At FamilyScholars.org, David Blankenhorn is not willing to grant R. R. Reno’s dismissal of the “Selma Analogy.” I’m sure, he says,
that Rusty Reno knows as well as anyone that almost no gay people (certainly no openly gay people, or at least none that I can think of) would accept the premise that being black-skinned is fixed whereas being gay is not — i.e., that being gay can be properly understood, as Reno suggests, as simply the choice to commit certain acts. Reno can defend this position, of course, if that’s his position (and of course it’s a position that many have argued), but in my view in 2012 he can’t simply (with legitimacy) assume it, as if it were an uncontested fact, rather than what the whole fuss is all about.
I very much doubt that Reno thinks that “being gay” is simply the choice to commit certain acts. He just doesn’t think that it is like “being black.” One can be black and do nothing at all (though of course one wouldn’t live long); indeed, one who is black cannot be other than black no matter what he does. But what is “being gay”? Whatever it is, it is not quite like that.
As for Blankenhorn, I would like to hear him further on three questions.
First: What does he mean by “gay people”? Does he mean “people with deep-rooted same-sex attractions” or does he mean “people with same-sex attractions who engage in same-sex activities” (to employ a deliberately broad term)?
If he means only the former, he is (a) begging the question about the moral propriety of same-sex activities, while (b) implying a knowledge of the biological factors in same-sex attraction, and their weighting over against other factors, that science does not yet have.
If he means the latter, he is either adopting a determinist view of human beings, one that makes moral considerations no more than intellectual mirages, or (more likely) making a number of assumptions about the way in which inclinations and choices and behaviours are related in human beings. Which is to say, he is positing all sorts of moral and anthropological claims which he has not yet articulated clearly enough. This again is question begging, as Reno has pointed out.
Second: Why does Blankenhorn insist that “almost no gay people” would allow that their sexual inclinations and/or habits are not fixed by nature? Surely he knows that the history of the homosexualist movement, both early and late, includes major arguments about this. Surely he knows that “gay” and “queer” denote differences on this. Surely he knows that the “transgender” advocates are disinclined to biological determinism. Surely he knows that the Yogyakarta fathers abandoned the idea of fixity and sketched out a much bolder, constructionist path towards the social and legal acceptance of what used to be regarded as deviant behaviour.
What work is this statement meant to do anyway? Does it really help build an analogy to skin pigmentation – the Selma analogy that allows the charge of implicit or explicit racism that Blankenhorn seems willing now to endorse? No one thinks “being black” something fixed because he has talked with many blacks who, almost to a man, assure him that this indeed is the case!
Third: Why does Blankenhorn suppose that the logic of the institution he cherishes, marriage, is going to survive the change in anthropology and moral theory that he himself has now embraced? Marriage may, for the moment, be the key strategic prize, but marriage is nowhere near the heart of the new moral majority (to use that label in a rather Bolshevik fashion) that Blankenhorn has joined.
How could it be? There is not even a clear logic of sex, much less of marriage, in this movement. And when it comes to polling its supporters – I am thinking not only of those who congregate under ugly acronyms such as LGBTTIQQ2SA, but also of those who cheer them on – a good many will say quite openly that marriage is just not their line; not a few will say that it is inimical to their line.
It is this fact, rather than any admirable candour he found in Reno, that should have made clear to Blankenhorn that of course we are arguing about human sexuality and about human nature, and not merely about marriage as such – as if one could argue about either separately! Or rather that we ought to be arguing about human sexuality and human nature; but that is the very thing the Selma analogy is meant to prevent.
November 30th, 2012 | 4:49 pm
I think anti-Semitism is a better analogue of “anit-gayness,” because anti-Semitism really is largely an objection to what people do and the ideas they espouse. However, I think it is overly simplistic—and in fact absurd—to claim that racists wanted (or still want) to discriminate against black people merely because of “skin pigmentation.” If we could interview some candid racists about why they objected to black people, I don’t think they would say, “Because of their skin color.” Racists would not welcome light-skinned African Americans who could “pass as white” into their midst. In fact, I just stumbled across a white supremacist site that has pictures of albino African Americans and says, “Negro Albino Photos Visual Proof Race Is NOT skin color.” Just a cursory look at the site (which I am not going to link to) attributes to African Americans promiscuity, drug use, crime, inferior intelligence, body odor. Many of the justifications racists would give for hating black people would in some way or another involve charges of immoral behavior of blacks. And, of course, sociological studies could be done to “prove” many of these things true. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among African American women is 72%. Black women have a much higher abortion rate than white women. Black men have about a 1 in 3 chance of spending some time in prison.
In short, both blacks and gays are discriminated against based not merely on an immutable trait (skin color, sexual orientation) but on the kind of behavior they engage in or are thought to engage in.
November 30th, 2012 | 5:05 pm
Why does Blankenhorn suppose that the logic of the institution he cherishes, marriage, is going to survive the change in anthropology and moral theory that he himself has now embraced?
