#LoveLoses, Again
Ah, I just saw someone who was really happy about the SCOTUS ruling retweet this from one of her fans. (In fairness, I should disclose she’s not a libertarian–in fact she actively mocks libertarians. But, I think even many pro-SCOTUS SSM ruling libertarians have similar views.)
Again, the standard disclaimer: Just because some people loudly pontificating on a given issue are hypocrites, doesn’t mean everybody on their side is hypocritical (let alone wrong). But I’m occasionally relaying stuff like this (like the earlier Dalmia piece) so you can understand why some of us were stunned at the reaction to the SCOTUS ruling.
In reference to the above graphic, in case you don’t get what my point is: The people who are now mocking a brother marrying a sister among those idiot Southerners were exactly the same ones who a month ago were so scandalized that evangelicals might look down upon two men getting married. So this had nothing to do with the principles they espoused (like individual autonomy, minding one’s own business, live and let live, and of course #LoveWins), but instead was simply, “My personal preferences regarding which marriages are fine and which are yucky are better than yours. By the way you’re a bigot and I hope someone burns down your pizza shop.”
I agree. This is clearly hypocrisy. And calling someone ‘white trash’ is racist.
And you are also correct, people use ‘individual’ or ‘bodily’ autonomy in their line of reasoning when it supports their cause, and mock it when it doesn’t.
There is nothing hypocritical about supporting gay marriage but opposing incest. White trash is not a racist insult. If you said someone was trash because they were white, that would be racist.
Oh, it’s Laugh. It’s been a while, buddy.
“There is nothing hypocritical about supporting gay marriage but opposing incest.”
Assuming consent, by what value system do you make the judgment that incest is wrong? The distinction is completely arbitrary without reference to a moral judgment. You just consider it to be icky. It triggers your moral judgment of disgust. The whole point is that the person who retweeted this image has no framework for determining what is a valid right and what is not. It comes down to an emotional reaction of outrage for a perceived injustice, or the lack of outrage due to disgust.
People have lost their jobs and faced lawsuits and public persecution for expressing unpopular moral judgments about gay marriage. Yet, here we have someone mocking people who want to pursue an alternative lifestyle because it’s icky. That, my jovial friend, is why this is an example of hypocrisy.
“White trash is not a racist insult.”
Wikipedia disagrees with you. Why not just call them “trash”? Why reference the color of their skin at all? I mean, by your argument, if someone says “black trash”, what they are really saying is, “This is a disgusting member of the human race. They are poor, of low morals, and possibly violent. Oh, and, not that it’s relevant, but they are black.”
I have recently read that, in popular moralizing today, the only true sin is hypocrisy and that there can be no forgiveness for that sin.
It’s because apart from hypocrisy and inconsistency, one cannot actually provide any demonstrable evidence that the moral principles that you start from are correct or better than anyone else’s. If another person’s moral code is internally consistent, you cannot really assail them except by putting on big shows of outrage.
Z: You summed it up much better than I could without re-reading the other post a few times. thanks.
Oh, and who are you to judge my inconsistent moral code, you hypocrite!
Exactly
Just the standard BS from moral relativists. No surprise at all.
Hahahaha…Well, I’m a moral nihilist, so to me it doesn’t matter if your moral code is inconsistent or not.
You, at least, believe there is a means by which to evaluate a person’s moral code. Callahan’s point, by contrast, is that there is no means to do so. If that’s not nihilism, I don’t know what is.
I think Gene was making a joke. Gene is many things, but he’s not a nihilist.
I think he was putting on a ‘big show of outrage’ as a joke.
A moral nihilist who “conveniently” and totally not coincidentally not only strives to thonk logically, but tacitly advocates for the universal norm that we ought to think logically as well, for example in accordance with the law of non-contradiction implied in his pronouncement that he is a moral nihilist, A, and not a non-moral nihilist, non-A.
The Bailey: Moral nihilism rules bitchez!! You and your faith based moral superstititons! You all ought to think what I know to be the truth! That morality is an illusion!
The Motte: Oh you took what I said as depending on a moral code? Take what I say any way you want, I am not advocating anything as a morality.
I have no idea what ‘Bailey’ and ‘Motte’ are, but it seems you are attempting to find some type of internal inconsistency in what I said. How am I saying that one ‘ought to’ think that moral nihilism is true? If I say ‘the sky is blue’, am I saying that everyone ‘ought to’ see the sky as blue, or am I just stating the fact that the sky is blue? And if I want you to believe that the sky is blue, would you automatically assume it was for some type of moral reason?
We all do and say things based on many different types of motivations, they are not necessarily moral in nature.
