Fernholz on Douthat: Mosque

Redux: Douthat's musings are like chum in shark-infested waters. My favorite liberal bloggers show up to feast.

Here now, Tim Fernholz, writing at The American Prospect:

In rejecting Cordoba House -- and saying that religious freedom doesn't apply to Muslims -- opponents of the Mosque are doing the exact opposite of encouraging assimilation. They're telling Muslims that even if you embrace religious liberty, we're not going to welcome you to our shores. What liberals worry about in the case -- aside from their normative support of religious liberty -- is the terrible message opposing the Mosque sends to Muslims around the globe about our country's values.

Picking up after Douthat. This time: the Ground Zero mosque/community center.

Ezra on the coverage of the mosque, here:

You get a lot of these mini-manias in the 24-hour news cycle, and it's always hard to say which you should take seriously and which you should ignore. After all, if you jump on everything that cable news makes into a big deal, you've become part of the problem, because you're helping the story along. But you don't want to just dismiss everything, either. The test I try to use is this: Could I imagine a world in which this thing was happening but no one ever thought to comment on it?

Well, yes. I can't imagine that world for unemployment, or financial-regulation reform, or the Afghanistan Wikileaks. But it absolutely could've been the case that Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf decided to build an Islamic community center and no one really noticed, or cared, and maybe a few local politicians from both parties showed up to help cut the ribbon. As it happened, a few opportunists went after it, which brought it to the attention of a few sensationalistic media outlets, and then some opportunistic politicians jumped on board, and then their colleagues felt compelled to comment, and then more legitimate media outlets had something to cover, and on and on. The story is a story because of the incentives of the people making it a story, not because there's something about an Islamic community center a few blocks from Ground Zero that just screams out for national attention.

Don't believe me? Then ask yourself why you've never heard anyone complain about the halal food carts parked outside the Ground Zero construction site. This didn't need to become a polarizing national issue. It was made into a polarizing national issue. And now the only thing to do is to wait for it to pass.

I'm inclinded to follow Ezra's example and not discuss the mosque mess, but, offline, Michael requested my response to Douthat's mosque piece, so I'll indulge him.

Douthat makes two common mistakes:

1) Treating the 9/11 terrorists as if their behavior informs us about Islam. It doesn't, any more than the bombing of abortion clinics by self-proclaimed Christians informs us about Christianity. There is an America that cannot get this concept through their heads and therefore insist on treating Muslims as a special class who are always suspect, who are not entitled to the freedoms that our country promises, who have to prove their trustworthiness in a way that non-Muslims do not, who are expected to employ more "sensitive" antennas than non-Muslims. It's THAT America that scares the sh*t out of me.

2) Watching and reading news stories and drawing the conclusion that what isn't presented there doesn't exist -- that if news stories don't present images and sound bites of Muslim Americans decrying the 9/11 terrorists, then that means Muslim Americans accept, support, and are in agreement with the 9/11 terrorists or other radicals. Douthat, and everyone else, needs to appreciate that the media doesn't give time or space to people spouting reasonable, temperate sentiments, so Muslims with reasonable, temperate sentiments are not going to be appearing in news stories or as talking heads in the proportions that they exist in the world. The Muslims being quoted or trotted out for inflammatory comments in news coverage are not a representative sample and that's what gives Douthat the impression that they "too often" do what they do. The real "too often" is that the news finds and quotes these folks but fails to quantify how prevalent their positions are. Also, "too often" the media automatically associates the views of an individual with those of an organization to which he/she belongs.

I don't know anything about Craig Berger writing at Future Majority, but he has already written a rebuttal to Douthat that addresses these points. He does a good job of putting the shoe on the other foot to illustrate the absurdity and unfairness of having an attitude that the events of 9/11 should have a bearing on selection of a mosque location.

I'm still calling him DOUGH HAT in my head. Will someone correct me if I've got that wrong, please? It's hard not to think derisively of someone you're calling DOUGH HAT.

Serwer on Douthat

Douthat's musings are like chum in shark-infested waters. My favorite liberal bloggers show up to feast.

Here now, Adam Serwer at The American Prospect.

Ezra vs. Douthat - next rounds

Ezra yesterday:  

In other words, America does not currently conceive of marriage in the way that Douthat and Tushnet would like it to conceive of marriage, and in the way it would need to conceive of marriage in order for there to be a good reason the institution can't accommodate gays. So to oppose gay marriage, Douthat and Tushnet must first construct an alternative version of marriage, and then argue that if real marriage opens to gays, that's another step away from the idealized marriage that would be closed to gays.

