This is officially not okay. Really. I know this will seem odd, and possibly mildly hypocritical coming from me, but... Damn. It's fucking cold, and I no longer approve. I walked home from my date tonight (well, from the El, but... six of one), and I'm impressed I still have a nose. Windchill of -25, according to Weather Underground.
That's just not right. I want it to be balmy and 27 again. Much better for snow, anyway.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
I got cranky in CLR...
First, here is a link to an article:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-central_chadwick_11edi.State.Edition1.15efc13.html
Second, here is the response I got (with my response to the article... I mean, my rant at the article... copied in the reply):
Dear Mr. Kidney,
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and respectful response to my article. I especially appreciated the links to additional resources, which were quite interesting. As I said, I believe this issue is fraught with difficulty, and more debate is needed. I am concerned that we are moving quickly toward making a major change in social policy. I am still thinking about this issue and the reason I mentioned civil unions is that they might address some concerns without redefining marriage. Your response was well-reasoned. I bet you will make an excellent lawyer. :)
Thanks again for taking the time to reply.
Wishing you all the best-
Michelle Chadwick
---- Des <draskireis@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Mrs. Chadwick,
>
> I'm
> writing this in response to your article "Debating Gay Marriage" which
> I came across this afternoon. I take exception to the disparity
> between your expressed tone and the implications of your choice of
> words (nevermind your arguments, which I find largely to be the
> standard more or less specious set, and I'd like to address those as
> well). I will be upfront--for full disclosure, as you might have
> guessed anyway--I am gay, and am also not religious so my opinion on
> this matter will clearly differ from yours.
>
> It is kind of you to
> take into account the horrors that are perpetrated on people because of
> their suspected or actual sexual orientation. It is also quite kind of
> you to humanize us--portray us as people who love and want to be loved,
> who respect and want to be respected (and to have our loves--the which
> we cannot control--respected, as well). While you're doing this,
> however, you ignore the consequence of your words: people commit
> violence against gay people because we are an 'other' group,
> marginalized and scapegoated, and so on. And arguments that put us
> outside of or contrary to 'nature's pattern', as you put it, only
> further that marginalization and dehumanization which leads to
> violence. (Incidentally--homosexuality is not merely a human thing,
> and is not outside the pattern of nature, unless it is so situated in
> all the species in which it occurs. See http://www.news-medical.net/?id=20718 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_animals
> ). So, in essence, your article, seemingly conciliatory in tone to
> gays and at least overtly suggesting that gays be treated with
> 'gentleness and respect' is likely to have no such effect, but rather
> the opposite of what you purport to intend.
>
> While it is
> literally true that the origins of any given person's being gay has not
> been precisely determined, most scientific theories run toward genetic
> or pre-birth environmental factors--which is to say, that it's on the
> nature side of things rather than the nurture side of things (which is
> further to say, as far as parenting goes, that gayness, as it were, is
> only contagious in the same way that genetic defects are contagious).
> Here's a study involving twins (mono- and di-zygotic, and showing the
> difference between incidence of homosexuality between the types of
> twins, suggesting a genetic component): http://www.springerlink.com/content/2263646523551487/
> . And here's a study inolving fraternal birth order (that is, the more
> older brothers one has, the more likely a guy is to be gay): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WMD-45KKS7X-72&_user=1458830&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000052790&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1458830&md5=e70fbf916601ebf4b2c0f95466348792 .
>
>
> I
> won't touch your personal definition of the purpose of a family.
> You're certainly entitled to such an opinion. The problem, though, is
> that the government has no duty to define the purpose of a family in
> such a fashion. But, for sake of argument, let's do that. Why does
> the government have an interest in people getting married?
> 'Stability,' comes the answer from a chorus of everyone. What sorts of
> stability is the government interested in? 'Family!' cries the same
> chorus.
>
> Family, though, can be defined various ways: you
> could set up family as people cleaving to each other for life
> (nevermind the heterosexual divorce rate), where I'd argue that
> including such gays as want to get married (there are, contrary to pop
> culture, gays--even men--who want nothing more than to fall in love
> with a wonderful [same sex person] and settle down to live a nice life
> with that person. I, for one.) would have a bolstering effect on the
> strength of marriage, insofar as more people would be successfully
> participating in the same institution you so fervently wish to protect
> (from us).
