In California public schools, students are required to learn about black history and women’s history. And if a bill approved by the State Senate this week becomes law, the state will become the first in the country to mandate that schools also teach gay history.
While the bill does not set specific requirements about what should be taught to students, it does say that contributions of gays and lesbians in the state and country must be included in social science instruction. So Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the state, and Bayard Rustin, a civil rights activist, may take a prominent place in the state’s history books.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 10:44 AM
April 20th, 2011 | 10:50 am
What, precisely, IS gay history, other than an attempt by the homosexual community to appropriate unto itself every important historical figure who was either a confirmed bachelor or childless?
April 20th, 2011 | 11:05 am
tolerance —-> enforced approval —-> indoctrination
April 20th, 2011 | 11:22 am
If I lived in California I would homeschool. No question.
April 20th, 2011 | 11:45 am
In practice this law is going to be fairly meaningless. Most teachers will simply ignore it, since it’s just too silly to be followed.
The Democrats who run everything in California have nothing at all to offer in the way of solutions to the state’s catastrophic problems, so they spend their time on utter nonsense like this.
April 20th, 2011 | 11:54 am
What, precisely, IS gay history
I imagine the course might begin with the fact that the ancient Hebrew punishment for homosexuality was stoning.
April 20th, 2011 | 11:54 am
My thought was similar to Brian’s. The upside (downside?) is that this would be taught with all of the skill and effectiveness that the rest of the curriculum is taught with so I doubt any of the students will remember any of this anyway.
April 20th, 2011 | 1:20 pm
“I imagine the course might begin with the fact that the ancient Hebrew punishment for homosexuality was stoning.”
So, like, gays back then had to get stoned? Dude, I am SO going to be gay!”
April 20th, 2011 | 3:03 pm
Then I would demand Catholic History be taught at all schools since the Catholic historical figures and institutions have had a tremendous impact on the history of California
April 20th, 2011 | 3:50 pm
The same things were said when black history was included into the social studies curriculum 40 years ago. It seems homophobia is alive and well on this comment page.
April 20th, 2011 | 4:08 pm
The same things were said when black history was included into the social studies curriculum 40 years ago. It seems homophobia is alive and well on this comment page.
I think it has to be admitted that singling out black or gay or any minority group’s history further contributes to the balkanization of American identity. Having said that, minority group history is typically slighted unless it’s singled out. And regardless of what one thinks of the morality of homosexuality, there is no denying gays have been badly treated. I don’t know if I like the proposed law, but I’m sympathetic to its backers.
April 20th, 2011 | 4:49 pm
mtm,
According to the post, “While the bill does not set specific requirements about what should be taught to students, it does say that contributions of gays and lesbians in the state and country must be included in social science instruction.” This doesn’t mean schools will be required to offer separate courses in gay history. I doubt that all mention of Catholics is suppressed in social science courses, so presumably “Catholic History” is already taught.
I agree with Ken and Judd above.
April 20th, 2011 | 6:23 pm
“The same things were said when black history was included into the social studies curriculum 40 years ago. It seems homophobia is alive and well on this comment page.”
As an historian, I have to say the balkanization of the history curriculum in the public schools has not done much either for the discipline of history or the education of America’s young. There are only so many instructional hours in a year, and the focus on the role of minority groups has led to major distortions in the curriculum, so that, teaching units on World War II include so much on Rosie the Riveter, Navajho Code Talkers and the Tuskgeekee Airmen that fundamental and crucial facts about World War II fall by the wayside–things like the chronology of the war, war aims and ideology, underlying causes, the ebb and flow of the conflict, the names of the important battles (and who won them), the leaders, their strengths and weaknesses, the outcome, and its lingering effects to the present day, all of them get lost in the quest for self-esteem and identity politics.
Adding “gay history” to the mix won’t really help anything, though I do think kids might pay more attention in class if teachers went into graphic detail on the reported end of King Edward II.
April 20th, 2011 | 6:27 pm
Another reason to home school.
April 20th, 2011 | 6:29 pm
“nd regardless of what one thinks of the morality of homosexuality, there is no denying gays have been badly treated. ”
Have they? Worse, say, then the blacks, or the Irish, or the Jews, or the Chinese or the Italians or, yes, the Catholics? Really?
And, as I said, there are only so many instructional hours, so what will you delete in order to accommodate “gay history” in an already disgracefully shallow history curriculum? Hmmm??
I suppose we could drop the Jews out of any mention of the Holocaust in order to carve out a lesson or two on the oppression of homosexuals in the Third Reich (whilst carefully overlooking those Suras of the Quran that require death by stoning for sodomites–and never, ever mention how frequently this sentence is executed in the Islamic world today).
There is no such thing, and there is no room, at the primary and secondary school level, for “identity history”. Teach the basic facts, and leave it at that. If some groups barely get mentioned, it might be due to their limited impact on the course of history in various places and times.
April 20th, 2011 | 6:33 pm
“Then I would demand Catholic History be taught at all schools since the Catholic historical figures and institutions have had a tremendous impact on the history of California”
When my wife went to public school in San Bernardino in the 1960s, the unit on state history still included the whole nine yards on the Spanish mission system, Junipero Serra, etc.
When I went to public school in New York City in the 1960s, we got what I consider to be an outstanding education in toleration, learning about Jewish, Protestant and Catholic traditions equally. Today, tolerance mandates that none of this be taught, lest someone be offended.
Of course, toleration goes only in one direction, so the notion that one might be offended by the elevation of homosexuals (as homosexuals) to important persons in history cannot be tolerated, because not fully accepting homosexuality is by definition (whose. precisely?) intolerant. And we can’t tolerate that, can we?
April 20th, 2011 | 6:38 pm
Since gays have been almost entirely in the closet or at most the subject of unverified suspicion and/or rumor as to their sexual orientation until about the last four decades, is this “history” going to begin around 1970?
Because the worst thing of all about something like this would be if it partakes of the 20th century hobby of trying to “out” historical figures based on innuendo and overly sexualized interpretations of events and writings.
April 20th, 2011 | 7:17 pm
There is no such thing, and there is no room, at the primary and secondary school level, for “identity history”. Teach the basic facts, and leave it at that.
Leave out that MLK, Jr. was black then? Or if that civil rights revolution is important enough to teach, why not the revolution that is making it socially unacceptable to hate gays?
If some groups barely get mentioned, it might be due to their limited impact on the course of history in various places and times.
Gays have had a disproportional impact on the arts.
April 20th, 2011 | 8:26 pm
California inner city schoolkids quite literally learn more about “ethnic studies” than they do about American history.
They cannot read or write, but they know how to march around a parking lot singing “We Shall Overcome”.
They could not name a single President (I’m sure they now know Obama’s name). They could not identify major historical figures, or put them in context. But they got a full month of teachings on the same five black history figures every February. Every year. With exactly the same lessons and materials. The good news is, these schools have proved they can indeed teach – and drill stuff into the kids’ heads – when they want to. So don’t think the kids will have the same lousy learning outcomes re: “gay history” political lessons as they do in real subjects.
My favorite was the lesson on George Wallace, taught to third graders. Because who needs reading? What is important is that you know that white people hate you, and will do anything to keep you from going to college anyway.
I am sure that digging around the Old Testament looking for grievances to lob at Christians will do a wonderful job of persuading kids to rebel against what in my kids’ school were called “Christofascists”.
(The kids had their own, uglier name for these people. But the teachers called them “Christofascists.”)
April 20th, 2011 | 8:51 pm
Then one day , many of those were cured – like in the desert , they looked at The Image of The Father …took in the power with which He took up all the sufferings , in loving trust of The Father , whose love was being poured into Him , in The Spirit ..and for us , as Blood and Water ..
Many who were bitten by the serpent of hatred against father figures, mother figures brought in their hearts to Him , asking Him to pour in His holiness and mercy , into their hearts so that they be free from the poison of misidentity and father hunger ..they joined spiritually, with millions of others ..for they trusted in the Father’s Power of mercy and forgiveness – far greater than the 7 billion sinners ..
all of whom brought into His ocean of mercy, as per His invitation ..by a prayer here , a prayer there ..
imbibing in the healing words – ‘ all your sins are forgiven in His Name ‘..most precious words ..to help to shed the serpentine confusion ..
and that too became history ..of His Story of how He heals ..
April 20th, 2011 | 10:18 pm
I am sure that digging around the Old Testament looking for grievances to lob at Christians will do a wonderful job of persuading kids to rebel against what in my kids’ school were called “Christofascists”.
You write as if religious hatred of gays is a thing of the past that must be fished for in the bowels of the Old Testament. That’s just the attitude that makes me sympathetic to this proposed law.
April 20th, 2011 | 10:34 pm
pentamom,
Alan Turing, hero of WWII for cracking Germany’s Enigma code, and one of the founders of Computer Science was tried and convicted of engaging in homosexual acts in 1952. Although a British citizen, his work in computers and Artificial Intelligence had (still has!) a tremendous affect on Silicon Valley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
There are many famous authors, artists, scientists (and even politicians) who were gay – Wikipedia has compiled quite a list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gay,_lesbian_or_bisexual_people
April 20th, 2011 | 10:49 pm
You write as if religious hatred of gays is a thing of the past that must be fished for in the bowels of the Old Testament.
Ahh, but you are falling into the left wing trap of confusing two different groups who go by the name “gay”.
The word “gay” can mean merely a homosexual.
But the word “gay” has also been appropriated by a bunch of people who are trying to deliberately use a word already in use to misrepresent themselves as being “the community of homosexuals” – as if every homosexual were a member of this community, and this community represented the views and beliefs of all homosexuals.
But alas! There are homosexuals who are willing to go on record as not wanting to be identified with the group that claims to represent ‘all’ gays!
There are even homosexuals who are willing to state publicly that they despise what is being done in their name.
So when you say religious people “hate” gays, please make sure you specify which type of gay: actual homosexuals, or people who may or may not themselves be gay, who are claiming to represent “all” gays (and therefore misrepresenting themselves for the express purpose of committing fraud)?
Because there are religious people who hate homosexuals (although probably far fewer than there are homosexuals who hate Christians, unless of course you reserve the right to creatively interpret all political disagreement as automatically presumed to be motivated by “hate”).
But most people don’t really care nearly so much about the sexual habits as they do about the lying, manipulation, fraud, deceit, and – now – the attempt to hijack our public schools, to inappropriately push a political agenda at the expense of the school’s actual public mission.
(On the bright side, I hear there are new studies out vindicating vouchers – and this will be great PR for the cause!)
April 20th, 2011 | 11:17 pm
How many graduates of public high schools in California know how many voting members the U.S. House of Representatives has? If it is more than 10%, I’d be surprised. It gives you a sense of how lousy most public schools are, and this episode in California tells you where their priorities lie.
April 21st, 2011 | 9:19 am
But alas! There are homosexuals who are willing to go on record as not wanting to be identified with the group that claims to represent ‘all’ gays!
What are there, three of them? You remind me of pre-civil rights Southerners saying that that most Negroes are happy. Sure there are Christians with gay tendencies who don’t act on them. But they’re in the great minority, and even they take offense at hatred and indifference.
people who may or may not themselves be gay, who are claiming to represent “all” gays (and therefore misrepresenting themselves for the express purpose of committing fraud)?
Good grief. I have no words to describe how crazy that sounds. Are you referring to liberal straights? Should straight people keep quiet where they believe – believe, mind you, correctly or incorrectly – that others are being treated unjustly? Should Richard John Neuhaus not have marched with Dr. King? In any case, gays do not lack for gay leaders. Straights who stand up for them are not “outside agitators.”
