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Is it possible to have a rational dialogue over a social disagreement when the people who populate one side of the debate live under a considerably greater threat of being physically victimized, economically exploited, legally disenfranchized, and/or ideologically segregated?
People who read my journal know that primarily I'm talking about the debate over queer people's rights and even their right to express themselves as they wish.
But I am thinking also of race relations. In the context of that debate, in the United States we have the advantage of 45 years worth of hindsight. And in hindsight, it seems obvious that what really needed to happen most of all, was that white people had to stop lynching and beating black people, had to stop limiting their access to educational, political, economic, and legal institutions, and had to stop spreading ideologies that presented black people as intellectually, culturally, and morally inferior. (There's still a lot of progess to made on these fronts, but at least cultural values have shifted in favor of ending these things.)
And by obvious, I mean that there wasn't really a debate; there is no "rationalization" for plain injustice and inhumanity. There was the veneer of one, a pretend rational ideology, trotted out by the racists, with pretend "evidence" from science and scripture and tradition.
Oddly enough, when there was finally real emphasis among white people on stopping the violence and ending the oppression, a lot of the "experts" who offered us pseudo-rationalizations for the inferiority of black people were left just looking silly. Very few Christians today would seriously entertain the "silly" idea that black people, as the "descendents" of Noah's son Ham, lived under a curse of servitude to the descendents of Noah's other children; yet this was a widely-accepted doctrine in parts of the US not all that long ago. Some people continue to beat that horse even today. Social scientists do not jump at lower test scores by minority students as evidence of their intellectual inferiority but rather as proof of cultural bias among test preparers and teachers. Taking the time to actually construct rational counterarguments is time wasted, because it does more to legitimize them than de-legitimize them.
For the most part, the "silliness" of these ideas, which were once accepted as plain truth, was revealed when the "marketplace of ideas" became truly free and level. When the lynchings stopped, it was like people woke out of their nightmare and turned off the racist soundtrack. It no longer sounded relevant.
Similarly, I've come to feel that the validity of scientific or scriptural arguments against queerness is, in a way, an irrelevant issue in the face of anti-queer violence and disenfranchisement. That is for me the first issue: the gay-bashing and discrimination has to stop. Then let's come back to the table and see if a rational debate even seems to be necessary.
At present, it dismays me that ending violence against queer people is not a priority. I am not going to give any more attention to "rational arguments against queerness" whether from science or religion, until the priests and ministers and imams and politicians and judges and CEOs make ending the violence a priority. Until they do, I don't have any reason to trust them or their supporters.
Edit. I write this after just having heard that a person a few degrees of acquaintance removed from me, was recently queer-bashed. And in light, of course, of all of the ongoing violence. And after hearing on NPR that there is a potentially divisive debate going on in the Anglican Church over the ordination of female bishops; I didn't touch on feminism in this post, but the oppression of women was also on my mind.
People who read my journal know that primarily I'm talking about the debate over queer people's rights and even their right to express themselves as they wish.
But I am thinking also of race relations. In the context of that debate, in the United States we have the advantage of 45 years worth of hindsight. And in hindsight, it seems obvious that what really needed to happen most of all, was that white people had to stop lynching and beating black people, had to stop limiting their access to educational, political, economic, and legal institutions, and had to stop spreading ideologies that presented black people as intellectually, culturally, and morally inferior. (There's still a lot of progess to made on these fronts, but at least cultural values have shifted in favor of ending these things.)
And by obvious, I mean that there wasn't really a debate; there is no "rationalization" for plain injustice and inhumanity. There was the veneer of one, a pretend rational ideology, trotted out by the racists, with pretend "evidence" from science and scripture and tradition.
Oddly enough, when there was finally real emphasis among white people on stopping the violence and ending the oppression, a lot of the "experts" who offered us pseudo-rationalizations for the inferiority of black people were left just looking silly. Very few Christians today would seriously entertain the "silly" idea that black people, as the "descendents" of Noah's son Ham, lived under a curse of servitude to the descendents of Noah's other children; yet this was a widely-accepted doctrine in parts of the US not all that long ago. Some people continue to beat that horse even today. Social scientists do not jump at lower test scores by minority students as evidence of their intellectual inferiority but rather as proof of cultural bias among test preparers and teachers. Taking the time to actually construct rational counterarguments is time wasted, because it does more to legitimize them than de-legitimize them.
For the most part, the "silliness" of these ideas, which were once accepted as plain truth, was revealed when the "marketplace of ideas" became truly free and level. When the lynchings stopped, it was like people woke out of their nightmare and turned off the racist soundtrack. It no longer sounded relevant.
Similarly, I've come to feel that the validity of scientific or scriptural arguments against queerness is, in a way, an irrelevant issue in the face of anti-queer violence and disenfranchisement. That is for me the first issue: the gay-bashing and discrimination has to stop. Then let's come back to the table and see if a rational debate even seems to be necessary.
At present, it dismays me that ending violence against queer people is not a priority. I am not going to give any more attention to "rational arguments against queerness" whether from science or religion, until the priests and ministers and imams and politicians and judges and CEOs make ending the violence a priority. Until they do, I don't have any reason to trust them or their supporters.
Edit. I write this after just having heard that a person a few degrees of acquaintance removed from me, was recently queer-bashed. And in light, of course, of all of the ongoing violence. And after hearing on NPR that there is a potentially divisive debate going on in the Anglican Church over the ordination of female bishops; I didn't touch on feminism in this post, but the oppression of women was also on my mind.