I can’t help but wonder if opponents of gay rights, same-sex marriage, and the “normalization” of homosexuality could step back a moment, they would see that they are engaging in what look to other people like “scare tactics.” Look at the state marriage is in today and ask yourself why allowing same-sex marriage, which would affect only 4% of the population, would somehow destroy marriage when, say, “researchers have estimated that between 1.7 percent and 6 percent of married people are involved in open marriages, the United States has the sixth highest divorce rate in the world, the vast majority of Americans engage in premarital sex, and the out-of-wedlock birth rate is 41%. Maybe the sky is falling, but it’s not homosexuality that is bringing it down.
November 30th, 2012 | 5:09 pm
Dear Doug Farrow:
Thanks for your comments and for posing the three questions you want me to answer. I’ll do my best.
First, as to what I mean by the term “gay people,” I mean what nearly everyone means when they use this term. I mean that some persons have same-sex attractions; and that some of those persons with same-sex attractions have sexual relationships with persons of the same sex. The term “gay” as it’s currently used in North America can mean either. I fail to see why any of this information would surprise or alarm you, or cause you to accuse me of question-begging.
Second, as to my suggestion that most (especially most openly) gay people in the U.S. today believe that homosexual attractions are typically hardwired, to be understood more as an identity than as a choice, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you know more than I do. It’s my personal experience, based on conversations that I’ve had and books that I’ve read, that most gay people themselves favor “indentity” explanations of homosexuality over “choice” explanations. Maybe you have evidence on this question with which I am not acquainted. If so, please fee free to share it.
Then you want to know, “what work is this statement meant to do anway?” Again, at the risk of repeating the obvious, the “work” that my sentence was and is “meant to do” is to suggest that most (especially most openly) gay people in the U.S. today believe that homosexual attractions are typically hardwired, to be understood more as an identity than as a choice. I can’t think of a way to say it more clearly.
Finally, you have firm judgements to render regarding “the anthropology and moral theory” that I have “now embraced.” Maybe I’m forgetting something, but I do not recall, in the short blog post which has aroused your concern, spelling out my “anthropology and moral theory,” whether newly embraced or otherwise. Maybe you could enlighten me. I’d be curious to learn more about it. I seem to be a definite laggard, compared to you, when it comes to understanding my anthropology and my moral theory.
November 30th, 2012 | 6:36 pm
another way to think about this question:
“being black” does not connote any necessary act whereas, for example, “being a glutton” does, i.e. it connotes acts of gluttony. however, just because one “is a glutton” (one has a tendency to overeat) does not mean that one is deterministically forced to commit “acts of gluttony.” the choice to act or not to act is still a real choice.
November 30th, 2012 | 8:29 pm
I honestly thought I was missing something; “can they really be insisting a ssa person not having sex (for length of time x, and for reasons x,y or z) is no longer ssa?”
Paraphrasing Eve Tushnet; so out of exclusive fidelity to my love of God (however stumbling) the form of my desire is now an illusion, I’m no longer ‘gay’ – as a Catholic am then perhaps “Romoerotic”?
Invites the question, why are the Romoerotic invisible to the media?, why are those who disover they’re attracted to the opposite sex get married and have children thousands of times more often than the liberal establishment desires to acknowledge vilified? Can we re-direct the liberal Ivy-League/Washington DC mystical body to furthering public campaigns against say Romoerotophobia?
The quasi religious establishment of sovereign desire, the stripping of the social setting for the practice of virtuous self government i.e the destruction of rivals to liberal government is what this all seems to be about. Anthony Codevilla in his ‘The Ruling Class’ shows as well as anyone our liberal establishment’s unprecedented levels of self-seeking.
Therapeutic international liberalism is the latest potent and spectacularly dangerous irrationalism abroad these days, and now in a mocking of the uncreated Word, they speak and reality is unmade. How could anyone maintain, unless they were under the spell of a powerful symbol, that the direction of my desire over time x is as given and compulsorily present and unchosen as my black skin or white skin?
I can’t make sense of this without Christian language, without the Bible and what it tells me of humans as constitutionally inclined to idolatry. I can’t understand this ssm phenomenon without recourse to the themes of the modern totalitarian political systems.
December 1st, 2012 | 1:22 am
Why does Blankenhorn insist that “almost no gay people” would allow that their sexual inclinations and/or habits are not fixed by nature?
I have never met a gay person who isn’t bewildered by the claim that sexual orientation is a choice. I suppose there are some people who are bisexual who choose to live as either gay or straight. And I suppose there are people who basically feel so little sexual attraction at all one way or the other that they choose to live as either gay or straight. But it seems clear to me that the vast majority of people regard their sexual orientation as something they discovered about themselves, not as something they chose.
Surely he knows that the history of the homosexualist movement, both early and late, includes major arguments about this.
Documentation?
Surely he knows that “gay” and “queer” denote differences on this.
Queer, denotes certain political and/or ideological approaches to sexuality and sexual orientation, but I certainly am not aware that people who call themselves queer would argue that one’s sexual orientation is chosen.
