Dating to disappoint and the Bulworth solution

0 thoughts on “Dating to disappoint and the Bulworth solution”

1. One of my sisters married a Maori, the other a Pacific Islander. I do think though, that if you are going to mix-races in marriage, you have to be prepared for all the cultural and family challenges that go with it.

   As for mixed-religious dating, the answer is No. In fact, Hell no. I have had the opportunity several times, but would never consider it. The Bible forbids it, for a start.

2. Of course, John, it depends on what we mean by mixed-religious dating. Can a Pentecostal date a Reform Calvinist, or is that too broad a river to cross?

3. Hugo,
   I think you’re right, you can’t have true unity with other races and maintain allegiance to your own ethnic group. You have to be willing to blend in with the other group and become a part of their culture.

4. To a point. But if you’re not careful, you wind up with a problem we see much of these days – people who are searching for roots, searching for where they’ve come from. There are many people trying to construct some sort of “cultural” traditions to give themselves some solidity, to help them know who they are.

   At one point, we saw a bit of this difference in our family. My European ancestors have been here since the 1680-1720 migrations, primarily from Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, and Wales. My family has put a lot of work into maintaining family history and records, and in researching records that were missing. The farm on which I grew up has been in my family for over 150 years. That gave us stability, a sense of knowing who we are.

   My husband’s immigrant ancestors didn’t come over until the 1850′s, primarily famine Irish and ethnicly cleansed Prussian. They didn’t maintain ties to their pre-American cultures and there was no real “American culture” in which their children could grow. As a result, for a long time, my husband was searching for roots.

   I’ve known many others who’ve experienced this as well. It’s the one problem I have with the “American Melting Pot” phenomenon. People *need* roots. They *need* to know where they’ve come from, what their ancestors cultures were.

5. For the record, the vast majority of the audience when I saw that movie was black and they laughed just as hard.

   Funny, my co-blogger and I were discussing this issue today, since we’ve both been deemed the wrong race to date someone we’re with. Still, I try to walk carefully around this issue, since some people are aching to deliberately misunderstand me, I’ve learned the hard way.

6. The thing that occured to me just as I hit “post” is this–people who argue for demanding intra-culture/race marriage is important for holding their families together are lying to themselves. They end up, more often than not, ejecting children from the family (my boyfriend doesn’t speak to his mother any longer) and of course, the very existence of mixed-race children thereby becomes problematic, since they grow up knowing that some family members don’t think of them as real somehow.

7. Amanda, the problem you cited is the issue my grandmother always brought up with mixed-race marriages. She’d grown up in an era where those who were openly of mixed heritage suffered quite a lot of prejudice and abuse. It was her opinion that people who married inter-racially where being selfish and not considering the abuse their future children would endure.

   Thankfully, the abuses aren’t as bad now as they were when she was younger, but she hasn’t seen that change. She still feels sorrow for children of mixed heritage and thinks their parents were being selfish when they entered mixed relationships.

8. Just a brilliant scene and a brilliant line.

   Caitriona, my grandmother has said similar things. I’ve always found that line of thinking deeply infuriating. It’s basically saying, “Small-minded bullies might try to prevent us from living our lives and being happy, so we better just do what they want…” Screw that.

   Amanda: exactly. Anyone willing to place this sort of thing above family probably doesn’t care anywhere near as much about “family” as they claim to. “Family” is frequently political code word for enforcing exclusionary social norms.

9. djw,

   I used to get really frustrated by that. But after becoming a parent, I started seeing where she was coming from. Each and every decision I’ve made in my life impacts my children. It’s probably be a lot better for everyone if we’d all put more forethought into what we do, especially those bullies of which you speak. But the bullies needing to behave better doesn’t remove any of the responsibility from our shoulders of any consequences our children live with due to our actions.

10. Each and every decision I’ve made in my life impacts my children. It’s probably be a lot better for everyone if we’d all put more forethought into what we do, especially those bullies of which you speak.

    Being childless, I can only imagine rather than empathize. Still, the message, it seems to me, is that the children between you and the person you love would be better off not existing than possibly facing small-minded bullies. Because that’s the message, isn’t it? I don’t see some other children with some other mother/father as “replacement children.”

11. But we’ll never all really be the same color, no matter how much we fuck. It would be kind of sad if we were all exactly the same shade, a la The Lathe of Heaven, anyway, wouldn’t it? The problem isn’t the color we are; it’s the importance we attach to that color.

    I admit I want my kids to marry Jews. What color they are is of no importance to me whatsoever.

12. At the time our grandmothers formed their opinions, in some places the children could be killed by those “small-minded bullies.”

