Austin Ruse’s post last week on the wealth and political power of gays and lesbians left me uneasy. That’s not because I thought his point was entirely illegitimate (it’s fair to point out that the situation of non-straight people today is not exactly comparable to that of non-whites in the mid-twentieth century) but because of everything he left out.
As David Blankenhorn commented:
Really, it’s ethically shockingly obtuse to conclude that because LGBT people are comparatively financially well off that “we should all be so discriminated against.” To even say such a thing is to overlook so much painful history, and so much actual human suffering due to persecution and stigmatization, that — well, one hardly knows where to [begin].
Christians must be willing to talk about and fight the bullying, harassment, and (yes) bigotry that gays and lesbians face. Roughly 80 percent of LGBT teens have experienced verbal harassment, and 40 percent have experienced physical harassment. Not infrequently, such abuse leads LGBT teens (or those perceived as LGBT) to commit suicide. We cannot ignore these facts, even as we continue to preach the gospel in its entirety.
Making a similar point, Jordan at the Gay Subtlety blog recently described Evangelicals’ engagement with LGBT people this way (emphasis his):
It’s like the church is chasing after them, hurling spears of condemnation and prejudice, all while shouting, “We love you! God loves you! No, seriously! Come back!” And when they keep running we just shake our heads and attribute their retreat away from us as a sign of their gross sinfulness, a refusal to accept the “Gospel-centered” kind of love we’ve offered them.
What the hell is wrong with us?! We treat them like crap throughout history and expect a different outcome? Maybe they reject us because we’ve never really loved them in the first place. Maybe they reject us because we are continually rejecting them.
Where were we when they became victims of abuse, hate crimes, disease, stigma, and bullying? We were either perpetuating their pain or apathetic toward it. And for those brave few who dared to stand beside them and model a different kind of love? We yelled across the chasm of our fear, “While you’re over there, make sure you tell them they’re sinful, otherwise whatever you’re doing doesn’t count!” Then we patted ourselves on the back for being “missional.”
Although trying to end bullying and bigotry would help us look better, this isn’t just about appearances. No matter what happens in the political realm with gay marriage, we have a moral obligation to fight the mistreatment of LGBT people.
Again, that doesn’t preclude defending traditional marriage or pointing out the differences between the civil rights movement and today’s LGBT activists. But it suggests that we should at the same time acknowledge and make efforts to combat the abuse that gays and lesbians face.
December 17th, 2012 | 2:47 pm
While I *absolutely* agree with the main point of the article, I would ask a question about the statistics: how do those numbers correspond to the teen population at large? In other words, regardless of sexuality, what % of teens would say that have experienced verbal or physical harassment? What % of fat kids, or “nerds”, or those with learning disabilities or underdeveloped social skills or head-in-the clouds artsy types?
If (for example, I really have no idea what real figures might be) 75% of all teens say they’ve experienced verbal harassment, compared to 80% of LGBT teens, that’s a completely different issue to address than if it’s 10% of all teens compared to 80% of LGBT teens.
Other than that, you’re spot on – thank you for saying this!
December 17th, 2012 | 2:52 pm
I completely agree with the primary point of the author that Christians should combat the abuse of gays and lesbians, but I’m inclined to think that a lot – though certainly not all – of the abuse is in their heads.
I remember a conversation with a friend of mine, an out and proud lesbian. When I asked her if she had ever been seriously persecuted in our town, she only pointed to one event: A group of high school kids through garbage at her and her girlfriend while they drove by in their car. Certainly, this is a bad thing. Nobody deserves to have garbage thrown at them. But how could she know that it was because she was a lesbian? Perhaps they had no idea she was a lesbian. Perhaps they just wanted to throw garbage at somebody the couple just happened to be on the sidewalk where their car happened to be. As an idiot high schooler I know I threw my fair share of objects out car windows not knowing a thing about my “target.”
We have to face a couple facts. Yes, plenty of gay people have been bullied just because they are gay. But on the other hand, gay people have largely trained themselves to believe that their whole lives revolve around their orientation, and because of this, every act of injustice against them MUST be because they are gay, even if it isn’t true.
As a man with a gay brother I’ve experienced a lot of frustration here, so I might be biased and I apologize if I offend anyone. It is impossible for me to critique any aspect of his life (like his unhealthy drinking habits and fixation on wealth – things that are not related to his orientation), because in his mind it will always go back to the fact that he is gay. Such is the price this “community” pays for making everything about their orientation.
December 17th, 2012 | 2:59 pm
The bullying statistics are from GLSEN, an activist organization committed to all sorts of obscenities that is deliberately recruiting students as homosexual activists. Have these statistics been vetted for accuracy?
“GLBT” students, like all students, need responsible adults committed to public morality. If adults do not provide such guidance, it is inevitable that children and adolescents will try to enforce morality in a brutish and irresponsible way.
December 17th, 2012 | 3:00 pm
Katie,
Fair point. I imagine that different reports and surveys have different numbers, but here’s some federal data in answer to your question:
December 17th, 2012 | 3:40 pm
Kevin X. –
I went to a Catholic high school. I can assure you that the physical abuse that went on had nothing much to do with ‘enforcing morality’. It had much more to do with physical strength and weakness.
I still recall the day a large, hulking football player smacked a slightly-built newcomer into a wall, as he’d done many times before with little consequence. Just in passing, you know – no particular animus involved. The newcomer happened to be smaller, and in the way.
You know how I can be so certain that he wasn’t ‘enforcing’ any kind of ‘morality’? Because he was very dismayed to discover he’d just manhandled the new science teacher…
December 17th, 2012 | 3:50 pm
But on the other hand, gay people have largely trained themselves to believe that their whole lives revolve around their orientation, and because of this, every act of injustice against them MUST be because they are gay, even if it isn’t true.
Andrew O’Brien,
On what basis do you make this sweeping, negative generalization about gay people? I have no hesitation classifying this as . . . shall we say a product of “anti-gay animus.”
It is just nonsense to say that “gay people have largely trained themselves to believe that their whole lives revolve around their orientation.” What is your evidence for this? What is your evidence that, say, a young heterosexual man sees himself any less as heterosexual as a young gay man sees himself as gay? Thinking back to my high school and college days, I don’t think the young men I knew were any less aware of their heterosexual orientation as young gay men would be of their homosexual orientation. They read Playboy, the spent their time pursuing young women, they listened to music that was largely about heterosexual relationships. They watched television shows and movies in which heterosexual sex and romance played a large role. And when they got older, many of them married and had children. It is rather difficult not to make your sexual orientation a part of your life when you marry and have children. And look forward to the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, are bombarded with commercials telling you you’ll appeal to women if you uses such-and-such a deodorant, toothpaste, or cologne. How blind do you have to be to see that contemporary culture is saturated with heterosexual images meant to appeal to the average man or woman?
Alleged “insights” like you offer above are merely anti-gay stereotyping, based on no real knowledge about gay people, meant to justify anti-gay bullying and anti-gay rhetoric.
December 17th, 2012 | 4:03 pm
Ray, that’s the “look at all the people I didn’t kill.”
That much bullying arises from the billy’s sheer desire to impose his physical superiority is not even the beginning of an argument against the claim that much harrassment arises out of a (deeply misguided) collective impulse to enforce a certain standard — I’d call it a socially acceptable standard rather than really a moral one, though. It’s not just the big kids who make life miserable for those judged deficient — it’s all those who take upon themselves the role of social enforcer. That’s especially true when you’re talking about non-physical, or less overtly physical, forms of harrassment.
December 17th, 2012 | 4:14 pm
Like a raped woman who finds she has a hard time trusting all men, hypersensitivity may be irrational but it’s not solved by admonishment from those perceived as the perpetrating class. For outsiders, the best we can do is to act with love and hope that they learn to trust again with the help of those that they do trust.
Also, it’s nice to talk about love but what are some concrete examples? I’ll submit 3 controversial proposals.
