I really hate saying anything bad about anybody, but I really *do* wish he'd shut up about this already. Yeah, Mr. Card. We get that you don't like gay marriage already. So may I recommend not marrying a man?
ETA: Also:
The first and greatest threat from court decisions in California and Massachusetts, giving legal recognition to "gay marriage," is that it marks the end of democracy in America.
These judges are making new law without any democratic process; in fact, their decisions are striking down laws enacted by majority vote.
What bugs me about arguments like this is that people's rights should never be decided by majority rule.
Aagh! Ellen! I've now read the whole thing and none of it makes a single lick of sense! Now he's talking about property rights and how marriage should be like property rights in that, um, I guess you own your husband or wife and as a man you have no responsibility to any children you may produce while cheating on your wife. But that's okay because societies that didn't follow this rule all died out.
I could respect this if he could at least make an argument that I could follow. But now he's just sounding unhinged.
It's a great idea, but I'd say go with Equality California rather than Utah because the fight for equality in UT is pretty much dead in the water and the CA struggle may, Goddess willing, be won with all our help.
Oh, I fully agree with you :) It's just that Utah has our own anti-gay political battles to be fought that are just as terrifying - none of these are about marriage equality, mind you. More about whether or not gay couples can adopt children (they haven't been able to here since 2000).
Utah may be the heart of mormonism, but I am afraid I have to admit that OSC lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, right down the road from here. (Feel free to donate to our local orgs, they're fighting a pretty good battle).
I joked to Craig Gidney last night about doing an anthology Pick a Card, Any Card, where contributors choose a OSC storyline and write a pastiche of it with gay themes, all money going to pro-gay marriage charities. Craig laughed.
I don't think the issue here is whether people's rights should be decided by majority rule; I think it's whether a majority in the past should be permitted to overrule a majority at present or in the future (as I believe is being done with the 2nd Amendment), or whether someone like Card should be permitted to pick and choose what constitutes a majority: if a majority in the US voted to allow gay marriage, would he then say that the majority of Christians worldwide were against it and it should therefore still be banned? I suspect he would. (Considering the history of Mormonism in the US, I'm surprised that Mormons aren't a little more cautious of endorsing the oppression of minorities.)
(FWIW, Card was a GoH at the Easter Natcon in New Zealand a few years back. This caused an exodus of fans from NZ to Australia for our Easter con, as a protest against Card's political views. I will, however, admit to still admiring his earlier works - say, pre-Xenocide.)
On topic - Card seems to think he understands law much more than he does. He was totally, completely wrong about the J.K. Rowling Lexicon case, and now he's completely wrong in what he's saying here. *sigh*
"Considering the history of Mormonism in the US, I'm surprised that Mormons aren't a little more cautious of endorsing the oppression of minorities."
Yeah, well, that history's kinda bullshit. The early Mormons, like the English Puritan settlers, weren't so much persecuted as driven out every time they tried to persecute others. You know why Smith and his brother got lynched, for instance? Because the LDS completely took over the political infrastructure of Nauvoo, Illinois. There remaining only one important piece of opposition, a local newspaper, Smith, as mayor, authorized the Mormon sheriff to get up a mob and burn the place to the ground. Which they did. That's why they were in jail, and that's why the local non-LDS citizenry, thoroughly sick of their crap, hauled them out of jail and murdered them.
The Mormons have a history of being very kind to American Indians in their migration to Utah, primarily because they thought they were actually Jews. Other than that, they're as oppressive as any other religion that gets any power, and they were really kind of egregious assholes to everybody around them, back at the beginning.
You might want to read about The Meadow Mountain Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre). Early Mormons were not friendly people.
Whenever I hear the gibberish about "majority vote", I keep thinking of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Texas, a group of whackjobs in the Nineties who felt that Texas illegally became a state without opening up the debate to public vote. (Just in case you weren't familiar with our history, Texas is the only US state that was previously a separate Republic, although we joined the Union because the Republic government had been printing a lot of money without anything to back it up. Much is made about how the Texas Constitution allows the option to secede, even though the statehood was contingent upon the US government paying off the Republic's debts, but all of that was rendered void once Texas joined the Confederate States of America in 1861.) What was left out of their homespun press materials was that one of the things they wanted back as a newly minted Republic was slavery, because the decision to ban slavery wasn't voted upon, either.
