WaPo and lefty, pro-homosexual advocacy “journalism”

There is an interesting piece at The American Conservative which illustrates an obvious problem in the mainstream media.  Rod Dreher nailed this one.

Dreher looks into WaPo‘s commentary an exchange between an editor, a journalist, and a concerned reader.  The point made is that WaPo has assumed a pro-homosexual position.  WaPo then falls firmly into the trap.  WaPo holds that pro-homosexual, advocacy reporting is about justice and fairness.

Replied the reporter: “The reason that legitimate media outlets routinely cover gays is because it is the civil rights issue of our time. Journalism, at its core, is about justice and fairness, and that’s the ‘view of the world’ that we espouse; therefore, journalists are going to cover the segment of society that is still not treated equally under the law.”

Get that?

More of the exchange:

The reader: “Contrary to what you say, the mission of journalism is not justice. Defining justice is a political matter, not journalistic. Journalism should be about accuracy and fairness.

“Good journalism also means not demeaning conservatives as ‘haters.’ ”

The reporter: “As for accuracy, should the media make room for racists, i.e. those people who believe that black people shouldn’t marry white people? Any story on African-Americans wouldn’t be wholly accurate without the opinion of a racist, right?

“Of course I have a bias. I have a bias toward fairness,” the reporter continued. “The true conservative would have the same bias. The true conservative would want the government out of people’s bedrooms, and religion out of government.”

NB: “religion out of government”.  This could have been written by the White House.  Oh… right…. this is WaPo.

At the heart of this particular issue, advocacy of re-defining marriage to include homosexual unions, is that it is NOT a civil rights issue!

These reporters and commentators and liberal wonks have confused the issue of homosexual desires with the color of someone’s skin. They seem not to have the reasoning skills to see the difference between the issues.

 

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30 Comments

  1. Legisperitus says:

    They are also too blinkered to see that it’s abortion which is truly “the civil rights issue of our time.”

  2. Patrick-K says:

    “government out of people’s bedrooms”

    Total non sequitur. Although the Catholic Church teaches that sodomy is sinful, certainly a distinction can be made between that and teaching that sodomy should be illegal. And indeed nearly all mainstream American social conservatives do in fact draw that distinction and do in fact support only the former proposition and not the latter.

    “religion out of government”

    How is voting based on what Jesus, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, or the pope say any different than voting based on what Karl Marx, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, or liberal professors say? Why can one be abused as “religion” but not the other? Oh, right, the dictatorship of relativism. Thank you, Holy Father, for making this so clear!

    Another useful concept I came across recently (here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/evetushnet/2013/02/meta-pharisaism-explained.html ) is “meta-pharisaism.” That is, the belief that one is much better and holier than those nasty judgmental people….

  3. frjim4321 says:

    At the heart of this particular issue, advocacy of re-defining marriage to include homosexual unions, is that it is NOT a civil rights issue!

    I’m not too sure about that. [There is time for you to come around.] I think that an aim of same-sex marriage is assuring equal protection under the law for all without regard to sexual orientation. That sounds like a civil rights issue to me. [No.]

  4. Legisperitus says:

    Patrick-K: Even when consensual sodomy was illegal (as it was quite recently in many parts of the US), when did you ever hear of police hiding in people’s bedrooms? The rare prosecutions that occurred would be when an officer witnessed some lewd act in a public place. This whole “government in bedrooms” thing is a straw man.

  5. wmeyer says:

    … therefore, journalists are going to cover the segment of society that is still not treated equally under the law.

    And once they have scratched same sex marriage off their list of causes, it will be the ephebophiles and pedophiles who need equal protection. Their argument ignores the bankruptcy of the proposition by ignoring the traditional moral position on the issue at hand.

  6. Patrick-K says:

    frjim4321, if you want to be precise, homosexuals currently have equal protection and are treated equally as everyone else insofar as that they can marry, they just can’t marry someone of the same sex. There is no sexual orientation requirement in order to marry; the law as it stands is indifferent to sexual orientation.

    There are, however, restrictions to marriage. Both homosexuals are heterosexuals are prevented from marrying immediate family members, from marrying more than one person, from marrying children, from marrying without a license, etc. These restrictions are in place in order to ensure social stability, which is a purpose of the law just as important as civil rights.

    Historically and currently everywhere except the West, marriage is defined as the union of a man and woman becoming husband and wife. If you ask almost anyone in, say Eastern Asia, if they believe a man should be allowed to marry another man, their response would likely not be, “no, we can’t allow that!” but rather confusion.

