Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
If I may ask, how is it that you are able to find these older posts you link to so readily? (Or, more specifically, that Reddit post? I've always found it a pain to search.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
This does not make their arguments somehow more "valid" in a political context than people of faith.
According to much 1st Amendment jurisprudence, and the popular understanding thereof, it absolutely does.
If that were the case, we'd have a weird situation where everyone would be in a rush to prove how atheist they are while also borrowing heavily from moral theology. It's actually kind of comical to think about - "Look at how excellent my purely rational reasoning is. DON'T LOOK AT THE GOD SHAPED HOLE"
As I see it, this perfectly describes the post-Puritan offshoot that is Wokism the Ideology That Will Not Let Itself Be Named, and how it rose to prominence. America, as a predominantly-Protestant country, developed a legal tradition of treating "religion" as being defined first and foremost by one's beliefs about God(s) and the supernatural, and in the doctrines derived therefrom; and so developed "antibodies" against religious "establishment" along these lines. Thus, the first dogmatic, crusading faith to ditch all that, make all their metaphysical priors as implicit and unspoken as possible, (yes, even with the glaring "God-shaped hole") was able to to get it's moral doctrines established without tripping the metaphorical immune response (like a virus mutating to shed a critical antigen), and become our unofficial official religion.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
Marriage originated in a time when it was virtually impossible for medical science to tell ahead of time that someone was infertile.
Yes, but that just means that definition is obsolete — as science and medicine evolve, the law must evolve with them, no?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
This "if" is precisely what my example points out is not true. The entire premise of the argument is simply false.
Well then, if the line between who should be allowed to marry isn't about who can produce children, then what is it about? What is the difference that justifies, in purely secular, non-religious terms, treating gay couples differently than straight ones?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
reinforces the norm that you should marry someone of the opposite sex and encourages conformity to traditional morals
And the gay marriage proponents argue that the norm you posit is bad and discriminatory; that it is contrary to civil rights law, equality, and anti-discrimination; that it is nothing but anti-gay bigotry. They argue that the "traditional morals" you speak of outdated, and motivated purely by religious sentiment — which, again, makes it a violation of the 1st Amendment to enshrine into law. That, contra illiberal communist regimes, liberal Progressivism says we should erode these norms because what reason do you have that we should even want to "encourage conformity to traditional morals," if not some flavor of "because God says so"?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
Do you live in a rural, suburban, or urban area?
Depends on how you draw the line between suburban or urban. Because I live in Anchorage, which is the largest city in Alaska, but which is also rather geographically spread out compared to towns in the Lower 48, and thus, by the density-based definition used by the federal government, this entire city — save the very core of downtown and a few blocks in our poorest neighborhood — are considered "suburban." Though, my area has also seen rising crime for the past couple of decades. Apparently, the local Walmart — where I get my prescriptions filled and do most of my grocery shopping — has the worst loss rates from shoplifting. Not the worst in the city, or the worst in the state, the worst period. It's probably going to close soon (I understand our state government is currently in talks with Walmart to try to prevent this), which will make my life harder.
So, probably best to go with "urban."
Do you have reasonable capability to transport yourself around your area? I.E., rural = vehicle, suburban = bike, urban = public transpo or your two feet?
I have a yearly bus pass (takes most of my PFD), and I walk when I can (but much of the winter that's not really doable), or take a cab when I must. Plus, now that summer's over and he's not out of town working on the retirement home, I can sometimes get rides from my Dad.
Do you hang out with people? If yes, small, medium, or large groups?
Does having dinner with my parents and one of my two brothers (who lives with them) a couple of times a month count? How about being invited to see a movie by a friend a couple times a year (when he needs a break from the house and five kids)?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
Jesus, what is this, the sexual code for robots?
Seriously, though, I'd argue that it's just the inevitable conclusion of the "consent model of sexual ethics" (particularly in combination with the natural human instinct to protect women in particular), and of Western society's attitude on these issues for the last century or so. (People talk a lot about the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s, and forget the possibly bigger one in the 1920s.)
Personally, I hope Blue Tribe liberals keep embracing and promoting these norms as thoroughly and widely as they can.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
Look north - Canada
I got that; I just thought @ThisIsSin must be referring to some specific public figure there. Now that you point it out, I suppose he's saying that you could get away with making these arguments in Canada, and at least get Alberta voting for you, if not anywhere else.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
It's not just that he can afford takeout;
This year, I was working late
tells us he has a job, and
I told my wife
tells us he has a wife.