1. If you oppose hate crime laws, oppose them all. If you support them, support them even for hate crimes based on sexual orientation.
2. Support the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Some make a theoretical case for the policy but the empirical evidence for it is weak. By insisting on theory instead of evidence, it makes the position look ideological which it shouldn’t be.
3. Segregate marriage as an institution ordered to the creation of families from other arrangements. That may mean a step in the other direction for childless straight couples. But if you want to protect marriage, the substantive difference between traditional marriage and the now-popular understanding of marriage has to be clarified. For too long we’ve allowed straight couples who have no intention of entering a traditional marriage to partake in the institution anyway. By allowing that but not allowing gay marriage, defenders of traditional marriage lose the moral argument.
December 17th, 2012 | 4:24 pm
Focus on the Family provided what seems to be a good criticism of the GLSEN 2009 survey:
http://www.truetolerance.org/2011/the-truth-about-glsens-school-climate-report/
The bullying statistics are heavily self-selected, relying on internet surveys and surveys solicited through gay activist groups.
That these gay activist group talking points are now appearing on a conservative-leaning website doesn’t speak well for the conservative movement’s competence.
December 17th, 2012 | 4:30 pm
“GLBT” students, like all students, need responsible adults committed to public morality. If adults do not provide such guidance, it is inevitable that children and adolescents will try to enforce morality in a brutish and irresponsible way.
Kevin X.,
Bullying isn’t a matter of “enforcing morality.” If it were, they boys in high school and college who had the most sexual conquests would be bullied. Bullying is about treating people badly because they are different. A number of times on First Things there have been posts by the contributors saying that young people who committed themselves to chastity were the ones who were bullied. (No doubt some of them are.) I don’t think it is so much that young gay people, as such, are bullied. I think it is that young people who are perceived to be different in any number of ways (“eggheads,” nerds, effeminate boys, sensitive kids, shy kids, and so on) are looked on as oddballs, at least. They may be merely unpopular, or they may be disliked, or they may be bulled. There is a powerful human tendency to divide into in-groups and out-groups. I am sure that many gay kids wind up in the out-groups not because anybody knows they are gay, but because they are somehow perceived as different. If they are the top student in the class, a member of the chess club, skinny, and sloppily dressed, they are much stronger candidates for bullying than if they are the top student in the class, the quarterback of the football team, and physically attractive. It probably wouldn’t make much different who is gay and who is straight.
Anti-gay bullying has nothing whatsoever to do with enforcing morality, any more than bullying obese kids is an attempt at weight control or making fun of someone with a speech impediment is standing up for good diction.
December 17th, 2012 | 4:31 pm
One brief note. In his study, Regnerus found that those who are raised by two adults of the same sex, found that the wellness of such persons was independent of the “gay-friendliness” of the State’s they live in. “Gay-friendly” in this context essentially means State’s that legally recognize certain homosexual arrangements as marriages.
This implies that the anxiety, distress, depression and even suicidal woes that self-identified homosexual adolescents experience may be, in certain cases, unrelated to bigotry or bullying harassment. That induction applies the assumption that States and jurisdictions that accept the popular legal redefinitions of marriage are less disgusted or bother
December 17th, 2012 | 4:39 pm
Quote: “Although trying to end bullying and bigotry would help us look better, this isn’t just about appearances. No matter what happens in the political realm with gay marriage, we have a moral obligation to fight the mistreatment of LGBT people.”
“Again, that doesn’t preclude defending traditional marriage or pointing out the differences between the civil rights movement and today’s LGBT activists. ”
Actually, it does. The narrative has now been so deeply framed that “support for traditional marriage” = bigotry and the perpetuation of bullying.
“Support for traditional marriage” is, to use a word the Left loves, ‘code’ for homophobic hatred.
December 17th, 2012 | 4:56 pm
Hasn’t it occurred to people that since an erotic desire of a male for another male is intrinsically disordered, and that acting upon the desire is perverse, the people who experience these desires are going to be prone to troubles more generally speaking? That is, a man like Rock Hudson, who grew up without a father, and who lived under a miserable stepfather, is going to feel all kinds of bad things that are not caused by his homosexual inclination but that go along with it.
We could “check” this out by noting the rate of various pathologies within the homosexual community precisely where the actions themselves are most tolerated. Pathologies to check: drug use; unimaginable promiscuity; suicide; bug-chasing; sadism and masochism; exhibitionism; fetishism, especially centered on things destructive to body or mind ….
When people who engage in these destructive behaviors celebrate them publicly, they commit an act of aggression against the common good. That doesn’t mean they should be subjected to physical violence. They should, however, be arrested for breaking the laws they do indeed break, and they should be subject to public repudiation. In that regard they are no different from other people who help to destroy the common good, like people who run rackets, home-breakers, peddlers of porn, and so forth.
December 17th, 2012 | 5:05 pm
Anna wrote: ” Christians must be willing to talk about and fight the bullying, harassment, and (yes) bigotry that gays and lesbians face. Roughly 80 percent of LGBT teens have experienced verbal harassment, and 40 percent have experienced physical harassment. ”
Nothing different than youth in general.
And what needs to be noted is that a significant number of youth who bully or harass or sexually harass others think what? That homosexuality is normal. And most teens who think homosexuality is normal, think porn is normal. And many of those think hook-ups are normal. And they spread an enormous number of STDs (especially if we include college students).
People with a homosexualist agenda should be willing to face how destructive their views on relationships and sexuality are, but they aren’t willing.
And many of these LGBT kids are exactly the kind that will advocate for the destruction of wonderful companies like Chick Fil A, who will discriminate against anyone who question their views as soon as they get in such a position, who minimize and trivialize all the violence that LGBT individuals perpetrate in society, etc.
December 17th, 2012 | 5:10 pm
or bothered at homosexuality. Nonetheless, such legislation has sometimes passed via judicial overreach and might reflect sentiments contrary to popular ones. Even so, another, more essential, assumption underlies this discussion. Namely, the assumption that those who accept legally-sanctioned homosexuality are necessarily less likely to bully or harass self-identified homosexual persons.
For example, a heterosexual male with a hedonistic view of sexuality might take a “whatever” approach to the marriage question and want to avoid a label as a religious bigot. Nevertheless, such a male might personally find homosexuality disgusting, speak hatefully of persons who engage in such behavior, and even verbally harass such persons in some way under a certain circumstance. Likewise, many religious persons, writers and readers of First Things very much included, believe homosexual acts–among many other acts–contrary to the language of the body and thus immoral yet respect self-identified homosexual persons as dignity-bearing persons who bear God’s image.
In this discussion, many also tend to assume that the above-mentioned ailments to wellness are necessarily related to one’s sexuality, more specifically, how others view one’s sexuality.
Although repulsion and hatred toward self-identified homosexual persons is certainly the cause of such ailments in such cases, one might be perhaps wrong to correlate one with the other in all cases. After all, persons of all…
December 17th, 2012 | 5:24 pm
Andrew O’Brien wrote: “But on the other hand, gay people have largely trained themselves to believe that their whole lives revolve around their orientation, and because of this, every act of injustice against them MUST be because they are gay, even if it isn’t true.”
Nickol wrote: “On what basis do you make this sweeping, negative generalization about gay people? I have no hesitation classifying this as . . . shall we say a product of “anti-gay animus.” ”
Because the homosexualist agenda movement is largely based on a discourse of exaggerated and false claims to victimization, of equating LGBT people to blacks under oppressive racism, of claiming anyone who disagrees with their views is a bigot, of spreading wild lies about “epidemics of suicides,” etc.
On this blog, we had so many recent examples.
People with a homosexualist agenda will basically only omit, dismiss, minimize and trivialize information regarding how destructive, violent, or harmful LGBT individuals are, while posting comment after comment on how much violence (true or wildly exaggerated) LGBT people suffer.
And, as an aside tied to what Andrew wrote, based on news reports (but no formal study), the LGBT group is the minority group who most fakes “hate” crimes in society.
