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Politics : Polite Political Discussion- is it Possible? An Experiment. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (430)	8/2/2006 1:38:02 PM
From: Rambi	Respond to of 1695

Glad to hear it- as I said, the phrase from you startled me. Especially about the purple hair issue. Of no particular import to the discussion, except maybe to explain why I have such a strong reaction to BECAUSE I SAID SO is the following story: I was a juvenile probation officer for a few years (early 70s) in an upscale area outside of Richmond, Va. Unlike inner city family situations which lacked fathers and structure, the girls with whom I worked tended to be from intact homes with a nice, but somewhat ineffectual, mother and an authoritarian, "because I said so" father (had several ex-military dads). As the 60s impacted and changed the culture, they were unable to get past their established views of right and wrong to the true, important issues. The girls were most often charged with being "habitually disobedient and beyond control". This meant they were running away, sneaking out, taking drugs, having sex.. mostly because the fathers just could not let go in any way and refused to listen, consider, compromise, or really even be rational. I had the longest, most frustrating, session with a father about maxiskirts and slacks. To him they represented a slide into eveything decadent and scary and that terrified him. He was sure it meant his daughters were sluts and he would punish them severely for wearing slacks. Neither I nor the court psychologist could get beyond the because I said so's, to the whys and why nots. Actually, my boss, a sexist, though a nice one, refused to allow me to wear pants suits and I was reprimanded for doing theatre at night because it was "inappropriate". It was an odd time to be a woman-- lots of issues won, but an awful lot of leftover unthinking beliefs held by perfectly nice people still prevalent. Maybe because of that, it is important to me to steer clear of arguments that rely on that kind of foundation- habits, religions or fear of change. If there are real damages to be feared, then we need to be able to articulate these clearly and with support. Changing the culture isn't particularly a convincing defense since for me, as a woman, I have seen how hard it is to win those changes, and how the reluctance was based on a lot of determined ignorance and fear, rather than a consideration of the rational outcomes. I am reluctant to place pedophilia in with the first two because of the obvious fact that it involves minors and coercion by authority figures. The other two involve consenting adults (with the exception of the underage polygamist marriages which to me falls under a whole different category having nothing to do with polygamy). How these impact society other than being DIFFERENT is what I need to consider. I fail to see that gay marriage does so, if entered into by responsible adults. Polygamy I really have no opinion about right now, other than to not reject just because I personally think it's strange.