Rights for Me but Not for Thee

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For years, wingnuts argued that gays asking for marriage equality wanted “special rights” not given to anyone else. This makes no sense to me, but it’s still their argument. Just google “gays want special rights” and you get one tirade after another like this one, which basically says that same-sex marriage is wrong because the author says it is; therefore, if we let gays marry we are granting them special rights.

I agree with Nathaniel Frank that the homophobic view is pure narcissism. It makes sense only if you accept as a “given” that homosexuality is abnormal or depraved. So, in the homophobe’s minds, same-sex marriage amounts to a state approval of depravity that no one else gets.

Otherwise, their argument just plain makes no sense.

But NOW the shoe is moving to the other foot, so to speak, because wingnuts are asking for special privileges for themselves to be able to discriminate against others, or to allow employers to impose conditions on employees purely because of the employer’s religious beliefs. I say this amounts to the religious right asking for special rights and privileges other people don’t get.

I’m reacting to a couple of articles by Daniel Linker that basically says, if righties play the religion card they get to do whatever they want, because religion. (See “Is opposing gay marriage the same as being a racist?” and Are secular liberals getting cocky?) And I argue that Linker is asking for a special dispensation to ignore the establishment clause.

See also Ed Kilgore.

36 thoughts on “Rights for Me but Not for Thee”

  1. New Rule!:
    Until we see actual corporations, not the heads or owners of them, go to a Church, Temple, Mosque, Shrine, or other house of worship, and bow their heads and pray, then they cannot claim any religious privileges!

    And no, religious nut-jobs, Comcast and Time Warner, are NOT getting married – gay, or otherwise!
    It’s called a buy-out/purchase/merger/take-over, etc…

    The CU decision by the “Not-at-all Fab Five Fascists” on our SCOTUS would be farcical, if the consequences of it to representative democracy weren’t so deadly serious!!!

  2. Imagine the firestorm from the right if a Muslim owned company said they would not allow employees to eat pork on the premises, because, religion.

  4. Arguments for this and other religion-based discriminations (e.g. denying contraceptive coverage to employees) contain a consistent, fatal error: they equate acts of commerce with acts of worship.

    Renting out a house you own, and you hate gays, interracial couples or just those pesky kids “living in sin”? Deny them housing and claim special religious protection! Because all your income from rent is going straight to God, right?!

    Running a business like Hobby Lobby or a sometimes-for-profit hospital (because you are the impoverished Catholic Church), and you hate that women get to choose when or if they get pregnant? Deny your workers contraceptive care under your insurance coverage and claim special religious protection! Because you’re not being a bully, right? And because all those sequins and glitter you sell are entirely for the glory of the Lord! And you accept payment for hospital bills in loaves and fishes!

    Sooner or later the courts will grasp the distinctions here: worshiping the almighty dollar does NOT provide special religious protection. Furthermore, employers have considerable power over their employees, creating a duty for the government and the courts to protect employees from religious abuse by the people who issue their paychecks, and can hire and fire.

    Yeah, I can’t stand bullies who play the crybaby when teacher comes around.

  5. Daniel Linker asks, ‘Are secular liberals getting cocky?’

    We may as well ask,’Are religious conservatives getting pussy?’ Sorry to be vulgar, but…it explains quite a bit of their sourness.

  6. “All halal would break loose” good one, gulag!
    On a different and way off topic issue; my supervisor and I were hailed today by a woman who was in distress because her goat was having great difficulty giving birth. The kid was dead, and only it’s hind quarters were out. The woman asked us to pull the kid out, but that wasn’t happening. I have absolutely no experience with this, and told her to please call a vet. The woman and 2 of her children wanted to put the mother down, so we left. I wish goatherd was there.

  7. “gays want special rights”

    The reason why the knuckle draggers think this is because many of the more extreme homophobic ones have thoughts, thoughts about being gay that they have been taught to repress. So to them if the “queers” can outright express their queerness and also have the gubmint acknowledge that they are indeed human beings then those are special rights. To the repressed homophobic right-wing christian the fact that the queers are not repressing those impure thoughts the way they do, and that the gubmint is not punishing them, well those are special rights. Rights they too could enjoy if only they had the balls to stop lying to themselves and everyone they come in contact with. Just a theory!

  8. Still off Topic – The bill to increase the debt ceiling passed the House – JB ignored the Hassert rule and passed the legislation with 38 republicans voting with almost all the democrats, which moved the bill to the Senate. The charade gets even more interesting. From the WSJ:

    “Democrats had enough votes to pass the increase with a simple majority, which means they would have owned the debt increase. But then Senator Ted Cruz —the same fellow who planned the GOP’s shutdown fiasco in October—objected on the floor and insisted on a 60-vote majority.”

