PG - there is no push from any one on the other side to dictate anything like the equivalent of sharia law. But we all get our values from somewhere. Where do yours come from, and why do you assume the source of your values is more important than mine?
Bringing up American history is not going to be helpful to your argument. Many of our founding fathers attended institutions like Harvard and Yale and Princeton. Any idea what the curriculum was like at these schools when they attended? If you do, what do you think that says about their values? The most used school textbook in their day was the New England Primer. Have you ever looked at it? You’d be better off telling me it doesn’t matter anymore, but please don’t suggest they weren’t religious and that religion didn’t inform their values.
“Bringing up American history is not going to be helpful to your argument. Most of our founding fathers attended institutions like Harvard and Yale and Princeton. Any idea what the curriculum was like at these schools when they attended? If you do, what do you think that says about their values?”
I’m perfectly aware of what that curriculum was like. As for the founding fathers, some of their values were good and some of their values were not-so-good. (Hint: slavery and who should have the vote)
As a proud American, I value freedom. Mr. Grasso has every right to say he does not care to read the book or whatever else he has to say; I support that. Part of the freedom that I value, however, is that our public policy is not constructed by elevating one religion (or more accurately, one particular interpretation of that given religion) as triumphant above all. You don’t “own” Christianity – many good Christians are in favor of gay marriage, etc. – and moreover, even if you did “own” Christianity, it really doesn’t matter – because public policies are not intended to follow your specific sets of beliefs as though they are more special than anyone else’s. Follow your own religious beliefs on your own time; that’s fantastic and more power to you. But stop trying to use them as a basis for public policy. It’s as inappropriate as Jews advocating that pork should be banned.
“The most used school textbook in their day was the New England Primer. Have you ever looked at it? You’d be better off telling me it doesn’t matter anymore, but please don’t suggest they weren’t religious and that religion didn’t inform their values.”
I wasn’t suggesting they weren’t religious or that religion didn’t inform their values. If they had wanted to elevate (your particular brand of) Christianity, they had plenty of opportunity to say so. But part of why they were geniuses-ahead-of-their-time was this notion that men should be free to live how they like, and not that Old-World nonsense about how one religion was elevated to higher status.
“I would be interested in reading a book discussion about the book referenced in the OP…”
So would I. Just finished it myself. It takes me some time to completely digest a book, but I am already brimming with observations and questions. I am even working on a parallel of my own to the Bechdel test.
Does it require a new thread do you think or is it appropriate for this one?
“But part of why they were geniuses-ahead-of-their-time was this notion that men should be free to live how they like…”
Free to live how they like? Is that what you are advocating for? I kind of like that concept too. My state voted in 2004 to clarify that marriage is between one man and one woman. But SCOTUS said we aren’t allowed to have it that way.
Yes, civil rights are funny like that. They get to be applied nationally, not subject to popular vote.
Anyway, I’m perplexed how it impacts you. Today’s my 29th wedding anniversary. I married the man of my dreams. The presence of same sex marriage doesn’t affect me at all. I didn’t want to marry a woman, so I didn’t. Problem solved.
You don’t want “freedom.” You want to restrict other people’s freedom.
Loukydad - since we’re in the parents forum now, I might suggest that a thread about the book itself properly belongs in the parent cafe, but I’m no moderator.
What do we mean by rights here? There is no right to marriage in any of our founding documents, anymore than there is a right to health care or anything of the sort. Any right implies a duty on someone else’s part, to recognize something, to provide something, etc. otherwise it is meaningless. Government limits individual rights and freedoms all the time.
I mailed in my wedding marriage license on the day that marriage equality became the law throughout the land. What’s it to anyone but us the gender and/or sex of the people on that license?
Thank god that the US is not exactly like what the “founding fathers” envisioned or planned out. I kinda prefer being an equal citizen to my male counterparts, but to each his/her own.
“There is no right to marriage in any of our founding documents, anymore than there is a right to health care or anything of the sort. Any right implies a duty on someone else’s part, to recognize something, to provide something, etc. otherwise it is meaningless. Government limits individual rights and freedoms all the time.”
Right, but we don’t do so arbitrarily. We don’t say “everyone above 18 can vote, except those who are of Indian descent.” We don’t say “an adult male can marry an adult female, except if they are both over 60 years of age, or except if one is black and the other white, or except if one is Catholic and one is Jewish.” We don’t do so arbitrarily - or at least we strive not to.
