Positive Liberty

The post “Not So Different” has spawned a fascinating discussion, but it’s not been what I had expected.

I think it’s worth reiterating the main thrust of the post before moving on; I beg your pardon if this seems pedantic (among others, Ed Brayton seems to have understood me from the get-go). If you like, you can skip to the boldface sentence below, where I present an example that will introduce some very new material.

Here’s the key passage from “Not So Different:”

Now I could rant about Orson Scott Card’s anti-gay views forever, but that’s not what I really want to do here. What struck me most about Card’s stance is not how differently we see things–but how much we are the same. In a world not so far removed from our own, in a world where I had turned out straight instead of gay, I would most certainly be writing on his side. If, that is, I bothered to write about those irresponsible gays at all.

Perversely, Card diagnoses the problems before our society with perfect accuracy: The American family really is disintegrating. All too often, homosexuals really are isolated from the mainline of human life. Far more than we like to admit, gays come from broken homes and don’t have a mom or dad to spend the holidays with. A great many of us are lonely and unhappy.

And in a world not so far removed from our own, a straighter Jason would lay the blame for all of this at the feet of the gays themselves. After all, they–and not I–had broken nature’s laws. In a world not so very different, it would be easy for me to spend Christmas with my less tolerant biological parents, who would still welcome a girlfriend or a fiancée, but who turn my husband away at the door. In a world not so different, it would be so easy for me to think in Card’s terms.

I suspect it would be easy for many of you, too.

It’s easy–far too easy–to dismiss Card as a crank, to equate him with Fred Phelps, or to say unkind things about his religion. These approaches ignore Card’s arguments, which only makes them seem stronger. In “Not So Different,” I responded instead with some personal testimony to show that gays really are a part of the mainstream of human life. I’m convinced that this type of engagement is the most constructive of all.

Crucially, same-sex marriage, and the legitimacy of gay families, are still issues where rational people can disagree. A long tradition runs against both of them, a tradition that, when it is articulated properly, we would do well to acknowledge rather than deride.

Many of us adhered to the traditional view not so long ago, and in many ways, we remain closer to it than we often think. I suspect that somewhere in this closeness, there is also a peculiar strength that accrues to our side: We are not so different after all. The changes that we seek are in the end not so threatening, and we need to remember it, even when confronted by people–like Orson Scott Card–who make our blood boil.

In fifty years, I imagine that the issue of same-sex marriage will have clarified considerably. By then, one of us–Orson Scott Card or Jason Kuznicki–will look like a fool and a rogue. The other will look like a defender of everything that is right and good about western civilization. Care to bet, right now, on which one is which? The defender of tradition? Or the one who took an enormous chance at the founding of a new institution?

It’s the fearsomeness of this question that makes me tread so lightly around the most rational of our opponents, to give credit–and more–where credit is due.

Now, because my readers tend to agree with me about same-sex marriage, the point may well be lost by using Orson Scott Card as an example. It’s too easy to write him off.

So let’s change focus and examine an issue that is for me a lot more difficult to decide.

Writing at Alas, A Blog, guest blogger Kameron of Brutal Women addresses the prejudice against overweight people, one that presumes the obese are unhealthy and unhappy through a set of their own bad choices–and that losing weight will make things right again. It’s a topic that Alas, A Blog has covered in the past, but until now I have not had much to say: I have been unsure what to think, and my rule in these cases is to remain silent.

Breaking with my usual habit, I’m going to present some thoughts that I know are only half-formed, as a way of showing the difficulty of deciding real-life moral issues. It is my hope that if you do find my opinions bigoted, you will be kind enough to correct me without any undue nastiness in return.

So…

In the public policy debates about obesity, my first impulse is to roll my eyes. As a libertarian, I know that such arguments are almost always a warm-up to some further and totally needless government imposition. I want the whole issue to go away, because the longer it sticks around, the more likely it is to end up costing me money while doing little or nothing to help anyone at all.

My second impulse is far less charitable. After all, I have caught myself saying, the obese can change if they want. They can eat differently, become more active, and exercise more. Or they can stay as they are, if that’s what they prefer, and face the consequences of their choices, which may include health problems and unhappiness. It’s their life, not mine.

Shades of Orson Scott Card.

Yes, I know perfectly well that this is exactly what others say about homosexuals: Being gay ruins your health; being gay makes you miserable; gays can change if they want. I know this, yet my uncharitable thoughts remain.

The parallel is close, I find, but it is not perfect. I am convinced that many people can lose weight. I’ve seen it happen, and at any rate it is far easier to lose weight than it is to change one’s sexual orientation. Likewise, there seems to be much firmer data about the health risks of obesity qua obesity–as opposed to homosexuality qua homosexuality, which poses no risk of illness at all. (Note that I exclude unsafe sex, which is quite another matter.)

In the end, I can’t help but conclude that overweight people may be relatively more responsible for their condition than gay people are, and ultimately it means that I have a hard time seeing the two issues as quite equivalent. Still, I know that I ought not to judge a person by weight alone, and I am fighting all tendencies to the contrary.

Kameron in particular has given me a great piece of intellectual ammunition:

I come from a family of big people who put on weight and retain it pretty easily. There’s nothing wrong with that. Twenty extra pounds is actually better for you than being five pounds underweight. The problem is, my family struggled with those twenty pounds for so long that they eventually got depressed and gave up, and twenty became fifty, became eighty, became one hundred, and now we’re in some trouble, because they’re having trouble getting up the stairs, they can’t walk around the block, and listening to some of my family members gasping for breath is really scary.

I have an aunt who just got gastric bypass surgery. My dad’s scheduled for it in February. My sister’s “mother-in-law” is currently recovering. Everyone’s very excited at the idea that if you starve yourself because you’re stomach is so small, you suffer from malnutrition and lose weight. It’s like magic. ha ha

So what’s wrong with suffering from malnutrition and losing weight? It’ll make `um feel better, right?

Wrong.

You know why?

Cause most of these people don’t have any hobbies. They don’t know any other way to live. They’ve relied on food as entertainment for so long that now that they don’t eat, they have no idea what to do with all of their time.

And that was really the issue all along, wasn’t it? Finding something else to do besides eating. Picking themselves up from depression (usually incited by the fact that they had twenty “extra” pounds that were actually perfectly healthy for their size and body composition) and building model airplanes, or taking up some Jazzercise classes, or even joining a scrapbooking class. Something besides eating.

And they don’t have anything.

That’s my biggest worry about all of our quick fixes, all of those “lose those twenty pounds and suddenly your life will all work out” myths. It’s a bunch of crap. Sure, there are going to be those who find that starving themselves and being thin(ner) is a good kickstart to get them exercising and eating right (two of the biggest factors in combating depression) and may give them the self confidence to start other hobbies, to get their shit together.

Amen. In all the moral debates about obesity, we have entirely lost sight of the pursuit of individual happiness. A fulfilled, flourishing, eudamonious life may be gay or straight, fat or thin, depending on the individual who lives it. In either case, the means–food and sex–exist to accomplish an end, the good life, whose contours are more difficult to distinguish than many of us have imagined. Both of these means, food and sex, must be treated as such, and neither must ever come to serve as an end in itself. But how do we decide these things? It’s here, on these grounds, that the real debate should begin.

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