Hinkle rightly found this to be nonsense: "After all, you would not say a virus 'threatens humanity' if, in fact, no individual human person was ever harmed by the virus."
For his rejoinder, Taranto postulates a virus of his own:
The Hinkle virus is so fast-spreading that it soon infects every person alive, but it is largely benign. It has no effect on men, and only two effects on women: (1) it is passed on to any children they have, and (2) any children they conceive after infection will be born homosexual.Blink. Blink.
The Hinkle virus would seem to fit its namesake's criterion that it does no harm to any individual human person. We have established as a condition of the experiment--and we trust that in the real world Hinkle agrees--that it is not harmful to a woman to give birth to a homosexual child, nor is it harmful to a child to be born homosexual. And since the virus affects the sexual orientation only of the yet-unborn, it should not disrupt any existing heterosexual relationship.
Yet it should be obvious that the Hinkle virus would threaten humanity by dramatically reducing the incentive to reproduce...Taranto could as well have said "any children they conceive after infection will be born male" -- nothing wrong with being male, right? -- or "any children they conceive after infection will be born female" -- nothing wrong with being female, right? Which in the long run would have an even more dramatic effect on reproduction, if not on the "incentive to reproduce." We could use this, I suppose, as proof that masculinity presents a threat to mankind without blah blah. Or femininity!
But Taranto's point isn't really that "X may harm humanity without harming particular humans." It's more like You liberals think homosexuality is harmless, but what if everyone turned gay?
He follows this with reams of universals-vs.-particulars guff to retroactively class it up ("Humanity is not 'simply the sum of the humans in it' any more than A. Barton Hinkle is simply the sum of the cells in him, or those cells are the sum of the atoms in them"), but they don't relate to his virus analogy at all. They're just fancy cover for a dumb joke about gays -- such jokes being among the last pieces of armament the anti-gay-marriage side has left.
Like I said before: This is how you know you're winning.
Reading that article was like reading a signed confession of stupidity. I guess Taranto's logic is flawless in the universe that he made up.
ReplyDeleteSome times I think they're not even trying any more. At other times I see that they're trying very, very hard, but they're stupid.
ReplyDeleteOf course, none of Taranto's bleating actually addresses the core question he purports to consider: no one has been able to satisfactorily demonstrate legally-definable harm by including homosexuals in the same package of rights afforded others, which pretty much destroys the "the institution of marriage will be damaged irreparably" argument.
ReplyDeleteThere may in fact be a virus involved in this, but for now, it's restricted to gnawing away at what's left of Taranto's brain.
I can't even? How does this imaginary "everybody will be gay in one generation" "reduce the incentive to reproduce?" Gay people still like to reproduce. They even do it sexually, sometimes, by having an off books relationship with a close friend of the opposite sex, or by using donor sperm, or a donor womb (with or without artificial aides to the actual insemination.)
ReplyDeleteDoes Taranto think that every person who ever reproduced in the history of mankind did so willingly with a carefully chosen marital partner? Up until the development of companionate marriage, freely chosen, you might better argue that almost all men and women had zero choice in their marital partner and no choice in their reproductive lives. Far from "having an incentive to reproduce" most of human history was a war between the forced connection between sex and reproduction and the actual limitations of the household economy. Delay of sexual relations, delayed age of marriage, abstinence within marriage, coitus interruptus, use of spermicides, sponges, vinegar douches, abortifacients and infanticide were all used by individuals and entire family groups as ways of limiting fertility--and that's when there were fewer people as a whole on the planet.
My comment digs its toe shyly into the ground in admiration of this comment's pith.
ReplyDelete"Only a sophist could object to my convoluted and completely impossible hypothetical." James I do not think you know what that word means.
ReplyDeleteAllowing gays to be legally married will reduce the exclusivity of the institution of marriage; aristocrats are all about being members of clubs that are restrictive of who is allowed to be in them. That's how they know they are better than you: they're in the club and you aren't.
ReplyDeleteReading that article was like reading a signed confession of stupidity. I can't upvote this comment enough.
ReplyDeleteThink of all the conservative pundits who will no longer be able to work out the funny feelings gay people give them through obtuse bloviating. The strain on our mental health care system could be devastating.
