Posted on 05/25/2015 6:23:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
After you read Mark Regnerus on that fabricated gay-marriage study, click over to The Weekly Standard, where Andrew Ferguson makes an excellent point about the same:
You cant help but suspect that had such a questionable piece of work produced a result unflattering to the cause of gay equality, social scientists and journalists would have flogged each of its methodological mistakes. But this assumes that such a study could get published in the first place.
Which leads us to what should have been the brightest red flag of all. The study confirmsperfectly, exquisitely, suspiciouslythe picture that gay marriage advocates hold of the believers in traditional marriage, who are assumed to be at once brainless and heartless. Given that no rational or objective reasons exist for opposing gay marriage (goes the assumption), the only explanation for such a view is an unfamiliarity with gay people and a lack of sympathy for them. Thats why the gay canvassers just had to be more persuasive than the straight canvassers.
Ferguson is making a point about a particular study of a particular issue, but the conclusion should be understood generally. We can observe the logic.
The reduction of all same-sex marriage opposition to irrational hatred is not a reasoned conclusion, but a matter of dogma among many on the left. We saw this when Ted Cruz visited two gay hoteliers in Manhattan last month. As my colleague Charles C.W. Cooke wrote at the time, Cruzs visit was inexplicable to many liberals because they had closed themselves off to the mere possibility that opposition to same-sex marriage might be based on articulable reasons or principles.
And the inevitable result of casting ones opponents as sub-rational or anti-rational is the end of debate. From the position of Maggie Haberman, the Times writer so perplexed by Cruzs visit, trying to convince Ted Cruz to support same-sex marriage is like trying to convince a caribou.
The problem, of course, is that community life is subverted when matters of public importance are removed from the realm of debate. And if I cant convince you, I am left to appeal, finally, to force.
Which is what this study was. The conclusion was known from the start, and the study was fabricated to bolster that conclusion, because the conclusion was unquestionably, incontrovertibly right, and if its right, and the other side cant and never will understand that, there is no reason to waste time debating. The insidiousness of this act of force is that it pays lip service to reason, masquerading as an empirical, data-based contribution to a debate because the desire to start a conversation remains the great palliative of American political rhetoric.
One can see this playing out in several arenas. Many on the left have condemned skeptics of anthropogenic global warming as anti-science that is, as people who can never be convinced. Thus there is no point discussing global warming. So they turn to force, ie., more cooked studies.
And the feminist Left has declared, If we use proof in rape cases, we fall into the patterns of rape deniers. So what are the trials-by-media of accused attackers such as Columbias Paul Nungesser, or the brothers of UVAs Phi Kappa Psi fraternity but exercises of force by people who have declared that their claims are not subject to doubt?
The health of a democratic polity depends in no small part on the generousness of its civic discourse that is, opposing sides ought to give one another the benefit of the doubt. If same-sex marriage proponents allowed that same-sex marriage opponents might, just might, be motivated by something other than animal hatred, we might be able to reach solutions that balance the competing interests unavoidably present in any political body.
But our discourse is growing increasingly ungenerous. We ought not be surprised when the result is less debate and more dishonesty and coercion.
The majority of people know implicitly that gay “marriage” is unnatural. The gay advocates think it’s right because their unnatural tendencies urge them toward it. Afraid to face the fact that their wishes are against nature, they hide their shame by saying that the majority hates them.
Religion is all about faith.
Politics is all about persuasion.
Science is all testable theories.
The world today has a lot of religion and a lot of politics. The world has far less science than people think.
This is no different than the false environmental “studies.” So-called science perverted to the cause of Leftism. It is about power - this is how Leftism works, always and everywhere. It is about gaining or accumulating power, and everything including (perhaps especially) the truth is sacrificed to attain that goal. When will the public wake up?
Diversity is the destruction of Good!
>http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2014/07/diversity-destruction.html<
...Diversity is an anti-religion, and anti-ideology, a nepotism which promotes everything except one’s own family.
Diversity therefore equals the destruction of any and all religions and of all positive ideologies.
Because Diversity can only be destructive: whatever IS is insufficiently or inexactly diverse.
Whatever IS must therefore be destroyed in order to make it MORE Diverse.
And there is no conceivable or measurable end to it. Yesterday’s Diversity is today’s intolerable lack of Diversity.
Diversity is the destruction of Good; and it is the destruction of all types of Good - however defined. All are chewed up and spat out by Diversity.
Diversity is the promotion of chaos by the destruction of Good; and then there-naming of chaos as Good.
“Lysenkoism” is used to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/11/the_ghost_of_lysenko.html
I might disagree with this statement....there are a minimum of six hundred sciences. I admit...some aren’t likely to trigger any interest with most of us (beer or wine science for example)....but science has just as much variety as religions.
Global Warming studies comes to mind.
I would also suggest that -- even if one wishes to argue that some of Evolution represents solid scientific thinking -- certainly some of the work done in Evolution is based on opinion and hope rather than solid science. There is an element of ideology in the field of Evolution, so I consider it less than 100% pure science.
And psychology work in favor of homosexuality -- science? Don't think so.
DDT? You think Rachel Carson was doing a lot of science? Well, it wasn't very good science.
Paleontology is science. The Piltdown Man was not science.
There is, in short, less science in the world than people think.
Bkmk
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