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Here in Australia we’ve seen the latest example of ideological purity movements devouring themselves. What I find interesting about this particular case is that, to me, it accurately represents what seems to have happened in a lot of left wing movements over the last 20+ years.
Co-founder and former Queensland state leader of The Greens party, Drew Hutton, has failed in his appeal to his own party to reverse the revocation of his life membership. Hutton helped found the Greens with Bob Brown, both in Queensland (1990) and federally (1991), the initial ideological basis was for creating a party with “a historic mission to try to push the world to a more sustainable footing”. The parties platform that I recall, growing up as an Australian in the 90’s, was for combatting climate change, stopping deforestation, protecting fisheries, reefs and banning live export of cattle and other stock.
But both Bob Brown and Drew Hutton have long since departed from the front lines of the parties political battles. In their place we have seen a succession of leaders that promote environmentalism, but increasingly campaign on social justice issues. A party that (until the recent federal election) were making the majority of their electoral ground in inner city electorates (inner Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane).
Hutton was embroiled in drama from a twitter post (what else could cause so much drama) made over a year ago, which led to him being labelled a trans-phobe and promptly to the revocation of his life membership after he refused demands to delete the post and the comments below it. Today it was announced that the year long appeal process has not landed in his favour, but is in fact keeping with the original revocation. But if he’s espousing hatred and division online while somewhat representing his political party that he cofounded, then surely that’s a just result?
My initial thoughts were along the lines of “grandpa didn’t keep up to date with the terminology and unknowingly crossed the line”, however, after a bit of research it becomes clear that Hutton didn’t even make the hurtful comments, rather that he “provided a platform for others to do so”. Which after further research, revealed that he had publicly questioned his Party in their actions of removing membership from a different member for voicing concerns over a proposed amendment from the NSW Greens to change “pregnant people” from “pregnant women” in an upcoming act.
Interesting. I’ve run out of steam now, it’s a been a long day on site, but I wanted to post this and hear what other thoughts The Motte have - Australian and International.
Links:
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Note: reposted to this weeks thread as I foolishly did not check the day of the week.
What did he say?
Well, nothing really. It sounds insane but it was the fact that he criticised a previous move by the party of booting a female member of parliament for what they perceived as transphobic.
There is definitely not a slope, and were there a slope, it definitely would not be slippery.
I'm a social conservative, and the new orthodox faith of the One, True, Catholic Church of Trans Rights is not convincing me to shift on that. All the former gay rights activism that successfully sold the line "if you're not gay, this will have no effect on your life" to the mainstream and the trans activism that piggy-backed on this ("why are those bigoted conservatives so obsessed with bathrooms? no trans person has ever said anything about bathrooms, it's all them!") couldn't maintain the facade. Never mind "bake the cake, bigot", we're now in "um, aren't pregnant people women?/die, heretic! leper outcast unclean!" territory.
Yes, you too can be barred for life from the party you co-founded because you questioned a previous banning for life for not being 200% onboard with "we need this inclusive terminology so trans men and non-binary persons won't feel all oppressed and persecuted when turning up for their pre-natal appointments. Sure, maybe they're only 1% if that of people who turn up to maternity hospitals, but won't the 99% who are women be just overjoyed to make this teeny little change in being referred to not as a mother but a 'pregnant person'? And if they're not thrilled, too bad for them. They better know to keep their mouths shut, the transphobic bigots!"
Believe it or not, I want to be charitable to people who are unhappy with their bodies. I don't want to kick up a fuss about the changes. I'm not even that outraged about bathrooms. But when we're getting to the point of witch-burning someone for just being in the general vicinity of a witch, tell me how this makes society better for us all?
One of the things that has struck me about the trans backlash, which I think is real, has been its unwillingness to extend the slightest charity to social conservatives qua social conservatives. To put it bluntly and perhaps uncharitably: if the social conservatives warned you that this would happen, and now this has happened, perhaps you ought to consider whether or not they had a point.
So, for instance, I see worries that opposing such-and-such trans issues might overspill into opposing same-sex marriage. But social conservatives at the time said clearly that one of the issues with same-sex marriage was that it would undermine the gender binary. They were right, on facts. They have in fact, regularly been right on the facts. So now that the thing they warned would happen as a result of gay marriage has happened... shouldn't that make their judgement of gay marriage more credible, not less?
