Morality and Gay Rights Discourse Essay -- Gay Rights Ethics Essays

Morality and Gay Rights DiscourseWhen Aristotle discussed the material premises of enthymemes as being important in rhetoric, he was prescient of the variety show of appeals that would be tendered by opponents in the discourse over gay rights issues long after his time. Smith and Windes express the nature of this conflict accurately when they write, symbols expressing fundamental ethnic values are invoked by all sides (1997 28). Similarly, Sarah S. Brown describes the participants in a struggle to stake out symbolic positions of good and to frame their side in terms of morally powerful conceptions of right and wrong (2000 458). Fascinatingly, she suggests, even people with deeply conflicting opinions appeal to the homogeneous moral concepts for the force of their arguments (458). In fact, these same moral concepts are ubiquitous to all discourse and to life. They penetrate the social order at the most fundamental level. They are not static, however, and their malleability g ives rhytidoplasty to a constantly shifting landscape of debate wherein, as Smith and Windes (1997) assert, the adversaries literally induce so much impact as to drive the do work of self-definition for one another. Related to that process is the way in which the landscape itself is defined, which Haider-Markel and Meier see as consequential in terms of what resources are important and what advantages some coalitions in the struggle have over others (1996 346). (See also Kintz, 1998 Smith and Windes, 1997). Particularly, they demonstrate that models of discourse which conceptualize gay issues in terms of morality (or culture) as opposed to politics or cultivated rights offer a rhetorical upper hand to proponents of anti-gay arguments. It is the objectiv... ...vation in Gay Rights/Special Rights. In Kintz, Linda and Lesage, Julia. 1998. Media , Culture, and the Religious Right. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press. Patten, Steve. Preston Mannings Populism constructin g the reciprocal sense of the common people. Studies in Political Economy, Vol.50 (Summer, 1996) 95 Schulze, Laurie and Guilfoyle, Frances. Facts Dont Hate They Just Are. In Kintz, Linda and Lesage, Julia. 1998. Media , Culture, and the Religious Right. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press. Smith, Ralph R. and Windes, Russel R. The Progay and Antigay Issue Culture Interpretation, Influence, and Dissent. Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 83 (1997) 28-48 Terry, Jennifer. Unatural Acts In Nature The Scientific Fascination with Queer Animals. QLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Vol.6.2 (2000) 151-193