Vatican, don’t make me come down there…
The Vatican is in TRUB-BLE . The Dutch Foreign Minister is going to YELL AT IT. It might have to GO TO BED WITHOUT ANY DESSERT. HA ha ha HA ha.
The Vatican envoy to the Netherlands, we learn with enormous pleasure this weekend, is about to receive a well-deserved arse-kicking from Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister, Maxime Verhagen…[T]he envoy – Monsignor François Bacqué – has been called to a meeting to explain the Catholic Church’s stance on sexuality and marriage, and answer charges the Church opposes gay rights…LifeSiteNews said that, in December, the Vatican was attacked in the international press for refusing to endorse the UN motion claiming to “decriminalise homosexuality”…The Vatican’s representative at the UN, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, said in December that although there was agreement that persons with homosexual inclinations should not be subject to arrest or other forms of unjust discrimination, the motion would lend support to the movement to create homosexual “marriage” or other legal recognition for homosexual unions.
And therefore the Vatican is content to keep the criminalization of homosexuality, in other words the Vatican has presumptuous intrusive trivial unwarranted objections to homosexual marriage and therefore it wants homosexuality to go on being a crime. In other words the Vatican prides itself on being pointlessly bigoted and having contempt for human rights.
The Vatican also opposed the use in the document of expressions such as “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” saying they are not defined in international law but are only cultural concepts promulgated in the media and the homosexualist political movement.
Ah! Ah yes – so they are! Whereas the Vatican’s concepts are…what, exactly? They’re not concepts but truths engraved in nature? Edicts ratified by the seldom-seen but always groveled-to absentee deity? Well no doubt the Vatican would like to think so, but guess what, the Vatican’s rules and regs and refusals and foot-stampings are ‘only cultural concepts’ too, promulgated in the Vatican press office and the Catholic political movement. They’re made up. They’re not based on anything. They’re bullshit. I oppose the use of such expressions as “Holy Father” and “Holy See” and “Vatican envoy” because they’re just cultural concepts promulgated by a bunch of reactionary obscurantist deeply mistaken men in robes.
“In other words the Vatican prides itself on being pointlessly bigoted and having contempt for human rights.”
Who says bigotry is wrong? It’s not a truth engraved in nature. And since when is homosexual marriage a “human right”? Where does that come from? It’s just something liberals made up. It’s not based on anything. It’s bullshit.
O.B didnt say gay mariage was a human right mate, she said that it is a human right not to be locked up for being gay!
Care to back that crap up, Carter, or are you just going to do a hit and run? Liberals just “made up” the concept of equality under the law? And so what if they did? That’ *not* a good thing, in your view? And no, don’t start (because I know you’re about to) parsing the difference between “human rights” and “civil rights that Western societies have decided to uphold.” You know full well it’s intellectually and ethically indefensible to deprive a class of people of equal status with the majority class.
Liberals moralize constantly, they enact their moral preferences into law, they morally castigate people for innocuous private violations of liberal morality (see Prince Harry saying Paki). Yet liberals never explain what the basis of liberal morality is, and why we all must accept the authority of their unargued moral dictates.
Liberals just “made up” the concept of equality under the law? And so what if they did? That’ *not* a good thing, in your view?”
That’s the sort of non-argument I’m talking about. Of course liberals demand more than just equality under the law, they demand universal equality. And that’s not a good thing in my view.
I’ll make the popcorn…
OK, stop right now. Rights-talk may not be the most well-thought-out moral and political system ever, but it has a considerable head-start on “Don’t do that, I don’t like it, and neither does my big sky-fairy friend”, OK?
BTW, if “liberals…demand universal equality”, does that mean that there is no left half to the political spectrum? That as soon as you leave the shores of conservatism it’s all the same, from JS Mill to Tony Benn to Stalin to Pol Pot? I know that there are places in the world from which things LOOK like that, but the appearance is mistaken, rest assured.
People, Carter is not here to participate in or contribute to anything resembling a discussion. Carter is a troll here to pick a fight based on nothing but empty rhetoric and cheap insults. Do not feed the troll. B&W is and has been largely troll-free for a remarkably long time – but if you feed them, they hang about and attract more of their ilk.
Yes we can, Richard. It’s easy if you try.
Laughing offline is often better than refuting online.