There are already very few other individuals who are so perverse to fake their own suffering, to dupe society, as if we didn’t have enough real horrible events as it is. But every now and then, there is a report in the news of another LGBT person who completely faked some attack – to *pretend* to be a victim.
Christians need to be aware just how manipulative people with a homosexualist agenda are.
December 17th, 2012 | 5:25 pm
Christians have an obligation to treat every human being with the respect and charity that human dignity demands, regardless of whether the human being is homosexual or heterosexual.
Part of the problem is that many homosexuals consider Christian refusal to approve of their homosexual fornication as mistreatment of them. It isn’t, anymore than Christian refusal to approve of heterosexual fornication is mistreatment of heterosexuals.
Homosexual orientation, in so far as it is a condition or “state” one is in, is no more sinful than having a heterosexual orientation. Behavior, such as homosexual or heterosexual fornication, is what is sinful according to traditional Christian morality, although I have heard Christians speak as though the homosexual condition itself was sinful. It isn’t. Homosexuals have every right to resent and be offended by Christians who consider their condition sinful in itself, especially homosexuals who live virtuous and chaste lives, as I am sure many do. Such homosexuals aren’t the ones promoting homosexuality as a legitimate alternative lifestyle. It isn’t. The homosexual condition is unnatural, but one that can be lived out as a virtuous Christian who deserves the complete approval and respect of the Church. It is a condition that sometimes can be reversed, as some of the testimonies at Courage – A Roman Catholic Apostolate indicate.
December 17th, 2012 | 5:30 pm
David Nickol –
Oh please. AS I SAID IN THE COMMENT, my bias is largely in the way gay people I know see themselves and have experienced life in this culture. On the one hand my brother, who is a very talented soccer player with many good accepting friends who also play soccer, decided to quit his hetero team to join the gay soccer team. The fact that we even have gay soccer teams is stupid if the goal is to fit into normal society.
But don’t worry, I’ll go on. When I was in seminary I had a same sex attracted friend who is now a wonderful priest. During a homily, a permanent deacon spoke about diversity. He mentioned filipinos, whites, various races and “gays.” After mass my friend asked something along the lines of, “Why can’t we just all be men?” He had experienced the “over identification” I mentioned and had tried to distance himself from it – finding his way to the Catholic Church. He, more than anyone else, has provided me this insight.
I also found insight on this from the book “Beyond Gay,” by David Morrison (at least I believe it was that book).
December 17th, 2012 | 5:52 pm
Part of the problem is that many homosexuals consider Christian refusal to approve of their homosexual fornication as mistreatment of them. It isn’t, anymore than Christian refusal to approve of heterosexual fornication is mistreatment of heterosexuals.
harry,
The question is—Do Christians treat heterosexual fornication with equal disdain as homosexual “fornication”?
Say we have parents here who have sons or daughters in college. If the parents find out their sons and daughters are “hooking up” heterosexually, do they act with the same kind of disapproval or alarm as if they found out their sons were having sex with men and their daughters were having sex with women? Suppose General Petraeus had been discovered to have had an affair with a man. Would the public have been as forgiving?
The problem I have with people who present the Christian case against homosexuality is that they don’t seem to be as deeply committed to eradicating heterosexual sins as homosexual ones. Anthony Esolen above gives a laundry list of homosexual sins, and they are largely self-destructive ones. But it seems to me heterosexual sins—divorce, out-of-wedlock birth, adultery, premarital sex, abortion—are more destructive of society itself. What skin is it off society’s nose if gay men are promiscuous? On the other hand, I just ran across the headline (the story was from Tennessee) while Googling a couple of weeks ago: “The three men who have fathered 78 children with 46 different women… and they’re not paying child support to any of them.”
It is very easy (and very illegitimate) to ascribe to gay people as a group all the sins that gay people commit, yet it is done. But no one would ever argue how terribly wicked heterosexuals are by cataloging rapes, human trafficking, father-daughter sex abuse, premarital sex, adultery, abortion, out-of-wedlock birth. The conclusion would be that heterosexuals as a group are terrible people!
December 17th, 2012 | 6:56 pm
There are already very few other individuals who are so perverse to fake their own suffering, to dupe society, as if we didn’t have enough real horrible events as it is. But every now and then, there is a report in the news of another LGBT person who completely faked some attack – to *pretend* to be a victim.
Heather,
“Every now and then” there is a report? You make charges like that, and you “document” them by saying “every now and then there is a report”? I can come up with three fabricated anti-gay attacks. Can you come up with more? Suppose you can come up with ten. Does that reflect poorly on every gay person in America? If I can document a number of false charges of rape, does that prove women are “perverse” enough to fake their own suffering. If I can document a number of blacks falsely claiming racial attacks by whites, or vice versa, does that prove something about white people or black people in general?
It is a common tactic of yours to come up with some real or alleged offensive behavior of some gay people and treat it as if it were the behavior of gay people. That a classic characteristic of prejudice.
December 17th, 2012 | 8:30 pm
It’s encouraging to see this conversation continue to spread; thank you so much for the reference and for advocating Christian understanding and love in the midst of a complicated and emotionally fraught discussion.
Obviously I don’t have much to add! But I just wanted to say how, even if disagreements arise, I’m filled with hope.
Peace,
Jordan
December 17th, 2012 | 8:39 pm
We should not overlook the significant abuse that occurs within the homosexual lifestyle documented in articles in peer reviewed journals.
A 2002 study a lifetime abuse victimization revealed that 7% of heterosexual males reported being abused whereas 39% of males with SSA reported being abused by other males with SSA.(1.)
Nor should we overlook the harm done to children who are cruelly and deliberately deprived of their need for and right to a mother and a father by those in same sex unions who adopt. The health of children should be protected by preventing the redefinition of marriage.
(1.)Greenwood, G. et al. (2002) . Battering victimization among a probability-based sample of men who have sex with men. American Journal of Public Health, 92:1964–69.
December 17th, 2012 | 8:43 pm
Anna Williams: The battle is over mutability. It seems a teenager’s cortex is not yet fully filtering the limbic system: it may be that visceral responses are uncontrollable to the same extent that attraction is said to be uncontrollable. The question posed is: which immutable response wins?
The dichotomy is false and the Christian engagement, as you would have it, is one that professes rational grace – a fully developed cortex. Our moral obligation is to fight the mistreatment of teenagers who may be, by their nature, not LGT or B, but Q.
December 17th, 2012 | 8:44 pm
Andrew O’Brien,
Apologies if I reacted too strongly to your message. As must be clear, I am almost always in the minority here, and so when I make a point, I try to make it as forcefully as I can without being too aggressive. I try to respond by criticizing ideas rather than the people who state them, but I don’t always succeed. You seem like a nice person . . . unlike all the others. :P
The fact that we even have gay soccer teams is stupid if the goal is to fit into normal society.
I think people who want to play on a gay soccer team think a gay soccer team is normal. What’s wrong with a gay soccer team? If he hated football but played on a gay football team instead of a straight soccer team, I would see the point. But if you are gay and want to play on a gay soccer team, why not?
December 17th, 2012 | 10:16 pm
A few hours after reading this post and replying, I stumbled across this quote from Marlin VanElderen from 1983:
In the context he was writing about the nuclear disarmament debate, and how that must be done using “moral language” which the secular media derided. But his commends fit perfectly into this debate:
“The language of the church in public discussions will never quite fit. That may tempt us to alter the language fundamentally, so that it does fit, but as Helmut Thielicke warns, ‘when theology says only what the world can say to itself, it says nothing. The feet of those who will remove it are already at the door [an allusion, I imagine, to Ananias and Sapphira.]‘ Still, we must remember that many will be eager to argue that because moral language doesn’t fit, or because those who use it don’t always agree, the church should keep its opinions to itself.”
–”Freezing out God, in *Finding a Voice* (p.6)
The language of “traditional marriage” no longer fits or has a “voice.” Using it automatically establishes those who do as mean, judgement bigots by those who can only speak to themselves. Yet, we can not alter the language. So we are left as voices that “don’t fit,” which is as it should be, but make no mistake, the words we use will define us by those who “freeze out God” as hateful and evil.