Surely he knows that the “transgender” advocates are disinclined to biological determinism.
I think transgender advocates consider gender, like sexual orientation, something one discovers about oneself. But those who are transgender discover their experienced gender does not match their physical body. It may not be biological determinism, but they certainly feel very strongly that their gender is determined by forces outside their control.
Surely he knows that the Yogyakarta fathers . . . .
A Google search will reveal that “Yogyakarta fathers” appears only in this post! I am not sure I ever heard of the Yogyakarta Principles before coming across a mention of the “Yogyakarta fathers” here. It seems to me that when one says “surely he knows such-and-such,” one had better get such-and-such right oneself. Just taking a quick glance at the Yogyakarta Principles, I think the only possible conclusion is that the authors of the principles (a group of both men and women) would never refer to themselves as the “Yogyakarta fathers,” and a Google search reveals nobody else has, either. Perhaps it was a joke?
In sum, David Blankenhorn said:
As to what R. R. Reno knows or believes, I can’t pretend to say. But I think David Blankenhorn is not at all going out on a limb to say that the vast majority of gay people would not say their sexual orientation was a choice. People with a heterosexual or homosexual orientation can of course choose to refrain from all sexual activity (although it would seem very few stay with this choice or succeed), but that is different from choosing one’s sexual orientation.
December 1st, 2012 | 6:53 am
Douglas Farrow’s post poses important questions. He states them clearly, even forcefully. His focus is the subject under discussion – human sexuality and its right purpose.
David Blankenhorn’s reply has an annoyed, even sarcastic quality. It is no doubt difficult to be publicly questioned this way, especially when one has personally resolved a vexed issue after much thought and struggle.
Douglas Farrow has made his thinking on the subject of human sexuality, marriage, parenthood, and the state available to everyone. The January/February 2012 issue of Touchstone magazine, entitled “Man, Woman, & Society” carries articles by Prof. Farrow, along with one on “Marriage & Friendship” by Robert George and Gregory J. Mansour, a most valuable reflection on this subject. Douglas Farrow is extensively published in other venues. His books are available for purchase.
The Touchstone articles are worth reading, re-reading, and pondering. They explicate Dr. Farrow’s thinking. They are not personally insulting to any particular person.
They do however set forth his views on the “anthropology and moral theory” of those who would redefine marriage, motherhood, and fatherhood; who would erase our historic understanding of the solemn responsibilities of acting persons in the matter of our sexual powers; also, those of fathers and mothers toward their sons and daughters.
If I wanted to better understand Dr. Farrow’s position, I would begin with the Touchstone articles; then proceed to his other writings.
December 1st, 2012 | 9:06 am
David Nickol,
That was the most muddled mess of mismatched arguments I have seen in quite some time.
It appears obvious that you believe that sexual orientation is simply a matter of biology, with no moral choice involved. If that premise is true, then some of the conclusions that follow flow logically. If it isn’t true, then none of the conclusions are true or even logical.
Also, quoting a few facts about the African-American experience in the U.S. (incarceration rates, out of wedlock birth rates) serves exactly what purpose? That white supremacists use whatever data they can to make racist arguments. Well, sure. White supremacists can make a racist argument out of weather patterns or cartoon animals – it’s just what they do.
So any argument that anyone employs or any reason that anyone has to oppose gay marriage equals anti-Semitism or white supremacism?
I actually agree with you about the “scare tactics” comment and the fact that the primary reason that marriage in American culture is in poor shape has very little to do with homosexuality per se. But I think the argument that marriage isn’t primarily about rights/discrimination but really about human nature and human sexuality is true. And the idea/contention that sexual orientation is immutable is really the crux of the argument. That is where the debate really hinges. If it is immutable, then the language of rights and discrimination is appropriate. If it isn’t, then a different language and different set of arguments is where the debate lies.
Debate that point if you would like, but simply making that assertion (that sexual orientation is immutable) and making comparisons to anti-Semitism and White Supremacists is just a nice way to poison the well.
December 1st, 2012 | 9:21 am
“Surely he knows that the ‘transgender’ advocates are disinclined to biological determinism.”
I’ve been reading up on transgender literature and most now seem inclined to argue that they were (probably) born transgender, that their transgender state of being is no more a choice than a homosexual state of being.
December 1st, 2012 | 11:57 am
It doesn’t apply to marriage rights, regardless of whether being gay is like being black. If it is alluding to Loving v Virginia, it fails because it doesn’t take genetic engineering for a black person and a white person to procreate offspring together.
December 1st, 2012 | 1:47 pm
“I fail to see why any of this information would surprise or alarm you, or cause you to accuse me of question-begging.”
Putting to one side for the moment your puzzlement about the author’s “surprise” or “alarm,” which puzzlement seems wholly contrived and focus instead on the alleged question begging, which, I must tell you, your pointing out how the word “gay” is used contemporaneously does absolutely nothing whatsoever to address in the instant controversy.