    Thankfully, times have changed – in some places. But there are still places here in the US where one can be killed for having the “wrong” color of skin, or the “wrong” opinions.

    At some point in the near future, people I know may be “getting in the way” in South Texas. These people are having to weigh their family commitments against their societal/moral/faith commitments. If they choose to go to South Texas, there may well be serious consequences. Their children will have to live the rest of their lives with the effects of that. It is not something to be chosen lightly.

13. It is not something to be chosen lightly.

    Absolutely. But neither is it “selfish” to make such a choice.

14. At one point in time, perhaps it *was* selfish to make certain choices – those that brought you pleasure but brought pain to others. That is a bit different than making a choice to go and stand between people intent on hurting others and those whom they intend to hurt.

15. I do thank y’all for those comments, though. Suddenly, the thoughts milling around in my head for July 3rd’s message at church (Bringing Peace to the World) are starting to come together. Gracias.

16. At one point in time, perhaps it *was* selfish to make certain choices

    You know, for hundreds of years, every single member of my family who reproduced knew that they were bringing into the world children who would face discrimination, who might face violence, who might be killed just for being who they were. That is part of the burden with which my family has lived, and I understand how profoundly it’s a burden that someone of your ethnic background cannot understand. But it really just horrifies me that you seem to be suggesting that it is “selfish” for members of oppressed groups to have children. And that is what you’re suggesting, whether you’ve thought it through or not. Your grandmother thought it was “selfish” for you to have children who would not have the racial privilege she took for granted. But since many other people’s children would not have access to that racial privilege no matter what, I can’t see how it wouldn’t have been “selfish” of them to have children at all.

17. I feel that if you don’t value your own identity/roots/ethnicity, you’ll never be able to value any one else’s. That’s sort of what’s happening here. For all that you want all the colors to marry each other, there isn’t actually any valuing of diversity going on. The opposite – you’re also heading towards a world where everybody looks the same and thinks the same.

    Maybe you feel that your ethnic background didn’t give you any aspects of culture or life style especially worth preserving or bringing with you into your marriage. So of course you won’t be able to understand when other people value those aspects of their lives and look for a partner with whom they can preserve them. Of course that doesn’t necessarily preclude ‘mixed’ partnerships – racially/culturally/religiously, etc. But it certainly requires the other partner to respect and enjoy their partner’s heritage that they are choosing to bring forward with them.

    Hugo, it sounds like you’re valuing the colors more than the heritages. So fine for you and your personal life and the family life you want to build. But to me, not necessarily the secret formula for solidarity among different peoples.

18. There’s no question, Tara, that one can enjoy aspects of one’s heritage and tradition. One can marry (as members of my family have) other folks in the Social Register in order to ensure that all the kids can also have what is essentially a WASP privilege (though a minor one, surely, in today’s world). But one can also meld one’s cultures together! My fiancee has taught me a love for Colombian food and a passion for West African music, for example — I’ve been enriched by that. I want my children to be fed by many rivers. I don’t want them bland and sanitized; I want them to be a diverse amalgam. They will have Jewish, Scottish, English, German, Croatian, African, Spanish, and indigenous American ancestry — and will have a handful of aspects of each of these in customs and traditions our family will celebrate.

19. I’m 2nd generation American on my dad’s side, and 3rd generation American on my mother’s side. With my mother’s parents’ generation, the big deal was not marrying outside the ethnic group (Lithuanians), although actually, most of them did, and there was no strife over it. Turns out, the Really Big Deal was marrying outside the religion – one great-aunt married a non-Catholic, and her own mother didn’t attend the wedding to show her disapproval.

    My mother, born in 1939, was always encouraged to find a nice Lithuanian boy to settle down with, but she found “nice Lithuanian boys” dull. She deliberately dated Italian and Irish boys as they were more fun, and married my Irish Catholic dad in 1965. (Interestingly enough, my dad’s parents had also asked him to find “a nice Irish girl” to marry.) But once each set of my grandparents met the person chosen by their child, they fell in love too.

    My parents never encouraged me to date or not date anybody of any ethnicity or religion or class. As a child, I found myself physically attracted to people with very different skin tones and facial features than my own, but I fell in love with, and married, a man of Scotch-Irish descent from Kentucky, who was raised Southern Baptist. Since by that time, I had left Christianity for Neo-Paganism, I experienced a lot of culture shock learning about the religious traditions he grew up with. I don’t think I’ll ever understand his family’s brand of Protestantism – it’s just so foreign to the Catholicism I was raised with, and the earth-based religion I follow now.