>Because there are religious people who hate homosexuals (although probably far fewer than there are homosexuals who hate Christians
I John 4:19: “We love him, because he first loved us.” And in their case, they hate us because so many of us have hated or are still unsympathetic towards them. I mean, really now – why shouldn’t they hate us?
But most people don’t really care nearly so much about the sexual habits as they do about the lying, manipulation, fraud, deceit, and – now – the attempt to hijack our public schools, to inappropriately push a political agenda at the expense of the school’s actual public mission.
This is classic right-wing “Christian” thinking, the move to demonize one’s ideological enemies instead of trying to understand them. Christ had a different approach. Have you ever tried putting yourself in their shoes? I understand and respect Christian opposition to homosexual behavior, and opposition to the mainstreaming and enforced tolerance of it. But the people pushing that aren’t trying to “hijack” the public schools (which don’t belong to you guys alone, in any case). They’re working to overcome attitudes like yours.
April 21st, 2011 | 10:28 am
R Hampton, was that supposed to refute anything I said? I didn’t say there were none, and glancing briefly at some samples of the Wikipedia list shows very few people who, despite being “famous,” would normally have a position in an elementary or secondary school history curriculum, though not none. Anyway, my point was not that there were no known gay people to be mentioned, it was that it would be lousy education *if* the “gay history” emphasis depended on the effort to “find” gay people based on dubious practices or wishful thinking on the part of those who wish to promote “gay history.”
April 21st, 2011 | 11:48 am
pentamom,
Aren’t you basically saying that if the teaching of “gay history” is handled badly, it will be bad?
And isn’t the subtext of your messages that you think gay people and those who support them will probably “‘find” gay people based on dubious practices or wishful thinking”?
April 21st, 2011 | 12:14 pm
“Since gays have been almost entirely in the closet or at most the subject of unverified suspicion and/or rumor as to their sexual orientation until about the last four decades, is this “history” going to begin around 1970?”
For most people, their concept of “history” begins on the day they were born.
April 21st, 2011 | 12:20 pm
“Leave out that MLK, Jr. was black then? Or if that civil rights revolution is important enough to teach, why not the revolution that is making it socially unacceptable to hate gays?”
You teach the civil rights movement within the total context of American history–you do not single it out in a way that elevates it to greater prominence than it merits, and above all, you don’t turn it into an opportunity to elevate one ethnic group while denigrating another (which is all too common). Read most primary and secondary school texts on the subject, and you will be hard pressed to find much mention of the many white people who were at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement long before Martin Luther King (with the possible–and highly ironic–exception of the Kennedy Brothers). And, of course, you will not get any sense from these texts of the great progress that has been made in race relations in this country since the 1960s.
As for the “gay rights” movement, the attempt to conflate it with the civil rights movement is one of the biggest pieces of humbug ever inflicted on the American public, rejected by the great majority of black people, who can see the difference, even if you can’t.
“Gays have had a disproportional impact on the arts.”
Yet how does their sexual orientation affect their significance as artists, unless, of course, we have to buy into the entire notion of “Queer Theory”?
April 21st, 2011 | 12:23 pm
“You write as if religious hatred of gays is a thing of the past that must be fished for in the bowels of the Old Testament. That’s just the attitude that makes me sympathetic to this proposed law.”
It pretty much is. Most people don’t care if you are gay or not. What they do care about is people telling them they have to approve of behavior they find repugnant, and, moreover, that such behavior is (a) perfectly normal; and (b) equal to a monogamous heterosexual marriage.
April 21st, 2011 | 12:26 pm
“Aren’t you basically saying that if the teaching of “gay history” is handled badly, it will be bad?”
I’ll bite: I am saying that it is impossible to teach “gay history” well because it is a pseudo-discipline created out of whole cloth for purely political purposes. If you want examples of similar pseudo-historical disciplines, an examination of the curricula taught in the schools of both the Third Reich and the Soviet Union provide plenty of examples.
April 21st, 2011 | 12:38 pm
David,
I’m saying I’ve seen enough of the kind of thing I’m objecting to, to think that it’s highly likely that it will happen in this case. I’m not saying it’s inevitable.
That’s not based on some prejudice about what “gay people and those who support them” are like, it’s based on experience both with the approach of modern “scholars” to gay issues, and with “issue studies” approaches to education in general.
April 21st, 2011 | 12:58 pm
Pentamom,
Here are just a few names you may remember from your school days:
Alexander the Great, Emprorer Hadrian, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron, John Maynard Keynes
April 21st, 2011 | 1:00 pm
As for the “gay rights” movement, the attempt to conflate it with the civil rights movement is one of the biggest pieces of humbug ever inflicted on the American public, rejected by the great majority of black people, who can see the difference, even if you can’t.
It is a civil rights movement, and you don’t have to support all of its goals to see that. And the majority of those same black people support the teaching of black history as such.
how does their sexual orientation affect their significance as artists, unless, of course, we have to buy into the entire notion of “Queer Theory”?
It affects the content of their art in many cases, but that isn’t really the issue. Your claim was that “some groups barely get mentioned . . . due to their limited impact on the course of history in various places and times.” Gays have had major impact. As I said before, I’m not gung ho about a major emphasis on gay history, because I agree that the overall picture is more important. But they shouldn’t be written out of the picture for ideological reasons either.
Most people don’t care if you are gay or not.
Right, and why is that? Because gays have had the courage to come out despite the scorn of the Religious Right, and in so doing have won respect and sympathy. Just not from you guys. Your judgmentalism and/or unwillingness to empathize is the big reason you have NO witness.
April 21st, 2011 | 1:34 pm
“You teach the civil rights movement within the total context of American history–you do not single it out in a way that elevates it to greater prominence than it merits, and above all, you don’t turn it into an opportunity to elevate one ethnic group while denigrating another (which is all too common). Read most primary and secondary school texts on the subject, and you will be hard pressed to find much mention of the many white people who were at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement long before Martin Luther King”
Both gay rights and civil rights merit a great deal of attention since so much contemporary debate arise out of them.
Many of the whites prominent in the early days of the civil rights movement were communists, and the CPUSA played a crucial role. McCarthyism buried a lot of the rich connections among labor and civil rights movements. Glenda Gilmore’s “Defying Dixie” is a fine study of some of those connections.
McCarthyism also led to the Lavender Scare, which would be part of any history of gay rights, but any history should also include the lavender purge that many feminist organizations pursued in the sixties and seventies in a misguided effort to gain greater mainstream acceptance.
“It pretty much is. Most people don’t care if you are gay or not. What they do care about is people telling them they have to approve of behavior they find repugnant, and, moreover, that such behavior is (a) perfectly normal; and (b) equal to a monogamous heterosexual marriage”
On the contrary, most kids care a great deal about whether their classmates are gay. There’s a lot of pressure and prejudice. It’s easier than it was 10, 20, or 30 years ago, but the ugliness is still great.
Most of the behavior is in fact not “repugnant” and is perfectly normal. Most straight men perform oral sex just as lesbians do, and most straight women perform oral sex just as gay men do. The only “repugnant” behavior is anal sex, which looms large and overwhelms everything else in the anti-gay imagination.
“I’ll bite: I am saying that it is impossible to teach “gay history” well because it is a pseudo-discipline created out of whole cloth for purely political purposes.”
Of course it’s a real discipline with real historians working on real historical issues. Start with D’Emilio and Freedman’s “Intimate Matters.”
“That’s not based on some prejudice about what “gay people and those who support them” are like, it’s based on experience both with the approach of modern “scholars” to gay issues, and with “issue studies” approaches to education in general”
The problem isn’t with scholars or with issue studies, it’s with teachers, parents, and administrators in elementary and secondary schools. There are lots of obstacles to good teaching and good learning, but the subject itself is both worthy and timely.
April 21st, 2011 | 4:33 pm
“Alan Turing, hero of WWII for cracking Germany’s Enigma code, and one of the founders of Computer Science was tried and convicted of engaging in homosexual acts in 1952. Although a British citizen, his work in computers and Artificial Intelligence had (still has!) a tremendous affect on Silicon Valley.”
To all of which his homosexuality was utterly irrelevant. You can teach Alan Turing, and never mention the fact at all.
April 21st, 2011 | 4:40 pm
You can teach Alan Turing, and never mention the fact at all.
Or you can teach that he was gay, and help some poor gay kid who’s being shunned feel better about himself.
April 21st, 2011 | 4:44 pm
“Here are just a few names you may remember from your school days:
Alexander the Great, Emprorer Hadrian, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron, John Maynard Keynes”
QED: All “gay history” amounts to is an attempt to expropriate great men on the basis of their reputed sexual preferences.
Of the men (What? No great lesbians, you sexist pig!) mentioned above, none can definitively be labeled as homosexuals.
Alexander the Great was sexually omnivorous (like all Macedonians), but seems to have preferred women. Hadrian had a boyfriend (Antinous), but also a wife; Byron definitely preferred girls (including his sister); Oscar Wilde mixed the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name with conventional marriage and children; and Keynes was supposed (in the words of my econ professor) to have hung out with “arty types”.
Of Emerson, Michaelangelo and da Vinci we know nothing at all–but hey, that’s the great thing about “gay history”: if a guy is cool and not a total stud (and sometimes, even if he is), just say he’s gay and add him to the curriculum. See efforts to include, e.g., Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln and countless others to the pantheon of poofts.
More to the point: with the exception of Wilde, just how does the sexuality of any of these men affect their prominence in history? If it doesn’t then why do we need to bring it up? What value added to we bring to the curriculum in this manner? It is by men’s deeds, and not their sexual inclination, that they merit inclusion in the curriculum.
April 21st, 2011 | 4:44 pm
Alexander the Great is an example of importing a modern sexual sensibility into an ancient context which regarded matters very differently.
If your category of “gay” includes all men who ever had sexual relations with other men, fine, but that’s not quite the same as what we mean by “gay” nowadays, and kids shouldn’t be misled into equating them. Ancient Greek culture approached marriage and extra-marital sexuality entirely differently than the way we do now, and if Alexander the Great and Oscar Wilde are treated as functionally equivalent in their sexuality, that’s far more misleading than never mentioning it at all.
April 21st, 2011 | 4:47 pm
“McCarthyism also led to the Lavender Scare, which would be part of any history of gay rights, but any history should also include the lavender purge that many feminist organizations pursued in the sixties and seventies in a misguided effort to gain greater mainstream acceptance.”
Having spent much of my professional career in and around intelligence, I can safely say that (a) there were communist agents in the U.S. government; and (b) a disproportionate number of them were homosexuals. Homosexuals, for whatever reason, do seem attracted to espionage and treason, for which reason it’s not irrelevant to ask questions about it.
April 21st, 2011 | 4:49 pm
If your category of “gay” includes all men who ever had sexual relations with other men, fine, but that’s not quite the same as what we mean by “gay” nowadays
Right, and that’s a strong argument that Biblical teaching on the homosexuality of the day should not be taken as applicable to monogamous homosexuality practiced today.
April 21st, 2011 | 4:51 pm
“Or you can teach that he was gay, and help some poor gay kid who’s being shunned feel better about himself.”
Oh, is that what school is about? Really? Feeling good about one’s self should not come through vicarious identification with a man who, by all accounts was both brilliant and deeply, deeply disturbed and unhappy (and not merely because he was homosexual). Rather, “self esteem” should arise from one’s own personal accomplishments. Beyond that, one should seek virtue–and somehow or other, I don’t think any of the ancients, whether pagan or Christian, included homosexual fornication among the virtues (even those who practiced it themselves).
