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naraburns  nihil supernum  1mo ago (text post)   6286 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for September 2024

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions in the Main Subreddit

@naraburns:

@Highpopalorum:

@2D3D:

Contributions for the week of September 2, 2024

@Dean:

@faceh:

@KolmogorovComplicity:

@ControlsFreak:

@RenOS:

Special Issue: Babies Everywhere!

@Hoffmeister25:

@ProfQuirrell:

@Tractatus:

@doglatine:

@urquan:

@satirizedoor:

Contributions for the week of September 9, 2024

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@ControlsFreak:

@gorge:

@Rov_Scam:

Contributions for the week of September 16, 2024

@Dean:

@naraburns:

@100ProofTollBooth:

@Walterodim:

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@MaiqTheTrue:

On An Ideology With No Name

@MadMonzer:

@Hoffmeister25:

@FCfromSSC:

@Supah_Schmendrick:

Contributions for the week of September 23, 2024

@teleoplexy:

@wemptronics:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@Hoffmeister25:

@LotsRegret:

You're a Villain All Right

@Baila:

@DirtyWaterHotDog:

@faceh:

Contributions for the week of September 30, 2024

@self_made_human:

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I wonder what @gorge would make of the conservative argument for gay marriage. @gorge writes:

There is furthermore the argument that homoerotic behavior is a vice, a sin. And if we love our neighbor, we want to save them from sin. Sin ultimately makes us less happy. Vices give momentary pleasure but leave us empty and wanting more, no more happier than before. The glutton eats a lot of junk food, but ultimately that makes the glutton less happy. If society does things to make the glutton less likely to engage in gluttony (eg, banning advertising of junk food) or I do something to make my loved one not engage in gluttony (eg not keeping junk food in the house) then I am doing good for them. If I teach them "fat acceptance" I am actually harming them.

Now I am straight and [can't] speak from personal experience about whether for a person who experiences same-sex attraction forgoing homoerotic activities makes that person more happy. I do think though, that forgoing sexual promiscuity and other sexual vices that a straight person has tempted by has made me more happy. So I can see how that argument is plausible. Given the very high rates of promiscuity and sexual experimentation reported among gay populations, seems like gay sex is leaving something empty, like eating a cookie or potato chip, not like eating a steak.

So promiscuous, meaningless, bohemian gay sex is to be discouraged. Therefore why not promote gay marriage as an alternative? After all, gay people will continue to exist either way, so we might as well attempt to include them as best we can into proper, respectable society, by providing an avenue for them to approach as closely as they can the traditional conception of a household, encouraging adoption, etc. I think Andrew Sullivan made this argument decades ago, and faced opposition from other gay activists at the time who held that gay people should not try to force themselves into heteronormative strictures or whatever.

Gay marriage, or something like it, almost seems like the only workable solution to the problem of homosexuality from the conservative point of view, unless you have some other proposal to make gay people vanish or turn straight or be castrated. If a gay person asks you, "how should I live my life", and the only answer is "sorry, you have no place in my conception of society, unless you commit to lifelong celibacy and loneliness, in which case you may quietly sit in the corner" then can you blame them for turning elsewhere?

Therefore why not promote gay marriage as an alternative?

Marriage being monogamous is not legally enforceable. It's not even an officially taught value at this point. It's basically surviving as a folk tradition. There is no reason to think that gays getting marriage would actually be monogamous, and from what I have read they are not. So gay marriage is more likely to further erode the convention that marriage is monogamous.

I think Andrew Sullivan made this argument decades ago, and faced opposition from other gay activists at the time who held that gay people should not try to force themselves into heteronormative strictures or whatever.

And we got gay marriage and instead of monogamous gay men we got NY Times and NPR normalizing polyamory and CDC approving DoxyPep.

If a gay person asks you, "how should I live my life", and the only answer is "sorry, you have no place in my conception of society, unless you commit to lifelong celibacy and loneliness, in which case you may quietly sit in the corner" then can you blame them for turning elsewhere?

I don't think lifelong celibacy == loneliness. If a gay man asked me this question, I'd point him to a testimony of a gay man who went celibate and found himself a lot better off, and I'd recommended the gay man read it and try it out.

But also, in no world would I ban two men from being roommates, nor should the government be busting down doors or installing hidden cameras to see what is going on in the bedroom. "Gay marriage" does not be legalized in order for two men to form a permanent loving relationship -- amore or caritas.

Pretty much all married gay men I've encountered continue to be promiscuous after marriage, just usually with their partner's permission.

I’d be interested in seeing the actual stats, since I’ve also encountered quite a few who are openly (and believably, in my opinion) monogamous.

I'm finding all kinds of conflicting stats and surveys, but it looks like at least a majority of gay couples are not monogamous: https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/06/most-gay-couples-aren-t-monogamous-will-straight-couples-go-monogamish.html

It seems straightforwardly likely to me that the percentage of gay spouses who are monogamous will be higher than the percentage of all gay ‘couples’ who are.

Not so much a rant against your post, but something I've wanted to say. I'll say its different, because it is different. When I was in grad school I remember one of my colleagues said the same thing, no difference between gay marriage and marriage between a man a woman. I wanted to slap her across her face. Such unthinking ally bullshit. To see that a regular marriage can have a physical manifestation of their love that binds them, a child, and her say that my hypothetical marriage between two men would lose nothing by not having any such possibility of that was such an insulting level non-thinking, and really missing the whole point. If my uncle had wheels he'd be a bike.

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