Jon’s opening comments about how he’s cool with the “pro-life” movement piss me off (as did his Planned Parenthood gift certificate jokes last week), but the rest of it is a good take down that has me cheering.
In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set.
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Reproductive Health Matters
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This is my husband’s favorite argument. Or rather, when someone makes the asinine comment that being gay is a choice he turns to them with a surprised and knowing look on his face and says something like “So you had to decide to find women attractive? Deep down inside that was something you had to decide, like there was an option? Is there something you want to tell us?”
It generally enrages the guy [yeah, I've never heard something like that from a woman...not that women don't say, just that I've never heard it]. Which can be funny, but I prefer the straightforward “A choice? You know that’s ridiculous right?”
Just playing devil’s advocate, but Jon doesn’t say that he agrees with the anti-choice movement, but rather that it’s easy to understand the reasoning behind it. Of course, Jon Stewart’s understanding of the movement’s goals (as he says, to reduce and eliminate the necessity of abortions–although he seems incapable of saying the word “abortion,” which is maddening, but anyway), is dramatically different from what anti-choicers actually think.
Also, it’s nice to see Jon Stewart look like a better Biblical scholar than a minister.
Yes Kevin, and the only way that I can possibly see “understanding” the reasoning behind the anti-choice movement is to take women out of the equation (or to assume that women are too stupid to make decisions for themselves). Which is what pisses me off.
Silly Jill!
God made Mike straight, just as He makes all of his children naturally and beautifully straight. It’s only through God’s gift of free will (probably abetted by child abuse at the hands of an older homosexual) that any lost soul makes the tragic decision to embrace a deviant gay lifestyle, and must dwell in darkness away from the light of God1 until they repent and enter an program to cure themselves.
1. Except for maybe at one of those fake churches like the Unitarians or Episcopalians or all those fake churches that accept gays, but everyone knows they’re worshipping false idols.
I saw his giving Fuckabee a pass on reproductive choice as strictly strategic: it’s one of Stewart’s strong suits that he feigns agreement with his target on a topic, makes all kissy-face, and then opens up a can.
And all with a smile on his face.
(Then again I don’t know Stewart’s history vis. choice issues.)
My wife and I were disappointed to hear that because we don’t plan on having any more children we don’t get to be married anymore.
I pick alternate days on which to be straight or gay (leap years I get an extra gay day!) This does cause my husband some confusion, as clearly sex between the two of us can only occur on a straight day.
PF, your husband should clearly just alternate genders every other day too. Problem solved!
Kevin is right, all Jon says is that he can understand the reasoning behind the pro-life movement. If you believe a fetus is a human being, then abortion = murder. He’s not saying he agrees, which he clearly does not, just that at least there is some form of (religiously based) logic behind it whereas there is no logic to the anti-gay marriage movement.
I also have to say, the whole “hammer on marriage and then sneak civil unions in the back of their poorly-constructed semantic arguments” setup seems to be working great so far.
I disagree entirely. They use biblical passages not about gay marriage to support their opposition to gay marriage. They use biblical passages not about abortion to support their opposition to abortion.
What’s the difference?
Also, for fuck’s sake since people want to argue about this, must I remind you that Jon says he agrees with the desire to end abortion? I’m almost certain that Jon is pro-choice, but this is not a pro-choice statement. It’s using anti-choice language. Period.
My mom told me not that long ago that I’m not actually gay, but that my current relationship with my girlfriend is just “filling a need.”
Good to know.
Rachel, I don’t know how snarky you are with your mother, but I would’ve been tempted to say, “yeah, a GAY need” at that point.
Rachel,
My grandma recently informed my aunt that it would be ok if I had a girlfriend, because then at least I’d have someone. (since being a single heterosexual in my late 20s isn’t optimal.)
Perhaps she should talk to your mom?
There is only one set of conditions under which I could even remotely agree with Jon’s sentiment (whether he agrees with it or not) that “we all” can agree that fewer abortions is a worthy goal — that in order to achieve this goal, we reduce the number of necessary abortions in this way:
– Universal reproductive care, including mental health, nutrition and alternative therapies like massage — for free.
– Universal child care — for free.
– Universal access to complete sexual education — for free.
– Universal access to contraception, including male birth control pills — for free.
– Instate federally mandated parental leave, at full pay, for a year.
– Research women’s health and reproductive health with enough vigor that all medical conditions which necessitate abortion are either curable, easily treatable, or eliminated.
