That was well reasoned. But perhaps Rod is simply an asshole hiding behind moral posturing.

You're a very different writer than most bloggers, in a good way. Your arguments are more sincerely grounded in the totality of human experience. It's not the argument here is unique - it's that most people would throw in the "does Jesus really want gay people to be lonely and sexually profligate" in no more words than that. Not only do you go deeply into the underpinnings of these arguments in a personal way, but you do so in a rounded manner, instead of simply beating your point to death. Your arguments don't sound like they're being made by whiny a**holes, in short. And they don't leave an impression of inconsideration, dismissiveness, or ignorance. It's sort of like Obama's gift for acknowledging the opponent's arguments before defeating them.

Whatever it is, you're good at it.

The thing about Dreher is that he could easily agree with you. It would make no difference. He can't change his mind. It would hurt his audience, mess with his sense of identity, alienate him from his real-world relations. All he has to do to continue disagreeing with you is not love or sympathize enough with gay people to be willing to suffer the personal costs of changing his mind. He doesn't actually have to fail to get your point or genuinely negate the emotional resonance and the validity of the principles.

I think that one of the reasons so many of us find the religious right to be so hypocritical is that they are very selective in which apsects of Christ's teachings they actually bother to follow.

If conservatives were a little more consistent in applying EVERYTHING that Jesus taught, not just the aspects that happen to fit with their political agenda, the rest of us might not find them quite so distasteful.

I always find it astounding when a conservative considers the marriage of two women -- who have pledged their lives and their love together, as an example of barbarism. Yet don't condemn unjustified war or torture as far more powerful examples of barbarism. It never fails to utterly amaze me!

what sort of person would... actively work to deny this kind of happiness to those who do not share his or her religious views?

The kind of person who doesn't particularly care whether others share his beliefs, or about their happiness, but still thinks those beliefs are the single, absolutely essential framework for a civilized society. With conservatives, it's always about their ideal societal structure: religious acquiescence (even they're not dumb enough to expect genuine acceptance), openly hierarchical power models, privilege praised instead of questioned.

Just a word about diversity.

The worst a Christian should say about these two women is that while, by loving one another and taking their love fully seriously, they get one very important thing very, very right, by falling in love with the wrong person, they have gotten another thing somewhat wrong.

I realize that you're writing this with Rod Dreher's apparent views on Christianity in mind, but I feel a need to caution people about the use of the word "Christian" as though Christianity were homogenous. "The worst" some Christians could say is different from "the worst" other Christians might be able to say. Heck, the worst thing folks in my church would say is that they're sorry they weren't invited to the wedding.

I'd really like people to know that Christianity does not equal "the religious right." In fact, the RR is mostly a subset of American Christian Fundamentalism, and if I'm not too badly mistaken, most Christians aren't fundamentalists, though you'd never know that by watching the news. There's a large group of Christians who reject the doctrine of inerrancy, who don't automatically assume everyone who disagrees with them will toast at the end of a pitchfork for all eternity, and who embraces marriage equality.

patient man, steve, that's why i read you, uh, "religiously."

you patiently deal with these jerks. me, i have a relatively short list of "people i no longer wish to argue with..."

started it several years ago:
#1- dick cheney (god damn his shit-filled soul to hell)

with pricks like dreher, who turn christianity into sociopathology, i have as deep a loathing. thru-out the history of the church, the gospel of love has been turned into a gospel of hate. dreher and his ilk today are not originals. but they are sorry-ass believers, just like the haters of the past, whether the ones who hated the jews (elaine pagels and james carroll have written formidable books on this) or women (the world's major religions are still among the greatest enforcers of misogyny). makes me think: hmph, dreher is really just small texas potatoes...

and that ass-hat newly working over at the ny times? dont even get me started... what a 2-bit theological maroon...

An absence of critical thinking, a failure to fully think through the context, and a willingness to be led around by the nose by those in his movement who are cynical manipulators of the intertwined emotions of indignation, rage, resentment, and...sexual excitement. Let's be honest, the fundamentalist Christian movement is based on pornography, whether it's gay porn or racism porn or Terry Schiavo's senseless body porn. It's what gets people emotionally involved. And people like Dreher, who may in other ways be somewhat decent, allow their perspective on what's important to be shaped by the issues the larger movement has decided are the issues of the moment, and they don't see the big picture—for instance, the fact that there are things much more worthy of concern (torture, the ravages of untrammeled capitalism, etc.) than two women who love each other getting to have some legal rights with respect to one another.

...so many of us find the religious right to be so hypocritical is that they are very selective in which apsects of Christ's teachings...

