A Facebook friend posted “GOP reintroduces bill pitting ‘religious freedom’ against gay marriage”, adding the following:
I realized today that in future I should call this kind of discriminatory justification “Jane Crow”.
Not providing a marriage license? Won’t make a cake? Oh, I see: you support Jane Crow laws. Spread the word.
(As far as I know, he identifies as a cisgender heterosexual male living in a multi-million dollar house in Silicon Valley. So I think that his passion for LGBTQIA+ issues rather than, e.g., housing the homeless, is “yes” evidence for “Is LGBTQIA the most popular social justice cause because it does not require giving money?”)
I was in China at the time that he posted this. Although I agreed that having to find a non-Christian wedding cake supplier might be burdensome for an American, it occurred to me that I was surrounded by people for whom the adoption of rainbow flag religion would be a significant change.
If you want to be a warrior for this cause, you could come over here to China and liberate 1.4 billion people from the tyranny of mixed-sex marriage (link to “China’s parliament rules out allowing same-sex marriage”). Also, I have not seen a single all-gender restroom since landing in Shanghai. So you could pack a suitcase with rainbow flags and introduce the whole religion here! Note that it is illegal to be a single parent here and, since, same-sex marriage is not available, that means that a same-sex couple cannot reproduce (unless wealthy enough to pay for a child’s education, health care, etc. privately).
Why not copy the Gates Foundation with its “All Lives Have Equal Value” mantra? There are people in the U.S. who receive suboptimal health care, but the Gates Foundation folks concluded that, if all lives have equal value, the same amount of dollars and effort would go a lot farther in Africa. If “All LGBTQIA+ Lives Have Equal Value,” then wouldn’t it make sense to concentrate one’s lobbying in a country where same-sex marriage is not available at all, rather than one where same-sex marriage might entail some hassle?
A high-calorie hate parade in a Suzhou cake shop:
A righteous friend (another cisgender heterosexual male, I think) answered in the negative:
sadly, I think in this case we need to fight it here to keep our own house safe. then we can go deal with other nations. I am unhappy to say that, but it would be a shame to be off fighting for right in a foreign land, and then suddenly discover that you are no longer welcome back home….
I poked at him:
in the US, it seems that at worst a same-sex couple might have to patronize a cake shop run by the righteous. In China, the unhappy couple wouldn’t be able to get married at all (and if they traveled to Massachusetts on the spectacular Hainan Airlines for $650 round trip, as I just did, their MA marriage wouldn’t be recognized back home I don’t think). The Gates Foundation realized that the greatest need was overseas. Why isn’t the same true for the rainbow flag evangelists?
He responded:
a persons ability to BE an evangelist, and work a foreign country on issues like this, is 100% dependent upon that person having a strong place to stand in their home nation. the fastest way for the Chinese (or whomever) to sabotage the ability of americans to work in China on this (or any issue) is to attack them in the US, and I do not know if we get to blame China for the current difficulties here in the US, but those difficulties are certainly happening.
Me (jetlag is a great motivation to prod the Facebook righteous!):
couldn’t you make the same argument for the Gates Foundation then? Until every American has perfect health care, they shouldn’t be trying to improve things for the world’s poorest? (separately, do you truly think the “difficulties” faced by an American same-sex couple are in any way comparable to the challenges overseas? In the US, a same-sex couple in which neither adult works can have four children, live in public housing, be on Medicaid (MassHealth here), and shop with food stamps (SNAP/EBT). In all 5 states (subject to public housing waiting lists) they can live an entirely taxpayer-funded same sex lifestyle, regardless of whether this proposed bill passes.)
Him:
if someone was threatening the gates foundation with the ability to exist, then yes, absolutely. but we all know that is not the case, they are a very richly endowed and powerful operation, so they do not have this problem.
Me:
I didn’t realize that this bill proposed the extermination of same-sex couples and their children. In that case, it is brave of opponents to take a stand against the US military and police state! (Like the NYT and CNN here in China. They bravely cover the crimes of Donald Trump, but don’t say anything about Hong Kong. Once Trump is fully impeached they will have a sufficient base of virtue to say something on the topic of Hong Kong.)
