would still be the case.

Proponents of innocent backlash theory recognize this, and they realize that a defense of inequality is indefensible. Thus they have gone to great lengths to try to reframe the matter not as one of equal rights, but as one of "special rights." It's hard to know what, if anything, this is supposed to mean. This is semantic sleight of hand, just like the larger attempt here to downgrade "reactionary" to merely "reactive." Apparently second-class citizens who demand to be treated equally are asking for something "special." The effort to relabel equal rights as "special rights" strikes me as an unironic affirmation of Anatole France's ironic description of "The majestic equality of the law, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges or to beg in the streets."

Finally, the innocent backlash theory is incapable of answering our question because it refuses to do so. That question, again, is how did it come to be the case that an "excessive contempt" for homosexuals is the "most common perception" of American Christianity? The innocent backlash theory rejects this question, insisting that this contempt is not excessive, and that this common perception is simply mistaken. The fact that this perception is shared by "80 percent of young churchgoers" -- people whose understanding of American Christianity comes from direct experience and from what they have been explicitly taught to believe in American churches -- apparently only means that four out of five young churchgoers are too stupid to understand what they have been shown and taught. I find that implausible. The question is legitimate. The refusal to answer it is not.

Rereading the above, I'm not sure I've been as charitable as I'd like to have been in evaluating this theory. I have a hard time being charitable toward those who would argue that any degree of contempt can be less than "excessive," or that blaming the victim is acceptable so long as you do it in God's name. So later on I may need to revisit this theory -- I'll put some VapoRub under my nose to mask the stench and take a closer second look. But for now let's move on.

Next up: The Exegetical Panic Defense.

Comments

[Brian J.]

Now we are getting somewhere. Homophobes and American Christians have several commonalities that explain their alliance, more than a few words in a collaborative work of fiction that no one reads ever could:

Their opinions were completely unchallenged until quite recently.
They are still in the majority, but not for much longer. Both are especially losing ground among today's youth.
They seek to lengthen their time in power, enjoying the privileges (social, financial, and otherwise) of being the majority in a representative form of government.
They are not averse to a bit of violence to advance their ends, and are happy to blame the victims of their violence for "provoking" them by dint of their existence.

It's the flailing of two inexorably declining attitudes, and will disappear when they realize that their hatemongering does them more harm than good. Sadly, this may be a while yet.

[Mabus]

Bugmaster: I guess that depends what you mean by "civil rights". Let's pretend that God really does exist, and that adultery really is a sin, and therefore a highly immoral act. Should adulterers be free to commit adultery ? If a person knows that adultery is a sin, and that it is highly immoral, and then goes ahead and commits premeditated adultery anyway -- would treat that person as trustworthy and deserving of respect ?

Cowboy Diva: Why is it that people can come to theological acceptance of things like divorce but not something like gay/lesbian relationships?

Many conservative Christians have not, in fact, "come to theological acceptance of divorce". Some have, but many acquiesce to divorce only because they feel they have run out of options with regard to government action. A substantial number of conservative churches still hold that divorce ought not to be allowed, or to be allowed only in certain special cases, primarily adultery. Typically these churches also hold that improperly divorced people ought not to be allowed to remarry. The liberalization of divorce laws was fought strenuously for decades, and though in the end the churches were defeated, few are actually reconciled to that defeat. In mine, for instance, preachers often refuse to marry anyone who has been divorced even though some divorces are considered legitimate, because of the difficulties involved in determining which are which.

Which ties into the problems surrounding Bugmaster's argument: these churches do not regard marriage as a civil right, but as a privilege that ought not to be under government control in the first place. They do not all agree what the actual status of marriage is, but they agree that it is not purely a government function. Therefore the government does not have the authority to adjust who marriage can be granted to. If marriage is not a right, it does not have to be granted equally to all.

[Bugmaster]

The really sticky one to my mind is incest. We're all cool with that being illegal (right?), but it's hard to justify in strictly logical terms why.

Especially if it's gay incest... Man, just thinking about it must make fundamentalist Christians' heads explode. It's Sin Squared.

[mike timonin]

Whoa now Ecks - I'm a Theist, but I have no problem with adultery or polygamy. If you want to engage in either, go right ahead.

[Grendel72]

I don't know. The really sticky one to my mind is incest. We're all cool with that being illegal (right?), but it's hard to justify in strictly logical terms why.
How is it hard to justify in strictly logical terms? It increases the possibility for genetic birth defects, family ties strongly effect any supposed "consent", it brings about inter-familial strife. Where do we need any supernatural daddy figure to tell us it's wrong to understand that?

[Ecks]

About half of everyone I know under 20 or so uses 'gay' as a synonym for bad or stupid ("That's so gay!"). Even people who have many gay friends.

Seriously! When I ask them they insist it is a completely separate word than 'gay' meaning homosexual... Which I suppose does happen in English (one word with two meanings depending on context - I can't think of one now, but usually we don't notice them at all till we see an ESL person mix them up, because in our head they ARE different words). But still, it just seems wrong, and I bet it ISN'T so separated in the minds of homophobes that hear it being used. I bet it leaves them feeling validated. Or at least, supported - maintaining the illusion that homophobia is normative.

Whoa now Ecks - I'm a Theist, but I have no problem with adultery or polygamy.