You want a world in which people who don’t conform to your religious values have them imposed on them. It’s as simple as that. Some of us simply don’t understand - or more to the point, we don’t agree - that fundamentalist Christian values are “elevated” and should be the basis of public policy making.
Back to Mr. Grasso. Mr. Grasso is free not to read the book. He is free to express his opinion as he’s done. He is free to start or support organizations that are against gay marriage, or support political candidates who are against gay marriage. He is free to not attend Duke University if the norms / mores there do not comport with his point of view - just like I’m free not to apply to Liberty U or Oral Roberts since their norms / mores don’t comport with mine.
Anyway, the book does not appear to be “promoting homosexuality.” It’s very clear the father’s homosexuality caused lots of strife, disruption, angst in the Bechdel family. If the book promotes anything, it’s that truth and honesty win out, and that hidden lies and secrets cause only destruction.
I would love to explore “arbitrarily” in this context, after ages and ages of history, where both homosexuality and marriage between men and women have both existed side by side, but yet no culture thought we should redefine marriage because of it…but hey let’s just recognize we are off topic and move on!
“How it was done in the past” is of little interest to me as a guiding principle. Otherwise women wouldn’t have the right to own property or vote, and we’d still have slavery. And the definition of marriage has NOT always been “one man, one woman, romantic love.” Read your history book, and even your beloved Bible. Last time I checked, Jacob had 2 wives, Rachel and Leah, and 2 concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah. Amazing how that part of the Bible is always conveeeeeeeniently forgotten when it comes to the definition of marriage!
Now that I have read the book myself, while I won’t call him a liar as others did, I will say I can’t really identify with his reasons for not reading it. I know what to me is pornography, and this isn’t it. As I said before, I would have read it. I found it to be thought provoking and worthy of discussion even if I might question and disagree with much of what it attempts to say.
Polygamy is in the bible yes, but was never endorsed and was outside of God’s blessing and plan. It was man acting outside of God’s will, and in many cases they were judged by God because of it. Surely we can recognize the difference.
I think that speaking of what “marriage” is in the Bible is not of so much relevance now, when what “marriage” is in our civil society has a lot to do with taxes, inheritance, insurance, etc. I hate these sort of arguments (honestly) because they seem to denigrate what most of us see marriage is: a lifelong commitment of one person to another (richer and poorer and sickness and health) recognized by society. But when gay folks have been living in “marriage” for 30 or 40 years without the legal and societal benefits of it, isn’t it time to say “it’s really not different”?
This is kind of stunning in its historical ignorance. Most of our founding fathers were products of a generation whose anticlericalism and rationalism far exceeded that of our own. I won’t tell you that religion didn’t inform their values, but in general they and their friends were proud of not being religious as religious was then defined. For the most part, they did tend not to be atheists, but they had little truck with any existing organized religious doctrine. Their god was the god of Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, and Rousseau, an idea that bears little or no resemblance to the God to which the prayers of today’s Christians of almost any variety are addressed, not to mention the God of the New England Primer. It took the evangelisms of John Wesley and Billy Graham et al. to make this a religious country.
LOUKYDAD is also very kind to the Old Testament in terms of its approval of polygamy and racial discrimination. There is an awful lot of them, and Christians and Jews have all been doing backflips for centuries trying to explain it all away.
But I want to say that I very much appreciate LOUKYDAD’s honesty in reporting that, even to a reader not predisposed to like it, Fun Home is not pornographic. (If you want to think about the difference, compare Fun Home’s one page / four panels of lesbian sex with the multiple pages and panels in Le bleu est une couleur chaude. THAT’s trying to bring the conventions and style of porno into the story. Fun Home is important, life-altering sex with a whole lot of modesty.)
@T26E4 (going way back to correct an error): You are right. Way toward the end of the Inside Higher Ed article, it appears that Grasso told the reporter he planned to read the book now that a friend had told him which pages to avoid. I think that’s perfectly fine, but it’s about 175 degrees from the position he took in the op ed published in his name in the Washington Post. When I was criticizing Grasso before, I was responding to the militant position he took in the op ed: That he should not have to read any part of something that contained an image he might consider pornographic.