    A circle is defined as the set of points in a plane that are equidistant from a given point. We can call other shapes circles, but then we are not really proposing “circle equality,” rather, we are changing the commonly accepted definition of the word “circle.”

  7. OdeM says:

    @ Patrick-K…. You beat me to the punch as I was recovering my password… Thank you…

  8. JohnE says:

    These reporters and commentators and liberal wonks have confused the issue of homosexual desires with the color of someone’s skin.

    More than that, they have confused homosexual activity with the color of someone’s skin.

  9. Imrahil says:

    The argument is flawed. A Catholic is for putting a bit of religion into government (which need not necessarily change much in practical policy, if the comparison is made to a totally unerroneous, integer secular politician), but even granted by hypothesis that the Constitution prohibited this, any man must needs, as the reporter himself acknowledges, be biased for fairness.

    Treating the unequal equal is unfair.

    As it were, it serves (to me) as a flanking argument against homosexuality: that homosexuals seemingly cannot but want marriage for themselves. It may be hard to be seen that the homosexual act is intrinsically evil in natural law (for less in value is not yet intrinsic evil); it is not hard at all that homosexual couples cannot possibly be married.

    Nevertheless, the conservatives of the first half of the 20th century seem to fall under the verdict Chesterton wrote somewhere about the prohibitionists, that they in the most literal sense scandalized the conscience of the young. If it was once without any reason supposed and defended with fanaticism that the interracial marriage is an abomination… how can the young possibly distinguish right from wrong when that was once called wrong?

    Also, there might be the feeling in those usually non-conservatives that attack marriage that if the conservatives were wrong then, they have earned to pay for it – not, of course, by honest prisons, but by the heavier penality that their group, persons unregarded, is without timelimit not taken seriously.

  10. DisturbedMary says:

    WaPo, aka the Washington Compost, is a paper of low information reporters. Its journalists are trained by the ivy propoganda machine that specializes in avoiding the truth, avoiding though and avoiding reason when telling a story. They don’t even know what they don’t know.

  11. acardnal says:

    frjim, following your thinking, couldn’t one also argue they have a “civil right” to be in a civil union with multiple persons simultaneously, or with children, or with animals, or with one’s siblings, or even one’s parents?

  12. Dr. Edward Peters says:

    Whenever I read Rod D, I inevitably (a) appreciate the analyses he brings, and (b) say a quick prayer that he returns to full communion. Soon.

  13. Pingback: Harvard Debate Stresses Meaning and Purpose of Marriage

  14. The Masked Chicken says:

    “That sounds like a civil rights issue to me.”

    How could there be civil rights for something that is a civil wrong?

    “A circle is defined as the set of points in a plane that are equidistant from a given point. We can call other shapes circles, but then we are not really proposing “circle equality,” rather, we are changing the commonly accepted definition of the word ‘circle.'”

    Good argument, bad example. A circle is defines as the points in the set defined by x^2 + y^2 = z^2, but the definition of the set depends on the metric properties of the topology. It is possible, using this definition to define a circle, using this exact formula, that is identical in shape to a square. The argument making an appeal to a definition of marriage is correct, because marriage is defined both by divine law and natural law. What one chooses to call a circle is somewhat arbitrary and the really intelligent atheist will defease your argument if you use that example.

    A better example might be using water. Water is H2O, If any of the amounts of hydrogen or oxygen change, it no longer has the properties of water. If H2O becomes H2O2, a simple little change (just like in a homosexual marriage), it converts the thing from a life-giving fluid to one of the most deadly liquid oxidizer known. That might be a better analogy to use. It is the same with marriage. If you add or subtract or otherwise change the component parts you get something totally different than marriage and it just might be toxic, as well.

    The Chicken

  15. wolfeken says:

    Dr. Peters wrote: “Whenever I read Rod D, I inevitably (a) appreciate the analyses he brings, and (b) say a quick prayer that he returns to full communion. Soon.”

    Ditto. I also: (c) write him a note or make a comment on his Catholic articles so it’s clear to him that fans of his are still stunned he went all schismatic and such. He is too great a writer for the orthodox to steal.

  16. VexillaRegis says:

    Chicken, I will use that analogy of yours. Same sex “marriage” is like drinking hydrogen peroxide when you need water – O, what a disaterous difference.

    You are a genius, you know that, don’t you? :-)

  17. frjim4321 says:

    frjim4321, if you want to be precise, homosexuals currently have equal protection and are treated equally as everyone else insofar as that they can marry, they just can’t marry someone of the same sex. There is no sexual orientation requirement in order to marry; the law as it stands is indifferent to sexual orientation.