Yeah, I was painting in uber big brush strokes there. I did flag it, but apparently not strongly enough. I readily acknowledge that there's probably no one position that covers all theists or all atheists, I was just making crude modal descriptions in the hope of coming up with some generalization that had SOME ability to illuminate. That was the aim at any rate.

How is it hard to justify in strictly logical terms? It increases the possibility for genetic birth defects,

ok, but say they use great birth control? Or say one has had a vasectomy or hysterectomy? Or what if they are same gender? I bet you still feel squicky about siblings going at it like wild bunnies, but there's no risk of genetically deformed kids.

family ties strongly effect any supposed "consent",

You've maybe got a sorta kinda point there, but we don't have any problem with 25 year old siblings forming a legal monetary contract with each other, and that would have all the same problems with "consent".

it brings about inter-familial strife.

And so do long car trip vacations to Disneyland. What's your point?

Where do we need any supernatural daddy figure to tell us it's wrong to understand that?

I don't believe supernatural daddies, mommies, or third cousins twice removeds, but I'm still opposed to incest. Even the cases where conception is impossible, and all the parties are well above all reasonable ages of consent. I just can't tell you quite WHY I am. It squicks me out, that much I know... but it seems wrong to ban something based only on that.

nb, bestiality and pedophilia don't meet these criteria. In both cases there you have huge problems with consent, so the logic of banning them is solid. It's just incest.

[G-Do]

Spalanzani: I think the "This." meme started on 4-chan, but I don't know for sure.

[Emily H.]

It seems like the relationship between "moral" and "legal" is really flimsy. Even if you put aside the question of whether adultery should be legal...

Is there anything immoral about driving your car when there's a red light in front of you? Is there anything immoral about driving on the left side of the road? Only in the sense that the US has a system of traffic laws that say you drive on the right side of the road and stop for red lights, and violating that system is likely to get somebody killed.

It seems to me that almost nothing illegal is illegal because it is wrong. Even murder; if murder were not illegal, we'd have extraordinarily violent family feuds and vigilante revenge, so it makes sense to outsource the punishment of murderers to the state.

[straight]

Fred,

I think that #3 is in fact the answer to your question here, but you've missed it because you're framing it wrong. Instead of calling it "Innocent Backlash" you should call it "The Rest of the World Changed."

75 years ago, Christians were just as homophobic as they are now. They just didn't have to talk about it and no one really noticed it because all of American society was homophobic as well.

Now in the last few years, you have a younger generation that is not homophobic and they look at the Evangelicals, whose position on the issue hasn't really changed, and they say "Wow, those guys are homophobes."

It's because the rest of society has changed, that this aspect of Evangelical belief now stands out and becomes what Evangelicals are known for.

[Ecks]

Interesting analysis straight. But the one thing that you haven't covered is why the evangelicals are all so hopping mad about gay rights, rather than any of the other stuff that's changed (other people here claim they ARE hopping mad about that stuff too, but gay rights is a whipping boy for electoral stuff in a way that nothing else except abortion is)

[straight]

Or put another way, all the Evangelical fuss over homosexuality is in fact a reaction, a backlash. It wouldn't have happened if the rest of society hadn't made steps towards acceptance of homosexuality. It's just not an "innocent" backlash. Your post rejecting this theory is really just a rejection of the "innocent" label.

[Spalanzani]

G-Do: "I think the "This." meme started on 4-chan, but I don't know for sure."

It does seem like one of their things.

...4-chan, source of all evil...

"How is [the immorality of incest] hard to justify in strictly logical terms? It increases the possibility for genetic birth defects, family ties strongly effect any supposed "consent", it brings about inter-familial strife. Where do we need any supernatural daddy figure to tell us it's wrong to understand that?"

Well, there is no apprecialble risk of birth defects for any relation of a genetic distance of cousins or more. More importantly we don't require a test of immotional or physical safety for other relationships, and I've never seen an incest law that says "It's okay if you're gay or infertile".

P.S. I don't think incest is inherently wrong, I have great difficulty understanding the position of anyone who does. I do think that knowingly inflicting birth defecst upon your offspring should be actionable however.

[Scott]

Me, I got no problem w/ "gay marriage" (for lack of a better phrase), but how about also legalizing the "covenent marriages" the fundies like? Both sides enter voluntarily, but no fault divorce is off the table. If social liberals get the marriages they want, can social conservatives get the ones _they_ want? Let _everybody_ choose, and not just Good Liberals. We're talking two consenting adults.

An now, we can look forward to Jesu's knee-jerk "no, because THEN MEN WILL BEAT ME BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT ALL MEN WANT TO DO!!!" response, straight from the Lifetime channel.

[Spalanzani]

Scott:" Me, I got no problem w/ "gay marriage" (for lack of a better phrase),"

If you really don't have a problem with them, then I'm not entirely sure why you think you need a better phrase.

[Doctor Science]

I went and bought the Barna study and just finished reading it (it's neither long nor dense). One of the striking things they found was that "even among evangelicals, just three out of five describe divorce as a sin, well below their opposition to gay marriage." Kinnaman (author of the study) notes that Jesus' opposition to divorce is very firm and well-documented, while he never mentioned homosexuality. And yet by every definition of "evangelical" or "born-again" or "Christian" that they used, RTCs are *much* more opposed to gay marriage than to divorce.

