LinkDump

First, two recent John C. Wright posts:

The Argument of Antimonogamy.

Disloyalty to the Void.

Now, my response to his second piece.

And his response to my response.

What do you think? Is Mr. Wright right, and there's a place for fuming and thunder? Or am I right and we should chose words carefully so that others are more inclined to listen to us?

And what's the answer to his question: "In the case given above, where Bukkake and BDSM and prostitution are portrayed as normal — what is the correct tone to set? That of Socrates, honest, detached, ironic, polite? or that of John the Baptist, who warned of the wrath to come?"

"The Banalization of Sexuality"

The Murloc sent me an article the other day, asking me to tear it apart. So tear it apart I shall.

The article is called "Why I Want a Male Birth Control Pill", by Kyle Munkittrick and can be read here.

The first paragraph is perhaps the most egregious, so we shall save it for last. Let's start with, this:

"Sex as we know it has two major biological problems: disease and unintended pregnancy."

It boggles my mind that one could look at the natural function of a biological process and call it either a problem or unintended. This is akin to saying "eating has two major problems: food poisoning and nourishment," or "breathing has two major problems: smoke inhalation and respiration."

Consider the phrases: "I intentionally at the entire cheesecake and accidentally gained weight." "I intentionally jumped off the roof and accidentally fell to the ground." "I intentionally had sex and accidentally got pregnant." The first two make the speaker sound like an idiot, but the third one, for some reason, is how people actually think.

Of course, this is just the contraceptive mentality: the delusion that sex is not for sexual reproduction, but rather for pleasure, and the reproductive aspects of it are an unintended side effect. It's a mindset I frequently see in the post-sexual revolution apocalypse. And one Mr. Munkittrick seems to be afflicted with.

Dave Barry (hardly a hero of the pro-chastity movement) even made a joke about this, with one of his book titles: Babies and Other Hazards of Sex. Of course, the joke here is that we all know that babies are what's supposed to happen during sex. It's comical to pretend that they're a hazard, and not the natural end, of the act. It's like saying, "my wife and I took a plane trip to visit her mother but, unfortunately, it didn't crash." The joke is that what was supposed to happen, happened, but we didn't want it to happen. The joke is that we want the opposite of what we do.

But it's only humorous when intended, like Dave Barry's book title, as a joke. Mr. Munkittrick seems to think it seriously.

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It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Does anyone remember the point of marriage? Is there a point to marriage? I really can't remember anymore. I think it's "do what feels good".

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships/love-objects/article1259075/

So we have a woman who married the Eiffel Tower, a woman who married an amusement park ride, a guy who's dating a sound board, and a woman in a relationship with an archery bow.

Nothing wrong with any of it right? I mean, if sexuality is about what makes us happy, we can't object to this anymore than we can object to someone attracted to a member of his sex (I find it interesting how many of the arguments in the article mirror those made by homosexuality advocates).

Perhaps the LGBT community should be called the LGBTNPBO community? Of course, many of them probably don't want to be grouped with those other weirdos, which leads to the hilarious claim of "my sexual perversion isn't as weird as your sexual perversion" which would also be a great bumper sticker.

So if, fifty years ago, I wanted to write a SF story about how bizarre the future was, and I wrote about how in fifty years people married inanimate objects, would it be dismissed as completely implausible? And if some people still somehow found it even remotely within the realm of consideration, how could I alienate even those readers with wild and far flung imaginations?

Ah, I know!

A Taiwanese woman marries herself!

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69L3H720101022

(And spends $5675 on it, too!) Surely this is too far fetched for even the mind-bending and imaginative world of speculative fiction.

But what could possibly be wrong with this? What makes her marriage any less valid than yours?

I actually feel sorry for the woman. "Hell," Fr. McHugh would say, "is an eternity of saying 'me'."

(H/T Mike Flynn)

Delusions of Reality

Do you know what the definition of insanity is? No, it's not doing the same thing expecting different results. That's called practice. I do it every day with the piano and, sure enough, the results are slightly better each day.