>
> One
> could alternatively define family as being for the creation and
> nurturing of children. I'm pleased that you make the obvious
> concessions to science--although you fail to allow as how there are
> more homosexual couples willing (happy!) to adopt, particularly by
> comparison to straight couples. If children are the bedrock of
> marriage, this would explain shotgun weddings, sure. This would
> explain a number of marriages--at least, on the surface. I think it's
> putting the cart before the horse: I think that the creation and
> nurturing of children is not required of marriage, but instead requires
> marriage (that is, should be a consequence of marriage, not a
> prerequisite for it). Further, there have been studies done--precisely
> to allay the fears of people like you--investigating the fitness of
> homosexual parents. Here's a guide to them, by the APA: http://www.apa.org/pi/parent.html
> . They show, relatively conclusively, that there is no internal
> disadvantage to gays being parents (as far as effects on the children
> go, homophobic jibes from those outside the family notwithstanding),
> and (I don't know whether they include any of the studies showing that
> gays tend to make at least as good parents, but they exist) might even
> be better parents than the average heterosexual parents (gays have to
> want kids; this is not always so with straight couples saddled with
> children).
>
> You say that there are single parents who do an
> excellent job at it, and despite not being the ideal child-raising
> situation, you accept them. What if the single parent in question were
> gay? How is a gay couple differently non-ideal? Since, as I've
> suggested above (with more evidence than you have shown to the
> contrary), gays are good parents, most notably because when we acquire
> children, it's certain that we want them and think we can do right by
> them.
>
> While
> there aren't studies, to my knowledge, of the long-term effects of gay
> marriage, I must ask--why the requirement of that? Were there ever
> long-term studies of heterosexual marriage and its effects on
> children? What about divorce (of that, I'm sure there are, and I'm
> sure it doesn't say very nice things, but it doesn't affect my argument
> so I'm not going to the trouble of searching them out)? Further,
> you've set up a neatly circular requirement: there cannot be gay
> marriage until there have been studies on gay marriage and its effects
> on children, you say--but for those studies to happen, there must be
> gay marriage somewhere (except, by your requirements, there can't be,
> so you've neatly stopped gay marriage in its tracks forever--or would,
> if you could). I'd like to point out, however, that gay marriage is
> legal in various places, and has been for at least a little while:
> Massachusetts, Canada, various countries in Europe, South Africa, and
> the fabric of society has not dissolved.
>
> As
> to your slippery slope argument, that is tenuous at best--but
> deceptively (no, insidiously) attractive if taken without thought.
> Sure. Let gays into marriage. Then we'll have to let this whole
> parade of horrors in, too. So... on second thought, let's not let gays
> in. The problem is that we're changing a part of the marriage laws,
> which have several requirements beyond mere gender. Incest is out
> because, as Bbow pointed out, (regardless of the whole birth-defect
> issue, which wouldn't apply so well to gay couples) it could lead to
> children being raised as potential sex partners either for older
> siblings or parents, which is, to put it mildly, terrible. Polygamy is
> still barred because not only would we not change the number allowed
> into a marriage contract, but also because--as is frequently stated
> (and truthfully, as opposed to similar claims about a blanket
> assumption of homosexual promiscuity) of polygamous relationships--they
> are inherently unstable due to the nature of a relationship that is not
> merely binary.
>
> Let
> me make a positive case for gay marriage to you, if in fact you're
> still doing me the courtesy of reading this. Let us assume that the
> purpose of marriage is to have a family of some kind--be it with or
> without children, as you please. Let us further assume that a
> requirement of marriage is love between two people (which is why
> polygamy is still out, as stated above). Let us finally assume that
> civil unions are in all ways equivalent (that is, separate but equal)
> in that the 1500-odd state and federal benefits, great and small alike,
> are conferred on both institutions. What, then, opponents of gay
> marriage might ask, is the difference between a civil union and
> allowing gay marriage?
>
> One
> of the features of marriage is that it is a historic and communally
> recognized relationship, generally implying a stronger sense of
> permanence (divorce rates notwithstanding) than mere 'partnership' or
> 'going out'. It's the shock you get when you hear from your playboy
> friend that he's given his heart to his latest flavor of the week and
> that he's proposed to her, and that they're to be married. It's
> permanence and respect before the community (e.g. '[she, he]'s going to
> make an honest [man, woman] out of me.'). To have a civil union, then,
> would be to be denied that same respect, that same implication of
> permanence, that same privilege.