Previous Barna studies have shown that born-again Christians are at least as likely to divorce as non-Christians. It's clear to me (from following their work over some years) that the Barna researchers find this *extremely* upsetting, but they face up to it.

I think mcc is right about the Scapegoat theory, and I think divorce is a big part of what is being loaded onto gays' backs. All looseness, pleasure-seeking, sexual openness -- all of that is, on multiple levels, "gay".

Meanwhile, my daughter is exasperated when her fellows complain that "this math homework is so gay!", and asks if it's same-sex multiplication that's at fault.

[Patrick Phelan]

I don't think incest is inherently wrong, I have great difficulty understanding the position of anyone who does.

For my part, it's that it's hell of difficult to disentangle the power relationships involved. Strikes me as it's immoral for a boss to sleep with her subordinate, because then she's in a position of power over him, and suddenly all this consent stuff gets real, real ugly. Even if it seems wholly consensual, there's subconscious things going on, and every decision within the relationship would be affected by that. So, then, how much the more so with a mother and a son? Or even an older brother and a younger sister? Dubious power dynamics, not wholly visible and not wholly embraced, are what make me shudder... not necessarily genetic closeness.

And maybe that's what makes a few of the homophobes shudder, too. "But... the husband is the head of the wife! Is Adam the boss, or is Steve?"

[G-Do]

@Jesu: Actually, it is. C. S. Lewis outlines its dishonesty...

There are two problems with that argument as I see it. First, the culture Lewis was indicting - Great Britain circa 1910-1960 - is different from both present-day GB and from the present-day U.S. Coed public schools have largely abolished the homosexual older student / younger student relationships which were prevalent in Lewis's day; I went to U.S. public schools in the 80s and 90s and never heard of anything like that. And sodomy laws are no longer on the books in GB or in the U.S. (except in the state of Virginia, IIRC). So the present-day culture is different, and demonstrating that the old culture's homophobia was dishonest doesn't mean that the present-day culture's homophobia is dishonest.

Second, even if the culture was the same, there is a difference between dishonesty and hypocrisy. The boys who got stuck in those miserably lonely all-boys schools were desperate for intimacy and sexual release (like most human teenagers). To get the emotional connection they craved, many of them violated their own sexually repressive behavioral proscriptions; they acted in a way inconsistent with their own beliefs about ethical and appropriate behavior. To say that they were insincere from the get-go is to misunderstand them completely; a lot of those people struggled mightily against their own need for love and affection.

What's more, the history of Christianity is replete with figures just like that: self-loathing people who set an impossibly high bar for themselves, struggle to reach that bar, fail, punish themselves, then wake up the next morning and try to reach the bar again. To say "oh, they don't really believe it because they don't practice it" misses the point. Their struggle is evidence for their sincerity; their failure only tells us that their goals were insane, maybe even impossible.

Now, at this point, your reaction may be to point at Ted Haggard and say "Are you shitting me? You think that guy is a self-loathing monk-type? Of course he's dishonest!" And if we were just talking about the Haggards of the world, I'd agree with you. But homophobia is about more than just the pampered, polished, plastic face of fundagelical leadership. I think that for every Haggard, there are ten real people for whom homophobia is a natural intuition, completely organic to their belief system, and is in no way a pretense or a subterfuge.

[Grendel72]

And to the extent that homophobia (that is to say hatred) is an important part of their belief system (generally to the extent that they ignore the actual teachings of Jesus, since Jesus wasn't particularly a big fan of hating your fellow man), that belief system is wrong.

[Ember Keelty]

@G-Do:

Read more carefully. It wasn't the "hypocrisy" that made Lewis object. I thought I should warn you before Jesu jumps down your throat.

[Ember Keelty]

I agree with G-Do. Many, if not most, Christians do indeed see homosexuality as a sin. Thus, homosexuals are clearly not equal, from the Christian perspective: they are sinners and criminals, and should be treated as such. The Homosexual Agenda Cabal (tm) does their best to subvert the moral foundations of our society, render homosexuality (and, by extension, all other sins) socially acceptable, and deliver us all into the hands of Satan, their master. It is the duty of every right-thinking Christian to oppose the nefarious gays. For the LORD !

Huh.

I've always tried to come to terms with pro-life by associating it with a certain a "squick" I have about another perfectly legal activity. Whenever I meet with a practitioner of said activity, there's always a large underlying element of "Wait. You kill for fun? And everyone else is okay with this? And knowing this, I'm supposed to treat you like a normal human being? Uh, I don't think so." There are several differences, of course, but I think the main one is the different definitions of "personhood."

With homophobes and other Bible-thumping bigots, I guess the problem is different definitions of morality. I think it all boils down to "An it harm none, do what you will," with an emphasis on "an it harm none." They, on the other hand, think it comes from a book. A really old, frequently self-contradictory book.

[Michele]

G-Do: Coed public schools have largely abolished the homosexual older student / younger student relationships which were prevalent in Lewis's day; I went to U.S. public schools in the 80s and 90s and never heard of anything like that.

Not relevant to your post, but just a data point. It is my understanding that the term "public school" does not mean the same thing in the UK as it does in the US.