ReplyDeleteSame-sex marriage turns everyone gay? Oh, crap. I don't have anywhere near the adequate wardrobe to pull that off.
ReplyDeleteTaranto's argument is like saying "If my aunt ever grew balls she'd be my uncle!" and then complaining about how confusing and disorienting it would make family reunions.
ReplyDeleteAnd has the nerve to accuse his opponent of "philosophical narcissism."
Just think of the shoes!
ReplyDeleteHow does this imaginary "everybody will be gay in one generation"
ReplyDelete"reduce the incentive to reproduce?" Gay people still like to reproduce.
Yeah but people like Taranto can't grok that. For them, being gay means all-gay-all-the-time.
It's really interesting to track how this mindset attempts to hang together. "Legitimizing" homosexuality means more gay people (somehow), which means fewer babies, and by that they mean white babies, to offset the prolific reproduction of the mud people, which means loss of power, which means the fall of Western civilization.
I realize that this comment takes the entire Taranto Trolling exercise way too seriously but its like he's invading all willynilly or something. I mean--there's such a thing as history, society, culture, reality even if these assholes prefer to pretend that they were born out of an egg five minutes before they were inducted into the "think like a libertarian asshole" club. No, just...no. He can fucking look something up next time before writing.
ReplyDeleteI want to add that they have this strange fixation with the idea of gay sex, and especially gay male sex, which is only exceeded by their race memory of a contempt for the idea that women like sex at all. These are teh same guys who used to tell those jokes about how their wives "always had headaches" and "let themselves go" and weren't interested in sex in the first place. So how do we square any of this with the new found solicitude for the idea of sex must equal procreation. I mean, I get that the Catholic Church has been pushing this in various encyclicals so boring and so removed from human expression that they could be used as sleep aids but no on else in the world thinks this way.
ReplyDeleteConsider a hypothetical virus. Every child born from this
ReplyDeletemoment forward is an exact clone of James Taranto. Do you not see how no living
woman would willing reproduce with a James Taranto clone? Thus, James Taranto
threatens the future of mankind.
That was a little less coherent than it should have been. I'm having a day here.
ReplyDeleteMy point, and I do have one, is that a) they've always thought women were more interested in babies than they were in sex. b) they've always thought men were more interested in sex than they were in babies. How would a world full of gay women and gay men change that? Maybe the number of men trading babies and money for readily available sex with women would decrease, but does he really think that no men want to have children/babies/heirs and would be willing to get them through adoption or sperm settlement in some lesbian womb? And that fewer women would be interested in having babies with donated sperm?
"... the institution of marriage rather than any specific marriages would be harmed by gay marriage."
ReplyDeleteCall me crazy, but we can worry about the harm done to abstractions after the harm done to people. Ideologues of any description are evil to the degree that they do the opposite.
And Bruce begat Bruce Jr, who begat no one at all because of the homosexuality. And God said this was awkward and that he saw not it coming.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's about the worst rewrite of "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" that I ever did see.
ReplyDeleteBut, seriously, look at this turd that he left on the carpet:
Presumably the next generation would stave off complete extinction by means of artificial insemination, but it's preposterous to think that fertility in an all-homosexual society would come anywhere near the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman (or 4.2 per lesbian couple).
As if there aren't too fucking many people on the planet already? Kind of not seeing the problem here, Jimmers.
Why wouldn't fertility in an all homosexual society come near the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple? It literally takes just the same two fertilizations that we now need hundreds of tries to achieve, and you have to find a bunch of women who are eitehr desperate enough or enjoy being pregnant enough to carry the babies for the gay male couples but that might not be so difficult. One can imagine a lively barter trade in sperm and wombs, actually. But in any event the world got along just fine when there were way fewer people on theplanet, and that was before we had robots to do a lot of the hard work.
ReplyDeleteThe arguments against accepting gay people as civil equals are becoming so abstruse they leave me with the sensation of having stared at an Escher. I'm beginning to miss the simple old idea that "my God doesn't like them, I don't like them, and they make me uncomfortable." At least it was straightforward prejudice, unencumbered by intellectual masturbation.