No, insanity is when one's perception of reality is different from reality itself. For instance, a man who believes himself Theodore Roosevelt, or thinks himself a cat, or that he hears voices. In each case, the person's idea of what is real is different from what is really real. The man is not Theodore Roosevelt, or a cat, and the voices are mere hallucination.

Increasingly, I've been feeling that the whole world has gone, by this definition, completely insane. Totally loony. Off their rockers. Large swaths of the population seem to be totally given over to ideas that have no bearing in reality. It's like everyone is playing a children's game where we all pretend we're monkeys in the zoo, or astronauts in outer space, or cowboys and Indians. But when I don't play along, or return to reality and stop pretending, everyone gets mad and indignant with me because they really believe they are monkeys or astronauts or cowboys. It's really quite surreal.

What brought on this feeling most recently was an article my Google reader recommended items pointed me towards (it recommends weird things). Apparently a school in Michigan has refused to allow a girl to be homecoming king because she's a girl, not a boy. This is, apparently, a problem because the girl is playing a make-believe game in which she pretends she's a boy. But the weird part is that so many other people are playing along and pretending the same thing. The news item itself refers to her as a "him", despite the fact that it even mentions towards the end that she hasn't even had the cosmetic surgery to add boy-parts. So in no real, objective way is this girl a boy--only in her mind and the minds of those playing along with her. She has no Y-chromosome, or male genitalia, or a prostate, or any of the biological capabilities that set men and women apart, yet many people seem totally willing to give themselves into the fantasy that she is somehow a boy.

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Oddly Relevant

Can you guess the author of the piece and the year it was written?

There is one view very common among the liberal-minded which is exceedingly fatiguing to the clear-headed. It is symbolised in the sort of man who says, "These ruthless bigots will refuse to bury me in consecrated ground, because I have always refused to be baptised." A clear-headed person can easily conceive his point of view, in so far as he happens to think that baptism does not matter. But the clear-headed will be completely puzzled when they ask themselves why, if he thinks that baptism does not matter, he should think that burial does matter. If it is in no way imprudent for a man to keep himself from a consecrated font, how can it be inhuman for other people to keep him from a consecrated field? It is surely much nearer to mere superstition to attach importance to what is done to a dead body than to a live baby. I can understand a man thinking both superstitious, or both sacred; but I cannot see why he should grumble that other people do not give him as sanctities what he regards as superstitions. He is merely complaining of being treated as what he declares himself to be. It is as if a man were to say, "My persecutors still refuse to make me king, out of mere malice because I am a strict republican." Or it is as if he said, "These heartless brutes are so prejudiced against a teetotaler, that they won't even give him a glass of brandy." 

The fashion of divorce would not be a modern fashion if it were not full of this touching fallacy. A great deal of it might be summed up as a most illogical and fanatical appetite for getting married in churches. It is as if a man should practice polygamy out of sheer greed for wedding cake. Or it is as if he provided his household with new shoes, entirely by having them thrown after the wedding carriage when he went off with a new wife. There are other ways of procuring cake or purchasing shoes; and there are other ways of setting up a human establishment. What is unreasonable is the request which the modern man really makes of the religious institutions of his fathers. The modern man wants to buy one shoe without the other; to obtain one half of a supernatural revelation without the other. The modern man wants to eat his wedding cake and have it, too.

Give up? Highlight to read: G.K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce, 1920.

It is stunning how relevant the piece still is if you simply replace "divorce" with "same-sex marriage".

A Pair of Deuces, Revisited. Part II: Marriage

Part of the ongoing conversation.

Devin says: "Same-sex marriage is not asking for special recognition to gay relationships. It is simply asking for them to be seen as equal. At this junction, we have a separate but equal idea of marriage in this country. This has been the case throughout history whenever social issues have come to the forefront. When interracial marriage was introduced, it was seen as the bane of people's existence."

This seems to be a favorite line of reasoning of the proponents of gay "marriage", that of comparing it to racial inequality. Frankly, I just don't see the comparison.