It is my understanding (and may the Brits here correct me if I'm wrong) that a "public school" in the UK is more akin to a "private school" in the US than to a US "public school".

[Ecks]

I do think that knowingly inflicting birth defecst upon your offspring should be actionable however.

You don't want to go down that road. What about a regular everything-groovy couple who goes for neo-natal testing of their planned wanted pregnancy and find out that the fetus has Down's syndrome? If they choose not to terminate the pregnancy should you prosecute them? Take that one step further, what about a couple that gets pregnant, and decides NOT to test the fetus for defects, and then has a child with them?

Nope, that's a can of worms you don't want to get to.

I think the best answer we've had so far is patricks one with uncomfortable power dynamics... I think I'd like to spell that out some more... What do you do if your mom hits on you? seriously? If it's just your friend you can walk away and not be interested. If it's your mother it's VERY hard to walk away.
But adult siblings? I doubt there's much power there, but I guess again there's a much lower tolerance of rejection. I mean what sort of choice is that. Never see your brother again, or become involved with him.

Yeah, starting to come clear to me why incest sucks so much.

[Ecks]

How interesting that I knew I didn't like incest, but didn't know why till now. This really reminds me of Jonathan Haidt's theory of morality... Wow, looks like he got an article about it in science. It's actually one of the most profound new things I've heard in a long time. Here's a bite:

My attempt to illustrate the new synthesis in moral psychology is the Social Intuitionist Model (8), which begins with the intuitive primacy principle. When we think about sticking a pin into a child's hand, or we hear a story about a person slapping her father, most of us have an automatic intuitive reaction that includes a flash of negative affect. We often engage in conscious verbal reasoning too, but this controlled process can occur only after the first automatic process has run, and it is often influenced by the initial moral intuition. Moral reasoning, when it occurs, is usually a post-hoc process in which we search for evidence to support our initial intuitive reaction.

Evidence that this sequence of events is the standard or default sequence comes from studies indicating that (i) people have nearly instant implicit reactions to scenes or stories of moral violations (9); (ii) affective reactions are usually good predictors of moral judgments and behaviors (10, 11); (iii) manipulating emotional reactions, such as through hypnosis, can alter moral judgments (12); and (iv) people can sometimes be "morally dumbfounded"—they can know intuitively that something is wrong, even when they cannot explain why (8, 13). Furthermore, studies of everyday reasoning (14) demonstrate that people generally begin reasoning by setting out to confirm their initial hypothesis. They rarely seek disconfirming evidence, and are quite good at finding support for whatever they want to believe (15).

You can find the whole article here
Highly recommended (science is one of THE journals, not just a psych rag), and pretty readable. It may change the whole way you think about things :)

[G-Do]

@Ember: thanks for the heads up. I think I got it - Lewis was saying, look people. You can't really think homosexuality is more horrible than the rest of the world's vices, you only say that because X, Y, Z. My point is that what Lewis took to be dishonesty might not have been dishonesty at all. Is that right?

Also @Jesu: Christians who claim they are homophobes because it says so in the Bible are wrong, in any case: the Bible says nothing as clearcut.

Depends on your hermeneutics, doesn't it? Anyway, given the popularity of the Left Behind books, the anti-homosexual feeding frenzy, and the Word-Faith doctrine, I think we can safely conclude that the fundamentalist Christian religion contains some wild deviations from scripture. The point is, these people genuinely believe that God is compelling them to be total dicks.

...they do not begin with neutral feelings about LGBT people and then learn to cultivate hate because of a handful of ambiguous quotes...

While I agree that homophobia serves powerful psychological needs, and thus is an emotionally charged thing before any theological analysis is ever performed, I do not agree that this makes homophobes insincere. The two motives - emotional and analytical - are not mutually exclusive. And one is not necessarily a cover for the other.

[Ember Keelty]

Interesting moral hypothesis, Ecks.

Not sure it works for me, though. There are lots of sexual things that I find completely repugnant on a visceral level, but that I think two (or more) consenting adults should have every right to participate in. In fact, sex in general sort of squicks me,* but intellectually I'm into "free love". Just not, you know, for myself.

*I think I may be asexual. At eighteen, I'm coming up against the edge of "late bloomer".

[Ecks]

Ember, you're talking about the hypothesis about why incest is wrong? My latest greatest version doesn't depend on the squick thing as a motivator (which is good because as you suggest it's not a very compelling reason to ban stuff).

The asexual thing is certainly possible. IIRC it's something like 1% of the population, which is shockingly common if you think about it... Even a small city will have a thousand such people, give or take. Or maybe you just haven't found your right groove yet, who knows.

On that exact topic, have you read "On Chesil Beach"? It's getting to be reputed as a modern classic. I won't say any more about it here though, for fear of spoilers.

[Ecks]

Oh, wait, you're talking about Haidt's theory. Yeah, he takes this into account later in the article.

Affective reactions push, but they do not absolutely force. We can all think of times when we deliberated about a decision and went against our first (often selfish) impulse, or when we changed our minds about a person. Greene et al. (19) caught the brain in action overriding its initial intuitive response. They created a class of difficult dilemmas, for example: Would you smother your own baby if it was the only way to keep her from crying and giving away your hiding place to the enemy soldiers looking for you, who would then kill the whole group of you hiding in the basement? Subjects were slow to respond to cases like these and, along the way, exhibited increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region that responds to internal conflict. Some subjects said "yes" to cases like these, and they exhibited increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, suggesting that they were doing additional processing and overriding their initial flash of horror.

