Friday, August 22, 2008

How Does That Happen?


The latest (and boy do I mean late!) buzz in the VP race is now pointing to Chet Edwards as a potential pick by Obama. Interesting Red Shirt Fun Fact™: Edwards was my congressman for four years while I was at Baylor. And we at Baylor really didn't like him despite his incredibly conservative (for a Democrat) record, for a single reason: he is staunchly pro-choice. Apparently the rest of his central Texas district thought that was just fine and dandy, though.

So he's pro-choice; that's hardy surprising for a Democrat. But he's also very much anti-gay-marriage. And that's where confusion really enters into it for me, so I pose the question: how does one become pro-abortion and anti-gay-marriage? I don't see the logical path. I can certainly see the reverse path. One could easily approach a pro-life position from a "sanctity of all life" approach that is not necessarily informed by religious values, and extend that to a sort of "do what thou wilt and harm no other" sort of philosophy, thus being hunky-dory with gay marriage as well.

And of course the other possibilities in this matrix are evident in everyday politics: for cultural and religious reasons, people tend to oppose both abortion and gay marriage; for libertarian or "empowerment" reasons, people tend to support them (see attached illustration). Everyone knows where I stand on these issues, and I certainly make no effort to conceal my thoughts thereupon (and far from the "There's room to debate these issues, of course" line, I think anyone who differs from my opinion (Cartesian quadrant IV) is either evil (Cartesian quadrant II) or ignorant (Cartesian quadrant III). Take THAT!). But I am really at a loss to understand any personal ethos that would convince someone that killing babies is okay, but damn those queers and their legitimated sodomy! So to my dear readers: please, if you can justify (if not believe yourself, I hope!) such a logical connection, however speciously, please illuminate me in the comments!

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3 Comments:

Blogger Marty said...

I see that the Quadrant I problem has so messed up your marbles that you (1) designed your table so that Quadrant I (usually associated with alrightness, and hence which should've been your philosophical territory) is the land of skewedness; (2) spelled illustrative with three "l"s

3:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Speakin' of fer and agin', you reckon' what The Good Book says about pro choice? I am not speaking of the infant human sacrifice part, I am speaking of the 'choice' part. Like your little picture shows, you are either fer infant human sacrifice, or you are agin' infant human sacrifice. If you are lukewarm, you are only worth spittin' out to The Good Lord.

Let us rid ourselves of the gentle term 'pro choice'. Let us even rid ourselves of the term 'pro abortion'. If the pilots of that plane that crashed in Spain had been 'pro abortion', the passengers would be alive. You can abort anything (in that case, a ake off), and many things are acceptable to be aborted. 'Pro infant human sacrifice' is a bit much to repeat many times, but let us make a term or phrase that can only refer to what we are speaking about.

Cheers,

ZCOL

3:25 PM  
Blogger Benjamin said...

Being the dork that I am, I actually agonized over that as I was generating the figure. I decided for symmetry-of-opposition, in the since that the "fers" line up, as do the "agin's". Thus my own position would have ended up in either II or IV. Graphical symmetry apparently won out over philosophical subliminal perfection.

As for (2): The Only Red Shirt is a "big tent blog", unlike that despotic regime run over at Mazurland. We allow spellings of all flavors, and do not discriminamate.

3:28 PM  

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