In another attempt to prove that the Catholic hierarchy is primarily made up of the out-of-touch crusty and contrarian, many articles treating Cardinal Francis George’s December 21st comments on the gay liberation movement in Chicago feature titles such as “Cardinal Francis George: gays are the new KKK,” “The Cardinal’s Bizarre Analogy,” and “Keeping Heat on Chicago Cardinal Francis George; Compared Gays to KKK.” The analogy was made by the Cardinal that, by planning a route for the 2012 gay pride parade that would directly conflict with or even prevent parishioners from attending mass at a downtown Chicago parish, the public demonstration of the gay activists would be comparable to more explicit anti-Catholic practices adopted by the Klan. The statement:
“You don’t want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism.”
Cardinal George did not amend his position:
“ . . .the organizers invited an obvious comparison to other groups who have historically attempted to stifle the religious freedom of the Catholic Church. One such organization is the Ku Klux Klan which, well into the 1940’s, paraded through American cities not only to interfere with Catholic worship but also to demonstrate that Catholics stand outside of the American consensus. It is not a precedent anyone should want to emulate.”
Note that the original statement expresses something positive for gay activists: the Cardinal’s hope that the group’s public demonstration not descend into the bigoted intolerance of the KKK. This hope for respectable public discourse obscured, a petition for the Cardinal’s apology has been made, as well as his resignation. The Cardinal will be sending in a letter of resignation next month anyway, a formality for bishops reaching the age of 75 that more often than not results in a new assignment or encouragement to continue in their current position. Needless to say, the Church’s requirement will probably go unmentioned when Chicago gay activists claim success in pressuring a Catholic Cardinal to tender his resignation.
January 6th, 2012 | 9:27 am
What becomes interesting to me is will the press even ask of the march organizers why it is imperative that the march proceed in such a place at such a time. Also of interest is the question of permits. A permit needs to be obtained for these events (I assume). Are well established cycles of public gathering not taken into consideration when permits are issued? Or is it an anywhere-anytime policy. Could a march be organized and permitted that, unintentionally of course, brought impeding congestion to a polling place on a certain day? And if some polling official complains they just need to get an attitude fix?
January 6th, 2012 | 10:16 am
What becomes interesting to me is will the press even ask of the march organizers why it is imperative that the march proceed in such a place at such a time.
pete,
The starting time of the gay-pride parade was changed by its organizers from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. the same day that Cardinal George made his remarks. Given that the parade is six months in the future, there was plenty of time for the Church to request, in a civil manner, that something be done so that the parade did not interfere with mass at the parish in question.
Mark Misulia tries his best to whitewash Cardinal George’s KKK remark:
I have a positive wish about Cardinal George. I hope he does not become a bigot and a fascist. Note that I am not at all saying he is. I am expressing the positive wish that he doesn’t become so. And I hope that Mark Misulia does not become an unprincipled spinmeister, trying to justify any remark that comes from the mouth of a cardinal, no matter how reprehensible. That is my positive wish for Mark. I am certainly not implying that he is an unprincipled spinmeister. It is just my earnest and benevolent wish that he does not become one.
January 6th, 2012 | 10:27 am
More than two weeks ago, the Cardinal made one tactless off-the-cuff remark. A few days later, he ineptly backtracked a little bit on it.
Why is this still being treated as news in major publications like the Chicago Trib? If “homophobia” is really as ubiquitous as it is said to be, wouldn’t one expect there to be more numerous and more dramatic examples than this? If this is the most significant evidence of so-called homophobia anybody can find, doesn’t it mean homophobia is practically a non-existent phenomenon?
January 6th, 2012 | 11:11 am
I think the Cardinal erred in making a too thought-filled, cerebral plea that didn’t pass the sound-bite test. There are times when the most complex statement that people can digest is something along the lines of, “Why can’t we all play nice?”
January 6th, 2012 | 11:45 am
I think the Cardinal erred in making a too thought-filled, cerebral plea that didn’t pass the sound-bite test.
Ellyn,
Surely someone of Cardinal George’s intelligence and experience knows that referring to the KKK and any other organization in the same breath is incendiary. The interviewers, by saying, “That’s a little strong, isn’t it?” gave Cardinal George an opportunity to soften his remarks, but instead, he took them further. They say that in Washington, a gaffe is when someone accidentally tells the truth. I think what makes Cardinal George’s remarks newsworthy (besides the fact that he was speaking on television) is that he actually does equate the gay-rights movement with the KKK.
By the way, the Catholic Church is the enemy of the gay-rights movement. The Catholic Church is utterly opposed to everything the gay-rights movement stands for, and it uses its political power to attempt to block any advances in gay rights. That is just a fact, and just because a movement or organization takes note of that does not make it the equivalent of the KKK. The Catholic Church is far more the enemy of the gay-rights movement than the gay-rights movement is the enemy of the Catholic Church. Undoubtedly there are some in the gay-rights movement who hate the Catholic Church, but it is not at all the purpose of the gay-rights movement to squash the Church, whereas it is the goal of the Church to do whatever they can do prevent the gay-rights movement from succeeding. That should not be a cause for hatred, any more than liberals should hate conservatives or Democrats should hate Republicans.
January 6th, 2012 | 11:57 am
Why is this still being treated as news in major publications like the Chicago Trib?
Felapton,
I think in part it is that people like Mark Misulia and Ellyn don’t think (or won’t admit) that Cardinal George made a tactless remark. Also, it is the fact that George stood by the comparison even after the parade organizers changed its starting time so there would be no conflict with the mass at the parish in question.
I do think, however, that it is a big mistake for gay groups to keep the whole thing alive. They should have said they regretted his unfortunate remarks and let the issue drop. They are in danger of making George look like a prophet if their protests get too extreme.
January 6th, 2012 | 12:19 pm
It does seem over the top to assume that not only would a passing gay rights parade be disruptive to the service but to compare it to the KKK purposefully using their demonstrations to attack Catholics seems both over the top and to assume peaceful coexistence is out of the question.
The concern that a demonstration might disrupt mass is perfectly valid (esp. given a gay rights parade is likely to be very critical of the Catholic Church as they pass by). But immediately assuming that KKK levels of hostility and emnity are the norm seems both quite uncharitable and might we also say unChristian?
On a related note, over on the other thread, we were just told that SSM will result in ‘intolerance’ of Catholics. Why? Well because some hypothetical professor supposedly speculated that if SSM becomes the norm then in the future Catholic politicians who don’t accept SSM will be viewed as racists or KKK members. The usual suspects here immediately started screaming about gross violations of ‘fundamanental rights’.
But notice the double standard when it’s someone else’s ox getting gored. When its the Cardinal comparing gay rights protestors to the KKK not only is that not violating anyone’s ‘rights’ it’s supposed to be taken as a positive comment about them!
January 6th, 2012 | 12:47 pm
I once found myself in the midst of the “gay pride” parade and found the displays of hatred of Christianity (and especially Catholicism) absolutely sickening. I’ve never seen the mainstream press report on the hateful aspects of these parades, nor give it the attention that has been given to Cardinal George’s statement, which is extremely mild in comparison to the parade displays.
I know we’re all supposed to pretend that there’s no inherent conflict between “gay rights” and Christianity, but how come those marching in these parades haven’t gotten the memo on this supposedly incontrovertible fact? And why is no one allowed to challenge the hatred of those in the parades?
January 6th, 2012 | 12:49 pm
[...] Cardinal Francis George and the KKK – Mark Misulia, First Things/First Thoughts [...]
