Listen to this guy! Can you imagine…
Please…do read the rest.
As you listened to this, did you get angry? Did you find yourself swearing at your monitor about what a lunatic he is? Many did.
It isn’t until the last few seconds that Mr. Levine drives his point home. I paraphrase:
To give blacks equal rights would be like treating left handed people like right handed people, gays like straights, treating all Americans the same. And does that make any sense? It would be as if someone wrote, in some founding document, that all men are created equal.
I think this is a brilliant analogy for our times. What do YOU think?
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22 Comments
November 26, 2008 at 11:07 am
Since you can’t legislate morality anymore than you can legislate religious beliefs, does this issue beg to have a seperation of church and state inserted into it? Why not allow the government to regulate and recognize civil unions just as it would a business partnership and allow churches and religious organizations to regulate and recognize marraiges as spiritual bond between people?
The same argument Mr. Levine makes for same sex marraiges can be logically applied to bigamy and polygamy.
November 26, 2008 at 11:21 am
Marriage…
November 26, 2008 at 11:32 am
*sp IA, not AI. thank you nwmuse.
November 26, 2008 at 11:33 am
I guess then, that I was never married, because I was married at the local country courthouse.
Personally, I think marriage is extremely overrated and gay people should be as entitled to fuck up their lives (and get divorced) as much as the rest of us.
Honestly, who cares that two guys or two women want to marry. Big deal. Let them.
November 26, 2008 at 11:39 am
Not quite Chris, we can have a law saying that marriage can be limited to two PEOPLE, because it treats everyone equal. It doesn’t specify age, race, gender, disability, or nationality.
I tend to agree on the idea that all should have a civil union, that basically is a contract resulting when the marriage license (or whatever it may be called) is obtained and signed, then approved by a judge. After that, what you do and in which church you have a ceremony, or not, is the couple’s business.
November 26, 2008 at 12:01 pm
HoR, exactly. The whole marriage thing is about church, not about marriage.
When you go to city hall, do you get a civil union license? No. You get a marriage license.
If they want to issue CU licenses, I would be all fine with that. Equality across the board for all human beings. Period.
November 26, 2008 at 12:26 pm
@ HoR – I would respectfully disagree because if your frame civil unions in the aspect of contractual law, number of persons would be meaningless as it is with partnerships, corporations or LLC’s. The only item would be terms of rights and responsibilities among those involved with the partnership.
Additionally, I think as far as private employers are concerned they should be free to choose what benefits they choose to extend to employees and under what conditions they provide them. If they are discriminatory, let public opinion and the market deal with them accordingly, keep the courts away from it unless they violate their stated policies. Government employers should however set a policy and apply completely even handedly.
November 26, 2008 at 12:30 pm
excellent satire.
November 26, 2008 at 1:16 pm
OK Chris, how does the anti-gay marriage people keep the legal responsibilities (contractual obligation) of marriage between ONLY one man and one woman, protected from the “number of persons would be meaningless as it is with partnerships, corporations or LLC’s. The only item would be terms of rights and responsibilities among those involved with the partnership.”
If it can’t pass muster for civil unions, it doesn’t pass muster for their definition of marriage either.
November 26, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Oy. Someone just wrote “let the market deal with it” on my blog post…and soiled it completely.
Damn. Clean up in aisle 8!
November 26, 2008 at 2:25 pm
@ HoR – Not sure, and frankly don’t care. It’s up to state legislatures to define the rules (just as any other contractual relationship) but at least you keep the morality and religious aspects out of the deliberative process because you’re no longer defining marriage, you’re defining a civil union. It’s purely contractual no more, no less.
When it comes to family matters, any non-biological civil union partner should be treated the same regardless of orientation. Whether a homosexual civil union partner is eligible to adopt or not should remain a legislative matter just as it is for a heterosexual civil union partner.
So long as marriage has a religious connotation, you are legislating religious beliefs when you define marriage. As long as marriage confers societal rights and obligations, and you want to keep the institution of marriage to include others, you must accept that religious organizations have a legitimate say in the legislative process. This is one of the few issues where traditional proponents of separation of church and state are supporting governmental legislation of a semi-religious construct.
November 26, 2008 at 2:38 pm
“If they are discriminatory, let public opinion and the market deal with them accordingly…”
@ MsJoanne – sorry to soil your blog by bringing up the free market. Although, correct me if I’m wrong, but the hit Arizona took in tourism after the MLK holiday fiasco, would certainly indicate that the power of boycott (i.e., market forces, voting with wallets) has an influential role in effecting social change. There was also the movement to boycott Coca Cola’s because they did business in South Africa during apartheid and the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1965 to name a few. Would you suggest that the free market forces were wrong in these cases and deserve no credit?
