2001-06-28 - 10:14 a.m. First, read this diary entry from espejisma. Then, come back here. I'll wait. OK, good. That priest's remarks illustrate a problem that a lot of people have with the concepts of ideology and argument. Bear with me. Occasionally I listen to the Jay Sevrin (I don't know how to spell his name) show on the radio. Jay runs a talk show that has a libertarian-conservative theme. Now, I should preface this story with the declaration that I disagree with Jay on many if not most of his opinions. However I believe that he constructs good arguments, and argues in good faith - most of the time. He will say, "I believe that, yada yada yada. And, this is why." He will then procede to give examples which illustrate his point. He is also very well informed and can usually back up his opinions with concrete sources of data. He's not a Rush Limbaugh - most of the time. But. But, when it comes to certain topics, such as homosexuality, he does not apply his ideology consistently. He has stated many times that he wants to be left alone by the government to live his life the way he wants. He doesn't want to be told which drugs he can or can't take. He doesn't want to be told that he can't own firearms. He doesn't want to be forced to pay taxes. Etc. In a nutshell: he wants to be able to live his life the way he wants without interference from the government. (He also wants to be responsible for his own quality of life: no welfare, no public assistance, if he can't do his job because takes too many drugs then his boss can fire him, stuff like that.) However, he supports the defense of marriage act, which is a law that would legislate the definition of the word "marriage" to mean a union between one man and one woman. This is, effectively a ban on gay marriage. Suddenly, when it comes to homosexuals, Jay's ideology of living one's life without interference from the government doesn't apply. Instead of "people should be able to live how they want to" the argument changes to "Well, if I have to pay taxes anyway, I will support a new law which prevents some people from gaining the benefits which are paid for with taxes that married people get". Now, I don't know what these benefits are. They were never discussed on the show, but it seems to me that the "taxes" argument is fairly weak given the more dominant ideology of "one's life not being interfered with by the government". Now, let's not just pick on Jay, because LOADS of people are guilty of this. Take this tax cut that George W. Bush has put through. Ted Kennedy says things like "you can't cut taxes this much. We need to pay for all these social programs, etc." So, if he's ideologically opposed to this tax cut, to be consistent, he should voluntarily pay higher taxes to offset whatever rate reduction he ends up getting. How many people will be sending their rebate check back to the IRS? I'd be willing to guess somewhere between 0% and 1%. OK back to espejisma's diary entry. This priest should have to make a decision. Is he against discrimination, or is he against homosexuals? He can't be both. If he takes the "homosexuals are the enemy" route, then he has no business shedding tears about discrimination. If decides that fighting discrimination is more important, then he has to reconcile his opinions with the church's views on homosexuality - or he has to keep his mouth shut on the subject. There are two ways to fight discrimination: speak out against it, or don't pass your own prejudices on to others. Unfortunately, the priest doesn't have to make this decision. He's got a big old book that already has his opinions written down for him. (0) Comments?