January 6th, 2012 | 12:53 pm
On recent First Things threads and on this one the topic has been the Catholic Church and its position on homosexuality and same-sex “marriage.” The following may be helpful to those not familiar with Catholic teaching on these matters:
Catechism of the Catholic Church – see #2357-2359 on Chastity and homosexuality
LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE PASTORAL CARE OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS – CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITION TO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS – CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
January 6th, 2012 | 1:08 pm
quote: “By the way, the Catholic Church is the enemy of the gay-rights movement. The Catholic Church is utterly opposed to everything the gay-rights movement stands for, and it uses its political power to attempt to block any advances in gay rights. That is just a fact, and just because a movement or organization takes note of that does not make it the equivalent of the KKK. ”
This is an absurd overstatement. The Church has repeatedly opposed hostility to gay persons based on their sexual orientation and urged people to respect their dignity as children of God. The fact that all human beings have inherent dignity does not mean that all behaviors are morally acceptable or good.
January 6th, 2012 | 1:24 pm
This is an absurd overstatement.
sallyr,
Name any piece of gay-rights legislation the Catholic Church has supported or even would support.
January 6th, 2012 | 1:59 pm
David – you have changed the nature of your statement.
First you claimed: The Catholic Church is utterly opposed to everything the gay-rights movement stands for, and it uses its political power to attempt to block any advances in gay rights.
I responded that the church supports and advances respect for the dignity of homosexual persons, and this is something that the “gay rights movement stands for”.
Now you ask what piece of legislation the Church would support – this is a different question. As I stated above, there is a difference between respect for persons and supporting immoral behavior. To the extent that the “gay rights” movement is committed to advocating immoral behavior, the church will oppose that, as should everyone who truly cares about people with same sex attraction.
January 6th, 2012 | 2:17 pm
To the extent that the “gay rights” movement is committed to advocating immoral behavior, the church will oppose that, as should everyone who truly cares about people with same sex attraction.
sallyr,
The gay-rights movement is about securing rights for gay people, not for closeted, celibate “homosexual persons,” which are those the Church is talking about when it says things about the inherent dignity of every human being. You will notice that the Church, in its official documents, never speaks of gay people. It speaks of homosexual persons. That is because the Church apparently makes the same distinction I do. One is a homosexual person purely by reason of one’s sexual orientation, which is inborn or inherent. One is gay, however, only if one embraces one’s homosexual orientation and sees it as good to engage in homosexual acts (under the appropriate circumstances).
The Church makes it very clear it does not support rights for gay people. It does not even support some rights for closeted, celibate homosexual persons (who may be justly discriminated against in hiring teachers and coaches, and may be excluded from the military).
January 6th, 2012 | 2:21 pm
Hi, David,
The Catholic Church teaches that the human dignity of homosexuals must be respected. So it is not “utterly opposed to everything the gay-rights movement stands for.”
The Church teaches that homosexual as well as heterosexual fornication is wrong as it has for two-thousand years. It also teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman — as society in general as well as the Church has traditionally held.
The Church hasn’t changed. It is the attitudes of various cultures that swing wildly over the centuries, although most, if not all, cultures have pretty much always held that marriage is between a man and a woman and that homosexuality is unnatural.
The Church today is merely doing what it has always done and teaching what it has always taught. Get used to it.
The Church has not suddenly mounted a ferocious campaing against homosexuals. It is the gay-rights movement that has in recent times mounted a campaign and is infuriated that the Church doesn’t toss out two-thousand years of teaching and go along with their campaign to legitimize what has always been considered to be unnatural. It is silly to expect the Church to go along with that.
January 6th, 2012 | 2:26 pm
The Church makes it very clear it does not support rights for gay people.
This is absurd. Gay people have all the same rights as everyone else. Eg. – Right to life, right to security, right to education, right to speech, right to due process, right to vote, right to drive, etc. etc. One’s attitude toward sexual behaviors (embracing them or not) has nothing to do with these rights.
January 6th, 2012 | 3:01 pm
The Church makes it very clear it does not support rights for gay people.
sallyr,
To make it clearer: “The Church makes it very clear that it does not support gay rights.”
That would be such things as the right—as an openly gay person—to hold a job, rent an apartment, enter the military, adopt a child, and so on. The Church opposes in principle such things as protecting gay people with hate-crime laws.
right to education
Remember the case of the Catholic lesbian couple whose children were expelled from Catholic school? These were little children who were obviously not gay themselves, but who were denied a Catholic education because their mothers were lesbians. And I can only imagine it would be a rare Catholic middle school or high school that would tolerate an openly gay student.
What the Church does say is that homosexual persons have the same rights as everyone else, as long nobody knows they are homosexual. Openly gay persons do not have the same rights as everyone else, just as those with communicable diseases or mental illnesses don’t have the same rights as everyone else, since society has a right to protect itself from “objectively disordered” behavior.
January 6th, 2012 | 4:32 pm
People who openly advocate all kinds of sexual immorality – whether it be those who are promiscuous, who engage in “open marriage,” wife swapping, “swinging,” incest, exhibitionism, sado-masochism, or same sex activity – all engage in behavior that is detrimental to themselves, their partners, and to society generally. The reality is that most of the time we don’t know if any particular person engages in these behaviors. But to the extent that people want to come out and advocate for these harmful behaviors, they are harming the common good and society should oppose them. If that means we don’t want wife swappers running a boy scouts club, then that is perfectly acceptable, just as refusing such a role to people who advocate other kinds of immoral conduct. If an adoption agency decides that people who define themselves as promiscuous or exhibitionists should not adopt children, I would support that judgment. Why this is even controversial is a mystery to me.
January 6th, 2012 | 5:04 pm
David, are you suggesting that gays have extra rights — “gay rights” — that other people do not have?
January 6th, 2012 | 5:39 pm
Why this is even controversial is a mystery to me.
slats grobnick,
Finally, someone who understands the Catholic position as I have been trying to explain it!
But what about a married couple, one or both spouses in which were previously married, and the previous spouse or spouses are still alive. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, they are committing adultery. (Jesus thought so, too, but apparently not all Christians believe he meant it.) If Catholic Charities were to hire a man whose wife was a divorced woman, should they be able to deny insurance coverage to his wife, although “truly” married men get coverage for their wives? Why should they recognize a merely legal heterosexual marriage any more than they should recognize a merely legal same-sex marriage?
Of course, it used to be the case that the divorced and remarried were considered unfit for many things, but the country left that behind for good when it elected Ronald Reagan as president.
January 6th, 2012 | 5:58 pm
the fact is David is right, the Church does oppose gay rights. It’s a red herring to say the Church demands that all humans be treated with dignity and respect. If some kids go out at night and throw bottles and rocks at people they think are gay the law already says that’s a crime and no one disputes that.
The Church does not support laws prohibiting discrimination against gays. Instead the Church views gays as one would view those who are prone to violence due to mental illness. Yes such people should not be unjustly punished or mistreated…esp. if they haven’t done anything, but at the same time they are not entitled to ‘the same rights as everyone else’ because their condition is in itself a threat to society which has to be contained and controlled.
The attempt to paint over this with mere behaviorial analogies is deceptive. The Church has an issue not just with sexual activity of gays but their existence. It’s not a case of “yes we know you’re curious about wife-swapping, but we are telling you don’t go there…” The Church isn’t simply saying “it’s ok to be gay just don’t have gay sex”. The Church’s stand is that simply existing as a gay person is disordered which makes the gay community’s beef with the Catholic Church more serious than simply the Church throwing cold water on some sexual activities they think might be fun.
January 6th, 2012 | 9:29 pm
Unfortunately, David and Boonton are not in agreement with Catholic teaching on homosexuality (and perhaps other matters as well). But that teaching will not change. The Church, of course, is in the right; David and Boonton are in the wrong.
January 6th, 2012 | 11:36 pm
“The Church has an issue not just with sexual activity of gays but their existence… The Church’s stand is that simply existing as a gay person is disordered”
– um. Ok. Boonton, you never cease to amaze me with your bizarre misunderstanding of Catholic teaching.
The Church’s stand is that every single human being (except Jesus and Mary) is disordered by sin. It’s called original sin, and it expresses itself as a weakness towards sin that is a part of who we are as human beings. People vary in the way that original sin plays out in their lives, but we are all heir to concupiscence. We are all disordered. That doesn’t mean that the church has a problem with the existence of every single human being in the world. It means that it opposes sin.