>
> Further,
> if--as I'm assuming--civil unions are in all ways comparable to
> marriage, this would include rights regarding the acquiring (by
> scientific or adoptive means) of children. How does this comport with
> your notions of family and how children ought be raised? That is, if
> it comports with it, why not go all the way to marriage, and if it
> doesn't, is your bone-tossing of civil unions being hypothetically
> acceptable in the future a specious claim?
>
> Finally, I'd like to
> point out that marriage is a self-selecting group--if one doesn't want
> to get married, one won't do it. There are all sorts of comments about
> how gays are big fans of infidelity and adultery (except that we can't
> get married so that's almost moot) and generally not big fans of
> commitment. I'm ignoring, for the moment, all the anecdotal evidence
> to the contrary, of lesbian couples who've been together for thirty
> plus years, and of gay men who've been faithful to each other for as
> long as they've been together--which in various cases has been rather a
> while. Given that divorce rates are so high, and that divorce is
> (sometimes,
> but not too loudly) considered to be a greater threat to marriage than
> allowing gays to join the ranks of marital bliss, how would allowing
> those gay couples who would want to get married to do so--which would
> likely lead to an overall decline in the divorce rate--be a bad thing?
>
> If
> strengthening the institution of marriage and supporting the raising of
> children in a family setting is your aim, I fail to see how allowing
> gay marriage is a notion that comports with what you want: gays make
> good parents when they decide to raise children. The institution of
> marriage strengthens the bond between the heads of a family allowing
> them to better weather the difficulties of life because they are
> recognized as a legal unit in public (such that the same respect
> accorded them for being married acts also as a social pressure to make
> them want to weather out the bad times as well as the good), which not
> only helps with children, but (if gays were included) would also
> increase the sanctity of marriage by allowing more loving
> family-raising couples into the institution.
>
> I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.
>
> Respectfully,
> Desmond
> Kidney
> Candidate, Juris Doctor
> Northwestern School of Law Class of '11
I don't know that I've ever been quite so amused at a more or less complete blow-off before.
In other, (that is, personal) news, one of my cats (at home) died yesterday. Classes have started, and with the exception of CLR are excellent. Looking for a job that will take me to SF or keep me here over the summer. I think that's it for the moment--there will be a more in-depth post on things post-Christmas when I do that.
http://www.dallasnews.com/
Second, here is the response I got (with my response to the article... I mean, my rant at the article... copied in the reply):
Dear Mr. Kidney,
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and respectful response to my article. I especially appreciated the links to additional resources, which were quite interesting. As I said, I believe this issue is fraught with difficulty, and more debate is needed. I am concerned that we are moving quickly toward making a major change in social policy. I am still thinking about this issue and the reason I mentioned civil unions is that they might address some concerns without redefining marriage. Your response was well-reasoned. I bet you will make an excellent lawyer. :)
Thanks again for taking the time to reply.
Wishing you all the best-
Michelle Chadwick
---- Des <draskireis@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Mrs. Chadwick,
>
> I'm
> writing this in response to your article "Debating Gay Marriage" which
> I came across this afternoon. I take exception to the disparity
> between your expressed tone and the implications of your choice of
> words (nevermind your arguments, which I find largely to be the
> standard more or less specious set, and I'd like to address those as
> well). I will be upfront--for full disclosure, as you might have
> guessed anyway--I am gay, and am also not religious so my opinion on
> this matter will clearly differ from yours.
>
> It is kind of you to
> take into account the horrors that are perpetrated on people because of
> their suspected or actual sexual orientation. It is also quite kind of
> you to humanize us--portray us as people who love and want to be loved,
> who respect and want to be respected (and to have our loves--the which
> we cannot control--respected, as well). While you're doing this,
> however, you ignore the consequence of your words: people commit
> violence against gay people because we are an 'other' group,
> marginalized and scapegoated, and so on. And arguments that put us
> outside of or contrary to 'nature's pattern', as you put it, only
> further that marginalization and dehumanization which leads to
> violence. (Incidentally--homosexuality is not merely a human thing,
> and is not outside the pattern of nature, unless it is so situated in
> all the species in which it occurs. See http://www.news-medical.net/?id=20718 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_animals
> ). So, in essence, your article, seemingly conciliatory in tone to
> gays and at least overtly suggesting that gays be treated with
> 'gentleness and respect' is likely to have no such effect, but rather
> the opposite of what you purport to intend.
