For the first time in my life, I agree with Dick Cheney: declassify all of the torture memos. It’s bipartisanship we can ALL agree on!

These idiots really have no concept or clue what the term “consenting” means, now do they?

I like people who want the government to keep morality out of their bedrooms and doctors’ offices because for years the rest of us have been arguing to keep the government out of our bedrooms. I like the way he’s added a couple of words to try to steal the language of what is, I suspect, an effective argument.

A better (and marginally realistic) way of phrasing this argument would be “why should the government be forbidden from restricting people’s fundamental rights when it comes to gay marriage or abortion but allowed to restrict people’s fundamental rights when it comes to torturing the shit out of them?”

And, of course, the answer hinges on believing that you get rights because you are a PERSON not a SPECIAL CATEGORY of person.

In their lame world, it’s all about privilege and dominance and power over those who are less of a person according to arbitrary designations and categories.

Excuse me while I hurl.  Torture is morally OK and same sex marriage is an abomination?  These people are truly warped and twisted.  This is really beyond Bizarro World and into something out of Dante’s nightmares by way of Salvador Dali and Albrecht Druher.

And then you realize that when you phrase the question like that, IT’S TORTURE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.

Well, you know, he’s a wingnut.  I can understand that the line between torture and being married to him might be a bit blurred.

Let’s see, what are the similarities…Gay marriage grants right to people and basically has no affect on anyone else.  Torture takes away rights from people and harm is the entire point.  Gee, how could anyone miss such astonishing similarities?

Even Shep Smith knows better than this.

Why does Goldfarb hate marriage so much?

I Always Said To Myself, “Either I’m Gonna Marry That Man, Or Torture Him”

Fortunately…

...say it with me…

THIS IS A BOTH/AND BLOG.

/Catskills for the 00s

Still, I wonder why the same people squealing about the alleged moral indignity to which these monsters were subjected are the same people who want the government to keep morality out of their bedrooms and doctors’ offices.

And here’s me thinking the whole point is to invite morality in, in hopes of crowding out some of the bigoted, reactionary hatred.

So, two men or two women marrying each other is just as bad as if they got together to murder someone instead.  I guess that gay weddings may as well include a moment when they pick a random person from the congregation and slaughter them in front of the assembled guests since the marriage that everyone is witnessing is the same thing as murder anyway.  Maybe they can do it after the cake-cutting, but before the first dance.  I’m sure there’s a wedding planner somewhere who can figure out where to fit it in.

This is why conservatives are losing the gay marriage battle:  because even if the thought of Steve and Gary next door having buttsex revolts you to the bottom of your soul, you’re still going to be able to see the difference between marriage and murder.

I guess that gay weddings may as well include a moment when they pick a random person from the congregation and slaughter them in front of the assembled guests since the marriage that everyone is witnessing is the same thing as murder anyway. Maybe they can do it after the cake-cutting, but before the first dance.  I’m sure there’s a wedding planner somewhere who can figure out where to fit it in.

Yanno those creepy looking baby cakes? Substitute a real baby for that and we can combine the whole cutting-the-cake/murder/gaybortion thing pretty swimmingly. And the couple dances on the baby remains or something I dunno, I’m not a wedding planner. :p Or a Republican.

Okay, let me make this simple:

With gay marriage, everyone involved gets cake.  With torture, on the other hand, everyone involved gets deep psychological scarring.  Now, we know from scientific studies (performed by Izzard et al.) that most people will choose cake over death; I believe that deep psychological scarring is sufficiently analogous to death to indicate that most people will choose cake over deep psychological scarring.  Hence, a government founded on the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will, when given the choice of allowing something that ends in cake or something that ends in deep psychological scarring, choose to allow the practice that ends in cake absent all other considerations.

Yeah.  What kind of priorities does one have to have in order to go “it’s perfectly acceptable to cause myriad and sustained physical and emotional pain on people with the intent of destroying them, but two men who love each other having their relationship recognized by the state?  EVIL!” ?!

Actually, I take that back—-I do not want to know what goes on in these people’s heads.

I’m going to play Socrates and assume he’s arguing in good faith and isn’t trying a pathetic “take that, libruls.” I will show him the error of his ways. Then I’m gonna have a hemlock drinking contest.

The two moral statements are not identical.

The first is “government has no business proscribing what constitutes moral behavior to private citizens.”
the second is “government does have a business proscribing moral behavior in its own conduct.”

unless gays getting gay married are doing so not out of private choice but because it is MANDATED BY THE STATE, the two are not comparable.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I saw some uncorrupted athenian youths nearby.

Consent is the key difference. Torture, with consent, is S & M kink. Gay (or any) sex without consent is rape.

But, as has been said many, many times… reactionary fools do not comprehend consent.

These idiots really have no concept or clue what the term “consenting” means, now do they?

I think they have no concept or clue what the term “morality” means.

To hell with “morality” - how about some ETHICS?