    Are you suggesting that gay people should simulate marriage by exchanging vows that they are unable to fulfill? I don’t think it ever works for a gay person to hide in a supposedly straight marriage. I think it does a grave damage to all people involved. Especially children.

    I think it does pastoral harm to encourage gay people To hide in Straight marriages.

    (Siri is doing the typing today.)

  18. wmeyer says:

    frjim, I think that when two individuals of the same sex enter into a state-sanctioned and gravely disordered relationship, it greatly damages them and society.

  19. robtbrown says:

    Frjim4321

    There was no suggestion. Just because someone has the right does not mean that it must be exercised. And the point mentioned above is good: If homosexuals have the right to marry why not father and daughter? Or why cannot someone have more than one spouse?

  20. Patrick-K says:

    Chicken, yes, that sounds better. My point was merely that it’s disingenuous to say you can make one thing equal to a different thing by merely legislating it. Reality stays the same regardless, what you have really done is changed the definition of the first thing.

    Frjim4321, no, I wasn’t suggesting that. I was merely saying that the law does not discriminate against homosexuals as such. Instead, it requires that marriages be between two people of the opposite sex. It’s sort of a subtle difference, but the difference is there. In the first case, it would be positive discrimination to say that only certain types of people (i.e. heterosexuals) can get married. In the second, it says that anyone can get married, respecting the fact that “getting married” involves the complementarity of the sexes. It is not an arbitrary discrimination, but a real foundation of any stable society, proven throughout all of human history, and rooted in the fundamental biology of the human species.

    As you imply, a marriage that cannot be properly consummated should not happen…

  21. eulogos says:

    Fr. Jim, The thing is that what two men or two women want to have with each other, whatever it is, is not marriage. Marriage implicitly involves sexual complimentarity, and sexual relations of a procreative kind. Now this doesn’t mean people past fertility, or with defects causing infertility, can’t marry, because their relations are still of the kind which as a whole is procreative. Whatever actions homosexuals may engage in to satisfy sexual urges or express attachment, those actions can never, never, never, never, result in a child. They are not of a procreative kind. They may adopt children, or raise the child of one of them, but they are never ever raising a child which is the fruit of their sexual relationship and which is the child of both of them, except by a legal convention. I do understand that some of them raise children who would otherwise have no one; there is a situation like that in my extended family. I find what they (the homosexual couple in my extended family) are doing in that regard to be praiseworthy, and while not ideal, better than what the child faced otherwise. And maybe they are better people than the heterosexual couple who rejected the child after starting an adoption, when they found out he was disabled. But that doesn’t change the essense and meaning of their relationship into a marriage. It just can’t.

    If you mean you would like people of the same sex who want to be lifelong partners of some sort to have legal protection with respect to property, power of attorney, health care proxy, hospital visitation, etc, OK, lets set up a legal framework for that, without any reference to their sexual activities. Let’s make it something that two sisters or two brothers can set up as well, so that it is clear the state is neutral with relation to, and is not privileging, homosexual relationships per se.
    If it were only legal rights they wanted, they should be satisfied with that.

    But the fact is that they want social recognition. They want our society to accept it when a woman says “my wife” or when a man says “my husband.” They want to give sheer nonesense a status in law. How can you be for that?

    I also want to point out that St. Paul said that the relationship of husband and wife is like that of Christ and the Church. Being male and being female tie into the natural symbolism God built into the universe and into human beings. A marriage, a real marriage, ties one into some of the essential truths of the universe, connects one, as it were, to what one might call cosmic truths. Do you really want to drain the image of Christ and the Church, of bridegroom and bride, of all their inherently sexually charged meaning? Conversely, do you want to drain marriage of all of its inherent spiritual meaning? When I say “inherent” spiritual meaning, I assert that even non- Christians when they truly engage in marriage, partake to some degree of that spiritual meaning, even if they never articulate this and it is not articulated for them. That is what equating a compact between two homosexuals with marriage will do, is doing, to the meaning of the word marriage, and language is not nothing; it is the conveyor of symbol and meaning. Lying language like “gay marriage” is a destroyer of symbol and meaning.

    Susan Peterson

  22. maryh says:

    @frjimk4321,
    If you provide same sex couples the same state recognition and support as heterosexual marriages, may I ask what type of state recognition and support ought to be provided to promote long term stable relationships between biological father, mother and child?

    What shall we call that? Or is there no reason for a state to privilege such a union?

