Well that's one I never heard before...
May 15, 2002

The View from the Core gets his panties in a twist because a gay high school student was allowed, by court order, to take his date to the prom.

Responding to a comment made in the Toronto Star about how you couldn't ban Jewish students from the prom so why should you be able to ban gay ones, he writes:

Were I Jewish, I would find Hutchinson�s remark highly offensive: he puts Jews, as Jews, in the same kind of category as individuals engaging in behavior that has been considered grossly immoral from time immemorial among the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Had he compared pedophilia with being a Muslim, per se, Hutchinson is the one against whom would come a public outcry.

So now he's he's invoking validity for his comments by not only appealing to authority (that whatever ancient cultures did must inherently be right) but also in pulling out the bugbear of equating gay people (implicitly) with pedophiles.

I always chuckle when I see this comparison being made. This is an exceedingly common attempt to justify bigotry and discrimination, by tarring gays with the raping of little children. It bears no relation to reality. It also speaks to the limited grasp of the subject matter of the proponent.

Anyone familiar with Godwins Law ? Akin to Murphy's Law or the Peter Principle, Godwin's Law states that 'As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." It's usually a warning sign that debate is over because the person invoking Godwin's has no further intention of debating facts or offering reasoned opinions. Invoking Nazi's, as Josie Appleton writes "...is a foot-stamping, self-righteous refusal to engage with other people in debate. It is the cheapest of cheap shots.." Well, invoking pedophilia as an (untrue) slam against homosexuality, is, in this day and age, basically the same thing.

Can I propose the Queer Corollary to Godwin's Law? In any debate on the subject of homosexuality, the probability that discrimination against homosexuals will be justified by invoking a comparison to pedophilia will reach one is directly related to the degree to which the invoker is religiously or socially conservative. (In other words, Jerry Falwell is much more likely to use the pedophilia angle than George W. is.)

Yeah, I know the phraseology is a little inelegant at the moment -- give me a day or two and I'll make it a little snappier. In the mean time, if you like the corollary, feel free to use it any and every time some bonehead tries to justify being a bigot by comparing gay men and women to someone who'd mess with a child.

Posted by Jody at May 15, 2002 01:56 PM

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