I was treated today to a lecture by Ann Coulter in our University's Assembly Series. Ms. Coulter claims to represent conservatively minded folks, and she spent a good deal of her talk lampooning liberal thoughts and ideals. I could post at length, but here are the interesting parts; I will conclude with some logic absent from her talk.
First, after her introduction, one person remained standing and continued clapping for some 4 minutes until a policeperson escorted him out of the building. Ms. Coulter was obvoiusly rattled by this, and managed to insult him and all liberals (who by implication were like him) during her talk. At the end, she allowed some questions and answers. Students were a bit nervous asking questions, but the intrepid did attempt to engage her. Instead of responding with logic to the students' questions, she would insult the student because of the student's views and just leave things at that. "Believe me because you are an inferior person" was the gist of her argument.
The very last question raised had to do with the conservative party's view of gay marriages. The question was why unions of any sex that form a family aren't considered family-fostering by conservatives. Ms. Coulter's response was that it was this person's burden to prove to her and everyone that 3000 years of mixed-sex marriage-thinking was wrong. Did we need to convince her that slavery was wrong, or that women without the right to vote was wrong?
Since she didn't present logic, here is some to prove that gay marriages are OK. To appease the conservatives, and since according to Ann Coulter I live in a Christian country, I will use not only the constitution but also the bible for my axioms.
- Axiom: Men (m) and women (w) are created equal. Thus we have
m = w
- Axiom: Be fruilful and multiply. Multiplying the above equation on both sides by m or w obtains:
m x w = w x w
and
m x m = w x m
- By transitivity of equality we obtain:
m x m = w x m = w x w
thus proving that same-sex pairs are equal to mixed-sex pairs. QED
As I already showed, you can use proofs to prove anything that's even remotely true... :-)
Posted by: Chris Hill Festival at March 3, 2004 6:09 PM
I've never thought of it that way, of course most observations are subjective and thereby not considered logical anyway. :)
Posted by: Athene at March 6, 2004 10:34 AM
Brilliant - I love it even though I know it's not going to win me any arguments any time soon.
A similar proof:
axiom 1: nothing is better than love
axiom 2: bread is better than nothing
by the transitive property, bread > nothing > love, so bread is better than love.
Posted by: Ari E-B at March 9, 2004 12:49 AM