In case you all missed it, Cardinal George has apologized for his remarks – as posted on the website of the Archdiocese of Chicago:
“During a recent TV interview, speaking about this year’s Gay Pride Parade, I used an analogy that is inflammatory.
I am personally distressed that what I said has been taken to mean that I believe all gays and lesbians are like members of the Klan. I do not believe that; it is obviously not true. Many people have friends and family members who are gay or lesbian, as have I. We love them; they are part of our lives, part of who we are. I am deeply sorry for the hurt that my remarks have brought to the hearts of gays and lesbians and their families.
I can only say that my remarks were motivated by fear for the Church’s liberty. This is a larger topic that cannot be explored in this expression of personal sorrow and sympathy for those who were wounded by what I said.
Francis Cardinal George, OMI”
January 7th, 2012 | 4:13 am
Cardinal George has apologized.
January 7th, 2012 | 10:17 am
Nickol: “The Catholic Church is far more the enemy of the gay-rights movement than the gay-rights movement is the enemy of the Catholic Church. Undoubtedly there are some in the gay-rights movement who hate the Catholic Church, but it is not at all the purpose of the gay-rights movement to squash the Church,”
No, it is the purpose of the homosexual agenda movement to squash anyone who disagrees with them.
This is why homosexual agenda people squashed the rights of that loving British couple to be foster parents because the latter do not support a homosexual agenda. Any loving, caring couple in Britain is now forbidden to be a foster parent if they don’t submit to the homosexual agenda. Here we had a couple in a loving, committed marriage, who had successfully raised children of their own as well as given of themselves to successfully help care for several foster children, and once the homosexual agenda people got power to evaluate their case, they squashed their rights to be foster parents.
These are the homosexual agenda people who are criticizing Francis George for mentioning bigotry and making a reference to the KKK.
I believe the more people highlight how bigoted people with a homosexual agenda are, the better off we will all be.
January 7th, 2012 | 11:34 am
Had “Palestinians” organized a march against a synagogue, you can bet that it wouldn’t have been the rabbi of the synagogue who was expected to apologize if he compared the Palestinian protestors to the KKK.
January 7th, 2012 | 12:09 pm
Had “Palestinians” organized a march against a synagogue . . .
Don Schenk,
Your analogy is false.
The parade organizers didn’t organize a march against a church. They organized a parade that happened to pass a church. Actually, they organized a parade that passed many churches, but only one church complained. They chose the new parade route because everyone agreed (the organizers and the city) that the old route was not suitable any more, because the parade had grown in size over the years.
So now we have the gay pride organizers compared not just to the KKK, but to anti-Semitic Palestinians. Any more comparisons out there?
January 7th, 2012 | 12:43 pm
sallyr,
Your attempt to soften what the Catholic Church teaches about homosexuality is, in my opinion, causing you to distort what the Church teaches: “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”
If you read Instruction
Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders you will find the following:
Now, 1 and 3 might be considered “no brainers,” although it is well known that the proportion of homosexuals (both celibate and non-celibate, or if you prefer, chaste and not chaste) in the priesthood is far out of proportion to the numbers in the general population. But 2 refers to orientation alone. Whether or not the Church believes it is more difficult for a man with a homosexual orientation to refrain from sex than a man with a heterosexual orientation, I do not know. But if you read the document to which I link, you will find that the Church maintains that a homosexual person has not attained “affective maturity.”
In my opinion, this puts the Church in the odd position of saying that perhaps a third of current priests and bishops cannot “relate correctly” to the people in their parish or diocese. And of course all homosexual persons cannot “relate correctly” to anyone. As I have already pointed out, in addition to disqualifying a man from the priesthood, a homosexual orientation alone may be used as a reason for barring a homosexual person from the military, from teaching, from coaching, from being an adoptive parent, and who knows what else?
So while it may be correct to say all human beings are sinners and “disordered” in some way, it is extremely misleading to imply that in Catholic teaching, homosexuality is just one “disorder” among many, and we all have disorders, so no one should make a fuss.
January 7th, 2012 | 2:46 pm
Unfortunately, David and Boonton are not in agreement with Catholic teaching on homosexuality (and perhaps other matters as well). But that teaching will not change. The Church, of course, is in the right; David and Boonton are in the wrong.
Matt C. Abbott,
While it may seem obvious that I disagree with what the Catholic Church teaches regarding homosexuality, what is at issue here is not my personal beliefs as opposed to what the Church teaches. The issue is what the Church teaches. Some, including sallyr, are (in my opinion) trying to minimize the nature of the Church’s stand against gay rights and to make arguments that the the designation of homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered” is not as harsh as it sounds. I suspect sallyr believes I am trying to put the Church’s teachings in the worst possible light, but I have documented my position by quoting at length from Vatican documents. So while you may be right that I disagree with the Church, and you may be right that the Church is right and I am wrong, that is not what is under discussion. What is under discussion is whether the Church teaches that homosexual persons may be discriminated against in some cases for their orientation alone (priesthood, adoptive parent, teacher, coach, military) and in other cases may be discriminated against for being “practicing” homosexuals (job, housing, and so on). The gay-rights movement, I would argue, is about securing legal rights for “practicing homosexuals,” and in principle, the Catholic Church opposes the gay-rights movement. I think that is extremely clear from the Vatican documents I have cited.
January 7th, 2012 | 5:55 pm
Somewhat abandoning the topic of gay rights for a moment, this just occurred to me.
In June 2012, Chicago will have its 43nd annual Gay Pride Parade. In the 2011 parade, over 250 groups marched, and there were 800,000 spectators. With six months to figure out what to do about holding it’s 11:00 o’clock mass the day of the parade, isn’t it a little nervy to ask for the plans for a parade involving close to a million people to be changed to accommodate one church?
There is certainly not a parade in New York City that doesn’t inconvenience hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, but we have them all the time. If, in every city, everyone got veto power over parade plans because they were going to be inconvenienced six months down the road, there would never be another parade anywhere in the country.
January 7th, 2012 | 11:32 pm
I think it’s worth noting that right after Prop 8, several Mormon temples were burned and vandalized in California (and several other states), and a burning Book of Mormon was left on the steps of a Mormon temple in Colorado.
I believe the two events are related, because I read comments in SFGate suggesting that Mormons need to “pay” or “be punished” – and one explicitly justified arson, saying that a burnt church was nothing compared to the harm Mormons had done (I’d include the link, but it appears to have been taken down).
If it is true these two events are related, then it is not unreasonable to note a comparison between gay activist groups and the KKK. These anti-Mormon tactics are KKK tactics.
Whether the incidents are related or not, if gay rights groups do not want to be compared to domestic terrorist groups, they must be far more vocal in separating themselves from and speaking out against radical and/or militant groups that brag about aggressive behavior, claim responsibility for protests that cross over into violation, threaten violence in statements, parade signs, etc., and/or choose names, slogans, etc. that are clearly meant to sound violent or scary, etc.
It’s also worth noting that gay pride parades are turf parades – descended not from the celebratory spirit of American “parades of unity” (such as you might see on the 4th of July or New Years), but from the tradition of martial parades as martial. I do not know if St. Patrick’s Day parades started out as martial also), but I do know Gay Pride Parades more closely resemble Orangemen parading through contested territories in Belfast than anything else – the goal is not to celebrate unity but to intimidate or demoralize “the other side”. Which is another way in which gay rights activists are similar to the KKK: in their choice of how, when, and why to occupy contested spaces.
January 8th, 2012 | 3:40 am
Nickol: So now we have the gay pride organizers compared not just to the KKK, but to anti-Semitic Palestinians. Any more comparisons out there?
Current estimates for interpersonal violence among homosexual male couples rate around 25%. It takes a very evil person to do violence to their own partners. So many homosexuals are violent and are in favor of a homosexual agenda (their little “gay” agenda).
