Shame on Michael Kinsley: "Wanting to Have the State Recognize Your Marriage" ≠ "Imposing Your Lifestyle on Everybody Else"
Michael Kinsley claims that Ben Carson "has views on gay rights somewhat more progressive than those of the average Democratic senator ten years ago."
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
Ben Carson:
Marriage Equality Could Destroy America Like The "Fall Of The Roman Empire": As a Bible-believing Christian… I believe God loves homosexuals as much as he loves everyone, but if we can redefine marriage as between two men or two women or any other way based on social pressures as opposed to between a man and a woman, we will continue to redefine it in any way that we wish, which is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire. I don't believe this to be a political view, but rather a logical and reasoned view…. I have no problem whatsoever with allowing gay people to live as they please, as long as they don't try to impose their lifestyle on everyone else. Marriage is a very sacred institution and should not be degraded…. I have no problem with Muslims or other religious groups who want to practice their religion in their homes… as long as they don't try to impose that on others or violate our laws. I could go on with other examples for quite some time, but I hope I have conveyed the wonderful freedom we enjoy as citizens of a government that protects the right to privacy…
Michael Kinsley:
Ben Carson and the Gay Marriage Police: Gay marriage, or “marriage equality”… was a genuinely new idea when it first appeared in this publication in 1989…. [Ben] Carson is the latest Great Black Hope for the Republican Party…. He should have left bestiality out of it. And any reference to NAMBLA—the “North American Man / Boy Love Association”—is pretty good evidence that we have left the realm of rational discussion…. Carson may qualify as a homophobe by today’s standards. But then they don’t make homophobes like they used to. Carson denies hating gay people…. He has apologized publicly “if I offended anyone.”… In other words, he has views on gay rights somewhat more progressive than those of the average Democratic senator ten years ago…. But none of this matters. All you need to know is that Carson opposes same-sex marriage. Case closed. Carson was supposed to be the graduation speaker at Johns Hopkins Medical School. There was a fuss, and Carson decided to withdraw as speaker. The obviously relieved dean nevertheless criticized Carson for being “hurtful.”… My analysis is that, at a crucial moment, the dean failed to defend a real core value of the university: tolerance….
Carson didn’t murder millions of people. All he did was say on television that he opposes same-sex marriage—an idea that even its biggest current supporters had never even heard of a couple of decades ago. Does that automatically make you a homophobe and cast you into the outer darkness? It shouldn’t. But in some American subcultures—Hollywood, academia, Democratic politics—it apparently does…. [Are] gays and liberals… conducting some sort of jihad against organized Christianity[?]… That is a tremendous exaggeration. But it’s not a complete fantasy. And for every mouth that opens, a dozen stay clamped shut…. If you were up for tenure at a top university, or up for a starring role in a big movie, or running for office in large swaths of the country, would it hurt your chances more to announce that you are gay or to announce that you’ve become head of an anti-gay organization? The answer seems obvious. So the good guys have won. Why do they now want to become the bad guys?…
The dean calls Carson’s remarks “hurtful.” They weren’t hurtful to him, unless he’s hopelessly oversensitive. The dean was just making a move in the great game of umbrage that has clogged American politics, where points are awarded for taking offense at something the other guy said…
When last we saw Michael Kinsley, he was claiming that Ben Carson--he of "I have no problem with Muslims… who want to practice their religion in their homes" as long as they don't want to build mosques, and of "I have no problem whatsoever with allowing gay people to live as they please, as long as they don't try to impose their lifestyle on everyone else" by marrying each other--is not a bigot:
Michael Kinsley: Ben Carson and the Gay Marriage Police: Carson may qualify as a homophobe by today’s standards. But then they don’t make homophobes like they used to. Carson denies hating gay people…. He has apologized publicly “if I offended anyone.”… In other words, he has views on gay rights somewhat more progressive than those of the average Democratic senator ten years ago…. But none of this matters. All you need to know is that Carson opposes same-sex marriage. Case closed. Carson was supposed to be the graduation speaker at Johns Hopkins Medical School. There was a fuss, and Carson decided to withdraw as speaker. The obviously relieved dean nevertheless criticized Carson for being “hurtful.”… My analysis is that, at a crucial moment, the dean failed to defend a real core value of the university: tolerance….
Carson didn’t murder millions of people. All he did was say on television that he opposes same-sex marriage—an idea that even its biggest current supporters had never even heard of a couple of decades ago. Does that automatically make you a homophobe and cast you into the outer darkness? It shouldn’t. But in some American subcultures—Hollywood, academia, Democratic politics—it apparently does…. [Are] gays and liberals… conducting some sort of jihad against organized Christianity[?]… That is a tremendous exaggeration. But it’s not a complete fantasy. And for every mouth that opens, a dozen stay clamped shut…. If you were up for tenure at a top university, or up for a starring role in a big movie, or running for office in large swaths of the country, would it hurt your chances more to announce that you are gay or to announce that you’ve become head of an anti-gay organization? The answer seems obvious. So the good guys have won. Why do they now want to become the bad guys?…
The dean calls Carson’s remarks “hurtful.” They weren’t hurtful to him, unless he’s hopelessly oversensitive. The dean was just making a move in the great game of umbrage that has clogged American politics, where points are awarded for taking offense at something the other guy said…
Well, my thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman. It's a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality. It doesn't matter what they are. They don't get to change the definition. So he, it's not something that is against gays, it's against anybody who wants to come along and change the fundamental definitions of pillars of society. It has significant ramifications.
Ben Carson:
As a Bible-believing Christian… I believe God loves homosexuals as much as he loves everyone, but if we can redefine marriage as between two men or two women or any other way based on social pressures as opposed to between a man and a woman, we will continue to redefine it in any way that we wish, which is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire. I don't believe this to be a political view, but rather a logical and reasoned view…. I have no problem whatsoever with allowing gay people to live as they please, as long as they don't try to impose their lifestyle on everyone else. Marriage is a very sacred institution and should not be degraded…. I have no problem with Muslims or other religious groups who want to practice their religion in their homes… as long as they don't try to impose that on others or violate our laws. I could go on with other examples for quite some time, but I hope I have conveyed the wonderful freedom we enjoy as citizens of a government that protects the right to privacy…
Proponents of political correctness say it is a way that we can be kind and courteous to everyone, but they need to recognize that it is quite possible to be respectful without imposing an unspoken law that is antithetical to one of the founding principles of our nation — namely, freedom of expression and freedom of speech.
Political correctness, which is vigorously enforced by much of the news media and many of our educational institutions, imposes a code of silence that prevents discussion of game-changing alterations of our fundamental social pillars. I was amused and saddened recently by the way the PC police intentionally took something I said out of context and distorted it in order to deviate the conversation away from what I was talking about and try to turn it into a conversation about me and whether or not I was a homophobe. This is a classical example of how this group works. I was asked whether I favor same-sex marriage. I said that I did not think that any group had the right to change the definition of a fundamental pillar of society.
The point of my answer was that once we begin changing essential definitions, it will be difficult to draw a line in the sand that indicates we won’t continue to change it beyond that point. My answer was not so much about homosexuals or any of the other groups that were mentioned, but rather about our need to maintain certain behavioral definitions and standards in order to preserve our identity. If we keep redefining our fundamental institutions, how will we or our progeny have a social anchor on which to base our behavior?
The PC police tried to persuade people that I was comparing same-sex behavior with unacceptable forms of sexual variation. I was not making that comparison, but the speech minders insisted that it was my intention, as though they knew more about my intentions than I did. Their desire was to change the focus of the argument and to shut me up.
