The Gay=Philosophy part II

And now, while I wait for some my stream monitoring probe readings to stabilize during calibration, I'll continue on last night's ill conceived metaphor.

Ok, my point about philosophy was not really a point. Plenty of philosophy majors don't become philosopers. They go to law school. Or so I hear. But this guy's mom's conception of philosophy that it was a self-contained field. Without the assumption that it was inherently worthwhile, in her view, it wouldn't exist.

This is true of the idea that being gay just ain't OK. I'm pretty sure that there isn't an argument for why one should not be the gay (or why society shouldn't recognize the gay as a-OK) that doesn't boil down to a fundamental assumption that it's just wrong.

Take the big one:
It's bad for kids to have gay parents. Well, no, that's not what the social scientists say.
And then there was this woman, who made the point pretty well at some fundy-type "family" conference.
And pretty much the rest of the parental-type "it makes your life harder" type arguments wouldn't exist if not for the fundamental homosexual menace assumption.

I guess this is pretty obvious to yee small crowd of GW readers. But I do keep coming back to it.

The thing that makes me the most frustrated in talking about controversial issues (particularly queer issues and choice), is that people on different sides really forget that their co-arguers are also people. People forget that we all have common ground. Most of those arguments consist of this scary smoke-and-mirrors game where people skirt around their disagreement and never make it to the base assumptions that divide them. The blogosphere and internet in general seems to make this so much worse. People score these cheap, anonymous shots. They act inhuman and so easily treat others as inhuman.

If you know me, maybe you can tell that I've been reading the online message boards in the letters to the editor section of our regional paper again.