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Tristyn Bloom
Matthew Cantirino
Anthony Esolen
Gene Fant
Greg Forster
Matthew J. Franck
Collin Garbarino
Robert P. George
William J. Haun
Leroy Huizenga
Katherine Infantine
Joseph Knippenberg
David T. Koyzis
Robert T. Miller
Matthew Milliner
David Mills
Mark Movsesian
William Mumma
Nathaniel Peters
R.R. Reno
James R. Rogers
Russell E. Saltzman
Matthew Schmitz
Kevin Staley-Joyce
David Talcott
Anna Williams
This is just a straw in the wind, but it’s nonetheless very disturbing. Will adherents of traditional morality, who seek only to protect their view of marriage (and not in any other way legally to stigmatize homosexuality) be relegated to the margins of society, treated the way white supremacists were (and are) treated?
January 5th, 2012 | 8:28 am
Does protecting their view of marriage actually mandate preventing anyone else from legally entering into what they view as marriage? In other words, is the problem “legally… stigmatiz[ing] homosexuality” period?
The linked article brings up the the idea, “if the SSM advocates are right and opposition to SSM becomes analogous to racism in our society”. Looking at it from that perspective, one could be a racist to the point of not wanting to intermarry with another ‘race’, and discouraging one’s children from doing so. But isn’t that different from trying to make ‘miscegenation’ illegal for anyone?
As I’ve noted before, it is legal in our society for people to divorce and remarry. But Catholics do not allow that – for their members. There’s already a separation between the concept of marriage in the Catholic church and the concept in broader society.
“Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question – how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mahommedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.” – C.S. Lewis, ‘Mere Christianity’
January 5th, 2012 | 8:49 am
When the Left gains power, they repress religion.
Their own religion (whether they call it a religion or not) is the only acceptable ideological belief. Dissent is intolerable.
There are some Unitarian Universalists I have known who rationalize this by pointing out that there should be no tolerance for intolerance. The problem is in the execution – they don’t even try to formulate categories, criteria, definitions of what constitutes unacceptable levels or forms of “intolerance”. The irony is, of course, that they exhibit more real intolerance of people with dissenting views than the people they fear. What’s worse is that they do not see intolerance as a behavior, but rather as an innate quality that makes certain types of people defective – that is, they reject the notion of “love the sinner but hate the sin”.
The idea that we could have zero tolerance for them (based on their intolerance) is simply not something that ever occurred to them.
However, someone – somewhere – is going to have to figure out exactly where the boundaries of what you might call “antisocial” types or levels of intolerance are, because the only way “Catholics and others” are going to survive is if they start stigmatizing the act of stigmatize them.
January 5th, 2012 | 8:51 am
This is a pretty fragile straw, isn’t it? A blogger says an unnamed (albeit superstar) former law student wrote a note saying that one of his professors, discussing a hypothetical thought experiment, once said “something along the lines of” Catholics would be treated like segregationist Senators.
January 5th, 2012 | 8:52 am
Does protecting their view of marriage actually mandate preventing anyone else from legally entering into what they view as marriage?
Yes.
It is a zero sum situation.
I am getting tired of people pretending they haven’t already been given reasons why this is. It is one thing to disagree with the traditional marriage position – another thing altogether to misrepresent it.
A lie of omission is still a lie.
January 5th, 2012 | 9:44 am
“Does protecting their view of marriage actually mandate preventing anyone else from legally entering into what they view as marriage?”
Allowing anybody to legally enter into anything they view as marriage and claim all the benefits associated with marriage is a terrible idea. Isn’t that obvious?
“Gay marriage” is a gimmick. It’s an attempt to obtain entitlement payments (e.g., public pension inheritance, dependent discounts in health insurance) and tax breaks (e.g., exemption from estate taxes) for same-sex concubines. If it works, everybody will try the same gimmick. Before long, the taxpayers will be paying pensions to goldfish and lawn mowers.
Then the taxpayers will be broke and nobody will get any benefits. It would be the end of marriage according to anybody’s view.
Is that to goal, to kill marriage? No, probably not for most “gay” activists. They just want the money. But the end of marriage is the most probable outcome long-term.
January 5th, 2012 | 9:52 am
Will adherents of traditional morality, who seek only to protect their view of marriage (and not in any other way legally to stigmatize homosexuality) be relegated to the margins of society, treated the way white supremacists were (and are) treated?
No, but it seems to me that a great many who oppose same-sex marriage do want to legally stigmatize homosexuality. For example, about 30 states have passed amendments banning same-sex marriage. One might say, “Fine, that’s protecting traditional marriage.” However, 17 of those state amendments also ban civil unions, and 2 additional states also ban same-sex marriage, civil unions, or any other legal arrangement that give benefits of marriage.
The Catholic Church believes that two baptized people can marry only once, and the marriage ends only when one of the spouses die. That is the Catholic view of “traditional marriage.” So I think it’s reasonable to say that in the eyes of the Catholic Church, most divorced and remarried people are actually living in adultery. Do you suppose when Catholic Charities gives spousal benefits to legally married employees, it excludes those who are divorced and remarried on the grounds that they are not traditionally married? Does Catholic Charities deny adoption services to those who are divorced and remarried?
The Catholic Church maintains that same-sex couples cannot “really” marry, because marriage is a union of a man and a woman. But the Catholic Church also claims that a divorced person with a living spouse cannot “really” marry because he or she is already married. So in opposing same-sex marriage, people tend to claim the Catholic Church is just upholding “traditional marriage.” But what if the Catholic Church—in the name of “traditional marriage”—were to lobby for law denying spousal benefits to couples who had divorced and remarried? How many would defend the Catholic Church as standing up for traditional marriage if it initiated a campaign to deny the divorced and remarried to file their income taxes jointly, like “real” married couples?
The fact of the matter is that the Catholic Church does want homosexuals to be stigmatized. They do not want any legal protections for gay people at all, including the right not to be fired or not to be denied housing for being gay.
January 5th, 2012 | 9:58 am
Allowing anybody to legally enter into anything they view as marriage and claim all the benefits associated with marriage is a terrible idea. Isn’t that obvious?
Felapton,
And yet one of the major complaints here by some First Things commenters is how few same-sex couples are getting married. If same-sex marriage is a great way to take advantage of the system for monetary gain, how do you account for the small number of people who actually are cashing in?
January 5th, 2012 | 10:46 am
Blake –
Maybe they aren’t pretending.
January 5th, 2012 | 10:57 am
Felapton writes:
This is a pretty fragile straw, isn’t it?
It’s what should be called a virtual or conditional straw: if it had any significance, then it would be significant.
Not worrisome to proverbial camels or their backs. However, anything can serve to support the “we are living in a Kulturkampf!!!” trope, especially in the blogosphere.
January 5th, 2012 | 11:07 am
At present, the big monetary pay-offs are still not available; the really big marriage benefits are federal. Once the dollar signs begin to accumulate, no doubt the nuptials will follow.
Can everybody agree there is a difference between “I have never heard a reason why this is so.” and “I have never heard a reason that I personally find convincing why this is so?”
In the present case, the first is a lie. The second is a quibble.
January 5th, 2012 | 11:31 am
David,
The Catholic Church maintains that same-sex couples cannot “really” marry, because marriage is a union of a man and a woman. But the Catholic Church also claims that a divorced person with a living spouse cannot “really” marry because he or she is already married.
Wrong.
(1) The Church maintains that same-sex couples cannot “really” marry because marriage is between a man and a woman for (a) procreation, and (b) drawing the couple into deeper union.
(2) The Church maintains that that a person who entered into a sacramental marriage, then divorced, and has a living spouse, cannot “really” obtain a new, sacramental marriage.
January 5th, 2012 | 12:16 pm
Allowing anybody to legally enter into anything they view as marriage and claim all the benefits associated with marriage is a terrible idea. Isn’t that obvious?
Imagine if the KKK – the Klan – started holding their own “gay pride parades”, where “gay pride parade” is defined as being exactly the opposite of what the people who currently use that institution think it means.
Imagine if these klansmen argued that it’s a thought crime to believe that their gay pride parades are different from the ones held by gay rights organizations.
And if a court upheld that klansmen have the right to not be discriminated against, and therefore every gay rights organization in the nation had to treat klan parades as being equal to their own parades.
Even though they’re parading around symbols that mean exactly the opposite of what “gay pride” celebrates.
When challenged, they could say that gay pride is a social construct and thus their definition of what it means is as valid as anyone else’s.
Lucky thing for gay rights organizations that the Klan isn’t as good at trolling as they are.
Because that’s what is really going on: it’s about trolling and perverting norms.
January 5th, 2012 | 12:23 pm
Blake –
I am getting tired of people pretending they haven’t already been given reasons why this is.
Maybe they aren’t pretending.
Well, you’ve seen secular arguments. You’ve even responded to a few, so why do you pretend otherwise?
January 5th, 2012 | 12:29 pm
(2) The Church maintains that that a person who entered into a sacramental marriage, then divorced, and has a living spouse, cannot “really” obtain a new, sacramental marriage.
Jack Perry,
Are you saying the Church finds it acceptable for those who are sacramentally married and civilly divorced to civilly remarry? The naturally married (one or both unbaptized) and the sacramentally married (both baptized) are truly married. But the sacramentally married, civilly divorced, civilly remarried are not “really” married. They are only legally married. They are living in adultery. I think they are (or should be), in the eyes of the Church, analogous to legally married same-sex couples. Does anyone deny that legally married same-sex couples are really legally married? Clearly they are. However, to the Church they are neither sacramentally nor naturally married.
If it is acceptable for the Church to recognize legally married couples living in adultery for purposes of spousal benefits, then I don’t see why they cannot recognize legally married same-sex couples for those same purposes.
January 5th, 2012 | 12:33 pm
Blake,
The Klan has every right to call their parades whatever they want. Decent citizens have the responsibility to respond and object, but they don’t have the right to make your hypothetical illegal. You may think gay marriage is a perversion, but that’s not grounds to keep it illegal.
January 5th, 2012 | 12:34 pm
Imagine if the muggers got together and decided to redefine mugging as “hyperthumotic orientation.” Some people, they could say, have a wage-earning orientation and some people have a hyperthumotic orientation, and it is discriminatory to expect the latter to earn their money honestly by working as the former do. In fact, not handing over one’s wallet to a hyperthumotic individual on command could reasonably be considered a hate crime.
