November 16, 2010
A Moratorium on Controversy Requires Postponement of Change
So a group of gay conservatives and some Tea Party figures are urging the Republican Party to keep away from social issues while they've got a role in untangling our big-government mess. One particular comment highlights, in a humorous way, the strange assumptions that social liberals make about the universality of their causes:
"When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren't arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion," said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member, as well as an Ohio co-coordinator.
I'd suggest that anybody who'd been openly gay or advocating for abortion may very well have found himself in the water with the tea. The notions that governments should redefine marriage to eliminate its opposite-sex character and that people had an unassailable right to kill their own children in the womb would not have come up because the would have been found universally appalling.
This is not to say that our forebears, right on taxation and representation, were necessarily correct in their social views. But unity on civic matters is easier to separate from social matters when there's already cultural unity on the latter.
What this means for current conservatives is that the libertarian types cannot expect their socially conservative allies to tie their own hands while liberals advance their own causes. What it must mean not "to act on any social issue" is that libertarians and social conservatives must accept the status quo and work together to prevent attempts at radical change while the economic and political-theory issues are predominant.
That'll be a tough promise to keep. After all, judges must still be appointed, and social conservatives, with an eye on the long term, will not forgo the opportunity to change the judiciary's take on Roe v. Wade. On the other side of the coin, the persistence of liberals on such issues as same-sex marriage may require social conservatives to seek a Constitutional amendment just to maintain the current state of affairs.
What libertarians and "moderates" usually intend when they urge conservatives to hold off on "pushing" social issues is for liberals to keep up the fight for their shared causes while conservatives sit on their hands. That's not likely to prove feasible.
I was raised Catholic, so abortion does sicken me. Even as I try to be the most liberal, I hate to discuss the topic because I do feel it is a baby. I can understand people fighting that even though it was decided so long ago. As for gay marriage, DADT, and other gay rights, I think those issues will pass and fade away. I can't imagine the issue of gay marriage or DADT even being discussed in 40 years as people still do with the abortion issue. Gay marriage will pass here next year, and by 2012 it wont even be an issue.
Posted by: Swazool at November 16, 2010 3:16 PMFiscal conservatives need to realize that the intact family, children knowing and being known by their mother and family, is the most fiscally conservative institution this country has.
RI loses $209 million every year due to the results of family-fragmentation.
http://tinyurl.com/4l5x4e
Want to promote the economy? Promote and protect the family.
Posted by: Chris Plante at November 17, 2010 11:12 AMChris, you have got to be kidding if you think that homos are attributing to fragmenting families! You really think that homos are costing RI 209 million a year. That is almost as funny an as arbitrary a number as Obama trip costing 200 million a day.
Enjoy your last few months fighting a loosing battle. I can't wait to hear you on John Depetro's show, I hear he is really into the sanctity of marriage right now!!!! ROTHFMAO
Homosexuality costing Rhode Island almost three times as much as Chafee's tax hike?
Sounds like somebody learned basic math from George Orwell. Two plus two equals five, indeed.
Swazool,
You're missing the point. Homosexuals are not causing the deterioration of the American family, but redefining marriage so as to write the opposite-sex requirement (and, implicitly, childbirth) out of the equation will exacerbate the current problem and block the most efficient means of putting on the break (namely, the promotion of mother-father-children families).
Posted by: Justin Katz at November 17, 2010 8:05 PMJustin,
I don't believe that allowing homes to marry exacerbates any problem with hetro marriage, MA has had it for a few years now and they don't have more divorces or less marriages because of it.
This has been argued over and over, the real point is there will be no need to argue once it has been passed next year. The tea party should see that and not want to jump on a sinking ship.
Justin,
I don't believe that allowing homos to marry exacerbates any problem with hetro marriage, MA has had it for a few years now and they don't have more divorces or less marriages because of it.
This has been argued over and over, the real point is there will be no need to argue once it has been passed next year. The tea party should see that and not want to jump on a sinking ship.
Your misunderstanding spreads: Marriage and other social policies aren't like tax policy, with which a change in a neighboring state can be expected to produce measurable results. At issue, here, is the meaning of marriage, culturally, and cultural policies don't stop so easily at state lines.
Even so, your assertion only appears to work because you imagine some effect that would "count" and claim that it never materialized. The fact is that MA's marriage rate dropped from 6.5 per 1,000 to 5.6 per 1,000 since 2004, when SSM became legally recognized, there. True, the divorce rate also dropped, but each year that the marriage rate declines, there are fewer married couples to get divorced.
It's a broad topic, though. It'd be interesting to trace the demographics in RI, inasmuch as marriage rates have decreased, here, while divorce rates have increased, but population has fallen. It would help to explain those numbers if young adults were the ones leaving the state.
But the point is that it doesn't count as evidence to create a straw man of warned effects in MA and then declare it not to be breathing. All of the above, notably, ignores the fact that we're still a number of years away from the first generation of people who grew up hearing that homosexual relationships could be "marriage" reaching the age at which we'd expect them to marry. That'll be the real test.
Posted by: Justin Katz at November 17, 2010 10:29 PMJustin,
Back to the original post, the Tea Party wants to keep what momentum they have. Why would they get involved in a loosing cause like stopping gay rights or gay marriage? They should stay focused on one issue, (or two) smaller govt and less taxes.