“If you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement.”
Michele Bachmann allegedly said the above in 2004. That remark, along with the many others that are being repeated all over the Internet, will not endear her to gay voters, 25% of whom generally vote Republican. (To say nothing of gay-friendly voters.)
But (as I touched on in a post last week) a lot of people think that things they don’t like constitute “enslavement.” I could say that about being a lawyer, or a night-club owner. (Trust me, both felt like slavery.) And I’m sure I could find more than one disgruntled heterosexual who would say that straight marriage is a form of enslavement. I’d be willing to bet that some divorced men (especially “deadbeat dads”) would be the first to characterize what some call an “institution” as little more than lifelong enslavement.
How about student loans? A lifetime of debt (that can never be erased even in bankruptcy) in return for a worthless piece of paper? This means that many a young person starts out life with a ball-and-chain financial arrangement which may be the closest thing modern America has to indentured servitude.
Glad we abolished debtor’s prison for people “enslaved” to debt along with prison for “sodomites” who had “enslaved” themselves to that vice. Of course, this freed up plenty of prison space for all the people who have enslaved themselves to illegal drugs. For the time being, slaves to legal drugs don’t have to go to prison.
So the moral lesson is what? Being enslaved sucks but you cannot avoid it? Or is it really slavery that we are talking about here? It strikes me that there’s somewhat of a logical problem in that what someone has done to himself (or enjoys doing) is not slavery in the true sense of the word, as slavery means being owned as chattel property by others. If I voluntarily decide to work for someone without pay, or if I sign a document promising to pay more than I can ever afford, that is not slavery. If I do something I don’t want to do because I feel obligated or I have obligated myself, that is not slavery — even if it may feel like it later. Calling people slaves because they have made bad choices (or others think they made bad choices) not only does not make them slaves, but it alleviates them from any responsibility for their actions and denies them the simple dignity of being given credit (or blame) for what they do. It also denies free will.
But that does not solve the conundrum, because if there is no free will, then we all are slaves.
Comments
4 responses to “Up from freedom?”
“Enslaved” is a bit strong.
I like Bob Dylan’s words as more accurate and general:
“You’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
Is it me or is the quality of presidential candidate decreasing at an alarming rate?
I thought it couldn’t get any worse than Bush-Kerry, then we had McCain-Obama.
At this rate, by 2020 they’ll be wearing clown make-up and riding unicycles.
I think she’s probably using this as an indirect reference to John 8:34, where Jesus said, “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” (Of course, in orthodox Christian theology, that means every single person is a slave to sin, so singling out gay people isn’t warranted.)
Moreover, this promulgates the standard capital-E Evangelical idea that gay people are necessarily slaves to the passions of the flesh, whereas straight people aren’t.
I hate to break it to her (especially since I’m sure she knows this deep down already), but straight and gay people have sex for the exact same reasons (hint: it’s not to have children), and they get married for the exact same reasons (it’s also not to have children). But her worldview doesn’t allow her to accept that, so she doesn’t. (I certainly can’t fault her for this… my worldview doesn’t allow me to accept some things, either.)
Just ask a lawyer about a “free will.” He would probably council that there is no such thing.