I've got several unfinished essays looking like they're about to turn into chapters of a book/manifesto laying out my views. With titles like "Society is Not a Van der Waals Gas" (on liberalism having faulty anthropology), "You are not Avalokiteśvara" (on concentric loyalties and telescopic philanthropy), and "Evolution is Not a Creation Myth" (on how most people who "believe in evolution" don't even understand it, treat it as something that doesn't apply to modern humans, have "Creationist-adjacent" views on central planning and "high modernism," and implicitly accept the Creationist position that telos inherently implies a conscious, telic "purpose-giver").
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
As mentioned below, there are actually laws saying that some people couldn't marry unless they could show that they were infertile. Your entire frame of reference simply does not make sense, and you need a pretty significant perspective change.
It's not my perspective — as you'd note if you'd read the part I'd linked — it's just the most common counter-argument the pro-gay-marriage side presents.
Your entire frame of reference simply does not make sense
What doesn't make sense about it? If you are saying the line between who can marry and who cannot, which puts gay couples on the "cannot" side, is drawn on the grounds of who can produce children and who cannot — that you're barring gay couples because they're non-reproducing rather than because they're gay — then the line has to be drawn between (straight) couples who can reproduce and couples, straight or gay, who cannot.
People made the "privacy" argument you made here, back when the debate was live. The first answer was that age is just as legible to the government "in terms of intrusiveness to privacy" as sex, and yet we let 70-year-old straight couples get married, despite being just as clearly not about producing children as in the case of gay couples.
(My reply to this is my linked argument about teleology, and "inherent" versus "accidental" characteristics in regard to such teleological orientations.)
The other is the argument (a much better one, IMO) that differences in the intrusiveness to enforce a rule between groups do not justify enforcing the rule unequally. Just because it's easier to enforce a ban against gay couples marrying than it is against infertile straight couples without massive state intrusion does not, under modern anti-discrimination law, make it acceptable or non-discriminatory to enforce it in a discriminatory matter, let alone set down such discriminatory enforcement in the law itself. If the rule is "too intrusive to enforce" against a particular group, then it can't be enforced, or a rule, at all.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
This year, I was working late, and for various personal crisis reasons I didn't really want to do anything major, so I told my wife I wanted to get a little high and get a big takeout order of boneless wings and watch an old horror movie.
I can't begin to describe how bad this bit of humble-bragging on your part makes me feel.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
I was going to reply with all my various objections and nitpicks about these suggestions (like mentioning how I go for regular walks, or my landlords' noise rules, or our anti-panhandling laws), but why bother?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
get a pet, take care of the pet
I can't even afford to take care of myself, really. Over half my income goes to rent + utilities; food is about 75%-80% of what's left. I wash my underwear in my bathroom sink and hang it to dry to save on laundry costs.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
Take twenty minutes, sit somewhere without pressing distractions, and focus on the moment.
This sounds like meditation, which I've been informed is a very bad idea for schizophrenics like myself.
Push all of your worries and expectations out of your mind
I have no idea how.
and just take reality in. The physical sensations, the sights, the sounds, the internal experience of being you.
"The internal experience of being me" comes with a lot of angst, and the potential return of the hallucinations despite the meds that currently suppress them.
I think you will find existence itself, moment to moment, quite pleasant.
I haven't before.
I just want you to know that there's a very pleasant base-level reality that exists on a much deeper level than your goals and self-conceptions, and visiting it, even staying for a few months, is perfectly fine.
I think you're wrong. "Base-level reality" is horrible.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
Would you truly say, upon introspection, that you have literally zero joy every single day?
Take depression, add the anhedonia that is one of the "negative" symptoms of schizophrenia on top of that, and bundle it with being an utter failure at life.
You seem like a decent guy
That's not something I hear very often, particularly on an online forum where my political views are known.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
Charitably, the interviewer may have been thinking of the notion that some divine commandments as more law than morality - i.e. "arbitrary" rules that Christians must obey to show obedience to the Lord, but which a moral philosopher could not conclude ought to be forbidden from first principles if God had not specifically forbidden them.
