Who Is IOZ?: Separate but Equal

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Separate but Equal

To be clear, Bond has used this line several times, and when he says "equality," he isn't talking about the right to vote, the right to eat at a public restaurant, the right to attend an integrated school or the right to a fair trial. He is talking about the right to change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

-Taylor Harris

Proposition: from Brown through Loving, the Civil Rights movement changed the definition of equality.

32 comments:

NutellaonToast said...: You know, it still pisses me off that the women's suffrage movement changed the definition of voting, too.; 12:32 PM
Anonymous said...: It's like there's a specific want-ad somewhere to keep these up and comers filling the hoppers.... Armstrong Williams, John McWhorter, and now Taylor Williams.

Wanted: black man, must play the self-righteous half-victim card to hate on whites, but only the liberals, then attack a black man who's "gone too far" all with the smug prose of a fully reigned-in aspirant to the Wash. Post class; 12:45 PM
former said...: Not to mention, the Civil Rights movement also changed the definition of marriage to include interracial couples.; 1:28 PM
Cüneyt said...: I know, Nutella! Just like Andrew Jackson's expansion of suffrage changed the definition of a republic from what it was supposed to be to what it is, wretchedly, today.

Personally, I blame the founders of this country, who changed the definition of inheritance by banning primogeniture. It was all downhill from there.; 2:02 PM
TGGP said...: I thought Andrew Jackson got elected because of the expansion of suffrage (which I do not view as a positive development, just look at the declining quality of our elected officials). John Quincy Adams was actually the first president elected when all free white male citizens could vote regardless of property (with the exception of six states).

I preserved John T. Kennedy's anarchist take on the marriage issue here.; 3:33 PM
Enron said...: How nice to use DuBois' double consciousness to justify continued inequality.; 6:22 PM
A Squirrel said...: Up next at Wapo, Chris Hitchens explains why religious freedom, so vital with respect to atheists, should not apply to muslims.

Shit, I get that all of these extensions of rights are just a means to co-opt groups into the patriarchy, or whatever. It doesn't make that dumb bigot any easier to read.

"I'm not free if I'm just allowed to hate you, or speak freely of my hatred for you. I am only free if my hatred is codified into law. Also, W.E.B. DuBois. Q.E.D., mutherfuckers!"; 7:02 PM
Enron said...: As an aside, the Chinamen stimulated Brooksblob's inferiority complex again:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/western-men-are-doomed/?ex=1274677200&en=6733510e1351b235&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=OP-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M125-ROS-1109-PH&WT.mc_ev=click; 9:35 PM
Bluemole said...: I will try to un-doom myself by taking all my cash and parking my butt on a beach in Thailand.

BTW, Hitchens is dumber than a bag of hair.; 6:38 AM
Anonymous said...: Does the female form make you uncomfortable, Nutella?; 8:37 AM
NutellaonToast said...: I need my fucking Johnson!; 11:02 AM
IOZ said...: Nobody's going to cut your dick off. Not if I have anything to say about it.; 12:10 PM
Inkberrow said...: That pesky equaltreatment/special treatment conundrum! Form follows elective function in modern civil rights analyses, which is why men should receive the option to take pregnancy leave and homosexuals the option to get married. And Harris will be fine once he realizes that Bond, like DuBois, is a (cultural) Marxist first and a black man second.; 2:15 PM
zencomix said...: ...according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.]; 4:21 PM
Cüneyt said...: I think Inkberrow is making a couple of assumptions. First, that paternity leave and gay marriage are equivalent and, second, that we'll find paternity leave so laughable that the connection between it and gay marriage is seen as one that is denigrating.

That said, I don't feel the equation's fair, because there is nothing that keeps gays from marrying (except for law, or better judgment) in the same way that keeps men from becoming pregnant. Of course, the latter is what you play up, but you do so while ignoring the very real needs and challenges that fathers undergo after the birth of a child. There's nothing laughable about paternity leave or gay marriage, aside from what's already laughable about parenthood and marriage.; 7:08 PM
scythia said...: There's nothing laughable about paternity leave

Hey, that salt isn't gonna mine itself!

Also, if people started taking time off work for pointless things like raising children, where would we possibly find the labor to replace them?; 10:47 PM
The Promiscuous Reader said...: I really appreciate Taylor Harris's concern for the sensibilities of religious believers. I'm sure he feels exactly the same way about the devout Christians who opposed the Civil Rights Movement because of their sincere, scripture-based conviction that God intended the races to be separate. Yet these fine people were demonized as "racists," "bigots," "rednecks," and the like. And the definition of American was changed from white to any damn color you please. You can see the decline since then. It may be too late to repair the damage now, but at least we can draw a line in the sand on sodomitical marriage and say, "No pasaran!"

But ... just a thought. Didn't the trouble really start when the Christians forcibly changed the definition of religion in the Roman Empire from polytheism to monotheism? And probably at about the same time, changed the definition of marriage from polygamous to monogamous? Or maybe it was when the Phoenicians changed the definition of writing from syllabic or hieroglyphic to alphabetic, thus allowing the common people to achieve literacy more easily? You can see how the quality of literary production has dropped since then.