Statistically speaking, a fourth of all the homosexuals in a parade are violent, if we consider just this problem. Obviously their audience doesn’t care about this and are not inconvenienced by the issue.
Is enforcing censorship of intimate violence and keeping silent about how much violence exists among homosexuals, aside from the violence they do to heterosexuals, improving this blog and people’s awareness of the issue?
January 8th, 2012 | 10:09 am
Cardinal George COULD NOT have been equating the Gay Rights Movement with the KKK, because he clearly said YOU DON’T WANT the movement to become like the KKK – meaning blatantly that it is not at this point like the KKK. Does nobody read the source material?
January 8th, 2012 | 11:46 am
Sherry,
You provide a classic example of homophobia. Imagine if someone were to attempt to use this kind of statistical method to discredit African-Americans as a group. Everyone would recognize it as racist.
Current estimates for interpersonal violence among homosexual male couples rate around 25%. . . . Statistically speaking, a fourth of all the homosexuals in a parade are violent . . . .
Even if we accepted your (unsourced) figure of 25%, and if we assumed that all gay men in a parade currently had domestic partners (which would be a totally unwarranted assumption), domestic violence is generally perpetrated by one partner on another, so the percentage of “violent” gay men would be 12.5%, not 25%.
Also, in order for your figures to have any meaning at all, the alleged 25% figure has to be compared to something. What are the figures for domestic abuse by men in heterosexual relationships? You don’t say.
Do you really think it is true, you that you can prove statistically, that gay men are more violent than straight men? I can find no evidence for it.
I think it’s fairly safe to assume that men are more violent than women (although I have run across claims that female-on-male domestic violence is underreported or undercounted), so one would assume a higher rate of violence in male-male relationships than in male-female relationships. But that in no way demonstrates that gay men are more violent than straight men.
To reiterate, you have provided a classic example of homophobia.
January 8th, 2012 | 2:21 pm
Cardinal George COULD NOT have been equating the Gay Rights Movement with the KKK, because he clearly said YOU DON’T WANT the movement to become like the KKK – meaning blatantly that it is not at this point like the KKK. Does nobody read the source material?
Here is the transcript from Fox News:
What would be an objective description of the attitude of the Catholic Church to the gay-rights movement? Is it a friend? Enemy may be an emotionally charged word, but certainly the Catholic Church is one of the main opponents of the gay-rights movement, and if you make a distinction between the gay-rights movement and the gay-liberation movement, I think it is fair to say that the Catholic Church condemns gay liberation. The Catholic Church does not recognize a right to same-sex sexual expression.
January 8th, 2012 | 2:24 pm
Let me add to the above that I think the whole Cardinal George-KKK issue should have ended with his apology. Why should anyone find it necessary either to dwell on his remarks, or to defend them, now that he has apologized. It is now history. We can let it go.
January 8th, 2012 | 3:33 pm
You provide a classic example of homophobia. Imagine if someone were to attempt to use this kind of statistical method to discredit African-Americans as a group.
Except that African-Americans are a group bound by common ethnicity, while homosexuals are a group bound by behavioral choices.
So what is racist when done to blacks is not racist when done to gays, because there’s a category-changing distinction that renders comparisons between the two categories irrelevant.
January 8th, 2012 | 5:08 pm
So what is racist when done to blacks is not racist when done to gays, because there’s a category-changing distinction that renders comparisons between the two categories irrelevant.
Blake,
Of course it is not racism to try to criticize gay people in this way, since gay people are not a race. However, it is bigotry. Evangelicals or Catholics are not bound by a common ethnicity, but it would be bigoted to try to statistically “prove” they should be scorned because of some negative trait they allegedly exhibited out of proportion to their numbers in the population.
Wikipedia tells us, “The EEOC investigates discrimination complaints based on an individual’s race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, perceived intelligence, disability (such as alcoholism) and retaliation for reporting and/or opposing a discriminatory practice.” Do you want to remove religion, perceived intelligence, sex, age, and disability from the list because they are not ethnicities?
It is nonsensical to maintain that there can be no comparison at all between discrimination based on race and based on sexual orientation. If a black person gets beat up by a group of white thugs, and a gay person gets beat up by a group of straight thugs, their experiences are really quite comparable, even though race and sexual orientation are not strongly analogous. A person who hates black people just because they are black and a person who hates Catholics just because they are Catholics are both bigots. It is no defense to say that Catholics are not bound together by a common ethnicity, only behavioral choices. All forms of invidious discrimination have something in common, and there is no reason why they can’t be compared.
January 8th, 2012 | 11:46 pm
David,
I just want to thank you for the above explanations of the Roman position. Your writing is so clear, concise, and straightforward. I also really appreciate your explanation of the softer position that Sallyr and so many in my family take. Romans will get used to homosexuality just as they have gotten used to contraception and divorce.
January 9th, 2012 | 4:45 am
Nickol: “Even if we accepted your (unsourced) figure of 25%, and if we assumed that all gay men in a parade currently had domestic partners (which would be a totally unwarranted assumption), domestic violence is generally perpetrated by one partner on another, so the percentage of “violent” gay men would be 12.5%, not 25%.”
Because the majority of men in a Pride parade live a celibate life. Right.
You need to look up the term “interpersonal violence” because it does not need to refer to a long-term domestic partner.
What percentage of homosexual men in a Pride parade are in a relationship or hook up with others?
For someone who is claiming my figures are wrong, you neither post any other figures, nor do you obviously post any source as a basis for your claim.
If not posting sources is a problem of “homophobia,” I hate to break it to you, but you are extremely homophobic.
January 9th, 2012 | 5:05 am
Nickol: “if we assumed that all gay men in a parade currently had domestic partners, domestic violence is generally perpetrated by one partner on another, so the percentage of “violent” gay men would be 12.5%, not 25%. ”
Really? The fascinating math of someone with a homosexual agenda. We take 100 men who have some kind of partner, and 25 of these 100 men are violent. We put these 100 men in a Pride parade and how many violent men do have? According to Nickol, 12.5 men.
Perhaps before ranting about other people being homophobic, you should learn a little basic math.
January 9th, 2012 | 5:09 am
Nickol: “Even if we accepted your (unsourced) figure of 25%, and if we assumed that all gay men in a parade currently had domestic partners (which would be a totally unwarranted assumption), domestic violence is generally perpetrated by one partner on another, so the percentage of “violent” gay men would be 12.5%, not 25%. ”
“Violent”?
What would the percentage of violent men (without quotes) be?
Or if a homosexual does violence to another person, they are different than a KKK person doing violence to someone else?
January 9th, 2012 | 5:16 am
Nickol: “Also, in order for your figures to have any meaning at all, the alleged 25% figure has to be compared to something. What are the figures for domestic abuse by men in heterosexual relationships? You don’t say.”
Are heterosexual men going on Pride parades claiming to be victims? Is this the group we are discussing here?
We can compare this 25% figure to anything, it’s fine with me.
Let us suppose a group of heterosexual men did just that, they went on a similar Pride parade.
“Help, help, we are being oppressed! We were born treating women like a bunch of sex objects, we can’t help abusing children, being batterers, consuming porn, organizing prostitution systems, spreading STDs wherever we go– it’s really all our in-born heterosexual orientation, we are so oppressed, and we are just fighting for our “civil rights. Please clap.”
I’d be calling out for how stupid and ridiculous and irresponsible they are faster than anyone.
January 9th, 2012 | 5:28 am
Nickol: “Do you really think it is true, you that you can prove statistically, that gay men are more violent than straight men? I can find no evidence for it.”
I think if you are going to work so hard on building up a strawman so that you can demolish it and feel like you are arguing something, it’s up to you to prove it.
If a homosexual comes and punches you in the face and then a heterosexual does the same, does it make the two actions OK now?
Does it make these two men non-violent?