The rest of us didn't, I hasten to add: these were a gaggle of idiots who would have been kicked out of a Dragon*Con for being overly obnoxious and dorky, but they felt they had the law on their side. Ultimately, they went to jail, mostly because they were trying to sell Provisional Republic scrip as legal tender. The worst part was that they wanted a Waco-style standoff with the authorities, but if I remember correctly, they finally surrendered without bloodshed. (As the joke goes, they had to leave their trailer in order to get their welfare checks from the post office.)
Vermont was an independent Republic for a while as both New Hampshire and New York claimed it and thus politically us joining the Union was awkward. We had our own money and postage and all. Vermont celebrates two centennials - one for the nation and one for our joining up in 1791.
You know, if public education ever becomes subject to lemon laws, most of Texas's population is going to be recalled and scrapped. A semester of Texas history is mandatory for middle school graduation in the state, and that's where I heard about Texas being the only republic. Hmmm...would my old teacher be recalled, too?
Not only that: we here in Massachusetts have a legal system, set up by John Adams, which has appointed judges as a deliberate bulwark.
Unfettered democracy without a counterbalancing independent judiciary to protect the rights of minorities is called "mob rule". John Adams was aware of that, and set up a judiciary to deal with precisely this sort of situation.
Then, of course, there's the fact that Card is wrong about majority vote, at least here in Massachusetts. About 60% of us are in favor of gay marriage, and maybe 20, 25% just don't care one way or the other. And the other fifteen or twenty percent? Most of them aren't THAT upset by gay marriage, either. I mean, they're KINDA against it, but not enough to lose sleep over it.
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ellen_datlow) wrote2008-07-29 08:35 pm
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ETA: Also:
The first and greatest threat from court decisions in California and Massachusetts, giving legal recognition to "gay marriage," is that it marks the end of democracy in America.
These judges are making new law without any democratic process; in fact, their decisions are striking down laws enacted by majority vote.
What bugs me about arguments like this is that people's rights should never be decided by majority rule.
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I'm wondering if I could auction them off and donate all the proceeds to Equality California (though Equality Utah might piss him off even more).
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Aagh! Ellen! I've now read the whole thing and none of it makes a single lick of sense! Now he's talking about property rights and how marriage should be like property rights in that, um, I guess you own your husband or wife and as a man you have no responsibility to any children you may produce while cheating on your wife. But that's okay because societies that didn't follow this rule all died out.
I could respect this if he could at least make an argument that I could follow. But now he's just sounding unhinged.
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I joked to Craig Gidney last night about doing an anthology Pick a Card, Any Card, where contributors choose a OSC storyline and write a pastiche of it with gay themes, all money going to pro-gay marriage charities. Craig laughed.
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(FWIW, Card was a GoH at the Easter Natcon in New Zealand a few years back. This caused an exodus of fans from NZ to Australia for our Easter con, as a protest against Card's political views. I will, however, admit to still admiring his earlier works - say, pre-Xenocide.)
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On topic - Card seems to think he understands law much more than he does. He was totally, completely wrong about the J.K. Rowling Lexicon case, and now he's completely wrong in what he's saying here. *sigh*
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Yeah, well, that history's kinda bullshit. The early Mormons, like the English Puritan settlers, weren't so much persecuted as driven out every time they tried to persecute others. You know why Smith and his brother got lynched, for instance? Because the LDS completely took over the political infrastructure of Nauvoo, Illinois. There remaining only one important piece of opposition, a local newspaper, Smith, as mayor, authorized the Mormon sheriff to get up a mob and burn the place to the ground. Which they did. That's why they were in jail, and that's why the local non-LDS citizenry, thoroughly sick of their crap, hauled them out of jail and murdered them.
The Mormons have a history of being very kind to American Indians in their migration to Utah, primarily because they thought they were actually Jews. Other than that, they're as oppressive as any other religion that gets any power, and they were really kind of egregious assholes to everybody around them, back at the beginning.
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I'm currently do work with General Grant's thoughts about that, as he formed them, while serving in that war.
He was agin it -- the invasion of Mexican and slavery and the expansion of slavery, but he served in his line of command.
Love, C.
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And Hawaii was a nation on its own, both as a monarchy and after the Committee of Safety staged its coup as a republic
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Unfettered democracy without a counterbalancing independent judiciary to protect the rights of minorities is called "mob rule". John Adams was aware of that, and set up a judiciary to deal with precisely this sort of situation.
Then, of course, there's the fact that Card is wrong about majority vote, at least here in Massachusetts. About 60% of us are in favor of gay marriage, and maybe 20, 25% just don't care one way or the other. And the other fifteen or twenty percent? Most of them aren't THAT upset by gay marriage, either. I mean, they're KINDA against it, but not enough to lose sleep over it.