April 21st, 2011 | 4:58 pm
More to the point: with the exception of Wilde, just how does the sexuality of any of these men affect their prominence in history? If it doesn’t then why do we need to bring it up? What value added to we bring to the curriculum in this manner? It is by men’s deeds, and not their sexual inclination, that they merit inclusion in the curriculum.
Read my post at 4:40 pm. And agreeing for the sake of argument for a moment that gays do want to “hijack” the curriculum, why is it that when it comes down to either empathizing with people who’ve been done wrong or holding a grievance against them for demanding too much in return, right wing Christians go for the grievance, like any other interest group? Listening to most right wing Christians, or at least the ones with the loudest voices, how in the world are gays supposed to see that God loves them?
April 21st, 2011 | 5:00 pm
Stuart Koehl,
Are you really claiming that Alan Turing’s homosexuality was utterly irrelevant to the fact that he “was tried and convicted of engaging in homosexual acts in 1952?”
Or are you claiming that his trial, brutal punishment, and subsequent death (possibly by suicide) are utterly irrelevant in a class where one is teaching about Alan Turing?
Or were you typing so fast that you didn’t read the paragraph to which you were responding?
From Wikipedia: “Turing’s conviction led to the removal of his security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy for GCHQ.” I can’t see how you can “teach Alan Turing” without mentioning the ways his homosexuality influenced his interaction with the government, ability to pursue his research interests, and ultimately, the trajectory of his life.
April 21st, 2011 | 5:06 pm
“self esteem” should arise from one’s own personal accomplishments.
Positive self-esteem should, yes. Negative self-esteem very easily comes from being told your bad because you’re gay.
Beyond that, one should seek virtue–and somehow or other, I don’t think any of the ancients, whether pagan or Christian, included homosexual fornication among the virtues (even those who practiced it themselves).
I don’t think they mentioned cooking either. Should everything they didn’t mention be considered lacking in virtue? Anyhow, they did mention love. Have you never noticed that gay couples can love each other as much as straight ones?
April 21st, 2011 | 7:07 pm
“Positive self-esteem should, yes. Negative self-esteem very easily comes from being told your bad because you’re gay.”
Come, now, how would a six year old even know that? Or even a sixteen year old? And don’t give me that line about being born that way–there is no evidence of this (and homosexuals, if they are smart, better hope none is ever found). Besides, being gay is a lot like being poor: as Tevye says, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s no great honor either.
April 21st, 2011 | 7:25 pm
“Are you really claiming that Alan Turing’s homosexuality was utterly irrelevant to the fact that he “was tried and convicted of engaging in homosexual acts in 1952?””
Alan Turing’s conviction for engaging in homosexual acts is not relevant to his role as inventor of the digital computer, hence not something with which the history curriculum need address, either at the primary or secondary level, whether discussing the history of technology or the history of World War II. If you think about it, “gay history” amounts to reductionism, in which people are granted importance solely on the basis of a behavioral trait. If I were gay, I’d be insulted.
“Or are you claiming that his trial, brutal punishment, and subsequent death (possibly by suicide) are utterly irrelevant in a class where one is teaching about Alan Turing?”
Turing’s life was miserable long before his conviction, and the causes extended far beyond his homosexuality. There was his alcoholism, for instance.
“From Wikipedia: “Turing’s conviction led to the removal of his security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy for GCHQ.” I can’t see how you can “teach Alan Turing” without mentioning the ways his homosexuality influenced his interaction with the government, ability to pursue his research interests, and ultimately, the trajectory of his life.”
We’ll leave aside that impeccable historical source “Wikipedia” for the moment, and address the issue of Turing’s role in primary and secondary history classes. Turing’s importance comes in two areas–cryptography and the development of computers, in both of which he did his best work during World War II. Turing would be taught in that context (and even then, his name would–or should–garner only a line or two, since others did much more of the heavy lifting than he did), so his work after World War II is indeed, irrelevant.
But if we were to go into that, we would have to go into the Cambridge Spy Ring, the discovery of which (and its pervasive thread of homosexuality) undoubtedly made everyone particularly aware of the security risk posed by homosexuals.
In any case, as I said, in a high school World History textbook, in which World War II merits today about 50 pages, how many lines does Alan Turing merit, based solely on his accomplishments? I would say perhaps two. In the context of a mandate to “study gay history”, however, Turing would probably get his own page, or sidebar, telling his tragic story (and making it seem as though it was not his own fault).
We see the same thing in our textbooks already, with regard to the treatment of the role of women in World War II (Rosie the Riveter gets several pages in most, even though women in the U.S. never accounted for more than 15% of the defense industrial workforce), or Blacks (the Tuskegee Airmen had a distinguished record, but theirs was just one of many good fighter groups, and aside from the color of the pilots, not very different from the others), or Hispanics (two pages on agricultural guest workers, and how badly we treated them, while not a page about the use of slave labor by the Nazis or the Japanese), or American Indians (the ubiquitous Navajo Code Talkers), and–lest we forget–the internment of the Japanese (ignoring the internment of more than 50,000 German and Italian nationals that went on at the same time, as well as evidence for extensive Japanese espionage cells within the Issei and Nisei communities).
When all that political correctness is covered, just how much is left for the War itself? But I forget–war is icky, and should not be taught to innocent children, except as a means of packaging self esteem for privileged ethnic, racial, religious, and now sexes and sexualities. No wonder I keep running across grad students who are totally ignorant of modern history.
April 21st, 2011 | 7:27 pm
“I don’t think they mentioned cooking either.”
Shows what you know.
“Anyhow, they did mention love.”
Which one? Filios, agape or eros?”
“Have you never noticed that gay couples can love each other as much as straight ones?”
Not in that way, no.
April 21st, 2011 | 7:30 pm
“Right, and that’s a strong argument that Biblical teaching on the homosexuality of the day should not be taken as applicable to monogamous homosexuality practiced today.”
Ah, yes, the myth of monogamous homosexuality.
April 21st, 2011 | 8:25 pm
Stuart, the most charitable way to understand those statements is that you simply don’t know what you’re talking about. (I have to say, though, that your tone suggests something worse). Gay people are just people – fully human, and fully as capable as straights are of agape love and commitment.
Men are by nature more promiscuous than women, so it’s to be expected that the rate of promiscuity is relatively high among gay men. But that has to do with the male sexual desire, not exclusively homosexual desire, and doesn’t change the fact that plenty of men live monogamously.
You should remember too, that until very recently every gay and lesbian remaining in a committed relationship has done so without the support the state bestows, and society as a whole by its approbation and affection bestows, on straight ones. Their commitment reflects more highly on their character than commitment does on straights.
April 21st, 2011 | 8:38 pm
Come, now, how would a six year old even know that? Or even a sixteen year old?
I don’t think they’re proposing to teach gay history in first grade, but plenty of sixteen year olds experience homosexual desire and are made miserable when they show it. I can’t imagine how you would deny this.
And don’t give me that line about being born that way–there is no evidence of this
Whether it’s nature or nurture makes no difference. The fact is that reparative therapy has a very low success rate. Gays can’t just choose to be straight, not any more than straights can choose to be gay. And remember, the issue isn’t sexual experimentation. It’s an orientation that melds eros, philia and agape.
April 21st, 2011 | 10:20 pm
Pentamom,
I believe that is the point behind teaching “gay” history. That, in the history of Western Civilization, homosexuality was not uniformly defined. Hence the treatment/mistreatment of gay individuals and/or groups differed by time and place.
In other words, a singular political or religious view, like that of an American conservative Christian, simply can not be used to understand homosexuality throughout history if we wish to learn/teach with historical accuracy.
April 21st, 2011 | 10:24 pm
“Right, and that’s a strong argument that Biblical teaching on the homosexuality of the day should not be taken as applicable to monogamous homosexuality practiced today.”
Um, not really, because it’s sexual acts of a specific nature that the Bible condemns (among other things), not a socially constructed identity of “gay.” If anything, it’s a strong argument that there’s no way around the Bible’s condemnation of homosexual acts as such, regardless of the context in which such acts were practiced or viewed at the time.
April 21st, 2011 | 10:48 pm
http://www.morganquitno.com/edrank.htm
It seems California already has education challenges. I cannot see how this bill will better educate California students. Perhaps people are confusing identity aquistion with education.
April 21st, 2011 | 11:10 pm
Pentamom, why were the acts condemned? How can you know for sure? It’s within contexts that acts have have meaning. The Bible tells us not to kill, doesn’t it? Does it contradict itself when it also prescribes capital punishment for certain acts? Or does context matter?
What is your evidence that the Biblical writers ever viewed homosexual acts outside the context of their culture? Did they even know of homosexuality in any other context?
April 21st, 2011 | 11:42 pm
“Gays can’t just choose to be straight, not any more than straights can choose to be gay. And remember, the issue isn’t sexual experimentation. It’s an orientation that melds eros, philia and agape.”
It’s also objectively disordered and contrary to human nature (its low rate of occurrence being direct evidence of that). It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to come onto an overtly Catholic web site and pretend there is anything natural at all about either a homosexual orientation or worse, behavior.
April 22nd, 2011 | 7:30 am
It’s also objectively disordered and contrary to human nature (its low rate of occurrence being direct evidence of that).
Stuart Koehl:
If a low rate of occurrence is direct evidence of a trait being “objectively disordered,” then left-handedness, musical genius, and photographic memory would all be “objectively disordered.”
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to come onto an overtly Catholic web site and pretend there is anything natural at all about either a homosexual orientation or worse, behavior.
You’re even wrong here. First Things is not a Catholic publication.
April 22nd, 2011 | 8:11 am
“All “gay history” amounts to is an attempt to expropriate great men on the basis of their reputed sexual preferences … none can definitively be labeled as homosexuals”
You need to read more gay history. It’s about many other things besides, including the fact that there has been a variety of practices across history. An exclusively homosexual identity is quite recent and for obvious reasons.
“just how does the sexuality of any of these men affect their prominence in history?”
It is relevant to two things, to the history of sexual practices and to individual and communal identity. Every group wants to see itself reflected in the great deeds of history, and our community is made stronger when other groups, especially the majority, understands that each group has played significant roles.
“there were communist agents in the U.S. government”
Of course, everybody knows that.
“Homosexuals, for whatever reason, do seem attracted to espionage and treason, for which reason it’s not irrelevant to ask questions about it”
There’s a nice stereotype. Perhaps you can come up with some other reasons why a disproportionate number might have arisen during a particular era.
“Oh, is that what school is about? Really? Feeling good about one’s self should not come through vicarious identification with a man who, by all accounts was both brilliant and deeply, deeply disturbed and unhappy (and not merely because he was homosexual).”
Yes, of course, that is part of what school is about. Part of learning American history is learning to be proud of being American, to live vicariously through its heroes, and to ground your self-esteem in a national esteem. It’s also why I learned Texas history in seventh grade, even though, objectively, the state’s barely old enough to have much more than current events.
On the flip side, it’s harder to mock kids for being gay, black, female, etc, when you’ve spent some time studying great figures who were gay, etc. It’s not just about self-esteem. It’s about building a communal identity.
“And don’t give me that line about being born that way–there is no evidence of this (and homosexuals, if they are smart, better hope none is ever found).”
As you surely know, nature and nurture work together, not separately, and something as complex as sexuality probably has multiple origins. But only probably. The science just isn’t in yet. In the meantime, it’s clear that gays don’t choose homosexuality like I choose which cereal to eat in the morning. I certainly can’t say that I chose to be straight. Something deeper is going on.