    Which resulted in establishment republicans joining with democrats to publicly vote for raising the debt ceiling. Implicit in the WSJ reporting is that the GOP intended the increase to pass, wanted it to pass, but did not want GOP fingerprints on the bill. Between JB’s move to put the bill up for a vote with (wink, wink) fervent disapproval, and McConnell having to vote FOR the increase (to satisfy the lunatic from Texas), the cat is pretty much out of the bag. It was a bi-partisan deal all the way and Ted Cruz pulled the fig leaf covering the chicanery.

  9. Erinyes: I wish I had been there too. I like to think, I might have helped. Although, it’s been a few years since we’ve been breeding. Breech births are pretty rare with goats. We’ve never had one on our farm. We’ve had a few kids with birth anomalies. They can be an education in the particulars of life and the odd tricks it plays.

    I have had to assist with quite a few difficult births, especially with small mothers. Sometimes, it seems like there is nothing for it, after trying to coax the baby out, you just have to use a little more force than you would choose to, because the alternative isn’t pretty.

    But, on the bright side, if they called a vet, he or she would have been there before. They probably wouldn’t put the mother goat down. In hundreds of births, we’ve had some difficult ones, but we’ve never lost a mother goat.

    The miracle of birth can be a pretty engaging and perplexing thing. Somehow, we members of the animal kingdom seem to stumble though it, one way or another.

    Well, this is way off topic, and I would certainly understand if this comment doesn’t make it through moderation.

  11. Thanks for your response, goatherd. The toughest part for me was the three little girls who were crying and saying good bye to the mother goat.I hope things turned OK.

  12. OY!
    We probably have over 20 inches of snow here where I live in Upstate NY.

    I shoveled the porch yesterday right after noon, and there was already about 10 inches of the light, fluffy stuff.

    I woke up this morning, and we easily got another 10 inches overnight.
    Except this is the wet and heavy snow – what we call around here, “A Widow-maker.”

  13. HOLY SH*T!!!!
    In the state of Kansas, our Christian Fascists will probably soon be calling for gays to wear “Pink Triangles” on their clothing, so that they can be more easily identified, and refused service:

    http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/13/us/kansas-bill-same-sex-services/

    From that article:

    “No individual or religious entity shall be required by any governmental entity to do any of the following, if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender:

    “Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services; or provide employment or employment benefits, related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement.”

    CHRISTIAN FASCISTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  14. OT, Growing Up Liberal. Be uplifted. There needs to be a lot more of this kind of “liberal manifesto” to counteract the conservative dumbing down.

    Gulag, in the state of California, large overhead signs on all the major highways – operated by state’s dept of transportation, which warn you of traffic conditions ahead – are now flashing “SERIOUS DROUGHT – CONSERVE WATER”. The state is tinder dry, and you’re going to see a lot of “California Wildfires” in the news this year. We’ve been talking about piping some of that snow out here, we really need the water.

  16. Well, here in Florida it’s a brutally cold 65°. But the hibiscus flowers are just loving the weather.

  17. Erinyes, experiences like that stay with you for a while.

    But, I got to thinking a bit more. If it’s any comfort, goats are pretty amazing birth machines. Often, they can seem in very desperate straits and come through fine. Actually, what I said about breech births isn’t true. We’ve probably had more then 200 goats born here. Most of the time there are two and less often three or one. Having one of the twins or triplets come out back feet first, which would be a “footling breech” isn’t rare, and it isn’t normally a problem. If the kid is born full or frank breech, butt first, especially to a doe that is primigravida and small, that does present a risk and likely a rough, painful birth. But, does are amazing at bouncing back. In fact, thinking about it a bit more, of the 200 or so goat births, I probably have witnessed only about 30 and “assisted” in probably a dozen. In most of those cases, the doe might have taken longer to give birth, but would probably have been fine without me. I just happened to be in the vicinity and couldn’t mind my own business. As for the balance of the 200 births, who knows what the birthing mother went through? I was out of the picture. If I had been there, I might have thought there was no hope, a number of times. But, whatever happened, the mother and kids were doing pretty well by the time I saw them. I had the good fortune to be blissfully ignorant of whatever difficulties occurred during the birth process. You are not so lucky in this case, but there is a very good chance that things turned out well.

    Sorry for going on so long. We started to wind down the farm a few years ago. Like fools we’ve kept the goats. We’re too attached to them. When I remember the fun and drama over the years,often accompanied by births and deaths, I get into a long winded narrative that usually ends with people’s eye glazing over and nodding off. It’s just the way I am.

