Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

that person needs to clarify exactly what it would mean for something to be "precluded by natural law", and until they do so, it's hardly surprising that their post reads as a rejection of gay marriage along fairly typical "you can make it legal but you can't make it right" lines but now with added pseudo-abstraction- (one can hardly accuse Plato and Aquinas of holding similar views about homosexuality, for that matter)

the very notion of invoking "natural law" in relation to homosexuality is a classic ideological move that has no scientific basis but works to reify an image of "straight" Nature- plenty of animals exhibit homosexual behavior- there's nothing "unnatural" about it if the frame here is the, you know, natural world. If, instead of the natural world, this person is hoping to erect some claim about essences or natures in an Aristotelian sense, he's still got a long way to go before this post makes sense. And that's not even touching on the likelihood that Aquinas is the real intellectual center of gravity here. If "natural law" just means "God's law" then this isn't a debate about philosophy, it's someone cloaking their religious views in terms cadged from a seeminlgy less polarizing and more high-falutin' discipline.

ugh the more I think about this move this coffee dude is making the more it annoys me. The basic move is "there's HUMAN law and there's NATURAL law . . . . but, I (a human, note) happen to know BOTH and those foolish people over there are still stuck on the petty human level"- it's pretentious in a very basic way for this person to think that they can somehow speak for / on behalf of this bugbear abstraction that they term Nature with a capital N. In scenarios like this "Nature", invoked with the rhetorical flourish of kettledrums, arrives only to squeak out the thin- pipsqueak sound of the same old Judeo-Christian, entirely and utterly "human", ideas. If they want to look Nature squarely in the face, my guess is that they will find Nature pretty much indifferent to "marriage" as such. Union, bonding, sexuality- yep, plenty of that, from atoms to enzymes to animal behavior, you will find lots of unions, bonds, partnerships, and sexytime. Marriage? not so much.

Plus, if he wants to take the high-ground of "i have my principles and I"m sticking to them" then he could at least clarify what those principles actually are. Otherwise he's a coward who's backpedaling to protect his business while claiming to not care if he loses customers. Why bother to say "I"m not a homophobe" if you're not going to bother explaining the post. In detail.

for the record america's tradition of deep frying is a beautiful thing

#SorryFolks #NotEqual

idk i feel like like that sort of glib #shrug tells you all you need to know about dude's incapacity for thoughtful reasoning

Otherwise he's a coward who's backpedaling to protect his business while claiming to not care if he loses customers.

otm. His laughable attempts at finnessing this episode consist of vague handwaving, pretending it is high-minded something-or-other. But his efforts are entirely content free, except to blame all those mean people who attacked him on false grounds, when what he really meant to say was... but let's not get into that, shall we?

He might not know what he meant to say. He's not very good at expressing himself.

The idea that this guy would tweet some fake philosophical bs and didn't mean anything about gay marriage isn't far-fetched. If he lost a lot of gay marriage supporters and gained just as many hateful coffee drinkers, I can also see how he'd feel stuck with his new dick customer base.

I can well believe his tweet was not based on a deep, abiding belief system, but was merely a smug bit of douchbaggery he whipped up on a whim because it made him feel clever, but it's meaning was pretty clear. The tag set practically went into conniptions to semaphore his intent.

#ChasingAfterTheWind just makes me think of this dude

omg, thank you so much for that

A man deeply touched by The Wizard of Oz I do not doubt.

http://i.imgur.com/gYYMF.jpg

My boss and his longtime partner got married in NY today. I'm very happy for them!

today was a good day huh
all this real nice to look through

Start posting photos of yourself so I can consider offers, btw.

http://www.filmjunk.com/images/weblog/2009/04/rickmoranisgb3.jpg

well?

Yes, but I am always the Keymaster.

lol
http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/9959/nystreetview.jpg

My boss and his partner -- now husband! -- actually showed up on NBC Nightly News! (My boss, Tom, is on the right, and his partner Steve is on the left.)

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/9958/28486510150253650772129.jpg

Larry Kramer in a mood to incur wrath:

"These marriages, in whichever state, are what I call feel-good marriages. Compared to the benefits heterosexual marriages convey, gay marriages are an embarrassment — that we should accept so little, and with so much hoopla of excitement and self-congratulation."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015720197_gayweddings25.html

As if DOMA will ever be repealed if citizens and governments at lower levels don't first show that the will is there. It takes momentum to make something like that happen.

Lemme guess, no one popped Larry the question.

he's had the same bf for 30 years, no? guess they're not the bourgeois type.

But he is the gadfly type.

Oh, my mistake. Sucks that someone so vanguard would feel compelled to submit to something as retrograde as monogamy.

larry kramer is such a legend

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/7/24/1311531119670/To-match-Reuters-Life-USA-005.jpg

Oh man I love Myron Levine and Phillip Zinderman a lot.

Larry Kramer may not have chosen marriage, but he has been an advocate of gay marriage forever.

Oh man I love Myron Levine and Phillip Zinderman a lot.

it took me FAR too long to realize what was happening in that picture

I need a nap

The quote above is part of his statement for nation-wide marriage equality.

xp

And he certainly was pro-monogamy during the 70s and 80s. I think it was in Faggots that he wrote "We are fucking ourselves to death" and that was before anyone had even dreamed of "the gay cancer."

wkiw the levine-zindermans

i keep scanning the slideshows to see if i know anyone but then i remember that i think i only know like two gay couples in NYC who are in LTRs

Actually, that's not exactly what Larry Kramer said.

I never interpreted it as “Larry Kramer Hates Gay Marriage.” The inequality that remains is why I don't understand the "Celebrate or die" dictum gays are giving others who aren't whooping it up over the current situation.

And also, our society is dying, but that's not a gay enough issue.

They might be related.

Actually, that's not exactly what Larry Kramer said.

so what is THAT in your sentence? I quoted exactly what he said (although it got edited along the way).

Larry is really disappointed when he submits 5000 words to the Times and they publish 3 sentences.

Well, when they choose to publish the 3 sentences that most make him seem like the guy that shit in the wedding punch bowl, sure. Not to say he probably hasn't actually taken a few shits in various wedding punch bowls in his day.

I quoted exactly what he said

From a piece that already stripped the quote of essential context, prefaced by a statement that makes it sound like he "shit in the wedding punch bowl," followed up with suggesting that marriage is "bourgeois."

Also your ceaseless harping on the "celebrate or die" stance that you insist "gays" (who are those gays??) are pushing - you really need some examples to back up that allegation.

you

I mean, there is a major and obvious difference between "celebrate or die" and "I'd like to celebrate this victory, small though it is, and when you come around hanging your crepe as usual, I am going to tell you that you seem like an condescending, zealous killjoy."

I don't give a shit if you celebrate, but you clearly have an obsession with whether others do.

Thanks, Doctor. I hate to see errant political priorities based on narcissism. Also, fuck off.

Oh my god do you suck, Morbs.

He shat all over my Facebook page for linking to an editorial defining the equality situation, Eric.

T3d's resistance to the marriage movement makes political sense. Yours is born strictly from your inability to accept anyone else being happy.

...which is my initial confusion about the Facebook dumbing-down of the term "friends" turned out to be well founded.

So many diagnoses today!

My "resistance to the marriage movement" is pretty much the same as t3d's afaik.