<p>
I agree – it is.</p>
<p>Oh my.</p>
<p>JHS et al, I cannot speak for all conservatives because they comprise an infinite spectrum of beliefs and agendas. Only myself. Here goes. Steadfast supporter of gay rights to the death . . . until we go to marriage. Why? Religion. Nope. Morality? Hell no! Economics? Yup!!! Marriage - usually means a financial nod from the govt - and I’m not going there with gays. I know, I know. They can adopt and form families. Still not going there. It simply doesn’t ring true in my head. Homophobe? Don’t think so. Love my big sister and she is gay. And also not pushing to marry her partner, btw.</p>
<p>And the whole push to call gay marriage part of the civil rights movement just truly did offend me. Preposterous! To equate it with the right to vote for blacks, etc. Really, really lost me on that. Even if they brought in Sean Penn to be in the move. Actually, bring in Sean Penn was probably a mistake for the movement. He overacts. And he’s just not that photogenic. Now if it had been Heath Ledger . . . but I digress.</p>
<p>Anyway. My problem with gays is that they are so stuck. Straw men indeed! They are so 20th century in what they are worked up about.</p>
<p>^^We want nothing to do with relatives who don’t believe our gay child should have the same rights as their straight children. In my humble opinion, you are pretty lucky to have a relationship with your sister with that attitude. She must be a very generous soul.</p>
<p>Fair enough. But on what non-discriminatory basis do you say “I’m not going there with gays” about economic benefits that you, as (I guess) a heterosexual, enjoy? And what does that have to do with “marriage”, since the economic benefits can all be rolled into a domestic partnership scheme, which other conservatives on this thread say they support? </p>
<p>I understand the age-old argument, “I’ve got mine, Jack; **** you.” And, yes, sometimes I suspect it IS a principle of conservative thought, although not one of the ones I respect. But I have rarely seen it used so unabashedly as the ONLY justification for a position. After all, Blacks weren’t allowed to marry for centuries here. Was it a mistake to let them in on it? Why do we let immigrants marry?</p>
<p>My problem (if any) with the current leadership of the gay rights movement is not that they are so 20th Century in what they get worked up about. It’s that they are so 19th Century. They actually value marriage as an institution! How quaint! Back when all our friends were getting married, I used to say that you had to invite your young nieces and nephews to the the weddings, because there had to be someone there who really believed all the bullstuff or the magic wouldn’t work. Gay people, it seems, can now fill that role, much to the dismay of passed-over flower girls everywhere.</p>
<p>(In seriousness now, an important turning point for me came when I was advising a friend on the breakup of her two-child, one-house non-marriage. Divorce is never easy, but it’s much easier to do it on a civil basis if tax-free transfers between the parties are permitted. Doing something fair for the two women and their children was just more difficult than it should have been, because the law treated them like prostitutes, not family members. It felt wrong. And I won’t even start with the hospitals who let hostile, estranged parents make medical decisions for dying AIDS patients, not their partners. Yes, you can plan around that, but why should you have to?)</p>
<p>Oh, JHS. I really like your writing voice. But I’m very saddened by your take on marriage. And I really don’t have a rational reason why gays who adopt kids shouldn’t have the economic benefits of married couples. As I said - it just feels very contorted in my head. I really think we’re all extremely lucky to have someone in life who loves us and sticks by us with or without marriage. The marriage part, imo, is about economics and rearing kids. And I’m definitely wide open to justifiable attacks on this. Well aware a terrible number of married heterosexuals are utterly lousy parentts. Still, the marriage thing feels like pushing on an empty sack to me for gays. Don’t get what they are pushing for.</p>
<p>Anyway, just my view. A gazillion “conservatives” would no doubt be highly offended by this post . . . </p>
<p>I really am sick of labels.</p>
<p>I don’t know about the lesbian couple JHS was helping, but I do know that many lesbian couples have babies born in to their marriage (if they’re married) or their partnership. What about them? If marriage is to support children, what about them? My family is more speshul than a lesbian couple’s family, because I married a man before I got pregnant and a lesbian married/unioned a woman?</p>
<p>well it’s obvious the OP has had her question answered by now- so I suppose this isn’t anymore off topic than the last 10 pages.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>editing post</p>
<p>Many posts ago (#716) I made a partly “tongue-in-cheek” remark in response to something mazatl said about “logic.” </p>
<p>But to be fair to mazatl I think the larger point that he/she was getting at is completely correct.</p>