Z, I suggest you read this blog post for context:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-words-words-words/
It’s a great blog in general, although by the author’ own advice you should take care that you’re not reading it just to confirm your own biases.
@Keshav:
Yes, I see what Motte and Bailey mean. That is Major Freedom’s interpretation of my intentions based on the above arguments. I never changed positions at all from the Bailey to the Motte at all during the conversation above. My reason for talking about consistency is not because I think one ought to follow logic, or that one becomes a ‘bad person’ if one doesn’t. I just don’t like people who get too big for their britches, which includes the author of the Confederate Flag picture Dr. Murphy posted in the original post. And to take them down, I am only pointing out they are violating a line of reasoning they claimed held true in prior arguments.
@Keshav:
By the way, the author of that blog post has ridiculous amounts of patience. I can’t believe he went step by step to explain hypocrisy that anyone with an IQ above 80 should be able to understand in a paragraph or two.
“By the way, the author of that blog post has ridiculous amounts of patience. I can’t believe he went step by step to explain hypocrisy that anyone with an IQ above 80 should be able to understand in a paragraph or two.” Z, I hope you’re reading the post in the spirit of dispassionately analyzing an argument, rather than using it to bolster a negative view you have about the Left.
I suggest you also read this post, so you can keep some perspective:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
@Keshav:
Ah, I see. I think if someone else had written that article maybe my statement would be more accurate, but for him that type of thoroughness seems to be just his way of analyzing every issue, not just that one article.
Major_Freedom, why can’t someone think “I prefer to think logically and I prefer to try to believe only true things”, without tacitly advocating that it should be a universal norm?
The thing about being a hypocrite is that you can still condemn hypocrisy.
#PoliticsIsNotAboutPolicy
I also wrote a defense of the Confederate flag against some charges against it here:
http://againstjebelallawz.wordpress.com/2015/07/11/the-confederate-flag/
Well done!
Why does it have to be defended? It’s not an official flag therefore it has no right to be flown a on a public building? You’d have more right to reclaim the good name of the swastika since it has greater historical precedence.
Have I said it needs to float from a public building? Are you talking to me or Harding? He wrote the article I just think he did a good job.
To answer your question with a counter-question: Why does it have to be attacked?
One can only hope that all the people retweeting this get sued by some lovely Southern brother and sister couple who then go on to force the lot of them to serve drinks at their confederate themed wedding. Justice.
But then brother and sister Southern couples don’t have lobbyists and political backers. This never really was about equality, we all get that.
Under AnCap, one is free to make any contract one wants. However, it seems to me that one’s contract is always going to have to pass the “yucky” factor if one expects anyone else to recognize it or help enforce it. Or sell you water.
Flying the Confederate flag means you hate being invaded and conquered by a neighoring country.
Do you think two unrelated men marrying is the same as siblings marrying? sincerely? those who support gay marriage do believe in those liberal values, but those arent the only arguments marshaled.
What argument would they use to explain why two brothers or two sisters can’t be married to one another?
I’d really like to hear from Gabby, but my guess is that they’d argue something such as “Incest generally produces children with abnormalities.” Of course, the obvious counterargument would be “Why do they have to have children? Isn’t all that matters the love they have for each other?” After all, most of the pro-gay marriage folks have been arguing against procreation being the key function of marriage.
That’s likely what they would say, but I call bullshit. If that was really the reason, they’d be against all mothers over the age of 35 or 40 becoming pregnant and carrying their children to term.
@bharat.
they dont have to have sex, but the point of marriage is, whatever they do is their business.
in this case, their private business are likely to create children with abnormalities, which is why cultural norms have risen to prevent this.
Like I said, if you are worried about children with abnormalities, you would ban all mothers over a certain age, like 35 or 40 from giving birth to children.
So would you be in favor of such [incestual] marriages if the two promised not to have children and use proper protection during sex?
Would you also be in favor of bestial marriages since no offspring (and therefore no abnormal offspring) are produced?
What makes you think married people have sex?
Good one Tel. “Check your premises!”
Check your privilege too, Bob. Your white male Southerner Christian glasses wearing bald privilege. Go on, we’re all waiting…
@Z
there are biological and sociological reasons.
No there aren’t. I’m willing to bet you don’t apply those same principles across the board.
“there are biological and sociological reasons.”
You could argue against SSM using those very reasons.
“Do you think two unrelated men marrying is the same as siblings marrying?”
Looks like Dr. Murphy’s point of the post went entirely over your head.
whats the point, if not libertarians would use the same principles (enumerated above) to justify marrying your sibling as one would to justify gay marriage.
is this not the point? the hypocrisy of supporting one but deriding the other?