I think that's true on the left as well. The bigger difference is that the right wants to enforce biblical interpretations on others. It frustrates me to no end that the Catholic church, which for so long taught about fighting temptation, as though morality was about self-control, now wants to engage in so much earthly judgment of others. Even the death penalty seems to be worthy of discussion.

Hilzoy: This gives me a chance to repeat a comment I made in an e-mail to Steve, but first, let me say why my comments rarely appear under posts by you. It's not that I don't read them. I almost always do, and realize that any comment I might make would be superfluous.

I have been a sports fan (mostly baseball) all my life -- I can remember a homerun I watched over 55 years ago -- and still damn Wes Westrum for it. I have been lucky to hear some of the great announcing in the field, and know that the ideal sports broadcasting team is a great "play-by-play" announcer to report on what is happening, and a 'color commentator' that gives the background, that may give the reasons why what happened happened.

You, I understand from Steve's response, won't entirely 'get' this, but I've had the chance to hear Howie Rose and Bob Murphy -- and earlier Richie Ashburn and Harry Kalas - in baseball; Madden and Summerall -- when they were at their best -- in football; and Sam Rosen and "JD" (John Davidson) in hockey. They were the best at what they did.

In politics, you and Steve are the exact equivalent. Steve is a 'play-by-play' person -- and so good at it that he is really writing the political history of the 21st Century in his writings. But you are his perfect complement, the ideal 'color commentator.'

In short, thank you for existing and sharing your brilliant, compassionate vision with us.

But, but, but....if gays could get marriedm they could collect on all of those great financial benefits of marriage (pensions, etstates, etc) and society would be propping them up just like Dreher and HIS wife. So he and his wife would be THE SAME as some gay couple. Which would be creepy. Because they or so not gay.

Or something.

Most of modern conservatism is built around and exploits the idea that a) somebody you think you wouldn't like is getting something they're not entitled to and b) the government is taking yours to give it to them. A good bit of what passes for philosophical underpinnings is just a cloud of obfuscation to cover the dark core of essential selfishness and greed.

Shorter modern conservatism:
1) I can say and do whateer I want. If you don't like it you're a politically correct WATB.

2) Don't talk back to me!

3) Get off my lawn!

4) Bring me my cocktail and cigar before you go darlin'/boy/Pedro, or I will cut your ass.

These anti-gay marriage folks only argument is religious, i.e., gays are bad and icky. However, many of their psyches are conflicted by attempting to repress their conscious/unconscious fixation on buttsex. ( Pam Spaulding some time ago rebranded Focus on the Family to Focus on the Anus.)

What's astonishing is how timid Dreher is in considering that he might be one of the barbarians. "Oh really, how about that?". He needs to consider the possibility that he is just flat wrong about most things political -- wrong about the Iraq war, wrong about our national energy policy, wrong about gay marriage, wrong about national health, wrong about how we tax and pay for things, wrong about our approach to crime, wrong about our approach to education, wrong about sex education, and wrong about tax policy. And also wrong, to not think that people on the other side, have not thought hard about these things. These guys, at best, are in love with a beautiful theory, that unfortunately does not work at all in the real world.

Though we like to think of ourselves as apostles of excellence preaching against the depredations of Hollywood trash and academia’s political correctness, we have reduced ourselves to sneering at the concept of elitism and celebrating ignorance and vulgarity as signs of authenticity.

I found it wholly ironic that Dreher uses the RW derogatory euphamism for 'educated' [elitism], and sees no commonality with 'celebrating ignorance and vulgarity' with the very definition of barbarism.

One might get the impression that here is yet another RW exercise in redefining words in order to participate in projection.

It could easily be considered more denialist crap from conservative leaders who simply do not want to admit that by embracing and intentionally cultivating vulgar ignorance in their supportive base, they put their own party in peril. And yet here he is, writing around and around in circles, never really getting to the heart of the matter.

One thing I'd love someone like Dreher to explain is: why is it necessary, in this particular case, for Christians to mobilize the power of the secular state to forbid the conduct that they disapprove of?

Why can't they let gsys legally marry, continue to witness to gays about how (as they see it) God would rather that they be straight, and trust in God to speak to the hearts of gays as He deems appropriate?

There are lots of behaviors that the Bible speaks to. For instance, it says in Deuteronomy 23:24-25 that people should be allowed to eat what they want as they're walking through another's vineyards or cornfields, so long as they don't take any away with them. But I don't see Christians of Dreher's ilk mobilizing to get that into the next farm bill.

