Sultan Knish/Daniel Greenfield Ping List (notification of new articles). FReepmail or drop me a comment to get on or off.
Posted on 03/28/2013 6:04:01 AM PDT by expat1000
The only question worth asking about gay marriage is whether anyone on the left would care about this crusade if it didn't come with the privilege of bulldozing another civilizational institution.
Gay marriage is not about men marrying men or women marrying women, it is about the deconstruction of marriage between men and women. That is a thing that many men and women of one generation understand but have trouble conveying to another generation for whom marriage has already largely been deconstructed.
The statistics about the falling marriage rate tell the tale well enough. Marriage is a fading institution. Family is a flickering light in the evening of the West.
The deconstruction is destruction. Entire countries are fading away, their populations being replaced by emigrants from more traditional lands whose understanding of the male-female relationship is positively reactionary. These emigrants may lack technology or the virtues of civilization, and their idea of marriage resembles slavery more than any modern ideal, but it fulfills the minimum purpose of any group, tribe or country-- it produces its next generation.
The deconstruction of marriage is not a mere matter of front page photos of men kissing. It began with the deconstruction of the family. Gay marriage is only one small stop on a tour that includes rising divorce rates, falling childbirth rates and the abandonment of responsibility by twenty and even thirty-somethings.
Each step on the tour takes apart the definition and structure of marriage until there is nothing left. Gay marriage is not inclusive, it is yet another attempt at eliminating marriage as a social institution by deconstructing it until it no longer exists.
There are two ways to destroy a thing. You can either run it at while swinging a hammer with both hands or you can attack its structure until it no longer means anything.
The left hasn't gone all out by outlawing marriage, instead it has deconstructed it, taking apart each of its assumptions, from the economic to the cooperative to the emotional to the social, until it no longer means anything at all. Until there is no way to distinguish marriage from a temporary liaison between members of uncertain sexes for reasons that due to their vagueness cannot be held to have any solemn and meaningful purpose.
You can abolish democracy by banning the vote or you can do it by letting people vote as many times as they want, by letting small children and foreigners vote, until no one sees the point in counting the votes or taking the process seriously. The same goes for marriage or any other institution. You can destroy it by outlawing it or by eliminating its meaningfulness until it becomes so open that it is absurd.
Every aspect of marriage is deconstructed and then eliminated until it no longer means anything. And once marriage is no longer a lifetime commitment between a man and a woman, but a ceremony with no deeper meaning than most modern ceremonies, then the deconstruction and destruction will be complete.
The deconstruction of marriage eroded it as an enduring institution and then as an exclusive institution and finally as a meaningful institution. The trendy folk who claim to be holding off on getting married until gay marriage is enacted are not eager for marriage equality, they are using it as an excuse for an ongoing rejection of marriage.
Gay marriage was never the issue. It was always marriage.
In the world that the deconstructionists are striving to build, there will be marriage, but it will mean nothing. Like a greeting card holiday, it will be an event, but not an institution. An old ritual with no further meaning. An egotistical exercise in attention-seeking and self-celebration with no deeper purpose. It will be a display every bit as hollow as the churches and synagogues it takes place in.
The deconstruction of marriage is only a subset of the deconstruction of gender from a state of being to a state of mind. The decline of marriage was preceded by the deconstruction of gender roles and gay marriage is being succeeded by the destruction of gender as anything other than a voluntary identity, a costume that one puts on and takes off.
Destroying gender roles was a prerequisite to destroying gender. Each deconstruction leads naturally to the next deconstruction with no final destination except total deconstruction.
Gay marriage is not a stopping point, just as men in women's clothing using the ladies room is not a stopping point. There is no stopping point at all.
The left's deconstruction of social institutions is not a quest for equality, but for destruction. As long as the institutions that preceded it exist, it will go on deconstructing them until there is nothing left but a blank canvas, an unthinking anarchy, on which it can impose its perfect and ideal conception of how everyone should live.
Equality is merely a pretext for deconstruction. Change the parameters of a thing and it ceases to function. Redefine it and expand it and it no longer means anything at all. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but if you change 'rose' to mean anything that sticks out of the ground, then the entire notion of what is being discussed has gone and cannot be reclaimed without also reclaiming language.