“Besides, being gay is a lot like being poor: as Tevye says, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s no great honor either”
It’s what you make of the hand you’re dealt. And some gays have done very well.
“When all that political correctness is covered, just how much is left for the War itself? But I forget–war is icky, and should not be taught to innocent children, except as a means of packaging self esteem for privileged ethnic, racial, religious, and now sexes and sexualities. No wonder I keep running across grad students who are totally ignorant of modern history”
The war you care about is military history, but history has other and more important uses for citizens who need to get a sense of what their country is and wants to be. Which is why it is more important to focus on the supposedly political correct things you deride. If you go back to earlier textbooks, you’ll see that they too are far more interested in building a cultural identity for Americans than they are in delivering strict military history.
“Not in that way, no”
I agree with Ken that you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about on this score. Gay men and lesbians have created some beautifully committed relationships.
“It’s also objectively disordered and contrary to human nature (its low rate of occurrence being direct evidence of that).”
Homosexuality has always been with us and always will be. The question is what to do with it, and there are several answers, some of them better than others.
“It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to come onto an overtly Catholic web site and pretend there is anything natural at all about either a homosexual orientation or worse, behavior”
Of course, First Things is not “overtly Catholic” but instead bills itself not even as Christian but as “interreligious.” The orientation and behavior are, of course, natural because both occur in nature.
April 22nd, 2011 | 9:16 am
Even if homosexual desire is objectively disordered – I call it a handicap, which is a softer way of saying the same thing – it can hardly be contrary to human nature if gays are human. Again, you’re practically echoing apologists for slavery. What are gays, 3/5ths human?
In any case, if we want gay kids to believe that their sexuality is “nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s no great honor either,” then we need to reply to all the voices in society that teach them that homosexual desire is shameful.
April 22nd, 2011 | 11:04 am
“Even if homosexual desire is objectively disordered – I call it a handicap, which is a softer way of saying the same thing – it can hardly be contrary to human nature if gays are human. Again, you’re practically echoing apologists for slavery. What are gays, 3/5ths human?”
1. Not everything humans do is consistent with human nature. The fact that man is a fallen being whose nature has been damaged by sin is the precise reason Christ had to assume full human nature to redeem it.
2. Like most people I meet these days, you never paid attention in your U.S. Government class, because you get the “3/5ths Compromise” entirely backward. With the seats in the House of Representatives apportioned by population, it was the **SLAVE OWNERS** who wanted their “property” counted as whole persons; this would have given the South a much higher proportion of seats (and thus legislative power) than would otherwise have been the case. In contrast, the non-slaveholding north **DID NOT WANT TO COUNT SLAVES AT ALL**, thereby reducing the number of seats apportioned to the South. The “3/5th Rule” was a compromise that counted all un-free persons as 3/5ths of a free person **PURPOSES OF APPORTIONMENT** only.
It has nothing at all to do with intrinsic worth–and in fact, those people who did not want slaves counted at all probably had a much higher view of the instrinsic equality of blacks than those who wanted them counted as whole persons.
Someone who gets wrong something as elementary as this, and then uses it as an argument in a discussion about homosexuality doesn’t deserve serious consideration.
“In any case, if we want gay kids to believe that their sexuality is “nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s no great honor either,” then we need to reply to all the voices in society that teach them that homosexual desire is shameful.”
Ah, but acting on homosexual desire is shameful.
April 22nd, 2011 | 11:07 am
“The orientation and behavior are, of course, natural because both occur in nature.”
That’s a very modern Methodist definition of “natural”. I will give you time to reconsider it.
April 22nd, 2011 | 12:50 pm
Y’know, I wouldn’t mind teaching “gay history” so much if it weren’t for two things.
The first is that too many kids are already not getting an adequate education, and it grieves me to think that they will be shorted even further on the skills they need to get a job, just so that a bunch of selfish people can misappropriate those resources toward their own political agenda.
But equally awful is the lack of honesty. I mean, consider the post above, where the person suggests gays are victims because the ancient Hebrews used to stone them. This is how the issue will be presented in the class – deliberately setting cultures into whatever context is most likely to make us judge those people according to the teacher’s ideal of how society should be.
The kids will not be taught that the ancient Hebrews were relentlessly focused on directing all sexual energies toward the well-being of tribe and family, and that anyone who engaged in any behavior that threatened this focus was stoned to death. So the kids will never be able to ponder the really interesting question, “did the ancient Hebrews’ relentless focus on the well-being of family and tribe have anything to do with why the Jews survived while their neighboring tribes are now extinct?”
True intellectual honesty is the enemy of ideological partisanship.
Imagine if we were allowed to ask questions like, “how come so many cultures associated with homosexuality are also associated with slavery or with massive inequitable distributions of wealth, decadence, decay, and decline?”
All men have sexual energies that are destructive if not controlled and channeled, so it can’t really be taught that there is a “natural” right to do whatever one likes with one’s sexual energies. When exactly did the standard “you may do whatever you like, as long as all the parties involved give informed consent” come into play? What are the ramifications – beyond just the myth that there “is no victim” and so it therefore “is harmless”, what changes when sexual standards change? What are the other ways in which sexual regulations have been organized, and what are the pros and cons of each standard of organization?
Equally, alongside the question of sexual energies comes the question of rights and obligations between a man and a woman when they make a child together. How does the actual arrangement – the institutions, expectations, norms, rules, laws, contracts, and obligations – between a procreating couple impact men as a group? Women as a group? Society as a whole? The family as a structure?
Will “gay history” ask such questions? Somehow I doubt it.
April 22nd, 2011 | 1:24 pm
Well said, Blake.
April 22nd, 2011 | 1:37 pm
The kids will not be taught that the ancient Hebrews were relentlessly focused on directing all sexual energies toward the well-being of tribe and family, and that anyone who engaged in any behavior that threatened this focus was stoned to death.
Blake,
• There are no prohibitions in the Old Testament against lesbian sex.
• A man could divorce his wife just by writing a certificate of divorce.
• If a man (married or unmarried) had sex with a married woman, that was adultery. They were both to be killed.
• If a married or unmarried man had sex with an unmarried woman, he did not violate the law.
• If a man (married or unmarried) had sex with a prostitute, he did not violate the law.
• If a female prostitute had sex with a man (or presumably a woman, for that matter) , she did not violate the law.
April 22nd, 2011 | 1:44 pm
I forgot to mention polygamy. Men in ancient Israel could have multiple wives and concubines.
Will “straight” history ask questions about why polygamy, prostitution, and married men having sex with unmarried women or prostitutes was acceptable? Will students taught “straight” history be taught that it is acceptable for a man to divorce his wife but not for a woman to divorce her husband? Will “straight” history teach that if a woman’s husband dies before she has children, the brother-in-law must try to impregnate her (and be killed by God if he practices coitus interruptus)?
April 22nd, 2011 | 1:48 pm
All men have sexual energies that are destructive if not controlled and channeled, so it can’t really be taught that there is a “natural” right to do whatever one likes with one’s sexual energies.
Men in ancient Israel had much more sexual liberty that Christians have today. They could take a wife or a concubine. They could easily divorce their wives. They could have sex with prostitutes. They could do pretty much what they liked as long as they didn’t do it with another man’s wife, or with another man.
April 22nd, 2011 | 2:25 pm
Stuart, thanks for the correction. I’m not sure how my misremembering one historical detail discredits my thinking about homosexuality, however. The fact is that when out of disapproval of homosexual behavior you deny that gays can engage in loving, committed relationships, you’re imagining gays to be inferior to straights, just as many whites used to see blacks. When you imagine them to be incapable of something so central to human life, you’re imagining them as less than fully human.
As I’ve said before, I understand and respect, even though I no longer share, your opposition to homosexuality. Bigotry and indifference to gay suffering, and a grievance mentality that replaces love for one’s enemy every time Christians lose ground culturally . . . these are something else again.
You wrote: Not everything humans do is consistent with human nature.
But we had been talking about orientation, not actions. You previously wrote that there isn’t anything “natural at all about [. . . ] a homosexual orientation.” Orientation is not behavior. Homosexual orientation is found in many animal species as well as the human species. Kids who are bullied for their homosexual orientation need to know that gays have made important contributions to humanity.
April 22nd, 2011 | 2:51 pm
Blake wrote:
it grieves me to think that they will be shorted even further on the skills they need to get a job, just so that a bunch of selfish people can misappropriate those resources toward their own political agenda.
“Darn those selfish gays! They should just accept being treated as inferior!” I have to wonder, when I read a comment like that, how the writer could be so incredibly lacking in empathy. And could we cut out lame loaded phrases like “political agenda”? Or are you trying to say you never have one, Blake?
it can’t really be taught that there is a “natural” right to do whatever one likes with one’s sexual energies. When exactly did the standard “you may do whatever you like, as long as all the parties involved give informed consent” come into play?
About the time the West gave up on theocracy, realizing that the proper use of law is not to punish sin per se.
April 22nd, 2011 | 2:55 pm
“I will give you time to reconsider it”
Thank you. I’ll answer more fully now.
As any good historian knows, talk of what is natural or not is usually crude shorthand for evading thornier problems.
What exactly is ‘unnatural’ about homosexuality?
First, one could say that the sexual acts are ‘unnatural,’ but most of those acts are quite natural and even beneficial. Manual and oral sex are widely and productively practiced by heterosexuals. A significant minority of women (around 40%) require these acts in order to achieve orgasm. The only ‘unnatural’ act is anal, which is generally practiced by gay men, not lesbians. Even then, studies have shown that a significant minority of gay men don’t have anal sex. An NIH study placed the number at one third.
Traditional moralists usually confuse the issue by focusing on anal sex and on gay men when the issue is much more complex.
Second, one could also say that homosexuality is ‘unnatural’ because someone has given their emotional life to someone of the same sex. But across history and even today, lots of married people give more of their emotional life to members of the same sex than they do to their spouses. One reason that names like Shakespeare and Lincoln appear on lists of gay men without real warrant is because they wrote so passionately to and about other men that it is clear that their hearts lay more with other men than with their wives.
Did Shakespeare’s and Lincoln’s passion for their friends cross the line into sex? Would they have been gay if they had lived in our era? I don’t know, and I’m as frustrated by those claim that they were gay as I are by those who claim they were not. I’d prefer frank admission that we simply can’t know.
Finally, what is ‘unnatural’ is the recent and widespread emergence of communities in which gay men and lesbians can live openly and normally, holding jobs at all levels of society, being accepted at all levels of society, and even raising children. Although gays have appeared in every society and have gained some acceptance in some pockets at particular times and places, their widespread appearance and acceptance in the last half century is new and unprecedented.
It is this novelty that has all Christian churches struggling to find the proper response. Even the Roman Catholic Church has changed its approach. It used to insist that gays should set aside sin, marry, and have children, but now it recommends chastity. Even the Roman Catholic Church understands that homosexuals are not what it once supposed them to be.
Should the US, the West, and the world accept these communities or drive them underground again? Should Christians help gays establish truly monogamous relationships and help them raise children, or should Christians deny gays participation in the church?
“The first is that too many kids are already not getting an adequate education, and it grieves me to think that they will be shorted even further on the skills they need to get a job”
History of whatever type doesn’t lead to direct job skills. Gay history is as good as any other kind of history in teaching writing and critical thinking skills.
“The kids will not be taught that the ancient Hebrews were relentlessly focused on directing all sexual energies toward the well-being of tribe and family, and that anyone who engaged in any behavior that threatened this focus was stoned to death.”
Good history will teach exactly that. Bad history won’t.