Who knows what the rules are for what Biblical edicts God tells His servants that they should require of everyone, what they should merely heed for themselves, and what they should ignore entirely? It's a mystery.

I'm tempted to think that psychosexual factors are the basic explanation for this kind of right-wing behavior.

But those factors get projected into exaggerated fears that America, or Western Civilization or whatever, will be contaminated, defiled, penetrated by all sorts of awful Otherness. It's as though America were a Holy Precinct that will lose its meaning if all taboos are not rigorously obeyed.

Basically it's completely irrational, which is why these people almost never budge, and on the rare occasions when they do, it's always a sort of "conversion experience," another form of irrationality.

Even if something is by a Christian's lights a moral wrong, and if it's widespread in the world in which the Christian lives, there's still a pretty good argument. against harnessing the coercive power of the state to root it out that that putative Christian should consider.

It's really quite simple. Like most human beings, Rod Dreher is susceptible to anger, envy, pride, sloth, and gluttony. As a Republican, we KNOW he is susceptible to greed. And it is very likely that he is susceptible to lust. BUT, as a straight male, Rod is much less susceptible to lust towards someone of the same sex. Accordingly, to him, this MUST be the worst possible sin, since it does not tempt him and his immunity to it proves his own moral superiority to those who do feel such desires. This is the basis of all religious opposition to homosexuality: by painting a sin which does not tempt you as the worst of all sins, you minimize your own sin and prove your moral purity.

That or he's a self-loathing closet case desperately in denial about his own homosexual leanings -- I don't know the man enough to even speculate on that, but I do know that those are the only two remotely plausible reasons for such virulent homophobia.

It's like Mencken's definition of Puritanism (paraphrasing): the nagging fear that somewhere, someone might be happy.

I agree with Mr. Dreher. We should go back to the good ol days 60 years ago. That way I could smack my secretary on the ass, sneer at that kike in the office nextdoor, and then go to a whites-only restaurant for lunch, and maybe watch the cops beat up on some faggits they caught.

Yeah, that's Much less barbaric than nowadays. Rod Dreher is awfully intelligent.

If Dreher's deep cultural traditions were in place, Hilzoy wouldn't be allowed to blog here. She'd have to blog on an old 486 connected to a 2400-baud modem, serving up HTML 3 pages.

I've been reading Drehr since he started on Beliefnet, just for laughs. Seems to me his biggest problem is that he really buys into that repub schtick about white, str8 men as the ultimate victims. And in his mind-blowing reality, it's the big, bad gays and lesbians who are the big power figures in the world, keeping the 'man', he being the proto-man, down and victimized. If you ever try to point out who the truly victimized are in the world, he testily calls you 'off topic' and deletes your comments. Then he points to the whole exchange as more proof of his victimhood.

I think what's always overlooked in understanding the deep-seated resistance to gay marriage is the issue of loss of status.

For a lot of the less educated who make up a preponderance of opponents, the history of the last few decades is one of constantly declining status. Fraternal organizations used to fill in for some of that, but they've all but disappeared. Civic groups? Ladies' garden clubs? Some still exist, but far fewer.

But the one thing that these folks were always told would afford them some manner of status in the community was that they would eventually marry and take their proper place in their own societies. This puts them above those who "shack up," those who have children out of wedlock, and those promiscuous, loin-driven homos.

And now the homos want in! What distinction will be left if even the homos can do it?

This is what is meant by "threatening traditional marriage." It isn't the marriages themselves, it's the distinctions these people think that marriage confers---and the lack of any other.

The problem with gay marriages is that it's mostly lesbians who do it, and from a straight man's standpoint lesbians are a bad thing regardless of any Howard Stern-ish erotic associations. For a straight man, gay men are like vegetarians at a barbecue - more for everyone else! Lesbians, in contrast, are more like starving Tasmanian Devils at a barbecue - less for everyone else.

Thanks to the rise of so-called soft polygamy (Alpha males with two or more women - think of the married executive with a mistress), it has become increasingly difficult for ordinary men to find women. It's no coincidence that sites like match.com and eharmony.com have too many men seeking too few women. Lesbians only make a bad situation worse. That doesn't make them bad people, of course, but it does mean that straight men should not celebrate them.

Lmao, yopu get worked up over this but have no problem with Obama ignoring rape.

Congratulations. You've proven the Barbarians aren't merely at the gate, their in the palace giving the orders.

Um, Peter, I seriously hope that you're kidding or haven't given what you wrote much thought because that is one of the dumbest arguments I've read in a long time.

