So, as I noted, Michael Arrington blocked me or defriended me or whatever on Facebook, so I can't even view his public page now (!).
But through the good offices of a friend, I got a look at how he had a) not deleted my comment as I had thought but was b) admonishing me in a follow-up comment -- that now I couldn't even see, let alone answer. What a douche!
Truly, that's all you can say about such people who have to swagger around on the Internet in that fashion, prevailing by using the geeks tools just like they made them deliberately, able to mute, ban, delete,disappear, throw down the memory hole, and prevail. Creepy!
So here's my comment and his, and I will reply at least here on my blog!
Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick The Boy Scouts do not accept gays. This is freedom of association and freedom of speech, and it is protected not only by the Constitution, but now by a Supreme Court ruling when someone tried to challenge it. It's the same freedom you would want for any LGBT organization. So the answer is, leave the Boy Scouts, and make new scouts for our time. And if the scouts meet in your school or church basement, then change your school or church if you don't like the scouts' policies. End of story. Enough of this bullying of people to change their views.
Michael Arrington Catherine - discriminating against someone's sexual orientation is no different and no less harmful to society than discriminating based on sex or race. Too many people still think gays are monsters, the only way to fix that is to force change. This is one of the few areas where I diverge from classical libertarian thinking. If we had done things your way in the past there'd still be segregation in pockets of America. That's not a country I want to live in.
Um, number one, I don't think gays are monsters, and I think they deserve equal rights, marriage rights, and freedom from discrimination.
But the legal standards for private groups versus the government or state aren't quite the same when it comes to discrimination. To be sure, some states have evolved discrimination rules that apply to gays.
Yet if you read the history of the jurisprudence on this, and the news, you'll have to concede that the courts have not favored Arrington's notion -- and not because judges think gays are "monsters".
It's just that they have to protect freedom of association and freedom of speech for all.
Now, if this was a case of black children being barred from the Boy Scouts meeting in their local school or church, wouldn't the law and the courts do something? Oh, they likely would. Now what if the Boy Scouts didn't allow girls? But they don't. For girls, there is Girl Scouts. No one has ever successfully claimed, in or out of court, that the Boy Scouts must take girls as members. They get to chose what kind of membership they wish. That's freedom of association.
But isn't keeping out gays like keeping out blacks?
No, because a) a group has the right to pick its members on the basis of its mission b) if it barred people only on the basis of the colour of their skin, there would be no justification for it c) and the real issue for gays, as they explain after much deliberation, is the profession of the status of being gay, not the inherency of gayness itself.
That is, the Boy Scouts do no like the fact that the gay rights movement raises -- and vocalizes within the organization -- the kind of sex they have or would like to have, or with whom.
This flies against the organization's other goals, which are to raise boys into men who are brave, trustworthy, etc. but also clean livers. They do not want sex to be part of that raising. And that seems appropriate for the raising of children. These are minors, after all. What those not backing gay rights most object to, culturally and politically, is the in-your-face nature of gays openly discussing their sexual preferences in a setting where they don't want sex and sexual preferences to be discussed or be a factor at all.
That nuance is one that goes over many debaters' heads (or is rejected flatly with the usual fuck-you hedonists' aggressiveness), but it's worth contemplating. A gay rights advocate could say that what gays strive for is to be "normal," that is, to be accepted for who and what they are without being seen as "deviants". The notion of "cleanliness" that leaves them out is offensive. The Boy Scout advocate might say it isn't that the notion leaves them out; it leaves out those who feel the necessity to express sexual issues, including their preferences.
Now, the gay rights advocate might snort and say that such Puritanism went out with the 1950s and it's old-fashioned to pretend that even teenagers aren't sexual beings or even experimenting with sex. Fine, the Boy Scouts might say, but their goal is not to assist teens in experimenting with sex, but to have them focus on other issues. And there's something to be said for this. They are minors, after all.
It's also helpful to recall that it isn't only Baptists or Catholics or Muslims who might not like sex and sexual preferences to be a topic in child-raising, especially in liberal forms of expression, but oh, any Buddhist or other spiritual practitioner who would have some notion of restraining the sex impulse and having it in its place in life, and developing other aspects of the spirit that are contemplating higher things. People might disagree what is high and low, but if it isn't appropriate to sit in math class in high school and discuss sex and one's preferences for whom to have sex with and how, why would it be in the Boy Scouts? It wouldn't. So if anything, it might be that people wish the Boy Scouts would be a setting with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy merely to be less distracting.
But there's no question, reading their mandate and positions, that the Boy Scout leadership think that it is not part of the education of a boy to allow him to manifest himself as gay -- that being a good and wholesome man means he cannot practice homosexuality. So that's when you say -- "OK, that's your idea, not mine, I'm out of here" -- and you make a different scouts. Perhaps in time this might change, but given that it *hasn't* changed in all this time despite a barrage of lawsuits for years lets me know that it won't likely -- and on principle. And I don't see anything wrong with that. The comments of those supporting the Boy Scouts are made by older people and people in more conservative communities. Eventually, it will die out or change. Our rights should not die out or be diminished on that pathway.
And Boy Scouts, after all, isn't a school or workplace. It's just a club. A club to learn word-working or how to help an old lady cross the street. These are optional activities, and they don't have to happen in Boy Scouts, they could be taught anywhere in other settings, other ways. It's precisely due to its optional notion that judges appear to rule that it can have its way. Otherwise, the state would be telling people what to do in their spare time, and how to raise their children.
I don't want to live in a country where people cannot form associations freely in their free time, do what they want within the law, and invite who they want as members. If you can't have that freedom of speech and freedom of association, you can't have democracy -- real democracy. If the state can tell you what is politically correct, what next?
And what's particularly annoying about this interchange is the sanctimoniousness of Arrington here. He doesn't convince me, he merely mutes and blocks me. "You cannot convince a man by silencing him." He does a star turn with his buds looking like he is Mr. Not-A-Libertarian On This Yet Holier-than-Thou that is willing to trample on some rights for some greater freedom (ostensibly), but there's no second round in the debate.
Complaints to the affect that this is his "living room" and he can "do what he wants" don't wash with me. He's not just some guy. He's a millionaire selling technology through his blogs and social media. Today he's hawking this lifestyle meme that he thinks is cool and gives him street cred, but it's only to hawk some California start-up he's investing in better the next day. Meh. And people like this *are* the journalists and the media now. Fox TV, which the left always fearfully hates on, has only a lousy two million viewers. Huffington Post, which is part of AOL which bought out TechCrunch, the online tech blog Arrington founded and sold, has more than 39 million people a month visiting.
Arrington thinks he is exercising "leadership" and that in order to end bigotry you have to take "unpopular" positions. Bullshit. What's unpopular in social media with its tens of millions these days are the minority of people who are pointing out that free speech and civil rights mean you cannot dictate political correctness. And again, I can only repeat that the way to equality and rights cannot be found through suppressing other people's rights.
Discrimination based on sexual orientation is different in the eyes of many people, because even if it is inherent (and not all accept that it is), unlike skin colour or gender, it is not visible unless you chose to make it so. That is a special feature of this issue that does mean that the Boy Scouts feel justified in doubling down -- it is the articulation of the issue, not the inherency that they do not want in members.
And yes, I get the counter-argument, that gay people shouldn't have to feel that they must "watch" it or "not be uppity" as was said of blacks -- we all know people can be beaten merely for looking effeminate or butch even if they aren't gay in fact. And that's all true. But the distinction still does matter. You can't get by without school or work. You can get by without the Boy Scouts, and given the purpose of the organization, you can get buy without discussing your sex preferences at the Boy Scouts.
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