Could “Carter” be a pseudonym? I seem to recall that sometime in the dim and misty past, there was a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Toronto that was named Carter.
G: You’re right. I set out the dish of troll food, and I shouldn’t have.
Richard: You wrote, “Josh gay mariage may be a decent thing to alow but it is not a human right.”
You seem to be doing what I hoped Carter would not – parsing the difference between “human” rights and “civil rights.” If you accept the principles of Western society that say citizens are entitled to equal protection, recognition, and rights under the law, then you must recognize that denying marriage to gays is an abrogation of that principle. Do you not recognize that?
What is the purpose in claiming that gay marriage is not a “human” right? What, then, is a “human” right? I hope you don’t mean to imply that gay marriage or the lack thereof is somehow just a trifling “nice” afterthought, not really very important.
I can risk feeding the troll just a little, since I’m the one who cleans up after them (and besides Carter has been here before, and is reliable about not returning when disputed). I just have to point out how idiotic this is –
“Yet liberals never explain what the basis of liberal morality is”
It seems to me I spend about half of my time doing that. If Carter actually read B&W, Carter wouldn’t have made such a silly claim.
By the way, G, just to put your mind at rest – B&W has been mostly troll-free for more than six years not just because they don’t show up and don’t hang around, but also because I delete trollery. Many people have a policy of not deleting comments, no matter how fatuous or arbitrary or sexist or vulgar or all those – and often their sites become, er, garbagey as a result. I have no such policy.
“In my opinion civil unions like we have in the U.K answer all the fairness questions that are raised by this isue.”
But they don’t answer all the fairness questions Richard, because they are grossly unfair. Civil Partnerships are marriages in practice but not in principle, and principles count; that is why we can’t (or shouldn’t) allow someone’s personal religious beliefs to affect their job as, say, a registrar refusing to wed gay couples, even if in practice no gay couple would be affected as a result – to do so is to say the bigotry is ok as long as it doesn’t affect anyone, when anti-disrimination laws are there as symbols too: gay couples should be able to feel they aren’t being discriminated against as a matter of principle, in any hypothetical situation, not just that they won’t be discriminated against in practice as there are enough gay-friendly registrars around.
It’s equivalent to allowing a branch of Starbucks to ban black customers because they can always use the identical branch around the corner (and the supposed religious ‘thinking’ behind homophobia doesn’t make the religious case qualitatively different from the example of race – bigotry is bigotry irrespective of the ‘reasoning’).
The fact that Partnerships are marriages but that the law doesn’t refer to them as such is a similarly sneaky but significant symbolic insult; it says gay couples can have the associated rights of marriage, fine, but don’t expect us to recognise your status as equal. If marriages were solely religious institutions it might be different – I don’t care what the Church might have to say on the matter, except when they dictate to society about the subject.
Irrespective of whether marriage was originally a purely religious concept, it isn’t now; there are secular civil ceremonies for straight couples that are recognised as legal marriages, and there is no reason why there shouldn’t be for gay couples too – civil law is no business for religious law to poke its nose in and impose its religion-specific views upon.
Dave JL – You’re exactly right about the power of symbol. You’re one of the only people I’ve seen comment on that. To me, it is at the heart of the gay marriage debate.
I have a short essay on this detailing what I believe is the real reason bigoted people don’t want gays to be allowed to call themselves married. If anyone is interested, please email me (my address is linked from my name). I’d enjoy your thoughts on it.
Subjecting liberal morality to the same scrutiny applied to traditional morality isn’t trolling.
JoshS said: “If you accept the principles of Western society that say citizens are entitled to equal protection, recognition, and rights under the law, then you must recognize that denying marriage to gays is an abrogation of that principle. Do you not recognize that?”
I agree, if one accepts the liberal faith, then those conclusions follow.
Dave JL said: “It’s equivalent to allowing a branch of Starbucks to ban black customers because they can always use the identical branch around the corner (and the supposed religious ‘thinking’ behind homophobia doesn’t make the religious case qualitatively different from the example of race – bigotry is bigotry irrespective of the ‘reasoning’).”
That free association and personal preferences (i.e. “bigotry”) should be overridden by demands for universal is assumed but never justified.
OB said “Carter has been here before, and is reliable about not returning when disputed”
Actually I stopped returning for the lack of being disputed. When pressed instead of saying anything interesting you evade and resort to ad hominem.