<p>Micheal Berube, in an article that Yorkyfan brought to our attention in post #718 does a fair job of articulating what I perceive to be mazatl’s larger point:</p>
<p>“Late last fall, the philosopher with whom I co-founded the Penn State chapter of the AAUP, Claire Katz, informed me of a graduate teaching assistant in philosophy who had just had a very strange encounter with a student. The course, which dealt with bioethics, had recently dealt with the vile history of experiments on unwitting and/or unwilling human subjects, from the Holocaust to Tuskegee, and the student wanted to know whether the “other side” would be presented as well. I hope you’re asking yourselves, what other side?—because, of course, to all reasonable and responsible researchers in the field, there is no “other side”; there is no pro-human experimentation position that needs to be introduced into classroom discussion to counteract possible liberal “bias.” We are not in the business of inviting pro-Nazi spokesmen for Joseph Mengele to our classrooms."</p>
<p>Here’s the link again:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/academic_freedom/]Michael”>http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/academic_freedom/]Michael</a> B</p>
<p>The Fiske Guide to Getting Into the Right College
by Edward Fiske (Author), Bruce Hammond (Author)</p>
<p>There are many reasons why students and parents would want to consider a conservative college. Lets face it, the political climate at most elite liberal arts colleges is dominated by liberals. Even at schools where conservatives may constitute a silent majority, they are often reluctant to challenge the prevailing political correctness. Furthermore, university faculties are overwhelmingly liberal, almost without exception in arts-and-sciences schools. In recent years, the gap between the values of college faculties and the more conservative segments of our society has grown increasingly wide. Many families may be seeking one or more of the following:
- A place that emphasizes the Western tradition rather than multiculturalism
- A place where conservative opinions can be openly expressed without being branded as racist or sexist
- A place where moral and/or Christian values set the tenor of campus life</p>
<p>Obviously, any attempt at a comprehensive listing of such colleges would be impossible. The term conservative is itself a broad generalization that encompasses a wide array of values and beliefs. To paraphrase The Fiske Guide to Colleges, we offer this diverse list as a selection of the best and most interesting schools that tend toward a conservative perspective.</p>
<p>One pattern youll probably notice right away: most of the conservative schools are in the South. With few exceptions, colleges in the South are more conservative in a host of ways than their counterparts in the Northeast and Midwest (the West Coast is a mixed bag). Students who are seeking more of the traditional trappings of college life may want to look at some Southern colleges. Note as well that most of the colleges on the Catholic-affiliated list would also fit here.</p>
<p>Babson College
Baylor University
Birmingham-Southern College
Brigham Young University
Calvin College
DePauw University
Furman University
George Mason University
Grove City College
Hampden-Sydney College
Hope College
Houghton College
Pepperdine University
St. Olaf College
Trinity University (TX)
Wabash College
Wheaton College (IL)</p>
<p>See also:
Dartmouth College
University of the South
University of Southern California
Vanderbilt University
Washington and Lee University</p>
<p>There’s no corresponding list of liberal colleges in Fiske, but they do offer this:</p>
<p>The Fiske Guide to Getting Into the Right College
by Edward Fiske (Author), Bruce Hammond (Author)</p>
<p>Top Nonconformist Colleges</p>
<p>Let’s get one thing straight: these are not merely colleges with a somewhat liberal bent. Ted Kennedy is Liberal. The “New York Times” is liberal. Many of the most selective colleges in the country have a mainstream liberal tenor.</p>
<p>These are places where students question the very foundations of what might be termed “the establishment” (though that doesn’t mean they won’t end up as doctors or lawyers someday). Many of the student bodies call to mind images of the 1960s: long hair, protest marches, communal-style living, and lots of kids who look like Grateful Dead groupies. At others, pink hair blends with purple combat boots and black leather to provide a bohemian, Greenwich Village ambience. Alternative lifestyles such as homosexuality are not merely tolerated – they are embraced. In exchange for increased independence, students lose the traditional trappings of college life – no football games, no fraternity pranks, and often, little sense of their collective identity. For most students at these colleges, that’s no big loss.</p>
<p>By and large, the academic caliber of these places tends to be high. The act of questioning authority is generally a sign of intelligence and students at these colleges do more than their share. Virtually all of these colleges offer a nontraditional twist to the curriculum and many are among the leaders in innovation across the curriculum. Elements may include self-designed majors, broad thematic courses, hands-on experiences, and de-emphasis of letter grades. Most of these colleges tend to be strongest in the arts and humanities, though science is a specialty at a few.</p>