“did the ancient Hebrews’ relentless focus on the well-being of family and tribe have anything to do with why the Jews survived while their neighboring tribes are now extinct?”
That would be an example of bad causal thinking which would be taught only in bad history classes.
“how come so many cultures associated with homosexuality are also associated with slavery or with massive inequitable distributions of wealth, decadence, decay, and decline?”
Another example of bad causal thinking that usually appears in bad history classes.
“Will “gay history” ask such questions?”
Read more gay history. D’Emilio and Freedman offer many such conundrums.
April 22nd, 2011 | 3:39 pm
With all the fuss people are raising here, you would think that California had mandated major changes in the curriculum, mandatory courses on gay history, etc., etc.
First, this is a bill that has only been passed by the Senate and not by the Assembly, so it isn’t law yet.
As to how it would affect the curriculum, here are some bits from an Associate Press story that may put things in perspective:
April 22nd, 2011 | 3:46 pm
It’s also about time the West and all the rest of the world gave up on secular progressivism — the idea that if self-styled secular progressives elect to change their minds, then everyone else must to be forced to change their own minds as well. Either that or be jailed. Either that or be killed.
April 22nd, 2011 | 4:08 pm
“I’m not sure how my misremembering one historical detail discredits my thinking about homosexuality, however. ”
It shows you just don’t have the intellectual chops to make a coherent argument–but we knew that from all your other arguments. Included ones subsequent to your last. Because you simply can’t be objective and transcend your feelings. But the ability to step back is essential, and far too many people in the [Fill in the Blank] Studies business just don’t have it. Which is why such disciplines, in the end, amount to grievance mongering and little else.
April 22nd, 2011 | 4:42 pm
It shows you just don’t have the intellectual chops to make a coherent argument–but we knew that from all your other arguments. Because you simply can’t be objective and transcend your feelings.
You’re dodging my argument and arguing that one memory lapse indicates lack of intellectual ability. And you’re presuming to psychoanalyze me over the Internet. (What are my “feelings” here anyway?) Sad. And the next time you see pentamom, remind her that she left a challenge on the table too.
April 22nd, 2011 | 4:58 pm
[This post wasn’t accepted earlier, perhaps because of its use of clinical terminology that I will replace with euphemism.]
“I will give you time to reconsider it”
Thank you. I’ll answer more fully now.
As any good historian knows, talk of what is natural or not is usually crude shorthand for evading thornier problems.
What exactly is ‘unnatural’ about homosexuality?
First, one could say that the sexual acts are ‘unnatural,’ but most of those acts are quite natural and even beneficial. Hands and mouths are widely and productively used by heterosexuals. A significant minority of women (around 40%) require these acts in order to achieve release. The only ‘unnatural’ act is generally practiced by gay men, not lesbians. Even then, studies have shown that a significant minority of gay men don’t practice this form of release. An NIH study placed the number at one third.
Traditional moralists usually confuse the issue by focusing on the one form of release and on gay men when the issue is much more complex.
Second, one could also say that homosexuality is ‘unnatural’ because someone has given their emotional life to someone of the same sex. But across history and even today, lots of married people give more of their emotional life to members of the same sex than they do to their spouses. One reason that names like Shakespeare and Lincoln appear on lists of gay men without real warrant is because they wrote so passionately to and about other men that it is clear that their hearts lay more with other men than with their wives.
Did Shakespeare’s and Lincoln’s passion for their friends cross the line into sex? Would they have been gay if they had lived in our era? I don’t know, and I’m as frustrated by those claim that they were gay as I are by those who claim they were not. I’d prefer frank admission that we simply can’t know.
Finally, what is ‘unnatural’ is the recent and widespread emergence of communities in which gay men and lesbians can live openly and normally, holding jobs at all levels of society, being accepted at all levels of society, and even raising children. Although gays have appeared in every society and have gained some acceptance in some pockets at particular times and places, their widespread appearance and acceptance in the last half century is new and unprecedented.
It is this novelty that has all Christian churches struggling to find the proper response. Even the Roman Catholic Church has changed its approach. It used to insist that gays should set aside sin, marry, and have children, but now it recommends chastity. Even the Roman Catholic Church understands that homosexuals are not what it once supposed them to be.
Should the US, the West, and the world accept these communities or drive them underground again? Should Christians help gays establish truly monogamous relationships and help them raise children, or should Christians deny gays participation in the church?
“The first is that too many kids are already not getting an adequate education, and it grieves me to think that they will be shorted even further on the skills they need to get a job”
History of whatever type doesn’t lead to direct job skills. Gay history is as good as any other kind of history in teaching writing and critical thinking skills.
“The kids will not be taught that the ancient Hebrews were relentlessly focused on directing all sexual energies toward the well-being of tribe and family, and that anyone who engaged in any behavior that threatened this focus was stoned to death.”
Good history will teach the ideology any group employed. Bad history won’t.
“did the ancient Hebrews’ relentless focus on the well-being of family and tribe have anything to do with why the Jews survived while their neighboring tribes are now extinct?”
That would be an example of bad causal thinking which would be taught only in bad history classes.
“how come so many cultures associated with homosexuality are also associated with slavery or with massive inequitable distributions of wealth, decadence, decay, and decline?”
Another example of bad causal thinking that usually appears in bad history classes.
“Will “gay history” ask such questions?”
Read more gay history. D’Emilio and Freedman offer many such conundrums.
“It shows you just don’t have the intellectual chops to make a coherent argument–but we knew that from all your other arguments.”
Ken’s slip up is a common one, and he deserves credit for knowing he slipped, understanding the issue, and admitting the slip. Lots of people don’t get it even after an explanation. The rest of your comment descends into a list of ungrounded and uncharitable slurs as well as gross inaccuracies.
April 22nd, 2011 | 5:36 pm
The only ‘unnatural’ act is generally practiced by gay men, not lesbians. Even then, studies have shown that a significant minority of gay men don’t practice this form of release. An NIH study placed the number at one third.
Michael,
On the other hand, a significant majority of giraffes engage in this practice. Estimates are that more than 90% of sexual behavior among giraffes is between two males. This kind of knowledge has been ignored until quite recently. Many, many species of animals have homosexual or otherwise nonreproductive sex.
April 22nd, 2011 | 5:46 pm
The final cause of sex is reproduction where final cause is: that for which the sake of which a thing is what it is. The word “natural” has been used in these comments referring to that which is ordered to its final cause. If what occurs is not ordered to its final cause, it is considered “unnatural” or “disordered.”
However, “natural” is also being used as a synonym for “in the realm of human behavior.” Hence the miscommunication. Will California also entertain a law regarding the history of words?
April 22nd, 2011 | 6:02 pm
That would be an example of bad causal thinking which would be taught only in bad history classes.
What an ignorant thing to say.
You are basically saying that “good” historians do not ask provocative questions, of the sort that lead to debate.
No wonder “gay and lesbian studies” professors are so into “writing a narrative”. I’m beginning to suspect that ideological zealots seriously want to replace critical thinking with lockstep-groupthink.
Unfortunately for you, your argument is flawed in that I did not posit any causal behavior. I only presented a set of questions that should be asked.
I guess the sort of people who need to force kids to endure left wing indoctrinations have good reason to hate and fear those who would ask questions.
April 22nd, 2011 | 6:05 pm
Should Christians help gays establish truly monogamous relationships and help them raise children, or should Christians deny gays participation in the church?
Open homosexuality is not a Christian value.
It is a secular humanist value.
No other faith-based belief system in the world teaches that it is, can be, or should be moral to reduce your baby-mama to “gestational carrier” so that your lover can steal the baby.
Gay marriages are inherently parasitic.
April 22nd, 2011 | 8:31 pm
Steve, that argument has never made sense to me. Why do you consider reproduction the one and only final cause? Where is that written that in cases where sexual relations are not immoral for other reasons, pleasure and joy and emotional bonding are not a sufficient ends?
Ben wrote:
It’s also about time the West and all the rest of the world gave up on secular progressivism — the idea that if self-styled secular progressives elect to change their minds, then everyone else must to be forced to change their own minds as well. Either that or be jailed. Either that or be killed.
Isn’t that a rather ironic complaint given the long history of Christians enforcing belief? Western non-believers don’t want to kill believers. Believers are the ones who’ve done the killing.
April 22nd, 2011 | 9:11 pm
Ken: Why do I consider reproduction the final cause? Because that is the definition of sex: the joining of two gametes. If you witnessed a man trying to drink hot tea through his eye you might consider that a disordered action knowing that drinking hot tea is not the final cause of an eye. If in fact the man finds pleasure in attempting to drink hot tea through his eye, that in turn does not order the action to the final cause – it is still a disordered act.
April 22nd, 2011 | 10:28 pm
Blake wrote:
I guess the sort of people who need to force kids to endure left wing indoctrinations. . . .
“Indoctrination.” Right-wing Christians throw this word around a lot and it always flabbergasts me. Why is it that when you controlled the schools you merely taught kids, but now that progressives are increasingly in charge, their teaching is indoctrination? In other words, why is it that your urge to teach kids right and wrong as you see them is good and commendable, and that same urge in your ideological enemies is something darker?
Gay marriages are inherently parasitic.
You know, I try to be sparing with the sarcasm so as not to be disrespectful, but the proper reply here seems to be “you have been in one, perhaps?” The realtor who helped my wife and I buy our house, and who is helping us sell it and buy another, is a lesbian, and she and her partner are raising two adopted kids. She loves those kids. She’s good to them. What is she doing wrong? Would you really tell her kids she’s a parasite?
Steve P, thank you for your reply.
Why do I consider reproduction the final cause? Because that is the definition of sex: the joining of two gametes.
That’s actually just one narrow, technical definition, ie. result, of the frequent results of one kind of sex. Pleasure and increased affection, both gifts of God, and the latter an important component of stable relationships (committed love) are others.
My thanks to Joe Carter for his assistance in keeping this conversation going even on a Friday night. Take a break, Joe!
April 23rd, 2011 | 12:03 am
Ken,
More people — hundreds of millions of people — have been killed in the past hundred years alone in the name of the secular progressive ideology that you yourself espouse than were killed throughout all the rest of human history, in the name of every other system of belief combined, including Christianity, which has contributed more genuine progress to the world and saved more lives (as opposed to taking lives) than any other system of belief that the world has ever known. The fact that Christianity declines to give you carte blanche to have gay sex doesn’t change all that — not the hundred of millions of lives lost to secular “progress” nor the billions of lives — and *souls* — saved by Christianity.
April 23rd, 2011 | 12:48 am
“Many, many species of animals have homosexual or otherwise nonreproductive sex”
Two questions flow from this. Do these species suffer from the ruptures and disease created in humans by anal sex? Do we expect a majority of human relationships in any society to be homosexual?
“The final cause of sex is reproduction where final cause is: that for which the sake of which a thing is what it is.”
I don’t quarrel with your use of “natural,” but like Ken, I do argue with the reductiveness of your understanding of the final cause of sex. Genesis explains that women were created to be helpmeet to men thus ending their loneliness so they might rule over the earth. The second creation account is quite explicit in stating that this new intimacy is what separates a man from his family and creates a new family. The final cause of sex is thus three things not one: reproduction, intimacy (that which ends loneliness), and the creation of a new family.
The question in front of us is whether this model applies to gays as well. Should they end their loneliness by creating new families? Should they parent children despite their inability to reproduce with their partner?
“You are basically saying that “good” historians do not ask provocative questions, of the sort that lead to debate”
I’m not saying that at all. You asked, “did the ancient Hebrews’ relentless focus on the well-being of family and tribe have anything to do with why the Jews survived while their neighboring tribes are now extinct?”