I'm a lesbian and I've been in a happy, commmited relationship with a woman for over 10 years. Guess what? Denying me the right to marry the love of my life does not help a single straight man find an available straight woman to date.

The other day I was genuinely, albeit naively, surprised when Dreher let it out that he'd barely read the Bible.

This astounded me. I took it that Dreher is a religious person, not a secular one, and that that meant that much of what he knows he knows not on the basis of reason and worldly evidence, but of revelation and otherworldly evidence. And from his standpoint, I would have supposed, by far the most important source of revealed knowledge would be the Bible. Yet of this source of knowledge he has availed himself scarcely at all.

Yet he seems to know a great deal--for instance, that for Laughlin and Diaz to marry would be an instance of "modern barbarism." If doesn't know this on the basis of the revealed word of God, how does he know it? He knows enough to do what he can to deprive them of the joys and fulfillment of matrimony--he knows then a good deal. How does he know it?

It's also worth noting that what has been revealed to us of the concerns of the Lord Jesus is that divorce is to be stringently avoided. Of course, In Jesus' view that meant only putting off divorce until the imminent arrival of the reign of God on earth transformed the human condition and perhaps carnal desire as well. But still, it's remarkable that among all his ethical concerns, homosexuality went unrecorded, and divorce--the condition of straight marriage--concerned him greatly. Again, one wonders from where Dreher's readiness to impose a piece of misery on others derives.

Soullite-

What on earth are you talking about? Wait, on second thought, don't bother to answer that. Just move on and away, please.

Christ commanded his followers to love one another.

Obviously, He was just kidding...

"Thanks to the rise of so-called soft polygamy (Alpha males with two or more women - think of the married executive with a mistress), it has become increasingly difficult for ordinary men to find women."

Yeah, this is pretty pathetic. Reminds me of those "women don't like nice guys" whiners. More likely it's not about them, Peter, but about you.

In fairness, it's not only straight men who think this way. I remember one woman I worked with telling me that she hated gays because they decreased her pool of available males.

When a writer wraps his bigotry in overblown rhetoric and sneers down his nose at the barbarians who have offended "our values," he doesn't, in my opinion, deserve a serious response. Why are you wasting your time treating him as though his self-righteous diatribe is worth your time?

I'm a lesbian and I've been in a happy, commmited relationship with a woman for over 10 years. Guess what? Denying me the right to marry the love of my life does not help a single straight man find an available straight woman to date.

Obviously not. The point is that if you and your partner were not lesbians, two men who may otherwise be left unhappily single and alone would have a chance at finding women. Again, this does not mean that you have done anything wrong or deserve any criticism, but it makes the "Wow, lesbians are so hot!" attitude found among so many men rather difficult to understand.

These things work both ways, of course, with gay men reducing the "pool" of single men available to women. That's less important, however, as due to soft polygamy and other factors it's generally easier for women to find men than it is for men to find women. Don't believe me? Compare the number of Men Seeking Women ads to Women Seeking Men ads on your local Craigslist.

Because they'll burn in hell if they don't do what Dreher's psychopathic god wants, so of course they should be made miserable in life in anticipation.

That's why.

Barbarians are people who hold in contempt civilized norms of behavior, who try to destroy government and governmental institutions and believe in the anarchy of might makes right in all things.

That is, Republicans.

Peter, your reasoning is faulty. The reason that there are more men trolling on the net is because women are less liable to look for a mate that way. It's a lot less safe being a woman looking for a mate than for a man. It has always been heavily dominated by men even though there are more women in the world. I have no idea what the hell you are trying to say with the soft porn two women one man thing, but, I sense you're pulling all this out of your ass, anyway.

In addition, your whole argument is a strawman argument because guess what? Lesbians don't like men. In addition, most of the screeds I've read against gay marriage is more aimed towards gay men than towards lesbian.

In other words, it's you, Peter, not the lack of straight/bi women.

As fer Dreher, I am with Hilzoy. With all the problems in the world, the last thing anyone should care about is two consenting adults loving each other.

In biblical times (and to this day in many places & cultures) marriage was essentially a way of exchanging goods between families. The most precious resource in a small precariously existing society is the fertility of its young women. Someone with daughters had this 'good' and gave it in exchange for what we in the west would call a dowry.

It was during the late medieval period that the idea of romantic love was imagined for the first time. And it was in the enlightenment that people first imagined that average people ought to have the 'right' to seek autonomy and personal happiness.

If marriage is in fact based on the enlightenment ideal of autonomy and the desire to find one's own love, there is no good reason to oppose gay marriage except homophobia.