The left's social deconstruction program is a war of ideas and concepts. Claims of equality are used to expand institutions and ways of living until they are so broad as to encompass everything and nothing. And once a thing encompasses everything, once a rose represents everything rising out of the ground, then it also represents nothing at all.
Deconstruction is a war against definitions, borders and parameters. It is a war against defining things by criminalizing the limitation of definitions. With inclusivity as the mandate, exclusivity, in marriage, or any other realm, quickly meets with social disapproval and then becomes a hate crime. If the social good is achieved only through maximum inclusivity and infinite tolerance, then any form of exclusivity, from property to person to ideas, is a selfish act that refuses the collective impulse to make all things into a common property with no lasting meaning or value.
As Orwell understood in 1984, tyranny is essentially about definitions. It is hard to fight for freedom if you lack the word. It is hard to maintain a marriage if the idea no longer exists. Orwell's Oceania made basic human ideas into contradictory things. The left's deconstruction of social values does the same thing to such essential institutions as marriage; which becomes an important impermanent thing of no fixed nature or value.
The left's greatest trick is making things mean the opposite of what they do. Stealing is sharing. Crime is justice. Property is theft. Each deconstruction is accompanied by an inversion so that a thing, once examined, comes to seem the opposite of what it is, and once that is done, it no longer has the old innate value, but a new enlightened one.
To deconstruct man, you deconstruct his beliefs and then his way of living. You deconstruct freedom until it means slavery. You deconstruct peace until it means war. You deconstruct property until it means theft. And you deconstruct marriage until it means a physical relationship between any group of people for any duration. And that is the opposite of what marriage is.
The deconstruction of marriage is part of the deconstruction of gender and family and those are part
of the long program of deconstructing man. Once each basic value has been rendered null and void, inverted and revealed to be random and meaningless, then man is likewise revealed to be a random and meaningless creature whose existence requires shaping by those who know better.
The final deconstruction eliminates nation, religion, family and even gender to reduce the soul of man to a blank slate waiting to be written on.
That is what is at stake here. This is not a struggle about the right of equality, but the right of definition. It is not about whether men can get married, but whether marriage will mean anything at all. It is about preserving the shapes and structures of basic social concepts that define our identities in order to preserve those very concepts, rather than accepting their deconstruction into nullification.
The question on the table is whether the institutions that give us meaning will be allowed to retain that meaning. And that question is a matter of survival. Societies cannot survive without definitions. Peoples do not go on existing through the act of occupying space. The deconstruction of identity is also the destruction of identity.
And that is what we are truly fighting against. Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center
Please put me on your ping list; this is a brilliant piece!
Under communism marriage and the family have to go. The only institution that is “allowed” is the state, which is all-knowing and all-powerful.
Amen.
About marriage -
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
We are rapidly losing control of the language.
>>Please put me on your ping list; this is a brilliant piece!
Will do, and I’m going to piggyback your comment with one of my own.
This is recurring theme with Daniel, that the left fights with subtlety and long range strategy to attain their goals, keeping a low profile, not publicizing their ultimate objective but building support inside their base for it while quietly chipping away at ours with the public until the time is right, and then they strike, and hard. And more often than not, win. Sun Tzu would be proud.
We, in the meantime are in Charge of the Light Brigade mode without any subtlety at all, and get cut to pieces.
An excellent essay.
He’s particularly astute when he describes the perversion of language, a very effective tactic - so effective that it claims the author himself as a victim: He uses “genders” to refer to the sexes, “gay” to mean same-sex, and “marriage” to refer to what isn’t.
Still and all, an excellent essay if one can see past - and perhaps take a lesson from - his errors.
The GLBT agenda is like termites upon society eating the structure from within. America seems amused at it— oh look at those silly, little termites carrying on such fun entertainment. Meanwhile the house is at risk of collapse by the little destructors.
>>He’s particularly astute when he describes the perversion of language, a very effective tactic - so effective that it claims the author himself as a victim: He uses “genders” to refer to the sexes, “gay” to mean same-sex, and “marriage” to refer to what isn’t.