ReplyDeleteWhatever you do, for the love of god, don't get out of the boat and read the comments over there. They are a masterpiece of indirection, hysteria, smug superiority, incoherence, faux philosphical gobbldeygook (like the guy who incorrectly explains ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) and just general horror. I despair for my countrymen and then I think: no, these are people who read the WSJ because it makes them feel better about their pathetic lives as busybodies and catholic scolds. Its a very small subset, indeed.
ReplyDeleteYeah, if that situation ever did arise (somehow gay marriage being legal turns everybody gay) I'm sure we'd solve the problem the usual American way -- find some Mexicans to do the hard work.
ReplyDeleteOh, he addresses that. You see, Taranto believes that people in his dystopian scenario, but not fast enough. Recall that many conservatives believe that some sort of inverse Malthusian crisis will occur if the birthrate is any lower than it was in the 20th Century. We're all screwed if we don't add another billion people over the next few decades.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it goes without saying but I think it's worth saying: the hypothetical really says nothing about the institution of marriage at all. The institution of heterosexual marriage is neither harmed nor helped by the gay plague Taranto conjures up. Gay marriage dole nixes a relationship that may or may not be procreative. Ditto straight marriage. A novel baby plague that killed off all babies (Tay Sachs) or made them all blue eyed wouldn't change that fact.
ReplyDeleteTaranto wants to argue that something something something gay marriage harms humanity and therefore it harms the institution of marriage retrospectively. His readers don't seem to see the sleight of hand in the argument, the inexpert palming of the issues like a bad circus performer dropping the cards, but they are simply too innocently and spitefully enjoying the "virus" riposte and the ideal of the logical cleft stick they think he's created. He knows what pleases his audience: a touch of prurience, a bit of the old Herod and a hint of plague and they are holy rolling with delight.
As usual, Taranto overlooks the actual point. Hinkle is a little curious as to what this "marriage" thing is if it's not...well, marriage. It's as though the "institute of marriage" was the Speed Force and Taranto is worried that Cobalt Gay is going to destroy it (Is that an obscure enough comic book reference?).
ReplyDeleteA virus that turns everyone gay? Sounds like Taranto's been reading too much fanfiction.
ReplyDeleteTo the natalist conservative, the second greatest existential threat facing the world today is not enough people - Number one, of course, being too many people speaking the wrong language.
ReplyDeleteHe presents as a given that the institution of marriage is more then the sum of all marriages without explaining why that is so. Also not attempted is explaining exactly how gay marriage will harm the institution. None of them go beyond mere assertion.
ReplyDeleteAnd we wonder why the right cannot accept science. As Taranto proves, it's only "acceptable" if you can make the experimental results come out exactly the way you want them. Otherwise, well, time to flip the playing board over and yell for mommy.
ReplyDeleteFor them, being gay means all-gay-all-the-time.
ReplyDeleteActually, they think being gay means having gay sex all the time. They think homosexuals are all just incredible libertines. But I guess this is what you think if you're not having sex, ever.
The more I think about it, the more I have to conclude that conservative men are apparently just seething caldrons of unmet and aberrant sexual needs that are only kept in check by their fear of state sanction.
ReplyDeleteConsider the arguments we hear about gay marriage--that if we let gays marry, everyone will want to be gay. Or the argument that if we let gays marry, next it will be people marrying animals. Why do conservative men always think like this?
Does Taranto think that every person who ever reproduced in the history
ReplyDeleteof mankind did so willingly with a carefully chosen marital partner?
Well, not the women, obviously, but who gives a shit?
Probably a mashup of Twilight with Daybreakers: there's a virus that turns everyone into vampires, except they're sparkly and fabulous.
ReplyDeleteThe more I think about it, the more I have to conclude that conservative
ReplyDeletemen are apparently just seething caldrons of unmet and aberrant sexual
needs that are only kept in check by their fear of state sanction.
Hell, strike out "sexual," and you've got the history of the modern conservative movement in a nutshell.
I think the perceived threat isn't 'not enough people', but 'not enough white people of genuine northern European descent'.
ReplyDelete"The Hinkle virus is so fast-spreading that it soon infects every person
ReplyDeletealive, but it is largely benign. It has no effect on men, and only two
effects on women: (1) it is passed on to any children they have, and (2)
any children they conceive after infection will be born homosexual."
Dear God, James... not ANOTHER one of your libertarian "thought experiments"??!!??
You liberals think homosexuality is harmless, but what if everyone turned gay?