I’m saying this question is an example of bad causal thinking. There are many things that go into a people’s extinction, and their emphasis on one aspect of culture is unlikely to be one of them. Among the civilizations that Jared Diamond describes in “Collapse,” for example, not one goes extinct for any such reason.
You need, by the way, to think more deeply about what exactly you mean by “extinction.” Are the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Philistines extinct? And in what sense?
“Open homosexuality is not a Christian value”
You’re wrong.
“Gay marriages are inherently parasitic”
No, they’re not.
April 23rd, 2011 | 1:04 am
You know, I try to be sparing with the sarcasm so as not to be disrespectful, but the proper reply here seems to be “you have been in one, perhaps?”
Please explain to me why a gay man “needs” the right to share his baby-making subsidy with someone other than the woman he actually made the baby with?
Is there any reason, other than pure selfishness?
I get that gays want status, prestige, “to make a political statement”, blah blah blah.
What I don’t get is why they think these desires give them the right to create a biological family unit with the express purpose of breaking it up, to scavenge the parts.
Marriage is an institution that serves some important roles in protecting the family. Children born to a married man and woman are less likely to be abandoned by one or both parents.
Gay marriage relies on children being abandoned by one or both parents. It actually goes out of its way to create such situations, and then applies pressure to the children who are then forced to hide all traces of grief at their losses (both the loss of their biological identity and the loss of whichever relationship, same or opposite sex parent, they are deprived of, must be treated as if no loss at all were involved, in a process known as “parentification” – where the children are responsible for the adults’ emotional well-being, in a dysfunctional inversion of a normal, healthy relationship).
Hence parasitic.
Gays currently have a great deal of political power. If they use it to pursue what they might legitimately claim a right to, they will do well. If, however, they continue to argue for their “right” to defraud and parentify children, exploit the opposite sex, debase the family unit, and in general violate boundaries and demand what is not rightfully theirs, then they will eventually be labeled parasites, because that is how the community is behaving.
April 23rd, 2011 | 1:07 am
The first sentence of my last comment was intended to be in italics, to indicate it was a quote from a prior comment.
April 23rd, 2011 | 10:42 am
Michael and Ken: sex – the union of two gametes – is the empirical reality. It is a hardly a reductive leap on my part. The question you are posing is one of essentials versus accidents – you seem to want the steps of sexual intercourse to be the essential aspect and the sex part (joining of two gametes) to be an accident. It seems to me difficult to argue. For example, fish engage in sexual reproduction yet do not seem to show a differently level of intimacy or family unit. Likewise, an act of sexual intercourse between a human female and male where the act is forced lacks the marks of new intimacy or the creation of a new family unit in most cases.
However, that is beside my point: you both seem to have grasped the difference in the meanings of the word “nature” as used in some of these comments.
Do you suppose that California students will be taught that Alexander the Great was gay to the detriment of the fact that he too had difficulty conquering what is now parts of Afghanistan or the fact of who his teacher was and what his teacher taught?
April 23rd, 2011 | 10:47 am
Ben, I don’t espouse secular progressive ideology – I’m a confessing Christian with an evangelical background. I’m an active member of an Anglican congregation, and not a liberal one. My belief that God blesses committed, monogamous
relationships stems from coming to understand that homosexual relationships as they’re known today didn’t exist in Biblical times, and from seeing no reason why God would not bless and be pleased by gays who make a commitment to each other in the same way straight couples do. My belief doesn’t spring from Marxism and is not going to lead to it. Likewise, teaching kids in California that gays have done a lot of good in the world is not going to lead to purges on the West Coast.
Blake, very briefly, because I’m afraid that’s all your post deserves, gays do not want children for the sake of “status, prestige, “to make a political statement”, blah blah blah.” I’m sorry, but that’s a bigoted view, a view that can’t be explained except by animus. And gays don’t rob straight couples of their children, or keep kids away from parents who love and want them. That should be obvious.
April 23rd, 2011 | 11:02 am
“Open homosexuality is not a Christian value”
You’re wrong.
“Honor thy father and thy mother.”
“Man and woman, become one flesh.”
“Thou shalt not covet….”
April 23rd, 2011 | 3:05 pm
“Teaching kids in California that gays have done a lot of good in the world is not going to lead to purges on the West Coast.”
Christians refusing to capitulate to LGBT ideologues like you who would like to use the California schools as a propaganda tool to impose your views is likewise not going to lead to “theocracy,” as you yourself have claimed.
If your LGBT ideology is indeed a part of your theology, then you yourself are rather closer to being a “theocrat,” given the propagandistic imposition of said LGBT views that you propose, than most of the respondents on this thread.
April 23rd, 2011 | 4:33 pm
Ben, you’re using the terms “capitulate,” “ideologue,” “impose” and “propaganda” in an unfortunately common but loaded fashion. When you consider evidence and change you’re mind about something, you’re making a logical decision. When I do, I’m supposedly capitulating. When you have views, they are reasoned views. When I have them, I’ve chosen them regardless of the facts to fit a larger ideology. When you use political power to tell kids your view of how things are, you’re teaching. When I do it, I’m imposing propaganda. That’s the import of the terms you’re using, and the double standard there ought to be so obvious that we Christians would be embarrassed to employ it. It’s unfair and uncharitable and contrary to the mind of Christ, and it absolutely impedes understanding.
The fair and fruitful way to debate is to make common ground as much as possible, saying things like “I disagree with you, but I respect your view,” and “I see the good you’re trying to accomplish [teaching kids that homosexuality is wrong, in this case], but I think what I’m aiming for is the greater good. [teaching gay kids that they are loveable and valuable, in this case]” I find it discouraging to have to point this out. I don’t always live up to the standard here, but so many people consistently argue as if they don’t even recognize the standard. When are we as Christians going become “born again” in our political rhetoric?
Anyhow, I agree that you guys are not trying to impose a theocracy. The way I see it is that we live in a democracy, and no one should blame anyone else for using the democratic process to order society as he or she believes is best.
April 23rd, 2011 | 4:40 pm
“the right to create a biological family unit with the express purpose of breaking it up, to scavenge the parts”
You frequently indulge in broad exaggerations like this that apply to one kind of case but not to others, including the most common sort of cases. This kind of exaggeration damages your credibility and is tedious for others to respond to.
“sex – the union of two gametes – is the empirical reality. It is a hardly a reductive leap on my part.”
Reductions are not leaps; they are simplifications, which mean they capture part of the truth and not the whole truth. So yes, the union of two gametes is an empirical reality, but Christians are required to attend to other realities, including the purpose of creation and the purpose of the creation of two sexes. The emergence of other sexualities after the fall requires the utmost seriousness of attention. Devout Christians have reached different conclusions about how to approach these other sexualities. The best we can do is to pray honestly for God’s wisdom.
“The question you are posing is one of essentials versus accidents – you seem to want the steps of sexual intercourse to be the essential aspect and the sex part (joining of two gametes) to be an accident.”
No. I do not frame the problem in terms of essentials and accidents. Please reread my last post.
“For example, fish engage in sexual reproduction yet do not seem to show a differently level of intimacy or family unit.”
Humans are not fish. Please reread Genesis.
“Likewise, an act of sexual intercourse between a human female and male where the act is forced lacks the marks of new intimacy or the creation of a new family unit in most cases”
The subject is not rape or even mere intercourse. It is marriage and the purpose God created for it.
“I’m a confessing Christian with an evangelical background. I’m an active member of an Anglican congregation, and not a liberal one. My belief that God blesses committed, monogamous
relationships stems from coming to understand that homosexual relationships as they’re known today didn’t exist in Biblical times, and from seeing no reason why God would not bless and be pleased by gays who make a commitment to each other in the same way straight couples do.”
It’s a pleasure participating in a conversation with you, Ken. I’ve admired comments you’ve made in other forums, where you’ve captured eloquently and generously the truth of the matter. I was raised Roman Catholic and then joined a Methodist reconciling congregation. Our church has several thriving gay families that have raised some wonderful children. Their faith commitment is often humbling, and I often feel that I’ve learned more from them than they have from me.
April 23rd, 2011 | 5:45 pm
Michael – I apologize that you seem to have misunderstood my points. I know I cannot communicate clearly.
One last attempt: you say there are different sexualities. What is the process of gametogenesis for those different sexualities and how do those processes differ from oogenesis and spermatogenesis? What realities does those processes create that are different?
Further, what is revealed of God’s wisdom that God created gametogenesis? Why did God build a powerful incentives, in humans, to bring gametes together? Does that say anything of God or of Man?
Finally, to get back on topic, will California students learn that gametogenesis is a biological process with a very old history? How will California students be taught which biological processes are to be heeded and which are to be ignored?
April 23rd, 2011 | 10:56 pm
Michael, thanks, and the greater pleasure has been mine. Your equanimity is an example to me, and I’ve learned from your closely reasoned arguments.
Steve P, I’ve appreciated your posts as well. Of course you’re right that the union of two gametes is an empirical reality in heterosexual sex, I just don’t think it’s the only reality, or the necessary point of the act. I see other goods as well, goods which can also be accomplished in homosexual acts between partners seeking to love each other as Christ loved us.
Do you suppose that California students will be taught that Alexander the Great was gay to the detriment of the fact that he too had difficulty conquering what is now parts of Afghanistan or the fact of who his teacher was and what his teacher taught?
Good question, but I’d think getting across the first point wouldn’t take away too much time from the second! :-)
April 24th, 2011 | 4:49 pm
Michael wrote: “the right to create a biological family unit with the express purpose of breaking it up, to scavenge the parts”
You frequently indulge in broad exaggerations like this that apply to one kind of case but not to others, including the most common sort of cases.
——
What exaggeration?
It is not an exaggeration to say that gay marriage is parasitic. Real marriage establishes norms, obligations, and contracts that protect vulnerable family members against being exploited by more powerful family members.
Gay marriage inverts this – it redesigns the institution of marriage as an institution that exists to help powerful family members exploit vulnerable family members.
It really takes a certain amount of chutzpah to self-righteously claim human rights for oneself while unashamedly defending, in the very same breath, a “right” to violate a child’s.
After all, the right to be free from exploitation is a far more fundamental right than the right to pretend you are something you aren’t.
No kid has “two daddies”. The saddest thing is that gays are letting themselves be used – letting themselves be talked into the idea that they need to pretend to be hetero – need to tell lies and create a false facade and fake self in order to be “who they really are”.
However, I have limited pity for people who ought to behave like grown ups but choose not to. Any couple that is forcing their children to play along with such a sick, dysfunctional fantasy needs to be called out for the child abusers they are.
The good news is: they will.
April 24th, 2011 | 9:03 pm
Blake, why do you believe that “gays are letting themselves be used – letting themselves be talked into the idea that they need to pretend to be hetero – need to tell lies and create a false facade and fake self in order to be “who they really are”?
Have you heard any gay people describe any such thing having happened to them? Can you not imagine that gays would have the same desire to raise a family that most straights do? Why would they not?
Even if you believe that gays are exploiting rather than loving children when they create new life with one partner’s sperm and another woman’s egg or the other way around, the fact remains that many, and I’ll bet the majority, of gays couples simply adopt. That’s not forcing kids to do anything. It’s providing them with a home.
April 25th, 2011 | 11:09 am
I think Blake is engaging in little more than name calling. Heterosexual couples, it seems to me, are just as capable of having babies for the wrong reasons as same-sex couples. There are no statistics that I know of as to how many same-sex married couples are having no children, adopting, or having their own children. So exactly how one can generalize about same-sex marriage and children I don’t know. Certainly it is no more “child abuse” for a same-sex couple to adopt a child than it is for an opposite-sex couple. Children given up for adoption have no chance of living with their biological parents.