December 17th, 2012 | 11:29 pm
Andrew:
“The fact that we even have gay soccer teams is stupid if the goal is to fit into normal society.”
There isn’t a single “goal” to the GLBT community in the United States (who, what?).
December 17th, 2012 | 11:51 pm
I don’t disagree with the premise of the piece here at all. I agree wholeheartedly. We must protect the LGBT from bullying. The real question, implied in the piece, is from whom? Other Christians? I’m not so sure.
I wonder how much we advance the conversation when we either self-flagellate or straw man a whole group of people (ie evangelicals). I have a friend, gay, Christian, trying to live the difficult celibate life, and who is politically conservative. He regularly says that he has never lost a Christian friend for being gay (not even in patterns of sinfulness) but he’s lost tons of gay friends for being conservative. I honestly don’t know who the evangelical haters of the LGBT are, other than the fake war fought in blogs and on the tv. Most evangelicals (I amongst them) are too cowardly to have a conversation about Jesus with most, much less have a conversation about sin with someone in the LGBT community.
Again, where is this war really being fought, and are Christians really the bullies? There will always be some (and that is regrettable), I suppose, but let us not straw man a whole population of them.
Back to the premise of the piece, though, and that is this: we do have an obligation to protect anyone from bullying. Self-evident to a true Christian, perhaps?
December 17th, 2012 | 11:56 pm
“Pathologies to check: drug use; unimaginable promiscuity; suicide; bug-chasing; sadism and masochism; exhibitionism; fetishism, especially centered on things destructive to body or mind ….”
Yes, I agree. Sexually transmitted diseases, drug use, sexual promiscuity and alcoholism are entirely absent from heterosexual populations.
December 18th, 2012 | 1:23 am
Uncharitable disdain of the person is always wrong. Since homosexual fornication is unnatural in addition to being sinful, it is not surprising that some have a greater disdain of homosexual fornication than they do of heterosexual fornication, although that is no excuse for uncharitable disdain of the sinner. Christians should hate the sin and love the sinner. That is a cliché but still very true.
There shouldn’t be a “Christian case against homosexuality” just as there shouldn’t be a “Christian case against blindness” in the sense that both are a condition or state one is in, not sinful behavior. There would be a Christian case against choosing blindness as an alternative lifestyle, just as there is against promoting homosexuality as a legitimate alternative lifestyle. Sight and heterosexuality are natural conditions, blindness and homosexuality are disordered conditions.
Homosexual fornication and heterosexual fornication are both sinful; Christians should be committed to eradicating sexual sin in themselves first, and then to helping others do that.
I agree. As I said earlier, I am sure there are many homosexuals who live virtuous and chaste lives.
December 18th, 2012 | 7:42 am
School bullying does not enforce a moral standard, but it does enforce the unalterable law of the pack. Pack members who are regarded as weak, unhealthy, lazy, disloyal or reproductively unfit are pressured to improve or be ostracized.
This is not entirely a bad thing. A lot of people, including me, would say that high school bullying was helpful as well as stressful. It provided motivation to stay neat and clean, work hard at sports, avoid gloating about academic ability, and treat pack leaders (the top athletes and their attractive girlfriends) with respect and consideration.
Thirty years later, I’m still a bespectacled, socially awkward, math and computer girl-geek, but I do OK. Because guess who’s doing the hiring and the grant reviews? Right, the high school pack leaders. A lot of things I needed to learn about life in the professional world I learned on the high school swim team.
Bullying is bad if it gets out of hand. But homo sapiens is a pack animal. Trying to change human nature usually just makes things a lot worse for everybody, even the people who are naturally doomed to the lower echelons of the pack hierarchy.
It is unreasonable to expect the pack to behave as if homosexual inclinations were equal to heterosexual inclinations. Heterosexual inclination is part of reproductive fitness. Expecting high school students to treat gay peers the same as straight peers is like expecting them to treat ugly girls the same as gorgeous girls or fat, clumsy guys the same as muscular, athletic guys. Not going to happen.
The rule that should be enforced is “Nobody is allowed to physically harm anybody else,” not “Everybody must always behave like a character on the Barney the Dinosaur show.”
December 18th, 2012 | 9:07 am
Pentamom –
I’m afraid I’m a little dense. I’m not really clear on what this is supposed to mean or refer to. Who didn’t kill whom? I’m not being sarcastic; I’m just not making the connection or catching the reference.
I wasn’t arguing against the idea that “much” bullying is intended to enforce conformity. I was arguing against the notion that enforcing conformity is the only significant cause.
And, as you yourself note, there’s very little ‘moral’ about it.
December 18th, 2012 | 9:24 am
Felapton –
You really need to read David Sloan Wilson’s “Evolution for Everyone”.
Because there’s only a knife’s-edge border between the two…
December 18th, 2012 | 9:51 am
Sorry, Ray, I left out a word. That should have been “That’s the look at all the people I didn’t kill defense” — attempting to prove a non-universal assertion false by showing that there are times when it doesn’t hold true. The guy who points out that he didn’t kill a lot of people hasn’t successfully defended himself on a murder charge of having killed one particular person. Pointing out that bullying is frequently the result of sheer physical dominance doesn’t refute the idea that it’s frequently about enforcing some kind of standard.
I don’t know that anyone claimed that enforcing morality is the *only* significant cause.
December 18th, 2012 | 9:57 am
Ray, I think felapton’s point (or at least it’s a point I’ve made before, I think) is that you can enforce an absolute ban on physical harm, but going about it by trying to teach all the kids to interact Barney-fashion will never work. Not because something close to Barney-fashion treatment is necessarily bad, but because it will simply never happen that kids will not form groups and ostracize, just like it will never happen that the cops can go out of business because people stop deciding to commit crimes.
So by all means enforce strict rules against specific harmful behaviors, but lose the fantasy that the road to eliminating those behaviors is actually to make everyone like (or even respect) everyone else. We can force people to TREAT one another with some minimal level of respect — there is no way the respect itself will ever happen across the board.
December 18th, 2012 | 12:37 pm
Pentamom –
And my point is that there’s a lot of room for alternatives besides “let’s just keep the kids from successfully killing each other” and “let’s make everyone love each other and never have any conflicts”.
I don’t recall fantasizing at any point – and in particular, I don’t recall ever expressing a fantasy – that we could, or should try, to “make everyone like (or even respect) everyone else”. Can you remind me when I did?
What I am saying is close to what you’re saying – don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But see, I think it’s possible, most of the time, to get high school to be just a touch more than an armed truce. What if we tried, say, helping more people like and respect each other than currently obtains? Is that an impossible goal?
December 18th, 2012 | 4:15 pm
“What is your evidence that, say, a young heterosexual man sees himself any less as heterosexual as a young gay man sees himself as gay? Thinking back to my high school and college days, I don’t think the young men I knew were any less aware of their heterosexual orientation as young gay men would be of their homosexual orientation.”
Be honest Mr. Nickol-you ask for evidence you don’t possess. Its blatantly obvious you are attempting seizure of the presumption in order to shift the burden of proof. Personal observations are not evidence. Given when you say you went to school in other threads-was the concept of “gay” even in the popular lexicon of that time?
But implicit in this statement we see the seed of all of Mr. Nickol’s (and by extension all militant gay activists and apologists) views. In this view, homosexual acts are behavior that defines the individual, (i.e., people are “gay” rather than acts being homosexual). It is merely an innate or inborn orientation, self-defining, unaffected by environment or experience, immutable, requiring a physical expression, morally neutral, if not positive and standing in equality with the heterosexual union. It’s adjunct is that sex is a merely a hedonic function, not posesses of anything other than momentary consequences.