In my opinion you HAVE massively begged the question and in precisely the manner suggested. You make a very simple-minded analogy between a “black person” and a so-called “gay person” in which we are clearly being asked to accept that the adjective “gay” modifies “person” in much the same, uncomplicated way that “black” does.
That is quite a remarkable claim unless, that is, one can tell by looking and looking alone that someone is “gay,” in the same way that one can nearly always discern if someone is black (in any sense that matters to the history of discrimination). That would mean that one can tell that someone is “gay” absent homosexual behavior. That assumes as true what is in fact in controversy, namely,what “gay” means, assumes that “homosexual identity” exists apart from behavior as something completely unseen, an essence, as it were, the only evidence required, it would appear, being self-report. Yet, again, the referent of such self-reporting is but a variant entity intended to pin down identity uncomplicatedly.
Does the word “gay” have ANY objective content apart from behavior? That is the question you evade by casually pointing to current usage as though it has any explanatory value at all in grasping YOUR black–gay analogy.
In fact, the adjective “gay” applies, when it does apply, inversely to a person, as a logical matter, to the way that “black” applies to a person. Nothing about “black,” or so we are exhorted to believe, informs us at all of the moral character, the hopes, dreams, intentions, virtues, or vices of any person so described. The word’s range of application is literally skin deep. The word “gay” on the other hand, absent certain objective behaviors, is entirely subjective, below the skin, and can be known to another in no other way. Self reporting is to be ignored in the same way that one would ignore Bill Clinton if he announced that he was the first “black” president and meant it.
Now it is true that certain activists speak of their “back” identity in ways that cannot unfortunately be distinguished from assertions that “being black” has an objective existence apart from their skin color. Yet surely that is not an uncontroversial claim. It is certainly not clear what it means with any definiteness, and that is certainly consistent with the possibility that such assertions have no real meaning at all, which, it sees to me, is what the author was getting at in his second query: that you are blandly trivializing vexing debates regarding “morality and anthropology,” ones that involve too many variables of motivation, personal history, psychology (including psychopathology) concerning which science has very little to offer. The burgeoning acronyms associated with the entire homosexual-rights movement testifies, if not eloquently then at least aspirationally, to the difficulties in deploying words such as “gay” or “queer” or “straight” as one would “black” and “white.”
December 1st, 2012 | 3:42 pm
David Nickol says:
“I have never met a gay person who isn’t bewildered by the claim that sexual orientation is a choice. I suppose there are some people who are bisexual who choose to live as either gay or straight. And I suppose there are people who basically feel so little sexual attraction at all one way or the other that they choose to live as either gay or straight. But it seems clear to me that the vast majority of people regard their sexual orientation as something they discovered about themselves, not as something they chose.”
That has been my experience as well, and Nickol’s conclusion (that for most people orientation is discovered more than chosen) is also my conclusion. I am certainly aware, as Farrow’s post suggests, that a vast appraratus of argumentation, including anthropologies and moral theories, can be brought to bear to rage, rage against this conclusion and all that it may imply, but I am not persuaded by it. For most people, as a subjective experience, sexual orientation is discovered more than chosen.
December 1st, 2012 | 9:59 pm
A couple of weeks before the election the pastor of the parish where I attend Mass (but do not belong to) gave a sermon on marriage and the relationship between men and women. A pretty good sermon actually. Yeah, a couple of women got up and walked out. Big deal. But the rest of congregation sat there in absolute silence. Not so much an unreadable silence as a silence one feared to read. As a country we no longer take marriage seriously. The stats are all there, the big books like COMING APART are there, and of course the rattling, clattering gravel of nonsense which has paved over Catholic academia and drowned out thought courtesy of the Beatties and Currans and whoevers.
During the election comedian Chris Rock produced a Message to White People in which he jokes that sames sex marriage hardly matters since “black men don’t believe in marrying at all.” Well only 75 percent of black men. But it’s not much better in other demographics — a tiresome concept with which the pundits and bishops and professors and the DNC and “serious” novelists are obsessed.
There is great suffering in this country because of the idea that “marriage is a choice.” This toxic contribution of the cultural and intellectual left is dumbed down into further accessibility by politicians and scriptwriters. The moral callousness of the civil rights establishment of virtually every stripe is appalling. They are not merely anti-marriage, they’re anti-child, anti-boy (remember only sexism and sex-selected abortion is wrong), and of course anti-life (that is anti-human life). There’s not a millimeter’s worth moral difference between the city council of Detroit and the city council of San Francisco and the city council of New York.
This discussion is monstrously selfish. All it proves is that the civil rights elite has no conscience, no sense of civic culture beyond rights-for-the-proper people, and no compassion.
It’s a reminder of how much I do not miss Manhattan. A place where people stepped over bodies in order to accost women wearing fur coats — a truly outrageous breach of elitist ethics.
Hit delete. I just don’t care anymore about this Park Slope, Sutton Place, Brooklyn Heights, Knob Hill, North Side, West Bloomfield ghetto nonsense.
December 2nd, 2012 | 10:29 am
To assert that any particular tendency, desire, or orientation is justified by the fact that it is “discovered more than chosen” is to erase the moral reasoning of serious, thinking persons through recorded time.