Then they could schedule Hyperthumotic Pride Parades, which would, of course, be indistinguishable from flash mobs, except that the courts would mandate police protection for them.
Lucky for us, most Catholic Churches on wouldn’t be good targets of Hyperthumotic Pride Parades; the financial district would be more attractive, just not on Sundays.
January 5th, 2012 | 1:13 pm
Even if it is not a sacramental marriage in terms of Catholic theology, divorced and remarried couples have a real civil marriage. The Church acknowledges that. Their civil marriage is in accord with the true nature of marriage since it is between a man and a woman.
Same-sex “marriages” are not sacramental marriages according to Catholic theology, but unlike civil marriage between a man and a woman, same-sex marriages are not real marriages according to nature.
You are comparing apples and oranges. There is a difference between the Church taking a stand on what constitutes a sacramental marriage according to its theology, and its taking a stand on what constitutes a real marriage, not necessarily a sacramental one according to its theology, but a real one according to the truth about human nature.
Wrong. The Church insists that everyone’s human dignity must be respected. Even so, it is obliged to teach the truth about what is natural and what is unnatural. It is painfully obvious that same-sex “marriage” is not natural.
January 5th, 2012 | 1:20 pm
David Nickol,
“The fact of the matter is that the Catholic Church does want homosexuals to be stigmatized. They do not want any legal protections for gay people at all, including the right not to be fired or not to be denied housing for being gay.”
Where do you see this in Catholic teaching?
January 5th, 2012 | 1:22 pm
The Klan has every right to call their parades whatever they want. Decent citizens have the responsibility to respond and object, but they don’t have the right to make your hypothetical illegal. You may think gay marriage is a perversion, but that’s not grounds to keep it illegal.
Sure, the Klan has the right to call their parades whatever they want, but in my hypothetical, the Klan also demands the right to force gays to participate, to treat them a certain way, to “not discriminate”, etc.
As for your unfounded assumptions, I don’t think of gay unions as a “perversion”; my objection is to the harm, lies, destruction, antisocial behaviors, and outright child abuse necessary to sustain the fantasy that there is “no difference” between a gay union vs. a procreative one.
Gays who are seriously interested in building social arrangements that will meet their needs – as opposed to the antisocial behavior that I am hostile to – should argue for the right to form unions that recognize a distinction between a “coparent” (that is, the person one makes a baby with) and a “life partner” (that is, one’s lover). The procreative benefits of marriage should be shared with the person one procreates with, while the life partner benefits should be shared with the lover. (The existing legal models used in stepparenting relationships would be a good starting guide, legally).
I am point-blank opposed to any union that forces a child to pretend that he “has two daddies”. No child should be expected to pretend that being motherless (or fatherless) is no big deal. It IS a big deal. It is a HUGE deal. And you can’t grieve properly when your parents are pointing a video camera at you and demanding that you tell the camera how you don’t mind having two daddies instead of a mom because two daddies is just as good.
Note that even if gays did win the right to “split” their relationships benefits, churches would still be within their rights to refuse to recognize the relationship as equal to a real marriage. It isn’t a real marriage.
I believe that family is important. I believe that people have reason to value their genealogy; it is through genealogy that we gain our sense of identity which is the basis of everything we are. There are plenty of queer studies texts on the importance of narratives, identity, history, etc. – gays aren’t the only ones with narratives, with identity, with a history. They should stop being selfish and stop trying to claim more than is rightfully theirs. There is no way for gays to “reproduce” that is not parasitic; we are not obliged to view parasitism as a positive or even an acceptable thing.
January 5th, 2012 | 1:25 pm
David
Are you saying the Church finds it acceptable for those who are sacramentally married and civilly divorced to civilly remarry?
No, for all sorts of reasons.
(1) As I’m sure you know, the Church finds it acceptable for those who are not sacramentally married, but have a civil divorce, to obtain a sacramental marriage.
(2) “Acceptable” is one thing; “possible” is another. The Church does not dictate the requirements for civil marriage. As I’m sure you know, there is a lot of discussion at the episcopal level about the appropriate pastoral response for couples in this situation.
(3) The Church does not believe that same-sex marriage is natural. This is a matter of impossibility, rather than of acceptability. The matter of “suitability” throws a third consideration into the mix for many of the situations you mention.
So my point was that the Church makes distinctions between natural marriage and sacramental marriage, and these distinctions matter. Your exposition treated them as if they were identical.
January 5th, 2012 | 1:29 pm
From the article:
“Well, they [Catholics and others] will either have to change their views or be treated in the same way that white supremacists and the segregationist Senators were treated. They were excluded from the judiciary entirely for decades because of the South’s views on race.”
If only that was so, Strom Thurman, Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, all were not excluded from Congress except by the Grim Reaper (and I believe convictions in Lott’s case). Ron Paul, last I checked, has not been excluded from Congress even though he was either a full fledged racist or was a senile old man in the 1980′s! unable to even read what others were putting out with his name on the byline!
Anyway, what this is is perhaps the stupidest argument against SSM yet made on this blog. we have totally anonymous law student and law professor in a conversation that may or may not have happened speculating about a hypothetical future where SSM is legal in all 50 states. In this hypothetical speclation, the student asks the professor what will become of Catholics who refuse to accept SSM….the professor answers they will be treated as racists. And tada! That’s it. Science fiction is now the standard of argument here.
The editors here could have at least made a passing nod to the numerous counterarguments made in hundreds of comments over dozens of threads on this very blog! For example, for hundreds of years Catholics have refused to recognize civil divorce yet that has not prevented Catholics from being appointed judges, Senators or Representatives even though they supposedly don’t recognize the new marriages of divorced people….such as Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, John McCain. But that would mean actually engaging with those who disagree with you and giving up your model of reality which seems to be veering towards a grand conspiracy theory (note how this little story has all the elements of it, secret meetings, names cannot be used ‘to protect the innocent’, the ‘truth’ isn’t spoken about in public).
January 5th, 2012 | 1:38 pm
Reading posts like this always reminds me of Symmachus and his appeal over the Altar of Victory.
Feel much like a 4th C pagan?
January 5th, 2012 | 1:41 pm
“It is painfully obvious that same-sex “marriage” is not natural.”
I’m not really on board with arguments that begin “It is obvious …” If a think it really obvious, why would it be a subject of dispute?
As the Scholastics say, Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
January 5th, 2012 | 1:50 pm
Felapton
“Gay marriage” is a gimmick. It’s an attempt to obtain entitlement payments (e.g., public pension inheritance, dependent discounts in health insurance) and tax breaks (e.g., exemption from estate taxes) for same-sex concubines. If it works, everybody will try the same gimmick. Before long, the taxpayers will be paying pensions to goldfish and lawn mowers.
Economic-wise ‘marriage benefits’ are exagerrated greatly here. Yes if you’re married to someone you can collect social security based on their work history. But you can’t collect based on your own. If both of you worked, well its wash. Likewise you share your social security with each spouse you had in your life that you were married to for ten years or more, so marrying people friviously is a good way not to inflate social security checks but deflate your own! (Note, BTW, that Donald Trump has a habit of divorcing his wives right before they hit ten years and right before the prenup agreements ‘vest’ his wives with ‘full benefits’).
Likewise private health benefits don’t seem like that much of a marriage maker to me. This presumes that the spouse getting the benefit doesn’t work, won’t get a job where benefits are offered. So what’s in it for the person with benefits to marry him or her? Marrying someone just to give them health benefits is a financial minefield for anyone whose thinking its just a ‘nice thing to do’. When you are married to someone, you can be sued for their debts, you can be sued for their medical bills, they can even sue you to force you to give them ‘spousal support’ and you may have to do so before they can collect food stamps or welfare. The idea that lots of people are going to casually marry each other (SSM or not) in order to increase health care coverage hasn’t really been thought out very much.
Blake,
congrats on finally coming up with something new.
Imagine if the KKK – the Klan – started holding their own “gay pride parades”, where “gay pride parade” is defined as being exactly the opposite of what the people who currently use that institution think it means….
OK that’s fine
And if a court upheld that klansmen have the right to not be discriminated against, and therefore every gay rights organization in the nation had to treat klan parades as being equal to their own parades.
OK this just confirms you have absolutely no idea how anything works but refuse to even bother to learn. There is no free floating ‘right not to be discriminated against’. If a group has a permit for a gay rights parade, they have every right to exclude groups they don’t like, such as the KKK. If the KKK wants to have their own event and also call it ‘gay rights parade’ they are free to get their own permit for it. If this means there are two or more different events all calling themselves ‘gay rights’ then so be it.
Felapton plagerizes your idea….demonstrating how like minded people think alike, for better or worse:
Then they could schedule Hyperthumotic Pride Parades, which would, of course, be indistinguishable from flash mobs, except that the courts would mandate police protection for them.
Errrr, so what? There’s plenty of ‘legalize pot’ parades. Muggers could organize and come up with their own parade if they wish. They can’t mug people, of course, but then you can’t legally smoke pot at a ‘legalize pot parade’. Is this really so hard for people like Blake and Felapton to understand? Whose the real troll here?
January 5th, 2012 | 2:12 pm
harry
Even if it is not a sacramental marriage in terms of Catholic theology, divorced and remarried couples have a real civil marriage. The Church acknowledges that. Their civil marriage is in accord with the true nature of marriage since it is between a man and a woman.
This does not seem to squre with the Catholic encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05054c.htm, which seems to say divorce is ok only for ‘non-Christian marriages’ if its in favor of the Faith (I assume that might mean something along the lines of letting a person married under Hindu or Islamic customs divorce their non-Christian spouse in order to enter a Christian community and marry a Christian). It does NOT say the Church accepts or approves of non-Christians getting divorced for any and all reasons that might apply under traditional civil divorce laws.
More importantly, ‘so what’? The Catholic Church and any other Church is perfectly free to believe that divorce is unacceptable and that divorced people who remarry are not really married and shouldn’t be recognized as such. Whether the Church actually does believe that or if its belief is more subtle as you imply is irrelevant to this topic. Likewise the Catholic Church did not take your, errrr, ‘liberated view’ when Ireland proposed and passed its 15th amendment essentially legalizing divorce.