The reality is different. Heterosexual behavior of course has a (surbordinate) hedonic dimensio which provides necessary inducement to exercise, but it’s principal biological purpose is babies, so it is an inclination in order with necessity and nature. Even so, it is also not a right, and until recently, we expected certain preconditions prior to participation (maturity, mental hygiene, marital commitment, freedom from prior marital commitment, economic capacity, etc)
Even when we engage in a physical act that is a biological necessity, we understand it can become disordered (think of the list of eating disorders)-but physical acts that serve no biological purpose in fact are ipso factor disordered.
Now of course, I expect an indignant response, but I will be just as indignant in rejecting the idea that which I do with my wife, is the same as what two people of the same sex attempt to imitate. The expression of homosexuality is not the equivalent of the union of a man and woman, it’s a counterfeit.
What is “discrimination” to the activists is anything other than the full acceptance of their pursuits and their physical expression as indisputably natural, positive and equal to the natural attraction of men and women together and the union that results from the attraction between the sexes.
For the activists, they fail to consider that there are actually good reasons for the individual to be disposed to reject such behavior, to the point of imposing a social rejection (not violence)
of it, because it cannot, under any conditions produce children and people have a right to reject that which is not fruitful.
What is your evidence that if homosexually oriented people see their inclinations as the equivalent of heterosexual inclinations, that that view is valid and I should be required to embrace it as normative, rather than intrinsically disordered?
To me, to assume that sex with a member of your own sex is valid and normative is sexism, telling us that one can reject fully half of humanity as superfluous.
December 18th, 2012 | 4:53 pm
David Nickol –
Apology accepted. The main problem I have is that for all the whining my brother does about not being “accepted” by society, here is an opportunity for him to find acceptance and he doesn’t take it. Instead he willingly segregated himself based on his orientation.
Thinking about this in a deeper way, however, I don’t think that this is something that only gay people do. I think all minorities do it at the very least in a subconscious way. Even I, as a Catholic, have cried “anti-Catholicism” a number of times when it probably wasn’t the case. I don’t do that anymore. I refuse to act like a victim, even when there is anti Catholicism.
If this is true, reconciliation isn’t just the responsibility of the “majority.” The group being discriminated against also bears some responsibility and I think that includes abandoning suspicion that everything is about that which makes them different.
December 18th, 2012 | 5:07 pm
David Nickol,
Christians do not equate heterosexual fornication with homosexual fornication for reasons grounded in Romans 1:26-27.
That biblical passage has “secular” philosophical support. Bodily organs have functions. Just as with the function of a clock–the *function* of which is to tell the time even if the clock is *used* as a bookend–bodily functions are both descriptive (what those bodily organs are commonly used for) and prescriptive (what they are properly used for, or ought to be used for).
I would like to add two quick points about this: First, if you happen to accept the idea of a naturalistic fallacy, please check the first chapter of David Oderberg’s book “Moral Theory” for a six-page–brief but very persuasive–refutation of the supposed divorce between facts and values. Secondly, even if you prefer to stick with the modern orthodoxy on facts and values, the is-ought gap does not seem to apply to functions or function statements. Think of the plausibility of saying both that a clock does tell the time and should tell the time, insofar as it is functioning properly.
Apply that thought to the function of the reproductive organs, and I believe you will find “secular” philosophical justification for Romans 1:26-27, and generally for the unwillingness of “bigots” like me to morally equate homosexuality with heterosexuality.
December 19th, 2012 | 8:25 am
Ray, it’s great to strive to achieve more than an “armed truce.” But you don’t limit your ability to achieve non-violence by insisting the only path is through first achieving total harmony. That’s the way the current anti-bullying stuff seems to work — we have to make everyone like each other, then the bullying will stop. That will never work, therefore bullying will never be controlled. Better to control the bullying simply by enforcing behavior, while at the same time seeking to improve relationships as a more or less separate task.
My comments were not in reference to anything you said — they were an attempt to explain why the dichotomy between “Barney” and unfettered bullying was not being falsely drawn. It’s not falsely drawn because a lot of the the anti-bullying methods out there are leaving us only those two choices — until we succeed in teaching kids to sing happy songs holding hands, there will be bullying, because that’s the primary thing we’re doing to try to stop it.
December 19th, 2012 | 9:07 am
Adam Baum -
Can you name any biological function that serves only one purpose? Sweat, for example, cools the body, eliminates wastes, and distributes pheromones, and maintains skin tone.
Sex can – and in many species including humans, does – facilitate social purposes like bonding, among many other things. Biology is full of examples of one function being co-opted to perform other functions. Pointing to one function of sexual activity and saying all other functions are illegitimate needs more argument than ‘it’s obvious’.
Well, sure, you’re free to reject homosexual behavior at least as much as the Westboro Baptist Church does. But it’s conceivable that there are more kinds of ‘fruitful’ than you recognize.
December 19th, 2012 | 12:47 pm
Ray Ingles –
Yes, sex has many purposes, but why does that give us the “right” to deliberately frustrate any of the ends? Does that fact that food tastes good mean that we have the right to throw it up after a meal?
Yes, there is the “fruitfulness” in gay couples, but the fruitfulness is in the friendship – not in the sex. I have a really hard time believing that anal/oral sex help a couple bond in the same way intercourse does. During intercourse, the man and woman participate as equals. Both give and receive pleasure at the same time. Anal/oral encounters as well as mutual masturbation don’t celebrate the equal dignity of the participants. One person is dominant and the other is submissive. Only one gives and only one receives.
December 19th, 2012 | 2:17 pm
Andrew O’Brien –
What’s the purpose of eating and drinking and breathing, though? To nourish and maintain the body, I presume?
So… is smoking ‘frustrating the end’ of breathing? How about drinking alcohol? And – perhaps the clearest analogy – is it sinful to eat food made with artificial sweeteners, pleasing the tastebuds without nourishing the body?
Somehow I never see anyone calling for legislation against aspartame on moral grounds. Can you explain the distinction?
(I don’t really want to discuss modes of intercourse directly on this forum. The applied moderation has been sketchy in the past, and I have no desire to tempt fate in that regard.)
December 19th, 2012 | 4:18 pm
Yes, sex has many purposes, but why does that give us the “right” to deliberately frustrate any of the ends?
Andrew O’Brien,
Well, of course it is not gay people who “deliberately frustrate” the procreative end of sex. They can’t procreate. So apparently your conclusion is that they should refrain from all sexual activity.
However, heterosexuals very definitely deliberately frustrate the procreative end of sex. The use of artificial contraception among sexually active heterosexuals in their fertile years is close to universal. Why do we hear not condemnations of this? And unlike homosexuals, heterosexuals frequently try and fail to frustrate the procreative ends sex, and they end the unwanted pregnancies with abortions.
It seems to me a good argument can be made that it is a far more serious matter to deliberately thwart a capacity you have been given (a capacity many would consider an almost miraculous gift) for the purpose of sexual pleasure than to take sexual pleasure in the absence of the capacity to procreate. (We do not consider married couples who have sex after their fertile years to be wicked and selfish because they are not capable of procreation.)
December 19th, 2012 | 4:56 pm
Ray, no need to talk of particular acts of same-sex sexual behavior. All scenarios that lack either man or woman are limited in sexual behavior to non-coital relations. This is a matter of kind, not degree, of sexual difference manifest in these scenarios.
There is no moral equivalence between the two-sexed scenario and the one-sexed scenario precisely because of the significance of sex difference.
The same-sex scenario makes sex difference very important via the exclusion of this or that sex. The two-sex scenario makes sex difference very important via the integration of man and woman in bodily union.
Bodily union is not sufficient for a marital relationship, of course, but it is impossible in all scenarios that lack either man or woman. Sexual embodiment is the nature of humankind. Same-sex sexual behavior, not so much.
December 19th, 2012 | 4:57 pm
Oh, yes, and there was something else to note here:
“Not infrequently, such abuse leads LGBT teens (or those perceived as LGBT) to commit suicide. ”
No, it doesn’t. It is infrequent. Most teens who commit suicide are in situations where there are multiple causes for the suicide. It is rare when it’s only bullying, because the bullying needs to be extreme.
