Friday, February 20, 2004
Yesterday in class I was informed that ALL arguments against gay marriage are by definition bad arguments. There can be no good arguments against gay marriage at all. None whatsoever.
Actually, there are lots of bad arguments against gay marriage - but there are lots of bad arguments for it as well. The main problem as I see it is that both sides are speaking different languages. They may be using the same terms like "marriage" and "morality" and "family" but they mean vastly different things.
In every debate on gay marriage I have participated in or observed, the participants might as well have been speaking Esperanto and Klingon for all the actual communication that went on.
I tried bringing that up, showing how the best conservative arguments against only fail when interpreting their terms from the left wing dictionary, but that just got comments about how conservatives obviously have no idea what these terms "really mean."
I gave up at that point. The liberals in the academy have decided that conservatives are dumb by definition, because they see conservatism as the default position of stupid people (anyone following the recent problems at Duke will be aware of this).
I could argue that since liberalism is the default position of high school students and college freshman, it is just as suspect. But I won't. Not today, anyway.
Actually, there are lots of bad arguments against gay marriage - but there are lots of bad arguments for it as well. The main problem as I see it is that both sides are speaking different languages. They may be using the same terms like "marriage" and "morality" and "family" but they mean vastly different things.
In every debate on gay marriage I have participated in or observed, the participants might as well have been speaking Esperanto and Klingon for all the actual communication that went on.
I tried bringing that up, showing how the best conservative arguments against only fail when interpreting their terms from the left wing dictionary, but that just got comments about how conservatives obviously have no idea what these terms "really mean."
I gave up at that point. The liberals in the academy have decided that conservatives are dumb by definition, because they see conservatism as the default position of stupid people (anyone following the recent problems at Duke will be aware of this).
I could argue that since liberalism is the default position of high school students and college freshman, it is just as suspect. But I won't. Not today, anyway.