– Oh, and stay the fuck out of women’s decisions — leave it to them and their doctors.
Remove all the barriers women have to being able to keep children, make providing for those children effortless. That would reduce abortion to those women who are too young to bear, or who simply don’t want to when the contraception fails. You won’t ever eliminate abortion, but taking damn good care of women would go a long way to making abortion less necessary, or necessary less often.
Somehow, I don’t think Jon was thinking anything of the sort. I think he was falling for the fauxgressive “safe, legal, and rare” line — anti-choice rhetoric in pro-choice clothing.
And to Huck: If marriage is a privilege, why the hell does the federal government guarantee it for some but not for others? The govt should only be in the business of guaranteeing rights, not privileges. If it’s just a privilege, with no side govt’l benefits, let churches deal with marriage, and keep the govt out of it.
Just. Fucking. Saying.
The difference is between a valid and a sound argument. Jon is saying that the argument again abortion is valid, i.e. the conclusion follows logically from the premises, but not sound, whereas the argument against gay marriage isn’t even valid.
The difference is between a valid and a sound argument. Jon is saying that the argument again abortion is valid, i.e. the conclusion follows logically from the premises, but not sound, whereas the argument against gay marriage isn’t even valid.
Aaaaand, what about the anti-abortion argument is more valid than the anti-gay argument? I’ve yet to hear it. Why exactly is “I think zygotes are people” more valid than “I think two men loving each other is evil.” They sound equally absurd, fanciful and invalid to me.
Further if you’re not agreeing with Jon but simply trying to explain his argument to me, it’s precisely my point that I disagree with the argument he’s making.
@aproustian: Hah. I should have said that, but unfortunately my lifelong mommy issues have left me just sort of twitching in the face of her judgment. I think I said something like, “Ok.”
@zak: That would be great, except my mom would expound on the importance of autonomy and how she fears I’m burying my intense need for independence by taking care of other people. Because apparently I take care of my girlfriend, who, despite her brilliance, college education and pretty good job, is clearly unable of taking care of herself.
Sorry, I have absolutely derailed the thread.
First of all, the following argument is logically valid:
(1) A fetus is a human being;
(2) Human beings are entitled to a right to life;
Therefore,
(3) A fetus is entitled to a right to life.
However, the argument is not sound because premise (1) is false. Regarding gay marriage, opponents don’t argue (at least in public) that gay marriage is evil. Rather, they frame it as a problem of redefining the institution of marriage. THAT, Jon Stewart said, is not even a valid argument. Make sense?
Honestly, my biggest problem with what Jon said was, well… His comparison to “two loving gay parents who are financially secure” to Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. First off, it’s an annoyingly obnoxious comparison, and second… Why does the gay couple have to be “financially secure”? Is access to the middle class now a requirement for raising a child among certain liberals? Not okay.
I did appreciate his willingness to confront Huckabee there, but I’m not as worried by his remarks about the pro-life movement. I think some later comments he made indicate that he’s not some anti-choicer, and I also understand what he’s saying at something of a visceral level. If I think about abortion as nothing but a medical procedure and don’t understand anything about its contexts (various constraints that make having a child difficult or impossible), then I get where the pro-life movement is coming from at a visceral level. I just don’t agree with them.
nightgigjo: I also think that reducing abortions could potentially be a worthwhile goal under the circumstances you mention, which is why I’m not quite as outraged by the statement per se.
Also, Jared, yeah, I see the distinctions you’re making there as well.
Anyway, Cara, I see the points you’re making, but I don’t think some of the distinctions being made in this discussion are anti-feminist. As fraught as the word is, I still count myself as a feminist, and I’m certainly pro-choice. I do not, however, appreciate the way in which access to abortion is sometimes framed as The Crucial Feminist Issue, when… Frankly, if critiques are being leveled at the things Jon said, I certainly find his classist distinctions (mentioned in the comment above) far more problematic. The idea that certain classes of people should not have children is the byproduct of the eugenics movement and one that infuses the practice of adoption, and frankly… People who desire children should be able to have them. Period.
Kristin, I agree that the comment you’re referring to also stuck out at me, and I will grant you that I should have made a note of it as well.