  19. Back to the subject of religion and the right wing; I just don’t get it. Especially when this is supposed to be a christian nation. We use wars to identify generations. I can’t remember a time when america has not been at war. As soon as one stops, we’re revving up for another.some eighties want to put the 10 commandments in front of court houses and other government buildings. Maybe that would be a good idea, because as things stand now, “the government” seems to be exempt from “christian” behavior.both sides have their share of crazies, but the republicans have insanity as a prerequisite for membership, and the more extreme, the better.

  20. How can corporations have religious rights? They’d have to have religion, but according to Justice Brandeis, they don’t even have souls! (“No bodies to condemn or souls to damn” said the jurist; and since corporations are persons in law only, the judge’s word is definitive.) So I ask you; what religion would befit an entity with no soul?

  21. I was thinking along lines similar to paradoctor. Except of course, I may have it wrong.

    Forming a corporation offers the officers of the corporation a certain legal protection in that they, as individuals, can often distance themselves from harm done by the corporate entity. Where the corporation, as a whole, may bear responsibility and pay a fine, the individuals involved in the decisions that led to the harm have limited liability. So the corporation is assumed to act as a collective, in a manner, and for a purpose which can be separated from those of the individuals that guide it. It doesn’t necessarily reflect their intentions. Where the corporation may seem to have purposefully, knowingly or recklessly caused injury, it seems absurd to assert the case, because it is only a legal fiction and not a sentient being. The sentient, flesh and blood individuals who collectively shaped this recklessness then claim a distance from the corporate will.

    So, then, if those same individuals who guide the corporation, choose to assert that the corporation should reflect their individual consciences and values, aren’t they arguing against the legal “distance” that limits their liability?

    Obviously, I am very, very confused. Just forget the whole thing.

  22. I can’t remember who Joe Campbell was quoting, but, the quote asserted that “some people adopt religion because it insulates them from the experience of God.” I find that the believers among my friends tend to fall into two groups. Those in the first group have a deep faith and feel compelled by it, to act in a compassionate manner, to engage the world and to reflect critically upon their relation to it and their actions. The other group seems to have a deep conviction that God follows them around, protects them, and validates their prejudices and victimhood. All he asks in return is that they will occasionally “witness” his greatness by posting something schmaltzy on facebook a few times a week or voice some outrage against the current stock of infidels.

  23. Goatherd, that is the best descriptionI’ve ever heard of the two kinds of religious people I have encountered. I shall steal it and trot it out at appropriate moments.
    Thank you!

  24. Goatheard – I just went out to read a few quotes by Campbell. Outstanding thinker. Like BB, I plan to plagiarize your quote without attribution. Well said.

    For some reason, this quote makes me think of GULAG.

    “As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don’t bother to brush it off.
    Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance.
    Having a sense of humor saves you.”
    ― Joseph Campbell

    For Barbara –

    “All religions are true but none are literal.”
    ― Joseph Campbell

    “Myth is what we call other people’s religion.”
    ― Joseph Campbell

  25. LOL!!!!!
    Thanks for that one, Doug!

    And when I lived in NYC, periodically, I’d be the target of some pigeon target practicing on humans, probably for revenge.
    I always laughed about it, and told joke about it happening to co-workers.
    And everybody always laughed with me, because if you live in NYC for any length of time, some pigeon will find you and poop on you, too!

    Btw – years ago when I was younger and smarter, I read a lot of Campbell – to have a better understanding of a lot of different things. And not just mythology – but history, psychology, sociology, etc.
    A great, elegant, and very readable writer, considering he was dealing with a very complex subject.

  26. Thank you Doug and Bill. I’ve stolen enough of your thoughts that I’d love to even it up a bit. I do have to warn you that any resemblance to actual thought or insight in any of my comments is purely accidental.

    Campbell was a huge influence on my middle years. He was a big reason that I was willing to pull up stakes and get “back to the land,” as we hippie remnants are still wont to do. For many years, I thought of mucking out the barn and the various other chores as meditation. It might sound silly, but it was true.

    I would especially recommend the “Masks of God” series, but it might be best to warm up on some of his other stuff first. His lectures are really worth listening to as well.

    Alan Watts, on the other hand, always kind of got on my nerves, even before I found out what jerk he was with women.

    We went overseas earlier this year, our our rental car had a GPS system that sounded EXACTLY like Alan Watts. I can still hear him saying “roundabout.” I tolerated that pretty well, so I guess I’ve buried the hatchet with him. Maybe there’s a little material for a short humorous piece in that experience somewhere.