Surely, it would seem, this cannot be seriously offered as justification for redefinition of marriage and parenthood, a redefinition to be required and enforced by the state (or in time a global power).
Demands for justice and fairness under civil law, laws affecting employment, housing, education, and public accommodation can and should be supported with respect for privacy rights and simple common decency among people of good will.
Redefinition of marriage and the serious, solemn duties owed to children conceived through the union of one man, a father, and one woman, a mother must, if we are still sane, require more than consideration of desires that may arise in a young person who is seeking integration of his or her sexual powers.
Is adult failure to protect children from premature sexual experience a denial of children’s human rights – one committed by those on whom the children have every right to depend? ( I believe that it is.)
What effect does early sexual experience have on the brain? Is it similar to the effect of a drug? How is a young person affected by confusing experiences, pornography?
Many mistaken ideas and desires can seem “inborn”. Only later do we often learn that one thing or another was learned or absorbed, not discovered within.
When a person comes, through arduous struggle, trial and error, to better know him or herself … well perhaps that process cannot be explained but must be experienced.
December 2nd, 2012 | 11:19 am
To assert that any particular tendency, desire, or orientation is justified by the fact that it is “discovered more than chosen” is to erase the moral reasoning of serious, thinking persons through recorded time.
A Reader,
I don’t believe any thoughtful person would ague that if homosexuality is innate, homosexual acts are necessarily good and same-sex marriage ought to be approved.
December 2nd, 2012 | 2:26 pm
David Nickol says those who oppose the redefinition of marriage are comparable to anti-Semites or racists.
Yesterday, in another post, I quoted Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech. I won’t quote quite as much here, but Lincoln’s speech addressed many Northerners who personally opposed slavery but who would certainly rather reach an accommodation with the South rather than enter in a bloody civil war. So the question Lincoln addressed was, “what will satisfy them?” As David Nickol’s comments make clear, he regards most of us as comparable to the most vile racists or anti-Semites (is there anything worse in our society??). It’s one thing to have a difference of opinion, but when your opponents say you hold opinions that make you comparable to the most vile people our society has ever known, they have more in mind for you then a polite exchange of opinion. (And it’s disheartening to see David Blankenhorn endorse ANY of David Nickol’s comments in this thread after reading that comparison.)
Now as you read Lincoln’s words below, notice how seamlessly you can replace “slavery” with “redefining marriage” :
Echoing a similar sentiment as Lincoln, Douglas Farrow writes:
Bu is Douglas Farrow overblowing things a bit here? He is, after all, an opponent of redefining marriage and perhaps apt to overstate things. Can we have an opinion from someone in a prominent position on the other side? Here is Paula Ettelbrick, former Executive Director of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission:
It’s an inconvenient quote that David Nickol would no doubt call a “scare tactic” if anyone who opposed redefining marriage had said it. And yet we’d be fooling ourselves to think that redefining marriage (awful enough on it’s own) would remotely satisfy Paul Ettelbrick or David Nickol. After all, David Nickol says you are comparable to the most vile racists or anti-Semites. Generally speaking, folks tend to have more in mind for those they regard as among the most vile and dangerous members of society.
December 2nd, 2012 | 2:56 pm
Many mistaken ideas and desires can seem “inborn”. Only later do we often learn that one thing or another was learned or absorbed, not discovered within.
People seem to ignore the fact that sexual arousal can be scientifically and objectively measured not merely by monitoring the sex organs with various devices but also by measuring brain waves. Sexual arousal is not voluntary, although, as with lie detector tests, subjects who are determined to “cheat” may have some voluntary control over test results. A person who is aroused only by heterosexual stimuli may certainly make an attempt to live as if he or she were a homosexual, and a person who is aroused only by homosexual stimuli may likewise make an attempt to live as if he or she were a heterosexual. But sexual orientation, as opposed to “lifestyle choice” is real and measurable.
One of the things the gay community suspects of “ex-gays” is that if they would allow their sexual arousal patterns to be measured, there would be no significant change between the “before” and “after.” Presumably “reparative therapy” has as its ultimate goal to take a person who is sexually aroused by homosexual stimuli and transform them into a person who is sexually aroused by heterosexual stimuli. We have a certain amount of testimony from “ex-gays” that alleges some of them have experienced changes in sexual arousal patters to some degree, but to the best of my knowledge, no “ex-gays” have ever undergone any kind of object test to measure what sexually arouses them and what doesn’t.
December 2nd, 2012 | 11:17 pm
David Nickol says those who oppose the redefinition of marriage are comparable to anti-Semites or racists.
Douglas Johnson,
No, I did not say that. I said, “I think anti-Semitism is a better analogue of “anit-gayness” [which is to say anti-gay prejudice or bigotry], because anti-Semitism really is largely an objection to what people do and the ideas they espouse.” I have never said that opposition to same-sex marriage in and of itself is “anti-gay.” In fact, I have said [November 18], “I am not at all sure that I would say that same-sex couples have a ‘right’ (a human right) to marry. It is something I haven’t thought enough about to take a firm position.”
