Hemant recruited a couple of members of the Homosexual Conspiracy to infiltrate an anti-gay seminar near where he lives, and I was shocked when I got to the part where the organizers noticed one of them was taking notes and asked her if she was against their agenda, she said yes! And then she got kicked out of several of the talks.

Really, people, this honesty thing is going to make it difficult to effectively spy on the opposition.

Anyway, she still got to attend most of the talks, and two reporters were at work (mission redundancy! That will help), so we’ve still got a full report on the whole sordid event. Read part 1 and part 2 now, and the third and final part will go up later today.

Just the list of speakers is interesting. They’re all affiliated with ministries or theology departments or Liberty University (there was a big investment of LU speakers here), or they’re part of one of those fanatical anti-gay organizations. It’s conservative religious ideology through and through.

Some Catholic site is giving advice on how to field questions from Leftists about homosexuality. After all, those danged lefties keep bringing up issues of equality and civil rights when gay marriage comes up, and it’s awfully hard to talk about restricting gay rights without sounding like a bigot or homophobe, so you’ve got to have a different set of talking points you can switch to whenever talk about equality and fairness and those other non-Catholic doctrines are brought up. So they’ve come up with five different tactics Catholic bigots can use to divert attention from their bigotry. They hope. Mainly, though, it diverts attention to the fact that they use really, really bad arguments. Here are the five, reworded from their misleading rhetoric to a blunter description of what they propose.

1. Obfuscate about rights. Redefine rights any old way you want to, endorse equal rights for everyone, but then claim marriage isn’t a right because there are restrictions (can’t marry your sister, there’s an age of consent, you have to pay a fee to get a marriage license), so it’s OK to add one more restriction. Never mind that by this reasoning the old miscegenation laws are perfectly valid, and don’t really deny anyone a right.

2. Point out that heterosexuals have damaged marriage. How this helps the Catholic case against gay marriage is a mystery, but they’re welcome to make the argument — they’re saying that contraception and divorce and artificial fertilization are all also crimes against nature. What a winning strategy!

3. Lie about how awful homosexual parents are. Kids need both a mother and father, because mothers are nurturing and fathers are brave and disciplined. Yes, right, arguing from sexual stereotypes is OK if you’re Catholic, and it also means you get to ignore the fact that a third of all households are headed by single mothers.

4. Slippery slope! Some guy wanted to marry his horse, there are horrible awful polyamorous relationships, and even if you allow gays to marry, they don’t all rush to the altar. This is a pointless argument: it’s basically saying that we should only permit traditional 1 man:1 woman marriages because if we allow other possibilities, not all marriages will be between 1 man:1 woman. We also allow marriage between couples of different races, and a Catholic can even marry a Protestant — this has not led to a massive rush to marriages between a man, an oyster, a pelican, and a watermelon.

5. Lie with statistics. This one is my favorite argument here. Gay marriage will hurt people! Did you know that 31% of lesbian report physical violence with their partner in the last year? (Don’t mention the fact that 39% of women in a heterosexual relationship report domestic violence.) Gay men are more likely to be killed by a partner than a stranger! (Don’t mention that heterosexual women are five times more likely to be killed by their partner than a stranger.)

Oh, and they do cite sources: most of them seem to be something called the Witherspoon Institute, which made a report…funded by the Templeton Foundation. Don’t be surprised. Those rich jerks are pouring money into all kinds of dubious, religiously-motivated projects.

I’m beginning to wonder if Catholicism damages the brain: Ross Douthat also has a column on why gay marriage is wrong. It’s not because gays are bad or unnatural, oh no — we must get away from the ghastly bigoted language and promote bigoted ideals more ambiguously. It’s because relationships between men and women are specialer than those between men and men or women and women.

This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing. And recognizing the difficulty of achieving these goals, it surrounds wedlock with a distinctive set of rituals, sanctions and taboos.

The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it’s that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.

That’s a non-argument. Of course opponents of gay marriage keep saying that heterosexual marriage is unique and special — but so what? They keep asserting that it’s better and best and worthy of support, but no one is trying to say that men and women don’t get to marry any more.

The whole problem is that we’ve got all the homophobes claiming that their favored kind of marriage is more admirable than any other kind of relationship, and so we must turn away from those other kinds of relationships. Hey, if you’re looking for a “microcosm of civilization” of the kind I want to live in, it’s not one where we quarantine and regulate love and tell people that they cannot love a rather large subset of the human race, even if it is reciprocated.

But then, that whole Catholic culture is one that I consider the antithesis of an enlightened and rational civilization, anyway.

That implicit consent thread has just broken a thousand comments, so I’m closing it and inviting everyone to move here.

Just to keep it interesting, I found (via Jen) a couple of lists. The one on the left is from one of those liberal progressive sites, and clarifies the whole issue of male privilege, which many of the commenters still fail to comprehend. The one on the right is from a batty wingnut site, where each point is greatly expanded into an exercise in blaming women.

Here’s your opportunity to find some common ground, I hope. There probably aren’t many commenters here who find the list on the right in any way convincing or based on reasoning and evidence (at least, I don’t think Lubos Motl is a commenter here.)