    My husband was raised by rural central KY parents who did warn him never to bring home a black girl. On both sides of his family, there have been serial divorces and domestic abuse and drug problems. Oh, murder, too, and prison time. But no mixed-race marriages that I can think of. OTOH, while some new blood could only be a good thing for this bunch, I wouldn’t want to wish them on anybody. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-intellectual-and-proud-of-it. And anybody who isn’t a stone cold conformist is treated like shit.

20. Sally, you wrote: I understand how profoundly it’s a burden that someone of your ethnic background cannot understand and Your grandmother thought it was “selfish” for you to have children who would not have the racial privilege she took for granted. But since many other people’s children would not have access to that racial privilege no matter what, I can’t see how it wouldn’t have been “selfish” of them to have children at all.

    Sally, you assume much. My grandmother grew up in a time where there was rampant discrimination, and children of “mixed blood” were discriminated against more harshly than any, by those on all sides.

    In addition, my family has a history that includes people who were “half-breeds,” to use the old term for those of mixed caucasian and Amer-Indian blood, and those who were Scottish and Irish. “Half-breeds” didn’t fit into either world and were often hated by both worlds. The Scots and Irish, especially the Irish, were hated by many, before the focus of most acknowledged racism became the blacks. It was not an easy life. Added to that is the treatment received by those members of the family who were members of historic peace churches.

    Taking all of this into consideration, I can see where my grandmother developed her philosophy of not making waves and not discussing with people outside the family any areas where any of us differed from the established “norm.” The problem I see with this is that it evolved into there being some members of the family who became a part of the “norm.”

    Throughout history, racism and discrimination hasn’t been just a “black/white” issue. It has taken the form of anti-Indian, anti-Irish, anti-Scottish, anti-Asian, anti-German, anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant, anti-Anabaptist, anti-non-Christian, anti-black, anti-white, etc. It is an anti-different issue, and it is wrong. But condemning those who hold some version of racism/discrimination without trying to understand *why* they feel as they do is ineffective in solving the problem and is just as wrong, IMO.

21. Cait, it’s selfish to tell your children that their happiness has to meet your approval. My great-uncle was forbidden to marry the woman he loved by his mother becaue she was in the “wrong” social class. He drank himself to death, but at least he met his obligations to his parents to choose his spouse according to their standards, not his. And you know who we all side with now? Him, not them.

    My grandpa married my grandma over his mother’s objections and she managed to survive.

22. Hugo asked: ”How can we form religious and political unity when we still hold historic allegiances to our own ethnic group, I wonder? Isn’t Beatty’s Bulworth, for all his madcap vulgarity, absolutely right about the solution?”

    No. I believe that we can respect and honor other ethnic groups while still holding allegiances to our own. This is the very essence of “diversity” that is so often invoked by self-proclaimed “progressives” (who I believe are not nearly as “progressive” as they like to think they are).

    He continues: ”But I’m aware of the weakness of what can be called the “Bulworth” solution. I know full well that the desire to retain cultural distinctives is not the same as a belief in racial superiority. For example, for Jews and Armenians whose forebears survived genocide, the preservation of cultural identity has an imperative to it that I don’t always grasp but of which I am not unaware.” (Gotta love those strained double-negative affectations Hugo) ”In a culture that is predominantly Anglo still, is the Bulworth solution — Hugo’s solution too — another form of well-meaning genocide?”

    Yes, although I would characterize it more as self-loathing than “well-meaning.”

    Hugo, this whole tome bothers me. It goes against everything that diversity is meant to stand for, and I for one have learned to honor and celebrate diversity. I used to believe in the “melting pot” model but then was forced to examine past efforts. For example, Native Americans and African Americans would probably be able to shed some light on what kind of effect the “melting pot” model has had on their cultural heritage. What you present here seem to suggest that we should all abandon our cultural roots for some sort of ill-defined greater cultural blend.

    Or are you suggesting that only WASPs abandon their cultural heritage?

    And this: ”The Bulworth solution excites and inspires me. But I also wonder if that doesn’t say more about me and my whiteness (and my hero Warren Beatty) than it does about the sensibility of the solution itself.”

    Yes, to me it does. Your missive seems full of self-loathing and what has been termed “white liberal guilt.” I for one am proud of my WASP heritage, that being the one of Newton, Cromwell, Maxwell, Churchill, et al., thus I celebrate my culture and heritage as much as any other member of a defined ethnic group. I refuse to feel guilty for my heritage and instead am quite proud of it.

    As it should be.

23. mythago wrote: “The problem isn’t the color we are; it’s the importance we attach to that color.”

    Exactly – well put.