<p>The downside of these schools is the fact that they are so far out of step with the mainstream of society. A generation ago, a number of them were hot among legions of rebellious youth that numbered among the best and the brightest. Today, most of these colleges are less selective than they once were, though interest has rebounded somewhat in recent years. They also suffer, in varying degrees, from the blight of political correctness that stems from their lack of conservative and even moderate voices. Finally, they often have far less endowment than their more mainstream cousins and often run on shoestring budgets.</p>
<p>Antioch College
Bard College
Bennington College
University of California – Santa Cruz
Earlham College
Eugene Lang College
Hampshire College
Marlboro College
State University of New York – Rochester
Pitzer College
Sara Lawrence College</p>
<p>See Also:
College of the Atlantic
Beloit College
The Evergreen State College
Grinnell College
Lewis and Clark College
New College of Florida
Oberlin College
Reed College
St. John’s College</p>
<p>Winchester, how old is the Fiske book? The list of counterculture colleges looks dated to me. Antioch, of course, is no more; bereft of life, it rests in peace. Pitzer has been getting more selective and somewhat more mainstream. I’m surprised to even see Grinnell on the list; among Midwest colleges, it’s not known as particularly countercultural.</p>
<p>I suspect UC Santa Cruz will become more mainstream now with the increasing interest in public colleges in California as a result of the economic meltdown.</p>
<p>Fang</p>
<p>copyright 2007.</p>
<p>But yeah, a grain of salt goes well with any lists and rankings.</p>
<p>Just read several pages of this thread in one swell foop (sic) after having been away for a few days.</p>
<p>It’s fun. </p>
<p>morandi, I like your posts.</p>
<p>geeps, I wonder if you have any hair left after tipping this snowball off the top of the hill.</p>
<p>JHS, in post #776 you said: “That article is interesting. It (accurately) describes ideologically conservative hegemony in economics departments across the country, even at all those “liberal” universities,”</p>
<p>which reminded me about (at least) one of the surveys I posted a link to earlier. It went beyond the blanket liberal/conservative numbers in schools in general and broke them down by discipline. I don’t remember which survey it was, or what the actually numbers were, but I’m pretty sure it showed conservative numbers to be lower in arts and humanities and higher in business.</p>
<p>I’m way out of my element when it comes to economics. But before we jump on the “we’re all socialists now” bandwagon (re: the NYT article recently linked here, which I admittedly only skimmed), here’s some more fuel for the “who shot john?” fire.</p>
<p>An extended series of articles examining the origins of the current financial crisis, which says, among many other things:</p>
<p>“Fannie and Freddie became massive providers both of reliable votes among grateful low-income homeowners, and of massive giving to the Democratic Party by grateful investment bankers, both at the two government-sponsored enterprises and on Wall Street.”</p>
<p>[IBDeditorials.com:</a> Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor’s Business Daily](<a href=“http://www.ibdeditorials.com/series11.aspx]IBDeditorials.com:”>http://www.ibdeditorials.com/series11.aspx)</p>
<p>Glass-Steagal was repealed under Slick Willie.</p>
<p>good day, comrade.</p>
<p>(busy re-arranging the deck chairs on the USS Titanic)</p>
<p>Winchester,</p>
<p>Loved your recountal of a nonspecific anecdote about a student wanting to hear the “other side” of the unwilling medical experimentation atrocities. </p>
<p>So . . . conservatives want to conduct medical experiments on unwitting victims?</p>
<p>Got it.</p>
<p>I took Winchester to be approving Berube’s idea that there is no “other side” that any professor could possibly be advocating in the case of the Tuskegee experimental subjects-- that is, there’s no respectable academic, liberal or conservative, who would approve of not treating patients’ syphilis just so scientists could learn more about the progression of the disease. Is that right?</p>
<p>I further assumed that we were then supposed to conclude that this is a caricature of conservative academics’ beliefs-- that no conservative would approve of the Tuskegee abuse, but there are other academic positions disfavored and ignored by liberal academics that conservatives academics would teach. Is this right?</p>
<p>"Winchester,</p>
<p>Loved your recountal of a nonspecific anecdote about a student wanting to hear the “other side” of the unwilling medical experimentation atrocities. </p>
<p>So . . . conservatives want to conduct medical experiments on unwitting victims?</p>
<p>Got it."</p>
<p>no, not unwitting victims, but fully liberated self-aggrandized types.</p>
<p>the line forms to the left.</p>
<p>Geeps.</p>
<p>I feel your pain at having to spell things out for these people.</p>