ReplyDeleteI might FINALLY be good at oral sex.
I'm not sure what's funnier - the way these homophobes imagine that all gay people pretty much live a lifestyle that's a Village People music video 24/7, or what their conviction that the normalizing of gay marriages will inevitably unleash skyrocketing rates of homosexuality and a collapse in heterosexual childbearing says about their barely-restrained hidden impulses.
ReplyDeleteYou mean no more unwanted children? Ever? Every single child born in the entire world will exist specifically because his or her parents wanted him to be born? Ninety-nine percent of the horrible, cruel abuse and trauma inflicted upon children throughout the world, gone, poof, like magic? Even to a hetero, girl-watching dude like me, it seems like a fantastic impossible vision of paradise.
ReplyDeleteHe stays away from explicitly claiming how gays marrying would harm the institution of marriage because since it clearly wouldn't harm the institution of marriage, his actually attempting to conjure up some bullshit argument would expose him to ridicule.
ReplyDeleteSo in a pretty masterful bit of sophistry and rhetorical slight of hand he comes up with a two-part trick: first bedazzle his readers with a sort of Zeno's Paradox of Procreation (“It is theoretically impossible to achieve a population replacement rate if every step toward that goal there are fewer babies and more homos!") and then while their heads are spinning say "Hey, the sexual revolution and the pill didn't make things better for people; you libs aren't going to fool us again with this gay marriage thing!"
To sum up: he chides Hinkle for not admitting that sometimes change brings unintended consequences - and since gay marriage is change he argues we should avoid it lest marriage and perhaps the very human race be harmed in some way we can't yet conceive.
Shorter Taranto: "Gay marriage might anger the gods and cause them to destroy us." Seriously, that's basically it.
I guess Taranto's logic is flawless in the universe that he made up.
ReplyDeleteMan, I wish I could have done the same thing when I was having trouble with high school physics.
Oh, let a girl dream can't you?
ReplyDeleteIronically I find that essays like this encourage a belief that humanity should take a bow and leave 'em wanting more.
ReplyDeleteI had to go read the Taranto in person to see if it made more sense that way. It made less.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I want to be upset by him, but I'm not even sure what he thinks.
I would like, just once, for one of these clowns to be forced to explain exactly how gay marriage would "destroy" traditional marriage. How would you know it's happening? What kinds of measurements would they accept as evidence that it was or wasn't? And then, when some time period (to be mutually agreed upon) passed, and that evidence failed to materialize, I'd like to see them respond to it.
ReplyDeleteBecause then they'd say, "Gee. I guess I was wrong, then." Right, fellas? Fellas...?
Actually, it's just not possible to be BAD at oral sex.
ReplyDeleteSo, during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Barry Allen fought the plans of the Gay-Monitor by going so married that he merged with the Marriage Force itself?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure precisely what this means for any and all Supreme Court cases. But while it doesn't sound as interesting as the original, I think Grant Morrison could do something appropriately bizarre with it.
So, gay marriage harms marriage by making marriages less likely to reproduce. The children of various marriages - not the children of the people in the marriages, but the marriages themselves - will come out in a way that makes it difficult to make more marriages. And this is bad, because it means we won't be able to marriage-populate enough to keep up our desperately overmarried world.
ReplyDeleteWhy, yes, Mr. Taranto. I do see how if you postulate something that has absolutely no relationship to anything in the real world, and then call your opponents a virus, how your argument makes sense. Or, in the immortal words of Abridged Series Yami Yugi, "I'm sure on some planet your strategy is considered powerful, but your weak link is - this is Earth."
I think it's just possible that he's trying to put together a Kantian argument based on "unless everyone can do something at the same time, then it's not moral for anyone to do that thing", but that part of Kant's philosophy was underthought and nonsensical, so fuck you, Kant.
And while of course this virus doesn't exist - that would just be silly! - the Taranto Virus nonetheless presents an excellent, cogent, and logical argument for not allowing James Taranto to get married. Though it's depressing to think we'd need the counter-incentive.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure we can also apply it to allowing James Taranto to own a house, keep a pet, or have a job; it's entirely as relevant.
And I don't have a Suburu! Though I did stop shaving my legs and pits JUST IN CASE.