And any teen can be led to try to commit suicide because of bullying, the reasons why they are allegedly bullied don’t really matter. Obviously there are many more teens who commit suicide who are not LGBT individuals.
Furthermore, people with a homosexualist agenda allege that many more LGBT teens killed themselves because of harassment of their homosexuality problem than it is true.
Information about the reasons why a teen committed suicide are usually confidential, they are not publicly discussed. This allows homosexual activists to make any claim they want regarding any case – and obviously their ideological followers are happy to believe blindly anything they hear – because it reinforces the narrative of the nice homosexual victim persecuted by the horrible conservative who does not normalize homosexuality.
December 19th, 2012 | 9:28 pm
I don’t know that we need any statistics to convince us of the omnipresence of the bullying of gays. Growing up, I can’t recall ever hearing anyone get mocked for being straight, but mockery of being gay existed even before I knew what one was, much less what one did. And despite attending a fine Catholic Church and school, I don’t remember ever hearing that gays shouldn’t be reviled. We would mock but could also understand gamblers, drunkards, and adulterers. Their crimes seemed like excess rather than a violation of nature.
For my mind to change about gays, I only had to meet one gay man who shared the same desires that I do. Once I started meeting gay men and women who were devoted Christians and who desired a spouse and family, the conviction that homosexuality was intrinsically disordered melted away.
In the meantime, the argument that sex is essentially or primarily procreative has always seemed so patently false. The desire behind sex has always been so obviously about achieving and expressing emotional intimacy. To reduce it to either procreation or pleasure is to misunderstand its role in tearing people away from their birth families and uniting them into a new family. That is the teaching of Genesis 2:24 after all, that sex pulls our loyalties away from mother and father, shifting them to our spouse.
And this issue of loyalty is what gave birth to the gay marriage movement. The sight of grieving partners at death beds and then estranged parents swooping in to make decisions crystallized the conviction that gay couples had indeed formed families distinct from their birth families. Once gay couples were seen fulfilling Genesis 2:24, gay marriage no longer seemed so unimaginable.
December 20th, 2012 | 3:06 am
Michael wrote: “I don’t know that we need any statistics to convince us of the omnipresence of the bullying of gays.”
Oh, I think we do – and very much so. Because what I see when I look at many school settings out there today is quite different than what you describe.
In many settings, teens with a homosexuality problem are told they are normal, along with the porn, the hook-ups, the sex outside marriage (and committed relationships), the spreading of STDs with impunity, etc.
Normalizing homosexuality is done as part of a larger package of a sexuality ideology that seeks to warrant social approval to a variety of interconnected harmful attitudes and practices.
Furthermore, what we also need that we mostly don’t have in terms of statistics regarding sexuality behavior is how frequently do people with a homosexuality or bisexuality problem make unwanted or unwelcome advances to others, how much they sexual harass, exploit or abuse others, how perverse and perverted their sexualities are.
Take the recent Kevin Clash case (now with allegations from his fourth -and underage- male victim). Suppose that before the scandal, he came on this forum and told us he had been bullied as a “gay” teen. It would give the impression that he was just a nice, benign, harmless, poor little homosexual victim, persecuted by the socially conservatives meanies at his school. Isn’t this the image that liberals constantly insist on?
And it would give the impression that this is the only or major problem we have in society regarding homosexuals. But flash forward several years, and we find a perverted wealthy, privileged individual who trolls the Internet searching for young male meat to exploit (and allegedly abuse). All the while he has been told by liberals that “there is nothing disordered” about him or his homosexuality.
When liberals go on and on about bullying of homosexual teens, they never address just how many dysfunctional and harmful behaviors these very same teens are in the process of adopting as teens or later as adults.
And imagine if you were applying for a job under Clash and stated the truth about being socially conservative. You would never get the job.
This narrative about homosexuals as victims of bullying or anything else is much more misleading and complicated than what liberals will have you believe.
December 20th, 2012 | 11:57 am
Heather –
I’ll assume, by your name, that you’re female. How many “unwanted or unwelcome advances” have you received from straight males? Is that an exclusively homosexual phenomenon?
To my knowledge, I’ve been hit on by a man exactly once. He was circumspect about it, and backed off immediately when I made it clear that wasn’t the sort of thing I was interested in.
Again, are these exclusively homosexual problems?
There’s also the problem of correlation and causation. For example, I’d be willing to bet that the rate of mental pathology was pretty high among the black population from the 1700s through the 1800′s and well into the 1900′s. But was that because they were black, or because of slavery and segregation?
(Note – that doesn’t mean that gays are or have been discriminated against in the same manner or to the same degree as blacks have. It does establish the point, though, that raw rates of problems need context to establish causation, as opposed to correlation.)
Imagine if someone who said they were gay asked you for a job. Would they get it?
December 20th, 2012 | 5:29 pm
Heather wrote: “how frequently do people with a homosexuality or bisexuality problem make unwanted or unwelcome advances to others”
Ray Ingles wrote: Is that an exclusively homosexual phenomenon?
It seems you are unable to understand what I am pointing out.
Let’s go back to a quote from the original post: “Christians must be willing to talk about and fight the bullying, harassment, and (yes) bigotry that gays and lesbians face. ”
Is the post talking about heterosexuals? Is it talking about children? Animals? No, it is talking exclusively about people with a homosexual problem.
And it is underlining the issue of bullying that only this group faces. I didn’t see you pose the question if only people with a homosexual problem experienced bullying in society? Why are you asking this question of exclusivity to me then?
If we want to have a more realistic picture of the problems we have in society, we need to collect and present data on how perverse and perverted, violent and dysfunctional people with a homosexuality problem are. These are all serious problems.
Looking exclusively at the bullying problem, and even worse, using an optic that is often exaggerated and not based on evidence, gives us a very false picture of society as it concerns people with a homosexuality problem.
LGBT people perpetrate a large number of crimes and they do a great deal of harm, as well as sometimes being the targets of bullying.
I don’t know why it’s not clear to you that this thread is not about heterosexuals, animals, children, etc. It is about homosexuals. Wanting to change the group focus is nothing but a red herring attempt.
Christians must be willing to talk about and fight the many destructive attitudes and behaviors LGBT individuals have, and they must hold them accountable for the harm they do to others and in society in general. Bullying is far from the only problem there is, and all the violence and harm LGBT individuals do in society is much, much worse than the bullying problem. So the priority should be to give attention to how destructive and harmful people with a homosexuality problem are.
December 20th, 2012 | 5:52 pm
Ray Ingles wrote: “To my knowledge, I’ve been hit on by a man exactly once. He was circumspect about it, and backed off immediately when I made it clear that wasn’t the sort of thing I was interested in.”
Your point is? The world begins and ends with your experience? Not quite.
Are you suggesting that if you haven’t been kidnapped, there is not kidnapping? If you haven’t been raped, there is no rape in the world? Clearly you haven’t been murdered, so there is no murder either?
You describe a life experience of extreme privilege. In addition, you purposefully dismiss above every single news article, study, testimony, and other bit of information that attests to criminal, destructive, harmful, or harassing attitudes and behaviors by homosexuals.
In short, the aim of your discourse here is a refusal to acknowledge and confront all the violence and harm that LGBT people do in the world.
December 20th, 2012 | 9:10 pm
Heather,
“Oh, I think we do – and very much so. Because what I see when I look at many school settings out there today is quite different than what you describe”
Are you saying that gays are not bullied and mocked just about everywhere in American society? The slurs and insults I heard people direct at gays seem just as prevalent today. What is different is that more people reject such terms, but every young person I know has heard or used these terms.
“In many settings, teens with a homosexuality problem are told they are normal, along with the porn, the hook-ups, the sex outside marriage (and committed relationships), the spreading of STDs with impunity, etc”
You’re right that, happily, more and more teachers are asking students to respect gays, but I don’t see teachers saying that porn, hook-ups, extra-marital sex, and the spreading of STDs is normal. What neighborhood do you live in?