Can I just say that I, as an atheist, have always found this view ridiculous? Particularly when Christians use it as a reason to react with confusion or hostility when I, an atheist, agree with them on an issue (such as, say, masturbation).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
I think that the division might be better described, not as 'religious' vs. 'secular' so much as 'metaphysical' vs. 'material'. Material assertions can be settled empirically¹, whereas metaphysical debates are often predicated on diverging axioms, and thus, if placed as support for state policy, tend to lead to bloodshed
Except that pretty much all of our "culture war" issues are more "metaphysical" than they are "material" — and are equally so on both sides.
The existence of "inalienable human rights" is not a material question. Unlike your radioactivity example, there's no Geiger counter for detecting the presence or absence of, say "the universal right to free speech."
While they may not be as explicit as in the case of the anti-gay-marriage side, the pro-gay-marriage side is just as grounded in metaphysical commitments. On the question of "is there a universal human right to free speech?" both the answers, "yes" and "no", are metaphysical commitments. And if no positions based on metaphysical commitment cannot be "placed as support for state policy," then the state must reject both answers — and what does that even look like?
It's impossible for any state to be truly neutral on metaphysical commitments; the attempt appears to mean that victory goes to whoever can keep there metaphysics as implicit and hidden as possible. And again, that means those whose metaphysics aren't explicitly grounded in theological beliefs (often, it seems to me, because they aren't grounded in anything) get to win over those who are. Which, again, equates to religious versus "secular."
The state is still picking sides on metaphysics, it's just picking the side that pretends not to have any.
If you know of any other secular arguments for the proposition that the state ought to distinguish between 'two men' and 'one man whose testicles have been disconnected and one woman who ran out of eggs ten years ago', I am willing to consider them.
I posted an argument, by toy analogy, a year ago here. The tl;dr is that "hat teleology can constitute a valid "joint" upon which reality may be "cleaved," particularly when it comes to law" even in an imperfect, entropic universe.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
One of the better ones defines marriage as an institute primarily aimed to form families and raise children.
To which the inevitable reply is that, okay, then where's the law banning infertile people from marrying? Because on the axis of "family formation," there's no difference between them and the gays, is there? To ban gays from marrying on the grounds they cannot produce children, but not similarly ban straight couples who cannot produce children, would clearly be anti-gay discrimination.
Now, I have my own secular, philosophical argument against this, complete with toy analogy, that I've posted here before, about teleology in an imperfect, entropic universe. (But I'll admit that sort of Aristotelian thinking is pretty far from most mainstream thought.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
I'm curious if his actions would qualify as such under that absurd "affirmative consent" framework of a few years ago.
See my reply above. And if this is your definition of "reasonable person," then there are a whole lot of unreasonable people out there.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
He brought a girl over of her own will, she got cold feet while he was stripping off his clothes, but she didn't say so.
Which means he transgressed by ignoring or not noticing her "cold feet," and thus failed to get affirmative consent. From Wikipedia:
This is the approach endorsed by colleges and universities in the U.S.,[62] who describe consent as an "affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed-upon sexual activity."
From the University of Sydney, in Australia (so this isn't just an American thing):
If it's not an enthusiastic yes, it's a no
…
If you’re engaging in romantic or sexual activity, you need consent every time. Consent must be informed, voluntary and active, meaning that, through an expression of clear physical and verbal actions, a person has indicated permission to engage in romantic or sexual activity. It is critical that you pay attention to and respect the other people’s verbal and physical signals of agreement, and you should expect others to do the same.
…
The Commonwealth Consent Policy Framework: Promoting Healthy Sexual Relationships and Consent Among Young People (669 KB) establishes a clear, consistent and evidence-based definition of consent, with five core concepts underpinning the messaging.
…
Affirmative and communicated
Consent is clearly communicated, and sexual partners are actively checking for consent verbally and non-verbally.
Consent is never implied or assumed. Silence, freezing, the absence of a ‘no’, appearing disengaged or a lack of any apparent discomfort, hesitation or resistance, does not imply consent.
[Bold emphasis added]
(And you can read more on the Australian Government's new national consent framework, introduced January 2024, here.)
And from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN, the US's largest anti-sexual violence organization, operators of the National Sexual Assault Hotline.):
Consent isn’t just a one-time check-in. It’s an ongoing conversation. You need consent every time, for every type of activity. Just because someone said yes in the past doesn’t mean they’re saying yes now. Just because someone agreed to one thing doesn’t mean they’re okay with everything.