There was this rumor going around about constitutional protection of equality for all people.
Don’t remember that being qualified by a requirement those people needed to all be “the same”.
You should read the last paragraph of articles. Sometimes there’s important stuff in there.
If marriage cannot be defined by an appeal to tradition then anything goes because it is meaningless. There are no coherent arguments for denying the rightfulness of brother sister, mother daughter, or whatever marriages you can think of with out appealing to some traditionalist definition of marriage which is necessarily incoherent because marriage is not rooted in tradition. All that has changed is that there are now two privileged groups instead of one who will fight tenaciously to defend their special privileges from people who are just as deserving as they are.
FTFY:
Do you think [things that are fine are] the same as [things that are yucky]? sincerely? those who support [things that are fine] do believe in those liberal values [when it supports their goals], but [they switch tactics when denouncing things that are yucky].
my original question was i didnt know what bob thinks of other (non-libertarian) arguments against sibling marriage.
i agree with his idea that its hypocritical, but ONLY if the libertarian arguments are the SOLE arguments you have for SSM.
so, is this true? what is the status of non-libertarian arguments for bob? do they exist, but are wrong? do they exist, but as a libertarian, none of them matter? which is it?
You should probably list a few of these arguments if you want people to evaluate them. Right now you are asking Bob to come up with those arguments himself, for the purpose of refuting them.
@dean
the biological and sociological arguments. or whatever arguments that are different from the libertarian arguments bob cites above.
i’m not asking to debate these other arguments. i’m just wondering if he has thought about these other arguments that say sibling marriage is bad, which makes it different from SSM.
if these other arguments have merit (whatever they are), is it still hypocritcal to support ssm but not support sibling marriage?
GabbyD wrote:
if these other arguments have merit (whatever they are), is it still hypocritcal to support ssm but not support sibling marriage?
Yes, if the official reasons you gave for why you support SSM would also support sibling marriage. And furthermore if you denounced opponents of SSM because they do things that you yourself do, in reference to sibling marriage.
“Yes, if the official reasons you gave for why you support SSM would also support sibling marriage”
really? isnt that the opposite of the meaning of the word hypocritical?
hypocritical means interpreting principles in such a way that is different for two different instances that are otherwise similar, belying the very principles you say you hold.
if there are meritorious arguments agains sibling marriage dont apply to SSM, these are not “otherwise similar”, and therefore not hypocritical to say support one and not the other.
the arguments of “merit”, as i posited above, refer to arguments AGAINST sibling marriage but not directly applicable, or even supportive of SSM.
GabbyD I don’t understand why we’re having such difficulty on this. You said “hypocritical means interpreting principles in such a way that is different for two different instances that are otherwise similar, belying the very principles you say you hold.”
Right, so if someone supports SSM by saying, “If two people love each other and consent, then it is pure irrational bigotry to say they can’t get married,”
and then a month later you say, “Ha ha those white trash southerners are the kind that would want to marry their sister,”
then yes that is obviously hypocritical.
@GabbyD
That is not the opposite of what ‘hypocritical’ means, that is the very definition of what it means. If the reasoning for allowing gay marriage applies to sibling marriage, but you only choose to apply it in one case and not the other, that is hypocritical.
And I don’t believe there are any consistent reasons to deny sibling marriage if you allow same sex marriage. I’m sure people have reasons for not allowing two people to get married, but it wouldn’t be any difference between same sex and sibling marriages. Rather, someone might have an argument for not allowing two people to get married that would apply to a certain percentage of sibling marriage and a similar percentage of gay or straight marriages.
Are you talking about some sort of Christian arguments that might exist against sibling marriage or liberal arguments that might exist?
GabbyD: If you’re asking, “Bob, do you think it’s possible for someone to coherently support a secular SSM but to still oppose sibling marriage,” then yes of course I think that’s possible. I know plenty of people with that position.
That’s not what I’m talking about in this post. I’m talking about people who absolutely flipped out about the “hate-filled bigots” who would inexplicably go out of their way to deny a voluntary couple the right to follow their hearts and marry, and then a month later mock “white trash” brothers and sisters who might want to marry (which of course is not even a real thing in the grand scheme).
oh, i was reacting to:”In reference to the above graphic, in case you don’t get what my point is: The people who are now mocking a brother marrying a sister among those idiot Southerners were exactly the same ones who a month ago were so scandalized that evangelicals might look down upon two men getting married. ”
in this quote, there are people who dislike sibling marriage, yet they support SSM (coz they were so scandalized that some people do NOT support SSM).
but in your clarification above, its different. so i guess its settled.
Yeehaw!