Him:
I do NOT think that the problems of same sex couples in other nations are the same as those in the US. In some countries, they would simply be executed. But, my point is not at all about making such a measurement of one vs. the other. I was pointing out that the ability of a US person to take the fight to other nations is very much based upon their ability to be at least somewhat secure in their selves here in the US.
Me:
like NYT/CNN! When the last Republican dies of old age or moves to Mexico (Canada having already been claimed by the Trump-resisting Democrats), they will then feel secure enough to cover events in Hong Kong in their China-distributed content.
Despite this learned exchange, the question in my mind remains live. Instead of trying to ferret out the last pockets of resistance to rainbow flagism in the U.S., why wouldn’t it make sense for LGBTQIA+ warriors to proselytize to the large populations worldwide that have never heard the Good News?
(Separately, I think it would be interesting to go to China with a male friend and go into a series of cake shops asking for an “Adam and Steve” themed cake for our upcoming nuptials. Ideally, get it all on video!)
Related:
- “The Struggle for Gay Rights Is Over” (Atlantic): For those born into a form of adversity, sometimes the hardest thing to do is admitting that they’ve won. … Despite evident progress, however, many gay-rights activists are hesitant to exult in their victories. To listen to some movement grandees is to think that the situation has actually never been worse. … If you had told gay activists 10 or even five years ago that their energies would center upon campaigns related to various foods—forcing pious pastry chefs to make cakes and boycotting Chick-Fil-A, or “hate chicken,” because its Christian owner has donated money to efforts opposing same-sex marriage—most would have considered their missions complete.
The battle was already lost in 2003. Go to 22:40.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRkhBav4ekA
“The court today pretends that we need not fear judicial imposition of homosexual marriage, as has recently occured in Canada. Do not believe it. Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of Constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions.”
I’m not up on the latest law that forces a private business owner to sell products to customers regardless of whether it violates their faith and those people are warned in advance that they need to shop elsewhere, but it’s a lost cause.
Moderator: “A decade from now will the supreme court have mandated homosexual marriage?”
Bork: “I think it’s less than a decade.”
As far as working outside the United States goes, the first step is to make sure that the world has changed so irreversibly here in the US that it becomes an incontrovertible element of U.S. policy abroad – by the government. In the military, the State Department, and in every other branch of the U.S. government that deals with foreign countries.
H.R. 5 – Equality Act. Passed the House on May 17, 2019. Probably won’t go through this Senate but will the next Senate. It will be the law of the land.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5/text
“(3) Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (referred to as “LGBTQ”) people commonly experience discrimination in securing access to public accommodations—including restaurants, senior centers, stores, places of or establishments that provide entertainment, health care facilities, shelters, government offices, youth service providers including adoption and foster care providers, and transportation. Forms of discrimination include the exclusion and denial of entry, unequal or unfair treatment, harassment, and violence. This discrimination prevents the full participation of LGBTQ people in society and disrupts the free flow of commerce.”
Read the rest. I don’t expect the activists to start moving to foreign countries just yet, but say, around 2022-2023 there may not be the need. This is an international movement, and they’re not going to try to mess with China or Iran, places like that are too valuable in the larger struggle against the oppressive United States geopolitically to invite much activism (not to mention you’ll get shot.)
As we’ve seen, the final steps in completing the society wide transformation aren’t Chick-fil-A, Catholic (or other) organizations, or cake shops. It’s curriculum in all the public schools of the land, and that battle is won by activists in towns where they ram the changes through even in the face of overwhelming protest. The next thing that will happen is that home schooling is going to be disallowed unless it contains an approved LBGTQIA curricular component. All the books will need to be rewritten, and from there it will also ramify into individual town elections and boards at every level. That’s where the money and energy are going, Philip. Finally, the rights of parents to decide to intervene to stop children who want to change their genders are going to be *REMOVED*. The State will simply say that if your child wants to switch genders and you won’t let them, you are defacto an abusive parent, they will step in and remove your child from your custody. Period the end.
And I’m violating my own rule here but here goes: They don’t care about foreign countries because this is where the momentum is at the moment. You don’t go and start another front in a war until you’ve won the battle completely where it began. It’s just that simple.
