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rfmcdonaldTowleroad's Andrew Belonsky linked to something grand.
The video is here.
The video may get taken down by its embarrassed posters, it may not, but I don't doubt that it'll go viral. Just Google "android marriage."
Three reactions come to mind.
1. Citing science-fiction television, without obvious anchoring, to justify specific real-world policies and attitudes risks being silly.
2. Citing science-fiction television, or any document of popular culture, or any document, without understanding it is foolish. The android character of fits into the same role of "alien, but understandable outsider" that Spock played on the original series and Odo in Deep Space 9. Data's specific type of non-humanity, his origins in human manufacturing, was frequently explored. The speaker doesn't seem to have paid attention to the second-season episode "The Meausre of a Man", which saw Picard et al. defend Data against the charges of being an entity of the second rank, as a thing that could be assembled and disassembled at will. Data, it turned out, was just as much a person with just as many rights as anyone else. If you cite science-fiction television, at least cite with some meaning of what your subject actually means
3. People making silly arguments in support of bigotry, as Belonsky noted in his post, can easily be mocked, and this mockery will help bring them down..
So, please, help this video go viral! For if we don't defend marriage now, one day we'll be assimilated by the Borg. Or something.
Consider a rambling argument made by Robert Broadus, head of Protect Marriage Maryland, at a hearing on a proposed same-sex marriage bill.If you pass this bill, you will set the groundwork that one day, when artificial intelligence is that advanced, we'll be considering whether or not people can marry their Androids.
If anyone has watched Star Trek, and you've seen the character Data, he was able to generate a tear, because he could feel emotion. If you knock down marriage between a man and a woman now, if you say any two people who love each other can get married, then you set that precedent.
The crowd couldn't suppress their giggles, of course.
The video is here.
The video may get taken down by its embarrassed posters, it may not, but I don't doubt that it'll go viral. Just Google "android marriage."
Three reactions come to mind.
1. Citing science-fiction television, without obvious anchoring, to justify specific real-world policies and attitudes risks being silly.
2. Citing science-fiction television, or any document of popular culture, or any document, without understanding it is foolish. The android character of fits into the same role of "alien, but understandable outsider" that Spock played on the original series and Odo in Deep Space 9. Data's specific type of non-humanity, his origins in human manufacturing, was frequently explored. The speaker doesn't seem to have paid attention to the second-season episode "The Meausre of a Man", which saw Picard et al. defend Data against the charges of being an entity of the second rank, as a thing that could be assembled and disassembled at will. Data, it turned out, was just as much a person with just as many rights as anyone else. If you cite science-fiction television, at least cite with some meaning of what your subject actually means
3. People making silly arguments in support of bigotry, as Belonsky noted in his post, can easily be mocked, and this mockery will help bring them down..
I've argued before that ridicule and satire can be effective routes to taking down an ideological nemesis. As British Think Tank Demos noted in their study, A Radical Approach to Extremism, "Satire has long been recognized as a powerful tool to undermine the popularity of social movements: both the Ku Klux Klan and the British Fascist party in the 1930s were seriously harmed by sustained satire."
While surely we must continue our legislative and social actions, a little comedy never hurt anyone, and taking some light-hearted pokes at our opponents could may just help laugh them out of town.
So, please, help this video go viral! For if we don't defend marriage now, one day we'll be assimilated by the Borg. Or something.
