yonmei

10:44 pm: Dissecting Orson Scott Card, part 5
One marriage that took place in San Francisco was of David J. Knight to Joseph A. Lazzaro Jr. They had been together for 10 years, and had crossed the country from Baltimore to get married. Knight's father is a Californian Senator, William J. Knight - who led the campaign to get Proposition 22 into Californian state law. (Proposition 22 may ban same-sex marriage in California. The Mayor of San Francisco believed it to be unconstitutional, which is where he took his stand on issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples.) David Knight's father is also actively involved with the campaign against San Francisco issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Not content with that, David Knight's father is taking part in a legal challenge to California's "domestic partner" legislation. David Knight came out to his father in 1997, and they have been estranged ever since. By Orson Scott Card's definition of homophobia, it would seem that William J. Knight is homophobic: he is letting his fear and hatred of gay people affect his life, not least by estranging himself from his son.

Sadly, a court order has now been issued putting a halt to the same-sex marriages in San Francisco. However, more than three thousand couples were married in the month during which it was legal: we may anticipate some interesting legal ructions resulting, because - thus far at least - the same-sex marriages that did take place have not been declared invalid. And this defiance of the law leading to changes in the law is traditionally one strong method used by minorities to gain civil rights.


--------After the above essay was published in the Rhinoceros Times, the paper received a letter to the editor criticizing it. This is OSC's response. (To see the text of the letter, visit the Rhinoceros Times and scroll down to the letter titled "No Teetering Here".) [Letter now gone - out of date.]

I toyed with publishing, along with my essay, a mock letter listing all the cliche "arguments" against it. I'm glad I didn't; Mr. Herman saved me the trouble. I'll take his points in reverse order:

First, Herman's letter has gone from the website, which means I'm unable to quote it. I haven't even been able to find it cached on Google. However, let me say that I did read it, and OSC's tone of amused contempt is in no way justified. In summary, Herman's letter stated that he'd been uncertain how he felt about gay marriage, but after reading OSC's column had concluded that he was for it: it was a matter of civil rights for a minority, and civil rights should not be subject to majority rule.

My column made it very clear that homosexual "marriage" is merely the latest, not the worst, damage done to marriage in America; thus his penultimate paragraph, far from refuting my essay, reinforces my main point and suggests possible topics for public debate - if debate is still allowed in Mr. Herman's anti-democratic America.

Persistently, throughout his response to Herman's letter, OSC accuses Herman of being anti-democratic because Herman asserted his belief that minorities have rights too.

Indeed, OSC's essay made it clear that he also sees the easy availability of divorce, and the fact that unmarried women are no longer punished for having children, as a threat to marriage in America. That he was harking back to an imaginary past in which illegitimate children were not warehoused in "orphanages", in which no woman was ever desperate to escape an abusive marriage, in which no widow was left unmarried, is something that OSC chose to overlook when he wrote the essay, and chooses to overlook in responding to Herman's comments.

"Inclusion" is an empty word when used as a general virtue. Its value depends entirely on what is and is not included. Every inclusion of one group is an exclusion of another. I think even Mr. Herman would agree with me that there are certain groups that should be perpetually excluded from civilized society. Where we differ is only on our list of those groups, not on the principle.

This is a sneaky paragraph. Most people can think of people who ought to be "perpetually excluded" from civilised society. But what OSC is sliding under the line is the principle that groups of people should be perpetually excluded - which is a much more doubtful assertion. The question of whether Myra Hindley should be perpetually excluded from civilised society is a different question to whether all murderers should be perpetually excluded. And what is really sneaky is the principle being asserted of "exclusion from civilised society" - what exactly does that mean? Locked up in jail for life, where life really means till death? Or refused the basic rights that the majority take for granted - including the right to get married? All of this OSC neatly sweeps into one small pile and claims that he and Herman are in basic agreement - as in the old joke "We've already established that. Now we're just dickering about the price."

It's also interesting that OSC asserts as a virtue that some people should be excluded so that "inclusion" shall have a value that he can appreciate. In his column, he was fulminating against "the elite".

As for what "studies have shown," I'll pit my "studies" against Mr. Herman's "studies" and see who can outvague the other.

Since OSC actually failed to cite any studies, merely harking back to his fantasies of a soap-opera 1950s, he can certainly outvague Herman: he did so, at length, in his original essay.

I already conceded the point that society must compensate for bad parenting. But this is not done by institutionalizing the absence of heterosexual role models, especially since this would result in the schools relentlessly propagandizing all children toward homosexual "marriage" as a desirable choice.

A double false assertion, one building on the other: a technqiue OSC used in his original column. First, permitting same-sex couples the right to marry is not identical with "institutionalizing the absence of heterosexual role models". Second, there is not only no reason to believe that if same-sex marriage was a legal option, schools would "relentlessly propagandise" it as a desirable choice, there is actually sound reason to know it's not so: if OSC fears it might be so, he only had to check out the Netherlands educational system, where same-sex marriage has been legal for four years. Finally, OSC leaves himself an out or two: he can describe any mention of same-sex marriage in either textbooks or novels supplied by schools as "relentless propagandising": and he is objecting to same-sex marriage being presented as a desirable choice - which surely it is, just as mixed-sex marriage is, if you are inclined that way. What he is objecting to, with the use of that little word a, is that schoolchildren should be given real freedom of choice: told what their alternatives are, and let to decide for themselves.