November 26, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Jeebos, I’m not even going to respond to this today…Happy Thanksgiving all..P.B.&J
November 26, 2008 at 6:36 pm
who is this jackass?
November 26, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Merriam Webster says:
Main Entry: dex·ter
Pronunciation: \ˈdek-stər\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin; akin to Old High German zeso situated on the right, Greek dexios
Date: 1562
1 : relating to or situated on the right
2 : being or relating to the side of a heraldic shield at the right of the person bearing it
— dexter adverb
Main Entry: sin·is·ter
Pronunciation: \ˈsi-nəs-tər, archaic sə-ˈnis-\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English sinistre, from Anglo-French senestre on the left, from Latin sinistr-, sinister on the left side, unlucky, inauspicious
Date: 15th century
1archaic : unfavorable , unlucky
2archaic : fraudulent
3: singularly evil or productive of evil
4 a: of, relating to, or situated to the left or on the left side of something ; especially : being or relating to the side of a heraldic shield at the left of the person bearing it b: of ill omen by reason of being on the left
5: presaging ill fortune or trouble
6: accompanied by or leading to disaster
How do these people get a national platform?
November 26, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Okay, I apologize for the multiple comments, but this has blown my mind…
In equal time for the actual meaning of what he is discussing, here is the Merriam-Webster definition of “left-handed”
Main Entry: left–hand·ed
Pronunciation: \-ˈhan-dəd, -ˈtan-\
Function: adjective
Date: 14th century
1: using the left hand habitually or more easily than the right ; also : swinging from left to right
2: relating to, designed for, or done with the left hand
3: morganatic
4 a: clumsy , awkward b: insincere , backhanded , dubious
5 a: having a direction contrary to that of the hands of a watch viewed from in front : counterclockwise b: having a spiral structure or form that ascends or advances to the left
6: having or being the L-form molecular structure
November 26, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Girl, you are missing his brilliant snark. Listen to the last 45 seconds or so. He is making a point. At first, I thought it was real (well, sort of, in a HUH? NO? REALLY?? sort of way), but you can tell that this is pure snark by the end of it.
After I thought about it for a minute or two, I saw the brilliance of it. I think it rocks!
This Levine guy used to work for Barney Frank. Check out his bio (linked above).
November 26, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I realize that the guy is trying to be sarcastic, and at one point I thought I could see him smirking while Javier was on the phone. But some of what he says isn’t actually correct. We have a Constitution that confers certain rights upon us in order to protect the minority from tyranny of the majority. It is not true that “the majority rules” on every issue. It would not matter if 100% of the people in a state said, “People can be forced to be witnesses against themselves in court.” It would be inconstitutional, and it would not become law.
And with about 50% of all marriages in this country ending in divorce, I fail to see what’s so “sacred” about “the institution of marriage” that they feel they should limit how many people can enter that legal state.
And to anyone who suggests that whatever rationale is put forth to allow two people of the same gender to enter a union of some kind that is equal in every legal aspect to what we commonly refer to as “marriages” today (churches can make their own decisions about recognizing same-sex unions), can also be used to justify more than two people entering such a union is an idiot. No one, except for homophobic critics from the right, is talking about this having anything to do with threesomes (or more). No one. Well, no one with an IQ in the three-digit range.
November 26, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Perhaps all left-handed people should secede from the Union.
This was an excellent satire.
It would, however, take on different overtones should O’Reilly or Limpbaugh make the same argument.
November 26, 2008 at 8:39 pm
girldujour
from m-w.com:
sin·is·ter
Pronunciation: \ˈsi-nəs-tər, archaic sə-ˈnis-\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English sinistre, from Anglo-French senestre on the left, from Latin sinistr-, sinister on the left side, unlucky, inauspicious
Date: 15th century
1archaic : unfavorable , unlucky
2archaic : fraudulent
3: singularly evil or productive of evil
4 a: of, relating to, or situated to the left or on the left side of something ; especially : being or relating to the side of a heraldic shield at the left of the person bearing it b: of ill omen by reason of being on the left
5: presaging ill fortune or trouble
6: accompanied by or leading to disaster
In other words, the guy in the video is right about the origin of the word “sinister.”
November 27, 2008 at 10:38 am
Yes, he is right about the origin of the word “sinister” but it doesn’t have anything to do with being left-handed.
I guess I missed the snark. Must be all the horrific news that hasn’t been snark that’s got my snark detector on the fritz…
November 27, 2008 at 10:43 am
Actually, my husband is left-handed, went to private Catholic schools, learned Latin, and had already heard and learned pretty much everything this guy said. He laughed all the way through it while nodding a lot. Levine was pretty much right about everything he said.
I am embarrassed to say the first time I listened to this I missed the satire. I just thought the guy was insane. The second time I listened, it sunk in, and I realized what a great job he did with the point he was trying to make. Great job.