One of the things we can say about the children of same-sex couples is that they are wanted. Same-sex couples are not conceiving more children than they want and aborting them. And with the high rate of out-of-wedlock births among heterosexuals, I don’t see how same-sex couples can be scolded for wanting and raising children in stable households.
I don’t see why same-sex couples should be castigated for wanting to have and raise children any more than infertile heterosexual couples should be.
April 25th, 2011 | 11:26 am
“What is the process of gametogenesis for those different sexualities and how do those processes differ from oogenesis and spermatogenesis? What realities does those processes create that are different?”
Thanks for clarifying your point, Steve. These are good questions that don’t have an answer yet. From what little I’ve read, the answer won’t appear in gametogenesis but in the changes that occur in fetal development. It’s possible that other changes occur during infancy and childhood that affect sexual orientation and gender identity, but the evidence tends toward earlier (fetal) developments. Many gays report that they have always felt different and that the process of coming out has been a process of overcoming their reluctance to identify what they’ve known all along. Gays also tend to appear in family trees.
Even though we don’t quite know the cause of homosexuality, most psychologists and even the Roman Catholic Church no longer believe that homosexuality is a conscious choice the way other sins are. This change in understanding of the nature of homosexuality requires a different evaluation of and approach to its morality.
“How will California students be taught which biological processes are to be heeded and which are to be ignored?”
The answer to all such questions is either poorly or well. Education can either ignore important issues or address them. The more some people urge a question to be ignored the more extreme and malformed the treatment becomes.
“What exaggeration?”
Let’s start with the phrase “express purpose” in your claim that gays seek “the right to create a biological family unit with the express purpose of breaking it up, to scavenge the parts.”
It would be more accurate to claim that the formation of some gay families encourages the breakup of biological families, but your choice of “express purpose” implies that most gays are malevolently seeking to break up biological families.
In addition to the exaggerated wording, you have chosen a less common situation rather than the most common situation, which is another form of exaggeration. Most gay children arrive through adoption, and the children would have been adopted by a straight couple if the gay man or lesbian weren’t in line ahead of them, so you exaggerate again by portraying gays as ruining something that had already been ruined.
We’ve talked about this subject a couple of times, Blake, and I find your approach to conversation tiresome. A good conversation can lead to persuasion (which is quite rare) or to a stalemate between noble opponents. In another forum, Ken Zaretzke and I (a different Ken than the one in this thread) had the latter type of conversation, but you ducked out of it. My conversation with Ken Z. forced both of us to tighten our logic, improve our arguments, provide better examples, and clarify our assumptions. Although neither of us persuaded each other, we both learned more about ourselves and each other. It was a productive conversation.
As far as I’m concerned, any other type of conversation is merely lobbing opinions back and forth. I had hoped Stuart would remain in this conversation because I usually learn something from him, even though his manner and style of argumentation are juvenile. He likes to belittle people and often makes logical leaps in doing so. Take, for example, his dismissal of Ken because Ken invoked the 3/5’s rule for counting black citizens. Ken’s point that blacks were considered less than human remains valid and is something we all know. Everybody also knows that the 3/5’s rule is routinely invoked as evidence even if it is flawed, and everybody also knows that in comment sections people often make errors in spelling, grammar, tone, and analysis they wouldn’t given more time to think. But Stuart was apparently looking for a reason to dismiss and demean, and he leapt on it. What’s valuable about Stuart’s comments is that, when he sticks with a subject, his arguments are logical and well grounded. When pushed back onto his assumptions, however, his only recourse is attack, which results in a different kind of intellectual dishonesty.
April 25th, 2011 | 12:39 pm
To David and Michael:
There is a conflict between what gays want vs. what is best for a child.
Why do gays think their rights should be prioritized above a child’s rights?
Stop avoiding the question and answer it. If you can.
What is it about being gay that makes a gay person’s needs more pressing, more compelling, and more important than the child’s needs?
Under the law, a child is supposed to have the following rights:
1. A right to have a relationship, and be supported by, both biological parents
2. The right to have (1) severed only when it is in the child’s best interest
3. The only person who has the authority to (2) is a judge.
4. All custody decisions are to be ruled entirely by the child’s best interests. (Note: anything less is a violation of a basic human right: the right to be free from exploitation. Further, to make a custody decision where the well-being of the child is treated as less important than the desires of the guardians may also be a more specific human rights violation, such as, for instance, trafficking in human flesh).
Sorry if you find that “tiresome” (though I can see why!)
April 25th, 2011 | 1:46 pm
“Stop avoiding the question and answer it. If you can.”
I’ve answered the question more than once for you, and I’ve tried to get clarity from you on the implications of the question more than once. Each time, you have evaded answer. Which makes conversation with you especially tiresome.
So let’s try again and see whether you break pattern.
Notice, to begin with, that you haven’t asked the question “Why do gays think their rights should be prioritized above a child’s rights” on this thread. You can hardly accuse anyone of avoiding a question you haven’t asked, especially in a thread that was about a different subject, the teaching of history.
Your question about the rights of gay parents vs. those of children can’t be answered simply because the answer changes in each type of situation. Rather than answer comprehensively, I’ll take the most common situation: the gay couple who wants to adopt. In most states, unmarried couples cannot adopt but single people can. So a lesbian goes to an adoption agency and applies to adopt. Various officials study her, her finances, and her home to determine whether she will make a suitable parent. Once approved, she joins a queue behind straight couples and other singles who want to adopt. When it is her turn, she adopts a child, and she and her partner raise the child.
If you want to prevent gay couples from raising children, are you prepared to prevent all singles from adopting, or will you require the state to investigate any sexual alliances the applicant has? Would you have children taken away if the adoptive parent later entered a gay relationship?
Or is your position that the current state of affairs is ok, that gays can adopt under the radar as they have, but you want to prevent gay marriage?
I’ve given you a good faith answer to your question. Let’s see if you follow suit. Can you answer questions that genuinely flow from your position?
April 25th, 2011 | 2:48 pm
Blake,
It seems to me you are making up law and rights.
If this were the case, parents could not give up children for adoption. Under the law, it is the parents who have rights and responsibilities, not the children. Child support is not for the child, it due from the absent parent to the parent who takes care of the child. About 40% of children in the United States are now born out of wedlock. Do they have a right to know the absent parent (usually the father) and have a relationship with him? Where in the law does it say this? If the mother wants child support, she may bring a suit. Or if the father wants to be a part of his child’s life, he may sue the mother. But if the parents abandon the child, that is the crime of child abandonment, but it is a crime, not a violation of the rights of the child to know the parents and received child support.
In the case of unmarried heterosexual couples, any children belong to the mother. A judge enters the picture only if the biological father sues for custody or visitation rights, or the mother sues for child support. So for the vast majority of children, a judge never enters the picture.
April 25th, 2011 | 2:59 pm
Michael: no, you haven’t.
You have not explained why a gay man – let’s invent a hypothetical man and name him “James” – “needs” the right to make a child with “Susan”, but yet have “Mark” be named the child’s father.
What would be so horrible about admitting that Susan is the child’s mother, and accepting that Mark is never going to be more than a stepfather?
I don’t care if we recognize gay couples. I just don’t understand why they need the right to lie about parentage, just so that James and Mark can “live a lie”.
No – wait – excuse me – I should have said, just so that James, Mark, and the child who is expected to pretend two “have two daddies” can “live a lie”.
April 25th, 2011 | 3:03 pm
Or – let me put this another way – is there any reason, outside of your desire to push your Unitarian Universalist/humanist beliefs on the rest of us – why gay people “need” to be presented as if they were procreative couples, when they are in fact NOT procreative as a couple?
Because I am not a Unitarian Universalist/humanist, and so I do not share your belief that family and/or sex/gender are or should be “choices”. Yours is the only faith that holds that reality-defying belief. Why should your faith be forced on the rest of us?
I believe you can no more choose to be married than Michael Jackson could choose to be white.
April 25th, 2011 | 3:29 pm
Blake wrote:
You have not explained why a gay man – let’s invent a hypothetical man and name him “James” – “needs” the right to make a child with “Susan”, but yet have “Mark” be named the child’s father.
Blake, do you have stats on how many gays do this versus how many simply adopt an unwanted child? You haven’t addressed the latter scenario, which I mentioned before. Isn’t a kid better with “two mommies” than no home at all but an orphanage?
is there any reason [ . . . ] why gay people “need” to be presented as if they were procreative couples . . .
Are they doing this, really? They’re lying about where the kid came from? Where’s your evidence? And I doubt too many same-sex couples are claiming to have procreated together.
Yours is the only faith that holds that reality-defying belief. Why should your faith be forced on the rest of us?
I’m not sure how many people still think homosexuality is a choice, but many people, practicing Christian and non-Christian, favor giving gays more rights. And we live in a democracy. To be outvoted is not to be forced.
April 25th, 2011 | 4:49 pm
What would be so horrible about admitting that Susan is the child’s mother, and accepting that Mark is never going to be more than a stepfather?
Blake,
You seem to be making a case against all adoptions. In an adoption, the state makes someone who is not a biological parent a legal parent. It seems you are opposed to this. If two males or two females in a same-sex marriage are “lying” about the parenthood of the child they adopt, then why aren’t a married man and woman “lying” about the parenthood of the child they adopt? Perhaps you would like all adoptive parents to make clear to their adopted children that they are not the real parents. They should tell their adoptive children, “If you call us mom or dad or mother or father, it’s a lie.”
April 25th, 2011 | 5:32 pm
I described an adoption scenario, while you have proposed a surrogacy scenario. Do you realize that you changed the scenario? Do you think there are any significant differences between adoption and surrogacy for children?
How do you recommend that your fictional family “admit” that Mark is a stepfather rather than a daddy?
Can you tell me how you propose to recognize gay couples and have them tell the truth about parentage? How exactly do couples do that?
I can’t answer your questions about Unitarianism. You’ll have to ask a Unitarian.
If the pattern holds, you won’t answer these questions any more than you did my previous ones.
In the meantime, notice that three people—Ken, David, and myself—have tried in various ways to get you to clarify your position, but you can’t seem to answer any of us in any straightforward way. Notice also that all three of us never ascribe to you views you do not hold while you accuse people of being Unitarian or coercive.
April 25th, 2011 | 6:02 pm
Why can’t a gay man be expected to honor his child’s mother?
What is it about being gay that somehow makes it unreasonable for a supposedly grown man to recognize that children enjoy having mothers?
Or – since you can’t seem to comprehend the question – let me try from another direction.
Have you spent as much time thinking about what it might be like to be a child without a mother, as you expect others to spend thinking about what it might be like to be a gay man who does not have the right to do whatever it is gay men think it is marriage gives them the right to do?
For all the ink that has been spilled on the subject of how awful it is for gay people not to be allowed to have wedding ceremonies, has anyone written any articles about what it’s like for a child of gays to have a wedding minus one of the prominent parents?
I bring up weddings because it’s one of the events specifically mentioned as particularly painful to motherless daughters in the book “Motherless Daughters”.
Weddings, for a motherless daughter, are times when the grief is re-experienced. And frequently hidden from the father, because the book strongly suggests that motherless daughters frequently feel they need to hide things like that from fathers – that this is part of the experience of being motherless.
What’s it like for a fatherless daughter to have no man to dance with? Are you going to tell me that dancing with “second mom” is just as good? That it doesn’t matter who gives a young bride away?