On the other hand, if society's interest in the fertility of it's young women in primary then of course there should be no gay marriage.

Imagine how many lesbians in the ages of mankind's past (and many present-day situations) never had a chance to even imagine not being married to a man and bearing his children because that was simply the reason they existed in society!!! And the stereotypical worried mother of a late-marrying son is a well known comic figure--because she actually exists.

For opponents of gay marriage their intuitive objection is hard to express because our civilization has progressed so far toward individualism and personal autonomy that they simply don't have the vocabulary to express it.

That is Dreher's frustration, that he doesn't have the vocabulary.

Peter, your reasoning is faulty. The reason that there are more men trolling on the net is because women are less liable to look for a mate that way. It's a lot less safe being a woman looking for a mate than for a man. It has always been heavily dominated by men even though there are more women in the world. I have no idea what the hell you are trying to say with the soft porn two women one man thing, but, I sense you're pulling all this out of your ass, anyway.

What I am saying is that the widespread male fantasizing over lesbians - e.g. the "girl on girl" scene that's found in just about every pornographic movie - is pointless, almost self-destructive, because the greater the number of lesbians, the worse things are for men. And things are bad, let me tell you. If you're a man who isn't sufficiently "Alpha," for instance if you prefer D&D and WoW to the NFL and MLB, you'd better learn how to cope with loneliness, because chances are that will be your fate in life.

I really don't think you, as a woman and especially as an Asian woman as your handle implies, can fully understand just how difficult it is to be a man today. A man that wants a family, that is.

I think the rape I am supposed to be ignoring is the rape Taguba supposedly claimed was in the photos. I have said that I think the photos should be released; with respect to this story, I am dubious of its source ever since they said they had copies of the new Abu Ghraib photos, which I didn't write about because I recognized them as old photos.

That said, there are also lots of things I don't write about because I don't have time. (Full-time job, etc.) It's never a good idea, in my case, to infer anything from the fact that I don't write about something.

Aside from the specifics of the example, a culture "where individual autonomy -- especially in matters sexual and economic -- is widely considered the highest good" cannot survive. It will collapse and take the natural world with it.

for instance if you prefer D&D and WoW to the NFL and MLB, you'd better learn how to cope with loneliness

LOL... I've never had any fondness for ESPN-loving men and have always made it clear that trying to include me in sports fandom is a waste of time & money, but I will say that at least sports seasons end eventually, and sometimes even jockheads get out of the house to socialize with others. I have yet to meet a dedicated geek (male) who wasn't actually more obnoxious about his hobbies than sports fans, probably less because of the sports "alpha" designation per se than the sense that sports is enough of a guy thing that it's okay for women to be explicitly uninterested without hurt feelings.

Personally, I prefer men who are handy (except w/cars) and/or musical, as far as masculine stereotypes go-- those interests are either useful or entertaining, and usually don't take up all waking hours for non-professionals.

Why is woman-on-woman sex viewed differently than man-on-man sex? Is a man's mouth or anus fundamentally different than a woman's?

For the purposes of pleasure: is the clitoris just an undersized penis, or is the penis just an oversized clitoris?

Viewed as a biologically-rooted social problem, men can spurt their seed into any number of wombs on a given day, while women can reproduce only every 9 months or so. Viewed from that perspective, its easy to see why women have been/are viewed as property.

I don't really get girl-on-girl porn. I mean, what am I supposed to identify with?

Humans are a pair-bond species. While infidelity is not uncommon (for either gender. At all.), we nearly universally go for one-on-one relationships over the long course. This isn't an accident. If older, more prestigious males monopolize the females they tend to get killed by the younger and stronger males. No quicker recipe for social unrest than having a lot of sexually frustrated men.

Actually Hilzoy, I apologize. I thought this was Steve Benen.

I wasn't really criticizing him for ignoring it himself. I was criticizing him for thinking it was no big deal that Obama doesn't prosecute these guys because it's not one of those 44 pictures. Everyone on that thread agrees with me. Hell, for once I wasn't even the only one going apeshit.

I love how people that think feminism is awesome LOVE making fun of RPG'ers for being 'unmanly' and proclaiming they deserve sexual frustration and lonliness.

Hell, I guess if you're a flat-chested feminist, why the fuck should any man look at you twice? You're clearly every but as worthless by your standards. If society can dictate masculinity, and you have no problem with it, then you're really just a hypocritical piece of shit when you declare that society shouldn't define femininity.

Hell, what do you expect from a group of people who LOVE laughing at the fact that people sell breast shape products, and yet keep mechanical penises by your bedside!