I’m all about inviting morality in everywhere.
Moral good: not gratuitously and maliciously causing harm to others by torturing them. 
Moral good: not gratuitously and maliciously causing harm to others by preventing them from uniting in consensual relationships.

Or we could pretend to be 3 year olds and start crying: “If I can’t have my toy[torture], you can’t get your toy[marriage]!”

Oo, also I like the way that ‘consensual’ ends in ‘sensual.’  It adds a nice sexy touch to what might otherwise sound kind of legalistic.

But Maureen- the cake is a lie.

I’m sorry; my bad. Someone had to say it.

Well said Maureen, except in many of these cases the torture was not “analagous” to death, it was the literal CAUSE of death.

Anyway, this guy’s argument is basically “These people like drinking water and dislike being set on fire even though water and fire are both elements. What hypocrisy!”

Wow, Goldfarb, way to err on the side of the most vindictive behavior on the part of the government. I betcha he’s secretly a libertarian who’s just trying to bring about perfect statelessness through clever use of reverse psychology!

What irks me about these tough-talking cowards is that they automatically assume that everyone who gets captured and tortured by our government is a ‘terrorist.’  Notwithstanding that the U.S. government’s definition of ‘terrorism’ is always quite fluid and usually deeply hypocritical, the batting average at Guantanamo (that is, those with any probable links to ‘al Qaeda’ vs. the multitude who’ve been quietly released or are still being held even after acknowledgment of innocence) is so low that such an assumption is not to be taken seriously.  Sadly, I hear this assumption made by average citizens, as well.  I wonder what happened to the notion of due process; did it fall with the Twin Towers, or did it ever exist for brown-skinned foreigners?

A better (and marginally realistic) way of phrasing this argument would be “why should the government be forbidden from restricting people’s fundamental rights when it comes to gay marriage or abortion but allowed to restrict people’s fundamental rights when it comes to torturing the shit out of them?” And then you realize that when you phrase the question like that, IT’S TORTURE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.

Of course, one would think that there is no fundamental right to torture people, so it cannot be a restriction of any such right to be prevented from doing so. (A right can only be restricted if it actually exists!) And one would tend to think that it probably is a fundamental right not to be tortured. In which case, the argument should be rephrased as “Why should the government be forbidden from restricting people’s fundamental rights when it comes to gay marriage or abortion but also be forbidden from restricting people’s fundamental rights when it comes to not being tortured?” Which is even more obviously insane. The attempt to paint these positions as somehow in tension is ridiculous, because they are both supported by the single principle that the government should always be forbidden from restricting people’s fundamental rights.

This is a joke right?  It’s simply not possible that someone could produce this kind of twisted logic and still be considered sane.  That’s it - it’s the end of satire.

Still, I wonder why the same people squealing about the alleged moral indignity to which these monsters were subjected are the same people who want the government to keep morality out of their bedrooms and doctors’ offices. Why should the government be forbidden from making a moral judgment about gay marriage or abortion but compelled to make a moral judgment about the treatment of terrorists plotting to murder Americans citizens?

Wow. WOW. That is REALLY something.

Why should the government be forbidden from making a moral judgment about gay marriage or abortion but compelled to make a moral judgment about the treatment of terrorists plotting to murder Americans citizens?

It shouldn’t be.  The moral judgment that should be made is spelled out in our Founding Documents—all men are created equal and are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  They should be free from unreasonable search and seizure, and they have a right to know why the government is holding them and be able to seek redress of said Government for wrongs.

His confusion, in part, comes from thinking morality is defined by a Particular Sky Fairy, and the one he worships says <strike>shrimp are abominations </strike> homosexual marriage should be illegal (somehow it’s a loophole in the ‘render unto Caesar’ speech).

Government morality is not defined by a single religion, and cannot be so defined by our Founding Documents.  Not all Sky Fairies hate homosexuals; quite a few, well, the same one but differently interpreted, say loving one another is the ultimate goal.

So morality in regards to government’s role in marriage can’t pick one or the other.  It has to be based on providing rights on an equal basis.

As for torture?  Just. Fucking. Wrong. as well as useless.  Our Government is required, by its Founding Documents as well as its Lawfully Entered Treaties to treat all people as human beings—it must inform them why they are restrained and must treat them humanely.

————-
It all comes of this complete asshole believing that his hard-on for torture and his fear of homosexuals constitute some universal and undivided morality.  He’s a scared pathetic creature—he’d rather torture his fellow humans in security theater to feel safe than actually do the hard work to be safe, and he’d rather discriminate against his fellow humans than deal with his own sexual hangups.

Pathetic.

I think a core problem here is a complete inability to understand just exactly what morality is in the first place.

To right-wingers, morality is something that is completely arbitrary. It’s something divinely inspired, or it’s common “values” or whatever. To…sane people, morality is determined by an action and its effects on people (or to a bigger degree, life in general). So to sane people, yes, we can say that there’s nothing immoral with gay marriage/relationships and that torture IS immoral. Because we can objectively say that one really is worse than the other. And it’s not a matter of both being bad, just of scale. One thing is neutral (I’d say it’s actually good on the whole) AT WORST, the other thing is highly highly bad.

