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Students rally for ironic 'Princeton Proposition 8'
Published: Friday, November 21st, 2008
Freshman should not have the right to walk on Princeton’s sidewalks, supporters of Princeton Proposition 8 (PP8) said Thursday in a demonstration on Firestone Plaza.
“We’re not froshophobes. We just think they should stay on the grass,” they ...
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This was the first bona fide protest I've seen at Princeton in a while, and when I first saw it, I could hardly keep from laughing. The analogy these students are trying to make is not particularly clever, not to mention entirely invalid. They're begging the question.
It's pretty stupid, yes, just like people going out of their way to ban gay marriage.
BUT I had no idea how this made any relevant sense. It's hard to see what the point was as a passerby.
Wowwww Daily Prince...first you have the same person write 2 articles on the same day on Prop 8, one of which bemoans the LACK of protest on campus about it(biased much?), and 2 days later, surprise! there's an article in the Prince about this protest. Not like Wednesday's article had predicted it or anything. Reaaal subtle.
Also, the analogy between sidewalks and marriage is so tenuous that the protest would only make sense to those who already agree with them...most people were just highly amused. Reducing marriage to something that is purely a means, like a sidewalk, would not seem to help their cause much either.
That's all right, though. Their aim clearly is not to actually convert people to their cause; as you point out, it's a terrible protest when it actually comes to arguing ideas. The real purpose of the protest is to signal that they hold the "correct" viewpoint among politically correct academics, and make passersby approve of their correct perspective, making the "protesters" feel good about themselves. It's not political protest; it's social signaling.
1) I think the metaphor (while not perfect) is better than you give it credit for. Similar to California's Proposition 8, PP8 advocates eliminating the right of a minority based on the will of a majority. Obviously walking on a sidewalk is not the same as marriage, that's irrelevant - the issue is they are both rights.
Why is gay marriage a right? Currently women have the right to enter into a consensual marriage with a man. Men are being denied this right. Explain to me how that is not gender discrimination.
2) The point of this demonstration is not to create a perfect metaphor or to immediately convert those who disagree this or (@ha) to make ourselves feel morally superior. Our aim is to generate conversation and discussion about an important issue that we feel is not being discussed enough on the Princeton campus. I'd say in that respect we've been remarkably successful.
Ironic?!?! I've been used. I supported Princeton Proposition 8 because I really do want to keep Freshmen off the sidewalks.
Now they just have to spend millions of dollars of money on shameful television ads showing how freshman damage the sidewalks, walk immorally, and damage children's development in order to scare the voters into voting for the ban...
Your argument makes no sense; you used marriage to define the right to a marriage: "Currently women have the right to enter into a consensual marriage with a man. Men are being denied this right."
You have to define what you think a marriage is, because that is the root issue here. It's not that the pro-heterosexual marriage people think that gay people have this right and are trying to deny it to them out of religious spite or homophobia or whatever other ad hominem epithets the SSM side is so fond of hurling. Rather, it's that they don't see marriage as a universal right or not in the first place, because they have a fundamentally different definition of marriage.