All heterosexual marriages, with or without children, present normalizing role models that affirm the institution of marriage; childless people can still function as effective surrogate parents in society at large, encouraging children to remain within the cycle of life.

This is an astonishing assertion. All heterosexual marriages present "normalizing role models"? Jason Allan Alexander married Britney Spears for something less than 3 days, and this is a normalizing role model? For whom?

It is also an arrogant assertion. To OSC, all marriages, even those intentionally childfree, may represent "surrogate parents in society at large" but he has a damned cheek asserting that this is what they mean to everyone.

It is absurd to claim that homosexual "marriages" are in any way parallel to childless marriages in their effect on society in general.

And yet OSC has not managed to explain why it is absurd to think that same-sex couples, with or without children, could have the same effect on society in general as mixed-sex couples, with or without children. Effectively, OSC is claiming that Britney Spears marrying Jason Allan Alexander for fifty-two hours is a better role model for children than Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, marrying each other after 51 years together. I think it's fairly obvious where the absurdity lies: but it's not where OSC thinks it is.

Woman suffrage? Abolition of slavery? You can bet that I approve of those changes. But Mr. Herman, those social revolutions were introduced by the constitutional process of amendment. It took long public debate and national struggle - including civil war - before a consensus emerged.

This is a flat lie. The abolition of slavery was not introduced by "the constitutional process of amendment" - and neither was women's suffrage. Anyone familiar with the history of civil rights in the 19th century, in the US or elsewhere, would know that.

OSC in writing that paragraph above dismisses as irrelevant and unimportant many people who worked against slavery and/or for women's suffrage before any amendment was made. I wonder how he would face a man named Gabriel, who represents one of the many who fought slavery without benefit of a constitutional amendment? If OSC was consistent in his beliefs, he would condemn Gabriel, and all others like him, such as Harriet Tubman, as anti-democratic: they went against the will of majority, something which OSC claims he does not approve of.

The real precedents for what we're getting now are judicial diktats that imposed the view of an elite group on the whole nation without democratic process. One thinks of Plessy vs. Ferguson and Dred Scott. Wow. The courts do such a good job of inventing new constitutional laws when they don't have to wait for democracy.

I supplied the links for those who (like me) are basically unfamiliar with stories from America's anti-civil rights history. The curious thing about OSC citing these cases is that he ought to be firmly on the side of the judges in this case: in both cases, the judges who consigned Dred Scott and his family to slavery, or who instructed Plessy to sit in the Colored carriage, were going with the will of the majority. They were imposing a democratic verdict. OSC thinks that's the right thing for judges to do: he has explicitly said that he thinks it's wrong for judges to grant civil rights to a minority when the majority don't want the minority to have those civil rights.

Since the 1970s, judges have been bolder and bolder about inventing new laws and forcing them on the American people.

I would guess that this is another tired reference to the Roe v. Wade (1973): because prior to the 1970s judges also made bold decisions (unlike the timid decisions made in the Dred Scott case or the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, which went along with the will of the majority): as in the Loving v. Virginia case, 1967, in which (just as with same-sex marriages in Massachusetts) a Supreme Court looked at the case, looked at the Constitution, and concluded that forbidding couples to get married on the grounds of their race was indeed unconstitutional. This is the kind of "new law" that OSC claims to object to.

Mr. Herman is content with this, because he is part of the elite that has seized control and agrees with the forced experiments.

You'll have to take my word for it (unless someone can come up with a copy of Herman's letter) but at no point did he identify himself as part of an elite. This is a malicious invention of OSC's, associating Herman with the imaginary elite that OSC claims is responsible for changes to society that OSC calls "forced experiments".

But I'm quite sure that if a different group were using the same mechanism to force social experiments on an unwilling people, he would have a very different opinion.

OSC is making three false assertions in this one sentence. First, the assertion that Herman is part of an "elite" forcing things on others. Second, that same-sex marriage is a "social experiment" rather than a civil rights issue. Third, that same-sex marriage is being "forced on an unwilling people": no one is being forced into a same-sex marriage.

Courts that follow their own conscience instead of the letter of the law are an appalling form of government, however noble their intent.

Which is not what the Supreme Court of Massachusetts did: indeed, it's exactly the reverse, as with all other American courts that have concluded that same-sex marriage or same-sex civil unions are legal: they have looked at the letter of the law and concluded that it is unconstitutional to discriminate against gays with regard to marriage. (The mayor in San Francisco was indeed, or so he claimed, following his conscience in permitting same-sex couples to get marriage licences: but he was doing so with reference to the letter of the law.)

