It’s astounding sometimes how utterly duplicitous the right-wingers are. They can be completely shameless in their antics. Right now over on Pharyngula, PZ’s critique of a hypocritical loony has fomented a minor war in the comments, much of which overlooks the point of Myers’s original post: That anyone who’s white, Christian, male, making a lot of money and invited to speak at university seminars is hardly entitled to call himself oppressed.
Of course much of this is lost on the trolls; but then, I think many of them would be stunned to realize Earth is more than 6,000 years old.
On other parochial fronts is yet more manifestation of stupidity, though it seems the fanatics are losing out in Arizona. 56% of those polled recently oppose the constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage; 14% are undecided. This means a solid 30% are pro-bigotry, whch is a surprisingly small number given the very red nature of the state.
But still, there’s duplicity to be found. On the one side you have rightie whining about same-sex marriage; they insist, for absolutely no rational reason whatsoever, that marriage (1) needs to be defended; and (2) is to be between one man and one woman.
As to point 1, I agree, but I actually happen to have a rational reason.
When idiots like Spears and Federline can get together, you bet your ass marriage is in trouble.
But if the righties really wanted to protect marriage, you’d think they’d be a lot more interested in, first, making divorce illegal; and second, shutting down one-hour wedding chapels. It seems to me those are much greater threats to the sacred institution of marriage than Adam and Steve tying the knot.
The point of point 2, of course, is dual: To keep marriage straight and therefore palatable to bigots; and to make sure you can’t get any of those polyandry or polygamy groups bandwagoning along. This particular juggernaut is for the Einsatzgruppen-ÜberKristian fanatics only.
And then there’s the other side. Bush’s Fed recently endorsed same-sex schooling for kids. (They call it single-sex, but I prefer the other term. It’s more potentially alarming to the righties.)
New federal regulations announced [on October 24, 2006] give school systems around the nation more flexibility in offering single-sex public education, even though the Department of Education concluded a year ago that there was not enough evidence to definitively evaluate single-sex classes.
The “even though” part is telling; in other words, despite there being absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support the viability of this proposal, we’re gonna go ahead and do it anyway.
Shades of “no child left behind” and, in particular, national testing that doesn’t work, huh?
The problem with same-sex schooling, of course, is that it makes it impossible to avoid discrimination based on gender, which schools are not permitted to do. It’s also silly and possibly dangerous to students; ask any English boarding school student, for instance, if an all-boys setting is desirable.
Did no one in the Bush camp ever read Lord of the Flies? Hell, Cheney’s on a first-name basis with him!
I’ll bet the righties come out in favor of it, though — to the extent that they favor public education at all — for the simple reason that keeping boys away from girls … keeps boys away from girls. And in a world such as the one they want, one wherein sex is a Dirty Secret that remains unspoken of, one wherein contraception is a myth, one wherein women by God never have the right to just say no to their owners husbands, that kind of absolute separation is best.
They’d be conceding defeat, but in a really spineless way. The idea that teenagers will be “abstinent” — or that they won’t discover fucking on their own even though you’ve never told them about it — is asinine, but it’s the kind of fantasy-based bullshit the fanatics have tried to pawn off as truth for a decade now.
And what of students’ social needs? Separation of schools by gender sure won’t make hand-holding in the back of class less disruptive, will it? And how will boys ever learn to talk to girls?
(Who says they need to? Can’t a Manly Man just pick up a girl physically, tote her off and — after pausing briefly at an altar to murmur a terse “I do, and so does she” — have his way with her, remaining ever the strong, silent type?)
There’s something else afoot here, you can be sure of it. There’s no science to support same-sex schooling and there’s no reason to let it move forward. When unreason and non-science come together, particularly under the Bush admin, you can bet there’s a fanatical cause.
Well, one thing we can all be sure of: Prom night will never be the same again.