Kristin,
He’s just piling on features of the family that would clearly give the child the best chance of living a good and happy life. The child of a loving, financially secure lesbian couple would have access to health care, education, adequate nutrition, care and attention, and even fun toys. The only thing he or she would lack access to is a male parent. (or, for a gay couple, a female parent.) And Jon’s point is that once all of that is taken care of for a child, the lack of either a male or female parent seems downright irrelevant.
It’s a good and important argument to make, because the implicit conservative rationalization for admitting gay/lesbian parents into the “family” club is that gay/lesbian parents can’t possibly be good parents, and forcing them to make that explicit leaves them vulnerable to argument by counterexample. (Whereas if the premise lies unexamined, the existence of such counterexamples is not so damaging to it.)
As for the abortion comments, it really just is a more sensible issue. If someone really believes that a fetus is already a person. with all the moral standing of any other person, then it does actually seem to follow that society can and should enact laws to protect them from being killed, because we already readily accept that laws should exist to keep people from being killed. (Of course, you could still make arguments that any right to life the fetus has is insufficient to override the woman’s bodily autonomy, as Judith Jarvis Thompson does.) The premise than a fetus is a person with full moral standing is batshit crazy, of course. But, at least the conclusion that maybe people shouldn’t be allowed to kill them indiscriminately follows from the crazy premise.
However, with gay marriage/adoption… there basically isn’t an argument. There is no parallel legal practice to which conservatives could possibly appeal to justify the discrimination in marriage law. They can appeal to the status quo and they can appeal to scripture, but there is no reason accessible to everyone (i.e. across religious lines, since our republic is supposed to permit some degree of latitude in religious matters) for treating a gay couple differently from a straight couple.
So, yeah. the pro-life argument depends on crazy beliefs… beliefs that are frequently sold to people in churches across the nation. And once those beliefs are in place, the conclusion does follow (other avenues for arguing that at least some abortion is permissible notwithstanding.) However, there is no logic, even warped logic, for the gay/lesbian marriage/adoption stuff. It begins and ends in hate.
Claire, this is pretty much what I was saying, except for the fact that you are far more comfortable with privileging the financially secure than I am. Otherwise, though, I think we were making the same points about the arguments that are being debated here (abortion, gay marriage).
I would object that I’m not so much “privileging” the financially secure as recognizing that the financially secure are privileged… I’ve been on both sides of the line (currently the unprivileged side, unfortunately), and I’ve gotta tell ya… I liked things better the other way.
andrew: thank you! because all this focus on “traditional marriage” being essential to raising the next generation is driving me crazy. do we have to sign an affidavit saying that we promise to have children if we get married? will someone check in on us to make sure we do? when i become widowed and am too old to have children does that mean i can’t get married again? if it turns out we can’t have kids do we have to get divorced, or will we be forced to adopt to meet our marriage quota?
i love how huckabee says he doesn’t want to defend britney spears & kevin federlane’s marriage. because they’re inconvenient to your argument, perhaps? if you don’t want to defend it, perhaps there’s a flaw in your argument. or you just have to accept that people are going to use marriage in ways you don’t approve of or didn’t expect, which is true for pretty much everything.
I posted this on my LiveJournal, and a friend’s husband commented to say that he was pro gay marriage, but Hucakbee presented his case really well, and “what if I wanted to marry my cat?”
Uh, are you sure you’re pro gay marriage?
i love how huckabee says he doesn’t want to defend britney spears & kevin federlane’s marriage. because they’re inconvenient to your argument, perhaps?
Yeah, because, he, you know, actually is defending Britney’s marriage. He thinks it part of the bedrock of society. And any gay marriage, any one at all, would be so much worse than Britney’s marriage that it should literally be illegal. He might not want to admit that that’s what he’s arguing, but it is, in fact, exactly what he’s arguing.
“You’d start getting signatures together for your own referendum, pervert, and stay the fuck out of mine.”
Seriously, what is with these people? We have marriage for straight couples. We want marriage for gay couples. It’s not a slippery slope. It’s not even a slope.
@Rachel: My mom is the same way about my sister except she thinks my sister being gay is just a phase. I neither care nor am I going to challenge it but I do get annoyed at that attitude. My mom has nothing against gay people but it’s different when it’s her own daughter. And it’s not even about getting grandchildren. My sister was always a tomboy so she can’t possibly be gay. Nope. *eyeroll*
Huckabee did give him an opening that Stewart didn’t use when he started that thing about ‘burning people at a stake’. For fuck’s sake, apart from the ridiculousness of the comparison, a gay person marrying doesn’t have any impact on anybody but the person they’re marrying. Why is that so difficult to understand for wingnuts?