>
> While it is
> literally true that the origins of any given person's being gay has not
> been precisely determined, most scientific theories run toward genetic
> or pre-birth environmental factors--which is to say, that it's on the
> nature side of things rather than the nurture side of things (which is
> further to say, as far as parenting goes, that gayness, as it were, is
> only contagious in the same way that genetic defects are contagious).
> Here's a study involving twins (mono- and di-zygotic, and showing the
> difference between incidence of homosexuality between the types of
> twins, suggesting a genetic component): http://www.springerlink.com/content/2263646523551487/
> . And here's a study inolving fraternal birth order (that is, the more
> older brothers one has, the more likely a guy is to be gay): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WMD-45KKS7X-72&_user=1458830&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000052790&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1458830&md5=e70fbf916601ebf4b2c0f95466348792 .
>
>
> I
> won't touch your personal definition of the purpose of a family.
> You're certainly entitled to such an opinion. The problem, though, is
> that the government has no duty to define the purpose of a family in
> such a fashion. But, for sake of argument, let's do that. Why does
> the government have an interest in people getting married?
> 'Stability,' comes the answer from a chorus of everyone. What sorts of
> stability is the government interested in? 'Family!' cries the same
> chorus.
>
> Family, though, can be defined various ways: you
> could set up family as people cleaving to each other for life
> (nevermind the heterosexual divorce rate), where I'd argue that
> including such gays as want to get married (there are, contrary to pop
> culture, gays--even men--who want nothing more than to fall in love
> with a wonderful [same sex person] and settle down to live a nice life
> with that person. I, for one.) would have a bolstering effect on the
> strength of marriage, insofar as more people would be successfully
> participating in the same institution you so fervently wish to protect
> (from us).
>
> One
> could alternatively define family as being for the creation and
> nurturing of children. I'm pleased that you make the obvious
> concessions to science--although you fail to allow as how there are
> more homosexual couples willing (happy!) to adopt, particularly by
> comparison to straight couples. If children are the bedrock of
> marriage, this would explain shotgun weddings, sure. This would
> explain a number of marriages--at least, on the surface. I think it's
> putting the cart before the horse: I think that the creation and
> nurturing of children is not required of marriage, but instead requires
> marriage (that is, should be a consequence of marriage, not a
> prerequisite for it). Further, there have been studies done--precisely
> to allay the fears of people like you--investigating the fitness of
> homosexual parents. Here's a guide to them, by the APA: http://www.apa.org/pi/parent.html
> . They show, relatively conclusively, that there is no internal
> disadvantage to gays being parents (as far as effects on the children
> go, homophobic jibes from those outside the family notwithstanding),
> and (I don't know whether they include any of the studies showing that
> gays tend to make at least as good parents, but they exist) might even
> be better parents than the average heterosexual parents (gays have to
> want kids; this is not always so with straight couples saddled with
> children).
>
> You say that there are single parents who do an
> excellent job at it, and despite not being the ideal child-raising
> situation, you accept them. What if the single parent in question were
> gay? How is a gay couple differently non-ideal? Since, as I've
> suggested above (with more evidence than you have shown to the
> contrary), gays are good parents, most notably because when we acquire
> children, it's certain that we want them and think we can do right by
> them.
>
> While
> there aren't studies, to my knowledge, of the long-term effects of gay
> marriage, I must ask--why the requirement of that? Were there ever
> long-term studies of heterosexual marriage and its effects on
> children? What about divorce (of that, I'm sure there are, and I'm
> sure it doesn't say very nice things, but it doesn't affect my argument
> so I'm not going to the trouble of searching them out)? Further,
> you've set up a neatly circular requirement: there cannot be gay
> marriage until there have been studies on gay marriage and its effects
> on children, you say--but for those studies to happen, there must be
> gay marriage somewhere (except, by your requirements, there can't be,
> so you've neatly stopped gay marriage in its tracks forever--or would,
> if you could). I'd like to point out, however, that gay marriage is
> legal in various places, and has been for at least a little while:
> Massachusetts, Canada, various countries in Europe, South Africa, and
> the fabric of society has not dissolved.
