Thursday, August 22, 2013

On Interracial and Gay Marriage Comparisons

Hey, remember me?

Yesterday I heard for the umpteenth time that the restrictions once placed on interracial marriage constitute a slam dunk reason why gay marriage should be allowed. I fail to see what the former has to do with the latter. Let us take a closer look.

I can think of three reasons why the "typical white male" might oppose interracial marriage. One, he is a racist and worries that interracial marriage will harm the superior white race over time. Two, his odds of finding a mate decrease when there is competition from blacks. Three, he worries that white women might actually prefer black men. For these reasons, he strongly opposes interracial marriage.

Now let us transport our racist, sexually insecure white statistician to the present day and explore his views on gay marriage.

He is racist, so he is fine with whites marrying whites and blacks marrying blacks, so from that angle, he probably would only oppose interracial gay marriage.

On the question of odds, he would be overjoyed with the idea of gay marriage between men as two competitors would be eliminated with every marriage. Not so with lesbian marriages as each marriage would eliminate two potential mates. Thus he would favor gay marriage between men and oppose it for women.

Regarding his sexual inadequacy, again I think he would favor gay marriage between men while opposing it for women. Marriage between men would if anything provide a reminder of his masculinity relative to theirs. Marriage between women on the other hand would, like interracial marriage,  provoke his feeling of sexual inadequacy and he would thus oppose marriage between two women.

As I have demonstrated, the reasons to oppose interracial marriage, if applied to the gay marriage debate, would result in support for marriage between men and opposition to marriage between women. There simply is no logical reason to compare the fully resolved interracial marriage (non) issue with the current debate over gay marriage.

Unless, that is, you find it logical to unfairly insult your debate opponents to further your political agenda.

4 comments:

Mroczuś said...

Reading all of this...I could agree with your point of view.

Nemo said...

More posts please.

It looks like I've been banned again over at sean's BURP site for pointing out the following:

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sean, "Walker's policies are NOT Responsible for the projected budget surplus."

sean (two sentences later),"Gubnah Walker created the projected budget surplus..."

Schrödinger's sean, a famous illustration of the principle in blog theory of superposition, serves to demonstrate the apparent conflict between what a blog purports to tell us is true about the nature of a governor and attemtps to prove it by stating the contrary position.

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How's about a nice Mann-Made Global Warming thread? An Obamacare post could be fun. The ginormous Amazon distribution center going up in Racine and not Minnesota is interesting. Anything would be nice though. See you at this weekend's Lake Lucerne Bottle Rocket war?

Unknown said...

Nemo, great to hear from you! I have had some ideas of late, especially my own O'Care nightmare. But I can't at the moment access my own blog. I blame the IRS. OK, not really, but I am having problems and, to be honest, not enough motivation to correct them. But with your prodding I will do it! Thanks. Thanks also for the bottle rocket invite but this weekend won't work.

Unknown said...

Ok, I see part of the problem can be blamed on my son Zane. Not Zane here but Denis.