But right wingers just don’t get this. Right now, they’re locked into a cycle where, their religious and political beliefs define what is “moral”. Which makes it nigh impossible for any sort of change or even compromise. And such a hard stance worked for a while. But it’s not working anymore. And that’s why their ship is sinking rather quickly.

I’m starting to think that the job of a pundit is to say really stupid things—anything, really—and see if any of the stuff they say has any resonance with the public or their ideological audience. The guy is just throwing spaghetti the wall and seeing what sticks. In 2 weeks, he’ll have forgotten he ever wrote that (or, at least, hope that we have forgotten it).

It puts the penis in the vagina or else it gets the hose again.

Paul Krugman writes an interesting column in today’s New York Times on the necessity of investigating and prosecuting the Bush Administration’s torturers: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/opinion/24krugman.html.

We have known for some years now that a great many conservatives and Americans are in favor of evilly brutazing people and against loving, egalitarian relationships between people, whether same- or opposite-sex. They are evil and vile.

Of course they’re all the same, you sillies.

If the Government forces someone to be gay, that’s bad.

If the Government forces someone to have an abortion, that’s bad.

If the Government forces to breathe water instead of air, that’s bad.

See, it’s easy.

Maureen, you sound like a Food Network lawyer, or some kind high-level cake scientist. Either way, I like you. Speaking of the Izzard studies, I sometimes enjoy eating cake and torturing people simultaneously, but I always adhere to Eddie’s suggested Best Practice of wearing an apron to protect my dress from crumbs and blood.
***

Maureen said:

Okay, let me make this simple:

With gay marriage, everyone involved gets cake.  With torture, on the other hand, everyone involved gets deep psychological scarring.  Now, we know from scientific studies (performed by Izzard et al.) that most people will choose cake over death; I believe that deep psychological scarring is sufficiently analogous to death to indicate that most people will choose cake over deep psychological scarring.  Hence, a government founded on the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will, when given the choice of allowing something that ends in cake or something that ends in deep psychological scarring, choose to allow the practice that ends in cake absent all other considerations.

So, in summary:

Causing physical harm to a person who may or may not be innocent (we don’t know since they are not given the right of due process) as a way to get information that may or may not be completely false is completely fine.  It doesn’t matter if torture is actually effective at finding out secrets, and it also doesn’t matter if we torture innocent people, since they are a different race and religion and speak a different language, and therefore are inherently guilty just for existing.

But two consenting adults who love each other having government-protected hospital visitation rights, inheritance rights, and child custody rights (none of which infringe on anyone else’s rights) is just terrible.  I guess that something existing in private that has nothing to do with you and has no effect on your life is scarier than torture because you might have to think about men kissing (and you might like it).

Wait, let me check my calendar.  I hope it’s opposite day today.

As with so many of the posts on this blog, I can’t believe that this kind of logic isn’t a joke.  So I read about these wingnuts, am instantly horrified, and then retreat into my own little world.

<Strangers with candy> “All they hear is: Who wants Cake?” </Strangers with Candy>

The modern conservative movement is driven by two principles. One is how much they hate the Left.

Goldfarb is demonstrating the other: Near-total substitution of obsessional sexophobia for all moral thought. 

If you or I think about the word “morality,” there’s a huge and nuanced range of considerations and guidelines, both personal and public.

If a ‘winger thinks about the word “morality,” the initial and overriding thoughts are: Sexual morality. I must not think bad thoughts. And no one else better, either.

Kinda floods out the ability to think about whether violence or mass theft are moral failings too.

It all comes of this complete asshole believing that his hard-on for torture and his fear of homosexuals constitute some universal and undivided morality.

It is worse I think. What I hear him saying is that morality is in the eye of the beholder and that if he is “forced” to accept something he sees as immoral and we don’t - gay marriage - then why shouldn’t we be forced to accept what we see as immoral and he doesn’t ?

Which is what conservatives always do: treat any issue as a game, an argument that they can win or lose. Sure, if you only look at word games and superficial issues, forcing my morality about torture onto others looks the same as others forcing their morality about marriage onto me.

But aif you use two braincells to follow his logic you see that anyone who agrees forcing a morality unto others is wrong, is also implicitly agreeing that forcing others to simulated drowning and sleep deprivation is <s>doubly</s> a billion times worse. So his argument falls flat. You can’t justify morality by being a billion times immoral.

I believe that deep psychological scarring is sufficiently analogous to death to indicate that most people will choose cake over deep psychological scarring.

Hmmm…..decisions, decisions.  What kind of cake?

Will it be delicious and moist?

Argh. I hate these people. Every time I let myself hope that everyone at least understands the basic concept of rights, they have to go and prove me wrong.