  27. OT:
    I’ve only watched a few seconds of the Winter Olympic events as I’ve changed channels – but I’ve come to the conclusion that, outside of figure skating and a handful of other events, the majority of the sports involved in the Winter Olympics are disguised attempts at suicide.

    I think people got so goddamn sick of winter, that the sports reflected their feelings of, “Hey, let me try to rocket down this mountain in the stupidest way possible! This looks so f’in stupid and fun, that if I survive, it might just let me enjoy freezing my bun’s off for months! I’ll either have the time of my life, or, I’ll die trying to have some fun in this miserable f’in season that seems to never f’in end. Oh, and btw – why in ‘Leap Years,’ do they tack an extra day onto f’in February, and not June, or some other nice warm month that doesn’t have 31 days. WHAZ UP WID DAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”

    Ok, I get Downhill Skiing – I can see the purpose of ancient peoples strapping-on some wooden appendages onto their feet, because they want to get from their lonely little home on top of the hill, down into town for some sh*t’s and giggles, ASAP!

    Ok, Hans, you flew down that hill in seconds to get some food and booze, and a salmon and lutefisk pizza for tonight’s family dinner treat, now ski back UP that same hill.
    What?
    You can’t?
    Then why isn’t climbing back up the f’in hill after having skied the f*ck down it, the 2nd half of the competition?!?!?!?!
    Best overall time, wins!!!!!

    And I get skiing and shooting at sh*t. That’s the way the Finn’s kept the Russkies at bay during WWII. And then the Russkies used that against the Nazi’s! We Slav’s might be thick, but we ain’t dumb!

    Alright, that’s a sport that makes some sense. Skiing and shooting – presumably for food, before being used in wars. But why don’t you have to drag that target back UP the goddamn hill? You could leave that soldier to fester, but what about that deer you just shot? Wouldn’t you have to drag that poor dead beast back UP the goddamn hill after you shot it?
    Why don’t they make the athlete’s drag their targets back UP the goddamn hill, and clock the best overall time?!?!?!?!?!
    We only measure the fun and suicidal part. Not the “hard work” part.
    I just don’t get it.

    Now, onto the Toboggan:
    Who thought that f’in thing up?
    “Hey, Franz, whatchya doin’? The bar down in town? I’ll meet y… Hey, I just gots an idea! Why don’t the two of us build a bullet-shaped death-sled, and rocket down into town and impress the local yokel’s?!?!?!?!
    It’ll be a hoot!
    Up the hill?
    Oh, no, I never thought of that. No, that won’t be any fun after drinking all night – too much work for the two of us. Maybe we can park it over night… Hey! I’ve got another idea – let’s build another one for 4 guys. That way, we can con another couple of schmucks into rocketing down into town the next morning, and we can take BOTH sleds up the hill!
    Hmm… ‘Sled’ sounds too childish…. Let me make-up a word for our bullet-sled… Deathski! No, to Slavic…Deathsickle! No, too childish… TOBOGGAN! Ya like it? Ok, then, come on over and let’s start building one. I’ll supply one of my kid’s sleds, you bring one of your kid’s sleds! The drinks when we get to town will be on m… on…. YOU! – for me thinking of this idea!!!”

    Lastly, onto the Luge and Skeleton – I get the fact that kids love sleds. I sure did!
    But naming an event, “Skeleton?”
    WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
    Only the most suicidal people, suffering from the worst cases of SAD, would think-up that name, and then take-up, an event named, “Skeleton.”
    Ditto, “Luge.” At least that sounds onomatopoeic – “Hey, let’s get our sleds out, kids, and go ‘LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE!!! down the hill!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
    Now, I remember when I was growing up, and in the winter when we went sledding, we’d build a few bumps into the course – for fun. We’d fly a few yards – some kids would fall – but not break anything. At least that I can remember – maybe I got a concussion one time.
    Both sports look similar. But what was the thought-process that made someone think of the modern day form of them?
    What psychopathic kid decided to have fun in his/her neighborhood, by building a refrigerated, curving, death-funnel?

    Probably some rich kid with too much time and money on his/her hands.

    Oh, and back to that f’in stupid Toboggan event – why didn’t anyone ever throw a motor into one of those things?
    Then we could have Winter Olympics NASCAR, as folks drive those things up and down the track!
    You might have to widen the track.
    Or, maybe NOT! You could have people getting out of their motorized toboggans, and fighting and kicking one another for the rights to go up and down that same hill!
    It would be like NASCAR meets UFC!!!!!
    And wouldn’t THAT be fun?
    Oy…..