ReplyDeletetheir barely-restrained hidden impulses
ReplyDeleteAnd yet they often procreate with people that don't actually attract them sexually! HOW CAN THIS BE?!!! And why would it necessarily stop if they could be honest with themselves?
That's what my dentist said, too, but it wasn't true.
ReplyDeleteReading that article was like reading a signed confession of stupidity.
ReplyDeleteOkay, if by "stupidity" you mean "being an arrogant, dickish, sack of shit."
The logic is flawless. It's those planets that keep crashing into each other and exploding that's the problem.
ReplyDeleteSorry if I missed it in a comment below, but everyone being born homosexual wouldn't threaten humanity, so long as the ratio between male and female births didn't change. Just ask the history of the world up until the eighties or so.
ReplyDeleteOh, there's plenty of babies being born. Just the wrong colors.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the nutpicking, but. . .
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to see how permitting gay couples to marry could do anywhere
near as much damage as has already been done by the combined systemic
effects of such developments as feminism, sexual liberationism, modern
birth control and no-fault divorce
New horse, old battle: It's the wimmin's fault.
How horrible. Every child planned and wanted, and fewer people on the planet.
ReplyDeleteConservative Hypothetical World: where gay marriage is a threat to all humanity but raping unconscious women is no biggie!
ReplyDeleteNo. No, it is actually possible.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunate, but possible.
On the other hand, you can always tell cunning linguists by how well they spell the Akkadian logosyllabary with their tongues.
ReplyDeleteTaranto is hiding the ball, as is his wont. The real reason that conservatives fear and oppose same-sex marriage is that if marriages are not required to have a husband and a wife in strict gender roles, then women might get the idea that equality within marriage is their right.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure he'd be upset if the Hinkle virus really existed. If all girl children were born gay, where would the senior straight men get their trophy wives?
This is a good point. If women really hated sex and only consented to it for the sake of baby making, you would think all these lesbian couples would be happy for an excuse to make with the turkey baster. I'm sure their gay male friends would be happy to lend some sperm from their nonstop sex parties.
ReplyDeleteOh wait, now I remember. Gay people aren't quite human in their view and don't actually fit into the "universal" gender stereotypes.
Where would the serfs and cannon fodder come from, eh?
ReplyDeleteAw, c'mon. I personally am willing to grade on a curve, and award high marks for effort and positive attitude.
ReplyDeleteWhen Taranto says "traditional marriage", he's making those two words stand in for "the precepts and edicts out of my holy book. No, the 3500-year-old bit about menstruation and diet, not the 2000-year-old bit about justice and forgiveness."
ReplyDeleteWhich is a lot for two words to carry.
Taranto's hypothetical virus -- which supposedly threatens humanity without causing injury to individuals, by reducing the likelihood of couples procreating accidently -- sounds a lot like "birth control". Or "education".
ReplyDeleteDoes Taranto think that every person who ever reproduced in the history of mankind did so willingly with a carefully chosen marital partner?
ReplyDeleteI believe I've spotted the problem.
"I'm a Malthusian! Eureka, pal!"
ReplyDeleteYes, his notion seems to be that "the institution of marriage" is in and of itself, holy, inviolable. Or should be. Because God wills it or something.
ReplyDeleteNo, this is (of course) I am Legend--at least the original book which ends with the Hero realizing that it is he who is out of step with the new overlords of the universe and committing voluntary suicide. IIRC.
ReplyDeleteThe (genuinely) good news is that the straightforward prejudice is socially acceptable in fewer contexts all the time. The bad news is that the actually prejudice is disappearing much more slowly and drives all this disingenuous handwaving.
ReplyDeleteThere was a Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers storyline about a mind drug called (I think) "a-ha" that had a similar affect. Maybe he picked up the idea there.
ReplyDeleteHell, yes, if everyone were gay there'd be a lot less abortion, wouldn't there?
ReplyDeleteSounds like Creeping Neo-Platonism to me, essences existing independent of objective correlates' existences.
ReplyDeleteMind you, a point I like to make, that behaviours can be good for genes' being passed on whilst making life worse for anyone bearing those genes, is not the same, as it only makes statements about actual objects.
(And how dare Taranto, with Maggie barely cold, insinuate that society actually exists?)
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ReplyDelete