“how frequently do people with a homosexuality or bisexuality problem make unwanted or unwelcome advances to others, how much they sexual harass, exploit or abuse others, how perverse and perverted their sexualities are”
I know a lot of gay people. Some are among my closest friends; others I will talk to only when necessary because I disapprove of their moral character. Some are kind and even heroic, and others are the kind of people you describe, the only kind of gays you describe.
In short, as a group, gays are just like everyone else I know—some are wonderful, others are rotten, and most are in-between.
The arguments you use against gays were used before you about blacks, Jews, and Catholics. In fact, variations of those arguments were used against women. And these arguments will be used again against whatever group somebody wants to hate on.
The word we use to describe arguments like these is bigotry. It is bigoted to ascribe to some group characteristics that are found across humanity.
In the last week, First Things has published a number of articles exploring the question of bigotry and gay marriage. I’m one of those gay marriage supporters who think there are some good arguments against gay marriage. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that marriage should remain between men and women. It is perfectly obvious that most marriage laws and customs have grown up around the expectation of children and the provision of inheritance. It is equally obvious that divorce and is fracturing our society and that our culture has become over-sexualized.
Thus, although I disagree with the arguments put forward by people like Michael PS and Ken Zaretzke against gay marriage, I admire the logic of their arguments, and I have never accused them of bigotry. Their opposition to gay marriage is rooted in principle, not in gross stereotypes. They are not alone, of course, and many others employ reason and principle in fighting gay marriage.
Arguments that gays are especially violent, aggressive, perverse, or dangerous, however, are, by definition, bigotry.
December 21st, 2012 | 7:40 am
Heather wrote: “Oh, I think we do – and very much so. Because what I see when I look at many school settings out there today is quite different than what you describe”
Michael wrote: Are you saying that gays are not bullied and mocked just about everywhere in American society?
“Bullied and mocked” just about everywhere?
Yes, I am saying that: Gays are not bullied just about everywhere. A considerable number of adolescents with a homosexual problem are not being bullied.
Were you asking if bullying is restricted by geographical area? No, it’s not. In that sense, it can occur anywhere. But I am referring to the percentage of individuals bullied. Boys, white kids, girls can all be “mocked and bullied” just about anywhere. That’s not saying much.
You’re just filling this blog with hyperbolic nonsense of a narrative that is quite false.
Reality in many school settings is that many adolescents with a homosexual problem are not bullied. In the majority of adult spaces, men with a homosexuality problem are not bullied. Yet they are free to do a lot of harm to others – and with impunity.
What is true and shown by research, is that about 25-40% of LGBT individuals experience intimate violence. Who are the perpetrators? LGBT individuals (who in their vast majority have normalized homosexuality).
What we also know is that men who have sex with men overwhelmingly lead the spread of HIV and syphilis. A large number of people who normalize homosexuality also normalize porn, promiscuity, sex with strangers, S&M, adultery, etc. And in every single country where homosexual marriage was legalized, it was shunned by 98% percent of adult homosexuals.
Michael: “The slurs and insults I heard people direct at gays seem just as prevalent today.”
But we know that you only hear something if it fits your narrative. You are a person who believes they don’t need data – you stated this in this very thread (“we don’t need studies”); reality for you is irrelevant.
Every time a person with a homosexuality problem displays how sexually perverted they are, or how they do harm to others, or how they perpetrate violence, or how psychologically dysfunctional they are, you curiously don’t hear it.
December 21st, 2012 | 10:42 am
Heather –
In the absence of other data, that’s what I’ve got to go on. Speaking of which…
I’ve seen you assert that. I’ve not seen you support that. I asked you to in my last comment in this thread (December 12th, 2012 | 12:48 pm), and you didn’t. Nor did you answer any of the other questions I posed.
So, yeah. I’m gonna stick with my experience until and unless you actually give me some reason to think differently.
December 21st, 2012 | 2:45 pm
Heather wrote: The world begins and ends with your experience? Not quite.
Ray Ingles: In the absence of other data, that’s what I’ve got to go on.
In other words, what you have to go on is basically no knowledge and no data, that is, you basically know nothing about 8 billion people regarding this subject. That’s a vast black hole of lack of information.
Although you could access a considerable amount of “other data” about other people that is readily available online and in the media by doing simple searches or just plain reading or listening, you curiously refuse to.
The amount of effort you put into shutting reality and knowledge out of your mind is quite intense.
December 21st, 2012 | 4:32 pm
Ray wrote: “I’ve seen you assert that. I’ve not seen you support that. I asked you to in my last comment in this thread (December 12th, 2012 | 12:48 pm), and you didn’t. Nor did you answer any of the other questions I posed.”
That’s not true at all. I certainly did answer.
I wonder if FT will censor this reply as well.
December 21st, 2012 | 5:13 pm
Michael wrote: You’re right that, happily, more and more teachers are asking students to respect gays, but I don’t see teachers saying that porn, hook-ups, extra-marital sex, and the spreading of STDs is normal. What neighborhood do you live in?
========
Michael, reality today means millions of young people have sex before they get married. They consume porn or believe there is no major problem with porn. They engage in hook-ups. They are promiscuous. And they spread STDs. They have abortions. They do drugs. They go on binge drinking. They rape. They sexually harass. They think that having a homosexuality problem is normal and they act on it.
What do teachers say about all of this? I really don’t know, but many teachers say nothing – especially in public schools. Is discussing all the problems that exist with porn part of the national curriculum?
Not that I know of.
I also know what many adults say, what celebrities say, what the media, what porn says, what many young people say to each other, etc., etc.
And millions of people say that there is nothing wrong with porn, homosexuality, hook-ups, etc. etc.
December 21st, 2012 | 6:45 pm
Heather,
“you stated this in this very thread (“we don’t need studies”); reality for you is irrelevant”
I said that, “I don’t know that we need any statistics to convince us of the omnipresence of the bullying of gays,” which is to say that anyone who has listened to kids on a playground, listened to pop music, or watched a movie pitched at junior high and high school students will know that the mockery of gays is everywhere. It has certainly lessened, but it is still strong.
I would appreciate it if you would report my views accurately.
“You’re just filling this blog with hyperbolic nonsense of a narrative that is quite false”
I think the phrase “hyperbolic nonsense” quite aptly describes statements like “reality for you is irrelevant”
“What is true and shown by research, is that about 25-40% of LGBT individuals experience intimate violence.”
I’d to see the research you refer to because I don’t trust you to report anything correctly, but I’ll continue nonetheless. We know that 25% of young black men are in prison and are mostly victims of black-on-black crime. Some bigots believe that these facts suggest that there is something inherently wrong with black people. Other, more humane observers believe that social forces are at work—the destructive force of the welfare state, the collapse of the black family, discrimination, etc.
“Every time a person with a homosexuality problem displays how sexually perverted they are, or how they do harm to others, or how they perpetrate violence, or how psychologically dysfunctional they are, you curiously don’t hear it”
You are lying. I have, in fact, discussed gay violence with you. I don’t think the fact that some gays hurt others is evidence that there is something wrong with being gay.
The argument that any group is inherently more violent or destructive than another is a defining feature of bigotry.
December 21st, 2012 | 7:00 pm
Heather, when you won’t help me understand it and won’t support it, why should I accept your position?
December 22nd, 2012 | 5:23 am
Heather said to Michael: “you stated this in this very thread (“we don’t need studies”); reality for you is irrelevant”
Michael: I said that, “I don’t know that we need any statistics to convince us of the omnipresence of the BULLYING of gays,” which is to say that anyone who has listened to kids on a playground, listened to pop music, or watched a movie pitched at junior high and high school students will know that the mockery of gays is everywhere. It has certainly lessened, but it is still strong.
Michael, there is significant difference between mocking and bullying. Even if bullying can comprise “intense mocking,” equating any mocking to bullying is simply more of your inflated nonsense. Not only that, it’s simply irresponsible. Bullying is a very serious issue. And, yes, we need statistics to know just how widespread bullying is, who does it, why, and to whom.
