Prop 8, Part II

So I was perusing Facebook and ran into a “note” that someone had put up concerning Prop 8. The central premise of the post seems to be something along the lines of, “why should one particular standard be enforced on us [what defines a marriage] when this country is made up of so many different types of people?”

The rant ended with the following yawn-inducing summary:

“Get over yourselves! Public schools belong to everyone, not just one religion, not one type of people and that being the case, you’ll all have to tolerate being educated about the practices, beliefs, and lifestyles of everyone else.”

Now, the unnamed writer of the Facebook note is failing to realize the error that keeps being made in these sorts of arguments, and that error is really just a fallacy of begging the question; an error that stems from this whole absurd myth of the “celebration of diversity.” It’s a mutant sort of liberalism that bears only the slightest and most tenuous relation to Locke, Kant, or any enlightenment thinkers, and which I will refer to as “humanism” in the rest of the post, though only for convenience.

Let’s examine it further. The philosophy’s basic tenant is something along the lines of “people should be allowed to do what they want as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else.” Now, the real danger is the fact that this premise isn’t ever actually challenged. People tend to take this at face value as some sort of given, and I’m mystified as to why. But when I ask, “WHY should be people be allowed to do what they want?” I am met with “Why SHOULDN’T they?”, but this is yet another trap to avoid defending the premise. In fact, it is a fallacy of shifting the burden of proof, and which ultimately does nothing to support the argument.

Getting back to what I said about the argument begging the question, we run into problems when we start trying to pair up this humanist myth with other, competing ideologies. For instance, proponents of this “everyone do what they like” drivel seem to be forgetting that this is not a moral absolute. Why on earth shouldn’t something more state-centered, like fascism, be the method for how we run things? What about something non-consumer, like communism? When this is asked, the proponent of humanism reverts back to his definition, and points out that these systems do not allow people to do whatever they wish, and are therefore wrong. Now, I realize I am setting up a straw-man here to throw my argument against, but this is only because of how simple this modern humanism is:

“People should be able to do what they want to do, because people should be allowed to do what they want, because people should be allowed to do what they want, because people should…

You begin to see the idea? The philosophy – if it is even substantial enough to be called that – is a great big circle of question-begging. And if it gets called on begging the question, it proceeds to shift the burden of proof with a negative voice, “Well, why SHOULDN’T they?”

So the still question stands:

Why should people be allowed to do what they want?

And now the problem needs to be answered within real moral framework; something that gives us a guiding rule based on something, a normative reason for the crucial question, why. Blathering about half-baked pseudo-Lockean ideas is hardly the place to start.

What’s upsetting is the fact that everyone has pretty well accepted that the proponents of Prop 8 are the ones who have to defend themselves, while the opponents of the proposition 8 assume the default position of being right until proven wrong.

And, on a deeper level, the fact that an argument essentially based on one logical fallacy and defended with another is being taken so seriously and by so many people is fairly disturbing. It makes me question the spirit of democracy: if this is the way people argue, why on earth is their opinion counted so highly as to be included in a national vote for what is best for the country?

But that is a topic for another time.