Or do you just not care?
We have some evidence of what it’s like for motherless and fatherless children, when they reach those points of their life when they need a same-sex parent, or need an opposite-sex parent, and they don’t have one.
We know that adolescence and sexual maturity is one such pain-point. Coming of age rites (for instance, “the prom”) are too. Marriage is another, as is the birth of a child – especially the first child, when women look specifically to their mothers and men look specifically to their fathers.
Because boys look to men to learn how to be men, and that need doesn’t change just because some woman really needs to pretend she is just like a man, nor does a girl stop looking to women specifically just because a man desperately wants to believe that women aren’t really important.
We know these things matter. We know they are times of grief and rage and uncertainty for the people who experience them.
What we don’t know is how the experience of being expected to pretend that “having two daddies is not motherless” affects this experience.
Do you care?
Do kids have rights? Or are they just playthings for adults to use?
Is parenting something you buy, or is it a responsibility?
April 25th, 2011 | 9:05 pm
And still you dodge the hard questions, Blake, and refuse to acknowledge facts that don’t fit your argument. Dishonesty is not a convincing debate tactic. You can admit that your debate opponent has a good point or two without thereby admitting that he’s correct on the larger issue, you know? That at least builds trust and respect.
April 25th, 2011 | 9:32 pm
Blake,
As I have pointed out, all of your arguments apply to children adopted by opposite-sex parents or children with surrogate mothers who are raised by opposite-sex parents. Many of your arguments apply to children born out of wedlock when the biological father is not around to be a father figure to the child, a situation which is much more common than same-sex parenting is ever likely to be.
Why can’t a gay man be expected to honor his child’s mother?
In the case of most adoptions, the biological parents do not want to be honored. They have given up all rights to be a part of the child’s life. In the case of surrogate mothers, it is quite possible for a mother who bears a child for a male couple to remain involved in the child’s life.
Motherless Daughters is a book about girls and women whose mothers have died. I don’t see that it necessarily applies to children of same-sex parents.
Pretty much everything you say is based on your imagination. You have cited no surveys or studies and no personal testimony of children who have been raised by same-sex parents. You persist in ignoring information like the following:
April 25th, 2011 | 9:36 pm
Ken and Michael: Thank you both for your individual recitations. I do not think we have anything more of which to speak.
April 25th, 2011 | 9:43 pm
“Ever since the day 19-year-old Zach Wahls stood up in the Iowa Legislature and proclaimed that ‘I was raised by a gay couple and I’ve done pretty well,’ he’s done even better…”
http://www.globegazette.com/news/local/article_7950b1d2-6ef7-11e0-944f-001cc4c002e0.html
April 25th, 2011 | 10:20 pm
So the pattern holds.
You cannot answer the questions I posed or the questions that Ken and David posed.
The best you can offer is to pose more questions of your own.
I’ll be happy to answer your questions but only after you answer mine.
April 26th, 2011 | 9:48 am
It seems to me that all of Blake’s arguments apply just as much to opposite-sex couples who adopt or use the services of a surrogate mother as they do to same-sex couples who do the same thing. Also Blake seems not to take into account that slightly over 25% if children in the United States live with a single parent (mostly the mother). About 40% of children are born out of wedlock. A recent study found that 28% of women in the United States who had two or more children had children by two or more men.
Also (and I may have said this before), all the children of same-sex parents are wanted. Same-sex couples do not get pregnant accidentally and abort 20% of the time.
I would also note that the book Motherless Daughters is about daughters whose mothers have died. It is not about daughters who have “two daddies.” One of the weaknesses of Blake’s arguments is he never actually deals with the realities of same-sex marriage. He does not quote studies or surveys. He does not produce any testimony of children raised by same-sex parents. Everything comes from his imagination.
April 26th, 2011 | 11:28 am
I would also note that the book Motherless Daughters is about daughters whose mothers have died.
Actually that’s not true.
The book covers abandonment by one’s mother as well – which is what happens when a woman sells her baby to a gay couple.
As would be obvious to anyone who cared even a little about the child’s welfare – anyone who spent any time at all actually thinking about it from the child’s point of view – gay parents cannot use the statements that adopted parents use:
“Your mother gave you to us because she couldn’t care for you, and wanted you to have a good home.”
“Your mother loved you.”
The child of IVF knows his real parent(s) didn’t love him. Concern about “narratives” and “identity” is for self-absorbed gays to angst about; children apparently don’t need self esteem.
April 26th, 2011 | 12:09 pm
David wrote: It seems to me that all of Blake’s arguments apply just as much to opposite-sex couples who adopt or use the services of a surrogate mother as they do to same-sex couples who do the same thing.
Oh, I object to that, too. The loophole in adoption laws – the one that allows a law originally intended to help children, to be used as a means of exploiting children – needs to be shut – and it will be. It’s a-coming.
But in the meantime, what gays are asking for is nothing less than the right to have outright falsehoods enshrined as law – as if there could be a “basic right” to force people to play along with lies.
There isn’t.
We lie for adopted families for humanitarian reasons: if the “graft” does not take, then the child is an orphan and the infertile couple is unable to experience parenthood. But gays are not infertile, they are just prioritizing their own narcissism and ego needs over their child’s well-being.
Call that lie #1: that being gay is somehow like being infertile. It isn’t – being gay is more like being a divorced parent: you don’t love the person you made the child with, but your child’s needs come first, so you do what is right by the kid.
Lie #2 is that family can be a “choice”. Even adoptive families aren’t just based on “choice”. Children do not choose to leave their family of origin to come live with another family. The situation is supposed to be based on finding the best possible outcome in a less than desirable situation.
Lie #3 is that men and women are interchangeable. If that were true, there would be no need for gay marriage, now, would there?
Lie #3b is that same-sex and opposite-sex parents are interchangeable. Because there’s nothing unhealthy at all about a boy confiding in his mother about his discomfort or anxieties when it comes to that first “wet dream”, right?
Lie #4 is that adoption is harmless. Even adoption advocates don’t pretend that any more. The justification for adoption is that it does less harm to put a child in an adoptive home, than it does to keep that child with a parent who is not prepared for parenthood.
If we as a culture sincerely believed that biological ties were irrelevant, then adopted kids wouldn’t have to hide their tears and their rage when YET ANOTHER teacher demands that they do a “family tree” project – creating what one adoptee-rights group describes as a “b*****d moment”.
If we as a culture sincerely believed that biological ties were irrelevant, then we’d think it a very funny joke to tell a nine year old that she’s adopted, just to see what she’d say – except, wait, it wouldn’t be a joke, because her response would be pleasure: “now I know I was a wanted child”.
April 26th, 2011 | 1:43 pm
The child of IVF knows his real parent(s) didn’t love him. Concern about “narratives” and “identity” is for self-absorbed gays to angst about; children apparently don’t need self esteem.
Blake,
Your entire message of 11:28 am seems to assume that same-sex couples are somehow using IVF as a means of obtaining children. Whatever for? IVF is extremely expensive, doesn’t have a high success rate, and is really only for couples with fertility problems. Are you thinking of surrogate mothers and artificial insemination?
Lesbians can and do have their own children, which the vast majority have by artificial insemination. They are then the biological mothers. I can’t find any statistics, but of the male same-sex couples that I know, and know of, all but one have adopted their children just like any other parents. Elton John and his partner did have a child through the services of a surrogate mother. Then again, so did Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. You don’t have to be a male same-sex couple to use the services of a surrogate mother.
I think your basic idea is that homosexuals shouldn’t raise children. Almost all of your arguments, as I point out repeatedly, apply just as much to opposite-sex couples as to same-sex couples.
You also repeatedly ignore all the facts about how many children are aborted by heterosexual couples, born out of wedlock, raised by single mothers with no father present, abandoned by one heterosexual parent because of divorce, raised by a nonbiological parent because of divorce and remarriage, and a whole host of other issues that involve many of the same issues you claim to worry about but have nothing to do with same-sex parenting.
April 26th, 2011 | 1:51 pm
´Alan Turing, hero of WWII for cracking Germany’s Enigma code, and one of the founders of Computer Science was tried and convicted of engaging in homosexual acts in 1952. Although a British citizen, his work in computers and Artificial Intelligence had (still has!) a tremendous affect on Silicon Valley.´
To all of which his homosexuality was utterly irrelevant. You can teach Alan Turing, and never mention the fact at all.”
I agree. But this is funny comming from people who think there is a conection between christianity and the development of modern science, just cause many great scientists were christians… I will remember this discusion when having the science-christianity one again.
April 26th, 2011 | 2:07 pm
What an interesting psychology you manifest. You’ve spent a lot of time on this thread accusing people of being dense and of ignoring children’s rights all the while refusing to answer any questions that would help people understand what you’re trying to say.
But only now in your last post do you actually explain your logic and define your positions. You might consider doing so right at first since your way of putting things is so oblique and difficult to understand.
Nothing you say in this last post comes as a surprise to me since I’ve heard you say it all before. I still have the same questions about the implications of these stands that I’ve asked in the past and you haven’t answered.
Do you propose banning adoption by singles as well as gays, banning all surrogate pregnancies, banning all sperm and egg donation, or banning these only when gays are involved? Would you ban adoptions by gay stepparents? Would you ban open adoptions when the adoptive parents were gay?
April 26th, 2011 | 4:28 pm
David Nickol: I do not have a dispute if gay couples are recognized as couples. It is granting them the benefits of marriage that I object to.
And it is ‘not true’ that I ignore all the rotten things heteros do to children. It all stems from the same source: the “sexual revolution” idea that marriage is or should be about adult sexual and emotional fulfillment, to the exclusion of the familial and social obligations that are just as important (if not more important) when one undertakes to found a family.
In all cases, the problem comes from the same source, and the cure is the same: the problem is that our culture has taken to worshiping sexual pleasure and (unrealistic) emotional ideals, and our culture is currently in a place where we’re so enamored of these false gods that we’re willing to sacrifice our children to them.
Gays don’t have the right to found a family, because they can’t found a family. Civil rights can’t be based on lies; if what you want is based on fraud, then it’s not your civil right. Whatever rights gays are honestly entitled to has to be based on truth.
April 26th, 2011 | 8:12 pm
Blake:
“And it is ‘not true’ that I ignore all the rotten things heteros do to children. It all stems from the same source: the “sexual revolution” idea that marriage is or should be about adult sexual and emotional fulfillment, to the exclusion of the familial and social obligations that are just as important (if not more important) when one undertakes to found a family.”
Is funny…so before the sexual revolution children were not abused? They were not beaten, put to work at very early ages, mistreated verbally etc etc? All of this happened after the “sexual revolution”? Before, I guess, children lived in paradise.
April 26th, 2011 | 9:58 pm
Blake wrote:
In all cases, the problem comes from the same source, and the cure is the same: the problem is that our culture has taken to worshiping sexual pleasure and (unrealistic) emotional ideals, and our culture is currently in a place where we’re so enamored of these false gods that we’re willing to sacrifice our children to them.
That’s a huge problem, alright; it’s just not everyone’s problem. When will you stop sneering at gays long enough to recognize that they too can love children, and that in their love they naturally believe they can provide them good homes?
No, adoption is not painless for children, but gays who adopt aren’t taking kids away from hetero couples who love them. They’re adopting kids whom hetero couples – or hetero single mothers – have said they cannot love and/or provide for them.
There is a civil rights revolution occurring here, which is to say that decency and fellow feeling is triumphing. Stand up for your belief that homosexuality is a sin – I respect that, and I’ll stand up for your own decency there. But don’t be like those enraged white Southerners we remember from the 60′s.
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