The Male Privilege Checklist 1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed. 2. I can be confident that my co-workers won’t think I got my job because of my sex – even though that might be true. (More). 3. If I am never promoted, it’s not because of my sex. 4. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities. 5. I am far less likely to face sexual harassment at work than my female co-workers are. (More). 6. If I do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think I did a better job. 7. If I’m a teen or adult, and if I can stay out of prison, my odds of being raped are relatively low. (More). 8. On average, I am taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces much less than my female counterparts are. 9. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question. 10. If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question. 11. If I have children and provide primary care for them, I’ll be praised for extraordinary parenting if I’m even marginally competent. (More). 12. If I have children and a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home. 13. If I seek political office, my relationship with my children, or who I hire to take care of them, will probably not be scrutinized by the press. 14. My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true. 15. When I ask to see “the person in charge,” odds are I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person is, the surer I can be. 16. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters. (More). 17. As a child, I could choose from an almost infinite variety of children’s media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of my own sex. I never had to look for it; male protagonists were (and are) the default. 18. As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often. (More). 19. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether or not it has sexist overtones. 20. I can turn on the television or glance at the front page of the newspaper and see people of my own sex widely represented. 21. If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex. 22. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex. 23. I can speak in public to a large group without putting my sex on trial. 24. Even if I sleep with a lot of women, there is no chance that I will be seriously labeled a “slut,” nor is there any male counterpart to “slut-bashing.” (More). 25. I do not have to worry about the message my wardrobe sends about my sexual availability. (More). 26. My clothing is typically less expensive and better-constructed than women’s clothing for the same social status. While I have fewer options, my clothes will probably fit better than a woman’s without tailoring. (More). 27. The grooming regimen expected of me is relatively cheap and consumes little time. (More). 28. If I buy a new car, chances are I’ll be offered a better price than a woman buying the same car. (More). 29. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore. 30. I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch. 31. I can ask for legal protection from violence that happens mostly to men without being seen as a selfish special interest, since that kind of violence is called “crime” and is a general social concern. (Violence that happens mostly to women is usually called “domestic violence” or “acquaintance rape,” and is seen as a special interest issue.) 32. I can be confident that the ordinary language of day-to-day existence will always include my sex. “All men are created equal,” mailman, chairman, freshman, he. 33. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is. 34. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name. 35. The decision to hire me will not be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon. 36. Every major religion in the world is led primarily by people of my own sex. Even God, in most major religions, is pictured as male. 37. Most major religions argue that I should be the head of my household, while my wife and children should be subservient to me. 38. If I have a wife or live-in girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks. (More). 39. If I have children with my girlfriend or wife, I can expect her to do most of the basic childcare such as changing diapers and feeding. 40. If I have children with my wife or girlfriend, and it turns out that one of us needs to make career sacrifices to raise the kids, chances are we’ll both assume the career sacrificed should be hers. 41. Assuming I am heterosexual, magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media is filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are rarer. 42. In general, I am under much less pressure to be thin than my female counterparts are. (More). If I am fat, I probably suffer fewer social and economic consequences for being fat than fat women do. (More). 43. If I am heterosexual, it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ever be beaten up by a spouse or lover. (More). 44. Complete strangers generally do not walk up to me on the street and tell me to “smile.” (More: 1 2). 45. Sexual harassment on the street virtually never happens to me. I do not need to plot my movements through public space in order to avoid being sexually harassed, or to mitigate sexual harassment. (More.) 45. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men. 46. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

8 Ways Fascist Feminists Are Ruining America’s Women 8. Encouraging Promiscuity 7. Sanctioning Victimhood 6. Dabbling In Misandry 5. Destroying Chivalry 4. Attacking Motherhood 3. Requiring A Feminist Litmus Test 2. Promoting Lies and Manipulation 1. Glorifying Abortion

In the list on the left, it’s true for me on 45 out of 46; the only exception is #15, just because of the quirks of being at this particular small liberal arts university.

Here is a list, with photos, of 15 sexy scientists. It has a little excuse for some obvious bias in the choices:

(Why no men? Because I unavoidably find women more sexy, of course!)

Which is forthright and honest and all that…but then I got a look at #15. I’m very disturbed now. I had no idea that my awesome sexual charisma was overwhelming even heterosexual men nowadays.

I’m also bothered by the premise. I think it’s an excellent idea to promote the idea that scientists can be sexy, and women who are comfortable with that should be able to proudly present themselves as sexual beings. But the important concept is that women should have the choice, and their decisions should be respected. Men do not get the privilege of having the roving eye, of being able to pick individual women out of the crowd to tell them that here, they get to be object of sexual interest, especially not if they’re going to then publicly display them as clever eye candy.

The worst possible way to handle this is to search the internet for photos of women scientists and make superficial decisions about who the male eye would find sexy. There’s a process of judgment that went on behind the scenes, where many women scientists had to have been rejected because they were insufficiently ‘hot’, and then many of the women dragged into the spotlight had their “scientist” qualifications completely ignored for their literally biological qualifications. It’s a reiteration of the same inappropriate judgmental attitude that pretty much every woman scientist suffers through.

Promoting 15 sexy scientists is a fine idea, if the choices are entirely voluntary, and if the qualifications are more than a photo. Common Sense Atheism should have asked first, and found something a little more interesting than appearances to explain why they’re sexy. Or better yet, have the women explain what it means to be sexy, because men tend to be very poor judges of such phenomena.

I know, it would have been harder for me to make the cut if I’d had to qualify for my mind instead of my smokin’ hot body, but I can make that sacrifice.

Demonstrating once again that we northerners are dour old puritans, Argentina has legalized gay marriage.

If this means Argentinians are damned, that’s just more good news: there will be Carnival in hell.