>
> As
> to your slippery slope argument, that is tenuous at best--but
> deceptively (no, insidiously) attractive if taken without thought.
> Sure. Let gays into marriage. Then we'll have to let this whole
> parade of horrors in, too. So... on second thought, let's not let gays
> in. The problem is that we're changing a part of the marriage laws,
> which have several requirements beyond mere gender. Incest is out
> because, as Bbow pointed out, (regardless of the whole birth-defect
> issue, which wouldn't apply so well to gay couples) it could lead to
> children being raised as potential sex partners either for older
> siblings or parents, which is, to put it mildly, terrible. Polygamy is
> still barred because not only would we not change the number allowed
> into a marriage contract, but also because--as is frequently stated
> (and truthfully, as opposed to similar claims about a blanket
> assumption of homosexual promiscuity) of polygamous relationships--they
> are inherently unstable due to the nature of a relationship that is not
> merely binary.
>
> Let
> me make a positive case for gay marriage to you, if in fact you're
> still doing me the courtesy of reading this. Let us assume that the
> purpose of marriage is to have a family of some kind--be it with or
> without children, as you please. Let us further assume that a
> requirement of marriage is love between two people (which is why
> polygamy is still out, as stated above). Let us finally assume that
> civil unions are in all ways equivalent (that is, separate but equal)
> in that the 1500-odd state and federal benefits, great and small alike,
> are conferred on both institutions. What, then, opponents of gay
> marriage might ask, is the difference between a civil union and
> allowing gay marriage?
>
> One
> of the features of marriage is that it is a historic and communally
> recognized relationship, generally implying a stronger sense of
> permanence (divorce rates notwithstanding) than mere 'partnership' or
> 'going out'. It's the shock you get when you hear from your playboy
> friend that he's given his heart to his latest flavor of the week and
> that he's proposed to her, and that they're to be married. It's
> permanence and respect before the community (e.g. '[she, he]'s going to
> make an honest [man, woman] out of me.'). To have a civil union, then,
> would be to be denied that same respect, that same implication of
> permanence, that same privilege.
>
> Further,
> if--as I'm assuming--civil unions are in all ways comparable to
> marriage, this would include rights regarding the acquiring (by
> scientific or adoptive means) of children. How does this comport with
> your notions of family and how children ought be raised? That is, if
> it comports with it, why not go all the way to marriage, and if it
> doesn't, is your bone-tossing of civil unions being hypothetically
> acceptable in the future a specious claim?
>
> Finally, I'd like to
> point out that marriage is a self-selecting group--if one doesn't want
> to get married, one won't do it. There are all sorts of comments about
> how gays are big fans of infidelity and adultery (except that we can't
> get married so that's almost moot) and generally not big fans of
> commitment. I'm ignoring, for the moment, all the anecdotal evidence
> to the contrary, of lesbian couples who've been together for thirty
> plus years, and of gay men who've been faithful to each other for as
> long as they've been together--which in various cases has been rather a
> while. Given that divorce rates are so high, and that divorce is
> (sometimes,
> but not too loudly) considered to be a greater threat to marriage than
> allowing gays to join the ranks of marital bliss, how would allowing
> those gay couples who would want to get married to do so--which would
> likely lead to an overall decline in the divorce rate--be a bad thing?
>
> If
> strengthening the institution of marriage and supporting the raising of
> children in a family setting is your aim, I fail to see how allowing
> gay marriage is a notion that comports with what you want: gays make
> good parents when they decide to raise children. The institution of
> marriage strengthens the bond between the heads of a family allowing
> them to better weather the difficulties of life because they are
> recognized as a legal unit in public (such that the same respect
> accorded them for being married acts also as a social pressure to make
> them want to weather out the bad times as well as the good), which not
> only helps with children, but (if gays were included) would also
> increase the sanctity of marriage by allowing more loving
> family-raising couples into the institution.
>
> I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.
>
> Respectfully,
> Desmond
> Kidney
> Candidate, Juris Doctor
> Northwestern School of Law Class of '11
I don't know that I've ever been quite so amused at a more or less complete blow-off before.
In other, (that is, personal) news, one of my cats (at home) died yesterday. Classes have started, and with the exception of CLR are excellent. Looking for a job that will take me to SF or keep me here over the summer. I think that's it for the moment--there will be a more in-depth post on things post-Christmas when I do that.
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