Or is the homosexual “violent” and the heterosexual violent (without quotes)?
Are you like that disgusting AA woman who said “it’s not rape rape”? It’s not violence violence if it involves a homosexual perpetrator?
And what if the rate of interpersonal violence for KKK men is 25%? So homosexual men and KKK men have the same rate of interpersonal violence. And yet the first group goes on a parade claiming to be victims.
You think it’s wonderful, I think it’s one of the greatest shows of hypocrisy and harmful ideological propaganda we currently have in society.
January 9th, 2012 | 5:56 am
How many people in a Pride parade are in favor of pornography? Of promiscuity/hook-ups? Of prostitution? Are in favor of the current abortion system? How many have carelessly spread STDs to others? How many have acted in sexual behaviors towards heterosexuals that constitute sexual harassment? How many try to censor viewpoints they don’t agree with (like the Manhattan declaration, the Joe King calendar, etc)? How many sexually objectify other people? How many have committed some kind of sexual crime or aggression, including to minors? How many have covered up, lied about, or denied bad behavior if it was done by other homosexuals?
We would be hard pressed to find one single individual in a Pride parade who did not have at least one of these ideological positions. Most paraders hold many of these views, plus many other attitudes and behaviors that are patently destructive and detrimental to our society.
I am critical of all of these positions. A Pride parade is nothing but a group of harmful, irresponsible, negligent people clapping at another group of harmful, irresponsible, negligent people.
When we scratch the surface of who are the people calling others “homophobic,” what we find are a host of destructive attitudes and practices about sexuality and personal relationships. On top of it, they parade around claiming to be victims. Obviously if you go into extreme denial about all the harm these people do all around, they are just a bunch of colorful ninnies walking down together on the avenue.
If we point out that people with a homosexual agenda are promoting a victim stereotype that serves to hide just how many destructive views they have, we are accused of being “homophobic,” something which homosexual activists equate with being a bad person.
A sorry spectacle indeed.
January 9th, 2012 | 7:23 am
Matt C Abbot
Unfortunately, David and Boonton are not in agreement with Catholic teaching on homosexuality (and perhaps other matters as well). But that teaching will not change. The Church, of course, is in the right; David and Boonton are in the wrong.
Unfortunately we haven’t even got to the point where I’ve given my opinion on Catholic teaching. Our problem here seems to be that those who would presume to school us on Catholic teaching are themselves refusing to be direct about it.
sallyr
The Church’s stand is that every single human being (except Jesus and Mary) is disordered by sin. It’s called original sin, and it expresses itself as a weakness towards sin that is a part of who we are as human beings….
Indeed, however this is NOT the subject of the dispute. The Church does not teach that heterosexuality in itself is disordered. An unmarried man who is heterosexual has a lot of challengings to living within Church teaching. He may not masturbate, may not obsess over sexually attractive women, may not have pre or extramarital sex and even within marriage he must place limits on his sexual expression. However, he may be a heterosexual. He may find women attractive, he may be drawn towards romantic relationships with women. While like all people, he is ‘disordered by sin’, simply being heterosexual as he is is not in itself either disordered or sinful. The disordered by sin aspect is that a non-sinful activity (say finding women attractive) can very easily lead to a sinful activity (lust, premarital sex, etc.) Presumably if he was not disordered by original sin he would find a pretty woman walking down the street attractive but would not worry about any inclination towards masturbation, lust, affairs, rape etc.
This option of ‘being gay but just don’t do gay sex’ is not, honestly speaking, quite open to gays in view of the Church teaching. Correct me if I’m wrong.
In case you all missed it, Cardinal George has apologized …
That’s great. Hopefully mutually acceptable arrangement can be worked out now so that the parade can happen but in a way that does not disrupt mass. Now I look forward to you all apologizing to David and I. After all, if the Cardinal is right to apologize for his original remarks, then those that criticized him for them were right to do so and those that leaped to his defense were wrong. Or you can say he was wrong to apologize, you are free, of course, to disagree with Catholic teaching.
January 9th, 2012 | 7:59 am
Cardinal George wrote: I am personally distressed that what I said has been taken to mean that I believe all gays and lesbians are like members of the Klan. I do not believe that; it is obviously not true.
“Obvious” seems to be the problem; the Cardinal obviously did not realize his sentences would be parsed by some of the same folks who demanded the Ernie and Bert, of Sesame Street fame, be same-sex married although it is obvious, even to small children, the two are puppets.
January 9th, 2012 | 9:04 am
How many people in a Pride parade are in favor of pornography? Of promiscuity/hook-ups? Of prostitution? Are in favor of the current abortion system? How many have carelessly spread STDs to others? . . etc., etc., etc.
Sherry,
I don’t know. How many? How do you know?
January 9th, 2012 | 9:35 am
If a homosexual comes and punches you in the face and then a heterosexual does the same, does it make the two actions OK now?
Sherry,
In order to prove what awful people gay men are, it is not enough to demonstrate that some of them are violent. At minimum, it would be necessary to demonstrate that men who are gay are more violent than men who are not gay. If the rate of violence of gay and not-gay men is roughly the same, then your complaint is not against gay men, it is against men. Your argument will work equally well against the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It has violent men in it!
You persist in your very ugly effort to smear gay people as a group. I urge you to stop. You are only making yourself look bad.
January 9th, 2012 | 10:48 am
Something else to keep in mind here, the Church’s teaching is very serious. It’s not just ‘don’t have gay sex’. I would like those leaping to the defense here to consider what would the consquence be of the Church being wrong?
If you’re view is that the Church is simply teaching a behaviorial prohibition (on the par with don’t eat meat on Friday or abstain from pork products), then being wrong is probably not a big deal. But if the teaching is more existential, then the stakes are much higher because it’s very troubling to call someone inherently disordered if, in fact, they are no different than you or I.
This means that gay rights protestors are right to have a beef with the Church. If the Church is wrong, then its doing an injustice to gays and since I think most of us would agree that most gay rights protestors think the Chuch is wrong, then they are right to protest. The argument here, then, is not silly or trivial but very serious and the stakes are very high.
That does, of course, mean that everyone has a duty to keep their emotions in check. It’s not that gay rights protestors have no right to be angry, in fact just the opposite, they have every right to be angry but that means the duty to control one’s anger becomes all the more important so they should make sure that protests do not cross the line.
January 9th, 2012 | 2:20 pm
Sherry: “How many people in a Pride parade are in favor of pornography? Of promiscuity/hook-ups? Of prostitution? Are in favor of the current abortion system? How many have carelessly spread STDs to others? . . etc., etc., etc.”
David Nickol: “I don’t know. How many? How do you know?”
Do you have any data that counters the profile of the men in Pride parades? Among the people you know, according to anything you have read or heard, is there any single account you know of that goes counter to what I have described?
January 9th, 2012 | 2:31 pm
Sherry: “If a homosexual comes and punches you in the face and then a heterosexual does the same, does it make the two actions OK now?”
David Nickol: “In order to prove what awful people gay men are, it is not enough to demonstrate that some of them are violent.”
As far as I can see, you are attributing to me a claim that all homosexuals are clones. Is that true?
In order to prove that homosexual men are not the victim stereotype they claim to be, it is enough to demonstrate that many of them are violent, corrupt, harmful, negligent, destructive, irresponsible, etc.
January 9th, 2012 | 2:46 pm
David Nickol: “If the rate of violence of gay and not-gay men is roughly the same, then your complaint is not against gay men, it is against men. ”
As I said, this is why if heterosexual men went on a Pride parade claiming to victims of oppression, they would just be displaying a show of hypocrisy.
Secondly, we know for a fact that MSM spread much more STDs than heterosexual men.
If you are claiming that liberal men and social conservative men all have the same behavior about everything, I think you are very out of touch with reality.
I would never trust a liberal researcher regarding data that says people are all clones.
