Breaking the Spell: Rethinking queer community

[Novelafemme]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

I like to think because it is not a scolding. As SA Ma'am pointed out, the right-wing--at least in America--has spent a long time claiming that the queer movement (and the Left generally) has no morals or thinks that there's no such thing as morals. We have, as she points out, delivered ourselves into their hands. This is not to say that the word isn't going to taste strange on our tongues. It will for a while. It will because we ceded space that we did not need to. At the time, the reasons seemed like good ones. The laboratory of the real world, I think, shows that it wasn't. At the end of the day, theory (we should avoid using moral language) was not in agreement with experiment (human beings use moral language and need to do so).

I think the difference in how I'm using moral is that I'm talking about how we treat one another. One could use ethics but I really want to reclaim the word moral. At some point in my lifetime, the Left just surrendered on the issue of morals and so this allowed the religious right to frame the word 'moral' in a way amenable to them and their goals. Thus morality became about whether one was anti-gay, whether one was anti-choice, whether one believed that women should be subservient and submissive to men and whether one believed in corporal punishment, etc. This allowed other things which my parents would have understood as moral issues to no longer BE moral issues. Rapaciousness and avarice? Once upon a time these were considered ethical blemishes now they are things to brag about between the covers of Forbes or Business Week. Cruelty and torture? Once upon a time we thought these things beyond the pale, completely beyond the pale. Now it is something for law enforcement to fairly boast about (Sheriff Arapaio in Arizona) and for politicians to wax poetic about on the floor of the US congress.

I think we need to reclaim the language of morality, not shirk from it. Because morality is about *behavior* not *being*. A murderer is not some class of person who has never killed, one's behavior makes one a murderer. This is completely different than saying that, for instance, homosexuality has any intrinsic moral weight. It does not. So we are right to judge the murderer harshly because all one had to do to AVOID being a murderer was to refrain from murder. Murder harms people and so we have a vested interest--as a society--for making it abundantly clear that the behavior is unacceptable. Who does homosexuality harm? No one. Because it harms no one--and I'm in favor of a harm-based morality instead of a, say, holy book based one--it has no moral content. It is therefore inappropriate to claim homosexuality is immoral, as the religious right does.

We can talk about morality without being prudes, we just have to be clear about what we mean when we start using moral language.

Cheers
Aj

Hi AJ,

I'm a little confused about the portion I highlighted in blue. Cruelty and torture have long been a systemic means of coercion and oppression utilized not only by our Armed Forces but by hegemonic powers by in large since the beginning of time.

More later...gotta go pick up the kiddos

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Novelafemme

Hi AJ,

I'm a little confused about the portion I highlighted in blue. Cruelty and torture have long been a systemic means of coercion and oppression utilized not only by our Armed Forces but by hegemonic powers by in large since the beginning of time.

More later...gotta go pick up the kiddos

When I was in the military we were taught that if we captured the enemy whatever else we might do we do NOT torture. Ever. It is a war crime. If given an order to torture, it was our *duty* to refuse to carry out the order and support our superior to the next in the chain of command and, if possible, relieve the officer giving that order of his command because giving an illegal order is prima facie evidence that one is unfit for command. Has torture been used by nation-states and by monarchs before them? Yes. However, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is quite clear on the matter of torture. We are signatories to the Geneva Conventions and by Constitutional mandate we are *obliged* to conform to it.

George Washington, who explicitly forbade torture, had it right. If we torture their people, they can torture our people. They might torture our people even if we do not torture theirs but if we torture theirs we make it a near certainty that our people will be tortured.

My saying that there was a time when torture was considered out-of-bounds does not mean that torture did not happen anymore than saying that murder is out-of-bounds means that murder never happens. But it was once the case that any commander who gave his troops an order to torture would have been relieved of command. There was a time when we, the American people, would have demanded the impeachment of any elected official who signed off on torture. It was once the case that we prided ourselves, we differentiated ourselves, by our NOT torturing.

Cheers
Aj