There are at least three ways we can override our immediate intuitive responses. We can use conscious verbal reasoning, such as considering the costs and benefits of each course of action. We can reframe a situation and see a new angle or consequence, thereby triggering a second flash of intuition that may compete with the first. And we can talk with people who raise new arguments, which then trigger in us new flashes of intuition followed by various kinds of reasoning. The social intuitionist model includes separate paths for each of these three ways of changing one's mind, but it says that the first two paths are rarely used, and that most moral change happens as a result of social interaction. Other people often influence us, in part by presenting the counterevidence we rarely seek out ourselves.

Later on in the article he talks about the role of religion in the development of human society, and how this relates to morality. He also shows some really cool data about how conservatives and liberals do different moral reasoning. Liberals focus entirely on 2 principles: prevent harm, and be fair. Conservatives use those 2, but also consider 3 other things to be important: Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. Which explains in part why they are so happy to put their personality on the shelf and echo whatever Karl tells them to, why they're such suckers for the patriotism ploy ("people who disagree hate America"), why they're fine with saying "homosexuality is icky, therefore it should be banned", and stuff like that (he doesn't actually give any of those examples, they're just my extrapolations - but they do fit his theory perfectly.

Seriously, you should go and read the darn article. It's not that long.

[Ecks]

Oh, if that link for the article doesn't work for you, try here.

[Jesurgislac]

Ecks, I find it interesting that you don't object to Bugmaster pretending to be an evil-minded bigot, but you do object to my pretending to flame the evil-minded bigot. It's a good example of a double-standard.

G-Do: And sodomy laws are no longer on the books in GB or in the U.S. (except in the state of Virginia, IIRC). So the present-day culture is different, and demonstrating that the old culture's homophobia was dishonest doesn't mean that the present-day culture's homophobia is dishonest.

Another example of dishonesty. For young people you can say "present-day culture is different" - people who grew up in countries in which sex between men was, for them, never illegal. I was 14 when sex between men was decriminalized in my part of the UK: the sodomy laws in the US were declared unconstitutional within the last five years (I've not looked up the exact date) and one of the nine SCOTUS judges registered a dissenting opinion. When a sexual activity is declared criminal and has enforceable (and enforced) legal penalties, there will be a cultural habit of thinking that, besides being illegal, it is wrong.

G-Do: The boys who got stuck in those miserably lonely all-boys schools were desperate for intimacy and sexual release (like most human teenagers). To get the emotional connection they craved, many of them violated their own sexually repressive behavioral proscriptions; they acted in a way inconsistent with their own beliefs about ethical and appropriate behavior.

You are projecting your own feelings on to the situation. If you take time to read the honest accounts of the acceptance of same-sex sexual behavior at public schools in the UK (and you need to bear in mind that a public school in the UK is not the same as a public school in the US, as someone already told you) you will find that, as one might expect, there is a range of sexual behavior from complete casual promiscuity to (relatively) long-term relationships: that, while the teachers at these schools have almost invariably also been to public schools, and while technically such behavior is cause for expulsion, boys are incredibly rarely expelled unless some unusual incident brings it to public notice. The boys are not acting in any way inconsistently with their own beliefs, from the accounts they themselves tell, years later: they're just having sex, in a way normal for any teenager, in accordance with the sexual behavior of the culture they live in during term time.

G-Do: Depends on your hermeneutics, doesn't it?

Sure. As I said. But if you actually go read the originals (or at least, a literal translation with a crib sheet, which is what I did) you will find that there is nothing there to justify their hermeneutics of homophobia.

Anyway, given the popularity of the Left Behind books, the anti-homosexual feeding frenzy, and the Word-Faith doctrine, I think we can safely conclude that the fundamentalist Christian religion contains some wild deviations from scripture. The point is, these people genuinely believe that God is compelling them to be total dicks.

Well, we can go with "These people have genuinely talked themselves into believing that their homophobic feelings are justified by God's sharing them", but they have no justification of this from the Bible, so they're getting their belief that God shares their homophobia, or that God causes their homophobia, from somewhere else.

[Praline]

Re Mabus: They do not all agree what the actual status of marriage is, but they agree that it is not purely a government function. Therefore the government does not have the authority to adjust who marriage can be granted to. If marriage is not a right, it does not have to be granted equally to all.

Then they don't have to recognise it if the government sanctions civil marriages between same-sex partners, do they? The government is never going to force them to institute gay marriages in their own churches; that means they've got no business trying to force the government not to institute gay marriages in the state. Separate spheres, and it's hypocritical not to apply the rules of separate spheres to themselves as well as the government. If the marriages they perform have status outside government functions, then they're free to withhold that status from same-sex marriages, whatever the government allows; there's no need for them to do anything else. All they need say is, 'Well, your marriages are civil, and ours are the super-deluxe version, and we get to decide who gets those!' Few people would question their legal right to do that. It would be far less tyrannical than trying to ensure gay partners can't inherit without tax or access medical records. Such people should just mind their own business and let the government mind its.