    Isn’t the result to say, in effect, that the state has no special interest in helping a mother, father and their biological child or children to stay together? Wouldn’t any such special interest by definition exclude same sex couples, who by definition will never be the biological parents of any children they raise?

  23. maryh says:

    @frjim4321

    No, I don’t think it would be a good idea for someone with same sex attractions to “hide” in a marriage. Such a person should be completely honest with any prospective spouse. Ideally, such a person could also be honest with people at large, the way a diabetic might be, in situations where it might be relevant. There’s nothing that needs to be hidden.

    Quite a few, most perhaps, of people with same sex attractions are quite capable of procreating, even if that isn’t their preferred method of sexual expression. And no, I’m not referring to orientation change at all.

  24. Ben Dunlap says:

    Patrick-K and Masked Chicken, you’re both wrong about circles, as any Traditional Geometer can tell you. The proper definition is from Euclid:

    A circle is a plane figure contained by one line such that all the straight lines falling upon it from one point among those lying within the figure equal one another.

    On the main topic, eulogos is on a good track. Only a man and a woman are capable of sexual union — i.e., of cooperating in a sexual act that is ordered toward a common end that is outside of either of them (a baby).

    Homosexual couples can certainly experience certain bedroom pleasures simultaneously, but this is not sexual union, except by shallow resemblance to the real thing.

    The sort of real union that homosexual couples can attain — by, for example, managing a household together — is also available to any other pair of persons (a sister and a brother, a parent and a child, platonic friends). So why call it a marriage?

  25. Thomas in MD says:

    The reporter: “As for accuracy, should the media make room for racists, i.e. those people who believe that black people shouldn’t marry white people? Any story on African-Americans wouldn’t be wholly accurate without the opinion of a racist, right?

    When Blessed John Paul II died, every story I saw/heard in the MSM noted how JPII alienated gays, women, dissenters in the Church, and in every story an abused member of one of those groups was interviewed. Can anyone here honestly remember an article or story about the Church that doesn’t interview someone who hates her? Hypocrites.

  26. Imrahil says:

    As it were, the dear @Masked Chicken was referring the definition of a circle from not Euclid, but today’s mathematics. Where, yes the circle (or “2-dimensional ball” :-) ) is defined the way @Chicken wrote.

  27. eulogos says:

    Ben Dunlop, where, pray tell, did you develop the habit of regarding Euclid as *the* authority on matters geometrical? SJC, east or west? TAC?

    Just curious.
    Susan Peterson

  28. JMody says:

    Yaawwwwnnn … zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzk!
    What, a whiny lefty was whining about the Church? So?

    The thing these would-be-journalists always miss when throwing around “civil rights” as some kind of trump card is that everyone in society ALREADY HAS THE SAME RIGHT. And the anti-miscegenation laws did clearly violate this right:
    You have the right to marry any one person of the opposite sex outside a certain level of blood relationship. For the secular minded, the only restriction IN CIVIL LAW today is that you cannot have an additional spouse without first annulling or divorcing the one. Whether or not you two love each other is not questioned, no proof is required. Coercion is merely asked, so you could probably force a marriage pretty easily.

    The only caveat, blood relationship, clearly indicates that the secular state sees PROCREATION, i.e. the spawning of more taxpayers, as its ONLY interest in the union. Love, faith, sacramental grace and all the rest are MOOT to the state. Procreation, and by rather obvious implication, stable families that raise upright citizens instead of roving packs of undomesticated Homo sapiens such as one sees at, oh I don’t know, Dallas Cowboy games, is the sole interest of the state.

    These people need to be called on this, often and loudly.

  29. The Masked Chicken says:

    Dear Ben Dunlop,

    Topology is a generalization of geometry. Euclid’s definition and Patrick-K’s definition are equivalent and correspond to using the Euclidian metric within the 2-dimensional set defined by x^2 + y^2 = z^2 (technically, a compact space or a compact function) . There are many other types of metrics, however, so the classical definition of the circle is a restricted case.

    Who would have thought we’d be talking about topology on a Catholic blog!

    The Chicken

  30. Ben Dunlap says:

    @Chicken, I’m entirely ignorant of topology but I don’t think a “set of points” definition can be reconciled with strictly Euclidean geometry, where you need to have at least one line to have a plane figure, and lines exist independently of points. Behold the strange and lovely opening words of Book I of the Elements:

    A point is that which has no part.
    A line is breadthless length.

    The definition of a point precludes a set of them from amounting to much of anything.

    @eulogos/Susan, you’ve caught me–it was TAC.

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