The thing is, the push for gay marriage included a number of predictive arguments that have since proven to be incorrect. "Gay marriage will have no effect on your life" was untrue. "Gay marriage is not a stepping stone to more radical activism" was untrue. "The normalisation of and acceptance of homosexuality will not lead more people to identify as homosexual" (deployed in gotchas like "gay marriage won't make you turn gay, why do you care?") was untrue. I suppose you could quibble causation and correlation, but the course seems pretty intuitive. Yet I still see this quite determined hostility to re-evaluating.
I don't believe traditionalists' revealed motives are trustworthy.
It was absolutely a stupid, destructive idea to replace abuse and overreach perpetrated by men (traditionalism) with abuse and overreach perpetrated by women (progressivism), yes. We have noticed the skulls that gynosupremacy has created, including the fractional ones generated by concern trolling.
But the traditionalists are, at least in popular consciousness, insisting that we merely reset it so it's male abuse and overreach again, uncritically and unironically- where for everyone else, the problem isn't who's doing it, it's what they're permitted to do. They're trying to prosecute a culture war they've already lost, in the same way they lost it before, and expecting things to be different somehow.
The thing traditionalists don't seem to have a satisfying answer for is "why is gayness uniquely bad"? Why does it uniquely fuel identarianism, if it does? When I consider the question of "if it wasn't this, would it have been something else?", I think back on all the times it has been something else, and note that there's nothing unique/special to non-straightness that lends itself to being used as a weapon in this way.
Because the traditionalists (as a natural consequence of being traditionalist) are unwilling, or unable, to come up with an answer for why it is unique (vagina-having and melanin-having being the two used for this before, with dishonorable mentions to religion and nationality) without ultimately falling back on some variation of "sin"- if they had a better argument, they'd be making it- then I judge they're no different than those who also have the same definition of sin but with the who and whom switched.
The axiomatic rejection that gayness (or whatever else) at times can be productive/the right answer to a particular pair-bonding question means that the needle cannot be threaded/competing interests cannot be balanced between "these relationships function mostly like straight ones do outside of certain specifics; we don't need to hunt these guys down" and "doing this thing that just so happens to be more common in this subgroup creates externalities that are not society's bill to foot".
I'm not interested in swapping a failing axiom for an already-failed axiom (while I am broadly OK with feeding progressives to traditionalists I'm under no deception that's productive); either we grow together limiting/harnessing the axioms to guide us into a position that can be rationally justified, or we don't grow.
I'm a little confused here.
Firstly, social conservatives and particularly conservative Christians do have quite detailed answers for why same-sex relations are morally bad. If you aren't satisfied, presumably you either don't find those answers convincing, or you aren't aware of them, but I suppose neither strikes me as a particularly devastating criticism. Let's charitably assume that you are familiar with and unconvinced by, for instance, teleological arguments, or arguments from natural law. It's not clear to me why that in itself should be that concerning, particularly since my suggestion here is not "social conservatives are absolutely correct in everything they have asserted", but rather "social conservative predictions coming true is an opportunity to re-evaluate their earlier claims". Social conservative arguments around sexual morality might be only partially true, or might lead to some pragmatically true conclusion for the wrong reasons; in either case it would still be worthwhile to revisit their arguments and see what might be salvaged.
Secondly, social conservatives do not claim that same-sex relations are uniquely bad, and I don't know where you got that idea. Let's assume a traditionalist Christian approach here. That approach is that same-sex relations are one species within the wider category of sexual sin. The category of sexual immorality or porneia is quite a broad one, and the reasons why same-sex unions are bad (illicit, to be discouraged, sinful, whatever language you like) are substantially the same reasons why many other forms of sexual behaviour are bad (this is where progressives would get very angry at the comparison between homosexuality and various other paraphilias).
So I'm not sure I understand your retort here. Social conservatives have explained why same-sex relations are bad at great length, and they have not argued that same-sex relations are uniquely bad in a way that sets them apart from any other sexual immorality. What's left here? You don't find conservative arguments against same-sex relations convincing? Well, good for you, I suppose.
Replace the word 'sin' with 'bad', if you prefer. It doesn't make much practical difference. I'm often baffled by the way secular people seem to understand the word 'sin'.
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