It’s perfectly understandable that the Catholic Church would like civil law on marriage to reflect their understanding of marriage. It’s also perfectly understandable and acceptable that in a free society, they will lobby for the civil law to match their understanding as closely as possible. It is not, however, ‘discrimination’, ‘oppression’, ‘suppression’ or any other term of whiny victimization mongering if the civil law deviates from the Catholic view, even dramatically deviates from it. Despite heroically dishonest claims, no one has yet demonstrated any plausible state interference or discrimination caused to the Catholic Church or any other religion by civil SSM. And no this new round of mysterious ‘superstar’ law professors contemplating that decades from now Catholic’s who oppose SSM may be as unpopular as racists are today doesn’t cut it.
January 5th, 2012 | 2:19 pm
Where do you see this in Catholic teaching?
JDD,
Here, for starters:
Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons
Considerations Regarding Proposals to give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons
Some Considerations Concerning the Response to Legislative Proposals on the Non-Discrimination of Homosexual Persons
Please note that when I say “gay people,” I do not mean people with a homosexual orientation. I mean people who have accepted their homosexuality as neutral or good, and who believe they have a perfect right to engage in homosexual activity (under the right circumstances). People are often shocked when I say that the Church, in a very real sense, does not recognize the right of gay people to exist. But think of it this way. Gay people (as opposed to celibate, closeted, homosexual persons) are, to the Church, in somewhat the same category as murderers, rapists, and others who perform acts of “grave depravity.” Murderers have no right to exist, because the only way to become a murderer is to murder someone, which is strictly forbidden. The only way to be a gay person (and you will note that the Church never, ever uses the word gay) is to approve of one’s own homosexuality and in a great many cases act on it. This is forbidden by the Church, so (once again) in a very real sense, the Church doesn’t recognize the right of gay people to exist. It recognizes they do exist, and I am definitely not claiming the Church wants to exterminate gay people. However, it wants them to renounce their homosexuality, view it as “disordered,” and refrain from engaging in homosexual behavior. So if the Church had its way, there would be no gay people, just as if the Church had its way, there would be no murderers.
January 5th, 2012 | 2:25 pm
But that would mean actually engaging with those who disagree with you and giving up your model of reality which seems to be veering towards a grand conspiracy theory
Yes, I do worry about the growing intolerance toward Christian values. Basic, fundamental rights are being threatened, and I do think that is a big deal.
January 5th, 2012 | 2:35 pm
Basic, fundamental rights are being threatened
Blake,
Name one.
January 5th, 2012 | 2:36 pm
Murderers have no right to exist, because the only way to become a murderer is to murder someone, which is strictly forbidden.
The Church says murderers have no right to exist?
Why do they oppose the death penalty if they say murderers have no right to exist?
January 5th, 2012 | 2:42 pm
Do you suppose when Catholic Charities gives spousal benefits to legally married employees, it excludes those who are divorced and remarried on the grounds that they are not traditionally married? Does Catholic Charities deny adoption services to those who are divorced and remarried?
They are supposed to go by the “child’s best interest” standard. Rightfully, they ought to judge the home on whether the child will be well cared for, not based on ideology. But they are right to exclude all homes that do not include both a mother and a father, because such homes are not good for children; children ought to go into such homes only if intact homes are not only not an option, but there is a high probability that such homes won’t be an option in the future, either.
By allowing gays and single mothers, we are transforming adoption from being something that is about taking care of children to something that is about taking care of adults – using children, rather than prioritizing them.
As far as spousal benefits, gays should not be claiming procreative benefits to split together as a couple. It’s fraudulent. Those benefits are for building families.
January 5th, 2012 | 2:47 pm
Basic, fundamental rights are being threatened
Blake,
Name one.
Religious freedom – freedom of belief and freedom of association.
Gay rights advocates want us to be forced by law to deny truth and voice lies. Reality itself will be whatever we’re told it is.
And they want us to lose our right to recognize our own family. They want to redefine families so that only the government can tell us who is and is not related to each other. They want “family” to be a concept that is granted by the state, not by nature. The right to recognize family as important is incompatible with the gay need to lie (“this child has two daddies”; “how I got my child is just as legitimate as adoption”).
But gay marriage won’t work if the government does not acquire the power to override religion, truth, and nature.
January 5th, 2012 | 2:52 pm
Notice the logical structure of the argument presented here. ‘Fundmental rights’ are threatened. How? Well maybe years and years from now Catholics who dislike SSM will become intensly disliked by the general public and will become as unpopular as racists today.
OK, is there a ‘fundamental right’ to not be unpopular? Where might I find this ‘right’? How is it enforced? Who can gurantee it? Maybe 100 years from now left handed people will be as unpopular as racists are today. What protections am I entitled to demand from society today to prevent that from happening?
This is, of course, all based on a supposed ‘superstar law professor’ sepeculating about who will and won’t be popular in the future. At what point did someone invent a reliable way to predict future popularity? Kind of interesting this ‘superstar’ can be treated as reliably predicting the future popularity of Catholic politicians and judges yet hasn’t been poached by entertainment and music companies who’d love to be able to predict such things!
Of course two can play at this game. If SSM is rejected, its possible that in the future this may turn into gays becoming deeply unpopular….so unpopular in fact that anti-gay politicians will be elected who push laws calling for gays to be slaughtered and who will appoint anti-gay judges who won’t stop such laws from going into effect. Therefore anyone opposing SSM today is guilty of attempted genocide even if they ‘claim’ today to respect the fundamental human dignity of gay people and would never approve of violence towards them!
Now granted that’s a silly argument, but I am unable to match the silliness of the original argument at the top of this thread!
January 5th, 2012 | 3:02 pm
Why do they oppose the death penalty if they say murderers have no right to exist?
Blake,
Read what I wrote, and possibly you will understand.
January 5th, 2012 | 3:25 pm
Blake,
“As for your unfounded assumptions, I don’t think of gay unions as a “perversion”
Another lie. You described gays as “bestial,” so don’t pretend you don’t think they are “perverted.”
January 5th, 2012 | 3:50 pm
Blake
Religious freedom – freedom of belief and freedom of association.
If your KKK hypothetical demonstrates anything, it demonstrates you have no idea what this means.
January 5th, 2012 | 3:55 pm
But they are right to exclude all homes that do not include both a mother and a father, because such homes are not good for children
Blake,
Catholic Charities places children with married couples and single parents. If you condemn placing adoptive children in a home without both a mother and a father, then you condemn Catholic Charities.
January 5th, 2012 | 4:19 pm
David Nickol,
The way you’ve explained your position may be the way that you would word it, but not the church’s language at all, I don’t think providing three links and saying “There – see! – there you have it!” is the best way to go about arguing intent.
Where do you see a mirror of your initial statement: “They do not want any legal protections for gay people at all.”? Instead, even in the documents you’ve referenced, (take the third one for example,) the Catholic thought is bookended by statements such as this:
*It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.*
If we *were* to use your language, then indeed _none_ of us has a ‘right’ to exist. No need to make distinctions between ‘grave depravity’ and not-so-grave depravity. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” It’s been remarked that the smallest venial sin is the second-worst thing there is – because it deprives a human person of some of their dignity.
“People are often shocked when I say that the Church, in a very real sense, does not recognize the right of gay people to exist. …if the Church had its way, there would be no gay people, just as if the Church had its way, there would be no murderers.”
No, if the church had its way, there would be persons who are inclined to murder, who turn away from murder.
I think you’re right in pointing out that the church refrains from using the term “gay” person – in the same way that it avoids using a term like “murderer” to describe the whole person – as opposed to the act. When Saint Paul writes that “no murderer, no adulterer… will be spared judgement,” he surely is not saying that there is a type of person who will be damned even though they cannot avoid what they are.
January 5th, 2012 | 4:19 pm
Does protecting their view of marriage actually mandate preventing anyone else from legally entering into what they view as marriage?
Does protecting your view of childhood actually mandate preventing Sandusky from legally acting on what he views as consent?
January 5th, 2012 | 4:25 pm
David Nickol writes:
Gay people (as opposed to celibate, closeted, homosexual persons) are, to the Church, in somewhat the same category as murderers, rapists, and others who perform acts of “grave depravity.”
Mr. Nickols,
That is the rub though, isn’t it? The Church does not recognize “gay” people as you’ve named them because it is a categorization of human behavior that doesn’t exist in the eyes of the Church.
The Church says nothing about how one identifies with their orientations: it is why the Church does not celebrate “heterosexual pride” or positive heterosexual self-conceptions. (The very notion is silly- as shown in the converse absurdity of looking on ones heterosexuality as a negative….
These are artificial categories created by science, and there is no reason for the Church to recognize them when speaking of human conjugation.
January 5th, 2012 | 5:07 pm
JDD
No, if the church had its way, there would be persons who are inclined to murder, who turn away from murder.
David can speak for himself but he was very clear what he meant by ‘gay people exist’:
Note a ‘person inclined to murder’ must not only refrain from murdering in the eyes of the Church, he must also not believe his inclination is neutral or good. He must not act on his inclination even in ways that fall short of murder (I guess attempted murder).
Contrast this with the view of a heterosexual person who for whatever reason does not wish to marry. Strictly following what the Church says, he has a lot of hard tasks. He should not masturbate, he should not have sex. He may however ‘be heterosexual’. He may find women attractive, he may start romantic relationships with them. May fall in love. May act as though his orientation is ‘neutral or good’. Granted if he intends to remain unmarried he will have to be very careful about those activities least he cause women to misunderstand his motives or desire to overwhelm his intention to abide by church teaching, but within those boundaries he may ‘exist’ in the eyes of the Church.
These options are not open to the homosexual. Yes the Church deplores hatred and violence directed at homosexuals, but the Church also deplores it against murderers. A murderer may be tried and punished per the law but that’s it. One may not hate or abuse a murderer, say, who was convicted and served his time in jail and is now free.
MPB
These are artificial categories created by science, and there is no reason for the Church to recognize them when speaking of human conjugation.
Artifical categories? Hardly, it seems to objectively exist in the real world. Saying they can’t really exist because its hard or awkward to square them with current theology is absurd.
January 5th, 2012 | 5:12 pm
It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs.
JDD,
Let me call your attention to this passage:
“Objectively disordered external conduct” could be living with your same-sex partner, entering into a civil union with your same-sex partner, or legally marrying your same-sex partner, marching in a gay-pride parade, being a spokesperson for a gay organization, and so on. The Catholic Church recognizes rights only for chaste homosexual persons, and it points out that there is no need for anti-discrimination legislation because nobody knows who chaste homosexual closeted people are (allegedly). The Church opposes any legislation that protects the rights of gay people (as I use the term). Homosexual activity is “behavior to which no one has any conceivable right.”