Unfortunately, liberals are too lacking in ethics to examine the political ideology of perpetrators or of people who engage in destructive behavior in their studies, so we can’t know much at this point.
Another deliberate, harmful action from people with a liberal/homosexual agenda.
January 9th, 2012 | 2:54 pm
Do you have any data that counters the profile of the men in Pride parades?
Sherry,
It doesn’t work this way. You make up a bunch of stuff off the top of your head, and you want me to come up with data? Sorry.
For what it’s worth, most of the gay men I know personally are between the ages of about 50 to 70 and have been in relationships for 20 or more years. They aren’t promiscuous, don’t do “hook-ups,” don’t engage prostitutes, and don’t have or spread STDs. In a wider circle including acquaintances, I don’t know of anybody who has marched in a gay-pride parade in decades, although nobody I can think of disapproves of them either. And those who do march in gay-pride parades are no more defined by the parades than people who cavort in New Orleans at Mardi Gras, stand in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, or get drunk for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The latter has been cleaned up considerably, it used to be notorious for drunken Catholic high school kids, who don’t have to go to school that day.
January 9th, 2012 | 3:22 pm
Nickol: “Your argument will work equally well against the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It has violent men in it!”
Indeed, this is a very interesting point. Aren’t there some types of violence that liberals recognize and profoundly condemn, while other types they trivialize, keep silent on, and coddle the perpetrators?
Let us supposed that a pharmaceutical laboratory decide to parade down the avenue to celebrate their drugs. Among their drug-making history, they peddled to the public numerous harmful and lethal drugs. And were never held accountable for it, nor were they brought to justice.
Who would clap at this parade? The people who are not at all bothered by the destructive actions and consequences of the paraders, and selectively like to think only about anything good they might have done.
Isn’t this exactly the case of the people who clap at Pride parades? Supporters refuse to acknowledge the harm that people with a homosexual agenda do in society, and instead, clap like ninnies.
I don’t think the analogy with the St Patrick’s works as well, but it is interesting. In order to make a proper analogy with the Pride parade, the people in the Irish parade would need to be engaging in a campaign for a large variety of harmful and destructive behaviors in society based on their Irish heritage, they would need to be attacking and smearing anyone who didn’t agree with their views, and they would need to be claiming to be victims, etc. This is what homosexual activists are doing.
There is also another analogy that can be made with the St Patr. example which is very interesting. Suppose you knew for a fact that 25% of paraders had attacked homosexuals, like beaten them up, what gets categorized as a “hate crime” in many places nowadays. It’s a concept I don’t agree with, but that’s another issue. Would people with a homosexual agenda go clap at the paraders to celebrate St Patricks?
Not only I’m sure they wouldn’t, they would throw a fit in the media and attack the St Patrick’s paraders for their harmful behavior towards homosexuals in every way possible.
Now, we all know that statistically speaking, among 300,000 St Patrick’s paraders, there is a significant number of batterers, etc. Yet people still clap, ignoring this completely. Isn’t it because the issue of interpersonal violence does get swept under the rug, culturally-speaking?
January 9th, 2012 | 4:43 pm
Sherry: “Do you have any data that counters the profile of the men in Pride parades?”
David Nickol: “It doesn’t work this way. You make up a bunch of stuff off the top of your head, and you want me to come up with data? ”
Every person and type of data I know of confirms what I have said. And you can’t come up with one single person or data that denies it.
David Nickol: “In a wider circle including acquaintances, I don’t know of anybody who has marched in a gay-pride parade in decades, although nobody I can think of disapproves of them either. And those who do march in gay-pride parades are no more defined by the parades than people who cavort in New Orleans at Mardi Gras,”
How do you what these people think if you don’t know any of them and you don’t know anything about what they think? You just completely made that up.
January 9th, 2012 | 5:10 pm
Sherry,
You seem to be obsessed with parades. Part of my whole point is that first, parades tell you very little about the people who march in them, because they are generally once-a-year events, and people live 365 days a year, have jobs, have families, and so on. Second, a parade doesn’t tell you a significant amount about the group allegedly represented by the parade. Would you really want to generalize about Catholics by the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, or about blacks by the MLK Day Parade?
You have made it clear you have a very low opinion of gay people in general, and the “proofs” you offer—they are promiscuous, porn-loving, abortion-supporting, violent spreaders of disease—if made about any other group (blacks, Italians, Puerto Ricans, feminists, etc.) would strike the fair-minded reader as springing from prejudice. Everybody now knows what you believe, so I don’t think this needs to go any further.
January 9th, 2012 | 5:29 pm
Of course it is not racism to try to criticize gay people in this way, since gay people are not a race. However, it is bigotry.
In exactly the same way it is bigotry for you to criticize the Catholic position on bigotry.
When you try to stretch the word “bigotry” to cover behavioral and ideological choices, the word stretches too thin to provide the sort of coverage it provides to blacks.
My point remains: you are trying to compare two unlike things, and your argument rests on the presumption that these two unlike things are like when they’re not. Just because something is true of a passive trait like skin color does not mean we should assume it to be true or even probable in the case of an active, self-conscious behavioral decision.
January 9th, 2012 | 5:43 pm
Every person and type of data I know of confirms what I have said. And you can’t come up with one single person or data that denies it.
Sherry,
You have a perfect right to your opinions about homosexuality, but I think you are embarrassing yourself in trying to demonize gay men in general and particularly those who march in gay pride parades. The more you write, though, the better Cardinal George looks in comparison. He said, “Many people have friends and family members who are gay or lesbian, as have I. We love them; they are part of our lives, part of who we are. I am deeply sorry for the hurt that my remarks have brought to the hearts of gays and lesbians and their families.” You, on the other hand, go out of your way to make ugly accusations. I suppose to you Cardinal George is a “ninny.”
January 9th, 2012 | 9:40 pm
David Nickol: “You seem to be obsessed with parades. ”
Guess what the OP in part refers to? Are you able to stay on topic or are you against people who do?
David Nickol: “Part of my whole point is that first, parades tell you very little about the people who march in them, because they are generally once-a-year events, and people live 365 days a year, have jobs, have families, and so on.”
So if the KKK went on a once-a-year parade, you wouldn’t know much about their views on race?
David Nickol: “Second, a parade doesn’t tell you a significant amount about the group allegedly represented by the parade. ”
Depending on the parade, it tells us a lot about certain characteristics or political positions. Pride parades are certainly among these.
David Nickol: “Would you really want to generalize about Catholics by the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, or about blacks by the MLK Day Parade?”
Would I tend to believe that most people participating in World Youth Day are Jews? No, I wouldn’t. Could I correctly generalize that they are mostly Catholics? From every source of information that I have seen, yes.
Personally, I find the profound hypocrisy that is at the core of Pride parades ridiculous. A Pride parade is a cultural symbol of how disingenuous people with a homosexual agenda are. It is for many of these reasons that a Pride parade is very salient, culturally speaking. It’s like Putin holding a parade to celebrate democracy in Russia. His supporters would clap like ninnies indeed.
While you think that I am “obsessed” about parades, perhaps that is because I am not the type of person who claps at anything and everything that marches in front of me, telling me I should clap.
January 9th, 2012 | 10:18 pm
David Nickol: “You have made it clear you have a very low opinion of gay people in general, and the “proofs” you offer—they are promiscuous, porn-loving, abortion-supporting, violent spreaders of disease—if made about any other group (blacks, Italians, Puerto Ricans, feminists, etc.) would strike the fair-minded reader as springing from prejudice. ”
First, let me correct you on your strawman. I have a very low opinion of people with a homosexual agenda because of their agenda (destructive and harmful). As you know, there are a great many heterosexuals who have this same agenda. As for homosexuals, this first political and cultural agenda problem is coupled with the fact that after displaying a host of destructive attitudes and engaging in a long list of harmful behaviors, they claim to be a victim stereotype and they enable and coddle other harmful homosexuals/bisexuals.