If Mr. Herman is so sure gay "marriage" is a good idea, then why doesn't he want us to reach that result by national debate and legislative process? Why does he despise the principle of majority rule? Why does he regard democracy with such distrust?

I can do no better than direct OSC to James Madison, whose open letters "To the People of the State of New York" were published in the Federalist in 1787/88.

Friday, November 23, 1787: "Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." (cite)

Wednesday, February 6, 1788: "It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure." (cite)

I might suggest also John Stuart Mill's famous essay On Liberty "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise." cite)

In short, the idea that the will of the majority should not be permitted to override the rights of the minority is not in itself anti-democratic - and OSC is being disingenous when he claims that anyone asserting minority rights in the face of majority will is defying democracy. (The friends of Socrates, in Athens, in 399 B.C., did not hesitate to recommend that Socrates should escape the death that had been voted for him: would OSC have lectured them that to do this was to despise the principle of majority rule?)

Civil rights in the US, as anywhere, have always followed the same pattern. Rosa Parks did not wait for national debate and legislative process before she refused to move to the back of the bus: she disobeyed. As James Blake, the driver, said: "I wasn't trying to do anything to that Parks woman except do my job. She was in violation of the city codes, so what was I supposed to do? That damn bus was full and she wouldn't move back. I had my orders." Quite. And according to OSC, in violating the city codes, Rosa Parks was part of an elite group forcing a social experiment on an unwilling majority - she was despising and mistrusting democracy. She ought, apparently, to have waited for the city to change its codes - not to have broken the law. That is, if OSC is consistent in his beliefs as he is expressing them in his response to Herman's letter.

His entire attitude can be summed up by his closing paragraph, which ends with telling me: "Stick to what you know." So much for inclusion, eh?

What is it that disqualifies me to enter the public debate? The fact that I reach conclusions different from him and the rest of the current dictatorial elite.

In Iran, people whom the ayatollahs don't approve of are barred from running for office or taking part in public discussion. The ayatollahs have the right to impose their ideas on the whole nation because they're really really really sure that they are correct about everything. All their friends agree with them, and anybody who disagrees with them is obviously evil or stupid.

Apparently, as long as he and his friends get to be the ayatollahs, Mr. Herman thinks that's a good system.

Me, I prefer democracy - even if it means letting dumb people like me have our say - and our votes. Studies have shown that when you let dumb people vote, it works out way better than letting experts make all the political decisions.

This is perhaps the most shameful (but most understandable) part of OSC's response. In OSC's original essay, that lying piece of bigotry, he presented himself as a man ignorant of everything but his immediate culture: a man who "thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature", and responds to any culture that behaves differently by exclaiming "Caesar! This is not proper." (Britannicus, Caesar and Cleopatra, George Bernard Shaw, 1900.) In short, OSC (deliberately or not) made himself look stupid, and Herman, responding to his essay, justifiably suggested "Stick to what you know". Yet OSC, responding, has expended more words on this one sentence than on any of the rest.

OSC wrote the essay in order to defend his religious beliefs: the principles of marriage as described in it are the principles of marriage ascribed to by the Mormon church (or so feedback informs me, and so my own limited knowledge of Mormonism suggests). Yet he avoided mentioning his church except in passing towards the end, and at no point does he admit that the whole structure laid out in his essay is, in fact, Mormon doctrine.

Let's look at the word he uses to attack Herman with: "ayatollah". An ayatollah is "a high-ranking Shi'ite religious leader who is regarded as an authority on religious law and its interpretation and who has political power as well". (cite) That is, an ayatollah is the Shi'ite Muslim equivalent of a Mormon bishop. The word has bad associations in the US, and I am certain that OSC chose it for its bad associations. Yet what he is accusing Herman of is, quite simply, what he himself is guilty of. Herman's letter defends same-sex marriage on civil rights principles: civil rights are not a religion in the US, or, indeed, anywhere. Neither is there any one identifiable group who are entitled to make final pronouncements on civil rights, and nor was Herman setting himself up to be a member of such a group. But OSC was attacking same-sex marriage on the basis of religious law, according to the Mormon interpretation, and setting himself up as an authority to do so. He simply wasn't acknowledging that he was doing so.

OSC is not a stupid man. He's intelligent, well-informed, empathic, with a knack for putting himself in other people's shoes. I've been reading his writings for twenty years: this much I can say for certain. But if I knew him only from this essay, I would think him stupid, ill-informed, bigoted, and utterly unable to see the world from any perspective but his own. I wonder if the defensive tone of the final paragraphs of his response, classing himself with "the dumb people" shows an awareness that he has presented himself as a stupid and ignorant man, a bigot writing for bigots? I hope very much that it is so, because it seems to me that when that last awareness flickers out, when OSC is no longer even slightly conscious that he has sold his integrity as a writer for the sake of his membership in the Mormon church, then he will no longer exist as the man I knew once: that man will be dead, and by his own hand.

The first four posts dissecting Orson Scott Card are in my memories. (And a link to this wedding story - just two women, a rainstorm, and a stinking cold...)