So the Church—and I think the documents I linked to make this quite clear—does not approve of legislation protecting the rights of gay people, because that would be, in effect, protecting “behavior to which no one has any conceivable right.”
I do not claim to be echoing the language of the Church when I say that the Church, in a very real sense, does not recognize the right of gay people to exist. I use in a sense to mean “in one way of looking at it.” But I say in a very real sense because I think what I say is quite clearly true.
January 5th, 2012 | 5:58 pm
“Objectively disordered external conduct” could be living with your same-sex partner, entering into a civil union with your same-sex partner, or legally marrying your same-sex partner, marching in a gay-pride parade, being a spokesperson for a gay organization, and so on. The Catholic Church recognizes rights only for chaste homosexual persons, and it points out that there is no need for anti-discrimination legislation because nobody knows who chaste homosexual closeted people are (allegedly).
Indeed, consider a person who calls himself a ‘murderer’ meaning not that he has actually murdered someone but he feels he is ‘inclined to do so’. He would fit in perfectly with the passage David cited. Such a person may not be punished in criminal courts as a murderer since he hasn’t actually killed anyone, but he has no real ‘rights’ as a citizen. You wouldn’t want to have an anti-discrimination law that said employers couldn’t refuse to hire someone who claimed he was ‘inclined to kill’. Such a person could be barred from working with children, working in law enforcement, owning firearms, and so on….even forced to submit himself to psychiatric evaluation to see if he can be committed against his will.
David appears correct here. It’s glossing over the Church’s view to just depict it as saying “it’s ok to be gay, just don’t have gay sex”. Unless there are other documents out there, the view is more accurately depicted as “it’s not ok to be gay, at the very least if you are you shouldn’t have gay sex”. This is akin to what most would say to someone who told us he was a ‘murderer’….we’d say that certainly is not OK, at the very least he should refrain from murdering people but even if he was a ‘chaste murderer’ that’s still not good! Asserting that people who clearly exist should aspire to non-existence does not seem to be a viable social policy.
January 5th, 2012 | 6:34 pm
It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. . . . The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.
JDD,
One more point about the above. Note that the Church says some discrimination based on orientation alone is justified:
That is to say, a closeted, celibate homosexual, if his or her orientation were somehow to become known, could be refused employment as a teacher or a coach and could be excluded from the military. Or they could be fired if discovered. And of course, celibate homosexual men may no longer become priests.
January 5th, 2012 | 8:18 pm
That is the rub though, isn’t it? The Church does not recognize “gay” people as you’ve named them because it is a categorization of human behavior that doesn’t exist in the eyes of the Church.
It is a humanist or Unitarian Universalist definition.
Mr. Nickol believes that he not only has the right to coexist alongside other religions, but the right to make them accept his ethical definitions and categories.
Imagine if a Roman Catholic tried to “coexist” in a way that involves forcing non-Catholics to accept Catholic terms and conditions as a precondition of “coexistence”.
January 5th, 2012 | 8:22 pm
“The fact of the matter is that the Catholic Church does want homosexuals to be stigmatized. They do not want any legal protections for gay people at all, including the right not to be fired or not to be denied housing for being gay.”
Where do you see this in Catholic teaching?
I want the right to not be stigmatized for being Christian or Catholic.
But we don’t have the right to be free from stigma – feelings, thoughts, and social actions are not appropriate for legislating.
I also think that all religious beliefs – not just humanist beliefs – should be equally protected or not protected by laws protecting people from being fired or denied housing based on their ethical creed and/or their moral behavior.
January 5th, 2012 | 8:24 pm
Blake,
Catholic Charities places children with married couples and single parents. If you condemn placing adoptive children in a home without both a mother and a father, then you condemn Catholic Charities.
I am very unhappy that adoption services have stopped providing the best possible homes for the children they place.
There is no reason why good families should have to look outside America, while the children in America are placed in substandard homes.
January 5th, 2012 | 8:28 pm
Among other rights, all persons have the right to work, to housing, etc. Nevertheless, these rights are not absolute. They can be legitimately limited for objectively disordered external conduct. This is sometimes not only licit but obligatory.
Here you find the very essence of the gay marriage debate.
Is there a right to behave any way you want, without consequences?
This is the line that gays are trying to break. We have already established that all Americans have the right to be who or what they are. Now the question is whether the right to be includes not just innate traits, but conduct and lifestyle choices.
If gays have the right to behave any way they want – while receiving protection from any and all consequences of their behavior – do people with an extra X chromosome? Do incestuous couples? Do pedophiles?
You say, “well it’s obvious that’s different because…” …but the root question is the same: will these issues be decided according to democratic Republican Constitutional due process, or will self-proclaimed scientific “experts” tell us what conduct we are expected to find acceptable or repugnant?
January 5th, 2012 | 8:31 pm
One more point about the above. Note that the Church says some discrimination based on orientation alone is justified:
10. “Sexual orientation” does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder (cf. Letter, no. 3) and evokes moral concern.
And yet the church is criticized for its pedophilia scandal.
You can’t have it both ways. If it’s wrong to discriminate according to orientation, then you have to hold that the pedophile priests had a right to be protected from the consequences of their actions.
January 5th, 2012 | 8:40 pm
“As for your unfounded assumptions, I don’t think of gay unions as a “perversion”
Another lie. You described gays as “bestial,” so don’t pretend you don’t think they are “perverted.”
No, I think being ruled by one’s passions is bestial.
I don’t have a problem with gay unions because I believe in religious freedom, and have therefore adopted the true live-and-let-live position – recognizing that because Unitarian Universalism/humanism accepts this as acceptable behavior, I should therefore treat real life gay couples the same way I treat any other couple: simply accept them as a social unit without worrying about the question of what they do or don’t do in bed.
Gay rights advocates always ask things like “how does gay marriage interfere with your marriage?” question. I have taken that question quite literally: the existence of gay couples needn’t threaten me, my marriage, or my beliefs, as long as I am not forced to endure unacceptable boundary violations (such as being forced to participate in lies or being asked to participate in the normalization of abusive child-rearing practices).
Please take care not to misrepresent my motives.
January 5th, 2012 | 8:48 pm
I do not claim to be echoing the language of the Church when I say that the Church, in a very real sense, does not recognize the right of gay people to exist. I use in a sense to mean “in one way of looking at it.” But I say in a very real sense because I think what I say is quite clearly true.
As long as we all understand that this is true in the same sense that the Church does not recognize the right of people using contraceptives to exist.
Because your statement is designed to make it sound like active persecution, when really it is only about the Church trying to get people to turn away from sin.
Many people find it useful to have institutions such as churches that have helping people rise above sin as a primary function. In a nation with religious freedom, every church is free to define sin according to its own criteria.
So as long as we understand that you’re taking an example of the church doing what churches are supposed to do, and the malevolent connotations are your own choice of word-arrangement and do not actually represent any real malice on the part of the Church.
They do not recognize the right to sin, but they are among the first to demand full protections for sinners. They – and I – simply do not recognize the rights you claim as legitimate protections. Since that is precisely the question being debated, it’s tautological to try to paint them as bad just because they’re your opponents on this issue – then use their badness as a factor in discrediting them.
First you have to settle the point, then – IF you settle the matter in your favor – it will be time to worry about whether they are bad.
Until then, you are only doing do them the same that you accuse them of doing to you: finding them ungood because they don’t share your moral assumptions.
January 6th, 2012 | 7:21 am
Blake
Mr. Nickol believes that he not only has the right to coexist alongside other religions,
Why the nerve of him!
but the right to make them accept his ethical definitions and categories.
Really? Where specifically has Mr. Nickol stated directly or indirectly that he has a right to make anyone change their ethical definitions or categories? Given your history of making up facts and making false charges you should really be more careful. You should also tread carefully after you horribly botched up the concept of freedom of religion and association with your KKK/gay rights parade hypothetical.
You can’t have it both ways. If it’s wrong to discriminate according to orientation, then you have to hold that the pedophile priests had a right to be protected from the consequences of their actions.
Yes you can. First there appears to be little evidence that pedophilia is an orientation. Second, even if it is, it would hardly be the same thing as a homosexual orientation.
This would be analagous to my ‘murderer orientation’ above. There even a ‘chaste murderer’ could not be treated by society as if there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. (By the way, if you want a movie illustration of this concept consider the Kevin Costner movie Mr. Brooks about a serial killer who has spent years struggling to control his urges to kill, using AA meetings as a proxy to help him with is ‘addiction’ to killing people).
As long as we all understand that this is true in the same sense that the Church does not recognize the right of people using contraceptives to exist.
No you didn’t bother to read the comments (yet again). There is no sensible ‘contraceptive orientation’. A person is either using contraception (bad in the Church’s eyes) or not using it (good). But that is not the same as what was argued in the passage David cited. The Church most certainly is NOT simply saying “be gay, just don’t have any gay sex”. Why then do anti-SSMites on this list insist on pretending that it does? Why the need to engage in constant deception and distractions? If you don’t believe in the Church’s teachings then don’t try to defend t hem, if you do then defend them and stop trying to pretend they say something else.
January 6th, 2012 | 10:52 am
Blake –
There’s two problems with that that I’ve pointed out before. First off, even if it were true that not having both a mother and father is a risk factor for problems (and to some extent it is, of course), no single risk factor is determinative. As I pointed out before, “It’s also documented that eating fatty, high-cholesterol foods increases risk for heart disease. Ditto lots of carbs leading to risk of obesity. And yet, rates of heart disease and obesity are lower in Italy and France than in the United States, despite a pasta and butter-rich diet. The problem is looking at only one factor. More exercise, moderate but regular consumption of wine – a multitude of other factors can not only compensate, but actually counteract a putative risk factor. So the fact that having both a mother and a father is a good thing does not automatically mean that having ‘two mommies’ or ‘two daddies’ is a bad thing. The conclusion does not follow – or at the very least, that conclusion must be demonstrated, not assumed.”
The second issue is that you actually have tried to demonstrate harm. But the only actual ‘harm’ you’ve ever tried to demonstrate was your hypothesis that the fact that children raised by same-sex couples seem to be a bit more mature than those raised by opposite-sex couples indicated that the children were subject to “parentification”. Oddly, when I pointed out the same maturity difference shows up in homeschooled kids, you never responded. You certainly didn’t start denouncing homeschooling.