24. At one point in time, perhaps it *was* selfish to make certain choices – those that brought you pleasure but brought pain to others.

    As Sally said, by this standard many ethnic groups should have quit having children and died out a long time ago.

    Sally referred to it obliquely, so I’ll be blunt: for centuries, Jews were subject to persecution, not merely with a wink from the law, but with its full force. How “selfish” of them to have children, knowing they would be subject to pogroms! How dare they have children who would suffer!

    I’m sure you’ll explain this isn’t what you meant at all, and perhaps it’s not, but that’s certainly what you said. If it’s “selfish” to have children knowing that they will be subjected to bigotry and harassment, then what you’re really saying is that certain people shouldn’t have children at all.

25. Amanda, nowhere did I advocate requiring parental approval in marital decisions. Nor did my grandmother. However, care should be taken in all our decision-making, whether we are the parent or the child. Wouldn’t you agree?

    One of our family stories is of the oldest son of a Virginia plantation owner who wished to marry a Cherokee woman. He stood to inherit the plantation. His father told him that he could inherit, or he could marry the woman he loved and be disowned. He married his love and they moved to Arkansas.

    Surprisingly, last fall I stumbled across some distant cousins who remained closer to the Cherokee side of the family after that move. The woman I spoke with is a dancer with a local Native educational organization which teaches people about the cultures of various Amer-Indian tribes.

26. Cromwell

    {shudder}

27. Mr. Bad, I fail to see how one’s cultural heritage is inevitably lost by encouraging inter-marriage. What one gets as a byproduct of intermarriage is the best of multiple worlds. One gets sangria and Irish whiskey, Christmas and Kwanzaa, dim sum and hummus, the dreidl and the cross. Why not allow each generation to treat their inheritance as a smorgasbord, from which to pick and choose traditions to pass on? Why not create a new heritage for one’s kids?

    I’m hardly ashamed of my WASP heritage, but that doesn’t mean I need to marry another WASP to pass it on.

    Full disclosure: wife number one was half Chinese/half Filipino. Wife number two was from a wealthy WASPy family (my uncle and her aunt once dated in the 1950s). Wife number three was also quite WASPy, with a healthy dose of Irishness put in for good measure. I’ve never made romantic decisions based on race or heritage, or, for that matter, faith. (First wife was lapsed Catholic, second wife liberal Episcopalian/Buddhist, third wife raised Presbyterian turned Pentecostal.)

28. Seems y’all are skipping this part of my comments:

    It is an anti-different issue, and it is wrong. But condemning those who hold some version of racism/discrimination without trying to understand *why* they feel as they do is ineffective in solving the problem and is just as wrong, IMO.

29. myathgo, very well said. The same logic could also be applied to the poor as well. It’s a line of reasoning that leads to all kinds of places the people pushing it would reject, which is reason enough to reconsider the initial premises.

    Mr. Bad: Cromwell? Really? There are certainly plenty of people in our waspy tradition who deserve admiration, but I’m not sure being an incompetent despot should get you on the A list. That’s probably a discussion for another day.

    I didn’t notice it until Mr. Bad endorsed answered your rhetorical question in the affirmative, but I’d like to make the humble case for not watering down the meaning of the term genocide, regardless of how we feel about the value of the preservation of ethnic identities and traditions over generations.

30. However, care should be taken in all our decision-making, whether we are the parent or the child. Wouldn’t you agree?

    I forget the name for this rhetorical device, so I’ll just note that making a broad statement with which nobody sensible would disagree (“we should take care in all our decision-making”) means little as to the validity of a more narrow statement (“it’s selfish to having children who will suffer discrimination”).

    One gets sangria and Irish whiskey, Christmas and Kwanzaa, dim sum and hummus, the dreidl and the cross.

    Hugo, I am speechless at how unbelievably clueless this statement is. Do you really believe the cross is no more significant a cultural symbol than hummus, and that Jewish and Christian holidays pose no more significant conflict than having two kinds of alcohol in the house? That passing on a tradition to your children has no more meaning than letting them pick out which kind of spaghetti sauce they like at a buffet lunch?

    I’m all about diversity and respecting–and often, combining–others’ traditions. But one of the things that really bites interfaith (and often intercultural) couples in the ass is minimizing how important traditions can be, and how tough it will be when those traditions conflict.

    Sometimes those traditions are minimal (do we open presents on Christmas Eve, like your family, or Christmas Day, like mine?). Sometimes they are not (will our children attend Catholic Mass or prayers at the mosque?).