Let me address each of the problems you mention. I have never seen a single homosexual attack other homosexuals for being promiscuous. The only thing I have seen is homosexuals either coddling promiscuous homosexuals or being promiscuous themselves. I have rarely seen a homosexual attacking other homosexuals on the issue of porn. I only see the contrary. I have rarely seen a homosexual who attacked the current abortion situation. There is a significant amount of harmful behavior done by homosexuals and bisexuals in society. Homosexual activists like yourself deny, trivialize, and basically keep silent on all of this harm, only furthering its negative consequences, since your denial actions are replicated by millions of people around the world. Several recent health organization have confirmed that MSM are responsible for leading the spread of at least a couple of serious STDs, and WSW another few.
Why would it strike the fair-minded reader that being critical of a needless epidemic of STDs is a prejudiced viewpoint? Why would it strike the fair-minded reader that having a low opinion of people who are waging a war against a wholesome, healthy culture is a prejudiced viewpoint?
January 10th, 2012 | 7:36 am
Why would it strike the fair-minded reader that being critical of a needless epidemic of STDs is a prejudiced viewpoint? Why would it strike the fair-minded reader that having a low opinion of people who are waging a war against a wholesome, healthy culture is a prejudiced viewpoint?
Because his argument presupposes that his ideology has more right to exist than yours does. That his ideology has the right to not just coexist, but supplant.
Because “the race card” is a powerful tool – bypass discussion, proof, logic; jump straight to “give me what I want or else you’re a bad person”. And it comes with the right to ignore any laws you don’t like, and anyone who disagrees with you can be simply reduced to “bad person”.
And they will continue to expand their own “rights” until the magic no longer works.
The magic will stop working as long as people stop being cowed into believing that gay = black (like most gay rights arguments, it relies on the idea that “because I do not believe the difference between X and Y is important, you shouldn’t either” – but the differences are there, and pretending those differences don’t matter means denying that truth matters).
Or the magic will stop working when people recognize the argument as tautological: blacks themselves never got any magical powers to use their conclusions as premises. But gay rights advocates (and humanists in general – you see the same tactic in their other arguments) rely on it routinely, almost exclusively. They think they can prove you ought to share their ideological belief by throwing out the presupposition that their ideological belief is superior to yours. Notice how this presupposes a direction. You are expected to care about his feelings, but he is not obliged to care about yours. You are expected to honor his “rights” – but he is not obliged to recognize yours.
Gay rights = emotional appeals. Logic is their enemy.
You can’t resolve the conflict because he doesn’t recognize the conflict. He’s right and you’re wrong, and in order to get around the fact that what he’s doing is not nice, not ethical, and not legitimate, he can borrow some legitimacy from the larger category/metaphor “civil rights”. This enables him to use words like “bigot” to dehumanize you – by lumping you in with the people who used fire hoses on blacks – without being inconvenienced by the fact that you haven’t actually done anything bad.
The logic goes something like, “People who believed blacks were bad killed Emmet Till, therefore people who believe homosexuals are bad are like the people who killed Emmet Till”. By this logic, anyone can label anything a “right” and anyone who doesn’t agree is automatically guilty of killing Emmet Till. You can see this logic at work in the names militant groups choose (“Bash Back”). (Notice that the Cardinal specifically mentioned “gay liberation – a group of groups with overtly militant names like “Gay Liberation Front” and “Gay Liberation Army”.)
January 10th, 2012 | 9:46 am
There is also another analogy that can be made with the St Patr. example which is very interesting. Suppose you knew for a fact that 25% of paraders had attacked homosexuals, like beaten them up, what gets categorized as a “hate crime” in many places nowadays
I don’t know this ‘for a fact’ nor does anyone else. I’m sure at a St. Patricks Day parade some of the marchers have beaten their wives, some are drunks, others are carrying on extramarital affairs. I have no idea what percentage but even if you could demonstrate that its 25% I would see no reason why I shouldn’t go to a St. Patrick’s Day Parade and clap. This would only be a relevant factor if, say, some guy in the parade was beating his wife in the parade itself, then I wouldn’t clap of course.
January 10th, 2012 | 10:16 am
While we are on the subject of 25%, the John Jay report, commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, found that 4% of all priests who served in the US between 1950-2002 had abuse allegations made agains them. Of the 11,000 charges, 6700 were substantiated and 1,000 were not leaving 3300 that could not be investigated because the accused had died.
So let’s say that of the 3,300 that could not be substantiated, all were false. That would still mean 2.5% of all priests from that time period had committed some act of abuse. Of course that’s a generous assumption, probably at least a few of those 3,300 were true charges which would put the number closer to 4% than 2.5%.
Now sexual abuse is usually a much harsher crime than domestic violence. Many would say its ten times worse or more. So if there was some hypothetical ‘Catholic Priest parade’ in that time period that had hundreds of priests marching….well we’d know that there would almost certainly be plenty of abusers in that group. Should people not clap and support the parade?
You claim that 75% of gay men do not engage in domestic violence….yet they should not be supported because 25% who do is sufficient to convict all of a ‘group crime’. Is 2.5% also sufficient? 4%? Esp. when the underlying crime is much worse than domestic violence? What is the the magic threshold where its ok to impose a collective punishment on a group because of a minority of bad actors scattered within it?
January 11th, 2012 | 12:39 am
Nickol: “You, on the other hand, go out of your way to make ugly accusations. ”
In another recent thread, Nickol stated that anyone (including all Christians) who opposes his homosexual agenda is an unfit parent and therefore has no rights to being a (foster) parent.
I find this an extraordinarily ugly accusation.
We can’t say that Nickol goes out of his way to make ugly accusations because his entire purpose here is to make such accusations and to smear anyone who opposes his homosexual agenda.
“You have a perfect right to your opinions about homosexuality, but I think you are embarrassing yourself in trying to demonize gay men in general and particularly those who march in gay pride parades. ”
Pointing out how destructive your discourse is and how much harm homosexuals are doing in society is not demonization, it is education. It is a responsible action being smeared by people like you.
By pointing out how destructive the political positions of men in a Pride parade are, I am raising awareness that one of the tactics largely used by homosexual activists is deceit.
Nickol: I suppose to you Cardinal George is a “ninny.”
I am not here to speak for Cardinal George, but I don’t think he wishes to hurt anyone’s feelings.
Does this means he wants to take your side and engage in a war against war against a wholesome, healthy culture? I would hope not, but if that were the case, I would certainly consider Cardinal George a ninny.
Is he in favor of needless epidemics of STDs spread by homosexuals and bisexuals? Is he in favor of pink mafias covering up abuse done by homosexuals? Is he in favor of pornography and promiscuity? Is Lady Gaga and George Michael his idols? I would hope not, but if that were the case, I would consider him a ninny.
January 11th, 2012 | 9:05 am
correction of garbled sentence above:
Does this means he wants to take your side and engage in a war against a wholesome, healthy culture?
Blake: “Because his argument presupposes that his ideology has more right to exist than yours does. That his ideology has the right to not just coexist, but supplant.”
Part of the problem is that the ways in which homosexuals and bisexuals are destructive in society refer to private, interpersonal, and sexuality spheres. These are spheres where many other people are squeamish and uncomfortable. They do run away from facing the tremendous problems we currently have in society in these spheres.
So Nickol posits homosexuals as 1) a-political regarding all these issues, and 2) as never doing anything destructive at all, and 3) as not having a political/ideological agenda whatsoever.
This is a harmful and very false stereotype, but one which pleases very much a general audience.
Then he smears anyone who criticizes problems in these personal spheres related to homosexuals as criticizing this caricature of a non-existent a-political homosexual.
It came to mind that while FT runs one article on homosexual marriage after another, they rarely (? never?) run articles on violence perpetrated by homosexuals, nor regarding the problems of STD epidemics and promiscuity, nor concerning sexual harassment/adultery/unwelcome sexual behaviors, nor homosexual pornography, nor prostitution, etc.