Humans are a pair-bond species.
soullite

No we're not.

No quicker recipe for social unrest than having a lot of sexually frustrated men.

True! And explains why porn is a multibillion dollar industry.

Yes, We are.

Isn't this fun?

NeilB:

"Aside from the specifics of the example, a culture "where individual autonomy -- especially in matters sexual and economic -- is widely considered the highest good" cannot survive. It will collapse and take the natural world with it."

I'm not sure if you are being serious here, since this statement doesn't comport with other opinions I've seen you express on Political Animal. But I would like to say this about what you said.

I don't believe that we are headed towards a society where individuals have utter license to do exactly as they please, anytime, anywhere. No doubt there are people who would like to see that outcome, but I believe that the majority of us recognize that living with others requires us to not always act upon the immediate impulse toward gratification.

However, what we liberals stand for, I believe, is individual freedom, as long as that doesn't infringe upon the rights of others. Despite inflammatory rhetoric, mostly from the right, allowing homosexuals or lesbians to marry the people they love doesn't do anything to the heterosexual marriages around them. NOT ONE THING. Sure, if humans manage to decimate themselves through nuclear war or failing to counter global warming or whatever, then those left will need all the sexual productivity they can muster. And one assumes that artificial insemination might be a technology beyond the means of a society desperately trying to survive. Even so, I could envision asking gay/lesbian couples to copulate with one another for reproductive purposes, while allowing them to live with and love persons of choice.

I simply do not see allowing marriage between consenting adults, regardless of what tabs are fitting into which orifices, as leading to some situation of utter license, as some conservatives allege. For instance, I don't see large scale adoption of a "right" to pedophilia or bestiality. Children and even more so, animals, by definition, cannot engage in children-adult, or animal-human, relations with informed consent.

Finally, we liberals certainly recognize that viable societies are based upon individuals helping each other out, and taking responsibility for those who due to youth or infirmity are unable to completely care for themselves. We do believe in observing social contracts and recognize that a society based solely upon individual hedonism is unsustainable.

I'll accept the findings of a science that studies humans as animals LONG before I'll accept one that studies human social interactions.

One studies what we are, the other studies the bullshit we pretend to be.

I think the thing that strikes me about that essay by Rod, as all of his essays, is the essential, pathetic, soul-lessness of the man. He worries about "rootless cosmopolitans" and people who "prize individual rights" precisely because he has no core, no center, no soul that he can call his own.

I don't mean to be dismissive, by saying that. I mean that the man makes a living carping about other people's failings--specifically their failure to seize the moment to become "saints" (that's in another one of his beliefnet pieces) and wringing his hands proposing various crunchy con solutions to withdrawing from the scary wide world.

What is that but to say that he earns his bread whining that other people not only live in the world, and work to earn their living, but exult in and enjoy the passions and the struggles of everyday life without tearfully prostrating themselves on the altar of a long vanished jewish carpenter. Rod sometimes complains that he is worried that the world is going down hill and that the evidence of that is greater unhappiness. But when he gives examples of the ruin around him its always examples of individual men and women working for and enjoying their own distinct form of happinness.

Look at this essay Hilzoy links to? He worries that the bad thing about capitalism is that it dissolved the fetters of feudalism and tradition. There's a lot we crunchy people could complain about in terms of capitalism--its heartlessness, its greed, its savaging of the poor and the weak, its exaltation of wealth but dissolving the bonds of feudalism and enabling (for example) widespread education, science, medical care and wealth are not really bad things. Except for someone whose god demands that people suffer and worship suffering and isolation.

aimai

I'll accept the findings of a science that studies humans as animals LONG before I'll accept one that studies human social interactions.

One studies what we are, the other studies the bullshit we pretend to be.

*cough*

Could someone point me to the passage(s) in the New Testament where Jesus condemns lesbians?

"But even in Christian terms, why not concentrate on any one of the innumerable things in which there is much less good to be found, if any, rather than trying to force his views on people who are genuinely in love, want only to be able to marry, and do not accept any of the religious views on which Rod bases his view that gay marriage is wrong? "

Because if you bump uglies and they don't fit together right, you are going to Hell forever!!!

Jeebus Crike on a corncake.

"patient man, steve, that's why i read you, uh, "religiously." "

Uh, neill, you might have noticed that this wasn't in the typeface Steve normally uses. That, as well as Hilzoy's signature at the bottom of the post, is a hint that no patient man wrote what you admired. ;-)

Peter, peter, peter.

Straight women LIKE gay men because they don't bother them in bars.