I'm sticking to my assertion that not even Douthat conceives of marriage in the way he's put forth, because if he really, really did, then he'd advocate for marriage to be available only to the procreating. In fact, he'd need to advocate for the establishment of government sex panels to make sure married couples were engaging in practices that might result in procreation, or risk losing their marriage status. (Truly, I could go on and on with the absurdities that would follow if Douthat's notions of the real purpose of marriage were correct.)

Back to Ezra:

Deep into his essay, Douthat admits that this is a difficult argument to mount. "This thickness issue also helps explain what often sounds like tongue-tiedness and/or desperation from social conservatives when they’re asked to explain what, exactly, it is about marriage that makes it distinctively heterosexual," he says. That's an important insight, but I think it cuts in the other direction. When you hold a position that you feel very deeply but can't justify with persuasive facts or clear theory, it's generally a signal that something is awry in the underlying position.

Ezra analogizes that the move toward acceptance of gay marriage is like the shift from VCR to DVD.

Douthat responds to Ezra today:

Douthat quibbles with Ezra's pick for analogy and says it's more like Betamax vs. VCR.  

Like the Betamax supporters,  social conservatives are convinced that they have a superior product — in this case, a conception of marriage that ultimately leads to greater overall human flourishing than the newer, thinner understanding. But having a theoretically superior product isn’t always enough: You have to be able to persuade the world to buy it, or buy into it, and you have to adjust as the world changes and some of the forces that gave your model a structural advantage in the marketplace shrink or disappear. And on both fronts conservatives have been conspicuously failing.

Ezra on Douthat

Ezra on Twitter says: Ross Douthat's posts on gay marriage are convincing me there really isn't a critique of gay marriage that makes sense.

Could not agree more, Ezra. I tried to write a rebuttal to Douthat's column, but he had made so little sense there wasn't anything to say in response.

Douthat said that the real reason heteroseXual marriage deserved honor was that straight couples had the unique ability to bear biological children. OK. That's true. But so what? It's a tautology, not an argument.

Of all the letters, only X is an X. Does that mean it should be treated differently? Maybe we could always capitalize the X. Of all the ways there are to be parents, only heteroseXual couples can create children biological to both of them.

Fine. But Douthat needs to then make the case that that unique condition matters in order to have said something.

If you want to say that the real meaning and purpose of marriage is about procreation, then what are you going to do with all the marriages of people who can't procreate, don't want to procreate, or are done with their procreating days? What are you going to do with straight couples raising kids that are not biological to one or either of them? There's absolutely no way to construct a sensible rationale for the institution of marriage that honors procreation but not parenting of the non-biologically-procreated. (If we were short on people, then you could; but since we have plenty of people, you can't.) And, if you base your rationale on parenting, rather than procreating, then you have to open the door to same-seX couples who parent.

But the thing about Douthat's blathering about this issue that steams me isn't that it doesn't make any sense; it's that it's dishonest. If Douthat had ever in his life argued that marriage should be reserved for procreating couples and should not be available to straight couples who aren't procreating due to barrenness or age or lack of interest, then I would believe that he actually believes his own rationale for what marriage ought to honor. If he said, "That's right; no getting married for women past child-bearing years. No marriage for men who've had irreversible vasectomies. I really mean it -- marriage is for procreators." But no. He hasn't done any such thing. He's only conjured this position about how the real purpose of marriage is to honor procreators as a way to try to draw a distinction between straight couples and gay couples. He knows that if he focuses on parenting, he can't eXclude gay couples from access to marriage.

It's possible that there is no particularly good rationale for why the government ought to sanction marriage for anyone. Big topic for another day. I think there are some reasons why it makes sense, including but not limited to a structure for parenting, but if you make me pick between a) making marriage only available to straight couples or b) no marriage for anyone, I pick no marriage for anyone.

BTW, how do you pronounce Douthat? I'm calling him DOUGH HAT in my head.

Update: So I guess The American Prospect called out the problem of Douthat failing to explain why the uniqueness of heteroseXual couplings matters, and he's responded by saying that heteroseXual seX has consequences or the potential of consequences that same-seX seX doesn't have.  My charges of dishonesty still stand, since there are no potential consequences for barren/old/vasectomied people having seX and yet Douthat isn't suggesting these folks should be eXcluded from marriage.