As an aside, I'd suggest leaving Fred Phelps out of, well, everything. All I've heard about him suggests that he delights in hatefulness, and thrives on negative attention. Being criticised just pleases him, because it gives him an excuse to spew out yet more hate. Just ignore him; if nothing else, it's about the only response that'll genuinely annoy him.

[Jesurgislac]

Mabus: Which ties into the problems surrounding Bugmaster's argument: these churches do not regard marriage as a civil right, but as a privilege that ought not to be under government control in the first place. They do not all agree what the actual status of marriage is, but they agree that it is not purely a government function. Therefore the government does not have the authority to adjust who marriage can be granted to. If marriage is not a right, it does not have to be granted equally to all.

Religious marriage isn't: it's up to the functionaries of each religion to decide who can marry in that religion.

Civil marriage is available to all without any religious discrimination, except in a theocracy.

To explain this to a stoopid, you point out what kind of marriage can be had by a Jewish man and a Catholic woman who divorce their previous spouses to marry each other.

The difference is, civil marriage carries no religious meaning, and religious marriage provides no legal privileges. Combine the two and you have most "church weddings". We already discussed this at length in one of the previous threads.

[Bugmaster]

...but you do object to my pretending to flame the evil-minded bigot.

Right, right, pretending. Right.

Anyway, I don't think it's helpful to frame the debate as a battle between compassionate females and evil-minded bigots. When you do that, you dehumanize your opposition -- which is exactly what they're doing to you.

Yes, they do evil things; yes, they are wrong. However, they are not doing all these terrible things because they're arbitrarily evil cartoonish hellspawn; they're doing them because they honestly do believe that they're making the world a better place. These people are human just like yourself, and, while you may never be able to fully understand them, it's worth it to at least make the attempt. From a purely tactical standpoint, understanding your enemy will allow you to defeat him easier by exploiting his weaknesses. From an ethical standpoint, dehumanizing people is where all these problems start in the first place: "he who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster", as the tired old quote goes.

Besides, once you define your opposition as an inhuman "Axis of Evil" or "The Patriarchy" or whatever, you pretty much abandon all the tools available to you, other than brute force -- and brute force only works when you have more of it than your enemy, which is not the case here.

Note that understanding your enemy does not entail agreeing with them. You can understand someone's position while still seeing the flaws in it; this is what true debate (other than just inflammatory rhetoric) is all about.

[Praline]

Jesurgislac: excellently put.

I have the feeling that the idea of a religious marriage carrying no legal privileges would be deeply annoying to a hardliner. Some people may just want everything to be run their way, but I wonder if there's an element of discomfort as well? If you believe that you should be law-abiding and obey authority, having two separate authorities, church and state, each with their own laws, which don't always coincide completely, is just too unsettling. Hence, panic and hysteria ensues.

[Jesurgislac]

Bugmaster: Anyway, I don't think it's helpful to frame the debate as a battle between compassionate females and evil-minded bigots.

Good. If you don't think it's helpful, stop doing the "I'm just pretending to be an evil-minded bigot who's being attacked by feminists" shtick. I don't think it's helpful either, and I'd be delighted if you'd quit it.

[Jesurgislac]

Bugmaster: Note that understanding your enemy does not entail agreeing with them. You can understand someone's position while still seeing the flaws in it

Duh. You can also understand someone's position without taking it up and advocating for it, which is something you don't appear to comprehend...

[Jesurgislac]

Praline: I have the feeling that the idea of a religious marriage carrying no legal privileges would be deeply annoying to a hardliner. Some people may just want everything to be run their way, but I wonder if there's an element of discomfort as well? If you believe that you should be law-abiding and obey authority, having two separate authorities, church and state, each with their own laws, which don't always coincide completely, is just too unsettling. Hence, panic and hysteria ensues.

Devout Jews and Muslims both (according to devout members of those religions I've talked to) have a hard-and-fast principle which the most hardline imams and rabbis adhere to (that is, if you discount the outright nutcases): When the law of God and the law of the land conflict, the law of the land prevails.

The problem lies, of course, with hardliners who are accustomed to living in a country where they can tell themselves they are in the majority and the law of God ought to prevail over the law of the land, because it will be their "God's laws" which prevail. If, as Fred has frequently pointed out, they had good reason to fear some other set of theocratic laws than their own being imposed on them (if "school prayers" meant the imam calling all children, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and atheist, to praise Allah) they would be all for the protection of a secular state.

[Invisibilitree]

The line between Equal Rights and Special Rights is hard to draw. This should not be any kind of surprise.

For example, most of us think the Right to a Fair Trial is an Equal Right. Yet we are often tempted to grant special exceptions, particularly to ourselves. This theme has been addressed many times, even in comic book form (of course by our old friend Dredd, but also frequently in Batman)

On the other hand the right to Bear Arms (and any related rights, bare arms, armed bears, armoured bears, etc.) are not so obviously Equal. It's great if you like guns, if you can afford a gun, if you want to learn how to use a gun. Everyone else though must live in fear. And why guns? Why no SAMs or grenade launchers ? What about swords, vials of poison gas, and so on ? Both sides just quote the Constitution as though it was automatically infallible. Especially when the section they're quoting assumes that the US won't need a standing army, a laughable claim in 2007.

