Friday, December 19, 2008

The Flap Over Rick Warren

Ok, the seething Left needs to get a grip about Rick Warren.

There is no three dimensional chess here or political calculation that makes sense on this point. If the argument is that sacrificing the rights of another group on the altar of political power is a reasonable choice, then you should remember that a society that callously denies one group their humanity can just as easily deny you yours.

First, there are no rights being sacrificed on any altar here. Gay marriage has never been a part of marriage in any society before ours. Never. Not once. And gay men, have always enjoyed the rights and privileges associated with their status as males. This is something that no woman, straight or gay, had in virtually every society before about the 20th century. This is where the "we have been persecuted just like women!" pisses me off.

Gay men have never been told that they lacked the capacity to sue, own property, or act in their own names. Women, specifically married women, have in every society. They've been subjected to the sorts of gender science that have said things like women are too stupid to go to college or hold certain jobs or whatnot because we have two X chromosomes instead of one X and one Y.

And so now, just because homosexuals aren't being allowed to marry--in the same way they haven't ever been allowed to marry in this country--that's denying one's humanity?

Rick Warren's opposition to gay marriage represents the majority opinions of Americans in this country. It also represents the opinions expressed in the Bible and held by most Christians. That doesn't mean those attitudes won't change or that homosexuals, still smarting from the Prop 8 loss, don't have a right to be disappointed. But this is, in no way, comparable to the struggles women have faced over the generations just to be treated the way men are.

On a related note, Amanda Marcotte is displaying her endless cache of stupidity regarding Warren, abortion, women's rights, and hyperbole.

I actually agree with the part of her post that suggests comparisons between abortion and the Holocaust are insulting and insipid. But, frankly, I find any comparisons with the Holocaust to be a form of demogoguery designed to cheapen what exactly occured during the Holocaust.

The insipid part of Amanda's post comes, as usual, with her insistence that people who oppose abortion and support babies do so because they hate women. Given that more abortions across the world are done on female babies as opposed to male ones, it's a bit difficult to follow the logic here. I suppose her idea of "hating women" means thinking life is valuable, regardless of its convenience. Oddly, the founders of feminism didn't think that women's equality was to be gained by killing the inconvenient.

This carping that a Southern Baptist minister espouses Southern Baptist theology is annoying. If Billy Graham were to give the invocation, would these same people be screaming that it was "denying their humanity"? Graham has met with every sitting president since Harry Truman, and gave the benediction at George H.W. Bush's inauguration. No one complained that it was a slap in anyone's face that this happened. It's time for the luny left to act a little more maturely.