January 6th, 2012 | 2:33 pm
David Nickol,
“Let me call your attention to this passage:
Homosexual persons, as human persons, have the same rights as all persons including the right of not being treated in a manner which offends their personal dignity (cf. no. 10). Among other rights, all persons have the right to work, to housing, etc. Nevertheless, these rights are not absolute. They can be legitimately limited for objectively disordered external conduct. This is sometimes not only licit but obligatory. This would obtain moreover not only in the case of culpable behavior but even in the case of actions of the physically or mentally ill. Thus it is accepted that the state may restrict the exercise of rights, for example, in the case of contagious or mentally ill persons, in order to protect the common good.”
Yes – so what do you make of this paragraph taken alongside the one I cited? Mr. Nickol, I’m pointing out that the way you paint Catholicism as antagonistic and militant against homosexual persons is inaccurate *in the reality* of its teaching, and ultimately, yes, in its *intent* – and you leave out the other half of the belief. You can’t just skim over and disregard those paragraphs in the documents you’ve linked to, any more than I can skim over and disregard the ones you highlight.
I hold the belief that *no-one* has an absolute right to what they want, no matter what their conduct sexually or otherwise. I think you and I might agree on that principle, but we would draw the line of demarcation differently.
Look, no doubt there appears to be a fundamental divide between our beliefs. I do not think that it is good and *ordered rightly* for a member of the human species to be sexually attracted to another of the same gender. I think there are fairly straightforward reasons that that should be so. The fundamental questions readily present themselves: “What exactly, again, is the purpose of human gender?” and, “Is there any way in which one *can* say that sexuality has an order, if not this one?” …
And we surely disagree on our definition of to what degree, (or whether at all,) people are ‘born gay.’ Of course persons exist who experience this orientation, and of course the church does not wish them to cease to exist. It wishes for individual persons that the inclinations towards someone of the same gender would cease to exist. It wishes the passions to be won over through the grace of God. You’ve clarified your wording and I hope I’ve clarified mine. The internet is a lousy place for this type of conversation, anyway.
“The only way to be a gay person (and you will note that the Church never, ever uses the word gay) is to approve of one’s own homosexuality and in a great many cases act on it.”
A good link here of a person who articulates why he disagrees with you.
http://www.cuf.org/LayWitness/online_view.asp?lwID=2061
Hope you have a good weekend.
January 6th, 2012 | 2:37 pm
Boonton,
“David can speak for himself but he was very clear what he meant by ‘gay people exist’:”
No, he wasn’t, until I questioned him on it. But David did a good job of clarifying that himself, and you quoted his clarification! I think Blake did a fair job of critiquing the wording of a statement like:
“People are often shocked when I say that the Church, in a very real sense, does not recognize the right of gay people to exist.”
January 6th, 2012 | 3:04 pm
JDD –
Why only one purpose?
January 6th, 2012 | 3:47 pm
Ray,
Why only one Grand Unified Theory?
January 6th, 2012 | 6:21 pm
You can’t just skim over and disregard those paragraphs in the documents you’ve linked to, any more than I can skim over and disregard the ones you highlight.
JDD,
Your paragraph refers to people like David Prosen (author of the article you link to). He may not be discriminated against justly in most things, although he may never be a priest, and the Church recognizes the right to refuse him a job as a teacher or a coach, or to refuse to let him in the armed services.
My paragraph refers to people like Ricky Martin, or Ellen DeGeneris, or the 83- and 87-year-old lesbians who were the first to get married in California. I think we understand each others points. I don’t think of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin (lesbian partners for over 50 years) as having engaged for a half a century in acts of “grave depravity,” or of having done anything reprehensible by entering into a legal same-sex marriage, and I don’t think a landlord should have the right to kick them out of their apartment. You agree with the Catholic Church that anyone who has sex with a member of the same gender has committed an act of “grave depravity,” and by virtue of that, may be excluded from many activities that good, normal people take for granted.
While I suppose you may grant that Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin are living according to their own consciences, you seem to know for a fact (as does the Church) that their consciences are wrong, and it’s a terrible thing they have been doing for the past 50 years.
Now, I understand why you and the Catholic Church think gay people are wrong. I understand the moral reasoning. What I have trouble understanding is why you think they don’t have a right to live according to their own consciences. We know that most sexually active married Catholics use artificial birth control, which the Church considers to be gravely sinful, and which—given the Church’s understanding of sexual morality—is an offense in many ways similar to homosexual sex. Also, as I have pointed out elsewhere, in the eyes of the Church, people who have been validly divorced and who remarry with their first spouse still living are not married at all in the eyes of the Church. They are living in adultery. Yet they are not singled out as being ineligible to serve in the military or be teachers or coaches.
So I understand the matter of believing homosexual sex is immoral. I just don’t understand the ferocity with which it is condemned compared to other kinds of sexual behavior. We know, for example, “80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) said that they have had sex – slightly less than 88 percent of unmarried adults.” No problem. They’re straight. They’re basically good people. The women may have abortions if they get pregnant, but the pro-life movement says that women who have abortions are victims. And probably they will get married some day, and their sexual misadventures will be behind them. Whereas if they were to have sex with a member of their own gender, it would be an act of “grave depravity.”
I hope you see where I’m coming from. What makes heterosexual misbehavior so easy to overlook, while homosexual behavior is in a class of evil all by itself? My short answer would be that it’s not really cold, rational moral reasoning behind it all, but disgust. Thomas Aquinas, with cold, rational moral reasoning arrived at the conclusion that masturbation was “worse” (more unnatural, anyway) than rape. If I am not mistaken, that’s one reason he felt society should tolerate prostitution. In any case I think a great deal of the “moral” outrage about homosexuality is really disgust and a certain kind of fear that some people, generally men, have when it comes to homosexuality.
January 6th, 2012 | 6:49 pm
JDD – Technically, there could be more than one Theory of Everything. Humans don’t get certainty, we have to test our theories. It’s possible that reality is ‘underdetermined’ and there’s a subset of theories that account equally well for all the observable facts and don’t make any predictions that would differentiate them. It’s even possible that some might be of equal complexity, so Ockham’s Razor wouldn’t help pick between them.
Purposes, though, are pretty much always multifarious. Take the classic Socratic example of a statue. A statue in a city square fulfills a purpose – decoration, memorial, whatever – but not only that purpose. It can serve as a landmark for navigating about the city. It can serve as a jungle gym for kids to climb on. It can serve as a perch for birds. It can serve as a blind from behind which to spy on someone. It can serve a fleeing pickpocket as an obstacle to slow pursuit. It can serve as a source of metal to melt down into cannons to defend the city. The number of different ’causes’ served by anything in the real world is probably at least equal to the number of agents that interact with it.
Even the artisan who made the statue may have multiple purposes in constructing it. He may wish to commemorate a fallen soldier… while at the same time subtly castigating the generals who ordered the march the soldier died in. The artisan may also choose a particular artistic style in order to make a statement to some of his fellow artisans, and have chosen brass as the medium to help out his brother-in-law the metal merchant. Plus, the artisan no doubt intends to be be paid for the statue… to help keep his children fed.
January 6th, 2012 | 10:12 pm
JDD
And we surely disagree on our definition of to what degree, (or whether at all,) people are ‘born gay.’ Of course persons exist who experience this orientation, and of course the church does not wish them to cease to exist. It wishes for individual persons that the inclinations towards someone of the same gender would cease to exist.
I think this is just spin, but you may not realize it. I return to the analogy of the ‘chaste murderer’ because I think it illustrates an example of viewing a hypothetical orientation the way the Church wants people to see homosexuality. An example that’s valuable because I think those more sympathetic to homosexuals can agree with the hypothetical orientation.
It’s not really about behavior. Yes the Church and everyone else would rather the ‘chaste murderer’ remain ‘chaste’ and not murder, but its not just about refraining from the behavior. The hypothetical murderer orientation yearns to murder the way a heterosexual man yerns for sexual contact with a woman. It’s one thing to tell a heterosexual that he shouldn’t have sex with a woman in a given context, it’s another thing though to say he should loath and hate the fact that he has sexual desire for women. That would really be a very hard thing to impose on a person and really would strike at who they are.
Now the hypothetical ‘murderer orientated’ person yerns to kill. While we are happy he holds himself back, at the same time we all agree there’s something wrong with harbouring a desire to murder people. While such a person may indeed ‘be born that way’, while we may sympathize that at some level this may simply be part of his nature and we could have been just like him if a gene happened to break in our conception or a particular hormone was produced in too high a level, while we may agree he shouldn’t be abused or mistreated or have his dignity as a human violated, we also agree he doesn’t have quite the same ‘right to exist’. He is a person who is sick for the simple reason that society has to defend itself against those who incline against order. Maybe he doesn’t have to be locked up, maybe he is able to control his impulse well enough to be treated just about like anyone else, fact is he doesn’t have a fundamental ‘freedom’ to ‘just be who he is’.
So with this in mind, there’s a very important difference between saying “be gay, just don’t have gay sex” and what the Church is saying. If it was just about sexual behavior, I don’t think the Catholic church would have the bad press and poor public relations and trouble with the gay community it does. The Church could simply say “look, we know its hard to command total lifetime chastity but hey we do it for everyone…even the heterosexual is forbidden from pre-marital sex, forbidden to masturbate…we don’t really make it easy for anyone to just do what they want to sexually. What they seem to be saying goes a step beyond that and to strike at the existentialness of gays itself. And its not surprising then that gays want to strike back. If you’re going to tell someone he shouldn’t exist, well be prepared to be bold!
Now I’ll be fair here. The Church has every right to stake out this position and make its case. I’ll also say as hurtful as the position is, it’s not quite fair to equate it with Nazism or racists. They didn’t come up with the position to bolster a position of power or exploitation over gays. It’s a position that’s thought out from first propositions and the Church I believe honestly thinks its just following where the reasoning leads it. But those on the other side are also fair to bristle against this position and argue quite forcefully against it. And while we all should keep things on a respectful level tempers are no doubt going to flare.
But what I think can be easily ditched is the condensation of pretending that this is just about a particular behavior or saying no to someone whose fancying entertaining some activity like wifeswapping, orgies, or whatnot. This is just doging a hard truth that the Church doesn’t accept a ‘right for gays to exist’ by pretending that its moot because gays don’t really exist after all….it’s all some type of conspiracy or delusion caused by modern psychology or something. Look you are obligated to treat others with human dignity and trying to soft soak this position is not respecting their dignity. If your in line with the Church’s stance say so and stand by it, if you’re not then reject the Church’s position and be clear about it. Don’t vaciliate in the middle, though, trying to pretend its something its not. Recall what Dante had in mind for the Uncommitted in his Inferno.