Under the proposition that "all men are created equal" (and remember that is the gender-neutral definition of the word man, since context does not require it to refer to males-only)—a proposition unique to Christendom, I might add—racist actions are contrary to truth. Treating people as unequal contradicts this idea known through reason.

But the debate over gay "marriage" isn't about whom, it's about what. It's not about equality of persons, it's about equality of relationships. I have never heard it proposed that "all relationships are created equal," and to do so would be absurd. No one would (or could) argue that the relationship I have with my cat is equal to the one I have with my son, which in turn is not equal to the one I have with my wife, or the one I have with God. Each one of these relationships is different, unique, and inherently unequal.

So in order to justify gay "marriage" as an equality battle, one first has to demonstrate, contrary to common sense and empirical evidence, that homosexual relationships are equal or equivalent to heterosexual ones. Lest we forget how they differ, there is this. In order for a homosexual relationship to be equal, they would have to be capable of producing, at least in principle, something of equal value to a human life.

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A Pair of Deuces, Revisited. Part I: Abortion

I put on my robe and John C. Wright hat.


Devin has responded to my arguments that marriage does not apply to homosexual relationships. She has done so in more words than I used to make the original post. Her comment warrants a more detailed reply than what will fit in a combox, so I will dedicate two posts to it. This, the first post, deals with the first part of her reply, about the seemingly-unrelated topic of abortion. It is actually somewhat appropriate considering there is a direct and strong link between homosexual "marriage" and abortion, which I will talk about later.

Devin linked to a video from NARAL where several women spoke of alleged misinformation given to them at an unnamed "Virginia Crisis Pregnancy Center". I watched the video, and my first response was the word most commonly written in red ink on my history papers by Miss Smyth, my high school history teacher: "evidence". I.e., the lack thereof. Unlike the video I linked, which shows the statements of a nurse in a Planned Parenthood clinic giving false information to a patient, the NARAL video consists only of a series of women stating things which allegedly they were told at an unnamed crisis pregnancy center, like neighbors gossiping over the fence. No context is given for these statements. We are not told who made them, if they were in printed materials, if they were spoken, what the context was, if they represent the view of one recently-hired nurse or the director of the center. We are not told the affiliation of the center, if it was run by a major national pro-life organization or out of someone's garage. All those details are left to the viewers imagination to encourage us, I guess, to assume the worst.

For these reasons alone, I could dismiss the entire video as uninformative and unhelpful, but I will address the allegations point by point.

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A Pair of Deuces

It is always interesting and enlightening when your opponent tips his hand or reveals his next play. Even if it shows something you had already guessed, there is a satisfaction that comes from knowing that your guess is right.

For instance, when Planned Parenthood is caught repeatedly lying to and deceiving women, they have tipped their hand. It becomes clear that what we guessed—that they do not care about the wellbeing of women and are only in it for the money—is true. Similarly, yesterday's decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and the arguments surrounding it, tip the hand and show their motivations.

In this case, what tips the hand is not just what is said, but also what is not said: I still have not heard from any gay "marriage" advocate why a government ought to grant special recognition to gay relationships. Instead, the argument seems to be, "well, heterosexuals get marriage licenses, so we should to." This is an argument with the maturity of a two year old.

Lest we forget, remember that gays are not banned from getting married. Any two men could go to Vegas and profess their undying love for eternity—or at least the next seven to 15 years—in front of their friends, family, or loved ones. This isn't merely about marriage as a social institution. This is about marriage as a government-sanctioned relationship. And that's the case that I've never heard made.

To me, gay "marriage" seems kind of like a male tampon. What's the point? If the point of marriage is to encourage through law the just and proper use of the sexual facilities so that children grow up with their parents and women are not abandoned by deadbeat dads, why do those whose sexual acts cannot result in children need these same legal encouragements? But I suppose our society has drifted away from that notion of marriage. Marriage is just something you do to make you feel good. And feeling good is so important that now, apparently, we have a fundamental unenumerated right to a marriage license.

