"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Sunday, September 05, 2010

Misplace Assumptions, an Addendum

Another thought concerning this post, which occurred to me in reading the further comments on Susie Madrak's original post, and in this post by Michael Hamar at Bilerico.

Well, OK, a couple of thoughts.

One thing that struck me about the comments from the Crooks and Liars post -- not so much at Bilerico -- was the tone of moral indignation in many of the comments, summed up most neatly in the comment of one person that "abuse of children is wrong under all circumstances," to which my response -- if I had made one -- would have been "Define 'abuse' and define 'children'." It's this sense of moral superiority couched in broad generalities that offends me, simply because it reeks of judgment based on near or complete ignorance, something that we seem to find both on the right and on the left.

Secondly, my real point in all of this, which I probably didn't state clearly enough, is simply that yes, there are abuses, obvious from the accounts of abduction and rape. To call for eliminating the institution on that basis is, I think, a grave mistake. Eliminate the abuses, to be sure, but before you demand that the institution itself be eliminated in toto, be damned sure you know what you're doing.

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