31. condemning those who hold some version of racism/discrimination without trying to understand *why* they feel as they do is ineffective in solving the problem and is just as wrong

    Depends on your strategy. There are some bigots out there that are awfully stubborn. The best strategy might be to a) politically defeat the bigots when they try to create policy based on their views, and b) create a cultural and educational environment that will lessen the likelihood and frequency of the bigots passing their bigotry down to their children. Neither of those strategies require any deep understanding of the sources of bigotry.

    When I was growing up, I had a good friend whom I briefly dated who was Native American. That was the group most subject to open bigotry and racism in my community. Deliberativist that I am, I argued with these people endlessly. As far as I could tell, their bigotry was based on a believe that these people don’t belong in our community, and because they’re inherently lazy, as well as a resentment that treaty rights might still occasionally be enforced (such matters had no meaningful impact on the rest of the local community, but it didn’t matter). I’m really not sure understanding the nuances of that worldview has helped me figure out much about how to combat it. I hope to help create a world in which these people’s children will come to view their parents’ bigotry as outdated and embarrassing. That’s probably the best we can do.

    It’s an unfortunately common human trait to fear and dislike those different from oneself, and then come up with various rationalizations for such that fear and hate. These habits of mind are not always permanent, but they certainly tend to be. Focusing your energy on understanding those rationalizations is, most of the time, misdirected energy, IMHO.

32. mythago,

    Thank you for speaking on Hugo’s comment about cultural mish-mashing.

33. Cait, if your parents forbid you to marry, defying them is disrespect. Period. There is no in-between. I stand firm–parents who tell their children who to marry, or even offer guilt trips, are being unbearably selfish. Why have kids if you don’t want them to grow into their own people?

34. The dreidl and the cross can work together, folks. I can’t tell you how many serious inter-faith couples I know who work very, very hard to honor both aspects of their heritage. I know what it is to go to synagogue on a Friday and church on Sunday and to believe both are vital. It makes for long weekends!

    The cross is not hummus. But just as we can blend our culinary traditions, we can blend and synthesize our religious traditions without compromising the distinctives of either. I have seen it done, seen it done by family and friends dear to me. It isn’t easy. But it can work.

35. And I agree care should be taken. A person should be careful to marry who will make her happy, and make sure that she’s choosing for that reason and not to please parents. Parents should be careful not to ruin their children’s lives by putting unfair expectations on them.

36. djw,

    I find that it helps *me* to deal with bigots on a better level if I understand a bit of their reasoning. Keeps my head from exploding, if you will.

    I agree that you have to employ educational means with the children so that the next generation has a different way of viewing things. That is why we have high school-level international student exchange. People have realized that to effectively deal with misconceptions about a culture, one must truly learn about that culture. They’ve also realized this is more easily done with students than with adults. So the students go as ambassadors to teach people in a different culture about their own, and to learn about that different culture. Then they go back home and teach their communities about the culture in which they lived.

    I’ve written a bit more about this on my blog.

37. To follow up on Amanda’s comment, disrespect is a two-way street. Telling your (adult) children who marry (and who not to) is disrespectful to them–it’s very insulting and infantilizing to be told by your parents that you may be an adult, but you still can’t be trusted with the important decisions in your life.

38. Cait, if your parents forbid you to marry, defying them is disrespect. Period. There is no in-between.

    I’m not sure that I agree with that. Just as was mentioned earlier about students whose parents told them that they should go into medicine or engineering but the students went into other fields instead, it is possible to disagree with one’s parents and do what one needs to do without being disrespectful of the parents. Unless, of course, you’re coming from a stance that one must *always* do as directed by one’s parents, for the entirity of one’s life. But I’m coming from a stance where after a child reaches a certain age, a parent can advise and guide, but the child makes the final decision.

39. Caitriona, that exchange program sounds great!

    On the “what constitutes disrespect” question, the fact is, it depends a fair bit on the decisions made by those who would be disrespected. My parents have treated me like an autonomous adult since I was a teenager, giving advice if I want it, but otherwise staying out of choices I make about my career, education, and social and personal life. As such, it would be very hard for me to disrespect them–I’d have to insult them personally or something. For other parents who are a bit slower to learn this trick about having adult children, the choice all-too-often becomes “follow what I find to be my own path AND disrespect my parents or do neither.” Parents who put their adult children in that position deserve what they get. A lot of people I know with those sorts of parents beat themselves up until some point (usually around mid-20′s) when they learned the trick of ignoring their parents with a sort of emotional spam filter for guilt trips. When that trick is learned it’s like a lightbulb goes on. Of course, any chance of a close relationship with their parents is gone, but the road to that state started with the parents lack of respect, not the children’s.