The usual arguments for why government ought to recognize gay "marriage" tend to invoke things such as hospital visitation rights or power of attorney. These arguments fall flat once you realize that all 50 states already grant hospital visitation rights with a simple legal document. And power of attorney can be granted to anyone, not just a spouse, again with a legal document. In fact, the state of California already grants gay couples all the same benefits as married heterosexual couples. They already have everything except the title.

Which is what tips the hand. Gay "marriage" isn't about equality, it's about approval.

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From the Department for Studying the Obvious

(Well, obvious to me, at least.)

News flash: chaste relationships have more romance.

You may now pick your jaw up off the floor. I know, shocking news.

Next week, we reveal a new in-depth study that shows men and women are different.

Key quotes:
"I think if you go to bed with somebody, it is a kind of bond; it's not nothing, however much we try to say it's nothing. Whether you're a man or woman, you're absolutely in your rights to expect there to be some kind of emotional gain."

"So yeah, I think it's difficult for teenage boys. And they're just bombarded with these images of female raunch wherever they look. I did speak to some male therapists who specialized in male patients. And I asked them what kind of changes they'd seen and they said a lot of their patients were getting younger, and they were coming to them with sexual problems that usually don't present until men are in their 50s. And this one guy said it was purely the result of internet porn, and they were just seeing too much and it was always on tap. Which is kind of awful, they had this kind of porn idea of what sex should be."

"And I'm actually quite happy, actually quite content. There's been a lot less sex, but more romance. And a lot more emotional closeness."

(OMG, an entire year without sex? That must have been so hard. Here, let me play the worlds smallest violin for you, while standing on the bank of Eastern Europe's saddest body of water, the Crimea River. It's filled with kitten tears.)

Intellectual Exercise otDWM: Addendum.

In summary of my previous post on gay "marriage", the current debate over whether or not homosexual couples should be granted government-issued marriage licenses is not over whether or not gays have the right to marry (they do; a gay man has the same rights and restrictions to marry as do I) or even whether or not gays should be granted the right to marry whomever they want (and only gays; few are interested in granting polygamists or pedophiles the right to marry whomever they want). Instead, the central issue, at the heart of everything is what is marriage for, and what should the government's involvement be.

Those on the side opposed to gay marriage typically agree with the Catechism's teaching that marriage is the foundation of family life, which itself serves as the initiation into life in society. It "is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom." They think that the government should protect marriage and grant families special privileges because "Civil authority should consider it a grave duty 'to acknowledge the true nature of marriage and the family, to protect and foster them, to safeguard public morality, and promote domestic prosperity.'"

Those on the side in favor gay marriage tend to think that marriage is something I do because I want to do it and it will make me happy. They think the government should be involved because... well, I don't know why. I have yet to hear a good reason for why the government should be involved in marriage if not because it is specifically in society's best interests to foster it.

But anyways, it is ironic to note that the foundations of the gay rights debate, the philosophy that leads to the thought that marriage is something only to make me happy and serves no other purpose, comes from heterosexual Christians.

As was pointed out in a recent article in First Things: "By giving benediction in 1930 to its married heterosexual members purposely seeking sterile sex, the Anglican Church lost, bit by bit, any authority to tell her other members—married or unmarried, homosexual or heterosexual—not to do the same. To put the point another way, once heterosexuals start claiming the right to act as homosexuals, it would not be long before homosexuals start claiming the rights of heterosexuals. Thus in a bizarre but real sense did [the 1930 Lambeth Conference's] attempt to show compassion to married heterosexuals inadvertently give rise to the modern gay-rights movement—and consequently, to the issues that have divided their church ever since."

The article is entitled "The Vindication of Humanae Vitae" and is a very good read.

I caught the link from the esteemed John C. Wright's live journal, where the most insightful comment was perhaps this one: "Often it is argued that homosexuals are attacking the 'sanctity of marriage' when the initial and decisive blow against the sanctity of marriage occurred during the Sexual Revolution and the normalization of contraceptives by heterosexuals, especially Christians. Few Christians realize how the normalization of contraception is the philosophical lead into gay marriage - because what is the difference between a contracepting heterosexual couple and a homosexual couple? Neither is engaging in sex that is aimed towards procreation."