And you see a lot more ads for Men Seeking Women because a whole lotta women are, for good reason, scared to meet people through ads. I mean, men don't exactly get raped by women as often as it happens the other way.

Rod's problem, besides his pornstar first name, is that he can watch "Pleasantville" as long as it's in black and white. The color comes in and it's a tragedy. He's one of those people who read old "Life" and "Look" magazines and thought that his grownup world would look like that.

There must be a place like that--Oklahoma? Utah?--where you can pretend it's 1962. Just don't ask me to live there.

Uh, neill, you might have noticed that this wasn't in the typeface Steve normally uses. That, as well as Hilzoy's signature at the bottom of the post, is a hint that no patient man wrote what you admired. ;-)

Plus the distinct lack of "...wait for it..."

Jack and Jill,
by Steve Benen

Jack and Jill went up the ...wait for it...hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling ...wait for it...after.

Oh my. When a Right Wingnut deploys the adjective 'rootless' with a criticism of 'capitalism' experience derived over the last couple hundred years of Euro-American history means they have made the equation "rootless cosmopolitan" = "urban bankers" = Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice "Simon the Shylock = "Blood-sucking Jew".

It is not an accident that that State Senator slipped and describe Schumer as "that Jew".

For hundreds of years much of the tension between country and city has been a proxy for anti-Semiticism and of course for homophobia. 'San Francisco Democrat' is right code for fag/dike/fag hag. 'New York City Liberal' right code for Soros/Rothschild/Jew. Ever shake your head in wonder about how the Right has managed to convince themselves that everything wrong with America can be summed up as 'Pelosi-Soros' know that it has little to nothing to do with who Nancy and George are, it is all about who they stand in for. They are names attached to concepts that pre-date their births by centuries.

Once you grasp the historical symbolism lots of things about wingnut discourse come into focus.

And you see a lot more ads for Men Seeking Women because a whole lotta women are, for good reason, scared to meet people through ads.

That's true.
Yet there's also a big surplus of men on sites such as match.com and eharmony even though they offer a higher degree of safety.

I've never had any fondness for ESPN-loving men and have always made it clear that trying to include me in sports fandom is a waste of time & money, but I will say that at least sports seasons end eventually, and sometimes even jockheads get out of the house to socialize with others. I have yet to meet a dedicated geek (male) who wasn't actually more obnoxious about his hobbies than sports fans, probably less because of the sports "alpha" designation per se than the sense that sports is enough of a guy thing that it's okay for women to be explicitly uninterested without hurt feelings.

All that ties in with an observation I've made. Women tend not to mind if a man is interested, so long as he isn't totally obsessed, in an activity that doesn't appeal as much to women ... so long as it's a traditional guy-stuff, appropriately masculine activity. Sports, tinkering with cars, manual crafts such as woodworking, hunting and fishing, things like that (of course some women like these things too, but not to the same extent).

The flip side is that women tend to have much less tolerance for men are interested in activities that appeal mostly to men yet are also seen as somehow non-masculine or not quite adult: science fiction, D&D and other RPG's, WoW, Star Trek, comic books, baseball cards, and so on.

I played D&D in highschool. I lost my virginity at 14. I really think how hot you are matters a lot more than your interests or hobbies. But, most people are simply ugly so it's hard to find another metric to base your judgment on.

I really doubt most women get that this is why most men don't care about women's rights and are dismissive of feminism in general. Spite is a very powerful emotion. You give what you get, you get what you give. It's not like most of us actually get anything worthwhile out of patriarchy. We just like that it punishes you.

Really, it's down right impressive the way patriarchy reinforces itself.

Teach young women to be judgment gold diggers >> Make men resent women >> Men keep women oppressed >> wash rinse repeat!

I'm awestruck. Can evil things be beautiful? Compaired to so much of the vile gore that comes from wickedness, that little bit of villainy is a piece of art.

Shit, I wish someone would pick on me. I'd love to laugh in a chicks face, inform her that society still values my and my dick more than it will ever value her and her vagina. I will then tell her to enjoy making 70 cents to every dollar I do, and go back to enjoying my drink.

That's why men don't give a shit. At the end of the day, we already won.

Wolfdaughter, I thought of that autonomy statement as an essentially conservative ethos - that individuals don't need anyone else, and should seek their own gain and not be concerned for the rest. That leads to no national health care, no concern for ecology, etc. I didn't interpret it as living your own private life the way you want to, which is OK with me.