Also, that ‘marriage has always been intended for procreation’ argument drives me batshit, because it’s not true. Historically, in the West, marriage was intended to regulate inheritance and property, and provide a framework in case procreation took place. There was a reason why in so many places married women couldn’t own property or enter into contracts. There was a reason children born out of wedlock couldn’t automatically claim any rights to the property of the father. Property of the family – ie the men – was the main point of marriage. Not procreation per se.
“Aaaaand, what about the anti-abortion argument is more valid than the anti-gay argument? I’ve yet to hear it. Why exactly is “I think zygotes are people” more valid than “I think two men loving each other is evil.” They sound equally absurd, fanciful and invalid to me.”
Validity is a precise logical term. An argument is valid if it is impossible for all the premises to be true but the conculsion false. There are many arguments that are valid but that no-one would ever accept as sound or even consistent – such as arguments with contradictory premises eg
Premise 1 I took a history exam yesterday.
Premise 2 I did not take a history exam yesterday.
Conclusion My name is Anna
Clearly this is a ridiculous argument – but it is valid, since it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. (It doesn’t have a valid form, but that’s another issue).
So we can’t use “valid” as a synonym for “good” or “acceptable”.
I agree with Jon, I “get” the pro-choice stance at its most basic definition, but I get it in a very defined fashion. They view human life as sacred and they’ve decided that a fetus is a human being. Let their beliefs guide their own body then. Sadly the movement as a whole has veered hugely off of this simple path. I think it’s much harder to debate religious doctrine with these people because it’s not as though you can logic their dogma out of them. They believe what they believe (what the Bible and church leaders have taught them) and it’s very hard (impossible?) to talk them down from there. It’s when they try to inflict their religious beliefs on to other people that things get a little tricky.
I don’t see why it’s bad to want abortion to be safe, legal and rare-because-women-don’t-want-abortions. If women only got pregnant when they wanted to be pregnant (which I’ve noticed is a common feature of societies in sci-fi/ futuristic writing by women), abortion would be safe, legal and rare — occurring only when the originally-desired pregnancy became undesirable due to threats to the woman’s health or ability to support a child. Abortion is genuinely unhappy and traumatic for a lot of women, and I don’t think their experience of it as negative should be devalued by saying that they just have false consciousness.
E.M. Russell,
They view human life as sacred and they’ve decided that a fetus is a human being. Let their beliefs guide their own body then. Sadly the movement as a whole has veered hugely off of this simple path.
In fairness to the abortion prohibitionists, if they truly believe that a fetus is a legal person (which I doubt they actually do believe — they never can answer questions about the consequences for inheritance law, citizenship law, etc. of actually treating fetuses as persons, but whatever), then they can no more limit their beliefs to their own bodies than abolitionists could limit their beliefs about the personhood of blacks to their own plantations.
The fact that forcing women to keep the “legal person” alive intrudes on the most basic liberty, that of the body, means that there are issues in abortion that did not exist in slavery (the only “liberty” at issue there was the freedom to own other human beings instead of paying freemen for their labor). But once you believe that a fetus is a person, you can’t say “Well, it’s OK for other people to kill those persons, I just won’t do it myself.”
PG: “But once you believe that a fetus is a person, you can’t say ‘Well, it’s OK for other people to kill those persons, I just won’t do it myself.’”
That might be what moderates (non-religious even) people might say, but sadly the adament pro-lifers feel the need to win us all over. If only we lived in a society in which people kept their weird morals to themselves, but that’s probably what they say about me, haha.
“the most basic liberty, that of the body”
I’d say the right to life was the most important right. After all, if someone violates our right to life, then all other rights are automatically infringed as well (we are dead).
You’re veering dangerously close to libertarianism and extreme property rights (“You own yourself” with no infringements permitted).
“‘Well, it’s OK for other people to kill those persons, I just won’t do it myself.’
That might be what moderates (non-religious even) people might say, but sadly the adament [sic] pro-lifers feel the need to win us all over.”
Ca’t you see how morally repugant abortion is to those who believe the unborn are human? They feels the same way about it as you would if millions of new born babies were killed every year, or the murder of old people were common. Imagine how absurd it would seem if you were protesting against such widespread murder and someone said to you, “If you don’t want to kill 2-year olds, it’s fine. But keep your beliefs to yourself”.
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