Oh we know why they don’t for chrissake. It’s because ‘marriage’ means Tom and Barbara or Jamie and Paul or Rob and Laura and it makes people come over all creepy to think of it as meaning Frank and Jack or Maggie and Liz. It’s as sophisticated as that, and as reasonable.
Carter that’s inaccurate. When you have been here before I have asked you specific questions about your claims which you never returned to answer.
P.S. Carter, no, what is trolling is saying things like
“Yet liberals never explain what the basis of liberal morality is, and why we all must accept the authority of their unargued moral dictates.”
That’s a moronicly sweeping generalization and it’s not in fact true – and it’s obviously not true to anyone who knows what liberalism means. That’s what makes it trolling.
(I think you’re confusing the Fox news version of liberalism with real liberalism – and as a matter of fact I think that’s one of the arguments we’ve had before, one of the ones which you simply ignored. That too is trolling. You’re thinking ‘Al Franken’ when you should be thinking ‘John Stuart Mill.’)
Yes, we had an extended argument about that, in which Carter displayed a steady refusal or inability to grasp the point that ‘liberalism’ is not identical with the Democratic party in the US or with the left in general. In short he uses it the way Ann Coulter uses it. That’s trolling.
The discussion was here. Another was here and another here. Just hit and run trolling.
I always wish I had better right-wing opponents, but so far they’re all just not very competent.
Another good reason for the word liberal to have modifiers it would deal with the Fox news problem?
“That’s a moronicly[sic] sweeping generalization and it’s not in fact true – and it’s obviously not true to anyone who knows what liberalism means”
I’m trying to match your style of argument.
“Carter displayed a steady refusal or inability to grasp the point that ‘liberalism’ is not identical with the Democratic party in the US or with the left in general.
You think your mistaken insistence I’m unaware of the varieties of liberalisms proves something. Repeating it over and over is an evasion.
“I’m just doing it because you’re doing it! And you did it first!”
Why not just add “So there!” to make the point really stick, Carter?
You’re definitely right about the quality of the “opposition,” OB.
And Carter, if equality before the law is an article of faith rather than, for example, an article of the Constitution of the United States of America, then what is your argument? You do not present one – because you are a dishonest jackass who is trying to start a fight, not someone who has any wish to engage in actual substantive discussion.
Begone! You have no power here!
*clap clap clap*
Yup go away now Carter. You are indeed just trolling, as we can all see from the record, so take a hike.
You display the same evasiveness in our past discussions as you do in this one. The time you were screeching about the Catholic Church not ordaining women, I asked:
Must a liberal moral order be imposed on all of society without exceptions? Why shouldn’t a private institution be free to order itself as it sees fit on its own principles?
You ignored the first question, and answered the second by making the absurd claim the Catholic Church wasn’t a private organization, in part because it’s “big”, then changed the subject to claim, erroneously, that I misunderstand what sub-species of liberal you are.
“go away now Carter…take a hike”
A moment ago weren’t you saying somethingabout J.S. Mill?
“Must a liberal moral order be imposed on all of society without exceptions?”
Ooh you relativist!
In a liberal order, adults acting with informed consent should be free to order their private relations in any way they see fit. That would include ‘believers’ doing whatever the heck they felt like amongst themselves, and holding whatever wacky private beliefs they chose. The trouble with religions is that, by any stretch of the definition, their ambit is not confined to adults acting with informed consent. Nor do they, the religions in question, confine themselves to pontificating on private behaviour. They often seek to legislate it, even for those outside their church.
Must a liberal moral order be imposed on all of society without exceptions?
Yes.
Next?
(P.S., Ophelia, stop that ‘screeching,’ you silly hysterical woman-creature!)
“somethingabout J.S. Mill”
And I gave you several chances to make an argument, but all you do is announce things, so you’re a waste of time and space and money. (Note that I’m not doing anything unMillian; I’m not silencing you; I’m just declining to host your trolling myself. I don’t recall that Mill published other people’s ramblings at his own expense with no editorial oversight, and as far as I know, The Westminster Review did not publish everything that was offered to it. I’m not silencing you, I’m just refusing to publish you myself.)
“Must a liberal moral order be imposed on all of society without exceptions?” I agree with Jenavir.
Isn’t that what the US Constitution was trying to do?
The problem comes when “liberal” is defined differently. And over-reaching on the imposition part is abuse of power.