…
How to Practice Consent
- Ask, “Is this okay?” before moving forward
- Listen and respond to your partner’s words and body language
- Respect a “no”—even if it’s said quietly, indirectly, or nonverbally
- Check in as things progress; don’t assume it’s fine to keep going
You also have the right to change your mind. Consent can be withdrawn at any time, even in the middle of an activity. If something doesn’t feel right, you can speak up—or use nonverbal signals like freezing, pulling away, or going silent. Partners should watch for these signs and stop immediately if anything seems off.
Enthusiastic consent means seeking out a clear, positive “yes”—not just the absence of “no.” This model encourages partners to look for active participation, mutual excitement, and ongoing check-ins throughout an intimate experience.
…
What Consent Is Not
Understanding what doesn’t count as consent is just as important. These are red flags that show consent is not present:
…
- Taking silence or lack of resistance as agreement
Consent should never be assumed. It must be given clearly, freely, and enthusiastically.
[Bold in original]
Note the "partners should watch for these signs and stop immediately if anything seems off" part. Our male character clearly didn't do that. She did not give unambiguous, enthusiastic, and ongoing consent.
Barring the most partisan of gender warriors, nobody would consider that coercive.
Only if you consider "the most partisan of gender warriors" to include (but not limited to) most universities in the Anglosphere, the Australian government, institutions like RAINN (which have non-trivial sway over the American legal system's approaches to these issues), nearly the entirety of Tumblr (IME), and a growing fraction of Western youth among at least the upper-middle-class, maybe.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
Sure there is; you need only look north.
I have no idea to whom you are referring; could you please speak more plainly?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
It depends on your exact definitions and which axes you care about.
Isn't the axis in question diversity vs. homogeneity?
Race mixing (and cultural exchange more generally) involves Group A becoming more like Group B (and vice versa).
So it reduces diversity, moving things in the direction of homogeneity.
Ethnic cleansing interrupts and reverses that process, keeping the original group(s) the same.
So it (theoretically) prevents the process of homogenization — that is, when the ethnic group being "cleansed" from the area survives the process, and doesn't just end up being assimilated by whatever population(s) they end up living with after their expulsion.
What is the operation that increases diversity? Which makes Group A become less like Group B, and vice versa? And further, gives rise to Groups C, and D, and E, and makes all these groups more distinct, culturally and genetically? What, in this age of globalization, can truly make humanity more diverse?
(Other than space colonization, that is? Contolism — the real way to increase diversity.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
because it seemed to me like it would be a waste to spend my limited time worrying about my death
It's not so much my death I'm worrying about — again, there are times I consider hastening it to the present — but the utter purposelessness and futility of my existence. Why live another 30 (miserable) years, when there's just no point to any of it? When no matter how much longer I live, it won't amount to anything?
perhaps a similar approach of trying to focus on the good things
What good things?
and enjoy them
That would require that I enjoy something. I don't. Nothing brings me enjoyment. Every moment I continue to draw breath is misery… and it will always be this way. I will never be happy. There will never be even a moment of joy between now and my death, only pain.
So why keep going, if not for some purpose? For some reason to keep going through this miserable existence, instead of just ending my suffering now? But I don't have one that I have any hope of pursuing.
(And don't recommend meds or therapy. This is me on meds, and I'm seeing a therapist pretty regularly.)
Speak fucking plainly. No, I'm not going to guess "what it is that they were trying to do" (note the past tense). You tell me exactly what you think the early 21st Century American government (with no-fault divorce, and civil rights and anti-discrimination law for LGB) was "trying to encourage/discourage"; why it's legitimate for them to encourage/discourage; how not legalizing gay marriage both works toward the end goal of that encouragement/discouragement, and is a constitutionally and legally valid means (because in American constitutional law, the US government is limited in the means it may use to secure even good and valid ends, with a number of judicial "tests" and levels of restriction depending on the importance of the ends and the nature of the means) of doing so.
Your continued mix of obtuseness, vaguery, and missing-the-point in this thread have been so frustrating, they've got me defending a position and argument I don't even believe myself here. There's a reason the sorts of arguments you're vaguely-gesturing-toward-but-not-actually-making lost the fight.
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