40. I thought that Brazil, specifically Rio, was where this was already happening–the population is “brown,” a mixture of white, black, native, everything. As skin color becomes much more neutralized, so do racial prejudices.

41. A parent who feels that he/she gets input into a child’s marriage decisions is going to feel disrespected when they are told to buzz off, don’t you think?

42. This is no small matter–if my parents voice disapproval of someone I’m going to marry, I assume that they must hate that person to be so bold.

43. Amanda,

    You can respectfully disagree with your parents *without* telling them to “buzz off.”

44. djw (among others) wrote: “Mr. Bad: Cromwell? Really? There are certainly plenty of people in our waspy tradition who deserve admiration, but I’m not sure being an incompetent despot should get you on the A list. That’s probably a discussion for another day.”

    Apparently the point that there are always good and bad examples of every different ethnic group was missed by many. Germans have Martin Luther and Hitler; Russians have Stravinsky and Stalin; Italians have Michaelangelo and Mussolini; etc. Just because a person is, e.g., Cambodian doesn’t mean that they should be ashamed of their heritage because Pol Pot was also Cambodian. In fact, they have the right to be proud of their heritage. That’s all I meant by putting Cromwell in there alongisde the others.

    Hugo, you said “In a culture that is predominantly Anglo still, is the Bulworth solution — Hugo’s solution too — another form of well-meaning genocide?” and then noted that Bulworth said “Rich people’ve stayed on top, dividing white people from colored people. But white people’ve got more in Common with colored people than rich people. We’re just gonna have to eliminate ‘em.” and then later on when Connie asked him who he meant, he specifically said “white people.”

    Now, perhaps I’m missing some nuance of logic here, but when you say that “the Bulworth solution [is] Hugo’s solution too,” I read that to mean that both of you agree that “we’re just going to have to eliminate them [white people].”

    I don’t call eliminating white people “encouraging inter-marriage,” I call it genocide.

45. Read the whole quote, Mr. Bad. He says Black people, brown people, etc. too.

    And DJW is right. It’s dangerous to misuse the word genocide. To use it to describe assimilation is indefensible, and I’ve been guilty of that in the past.

46. “I thought that Brazil, specifically Rio, was where this was already happening–the population is “brown,” a mixture of white, black, native, everything. As skin color becomes much more neutralized, so do racial prejudices.”

    Brazil has constructed race in a very different way than we do in the U.S. I would posit that it is their way of viewing race that has historically allowed a greater openness to mixing, and not the other way around.

47. I’ll take your word for it that there are serious interfaith couples out there, though I’ve never known any. However, I’m having trouble believing it’s “scalable.” At PMC, as you probably know, there’s a couple that hops between us and the wife’s Catholic church, but I’ve yet to actually meet them, because they aren’t around that much. The core of the church’s life — as seems to be true in every church I’ve been around — is made up largely of married couples who both go there. So while I can see fitting in an interfaith couple here and there, I can’t see how religious communities can continue to exist if everybody’s fucking everybody, so to speak.

48. Hi Hugo,

    I read the whole quote and I get it. According to Bulworth, black people, brown people, white people all have to go in the name of “assimilation.” So I’m back to one of my original questions: Assimilation into what? If there is no intact culture left, there can be no assimilation; the only thing left is to create a new culture. But why? We already have a lot of cultures that on the whole function pretty well.

    Like I said, the option Bulworth and you seem to advocate sounds like the antithesis of diversity, and frankly, pretty boring. What I like about other cultures is that they’re different than mine. Under your scenario that would disappear into a monotonous sea of beige.

    Boring.

    As for the term “genocide,” I agree, it’s inappropriate to describe assimilation, so why did you use it in the first place? I’ve just been responding to your question, so don’t try to pin that one on me Big Guy.

49. Assimilation into what?

    Why, the Borg, of course. The world where everyone is the same. “You *will* be assimilated.”

50. Cait, how do you respectfully disagree with someone insulting your choice of a mate? Maybe when I was younger I didn’t have the backbone, but now I see how disrespectful it is of someone’s most important choice to tell them you disapprove because they should pick someone according to standards laid out by you.

51. How do you respectfully disagree? “Mom, Dad, I love him. I am going to marry him. I would love for you to be involved in our lives, because I love you with all my heart. But I won’t call off the wedding just because you haven’t allowed yourselves to know him or to see how much I love him and how happy I am being with him.”

    Would I have been able to do that when I was younger? With my mom, yes. With my grandparents, I probably would have avoided the issue as much as I could have. With my father, it didn’t matter to me what he thought.