And at last we come to some Rights that look very Special indeed. While a carpenter who makes a chair gets paid for his day's labour, the author, the artist and the musician are entitled (and their children or other successors in interest), according to the constitution and the laws made in respect of it by Congress to compensation on a practically indefinite basis. Yet stranger still, if a man have an idea, he gets nothing for it, but if he pays the US government a tax to record a description of the idea, no matter how indecipherable his description then he is entitled for many years to a monopoly on that idea, and everyone else who has the same one may be obliged to pay him for it. That Constitution again

Note that Equal Rights was a failure in the US. Draft young women into the military and send them to be slaughtered or execute them if they refuse. That's what Equal Rights looks like, if it's to be equal at all - and it was too bitter a pill for the US to swallow it no matter how many times politicians made hollow statements about not using the Draft, because sooner or later a Draft is inevitable.

[Bugmaster]

Duh. You can also understand someone's position without taking it up and advocating for it, which is something you don't appear to comprehend...

Hmm, I don't know. So far, you haven't really responded to my Devil's Advocacy in any way other than "omg j00 suxx0r lol", which tells me that a). it's working, and b). your position is fairly weak. That's not a good thing, since I happen to support it (despite eating puppies for breakfast every day, etc.), and you're making it look bad.

[Jesurgislac]

Bugmaster, so far, you haven't come up with a Devil's Advocate position worthy of anything but a flame. That's probably because (a) the position you're trying to Devil's Advocate for is fairly stupid anyway and (b) because you're not very good at Devil's Advocating: you come across as a stupid troll.

Mabus and G-Do have done better than you, and I responded to their positions with intelligent disagreement, because they had earned that.

[Jesurgislac]

Note that Equal Rights was a failure in the US. Draft young women into the military and send them to be slaughtered or execute them if they refuse. That's what Equal Rights looks like, if it's to be equal at all

I see: you perceive "Equal Rights" exclusively and solely as drafting women for the military while men are not being drafted? Not only is that a fairly limited position on Equal Rights, and grossly unfair at present while no one is going to raise a draft, you are also apparently arguing that only men can file patents and only men can make tables. Also, you seem to have missed out on the fact that a good many writers and artists are in fact working for their day's pay, with their work-for-hire belonging to the company who hired them. So, slightly muddled all in all.

[Praline]

If, as Fred has frequently pointed out, they had good reason to fear some other set of theocratic laws than their own being imposed on them (if "school prayers" meant the imam calling all children, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and atheist, to praise Allah) they would be all for the protection of a secular state.

Undoubtedly. But I do still wonder whether some of the fury with which some Christians rail against gay marriage is partly caused by cognitive dissonance, a sense of being uncomfortable at a conflict between the laws of the land and the laws of God, because they really want to obey both. Maybe behind the hateful rhetoric there's some suffering, caused by having to consider a position where you can't possibly (as you see it) obey both authorities at once. If you believe in obedience as a virtue in and of itself, that's a scary position to be in. It means that whatever you do, you're bound to be in the wrong somehow - and being in the wrong is associated with massive, eternal punishment. Being in the wrong is frightening.

This suffering does not, of course, outweigh the suffering caused by a widowed gay man losing his house to taxes because it was in his partner's name, or being ousted by relations who don't approve of him as 'next of kin' when his beloved is sick, or any of the grim insults and humiliations that people suffer when the law ranks them as second-class citizens. Christians who really think gay marriage is a Bad Thing should just have to deal with it. But I'm trying to be charitable, and the feeling 'I don't want to deal with it! I shouldn't have to deal with it! Change the world so I don't have to deal with it!' is a temptation we all experience sometimes.

[Jesurgislac]

Praline: But I do still wonder whether some of the fury with which some Christians rail against gay marriage is partly caused by cognitive dissonance, a sense of being uncomfortable at a conflict between the laws of the land and the laws of God, because they really want to obey both.

But they can. A man who feels that it would be completely against the laws of God for him to marry another man, can refrain from doing so. Likewise, a woman who feels that way. No problem.

The cognitive dissonance isn't caused by really wanting to obey both sets of laws: it's caused by really wanting everybody to obey both sets of laws, regardless of what religion (or none) they profess.

[cjmr]

I've never seen an incest law that says "It's okay if you're gay or infertile".

Actually the last time I checked, there were at least three US states that allow first cousins to marry if the woman is post-menopausal. I don't think there were any that allowed siblings to marry, even in those circumstances. I don't get why some states have laws forbidding adult step-siblings to marry, though--they aren't biologically related in any way.

-----

Bug,

I don't know about anyone else, but what I'm objecting to is your insistence that if Christian Leader X truly believes that homosexual sex is sinful, it must therefore follow that Christian Leader X believes that every person engaging in homosexual sex is a criminal (just like a murderer is). It's just as annoying as when Jes says if Mabus truly believes that abortion is murder, he should be running around killing abortionists.

What you're positing may be what Fred Phelps truly believes. But I know enough Christians that believe homosexual sex is a sin and yet have no trouble seeing homosexual people as fully human persons who they value and respect, to assert that isn't what all (or probably even most) of the 80% of young churchgoers in the Barna survey truly believe.

Are we trying to figure out how the pulpit thumpers think or how the pew sitters think?

