Today Is For Amy
Futurama has been back for a few episodes and I'm not thrilled. It's alright, but not appointment TV. On the other hand, I felt that way back in the old days.
The most recent episode, "Proposition Infinity," has Amy leave Kif and fall in love with the very unlovable robot Bender. She's got a thing for bad boys. The rest of the episode was a metaphor for gay marriage, with a fight to legalize human/robot marriage.
It was pretty one-sided satire, mocking only those opposed (and having the preacher who opposes it get hot while watching human/robot sex). What felt so odd about it is a previous episode ("I Dated A Robot") was all about the evils of human/robot sex--how it must be stopped at all costs, and giving in on the issue will destroy the human race.
Of course, a show like Futurama, just like The Simpsons or Family Guy, tends to reset each episode. Otherwise, with its fantastic plots, it'd regularly be painting itself into corners. It's just weird to see such a 180, even if the writers wanted to comment on a controversy.
PS The review I linked to has this: "There really is no logical reason to oppose gay marriage, so why pretend the whole issue isn't based on irrationality and selfishness?" (Selfishness?)
Since the majority at present oppose gay marriage, and certainly believe they have logical reasons, I'd love to see this guy debate them.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:02 AM
5 Comments:
I don't pay much attention to the gay marriage issue, but when I do discuss it with someone, I use the cliched talking-point of "Do you want to make polygamous marriages and incestuous marriages legal, too?"
What surprises me is that in almost every case, the person gets angry. If someone finds the right to gay marriage so "obvious" that they know that "there is no logical reason to oppose it", then shouldn't they also find it very easy to answer these other questions too? Yet in my experience, people don't get angry when asked an easy-to-answer question.
I think they get angry because they feel no one's talking about these other things, which seem outrageous, so bringing them up is a smokescreen. This happens in a lot of debates--one side feels it's using a logical progression, the other feeling it's reductio ad absurdum.
I guess that makes sense.
But ultimately I think they are wrong. If two unrelated women have an inalienable right to marry, why wouldn't two sisters have the same right? Arguments against incest fall into two categories: religious (which are now considered irrelevant) and the dangers of inbreeding (which apply only to heterosexual fertile marriages).
There is a right to marry. The Supreme Court has discussed it and both sides of the issue believe in it. If you don't think so, try to ban heterosexual marriage and see how far you get.
So the question becomes how far does this right go. Should we allow discrimination based on sex, or on sexual orientation? Both sides make arguments, but to the pro-SSM, the con arguments sound like nonsense, and it's pretty common to ban such discrimination unless you've got an excellent argument not to.
So the only argument they seem to have is slippery slop. The next question becomes how far will this go? Can people marry animals? Trees? Themselves? Every one of those arguably has to be addressed--intellecutally--but it's doubtful unless there's a big movement behind these cases that any further stretching of the right to marry (even for polygamy) will gain much purchase. (And if some judge tries to find the right, he'll probably be overturned by a higher court. Even if the Supreme Court allows it, I can imagine a constitutional amendment.)
Can we make distinctions? We always have. Adding that there'll be no discrimination based on sex doesn't drop all limits. There are arguments, pretty obvious ones, to be made against polygamy and incest, ones that go beyond mere tradition, but I guess the argument for now is we'll worry about that when we get to it--for now we'll just stop discriminating against those who want to marry people of the same sex. I'm not entirely discounting a slippery slope argument, but if you think this'll lead to an orgy of new laws we force upon ourself that we don't want, you have to jutsify it against denying millions a basic right
There are arguments, pretty obvious ones, to be made against polygamy and incest, ones that go beyond mere tradition,
This is precisely the point I am disputing. You seem to be saying that there are "arguments, pretty obvious ones ... that go beyond mere tradition" for prohibiting incestuous same-sex marriages.
I honestly am unaware of any such arguments -- obvious or otherwise, traditional or otherwise. And I have been unable to invent any such arguments even in theory.
As far as I can tell, the reason that gay marriage proponents support a ban on incestuous same-sex marraige is SOLELY because they find the idea "icky". Is that the only reason? is that a good reason?
I don't think it's a slipperly slope, either. When SCOTUS permitted corporations to spend money campaigning for Republicans, did they also allow them to campaign for Libertarians by "slippery slope"? No; there was no slope involved. The two are one and the same. Similarly, every court decision I have seen that permits same-sex marriage does not merely have a "slipperly slope" to incestous same-sex marriage. Rather, the latter is included in the former by the most obvious logic, and only an affirmative ban on the latter would change that.
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