THE PSYCHOLOGIST : Same-Sex Marriage

Same-Sex Marriage

My previous post dealt with the moderating of conservative policy. To illustrate what I mean, why is the Conservative Party not making a bigger deal about same-sex marriage? Most polls I've seen seem to indicate that a majority of Canadians oppose this notion. Even the trained seals of the Liberal Party are divided with many backbenchers saying they will vote against the government bill. True to form His Royal Highness Paul Martin has ordered his Cabinet Ministers to play nice and vote in favour of the bill obviously fearing what may happen. Fortunately in the Conservative camp, Stephen Harper has not ordered anyone to do anything, in fact he has encouraged debate. But it's not good enough.

If the Tories have failed in any one area it is that they haven't articulated their platform to the electorate. They need to tell people what they are about, to get the message out. The issue of same-sex marriage is an emotional and potentially explosive one. It doesn't deserve to be downplayed or ignored. A check of the CPC website shows the topic is buried in a list found on page 2 (not counting the English/French splash page). When you finally reach it this is what it says,

Definition of Marriage

The Conservative Party will fight to give a greater voice to Parliament. We will ensure that issues like marriage are decided by parliament, not the courts.

I agree that the Courts are not the instrument by which to pass policy. But what is our policy? Where does the Conservative Party of Canada stand on same-sex marriage? I don't want to hear ambiguous statements like "...greater voice to Parliament." I want a clear articulated position and I want that position made clear to voters.

As so many before me have already done I too will tackle the issue of same-sex marriage and explain why I oppose it. The pro-SSM camp claims that the law discriminates against them, but does it? As it stands, I have the freedom to marry any member of the opposite sex I choose, within the rule of law and reason of course. A homosexual man also enjoys that same freedom. The fact he wishes to marry a member of his own sex is his choice and as such has nothing to do with equal rights and everything to do with preferential treatment or status. The "equal rights" argument is a red herring. I oppose the granting of special status/treatment to any special interest group under any circumstances, especially when doing so requires the altering of the law.

Another argument the pro-SSM camp likes to put forward is that this is an issue of rights. No it isn't. Nowhere in Canadian law is marriage defined as a right. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms refers to marriage as a "fundamental institution" to which access may be granted by the observance of various rules - it is not an inherent right. I have no right to marry anyone. The argument implies that I enjoy a particular right which is denied to homosexuals. It is simply not true. Again, the argument is a red herring.

Taking the point further, I said that the Charter "...refers to marriage as a fundamental institution to which access may be granted by the observance of various rules..." Can we not simply change the rules to widen that access? Once again we are making changes to accommodate a special interest group. What's next? Do we allow polygamous marriage? Why not? How can we deny access to marriage to that segment of the population after having changed the law to accommodate homosexuals? If you say yes to one group you cannot deny another. Where do you draw the line and more importantly, should lines be drawn at all? We may as well as throw open the doors and allow access to marriage by anyone and everyone. There is a very good reason why we have rules in place and if we start changing them simply to accommodate small segments of society then society is in trouble.

The arguments put forth by the pro-SSM camp are devoid of any logic. They seek to appeal to the emotional side of Canadians by implying that they have been denied rights enjoyed by the majority of Canadians. It is vital that people debunk these claims and expose them for what they are and it is equally important that the Conservative Party take the lead.

[cross-posted to Rite Turn Only]

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

Same-Sex Marriage

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