52. Martin Luther is your example to contrast Hitler?? Oy! No wonder Germany didn’t work out for the Jews!

    Hugo, I think it’s no coincidence that it’s you speaking as a Christian for combining the ‘dreidl and the cross’. The dreidl and the cross??? A children’s toy of eastern European origins associated with a relatively lesser holiday and THE cross??? Again, I say, oy. But that’s just the aside. Even if you chose a more appropriate Jewish symbol, well, I don’t know… The Talmud and the cross? Does that work for anybody? It’s not really working for me. The Trinity and the Shema? Definitely not working… The fact is that Judaism is not compatible with belief in Jesus’ divinity. If someone came to you and said, “well, I don’t believe that Jesus, if he lived, was anything other than a charismatic person who inspired the people around him, I follow the Jewish teaching that life starts at conception and abortion is permissible and in some cases mandatory, and believe that action is more important than faith, but hey, I have a christmas tree and we hunt easter eggs! would you reply “Hey, it’s really great how you’re passing down your Christian heritage!”??

53. hmmm… As a Christian, I’d have to reply that we don’t always have a Christmas tree, because we aren’t quite comfortable with the secularization of Christmas, and that we don’t hunt Easter eggs because we feel that that particular activity trivializes the meaning of Easter.

54. I guess I do a better (or worse) job of compartmentalizing myself. I fasted in Ramadan a few years back. I hunt Easter Eggs (or hide them) every Easter, and don’t feel they trivialize my savior’s resurrection. I laugh at anti-Christian humor, even as I quickly defend my faith if personally challenged.

    Yes, the dreidl and the Easter egg might have been better. Even better would have been the Shma Yisrael and the Gospels.

55. Yep, Cait, you’re still telling them that they aren’t getting their way when they are ballsy enough to tell you who to marry, but you say it nicely, so I’m sure it will go over well. Since there’s no reason to think those who wish to dictate the decisions of others handle being told no with aplomb.

56. Well, Hugo, I think the problem is that not all religious traditions accept compartmentalizing. I mean, the whole premise of being Amish is that following Christ means living radically differently from everybody else. I don’t see how an Amish person could marry, say, an urban Reform Jew and somehow live in such a way that “nothing is lost” of both traditions.

    There’s also the question of what happens to the children. I assume they’d have to choose between their parents’ faiths. In that case I don’t especially blame parents for not wanting their grandchildren to have only a 50/50 chance of following their own religion.

57. Hey, I said you can respectfully disagree with them. I didn’t say they’re going to always accept it. Even if they don’t accept it, you can still be respectful on your end.

58. Oh, Camassia, I do think we always lose something when we marry outside of our communities. But we gain far more in return. What we lose in certainty, we gain in complexity. It my experience, it’s a fair trade — but I understand completely why others would not be prepared to see it as such.

59. Hugo, there is a reason that the Amish allow their youth a bit of time to go outside the community, to decide for themselves if they wish to return to the Amish community or to enter the world of “the English.” IIRC, they have a pretty high percentage who choose to return to their home community.

60. I think there’s a bit more than ‘certainty’ at stake here. What about community? You still haven’t explained how a real community could be maintained composed mostly of people whose spouses’ primary loyalty lies with a different one. I don’t see how that could avoid becoming like a workplace, where people go to perform a task and return to their entirely separate personal lives. Is that what we want of church?

    Jesus told his followers to give themselves entirely to him, and also that husband and wife are one flesh. How can you give yourself wholly to Jesus if you’ve conceded part of your flesh to another god? I must admit I’m mystified.

61. Interfaith marriage strikes me as a complex question – just what is interfaith, anyway? Some people are nominally of the same faith, but have such vast differences in how they understand it, that their shared faith might be more of a barrier in their marriage than otherwise. And some are nominally of different faiths, but see themselves as of one mind (and, really, people shift around freely as a matter of convenience across certain denominational boundaries anyway). Sometimes people start out in more, or less, agreement than they find themselves with later. And some differences imply significant differences in how you live your daily life, how you view the roles of husband and wife, how you make decisions about childbearing, etc. No one really looks at all religious differences with indifference in choosing partners; the Unitarian who feels fine about forming an interfaith marriage to a Reform Jew may be a lot less receptive to a fundie suitor.

    Joel was raised Catholic, and I was raised Episcopalian, but the modest difference in the religions we grew up in doesn’t reflect the ways in which we differ now, when I’m a Quaker and he’s an agnostic leaning toward Buddhism.

    Interracial is more straightforward; it’s plain and simply wrong to object to interracial marriage.

62. Even better would have been the Shma Yisrael and the Gospels.

    Hugo, you’re a smart man. I am starting to wonder how you can possibly be unaware of how offensive and trivializing your comments about Judaism are.