As David Nickol’s comments make clear, he regards most of us as comparable to the most vile racists or anti-Semites (is there anything worse in our society??). . . . After all, David Nickol says you are comparable to the most vile racists or anti-Semites.
Of course, I said no such thing. I made an argument that anti-gay prejudice is more like anti-Semitism than anti-black racism. Anyone here who considers himself or herself to harbor anti-gay prejudice, please raise your hand.
December 3rd, 2012 | 1:18 am
David Nichol,
Re arousal patterns of ex-gays: so in this case, biology is to be held determinative?.
While in the case of transgendered, they must be accepted at their word when they claim that they feel alienated from their biology?
What about a person that having a same-sex arousal pattern, yet believes that acting on these arousals is wrong?. Is this person gay?
I should reserve the word ‘gay’ for them that claim it as essential to their being. Plenty of men act out on same-sexually now or then, but it is incidental to them. Those men that do not claim to be defined by their same-sex arousals or activities, they do not deserve to be called as “gay”, I submit.
December 3rd, 2012 | 8:04 am
All this obfuscation about genes!
A man wakes up one day and says, “I think I might like to be a woman.”
Many years later a movement is started to have the government declare universal womanhood for all, so that all mankind can embrace and participate in all the wonderful things about womanhood.
A debate ensues. The older generations especially say things like “but a man is not a woman.” It’s not really very well argued, is it? Others hear this and say it is sad that the legacy of racial hatred lives on.
Others aren’t quite sure what’s going on. Our man in the first paragraph volunteers for some medical testing and the research facility declares they have mapped the woman inclination in his brain that was responsible for his declaration, “I think I might like to be a woman.”
The group for the redefinition of womanhood declares this a major victory. “There you have it, there you have it! ‘Twas a gene in his brain made him say that! Yes sir-ee! Who could possibly be against universal womanhood now, except racists and anti-Semites! Racists and anti-Semites!”
Another decade passes. An old hermit that lives in the woods and hasn’t been to a doctor in 30 years, whacks his thumb with a hammer while working on the roof. He gets into his 1971 Dodge Powerwagon and drives to the doctor’s office. He fills out the necessary forms, and the nurse notices something wrong.
Sir, you’ve checked “male” on the form, but we have no record of whether or not you are in fact a woman. “I’m a man,” he says. “How do you know that? You’ve had no brain work done, no DNA testing…sir, we simply have no way of telling if you are a man or a woman. Legally, we can’t…”
She continues on saying something about the 2025 UN Declaration of Universal Womanhood, and the old hermit becomes very confused and wonders where he is. He concludes that he hasn’t walked into a medical office at all. He looks around the waiting room and he notices a few people giving him dirty looks. As he walks out of the office a little boy sitting beside his mother (but who looks to the old hermit like a very large man) shouts “he’s like a racist!”
As Thomas Sowell once said, “you can say anything you want if you have your own private language.”
December 3rd, 2012 | 8:48 am
David Nickol: Is an “acting person” one who participates in his or her moral development – one who labors to shape his or her inner self so as to modify original impulses, inborn tendencies, and so acquires agency?
Is the noble process of moral development one over which we have power or are we at the mercy of the electrical activity in our brains?
December 3rd, 2012 | 10:34 am
David Nichol, by your lights, what is bigotry? Please explain your intended meaning without mention of gayness or race.
Is the charge of bigotry a moral argument? Or a political argument/strategy? Howso?
I’d ask the same of David Blankenhorn.
December 3rd, 2012 | 12:19 pm
David Nichol, by your lights, what is bigotry? Please explain your intended meaning without mention of gayness or race.
Chairm Ohn,
Is the charge of bigotry a moral argument? Or a political argument/strategy?
Perhaps the most important word in the definition is intolerance, and in a pluralistic, democratic society such as our own, it seems to me a charge of bigotry has elements of the political and the moral.
December 3rd, 2012 | 4:23 pm
David Nikol,
Thanks for the reply.
You quoted the dictionary. I had asked you to explain your intend meaning — by your lights. It was not a technical question but if that definition reflects your intended meaning, then, let us proceed from there.
The decisive part of the definition appears to be “unreasoning attachment to one’s own beliefs”. The intolerance of other beliefs would flow from the obstinate unreasoned acceptance of one’s own beliefs.
I suppose one might have no definitive beliefs and still be a contrarian and so obstinantly oppose other beliefs unreasongly.
It strikes me that the pro-SSM position, and the ways and means used by its leading advocates, is bigoted on both scores.
The SSM campaign is infused with progay bigotry. Perhaps there is more than enough unreasoned obstinancy to obscure reason and tolerance altogether.
December 3rd, 2012 | 4:27 pm
David Nikol,
Thanks for the reply.
You quoted the dictionary. I had asked you to explain your intended meaning — by your lights. It was not a technical question but if that definition reflects your intended meaning, then, let us proceed from there.