January 7th, 2012 | 7:09 pm
Nickol: “So I understand the matter of believing homosexual sex is immoral. I just don’t understand the ferocity with which it is condemned compared to other kinds of sexual behavior.”
Because a person with a homosexual problem has a profoundly deformed problem in relating sexually in a healthy way, that is, to opposite-sex people. What would be their normal attractions, interests, dynamics, etc. get disoriented to people of the same sex. Furthermore, these problems can be compounded by other profound troubles with gender issues, and all kinds of personality and relationship issues. And apparently you are pretending homosexuality does not include every harmful, exploitative, and destructive thought, attitude or behavior that involves some sexuality between people of the same sex. Yet it does.
You are trivializing the level and complexity of psychological problems that lead someone to develop a homosexual problem.
Nickol: I don’t think of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin (lesbian partners for over 50 years) as having engaged for a half a century in acts of “grave depravity,”
They have completely deformed their sexuality and are incapable of a healthy, wholesome relationship with a man. It’s quite grave. Pretending that their homosexuality is not the result of profound problems is quite depraved. Pretending that they were born this way is quite depraved, not only depraved, but harmful.
January 7th, 2012 | 7:13 pm
Boonton: “Look you are obligated to treat others with human dignity and trying to soft soak this position is not respecting their dignity.”
By saying that people should be “gay,” you’re not respecting their dignity, nor ours.
January 8th, 2012 | 9:48 am
Alessandra, er, HarrietJ –
Or, possibly, you’re exaggerating them. The trend seems to be that the more people actually know ‘un-closeted’ homosexuals, the less they believe the claims you’re making.
January 8th, 2012 | 3:40 pm
There’s two problems with that that I’ve pointed out before. First off, even if it were true that not having both a mother and father is a risk factor for problems (and to some extent it is, of course), no single risk factor is determinative.
Children have a right to both a mother and a father.
These relationships are every bit as important as any right, any relationship claimed by gays.
Don’t try to minimize the importance of these relationships. Your rights are not the only rights that matter – it’s selfish to deny rights to a child so that you can have more than what you’re entitled to.
It is a false dichotomy to pretend that the only options are to allow single parents (or gay parents) to wed vs. letting children stay orphaned. There is a superior option: for the single or gay parents who are truly committed to be good parents take the actions that a good parent would take, by providing an appropriate co-parent for the child they wish to adopt.
January 8th, 2012 | 3:45 pm
First there appears to be little evidence that pedophilia is an orientation.
If it’s an involuntary impulse, then it’s no different from homosexuality.
You can’t say it’s an orientation if it’s socially acceptable but not an orientation if it’s not, because that would lead logically to the claim that homosexuality only became an orientation when our morals changed, and that would undermine the entire concept of what an orientation is.
If homosexuality is an orientation, then you have to come up with something solid as to why homosexuality is but other involuntary compelling desires that do not go away and cannot be cured are not – and the evidence would have to be biological in nature.
Otherwise, you undermine your own argument.
Either sexual pleasure is a fundamental human right or it isn’t. If it is, it is a fundamental human right for all persons – even if the logical consequences of that implication happen to have the power to completely destroy the entire foundation that “gay rights” is built on.
Because it turns out being gay is nothing like being black. It’s a lot more like being a sexual deviant.
January 8th, 2012 | 3:58 pm
This would be analagous to my ‘murderer orientation’ above.
Studies have shown that men with an extra Y chromosome are more likely to be in prison than other men.
If the gay rights definitions stand, then to the extent that we can’t expect gays to conform socially because their biology made them the way they are, to that same extent we can’t expect people with a biological predisposition toward aggression to behave themselves, either.
This is why it is so important to adhere to the “harm done” standard – which is in turn why I keep going back to the harm gays do to children, to the family unit, to the institutions of marriage and family, to the integrity of their family trees, and to every individual who is asked to lie in order to prop up gay fantasies.
Gays may or may not have rights, but the real contest is the point where gay “rights” override other peoples’ rights – like the right to not be exploited (in the case of the children whose best interests are compromised so that they may engage in ethically illegitimate reproductive practices), the right to not be forced into lies (like being asked to play along with the “children with two daddies” lie so that we may help gay people pressure their children into minimizing/denying feelings that interfere with gay fantasies), the right to religious belief (you are welcome to believe the demonstrable differences between gay “marriages” or “families” vs. real marriages or families is of no significance, but you have no right to expect me to share your beliefs, because they’re not demonstrable beliefs – indeed, they are demonstrably false. What right have you to expect me to accept your religious teachings over my own religious teachings? By lying and acting as if your teachings are somehow not religious in nature….)
Gay marriage does harm. The illogical arguments put forth to support most “gay rights” arguments do harm. That is the real line: homosexuality is neither more nor less than a religious belief, since what is at question is not whether homosexuals should be allowed to participate as equals in society (there is no instance anywhere of anyone having to be free of gay genes as a precondition for anything). What is being demanded are accommodations that have to do with a specific set of beliefs regarding how one should regard sex, family, marriage, mating, and pleasure – which is religious, not ethnic..
The right of homosexuals to exist is not in question. The right of all of us to believe what we think right about how we should view sexuality is what is at stake. Gays wish to present their view of sexuality as the one demonstrably correct way to view sexuality – but it’s telling that in order to do this, they can’t rely on logic, indeed must redirect logic whenever it appears, to keep their argument focused on false analogies, short-term focus, emotional appeals that focus attention on how gays claim to feel while demonizing or minimizing all other stakeholders, and outright lies.
January 8th, 2012 | 4:46 pm
So I understand the matter of believing homosexual sex is immoral. I just don’t understand the ferocity with which it is condemned compared to other kinds of sexual behavior. We know, for example, “80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) said that they have had sex – slightly less than 88 percent of unmarried adults.” No problem.
Most evangelicals think this is a crisis.
It is yet more proof that allowing the culture to casually endorse promiscuity is in fact not as “harmless” as pro-promiscuity folks presented it as.
The link between sex and procreation needs to be re-established. People – children – are being hurt by the lie that promiscuity is harmless. Out of wedlock pregnancies are up; poverty is up; more children than ever are missing one or both parents.
The sexual revolution promised to liberate us from strict norms. Instead, it just proved that those norms weren’t nonsensical – those norms served a purpose; they protected us and especially our children from harm.
January 8th, 2012 | 5:10 pm
It is a false dichotomy to pretend that the only options are to allow single parents (or gay parents) to wed vs. letting children stay orphaned. There is a superior option: for the single or gay parents who are truly committed to be good parents take the actions that a good parent would take, by providing an appropriate co-parent for the child they wish to adopt.
BTW this really bugs me, this casual indifference to the harm done to another human life.
How immature is it to believe that, because you don’t need a man, your child shouldn’t, either?
Part of growing up is learning that it isn’t always all about you. Part of becoming socialized is the painful recognition that only little children get to be the center of the universe, sheltered and protected by selfless grownups – in the real world, we all have to take other peoples’ feelings, rights, and interests into account as well as our own desires.
Nowhere is this more crucial than when it comes to grownups taking care of their children. Parenting isn’t about using children to feel good about yourself. Children require nourishing care; they require adults capable of human bonding. Children need to be protected from those who can only take, people who only want to give back when giving is fun or feels good. Caring for children isn’t about giving what you want to give. It’s about giving what children need, whether it happens to be what you feel like giving at that particular moment or not.
The left relies heavily on metaphors of illness but IMO the real sickness is people denying their children something as precious because they love their sexual pleasure more than they love their child. That’s not right. That’s the unhealthy kind of abnormal.
There is something literally sick about someone being able to argue out of one side of their mouth that their relationships are precious, speaking of rights and being treated with equality and fairness – and then turning right around and using an entirely different vocabulary to deliberately deprive their child of exactly the same things they just held up as precious. Healthy people should not be able to endure such incredible levels of cognitive dissonance.
How would gay rights activists like it if someone spoke of gays the way the apologists here spoke of children? There aren’t exactly any studies proving that gays suffer life-crippling levels of harm from being celibate; there are no studies proving that having a lover improves a gay man’s grade-point average or their productivity at work. To the extent that such evidence is available, it tends to produce the opposite – gay couples appear to be unusually prone to both divorce and domestic violence, and I don’t think the existing stats would compare well if we compared them against models where gay men or otherwise create coparenting relationships with lesbians.
Now I will shut up and go away. I apologize to the moderators if I have talked too much.
January 8th, 2012 | 5:29 pm
Children have a right to both a mother and a father.
Blake,
Adoption agencies routinely place children with single parents. In fact, Illinois Catholic Charities, the subject of the current controversy, placed children with single parents.
Some thoughts from Paul Horwitz, writing on Mirror of Justice:
And a comment from the always wise Barbara on dotCommonweal:
To use a slightly different formulation, you want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. If an adoptive child can’t be placed in a home with a married heterosexual couple, you don’t want the child to be placed in any home.
January 8th, 2012 | 7:26 pm
HarrietJ – “You are trivializing the level and complexity of psychological problems that lead someone to develop a homosexual problem.”
Ray Ingles: Or, possibly, you’re exaggerating them. The trend seems to be that the more people actually know ‘un-closeted’ homosexuals, the less they believe the claims you’re making.
Given that if someone lies about their homosexual problem (closeted) or not does not change the profound and complex causes of why they developed a homosexual problem in the first place, that’s an irrational claim.
The less people understand complex psychology, the more they blame everything on biology. It’s a form of ignorant rationality. If you don’t understand anything about physics and you see the sun “moving” about the sky every day, you are pretty sure that’s what the sun is doing in relation to the Earth. Ignorance about psychology leads to very stupid theories and ideas about the functioning of the human mind, notably about sexuality, trying to assign anything and everything to a “born this way/biologically determined” theory.
I meet very little people who have a complex and in-depth understanding of human psychology. Liberal pundits, on the other hand, there are millions.
No surprise as to the result the above imbalance produces.
January 8th, 2012 | 7:32 pm
Blake: “Children have a right to both a mother and a father.”
David Nickol: “Adoption agencies routinely place children with single parents.”
None of this changes that every child has a fundamental right to both a mother and a father, and good ones at that.