To a large extent, this reflects a desire for denial in addressing all these multiple problems regarding homosexuals and bisexuals.
Given that FT rarely addresses many of these problems when they refer to heterosexuals, this denial about how deformed and destructive homosexuals are is included in a desire for denial about the dysfunctional problems in the personal sphere for society at large.
What Nickol basically wants is for someone who criticizes the ways homosexuals and bisexuals sexually harass other people, or are vulgar, or denigrate sexuality, for example, to be seen as someone who is against a non-destructive homosexual. That’s his smear strategy. (“I think you are embarrassing yourself in trying to demonize gay men in general and particularly those who march in gay pride parades.”)
Yet when I asked him for any proof that the homosexual men who go on Pride parade did not have a series of harmful attitudes and behaviors, he could offer none. Nor did any of the other homosexual agenda proponents here. To point out that we basically cannot find men in a Pride parade who do not have a series of harmful attitudes and behaviors is not demonizing or being prejudiced, but facing and exposing the reality of these men.
Nickol’s strategy is to always lie about the attitudes and behaviors of homosexuals as long as they are harmful, and then accuse anyone who points out there are many destructive ones, and they are widespread, as being unfair.
The discourse strategy of homosexual activists is to do the opposite of what Nickol accuses me of doing: they “embellish and depoliticize gay men in general and particularly those who march in gay pride parades.”
Nickol wants carte blanche for all destructive attitudes and behaviors for all the LGBT community, and this is partially done by how he systematically sweeps under the rug any problem related to them whatsoever.
A Pride parade is, in this respect, much more a celebration of collective negligence and cover-ups of profound problems in the personal relationships and sexuality spheres in modern day society.
January 11th, 2012 | 9:15 am
Sherry: “There is also another analogy that can be made with the St Patr. example which is very interesting. Suppose you knew for a fact that 25% of paraders had attacked homosexuals…”
Boonton: “I don’t know this ‘for a fact’ nor does anyone else.”
But a lot of other people besides yourself do know what a hypothetical example is. Amazing, isn’t it?
I’m sure even if you knew for a fact that 99% of paraders had attacked someone, you would still go and clap, given your particularly grounded comments on here…
January 11th, 2012 | 10:30 am
But a lot of other people besides yourself do know what a hypothetical example is. Amazing, isn’t it?
I’m sure even if you knew for a fact that 99% of paraders had attacked someone,
Its valid to knock down a hypothetical for being a hypothetical if the hypothetical itself makes the question invalid.
For example:
Question: Would you feel respect for the Pope if on Christmas day he appeared at his podium, and in front of a crowd of thousands took a 5 year old boy and hurled him to his death on the stones below?
Me: Now I’d be shocked, horrified and quite angry if the Pope did that!
Question: Why don’t you then feel that way about the current Pope?
Me: Errr, because unless I missed a really big news item, the current Pope has done nothing of the sort!
If there was a parade of wife beaters no I wouldn’t clap. If there was a parade that had a huge number of people I *knew* to be wife beaters, no I probably wouldn’t clap then. But simply knowing that a parade happens to have a demographic that has a certain percentage of wife beaters is not knowing and would not in itself justify not clapping.
Speaking of which,
According to http://www.dvrc-or.org/domestic/violence/resources/C61/, 25% of women will be victims of some type of spousal or relationship violence at some point in their lives. So by your logic, any parade that happens to have a lot of men in it (say returning Iraq veterns, a parade for the next superbowl winner, Knights of Columbus etc.) I should withhold clapping because I can ‘estimate’ that 25% of the men are or have or will abuse a woman at some point!
January 11th, 2012 | 10:43 am
I would just ask people to read what I write for themselves, rather than accept Sherry’s interpretation of it. What I say, and what she says I say are two very different things. Also, contrast Cardinal George’s words with hers. I am totally confident that I could discuss the issue of gay people and the Church much more productively with Cardinal George than with Sherry. Can Sherry say, “Many people have friends and family members who are gay or lesbian, as have I. We love them; they are part of our lives, part of who we are. I am deeply sorry for the hurt that my remarks have brought to the hearts of gays and lesbians and their families.”
January 13th, 2012 | 8:05 am
David Nickol: “I would just ask people to read what I write for themselves, rather than accept Sherry’s interpretation of it. What I say, and what she says I say are two very different things. ”
And I would ask people to think carefully about your homosexual agenda.
Just as you have a right to mislead people, others have a right to point out just how harmful your views and misinformation are.
In addition, it is for this reason that we must continuously point out that your smears of social conservatives–including myself–and reality are two different things.
January 13th, 2012 | 8:15 am
Nickol: “Also, contrast Cardinal George’s words with hers. I am totally confident that I could discuss the issue of gay people and the Church much more productively with Cardinal George than with Sherry.”
What I can see from your posts here is that it is impossible for someone with your destructive political agenda to have a productive conversation with anyone. Why would you be honest with Cardinal George, if you are not honest about reality when you write on this blog?
Have you ever apologized for the hurt and harm any individual with your homosexual agenda is causing or has caused anyone else or society in general? Do people with a homosexual agenda ever take responsibility for any problem they cause in society? Why do they ask for apologies, when their objective is to obtain impunity for any type of harm they cause?
Your objective is to implant a destructive ideology, to cover up all harmful acts, mostly by deceit, and to ditch all accountability.
What I think the Church needs to do is to prove that they are not interested in covering up all the problems related to homosexuals in society as they were so eager to cover up the sexual abuse cases in their midst. Obviously, Nickol would love for that to happen, it is what he calls the Church being “productive.”
January 13th, 2012 | 8:17 am
David Nickol cites Cardinal George: “Many people have friends and family members who are gay or lesbian, as have I. We love them; they are part of our lives, part of who we are.”
Do you seriously intend to convince anyone that Cardinal George meant homosexuals have a right to do any harm they want in society with no accountability?
Are you trying to say that Cardinal George, like you, thinks you should institute any destructive policy in society? That you should continue to coddle homosexual perpetrators? That you should continue to further spread STDs?
Do you think Cardinal George wants everyone to join you in your cover up of all problems related to homosexuals and their agenda?
January 13th, 2012 | 1:48 pm
sherry/HarrietJ/Alessandra,
You seem to be a very angry person. I would appreciate it if you didn’t call me a liar, which I think could possibly be libel on your part. And since all messages are moderated before they appear, you may possibly be putting First Things into the position of being a party to libel.
I could be mistaken in my views. I could even be very mistaken. But I am not lying. So I would advise you to dial back on the hostile rhetoric and personal attacks, and stick to the issues.
January 15th, 2012 | 9:45 am
Nickol: “I could be mistaken in my views. I could even be very mistaken. But I am not lying. So I would advise you to dial back on the hostile rhetoric and personal attacks, and stick to the issues.”
All my posts here discuss issues. When they refer to homosexuality, they criticize the lies that constitute your homosexual agenda, plus the destructive attitudes and behaviors that homosexual activists promote. If you are saying that criticisms to a political agenda equal a personal attack, you are lying.
Secondly, dial back on your systematic promotion of your harmful homosexual agenda if you don’t want to be criticized.
Furthermore, just as you are entitled to smear social conservatives as unfit parents because they do not promote your homosexual agenda, a claim which is hostile rhetoric and a personal attack to millions of people, we are entitled to tell you that we have serious questions about your ability to parent anyone.
Just as you have serious questions about my ability to parent, I have serious questions about your ability to be truthful about problems related to homosexuals and people with a homosexual agenda.
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t call me a liar, which I think could possibly be libel on your part. ”
And I would appreciate if you were truthful about reality. I would appreciate if you didn’t spread misinformation. I would appreciate if you didn’t lie by omission about the many serious problems related to the LGBT community.
Given that I am not a libel lawyer, from what I know of the 1st Amendment, your potential libel claim above is laughable, but I am curious to find out the answer from a lawyer.
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