Furthermore, are you aware that there isn’t a single school in the US where teens (of all kinds) are not mocked? Mocking is ubiquitous – it’s not about just one little group. Millions and millions of heterosexual teens are mocked every year.
Teens mock others, for all kinds of reasons, some of which are good. There are also different types of mocking. This does not mean every time that one teen mocks another that they are participating in a bullying process.
There is a widespread bullying problem in schools – and it is horrible – but, contrary to your hyperbolic nonsense, it affects all kinds of kids.
This also means that teens with a homosexuality problem mock other kids. Teens with a homosexuality problem can be mean, stupid, disgusting, violent, anything really, just like any other teen.
And it also means that mocking is not the only type of harmful attitude/behavior there is – especially related to sexuality. Teens with a homosexuality problem can engage in an infinite number of harmful and destructive actions related to sexuality, relationships, or anything else.
If you go to any school environment which is not built on socially conservative principles, it’s the notion that homosexuality is normal that is everywhere. And there can be widespread hostility and virulence to anyone who questions your homosexuality agenda in such school environments where a liberal ideology is dominant.
Lastly, teens should mock anyone who tries to impinge on them a harmful sexuality ideology. That is to say, they should mock your views – because the latter have harmful consequences.
December 22nd, 2012 | 8:58 am
Actually, perhaps my previous comment (and its query) are not clearly connected to the topic of bullying in the original blog post by Anna. However I think the apparent paradox of unrelated people becoming related, based on sexual desire, but not incestuously, gets at just how very remote is bullying (and mistreatment) from the actual marriage issue itself. The focus on sexual desire is at the root of the gay emphasis in the SSM campaign; but that emphasis does not translated into actual legal requirements — or even moral requirements — for those who’d SSM. If it is really about group identity, then, we really ought to be careful not to overstate the issue of bullying (and mistreatment) — I say that because I do think the SSM campaign has long overplayed that card.
December 22nd, 2012 | 10:03 am
Heather,
I am reaching the conclusion that you don’t write or read coherently and that this inability makes conversation hopelessly confusing.
I’ll explain what I mean by that assessment.
You said, “Because what I see when I look at many school settings out there today is quite different than what you describe. In many settings, teens with a homosexuality problem are told they are normal, along with the porn, the hook-ups, the sex outside marriage (and committed relationships), the spreading of STDs with impunity, etc”
I took this comment to mean that you believe that, in school settings, teens are told that homosexuality, porn, hook-ups, etc, are normal. I inferred that you meant that teachers, guidance counselors, and administrators are presenting these phenomena are normal because that is what most people mean by “school settings.”
But now you are saying that “reality today means millions of young people have sex before they get married,” etc. You have shifted the conversation away from your claim that schools are normalizing various kinds of disapproved sex and toward the perfectly obvious claim that the larger culture now approves off these things.
How can we possibly have a productive conversation when you keep changing the subject?
December 22nd, 2012 | 4:57 pm
Michael,
I was describing the overall environment of many kids. Yes, when I said “kids are told in schools” that homosexuality is normal, it’s not unreasonable to assume it’s the adults doing the telling. But that is far from the complete picture of who is “doing the telling” in schools. This is why I went to present much more of who is sending messages to kids, outside and inside schools.
There are so many harmful messages being sent to kids in environments where homosexuality is normalized. Because it’s a packaged ideology. And many kids are behaving in very damaging ways regarding sexuality if they follow a liberal ideology.
December 23rd, 2012 | 1:15 am
Heather,
“there is significant difference between mocking and bullying.”
Once again, you have taken what I said out of context, and once again, you are changing the subject of conversation.
First, the context. Here’s my original paragraph: “I don’t know that we need any statistics to convince us of the omnipresence of the bullying of gays. Growing up, I can’t recall ever hearing anyone get mocked for being straight, but mockery of being gay existed even before I knew what one was, much less what one did. And despite attending a fine Catholic Church and school, I don’t remember ever hearing that gays shouldn’t be reviled. We would mock but could also understand gamblers, drunkards, and adulterers. Their crimes seemed like excess rather than a violation of nature.” It’s clear that I’m placing bullying in the broader context of mockery.
Second, the subject of conversation. You insulted me for supposedly arguing that “reality is irrelevant,” and I answered by quoting what I actually argued. Instead of apologizing for misrepresenting my views, you seize on the term “bullying.”
It’s frustrating to try to converse in such conditions.
“Even if bullying can comprise “intense mocking,” equating any mocking to bullying is simply more of your inflated nonsense.”
Really? Why all of the insults all of the time? Can’t you just have a civil exchange?
“Teens mock others, for all kinds of reasons, some of which are good.”
In the school I attended, kids mocked other kids for being fat, skinny, smart, dumb, left-handed, stuttering, tall, short, red-headed, curly-haired, black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. Kids who overreacted got teased worse. But on Mondays, guys would brag about facing down some black guys or harassing immigrants or homosexuals. So yes, kids mock other kids for lots of things, but some characteristics are more dangerous than others.
A gay person can go through his whole life and not ever get beaten, but he or she knows the threat is there. The scrawny kids, the lefties, and the stutterers don’t live with the same kind of fear.
“That is to say, they should mock your views – because the latter have harmful consequences”
Thanks. I’ll try to remember that you would encourage people to mock people like me.
December 26th, 2012 | 6:38 am
Michael, do you not detect a significant difference between “mock your views” and “mock people like me”?
To mock a view or idea is hardly the same as to bully someone as a person. This line can be criss-crossed, but the context of Heather’s comment would readily suggest that she does not encourage that.
However, as your emotional reaction suggests, mocking a view can feel very close to mocking the person who deeply holds that view. Teens are often unartful in many things. The adults who teach the harmful views on human sexuality — and on morally contended issues in general — thus carry a special burden to keep distinctions clear between views and persons. It have ever been thus.
However, the libertine dogmas used in “sex education” in too many public schools tend to encourage teens to mock virginity and to mock moral questions regarding human sexuality. And so the harm does get expressed in various ways including mockery and bullying of teens who do not fit your views, Michael.
The criss-crossing of the line is not necessarily encouraged but it is better to focus disagreement on the content of views rather than on the persons. N such disagreements feelings will come into play either way. Mocking or ridicling the view can cut close to the person with whom you have a disagreement. The view you hold is no less susceptible to encouraging mockery of persons, you might agree.
The modern Liberal fear of being anything but indiscriminatory does little to discourage bullying and mockery amongst teens. It just takes different forms … slightly different at that.
December 27th, 2012 | 6:05 pm
Chairm,
Although I’ve engaged in my fair share of mockery, I cannot think of a time when I have ever promoted our encouraged it.
I can’t make out the meaning of your last paragraph. My dictionary doesn’t contain the word “indiscriminatory.”
Perhaps you can tell me what it means.
December 27th, 2012 | 9:27 pm
Apologies for the typo.
Re: “anything but indiscriminate”.
Indiscriminate, meaning done without careful judgement; and indiscriminating, making no distinctions.
Michael, as you may know, mockery encourages more mockery. That is the point of taking responsibility for distinguishing between views mocked and persons mocked. Careful judgement itls taught first by example and then by sound reason ing as our guide to following moral conscience. It is too much to ban ridicule of views or ideas; it is not enough to shrug at the hazards of criss-crossing the line between view and person. And yet crying foul too readily leads by a very indiscriminate example and an abandonment of moral conscience.
Perhaps you can tell the difference between person and view or idea. Perhaps you are not fearful of being anything but indiscriminate. Perhaps your visceral reaction both mockery of your views and mockery of yourself as a person is one big knot in your gut that is beyond the rule of careful judgement. Teens are learning the discipline that their teachers (and not just school teachers) have a responsibility to model deliberately.
I would expect that our views on mockery are not so far apart as to confuse the view with the person.
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