January 8th, 2012 | 7:35 pm
correction: I meet very FEW people who have a complex and in-depth understanding of human psychology.
(they come in all sizes! :-)
January 8th, 2012 | 8:16 pm
Blake –
The odd thing is, I’ve asked you at least twice now the following question:
“What’s the proportion of ‘gay parents’ who labor to sever all ties with the other biological parent? Just a rough estimate would be fine, I know you can’t point to any actual numbers.”
You’ve never actually addressed that. The point – I really do have to belabor it, unfortunately – is that a gay couple raising a child do not have to deny the child a relationship with the other biological parent, and it’s far from clear that even a large minority do. That’s up to you to establish, and you’ve never even attempted to do so.
January 8th, 2012 | 10:21 pm
None of this changes that every child has a fundamental right to both a mother and a father, and good ones at that.
Sherry,
And how do you translate this “fundamental right” into policy and law? About 40% of children are now born out of wedlock. Should children of single-parent mothers be taken away and put in homes where there is both a mother and a father? Should children in foster care awaiting adoption just stay in foster care if no suitable married couple can be found to adopt them?
January 9th, 2012 | 6:36 am
Nickol: “And how do you translate this “fundamental right” into policy and law? About 40% of children are now born out of wedlock. Should children of single-parent mothers be taken away and put in homes where there is both a mother and a father? Should children in foster care awaiting adoption just stay in foster care if no suitable married couple can be found to adopt them?”
I think we need to start at the roots. Why are so many unwed women getting pregnant? Whose ideology/cultural context is responsible for this? Why is this such a dominant ideology/culture in society?
In terms of policy, having a culture that promotes hook-ups, promiscuity, and sex outside marriage has horrible consequences. As you well know, this is constantly promoted by homosexual-agenda activists and liberals.
In terms of policy, what is the government doing to prevent children from ending up in foster care? Not much, as far as I can see. And since we have this homosexual-agenda clown in office, what an irresponsible, destructive president. Instead of taking care of relationship and parenting problems in society, he spends his energy shoving homosexuality down as law.
In terms of policy and culture, why are there so few couples willing to be foster parents? That’s at the root of the problem that also needs to be first addressed.
People are much more selfish than they like to realize or admit. There is a very strong component of American culture that stipulates that people should just think about “their” families–if other children are suffering, it’s not their problem. This is antithetical to Christianity in my view.
This is why the Bachmann’s are a great example of what couples and families should be like. These are the people we need as our politicians. They lead by example.
And what is even more horrific is that the number of kids who are exploited or abused in foster families is significant. In terms of policy, there is an urgent need to improve the foster care system.
“Should children in foster care awaiting adoption just stay in foster care if no suitable married couple can be found to adopt them?”
You mean like homosexual activists stipulated for the Owens that the couple was not “suitable” to be foster parents in the UK?
A loving, caring Christian couple (Eunice and Owen Johns), who have been married for 39 years and who had successfully fostered 15 children in the past, were denied the continuance of their foster status parent status because, under a new evaluation of their beliefs, they were declared unfit due to the fact that they do not promote homosexuality.
Do you think this is right?
January 9th, 2012 | 10:02 am
As Blake demonstrated with his earlier KKK analogy, he has no understanding of what the word ‘rights’ means, let alone ‘fundamental rights’. As such he has no reason to expect anyone to give him address his points until he demonstrates at least a basic understanding of the terms he likes to employ.
January 9th, 2012 | 10:03 am
Do you think this is right?
Sherry,
You have given a somewhat distorted picture of the case, but I do think the Owens were treated fairly, and I think the landmark court decision in the case was fair also. People have a perfect right to believe whatever they want to believe about homosexuality, but when a society passes nondiscrimination laws protecting gay people, holding a religious belief about homosexuality does not give anyone the right to violate the law, any more than a religious view against Judaism would permit people to discriminate against Jews. I can understand your distress that your moral views are becoming minority views, but that does not exempt you from nondiscrimination laws.
January 9th, 2012 | 2:17 pm
HarrietJ – Apparently, you misunderstand. I’m not saying that people disagree with your psychological reasoning, such as it is. I wasn’t discussing the causation of homosexuality at all.
What I’m noting is that, so far as I can see, people who actually know ‘homosexuals’ seem to be dramatically less likely to see evidence of them being “profoundly deformed”, or “harmful, exploitative, and destructive”.
Perhaps they lack your keen psychological insight. Another theory is that people tend to shed stereotypes as they interact with subjects of such stereotypes. I suppose time will tell.
January 9th, 2012 | 3:38 pm
Nickol: “You have given a somewhat distorted picture of the case,”
Why is that? What do you claim is distorted about my account of the case?
Nickol: “People have a perfect right to believe whatever they want to believe about homosexuality, but when a society passes nondiscrimination laws protecting gay people, holding a religious belief about homosexuality does not give anyone the right to violate the law,”
What law are you saying the Owens broke?
January 9th, 2012 | 4:03 pm
Ingles: I’m not saying that people disagree with your psychological reasoning, such as it is. I wasn’t discussing the causation of homosexuality at all. What I’m noting is that, so far as I can see, people who actually know ‘homosexuals’ seem to be dramatically less likely to see evidence of them being “profoundly deformed”
Harriet: “Because a person with a homosexual problem has a profoundly deformed problem in relating sexually in a healthy way, that is, to opposite-sex people.”
I think you cannot discuss the issue without referring to the causes for a homosexual problem. How can you discuss if a profound aggregate of psychological dynamics are deformed or not, if you don’t consider anything about what produced them in the first place?
It’s impossible. But this is why people with a homosexual agenda refuse to investigate the causes for homosexuality.
Ingles: “Perhaps they lack your keen psychological insight. ”
And there is also knowledge. Are you saying that someone with basically no knowledge of physics can understand physical phenomena on the same level that all great physicists can? Are you saying that knowledge isn’t important in understanding life? Are you saying that psychology is a useless body of knowledge for understanding mental/emotional dynamics/phenomena?
Ingles: “Another theory is that people tend to shed stereotypes as they interact with subjects of such stereotypes. I suppose time will tell.”
Which “such stereotypes” are you talking about?
Ingles: less likely to see evidence of them being “harmful, exploitative, and destructive”
What evidence of interpersonal violence do you have for homosexuals and for bisexuals? What evidence do you have for them concerning spreading STDs?
Another theory is that people “see” according to their interests. Your interest is not to see any problems with homosexuals/bisexuals. The more you are invested in your denial, the less you will see of reality. Your blindness will remain the same, it doesn’t matter if you interact with one, a thousand, or no homosexuals.
January 9th, 2012 | 4:22 pm
Nickol: “I can understand your distress that your moral views are becoming minority views, but that does not exempt you from nondiscrimination laws.”
If I were the type of insecure person who needs to think along with the masses (i.e. the majority view) in order not to be distressed, I would be a clueless, selfish liberal, among your so-called “majority.” Fortunately, I have been spared such an idiotic fate. That danger I don’t have to fear in my life, always a nice comforting reminder.
Having studied different political movements in history, I know that often a time, a political group takes power, with support of the masses, and acts destructively. It might be the first time in history that doing good (which is what morality is) is attacked as a bad thing, but it is true that homosexual activists think in a very 1984-ish way.
People who have sturdy arguments and wholesome views don’t need to worry about being in the minority.
January 10th, 2012 | 9:54 am
HarrietJ –
Nothing I’ve seen indicates that homosexual or bisexual persons are either immune to or more prone to domestic violence, particularly when controlling for other risk factors.
Well, “To date, there are no confirmed cases of female-to-female sexual transmission of HIV in the United States database…”
January 10th, 2012 | 10:35 am
A right to have a biological mother and father cannot be provided by the state, the Church or anyone other than the biological mother and father. No gay couple ever has or ever could deny a child their biological father and mother. Any child who is so deprived has been denied their ‘fundamental right’ not by gays but either by fate (in the case of orphans) or by the biological parents themselves.
January 10th, 2012 | 4:09 pm
David Nickol,
“Your paragraph refers to people like… My paragraph refers to people like…”
No, both paragraphs refer to both ‘types’ of people. Both paragraphs, (and I’m certainly not relying on only these two for my understanding,) reference dignity for homosexual persons. Where we differ is in where we see dignity. Catholicism is never going to agree to see dignity in something it believes is a mis-ordered use – dare I say an incomplete use – of a gift. The Church insists upon dignity – and then reaffirms that this isn’t it.
“While I suppose you may grant that Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin are living according to their own consciences, you seem to know for a fact (as does the Church) that their consciences are wrong, and it’s a terrible thing they have been doing for the past 50 years.”
Frankly, get off your high horse. I don’t know anything about them, and my guess is that you have a stereotypical image of how I might view them. But you are not the only one with ‘gay’ friends, Mr. Nickol, and you are not the only one who has ‘their’ best interests in mind.
But I’m not a moral relativist. I’ll point out that the words you’ve put in parenthesis above (“as does the Church”) – I would say rather, “because does the Church.” I could just as easily point out that you seem to know *for a fact* that their consciences are right. Why? How?
“What I have trouble understanding is why you think they don’t have a right to live according to their own consciences.”
It was a watershed moment in my own spiritual walk to begin to understand that my conscience could be wrong.
It was partially through reading Cardial Newman that I was introduced to the “dual responsibility” of one to 1) ultimately follow one’s conscience, 2) deliberately allow one’s conscience to be formed. Our culture detaches #1 from #2. An interesting discussion here:
http://www.zenit.org/article-12221?l=english
…”For many people today, conscience suggests freedom to judge God’s law by our own personal resources and the right to reject the notion or reformulate this law as we think best.
I imagine that to non-Christians this must seem rather odd: If moral and religious teachings bind only to the extent that one’s individual mind and will enthuse about them, then pretty clearly the teachings do not bind at all.”
January 10th, 2012 | 4:44 pm
Ray Ingles,
How did I just *know* you would say there was more than one TOE!
Ah, let me be more clear. There is only one TOE that is correct. The universe / multiverse is not vacillating back and forth from day to day, trying to decide how it wants to operate. We have some number of Grand Unified Theories; one of them may some day prove correct. But the cosmos is not waiting anxiously this evening for us to figure out how it should operate. And neither is human sexuality.
“Technically, there could be more than one Theory of Everything. Humans don’t get certainty, we have to test our theories.
You are certain that humans don’t get certainty.