    From your point of view, of course, Judaism is merely a prequel to Christianity; you’re practicing Religion XP while the Jews are just doing Religion 3.0, so really there’s not much conflict other than that whole timing-of-the-Messiah thing. Such a view is incredibly ignorant of what Judaism is about and, by the way, is one of the reasons Jews are more than a little paranoid about Christianity (but hey! you ARE out to get us!)

    Treating others’ religous and cultural differences as a fun smorgasboard that is great because you find it personally enjoyable is nothing more than a kind of selfish cultural tourism. I would be the last one to say “nobody marry outside your clan.” But I dare say you would not consider your marriage ‘working’ if, as part of your smorgasboard, your children decided to turn their backs on Jesus.

63. I don’t see your point, then, Cait. How does one both take your parents’ opinion into consideration while not allowing it to influence the actual outcome of who you choose to marry?

64. Ah, now I see the confusion. To you, respecting your parents = taking their opinion into consideration. To me, it means treating *them* with courtesy and consideration, even when their opinion is vastly different than your own.

    I can respect my mother and treat her with respect, even when she and I disagree about something. We can discuss our differences without becoming disrespectful to each other. Sometimes one of us will change our stance a bit because of our discussion. Sometimes both of us will change our stances a bit. Sometimes neither of us changes our minds, but we each come away with a better understanding of where the other is coming from.

    Like the view of my grandmother’s that I mentioned earlier. Although I don’t agree with her view, I respect her greatly and due to that respect I took the time to determine why she has the view she has. I *UNDERSTAND* her reasoning better, even though I don’t agree with it. Because she’s in her late 80′s, I don’t try to change her mind about it, I just treat her with love and respect, and I remember that she has reasons for feeling the way she does.

65. Caitriona,
    You are a very special person! I’ve been reading your comments for a while now and they are so insightful. I know I’ve said it before,but you are wonderful! Thank you for your patience,understanding and sensitivity, it is very well received and appreciated!

66. Thank you, mercedes. Please remind me of that when I’m about to pull my hair out at the roots due to dealing with teenagers nearly 24-7.

67. Caitriona,
    I know what that’s like, I have two of my own!

68. I’m down to 1 atm, but I’ll be back up to 4 come August.

69. Cait, I can talk to my parents. But basic respect is respecting choice of partner. That’s not like other things. My mother and I are super close, but she’d never pass judgement on my choice of a life partner.

70. I have to admit, I’m amused. It’s all fun to talk a big game about parental respect, but I think we’ve proven pretty conclusively that you can say whatever you want in whatever tone you want and if your audience doesn’t want to hear it, well, you try to convince them it’s “respect”. I say this as a woman whose boyfriend doesn’t speak to his mother any longer because she disapproves of my race. Not much room for respectful disagreement once a parent has asserted the dictorial rights.

71. But you know, some of my husband’s family tried to sabotage and undermine our decision to home educate our children, for the first few years. They weren’t dictatorial about it; they were much more subtle than that. We had a few years of getting our kids into a nice, working system, only to have them get phone calls from family who were “concerned.” Then we’d spend months having to undo the undermining of one phone call.

    We could *not* become disrespectful to or about the “concerned” family members. That would have made things even more difficult than they were. We had to address the issues while maintaining a respectful stance toward the family members whose concern were causing us grief.

    We finally got through it. And the child with whom things were most difficult due to the “concerned” family members graduated a year early, with a 91% on his graduation test – *and* a full-time job that contributed to his education through job skills, budgeting skills, etc.

    Can’t really tell the particular family members, “See? Told ya so!” But there’s a particular satisfaction seeing that the relationship into which you poured your heart, blood, sweat, and copious tears has worked out far better than those “concerned” family members thought would be possible.

    Oh, and I’m the wife who was ignored until it was figured out that I was sticking around. Something to do with being wife #5 and the first four deserting husband and children.

72. This is one of the things I HATE about liberalism. Tell me, o wise ones, how is it racist to want to preserve your ethnicity, but not racist to want to obliterate both yours and everyone else’s?

    My view is this: if two people (and I mean a man and woman, just to clarify for the libs) LOVE EACH OTHER, they should marry, no matter if they are the same race or different races.

    God (and I do mean the Real One, the Biblical One), created sex only for marriage, only for a married man and woman who love each other. He did not create it so somebody could use it for a social experiment wherein everyone fucks until the next generations hopefully are all the same color (by the by, race-mixing has been going on ever since there were different races, and that hasn’t happened yet!).

    But back to my question, in the first paragraph. I really look forward to some good answers.