Or maybe it was when the first mitosis changed the definition of life from one-celled to many-celled?; 10:59 PM
Inkberrow said...: Cuneyt---

Believe it or not, you're mistaken. Necessary unnecessary personal aside: I myself believe homosexuals should have full-fledged marriage rights, and would vote accordingly. I don't believe that result is constitutionally mandated, however, for reasons which have been discussed here previously.

I was tongue in cheek, but only to point up the conceptual difficulties--the "conundrum"---in assessing equality between unequals. Not unequal in value, as with old "separate but equal" rationalizations, but unequal as in "different but equal". Pregnancy is the easiest example of inexorable biological differences necessitating "unequal" roads to "equality".; 10:12 AM
Inkberrow said...: Bluemole---

If Hitchens is "dumb", that makes you a lichen.; 10:44 AM
Cüneyt said...: But it's not just pregnancy. It's the process of very early parenthood. You reduce the need, and the occasion, to but one characteristic of it, and one particular avenue to it: pregnancy. Men do not get pregnancy leave, and many women don't either. Paternity leave, and parental leave as a whole, is a separate concept, one which you, ahem, redefine in order to make your case.

And part of this is your coy extension of "equality" to absurd lengths, rather than talk about equal access, which has its dilemmas, I grant, but which is also a thing that's hardly absurd. I am not asking for personal access to handicapped parking, as I am a mostly able person. That is a common sense distinction. But relabeling parental leave as "pregnancy leave" while ignoring that non-bearing parents may also have responsibilities to attend to in the first week of life? I'm looking for a conclusion, and I have a feeling I know where you're going with this, but I have to say, Inkberrow, this logic doesn't follow. Every one of your comparisons and equations have been faulty.; 10:49 AM
Anonymous said...: People have a lot of trouble understanding how profoundly the definition of "property" was changed in the US in 1863. Everything since has more or less followed from that change, and if people don't understand any given change coming down the pike, it's because they haven't wrapped their heads around the fact that the entire Anglo-American legal tradition in which we still exist was crafted with the pre-1863 definition in place.; 3:01 PM
Inkberrow said...: Cuneyt---

I hate to seem Coy once again, but I'm not sure there can be a "paternity" leave without some pregnancy or another as the immediate auspices.

Bottom line---folks trade literal equality (form) for practical equality (function) as rhetorical exigency dictates, including in court applying the constitution. Point is it's ALL functional, though imposed de jure. Professional women, e.g., in order to maintain career ambitions on an equal footing, must not be penalized for periodic child-birth and child-rearing sabbaticals and flex-time needs which go well beyond any "paternity" leave. Different, but equal.; 3:43 PM
Cüneyt said...: I might be wrong about what exactly you're saying here, Inkberrow:

"That pesky equaltreatment/special treatment conundrum! Form follows elective function in modern civil rights analyses, which is why men should receive the option to take pregnancy leave and homosexuals the option to get married."

You see, it seemed like to me that you were saying that men should get pregnancy leave because women do, just to be equal for equality's sake. Which, as I said, is a popular conservative reductio ad absurdum.

Of course, if you actually were arguing such a line (the sighted get eye glasses, the men "pregnancy leave", the homosexuals marriage, the fully-limbed complete coverage for prosthetics, harhar!), it's a little silly, because men and women may indeed have separate needs, but that does not mean that they do not, separately, each have parental needs. Even a masculinist would see what I am saying, that it is not so much as men getting "pregnancy leave" as you make this all to be, but men getting leave for the sake of family needs, because we have families too.

Again Inkberrow, the inconsistency or conundrum you insist is present in the extension of rights and compassionate benefits may well exist (and I know it exists), but it does not exist where you and other conservatives would insist it lies. I support paternity leave because of fathers' need to balance family and business, just as I support adoption leave for couples who have adopted, just as I support maternity leave for new mothers and mothers-to-be. It is not about equality, per se, so much as responding to the realities experience by each. E pluribus.

Do wheelchair ramps confound you too?; 5:50 PM
TGGP said...: Promiscuous Reader:
The individual cells that make up our bodies are still alive, and the majority of organisms are single-celled. Multicellular lifeforms are just a particular organization. Hive organisms of eusocial animals (freqently haplodiploid) are a scaled up analogy.; 7:45 PM
TGGP said...: Cuneyt:
How about freebasing leave, for those without families who would simply like to spend time getting high and not going to work? Since crotchfruit may actually be the cause of negative externalities, a case could be made it's just as deserving.; 7:50 PM
Ruling Classy said...: You're killing your father, Cüneyt!; 8:11 PM
Cüneyt said...: TGGP: Better still.; 8:30 PM
The Promiscuous Reader said...: TGGP: That's what the militant recruiting multicellular organisms would like you to believe: that they're really no different from one-celled organisms, multicellularism is an "alternative lifestyle" no different from any other.; 11:20 PM
Anonymous said...: Re: Paternal leave

As many other government attempts to standardisation of work schedule - that somehow always end up benefiting corporations - this is just another poisoned fruity gub'mint offering.

The Christians; 11:01 AM
Anonymous said...: is porn the only winner during credit crunch?

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interracialsex; 10:59 AM
Anonymous said...: How do you think credit crunch affected porn?

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killergram; 11:48 AM
Anonymous said...: does anyone think porn is the only business still thriving during the credit cruch? I think many folks seek refuge in buying and wanking porn during the crunch

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kelly divine; 1:59 AM

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Separate but Equal

32 comments:

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