Conservative
Christianist wingnut Cal Thomas is always good and reliable for a crazy laugh when you need one...or two.
This time, in a most recent column on Iowa overturning its same-sex marriage ban, Cal is even more incoherent and all over the place than usual going between telling his fellow conservatives to give up on the issue of same-sex marriage, to criticizing it bitterly as the end of Western civilization, to the whole "slippery slope" argument, to pointing out the hypocrisy of divorce in opposite-sex marriage, and everything in between.
When Meredith Willson wrote the wildly popular musical "The Music Man" half a century ago, Harold Hill proclaimed trouble had come to River City, Iowa, in the form of a pool hall, which he claimed would corrupt young people unless the local citizens bought the musical instruments he was selling and got their kids into a marching band. He promised that playing music would keep kids from "fritterin' away their mealtime, suppertime, chore time, too" and going to the track to watch "some stuck-up jockey boy sittin' on Dan Patch."
Neither Willson, nor his mythical character Hill, could have foreseen what "trouble" the Iowa Supreme Court has brought on the state (and potentially the nation) when it unanimously ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry "does not substantially further any important government objective," in the words of Justice Mark S. Cady, who wrote the opinion for the seven-member court.
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One must hand it to the gay rights movement. They have taken advantage of a morally exhausted nation that tolerates so many things that used to be intolerable - from abortion, to easy divorce, to pornography. And they have attacked American traditions at their strongest points, from the military, to pressuring Disney to allow "gay days" at their amusement parks, to marriage.
The problem with the Iowa Court ruling is that it vitiates a standard that defined marriage as between two people of the opposite sex, which was God's idea, not government's (see Genesis 2:24), while failing to substitute a new standard.
If homosexual marriage is now one of two equally valid choices, will other options be available anytime soon?
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To those on the political and religious right who are intent on continuing the battle to preserve "traditional marriage" in a nation that is rapidly discarding its traditions, I would ask this question: What poses a greater threat to our remaining moral underpinnings? Is it two homosexuals living together, or is it the number of heterosexuals who are divorcing and the increasing number of children born to unmarried women, now at nearly 40 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?
Most of those who are disturbed about same-sex marriage are not as exercised about preserving heterosexual marriage. That's because it doesn't raise money and won't get them on TV. Some preachers would rather demonize gays than oppose heterosexuals who violate their vows by divorcing, often causing harm to their children. That's because so many in their congregations have been divorced and preaching against divorce might cause some to leave and take their contributions with them.
The battle over same-sex marriage is on the way to being lost. For conservatives who still have faith in the political system to reverse the momentum, you are - to recall Harold Hill - "closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge."
The disjointedness of the whole thing left me asking "what the fuck?" Really, is Cal Thomas more incoherent than usual, or is it just me? Did he had a series of smalls strokes while writing this?
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I'm not familiar with Thomas' usual discourse
but actually, I don't think this is a very WTF
piece when set against the usual attacks on gay marriage by strongly opposed groups. It looks like it's in that sort of dark gray area where he uses some things that are sort of true to lead to conclusions that are ridiculous, but which someone who does not have strong feelings about the issue, and who doesn't pay particular attention to the illogic between his premises and conclusions could go along with. (er, putting aside the whole 'Music Man' analogy, anyway).
It's true that gay marriage opponents use the rhetoric of protecting 'traditional marriage' (and a variety of other buzzwords like protecting families, children, the American way, etc etc) to attack gay marriage, but don't seem to care or get at all worked up about any of the other forces affecting those 'traditional' marriage. In fact, this is a hypocrisy that gay marriage supporters point to quite frequently to rebut or attack the anti-groups. And it's definitely true that a big part of the reason that various religious and conservative spokespeople get all excersized about gay marriage but little else is that it gets them on TV. (of course, this phenomenon is by no means limited to religious and conversative activists, but that's another topic).
While I would put a different spin on his moral exhaustion point (it's growing tolerance, not exhaustion) -- he has identified a true historical progression -- a growing divorce rate, a growing rate of single mothers, legal abortions [well, technically legal, these days], and much greater prevalance/access to porn. Most folks would think yes, these are phenomena of concern to social stability. The shout out to slippery slope-ism is just the standard anti-marriage riff, and not even the worst (Thomas uses polygamy as his example, rather than the more dog-whistle-y marriage to animals or children as the next slidedown step on the slope).
Maybe it's just that most of the anti-gay-marriage rhetoric I come across is wildly worse than Thomas', or radically more jingoistic (gay marriage will lead to sex with goats!), but I read this and thought it was actually fairly slippery and dangerous compared the usual over-the-top defenses from the anti-marriage crowd. Thomas is criticizing his own side, which is often an effective credibility boost. He's incorporating and accounting for the criticisms of his opponents, which is also a credibility builder.
Thomas' erroneous implications of cause and effect are not really all that different from the same rhetoric twists that have become prevalent across the political spectrum and which we seem, as a society, no longer capable of recognizing and rejecting based on the invalid logic or conflation of correlation with cause and effect. In other words, his methodology is about average. Average and bad, average and wrong, yes, but just average. Sadly.
You don’t know me, son. So let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.
-Malcolm Reynolds, “Serenity”
He isn't being hypocritical. That's what's is puzzling
you. We aren't used to seeing conservatives with the courage of their conviction - well, at least not when it comes to money. Thomas recognizes correctly that conservatives don't turn divorced couples away because it would cut into their profits.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
Thomas is move clever than most
And, that he criticized his own side, this time, threw me off. I don't believe for a minute he did it for any other reason than as a device to shield him (at least partially) from being labeled a hack.
The truth, though, is that he is. Check the other links in the thread. I feel Thomas is more dangerous than most because of his seeming subtlety. He's quite effective (sometime) in not coming across as the ultra-conservative Christianist
that he is.
Valhalla, I'd like you to read up on the guy. I'd like everyone to know him so they know what they are dealing with. He peddles insansities under the guise of sanity.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
Damon, I trust you completely
when you say he's crazy and bad; and of course what he's peddling and how he's peddling it is bad and dangerous. I just thought his particular output here didn't come across that way. I can see folks in Iowa or wherever opening up their morning paper and reading his piece and nodding their heads without thinking too deeply about what he is saying, exactly because he's not screaming at the top of his lungs about armageddon coming because gay people are allowed to marry. The one sentence where he criticizes the court for "failing to substitute a new standard" sounds so eminently reasonable.
Except that it's totally false. Every court in the nation has boatloads of judicial precedent on the equality and due process due to citizens of the nation or their state. The Iowa court didn't drill out a hole in constitutional law and then forget to fill it back in. They just applied one of many possible standards to this one legal issue. It's just that that won't pop into most people's heads immediately reading this piece. (it even took me a second and I have a bit of a fetish for substantive due process).
Oops! I'm going on a bit again -- have to run -- family Easter responsibilities.
You don’t know me, son. So let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.
-Malcolm Reynolds, “Serenity”