Intellectual Exercise of the Day/Week/Month.

I saw this commercial the other day, while watching TV.

It raised two questions in my mind, without really addressing either one.

Question 1) Is marriage a requirement of love?

(And I'm not talking about the "touchy-feely" love of Valentine's day or Hallmark cards; I'm talking about Real Spousal Love as an act of the will; agape, for lack of a better English term.) If two people love each other, do they need to get married? Do they automatically have a right to get married? Is there any circumstance in which two people who love each other should not get married? Why ought two people who love each other get married? Considering all the legal benefits of marriage are already available without an actual marriage, why do two people need to get married? Is marriage merely something that two people who love each other do? Or is marriage something more? And why get married? If two people love each other, is it not enough that they simply be together, as an increasing number of couples are doing? Why officiate something that is implicitly shared between two people?

Essentially, what is the point of marriage?

Question 2) Is love the only requirement of marriage?

The commercial seems to imply (and maybe I'm misunderstanding it) that some people who love each other aren't allowed to marry and that's a Bad Thing. If I love someone else, is that sufficient reason to marry him (please note: gender-neutral meaning of "him")? Or are there other conditions that must be met for me to marry? Can I marry anyone I love? Can any person marry anyone he loves? Why should the person be of the opposite sex? Why should that person be unrelated to me? If two brothers love each other, ought they marry? Ought they be allowed to marry? (*Winks at Dave* we still have a chance!) Why should that person be of age? If a man loves a twelve-year-old boy, and the boy loves him back, can they marry? Why should I be able to marry only one person? If a woman dearly loves two men, and they love her, why should she be forced to choose between them? Is it not a Bad Thing that she is not allowed to marry one of her True Loves? Why should that person be a person at all? If I love my horse, can I marry that? Ok, horses are just dumb animals. Bad example. But what about dolphins or gorillas? They are intelligent animals, capable of displaying complex emotions. Can I marry one of them? Not even if it displays affection for me?

Essentially, if marriage does not serve a purpose other than to please the two (or more) spouses, what are the, and why are there, restrictions on marriage?

--UPDATE--

Those first two questions led me to a third question. Why should the government be involved in marriage to begin with?

If marriage is only a thing that two or more things that love each other do, why should it be recognized by the government at all? If I want to marry my True Love/brother/twelve-year-old daughter/mistresses/horse, why do I need a piece of paper from the government? Why can I not merely declare my intent to love my chosen partner(s) in front of my close friends, or in front of my partner only? Why should I need written permission or approval from the government? Why would the government even be interested in involving itself?

Essentially, what is the point of a legal marriage, regulated by the government?

--/Update--

Marriage is either something or it is nothing. It either serves a purpose or it does not. It is either an outward sign, a public institution designed to promote the family, create a nurturing environment for the upbringing of children, and enable a society to pass on its wisdom and morals to the next generation, or it is merely a tool used for my personal gratification.

So which is it?


"The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society....

"The importance of the family for the life and well-being of society entails a particular responsibility for society to support and strengthen marriage and the family. Civil authority should consider it a grave duty 'to acknowledge the true nature of marriage and the family, to protect and foster them, to safeguard public morality, and promote domestic prosperity.'

"The political community has a duty to honor the family, to assist it, and to ensure especially:
- the freedom to establish a family, have children, and bring them up in keeping with the family's own moral and religious convictions;
- the protection of the stability of the marriage bond and the institution of the family;
- the freedom to profess one's faith, to hand it on, and raise one's children in it, with the necessary means and institutions;
- the right to private property, to free enterprise, to obtain work and housing, and the right to emigrate;
- in keeping with the country's institutions, the right to medical care, assistance for the aged, and family benefits;
- the protection of security and health, especially with respect to dangers like drugs, pornography, alcoholism, etc.;
- the freedom to form associations with other families and so to have representation before civil authority....

"Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment....

"Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God. 'Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human... responsibility.'"

(CCC 2207, 2210, 2211, 2366, 2367)