Gay marriage may or may not be a good policy but it is not a constitutional right in any reasonable reading of the US Constitution– the Supreme Court overstepped its authority in deciding this was required, not permitted but required, by the constitution so the more resistance the better to the Court’s usurpation of the rights of the people to decide what is and isn’t good policy.
I knew that in 2003, but here we are. Please see what I said in the link above at 22:40 onward. It’s very difficult to talk to you from beyond the grave but I’m giving it good try today. I died almost exactly 7 years ago in Arlington Virginia and it’s taken this long to figure out this afterworld internet thing.
Many people didn’t like my book when it came out, either, but I was right. You can’t tell people what they don’t want to hear until they have to look back and figure out you knew what you were talking about all along.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060573112/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=77927998090356&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_9qne9sah72_e
“In this New York Times bestselling book, Robert H. Bork, our country’s most distinguished conservative scholar, offers a prophetic and unprecedented view of a culture in decline, a nation in such serious moral trouble that its very foundation is crumbling: a nation that slouches not towards the Bethlehem envisioned by the poet Yeats in 1919, but towards Gomorrah.
Slouching Towards Gomorrah is a penetrating, devastatingly insightful exposé of a country in crisis at the end of the millennium, where the rise of modern liberalism, which stresses the dual forces of radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than opportunities) and radical individualism (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification), has undermined our culture, our intellect, and our morality.
In a new Afterword, the author highlights recent disturbing trends in our laws and society, with special attention to matters of sex and censorship, race relations, and the relentless erosion of American moral values. The alarm he sounds is more sobering than ever: we can accept our fate and try to insulate ourselves from the effects of a degenerating culture, or we can choose to halt the beast, to oppose modern liberalism in every arena. The will to resist, he warns, remains our only hope.”
By the way, if you don’t want to buy my book, there is a full version available at archive.org. Somebody did goofy things with the endnotes by spreading them over more than 500 pages but the main text of the book is very readable. There is even audio (annoying), and it is searchable.
https://archive.org/details/SlouchingTowardsGomorrahModernLiberalismAndAmericanDecline/page/n309
We have very, very high speed internet where I am, and time works in both directions, so I realize it may take some of your precious mortal days to absorb the lessons I tried to discuss. Nevertheless I hope you will give it an earnest try, and you find it worthwhile. Good luck to you! They have rule here against me telling you any more than I have.
The U.S. Constitution doesn’t mention marriage in any way. Sounds pretty reasonable to me that anyone who wants to get married can, in the pursuit of happiness.
@JackedUp My next door neighbor loves ponies and wants to pursue happiness by marrying Sparkles. My Muslim neighbor wants to pursue happiness by following the Prophet and marrying 13 women, one of them 6 years old like Aisha. My Somali congresswoman neighbor wants to pursue happiness by marrying her brother.
I think it would be interesting to go to China with a male friend and go into a series of cake shops asking for an “Adam and Steve” themed cake for our upcoming nuptials
I wonder what that would do for your social credit score.
I had to return to this thread to ask a simple question, because the thread is really more important than I gave it credit for. The entire premise/justification/pipedream of allowing China into the WTO was that it would cause China to gradually adopt more western “values.” Tim Cook of Apple is gay, and he considers it “God’s greatest gift” to him, or so he told CNN. Apple is the 3rd largest company in America (behind Walmart and Exxon Mobil) according to Fortune magazine.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/24/tech/tim-cook-gay-apple/index.html
So why doesn’t Cook use God’s greatest gift and all of Apple’s power and influence to advocate for acceptance of openly gay workers at Apple’s plants in China? You know, start small. Just say: “Supreme Leader Xi, we’re not asking for much. Just allow openly gay workers at our plants in China, and don’t persecute them.”
It can’t be because he won’t appear with controversial people – he recently met with the President, who everyone knows is the Hater In Chief, to celebrate the opening of the Mac Pro assembly plant in Texas. But has he ever taken a public stance on LGBTQIA rights in China? Apparently not, because they won’t even talk to Buzzfeed about it in the United States!
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/apple-china-tv-protesters-hong-kong-tim-cook