Ought we to debate about whether a marriage between a black man and white woman should be allowed by law? Do we have to discuss whether or not a wife is the property of her husband? Is annulment and beating a woman a man’s right if he finds out that she was not a virgin when they wed?
Before going to college, I was a speech and debate dork through and through—a “master debater” as I was not so wittily called. It was the best thing I had going in my high school years—my real passion. But familiarity breeds contempt. What I came to be contemptuous of was not the process of an organized and well-thought-out argument, which I still treasure. What I truly loathed was the low place logic holds in most “debates.” You don’t have to watch C-SPAN to realize that what passes for discussion and debate in our country—and most others, I fear—is grandstanding and repetitive ad hominem screeching.
I was thinking this over when I saw that RPI was hosting a debate between the Republican and Democratic clubs on campus. Not a bad idea on the surface, but it’s the sort of thing that always degenerates into each side spewing the party line with little interaction between. I did not attend the debates, so I will not comment further except to say that it made my blood boil when I read a flyer saying gay rights was to be one of the topics of contention.
It is an embarrassment that people “debate” whether sexual preference has an effect on a person’s legal status. It makes me cringe. Racism is prevalent and ugly all over the USA, but at least it isn’t codified in modern law. At least loudmouths aren’t on major news networks saying that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of punishing New Orleans for celebrating Martin Luther King’s Birthday. It was not so long ago that this sort of racism was said out loud and I suppose I should be grateful that it is kept to a murmur now. There is no such discretion when bashing queers.
The wacko right’s pretend arguments against gay marriage boil down to this: Marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, granting rights to gays somehow undermines marriage of heterosexuals, the Bible forbids it, and it would encourage more “gayness” among kids.
All of these arguments are obviously fallacious, oops, I mean fallacious: The dictionary does not give words meaning, it catalogs the meaning people give words. It is fluid and entirely irrelevant to the point; your marriage is crumbling because you and your spouse are overweight and boring; your religion is mean spirited, useless, and entirely irrelevant to the laws of this country; and your son is gay because you made him listen to Madonna and Blink 182 in the car, not because of constitutional law.
The wacko right’s real problem is of course this: “I think I might be gay and I don’t want to face it so I will lash out at anyone who has come to terms with their icky gayness.”
This isn’t a debate any more than debating whether teaching evolution should be allowed in schools. It is a black mark on the soul of our society.
And where would porn be without at least some hot girl-on-girl action?
As my antihero Dick Cheney says, “Freedom means freedom for everybody.”
