Andrew Sullivan gets Prudenized

(1) If Andrew raises a fuss with the Washington Times then he risks losing a venue in which to voice his opinion as well as the income he gets from them publishing his column.

(2) Since the national gay marriage debate seems to be, at least in part, a debate about the proper definition of marriage, it’s not clear that quotation marks are out of place.

(3) Are opponents of gay marriage automatically bigots?

Nat,

1. Yes, he does. But if principles were free, everyone would have them. Not that I’m calling Sullivan unprincipled; he has taken a lot of grief from his companions on the right for his consistent support of gay rights and gay marriage. Why he would stand for it from the WT, I don’t understand.

Also, remember Sullivan was willing to take that risk when he wrote for the New York Times.

2. We’ll have to agree to disagree, because I sure do disagree. Right now, the legal status of gay marriage is very much an issue. But to apply scare quotes to the very concept of gay marriage is disrespecful at best. It’s certainly not the convention, even among mainstream opponents of gay marriage.

3. It should go without saying that not every opponent of gay marriage is a bigot, but I guess it doesn’t. The editors of the WT are free to publish such non-bigoted arguments elsewhere in its pages. They’ve certainly done so in the past, and will do so in the future. But they don’t have the right to doctor Sullivan’s text, under Sullivan’s byline, to make a mockery of his argument. Again, I don’t think Sully should stand for it.

And, as Brian notes, this isn’t a generic publication opposed to gay marriage. It’s the Washington Times, which has a history.
For example, they’ve written about the family of Rosie O’Donnell and her adopted children, applying scare quotes to the term “mother” when describing her. They don’t use quotes when talking about heterosexual parents who have adopted children. The obvious implication is that adoptive gay parents aren’t really parents. I’d have a hard time explaining that without invoking bigotry.

Well, I meant Ted and Roger, who were the only salient people. I bet someone somewhere in the world sometime has. I bet somewhere in the world someone sometime has said that everyone who supports gay marriage is bigoted too. No view so absurd that someone hasn’t supported it sometime. (Except for the view that everything in the world is made of fingernails. No one ever has endorsed that. All the other views have been endorsed though.)

Moon’s money keeps that rag afloat. If he and his minions want to define what is and is not marriage ask him (his holy eminence) what massw mariages represent or why his daughter-in-law had to seek a safe house when chased by her crazed hubby, Moon’s son, the abuser.(for which,k see her book)

Is there a question whether Moon’s mass marriages meet the standard definition of marriage? My dictionary (which was admittedly published in the unenlightened year of 1992) says that a marriage is “The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife.” Those mass marriages seem to fit this definiton, as did, I suppose, the marriage of Moon’s crazily abusive son to Moon’s daughter-in-law.

I absolutely hate these “X hasn’t said Y, so let’s conclude something bad about X” arguments that seem to turn up everywhere in blogistan these days. I’m normally perfectly happy to conclude mean things about Andrew Sullivan, but I won’t stoop to using that argument form even against him. From the fact that he hasn’t answered your particular question, we can’t conclude a single thing about what he thinks the answer is.

On the other hand, these argument forms are amusing I guess. Looking through the CT archives, I’ve never said that the moon is not made of orange cheese. From that I think it’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion that I do think the moon is made of orange cheese. I never knew I believed that, but there you go.

Sometimes silence doesn’t imply consent, or dissent, it just implies we couldn’t be bothered talking about just whatever it is someone wants us to talk about.

Brian Weatherson wrote:

“Sometimes silence doesn’t imply consent, or dissent, it just implies we couldn’t be bothered talking about just whatever it is someone wants us to talk about.”

True. Do you think that Andrew Sullivan can’t be bothered with talking about bigotry and opposition to gay marriage?

Sullivan puits up with that shit because queers are pussies. That’s why.

The discussion was getting involuted.

Oops, I meant, “married”.

Nat,
What I mean is that, if not for widespread anti-gay bigotry, people wouldn’t see same-sex marriage as a BIG DEAL. And if people didn’t see same-sex marriage as a BIG DEAL, then no one would oppose it. Since people see same-sex marriage as a BIG DEAL, there are some people who aren’t anti-gay bigots who oppose it–because it’ll be a radical change in the notion of marriage or whatever; but I think that’s unfortunate. (And Peter, I haven’t seen any good arguments against it that don’t rest on a more or less unargued sense that it’s a BIG DEAL; so in that way I agree with Sullivan.)
As has been pointed out on this blog before, divorce (and contraception) involve much greater changes in the concept of marriage than same-sex marriage does. And the Rev. Moon certainly does more to make a mockery of marriage than Gavin Newsom.
Anyway, I’m glad that you’ve come to recognize the importance of conversational context; I refer you to our previous argument, so you can re-evaluate the statements under dispute in light of the questions to which they were responses.