Thursday, June 11, 2009

 

Caught In the Middle


Two highly polarized camps agree on one thing: anyone who is trying to steer anything like a middle course and pragmatically achieve the socially possible, while attempting to move the debate in a progressive direction, is to be scorned.

No, I'm not talking about the reaction of both IDers and "incompatiblists" towards theistic evolutionists. This time it's the reaction of fundamentalists and some portions of the LGBT community to President Obama's quiet proclamation of LGBT Pride Month. As described by Nick Street:

One of the ironies in the broader reaction to Obama's maneuvering around the issue of legal parity for queerfolk in various domains of American life is the fact that, like the busybodies on the religious right, many of my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters have a hard time letting themselves feel good about this president.

Among the reactions:

"Homosexuality is nothing to be proud of," Peter LaBarbera told One News Now, the online news division of the American Family Association. "The fact is people have left the lifestyle," said LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. "People have overcome homosexuality—I think that's something to be proud of." ...

"Obama is a better friend to Rick Warren's constituency than to LGBT," one "homosexual activist" remarked, apropos of the White House press release, on the Advocate's Web site. "In fact, Obama is not now and has never been a friend of LGBT. I didn't believe his lies before November 4, 2008, and I don't believe his lies now."

Street calls it the "unanimity of displeasure among restive queerfolk and the modern-day Pharisees who lovingly hate them."

It isn't the only arena where the concept applies.
.

Comments:
I tried to get my Representative to introduce a Heterosexual Pride Month in Congress. For some reason, the idea did not gain much traction.

Why is that?
 
Nor does it follow that the "progressive" and "pragmatic" middle is right or wiser, merely because both wings disagree with it.
 
In particular, the less "pragmatic" gays have done vastly more to promote gay marriage and rights than the civil union types.
 
Nor does it follow that the "progressive" and "pragmatic" middle is right or wiser, merely because both wings disagree with it.

Quite right ... if we're speaking in absolutist terms about the underlying claims. I think the odds of their being right about how to go about making society as a whole more progressive and pragmatic (assuming one is interested in that result) is rather better than that of either extreme (especially where one of the extremes is definitely not interested in a more progressive and pragmatic society).
 
I'm less sure than you that this is the case - small minorities, heels dug in, can indeed overpower the larger middle, one of whose tendencies is a certain apathetic willingness to go along the path of least resistance whatever it happens to be.

Obviously these things can't be judged universally, much less in the abstract, but at least in the gay rights case I think the less pliable hardline types have a stronger track record, dragging society to their view instead of kowtowing to it.

When they go after Obama for not living up to his promises, I think that strategy is on to something. Hard to argue with track-record. Not much point being an uncritical support base in any case...
 
... at least in the gay rights case I think the less pliable hardline types have a stronger track record, dragging society to their view instead of kowtowing to it.

I think it's a combination, actually, where the militants stir the social pot and the moderates pave the way to greater acceptance. Still, I don't see the necessity to attack the moderates -- at least vociferously. It's a fine line between being a gadfly and being a smudge on a flyswatter.
 
Yes, I think I'd mostly agree with your summary of gay rights progress.

"Still, I don't see the necessity to attack the moderates -- at least vociferously"

The analogy having served its purpose, if we revert to the original religious question, I think Chad Orzel at Scienceblogs had it right. I think the best way to account for the hostility between the Dawkinsians and theistic evolutionists is simply to note that the former have additional goals the former don't share - they want to weaken the role of religion in society for many reasons having nothing to do with evolution and ID. It's clearly not the case that in this respect a Ken Miller can meet them halfway.

Moderate and extreme gay rights activists have roughly similar goals and goals, by contrast.
 
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