“It’s possible that reality is ‘underdetermined’ and there’s a subset of theories that account equally well for all the observable facts and don’t make any predictions that would differentiate them.”
By definition…reality *is* determined. Not trying to be glib, here – serious, actually – if you really want to take that as your starting point then you have absolutely no-where to go next with your thoughts. What’s to stop you from wondering if you really *are* just a battery? How our pop-culture has tied itself in knots with this latest iteration of “nothing is knowable” – how some persons I’ve met keep themselves up at night.
Let me ask you a question: What do you think is *a* reason the human race has two genders?
January 11th, 2012 | 12:47 am
HarrietJ – “What evidence of interpersonal violence do you have for homosexuals and for bisexuals?”
Ray Ingles: “Nothing I’ve seen indicates that homosexual or bisexual persons are either immune to or more prone to domestic violence, particularly when controlling for other risk factors.”
Thanks for not answering the question. Just how violent are homosexuals and bisexuals? I wasn’t asking if they were more or less violent in comparison to heterosexuals. But can you tell me just how violent are homosexuals and bisexuals? (You can tell me about heterosexuals as well if it makes you feel better, but it’s not the question).
January 11th, 2012 | 12:52 am
Harriet: What evidence do you have for them concerning spreading STDs?
Ingles: Well, “To date, there are no confirmed cases of female-to-female sexual transmission of HIV in the United States database…”
And for the male-to-male?
Are you saying HIV the only STD in the US or in the world? Is this the only fact you know of concerning homosexuals and bisexuals and STDs? Or do you engage in a deliberate silence about all the problems related to homosexuals and bisexuals in society, including about STDs?
January 11th, 2012 | 8:24 am
Sherry –
Uh, wait – you’re “HarrietJ” too?
In any case, let’s back up a step. You’re asking me about violence in “homosexuals and bisexuals”. Why? If you’ve got evidence that they are special in that regard, present it. I don’t see where I have the ‘burden of disproof’…
January 11th, 2012 | 9:40 am
JDD –
Sure. In practice, though, identifying it is, er… nontrivial.
As I’ve noted before, certainty is a continuum. Zero is “absolutely certain to be false” and one is “absolutely certain to be true”. Propositions range in value between those two extremes.
Human fallibility means that no actual proposition actually reaches zero or one, but some propositions get awfully close to an extreme. E.g. “two plus two equals four” would be .9999… and so many nines that for all practical purposes there’s no point in entertaining the idea it’s false.
Even the idea that “humans don’t get absolute certainty” is not absolutely certain. Until and unless I get a divine revelation, though, it sure seems to have a lot of nines after the decimal.
You misunderstand. I’m speaking of ‘underdetermined’ in the scientific sense, to wit: …where the evidence available is insufficient to identify which belief we should hold about that evidence. For example, if all that was known was that 10 dollars was spent on apples and oranges, and that apples cost 1 dollar and oranges 2, then we would know that 9 apples were not purchased, but we could not know which combination of apples and oranges were purchased. In this example we would say that belief in what combination was purchased is underdetermined by the available evidence.
It’s possible that reality is such that we cannot gather enough evidence to eliminate all possible theories. As a simple example, we cannot reproduce the energy concentrations present immediately after the Big Bang. It’s not hard to imagine a physical parameter that couldn’t be measured at lower energies.
Reproduction, of course.
However, it’s… rather amazing how ‘underdetermined’ even sexual reproduction is. There’s this (not entirely restricted to the invertebrates, actually), this, this, etc.
There’s the bonobo chimps, where sex has been coopted to also serve critical social roles. In humans, too, even ostensibly biological functions serve other purposes. (Why is there a meal at a wedding, or practically any major social function? What’s the origin of the phrase “breaking bread together”?)
So identifying “a” purpose for something in no way precludes it having other functions in other contexts.
January 11th, 2012 | 11:09 am
Ray,
“Reproduction, of course.”
No, I’m asking what you think is a purpose for the human race having *two* genders, instead of one, for reproduction.
January 11th, 2012 | 11:36 am
JDD – Ah, I see. Why sexual reproduction specifically?
There’s actually two issues. How sexual reproduction got started, and why it persists. The persistence is actually pretty straightforward. On a genetic level, it allows for gene repair during meiosis, and heterozygosity helps limit the effects of detrimental mutations. In addition, it allows favorable mutations (and, particularly, favorable combinations of mutations) to spread through a population relatively easily, and maintains a high degree of genetic diversity, which is helpful in quite a variety of ways, both immunologic and environmental.
There’s still a lot of ongoing research about the origin of sexual reproduction, with several suggestive hypotheses. I don’t know of one that has predominant empirical support yet, though.
January 11th, 2012 | 11:38 am
HarrietJ – It looks like my reply to you regarding STD transmission didn’t make it through moderation. I certainly didn’t intend any offense, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to continue that discussion.
January 11th, 2012 | 4:38 pm
Ray Ingles to Harriet: What I’m noting is that, so far as I can see, people who actually know ‘homosexuals’ seem to be dramatically less likely to see evidence of them being “profoundly deformed”, or “harmful, exploitative, and destructive”.
Since you claim to see less homosexuals being harmful, I was asking you what evidence you have about homosexual and bisexuals in that respect.
When I asked you about what evidence you have of how they spread STDs, you replied that you lack evidence that there exists cases of female-to-female sexual transmission of HIV in the United States.
In other words, given all the STDs and all the problems related to STDs and homosexuals and bisexuals, the only thing you mention is the non-existence of one type of STD for women.
Indeed, people with a homosexual agenda like yourself deliberately refuse to face every single problem and harmful attitude and behavior related to homosexuals and bisexuals. It would strike an observer that it is because you are prejudiced and unconcerned with the consequences.
In this manner, you coddle all homosexuals and bisexuals who are engaging in destructive behaviors, first and foremost, by joining them in a conspiracy of silence. Instead of “shedding stereotypes as you interact with subjects of such stereotypes,” you reinforce stereotypes regarding homosexuals all the time.
To recognize that there are serious problems related to homosexuals and bisexuals and STD epidemics is not stereotyping, it is a recognition based on real data.
You have proved my theory: people “see” according to their interests. Your interest is not to see any problems with homosexuals/bisexuals. The more you are invested in your denial, the less you will see of reality. Your blindness will remain the same, it doesn’t matter if you interact with one, a thousand, or no homosexuals.
January 12th, 2012 | 8:05 am
HarrietJ –
The problem is, I never see you post any “real data”. You claim there are “serious problems”, but never post evidence of them or their prevalence.
Maybe that’s not your fault, though – I tried to post a few links and it didn’t make it through moderation. Given that limitation, I really don’t see any use in continuing the discussion.
January 12th, 2012 | 9:19 am
Ingles– you mean you tried to link to CDC studies on STDs and some FT moderator killed your post? Because FT now censors public health information?
Of course!
And I have a bridge to sell anyone who’s interested.
Ingles–The problem is, I never see you post any “real data”.
The only “real data” you ever “see” anywhere is the type that says that one group of LGBTs is NOT spreading ONE certain STD.
It’s hard to see people who are more invested in denial than that.
January 12th, 2012 | 11:11 am
Ray,
I agree the reasons for its persistence issue appears pretty straightforward. I’m interested in how it got started. But I think here there’s still a need for a little more clarity in what I’m asking: You’ve listed some reasons for why sexual reproduction is advantageous – but I am looking for your thoughts on why sexual reproduction *between two different genders* is advantageous.
If we take the strict modern evolutionary theory, (which granted has a few different flavors, but I’m focusing on the characteristics of being purely chaotic and undirected, with more robust mutations surviving,) then the question that I think readily presents itself is: Why have two genders developed, when only one would do?
“There’s still a lot of ongoing research about the origin of sexual reproduction, with several suggestive hypotheses. I don’t know of one that has predominant empirical support yet, though.”
Fair enough. Which one do you hold?
January 12th, 2012 | 12:08 pm
If we take the strict modern evolutionary theory . . . . Why have two genders developed, when only one would do?
JDD,
I don’t think that is a question modern evolutionary theory would attempt an answer for. The reason there are two genders is because two genders evolved. It is not as if at the earliest stages of life on earth, members of an advanced civilization could have visited and predicted that two genders would develop. I don’t think it was a necessity that two genders developed. I am not sure I understand the purpose of the question.
It strikes me as not “unnatural” at all that human evolution could consistently produce a certain number of males and females who were not attracted to the opposite sex. Take a look at this very brief description of the reproduction of honey bees:
Almost all the females are sterile, male bees all are produced by “virgin birth” and only one of them gets to mate, and the only fertile female, the queen, is “made, not born.” If you are attempting to prove that a certain level of homosexuality doesn’t make sense in humans, the very unusual case of honey bees demonstrates that nuclear families are not necessary to be a successful species. Also, you are going to have to explain why homosexuality is so prevalent in non-humans.
January 13th, 2012 | 8:45 am
JDD –
Ah. If I understand you correctly, you’re asking something like, “Why not, say, hermaphrodites?”
The origin of sexual dimorphism is another area where we can’t claim certainty. On the other hand, it’s an area where I do have an opinion about what theory’s most likely.
Imagine a perfectly symmetrical sexual arrangement where each ‘parent’ puts in exactly half of the resources to develop the child. This is not an “evolutionarily stable strategy”, because it’s vulnerable to cheaters. A ‘parent’ that ‘cheats’ a little, and contributes less than what’s ‘fair’, can have an advantage. They can ‘parent’ more children.
Once something like that gets started, it amplifies. Enforcing fairness is evolutionarily difficult, so a parent that ‘compensates’ for cheating by delivering extra resources to ‘make up the lack’ from the other parent can do well. But then there’s pressure on the ‘cheaters’ to identify and preferentially mate with the ‘compensators’. You get an “evolutionary arms race”. The ‘cheaters’ eventually become the males, and the ‘compensators’ the females.
Of course, once that differentiation gets started, other adaptations and differentiations can develop on top of that. Hence the rather wide diversity of sexual strategies seen in nature. (I linked to a few before.)
And traits can be co-opted to new or parallel uses as well. The Catholic church, for example, recognizes that sex does not serve a solely reproductive role human relationships. What it opposes is the separation of the various purposes of sex. Personally, I find the case for that weak. But then, as I noted above, I haven’t received any divine revelations.
January 13th, 2012 | 8:46 am
HarrietJ –
I haven’t seen any data at all from you. Hint hint. :)
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