    And as for “Curling” – that’s a “sport?”
    It looks like ‘bocce’ for Nordic folks – or bowling without pins for old, white, and fat, winter fishermen, after they’ve thrown their baited hooks in the water through the hole in the ice, and while waiting for that nibble, want something to do to make some money by gambling. 😉

    Ok, them’s my $0.02 worth about the Winter Olympics.

    I could throw a few more hundred or thousand word-turds out there on the suicidal stupidity of most of the “sports” I see in the Winter Olympics, but I’ll spare ya.

    And I’ll also spare everyone my theories on figure skating being like dancing on ice to music, and trying to get laid.

    At least in the Summer games, you have to do things real people do – tumble, jump, run, run and throw/hurl/fling sh*t.

  32. Swami – I won’t rejoice in the death of the preacher Coots. I tried not to giggle when Jim & Tammy Baker went down in flames. I tried, really tried, not to laugh when Haggard was outed for a meth habit by a paid gay boytoy in his employ. Didn’t that shake up his megachurch?

    On the flip side, though I disagree with a lot of Catholic doctrine (I am a recovering Catholic) the current pope seems to be following the teachings of Christ. I love the guy!

    So why is it so hard for so many Christians to tell the difference between the two philosophies? Most would not define me as a Christian, but it’s not hard to tell the phony from the real deal. Why can’t the ‘faithful’ see it?

  33. So why is it so hard for so many Christians to tell the difference between the two philosophies?

    Doug..I don’t know the answer to that question. But in goatherd’s comment above where he says about “validating their prejudices” I know instinctively that that is a big part of the answer. How people interpret God is a reflection of their own fears, insecurities and prejudices. Who knows? Maybe there is something to be extrapolated in the saying: There but for the grace of God go I. Not so much as being understood as a statement of humility, but rather as a statement of superiority.
    I was married in the Catholic Church.

  34. Oh, I’m not rejoicing about Preacher Coots. You know what they say: If you live by the rattlesnake, you die by the rattlesnake.. or something like that.

  35. As anyone who has lived in the rural south knows, a lot of people tend to seize upon one or two Biblical verses as the “keys” to understanding. I guess it spares many the labor of reading the whole Bible and sweating over the the bigger picture. So, you see old cars with plates, bumper stickers and the occasional placard, with a book, chapter and verse inscribed on it. The citation distills to an essence, what “God said, and they believe.”

    When I first moved into our community sixteen years ago, my neighbors all came one by one to invite us to their church. One of the memorable invitations included directions to the church, which was, and still is, “way back in the woods,” and included the parting endorsement, “But, we don’t handle snakes or anything like that.” Although, my own feeble enquiries into the spiritual realm have made me a little more sympathetic to those who do.

    I say this because, if you give the “quest” a respectable effort, you arrive at places, not only at the edge of your understanding, but, some distance beyond it. That’s the whole point, at least it was for me. Some of us are better equipped to deal with this than others, but, we are all, to one degree or another, lamentably out of our element. So, often the things that other people do, or say about the experience is pretty difficult to separate from psychopathology.

    Back, in the 70’s, I was working a crap job and my friends and I would watch Jim and Tammy faye Bakker to wind down in the wee hours, usually with a scotch in one hand and a healthy dose of amusement. They seemed like the classic American telegrifters. I didn’t particularly empathize with them, but there was something likeable and absurd about them. When Jim got busted and had a breakdown in the courtroom, I started to see him as someone pathetically out of control. His actions and motives weren’t admirable, but there was something in him that inspired pity along with humor. There was a fairly funny story about him carving a collection plate out a bar of soap in prison, but there was also the account of him cringing under a bench in the courtroom at his trial.

    After so much time, the southern fundamentalist schtick has worn pretty thin with me. I find the megachurch phenomenon and the associated “pastors” off putting and, frankly, appalling. It’s harder for me to summon up compassion and understanding for people who seem to be seeking personal power and a sizable flock to fleece. They are redirecting peoples desire to comprehend the nature of things and turning it into fear, misunderstanding and six or seven figures a year. If that’s not “evil”, I don’t know what is.

    Okay, this has gone on too long. So. I’ll end by saying, I love Pope Francis too. I hope he is with us a long time. –And one last memory–

I had a close friend who was a professor and well traveled. We were talking, as usual, over a few rounds of scotch. But, it was only our second glass. Things had improved, and a single malt had replaced the “Usher’s Green Stripe.” Our conversation turned to the Bakkers. On one of his travels he had spent some time with them. I don’t remember the circumstances, but he was not in the slightest, a religious man. He turned to me and said, “I am going to tell you something, and you are going to think that I am crazy. But, it is true. In real life, Tammy Faye Bakker is the most sexually overpowering woman that I have ever met.”

    http://youtu.be/awmgpZFXHfk

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