The decisive part of the definition appears to be “unreasoning attachment to one’s own beliefs”. The intolerance of other beliefs would flow from the obstinate unreasoned acceptance of one’s own beliefs.
I suppose one might have no definitive beliefs and still be a contrarian and so obstinantly oppose other beliefs unreasoningly.
It strikes me that the pro-SSM position, and the ways and means used by its leading advocates, is bigoted on both scores.
The SSM campaign is infused with progay bigotry. Perhaps there is more than enough unreasoned obstinancy to obscure reason and tolerance altogether.
December 3rd, 2012 | 5:27 pm
The decisive part of the definition appears to be “unreasoning attachment to one’s own beliefs”. The intolerance of other beliefs would flow from the obstinate unreasoned acceptance of one’s own beliefs.
Chairm Ohn,
It seems to me one may be utterly committed to one’s own beliefs without being intolerant of others, and consequently it is intolerance that is at the heart of bigotry.
It strikes me that the pro-SSM position, and the ways and means used by its leading advocates, is bigoted on both scores.
Do you feel, then, that the presidential campaigns we just went through were bigoted? Being strongly committed to a position and promoting it aggressively does not strike me as bigotry. Campaigning to change people’s minds and attitudes does not strike me as bigotry. Isn’t that what the civil rights movement of the 1960s was all about?
December 3rd, 2012 | 6:20 pm
The SSM campaign is infused with progay bigotry. Perhaps there is more than enough unreasoned obstinancy to obscure reason and tolerance altogether.
Chairm Ohn,
I am not sure “progay bigotry” makes any sense. Bigotry, as I see it, is not about what you are for, but rather what you are against. Although of course if the same-sex marriage campaign is successful, it may have occasional consequences that its opponents do not like. But in essence it is for expanded rights and privileges for gay people, not diminished rights and privileges for everyone else. And of course if gay people make up 4% of the population, and more than 50% of the population supports same-sex marriage, you can hardly claim it is a small minority working against the will of the rest of the country.
Of course, it is not entirely irrelevant in identifying bigotry to determine who is right and who is wrong. It is not anti-homicide bigotry to put murderers in jail or anti-illness bigotry to quarantine those with extremely dangerous communicable diseases. But it certainly was bigotry to deny Jews their rights no matter how “certain” Christians were that the Jews killed Jesus and were forever cursed for it. Just because you are absolutely convinced you are right doesn’t mean you are right, and just because you are right doesn’t justify intolerance.
December 3rd, 2012 | 7:39 pm
The definition entailed unreasoned and obstinate attachment to one’s beliefs.
You intended something else: being strongly or utterly committed to one’s position and promoting it aggressively.
With intolerance.
Your clarification was in reply to my remark regarding a position. And the ways and means that have been used to promote it. The position fits the part of the definition you slipped off the table, I think.
That definition refered to the flow from unreasoned obstinancy that I had noted: the beliefs and behavior ensuing from this condition.
Seems to me that unreasoned obstinancy is the source of the beliefs and behavior that follow.
And the source of intolerance. Perhaps we each have our finger on this same point. But perhaps not. You now appear (to me at least) to have redefined bigotry as intolerance.
Webster’s definition of intolerance is your intended meaning?
December 3rd, 2012 | 11:10 pm
David Nickol
“it is intolerance that is at the heart of bigotry. ”
Some things are properly and simply intolerable. I hope you will find a Nazi or Stalinist State intolerable.
So it is not intolerance per se that constitutes bigotry but an unreasonable intolerance.
December 4th, 2012 | 5:20 am
David wrote: “And of course if gay people make up 4% of the population, and more than 50% of the population supports same-sex marriage,”
=========
So bisexual people will be prohibited from marrying people of the same sex with same-sex “marriage?”
Of course not. The number of people displaying any kind of homosexual dynamics is much greater than 4%.
Furthermore, in my experience, there is a striking difference between the number of people displaying any kind of homosexual dynamics in liberal environments and in conservative ones – exactly because culture, thoughts, and ideology affect a person’s desires, perversions, and sexual or personal-relationship behavior.
The percentage of women displaying homosexual dynamics (including those who also display heterosexual dynamics) in liberal environments can range anywhere from 20% to 50%. And the younger they are, the more the percentage rises.
Really, homosexuality marriage is not about a small minority. It is about an ideology endorsed by millions of people – and a number much larger than 4% of them display homosexual dynamics.
The majority of these people are obstinately intolerant as Chairm put it. It is one large group of people working against many of the fundamental rights and concepts of another large group of people (social conservatives). Every time they normalize homosexuality in any context, they work towards destroying one or more rights of conservatives in the same or related contexts.
“Just because you are absolutely convinced you are right doesn’t mean you are right, and just because you are right doesn’t justify intolerance.”
If only people who normalized homosexuality would follow the above words…
December 4th, 2012 | 5:38 am
David wrote: “It seems to me one may be utterly committed to one’s own beliefs without being intolerant of others,”
To me this is quite an irrational statement. Either you have legal abortion in society or you don’t. Either you have the death penalty for a number of crimes or you don’t. If you are totally committed to providing legal abortion any time, any where, for example, you will forcibly be intolerant of people who are against your commitment.