I’ve got to disagree with your take on that. ‘Gender’ and ‘gay’ are battles that are already lost. We gain nothing by insisting on continuing on with “sex” and “homosexual” except to further isolate ourselves, and I am not talking about moderating our core beliefs but being smart on how to further them. Which touches on my thoughts in comment #3.
Ah, make that comment #7
The adversary (satan) may win a temporary battle and many people will suffer and die, (his goal) and then he will get his ass kicked for evermore.
Couldn’t we just as easily say we’ve lost the battle on marriage? Or is there still some doubt that’s precisely what the Court will rule?
The decision at hand is how to proceed. Shall we retreat, regroup, and re-establish a new line of defense? It seems to me that not only has this been a losing strategy for decades, but the ground we’d still hold is not worth defending.
I prefer a Bastogne, a Masada: Let them surround and besiege us if they like. Or let them ignore us and just pass us by. My goal is no longer to preserve a civilization with a death-wish, but to preserve what’s best of that civilization for those with the capacity to appreciate it.
That means increasingly withdrawing from the increasingly deconstructed culture. I use accurate, non-Orwell-ized language when I speak, for instance. I do this so that I and others may think clearly. (When I discuss marriage, for example, it’s in such a way that exposes counterfeits.)
Yes, I do precisely what you say will “further isolate ourselves.” So be it. Pardon my vanity, but Orwell’s Winston was looking for someone like me - and I’m looking for him.
David Greenfield so often sees clearly what’s happening. It puzzles me when he doesn’t see it happening to himself. But that’s the insidious part, and I’m probably a victim from time to time myself. :-)
Thanks for this article.
Very true! The triumph of the left is near inevitable at this point; they control every organ of gov’t, manipulate the elections as Knish alluded to, and of course control the mechanisms of propaganda. As for the progress of their gay marriage agenda, I’d commented as follows at another link:
True for the rank and file that propel the movement, but there’s a whole nother agenda behind the Leadership, the Architects of this movement and that is to destroy the Christian Church communities if at all possible. Its an anti-God movement; they want to marginalize the “Christian” community to the point that they are entirely eliminated from the “public square” to such an extent that to be branded a “Christian” would mean someone would be precluded from running for public office.
My analysis of the situation indicates that they’re well over 50% of the way to achieving their first goal, i.e. forcing legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Following that victory, they’ll use the education system to indoctrinate children with the idea that its normal and correct to investigate their sexuality with members of the same sex and at the middle and high school levels, those who aren’t practicing “bi-sexual” relationships will be automatically deemed “homophobic” which they’ll write up as a mental disease and giving rise to possible hate crimes.
Another “next” step will be to attempt to deny tax exempt status to Christian Churches that refuse to perform same-sex marriages. The only salvation for the churches ultimate existence will be that they’ll have to write in some exemption for the Mosques and Synagogues and I think that will come about by way of exempting all religious communities that perform sacremental rites only with, for and by “members” much like Obama’s exemption from Obamacare for the Amish. This would of course require “registration” of church members. We know where that ultimately ends.
Whatever.
Great article. The father of lies sets himself up against the God of the universe. We know the final winner.
Yes we know the winner but it sure is depressing watching the balance tip in the interim.
I refuse to use the word “gay”. They are homosexuals or bisexuals. And when they co-opted the rainbow, God’s symbol of promise, that did it for me! Let the court do what they feel they have to do, but for me they will never be “married”. God is not mocked and we will reap what we sow - sooner or later.
This is just a view from my little piece of the world. My Son’s small Christian high school is having their prom. None of the boys and girls are going as couples. My wife and I call it “Barbie Dress-up Night” as the girls dress up and go as a group. The girls don’t see the boys as potential mates, they see them as competition for college scholarships. The girls don’t want anything to do with these Christian young men. This isn’t a big public high school where they’re pushing feminism. I went to a large public high school and I enjoyed dating and going to the prom. The interaction between men and women in this country is broken. We can thank Hugh Heffner, Hollywood, Madison Avenue and our friends the Democrats. I guess the young ladies in my Son’s school can all come home at night and snuggle with their paychecks.
Daniel Greenfield “hits the nail on the head”, “knocks the ball outta the park”, or whatever other cliche one might want to interject here. Great piece today as usual, but even better than most due the topic most certainly.
Thanks for the post, and the ping expat1000.
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