Stop Destroying the World

marriage, pseudogamy, esolen, traditional, christan, jesus, divorce, stupid,
On the one hand, I'm happy to finally see a "traditional marriage supporter" do something other than bash gays, on the other hand, somebody needs to stop worrying so very much about what others do. (Oh, and an award for the weirdest use of the word "addled" ever.)

Pseudogamy 101
Anthony Esolen

I've written in a post below that the real social problem we in America face is the number of people who are not married who behave as if they were. I'd like to revise that claim. Our problem is pseudogamy, false marriage, and it assumes many forms. Same-sex pseudogamy is but the latest and most flagrantly absurd, but it is not the first. We find the most fundamental form, from which other corruptions rise up like diseases, when a man and woman go through the ceremony and utter the traditional words "as long as you both shall live," while harboring the mental reservation, "as long, that is, as I am happy," or "as long as the marriage 'works,'" whatever that is supposed to mean. In other words, in the fundamental form of pseudogamy, we don't have people who are not married behaving as if they were, but people who are married (or who present themselves as having been married) behaving as if they were not.

Basically, if you get divorced, you were never married in the first place. Not really. It's a No True Scotsman, and it's no more valid in this instance than that particular logical fallacy ever is. It also reminds me of Ray Comfort's obsession with "false converts": if you used to be christian, but now you are not, then you never were a christian. It doesn't matter how sincere your belief was, it wasn't, and Ray is capable of determining that- even if he never met you. Mr. Esolen is capable, it appears, of determining who was really, truly married, and who was not. Yeesh.

Mr. Esolen seems to have predicted my response to "pseudogamy": who cares?

Why should anyone care about the private mental reservations entertained by the couple next door? The obvious answer is that those reservations are not really private. They will inevitably be talked about, urged upon others, or acted upon, if not by the couple next door, then by the couple two doors down, and then their problems are also ours.

Divorce is catching? We must "inevitably" gossip about others, try to talk our neighbors into divorcing, and . . . wtf? That's Teh Stoopid. You have to gossip about your neighbors. You don't have to get divorced because the Jones did, and anyone who does is just as stupid. We should encourage them to play in traffic.

We must live with their divorce. why? i have no idea which of my neighbors are married, cohabiting, divorced, whatever. i like my neighbors, but it's none of my business. We must try to teach their addled children. addled: confused or unable to think clearly. it's generally used to describe the mentally ill or drunk. i know children of divorce, and while they do tend to have some issues, they're not "addled" or unteachable. We must get along in neighborhoods blasted by the instability and the chaos. um, what, do you live in a war zone? i would imagine a certain percentage of my neighbors are divorced, my neighborhood is neither "blasted", "unstable" nor "chaotic" We must help feed the sharks in the divorce industry. who is this "we"? when did i start having to pay divorce lawyers for other people? We must suffer the now greater probability that other couples near us will follow their example. the horror! A culture in which divorce is common is a different thing from one in which it stands under severe disapproval; and everyone, divorced or not, must breathe the same cultural air. i for one, and glad that i live in a culture that allows abused women a way out, instead of "severe disapproval" for leaving their tormentor. Mr. Esolen is a little too into the severe disapproval.

jesus, jesus, jesus, god, god, god.

I know full well that men and women are sinners. dirty sinners in need of severe disapproval I'm a sinner, after all. shocked! i'm shocked! But even a poor marriage, when husband and wife do their duty by one another, stands as an example of the ideal, and in one way a more powerful example of it than will the good marriage, i think he means "loveless". a really bad marriage is not an a powerful example of anything other than pain. just as the man who stands by his post in defeat is a greater hero than one who does so in victory. marriage as war? we need to have a little talk about analogies, mr. esolen. And of course, just as the determination to stand by your post helps your comrades to victory even when all seems bleak, so the determination not to revoke your complete gift of self in a poor marriage may turn that marriage itself around and help others navigate through the storms. sorry, i'm not wasting the only life i'm getting in a loveless or abusive marriage just to make other people, what?, determined to stay in their own bad marriages? no, thanks. But in a nation of pseudogamy, the only place to turn to for the noble call for complete gift of self will be the military -- a call which few of us will even hear. mr. esolen is a little too into the sacrificing.

then we get a whole lot of words about self, and retaining your sense of self and how dare you retain your individuality instead of . . . yeah, i don't fucking know. i'm gonna go somewhere and sin. and introduce chaos to the world!