We witness the same regarding people who normalize homosexuality. The more it is normalized, the more people who disagree are vilified and denied their rights.
December 4th, 2012 | 9:47 am
David wrote: “It seems to me one may be utterly committed to one’s own beliefs without being intolerant of others,”
To me this is quite an irrational statement.
Heather,
If you are utterly convinced your own religion is true, is it irrational to be tolerant of other religions?
December 4th, 2012 | 11:52 am
“bigotry: state of mind of a bigot : obstinate and unreasoning attachment to one’s own belief and opinions with intolerance of beliefs opposed to them; also : behavior or beliefs ensuing from such a condition”
Well, this is what I face when I explain that same-sex marriage means allowing same-sex conception or stripping conception rights from marriage (and actually means both). Some people are so obstinate and attached to the belief that same-sex couples should have equal rights that they just refuse to consider those effects, they can only be called bigoted against natural reproductive rights and true equality.
December 4th, 2012 | 12:12 pm
And I’m not tolerant of having my right to have sex and reproduce offspring with my wife being equated to an unmarried couple’s or a same-sex couple’s. And society should not be tolerant of mad scientists attempting to create human beings that are not the union of a man and a woman. It is not a right and is not necessary and ought to be banned ASAP for many reasons. Attempting it should result in 10 years in jail for all parties involved and a 10 million dollar fine, because it would have such a bad effect on society, and ruling it out would have great effects.
December 4th, 2012 | 12:42 pm
David Nikol,
Did you intend to define bigotry as intolerance?
Unreasoned obstinancy is the heart of the definition you had offered, it seems to me.
What did you mean by intolerance?
December 4th, 2012 | 3:10 pm
Did you intend to define bigotry as intolerance?
Chairm,
Well, the Merriam-Webster Unabridged dictionary gives bigoted as a synonym for intolerant, so certainly the words are very closely related:
I don’t feel I am breaking any new ground here in defining words. The dictionary definitions are fine with me.
I would say that a landlord who refused to rent Ellen DeGeneris, Queen Latifah, or Sir Ian McKellen an apartment just because they are gay was a bigot.
December 4th, 2012 | 5:25 pm
I don’t think you have broken new ground. By your lights the dictionary definition of intolerance is your intended meaning.
Whence introlerance, David Nikol, if not unreasoning obstinancy?
The point of this line of query is, as you have hopefully detected, to place your criteria for bigotry (or rather intolerance) on the table. Readers may then assess the SSM idea and the ways and means that idea has been promoted by the voices of the mainstream of the SSM campaign.
Do you count yourself as among the mainstream of the Pro-SSM voices?
David Blankenhorn places significant extra weight on the elite opinion and on the opinion of very young persons who are under the influence of those very elites. His approach did not convince the elites so Blankenhorn thinks the promotion of the core meaning of marriage has been a failure.
Why? Because gay identity supersedes the core meaning of marriage, apparently. Somehow bigotry or intolerance has become redefined by gay-specific criteria.
Hence the query you have kindly responded to.
December 5th, 2012 | 1:50 am
David wrote: “It seems to me one may be utterly committed to one’s own beliefs without being intolerant of others,”
Heather wrote: “To me this is quite an irrational statement.”
David Nickol replied: “If you are utterly convinced your own religion is true, is it irrational to be tolerant of other religions?”
Do you tolerate sexual abuse of children, assuming that this is not your personal religious belief? Is that what “rationality” would entail, being tolerant of different beliefs about sexual abuse?
Do you tolerate the killing of doctors performing abortion procedures? Would you call that rational? Would you tolerate the massacre of an entire population of people deemed to be infidels by some religious group? What if a pastor put homosexuals in a fenced area because of his religion – would you tolerate his religious beliefs?
I recall a comment of yours up-thread that seemed to indicate you would not tolerate it.
Can a person be killed as a result of the application of the death penalty and not be killed at the same time?
How completely irrational.
Either you call people who question your views “bigots,” “homophobic,” “intolerant,” “with anti-gay animus” – or you don’t.
==============
Chairm wrote: “Somehow bigotry or intolerance has become redefined by gay-specific criteria.”
Bingo!
And most dysfunctional and harmful sexual behaviors (hook-ups, porn, promiscuity, S&M, adultery, etc.) have been morally “laundered” at the same time (as how the verb launder is used in its “money-laundering” sense).
Thus normalizing homosexuality is only one aspect of an ideology that seeks to legitimize and make people unaccountable for a host of harmful attitudes and behaviors about sexuality and relationships.
December 5th, 2012 | 6:52 pm
David Nickol,
Progay bigotry is not about who a person is. It is about unreasoning obstinancy in favor of an identity group. White supremacy provides an example of how marriage was abused for the nonmarriage purpose of promoting an identity group. The gay emphasis of the SSM campaign is closely analogous.
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