[inge]

Bugmaster: you see equal rights for gays in the same way as you see equal rights for murderers: a ridiculously warped notion of equality.

Bad example. Murderers, thieves, idol worshippers and people disrespecting their parents still have the right to marry. And murderers and thieves might lose their jobs over their activities and be restricted from adopting children while idol worshippers and folks at odds with their family don't, because the first two sins are also crimes of the land, and the second two aren't.

So it's little surprise that some christians want to change what constitutes a crime, but it still doesn't make sense that they persecute gays with more fervor than people arguing with their parents.

[Jesurgislac]

Praline: Christians who really think gay marriage is a Bad Thing should just have to deal with it.

No, they shouldn't. A Christian gay man who really feels that it would be a Bad Thing for him not to lose his house to taxes because it was in his partner's name, or for him to be the 'next of kin' when his beloved is sick, ought not to be forced into marriage with his beloved if he thinks it would be Bad to give himself and his beloved that legal protection. (His beloved, however, has a special right to keep bugging him about it, unless his beloved feels the same way.)

But a Christian family who feel that they ought to be allowed to be Christian all over the beloved of their son - that is, evict him from the house after their son dies, deny him the right to be with their son in hospital - they ought to be prevented from exercising their Christian values when this means unlawful harassment of their son's husband. In that sense, yes, Christians have to deal with it.

[Invisibilitree]

“I see: you perceive "Equal Rights" exclusively and solely as drafting women for the military while men are not being drafted?”

No, I know my history. The repeated and unanswerable criticism offered by opponents of the Equal Rights Ammendment which intended to enshrine the equality of men and women in the constitution was that it would make women eligible for Selective Service, the US euphemism for the Draft.

[Doctor Science]

Ecks:

The Science article is behind a subscription wall no matter how you try to get at it. Here's another article by the same guy.

Liberals focus entirely on 2 principles: prevent harm, and be fair. Conservatives use those 2, but also consider 3 other things to be important: Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity.

Not quite right, I think.

One of the central findings of the Barna book is that people under 30 value friendships *very* highly and are intensely loyal to their friends. Indeed, the researchers think the real rock the Christian homophobic preaching is cracking on is that almost everyone under 30 knows someone who is gay. For younger people, gays aren't distant outsiders, they're "my friend" -- and their loyalty to their friends is such that when push comes to shove they'll go with their friends rather than the dictates of their religion.

So the "Ingroup/Loyalty" quality is by no means a particularly conservative trait, by itself. What Kinneman et al. emphasize is that for young people the ingroup/outgroup boundary is not based on signs or symbols, but on actual personal relationships.

When members of an older generation said, "but some of my best friends are Jews!" it was an excuse; it meant, "so I can't really be that bad." When young people say, "but some of my best friends are gay!" it's a challenge: "so don't you go saying those things."

[wintermute]

Grendel 72: [Incest] increases the possibility for genetic birth defects,

Sure, about as much as living fifty miles from a nuclear reactor. You need many generations of inbreeding before you start getting actual genetic problems, and even then it's limited to specific recessive diseases, such as the Tay-Sachs common to Ashkenazi Jews, or the Hæmophillia of the Hapsburgs. If marriage within a small group isn't specifically mandated and a tiny minority of people decide to get busy with a close relative, the risks of genetic diseases are so small as to be invisible.

Far better to worry about consent and power dynamics.

Scott: how about also legalizing the "covenent marriages" the fundies like? Both sides enter voluntarily, but no fault divorce is off the table. If social liberals get the marriages they want, can social conservatives get the ones _they_ want? Let _everybody_ choose, and not just Good Liberals. We're talking two consenting adults.

Or, they can just choose not to get a divorce. It's kind of like homosexuality; just because divorce is available doesn't make it mandatory.

I'm not sure how explicitly removing an option from people is supposed to increase their choices. Any chance you can explain that one?

[Jesurgislac]

Invisibilitree: The repeated and unanswerable criticism offered by opponents of the Equal Rights Ammendment which intended to enshrine the equality of men and women in the constitution was that it would make women eligible for Selective Service, the US euphemism for the Draft.

Right, so you don't know your history: I invite you to educate yourself. This website looks like a good place to start:

Arguments by ERA opponents such as Phyllis Schlafly, right-wing leader of the Eagle Forum/STOP ERA, played on the same fears that had generated female opposition to woman suffrage. Anti-ERA organizers claimed that the ERA would deny woman’s right to be supported by her husband, privacy rights would be overturned, women would be sent into combat, and abortion rights and homosexual marriages would be upheld. Opponents surfaced from other traditional sectors as well. States’-rights advocates said the ERA was a federal power grab, and business interests such as the insurance industry opposed a measure they believed would cost them money. Opposition to the ERA was also organized by fundamentalist religious groups.

Claims that "women would be sent into combat omg" were an element of the resistance to the ERA, but by no means the sole or main element of it: and it's by far from being a dead issue. In any case, given the number of women in the US military who now have combat experience, and have also had the post-combat experience of military hierarchy claiming that women merely being armed, under fire, and required to return fire doesn't count as "combat experience" - their rules say "combat experience" is what men in the US military do, and therefore the combat experience women have is not permitted to count - I think that that simply won't work if the anti-feminists try it again.