Peter, one of the great saving graces of the more 'appropriately masculine' activities, to be perfectly blunt, is that they tend to not be both ceaseless and homebound the way geek gaming so often is. IOW, it's just easier to ignore a few hours of sports yakking on weekends or guy outings to games than to deal with someone sitting glassy-eyed & slack-jawed in front of a computer for nineteen hours straight. What's nominally more 'adult' about more traditional guy pursuits-- and I happen to consider identifying with teams to which one doesn't belong pretty silly-- is that they usually aren't underfoot 24/7. It's just not attractive to see someone obsessively absorbed in alternate realities constantly.

So, all things being equal, I don't consider sports more appealing than gaming, but they're slightly less intrusive and a lot better scheduled in general.

Yeah Latts, cause it's fucking adorable the way you guys clutter eveyr fucking shelf with such 'adult' toys as tiny kitty figuringes and beany babies!

That's fucking awesome!

On the defensiveness about 'non-manly' pursuits:
I think the instinctive revulsion has to do with pursuits that are basically consumption.
It may not be entirely fair, but playing World of Warcraft has a stigma that bridge or poker does not, because it's viewed less as real play than as consuming a product someone else has designed.
Science fiction? If it's reading the stuff and arguing about nanotech and whether Heinlein was a fascist, I maintain it's a different thing from something that boils down to refined watching of TV.
(And of course some of us love comic books enough to end up writing or drawing them.)
Sure it's a bad thing not to exercise--but historically there have been plenty of folks who find love of opera or jazz or Vladimir Nabokov grounds for mutual attraction. I think it's that the more it looks like soaking up the stuff that comes down The Big Chute, the less attractive it looks--and for a reason.

Soullite, I'll grant that adult women who decorate (not that decorating equals personal hobbies, mind you) with kitties or stuffed animals would probably be pretty good matches for hard-core gamers in terms of emotional development. Although IME the kitty-women are more often married to outdoorsy men-- that could just be a regional/generational thing-- and women married to WoW types just try to get out of the house (was it at Balloon Juice that one poster said WoW had destroyed two of her relationships?- couldn't even distract them with sex, IIRC).

pbg, I don't think it's the consumption issue that's a problem so much as the alternate-reality aspect of it... sports does at least happen in the real world, with the real bodies of real people who live something approximating real lives among other real humans. I don't claim to speak for all women, but anyone who prefers to spend much of his free time in a completely fake world is in red-flag territory as far as I'm concerned... they're probably better off with fake women, actually.

To be honest, there are plenty of gamer and geek women (even WoW addicts). Heck, there are even WoW marriages where the players have their characters marry as well! (And you should see all the videogame-based wedding cakes nowadays.) If a gamer guy is having trouble finding women, it's more likely he's just not looking correctly. The women are out there. The problem is with trying to get two introverts together in the first place, since both are happy not to get out much.

Unfortunately, though I'm a geeky female, I can't help. I met the love of my life purely by accident, arguing over who had the better fansite for an obscure Japanese videogame.

And secondly, humans may have evolved as pair-bonded but still extremely promiscuous. The head of the penis is meant to scoop out the previous man's semen to give his own a better chance at fertilizing the egg. Other primates don't have that feature nearly as pronounced.

Interesting post. Online dating has sure influenced our lives in interesting ways.

Although, I personally am so far to the left, that even the even the democrats appear to me to be "right-wing," I consider myself to be a strict constitutionalist. It is my opinion that since its inception there has been an organized and systematic assault by the conservatives in the United States on the civil liberties written into the US Constitution. The “War on Drugs”; “War on Terror”; “War on Communism” and a host of other wars waged by the right wing are really nothing more than a War on People--an excuse to erode civil rights to the point of non-existence. I invite you to my website devoted to raising awareness on this puritan attack on freedom: http://freethegods.blogspot.com/

Again, this does not mean that you have done anything wrong or deserve any criticism, but it makes the "Wow, lesbians are so hot!" attitude found among so many men rather difficult to understand.

Real lesbians aren't actually considered 'hot' by most straight ment; they seem to prefer straight women having sex with other straight women. It's part of the sexual objectification system, in which male fantasies about women have little to do with their personalities or other non-physical characteristics. Part of the attraction is, I think, that straight men understand why someone would want to have sex with a woman, but they still scratch their heads about why anyone would want to have sex with a man. Narrow vision, limited imagination.

Why is woman-on-woman sex viewed differently than man-on-man sex? Is a man's mouth or anus fundamentally different than a woman's?

See above; there's not much that's interesting to straight men about man-on-man sex, though it might be of interest to straight women and gay men. I know a number of women who like gay porn, and I think it may be for a similar reason to straight men liking "lipstick-lesbian" porn.