‘No I won’t'…what? Boonton, you’ve made a statement and then listed a bunch of points I didn’t mention, while ignoring the ones I did.

[Boonton] “First gay people exist whether or not Scouts lets them in and kids know that.”

This is not in question.

[Boonton] “… the last thing you want in a scout leader is any type of discussion of his sex life….”

And neither is this.

You’ve made exactly the same mistake that others have made in similar discussion threads – read motives into conservative objections, (mine in this case,) that simply aren’t there.

In the case of Boy Scouts of America, it is possible that boys in this organization will soon be taught – at the very least through the example of acceptance and endorsement of leaders – that a male member of the species can be healthily emotionally and sexually attracted to a female member of the species…or a male member of the species, it doesn’t matter and makes no difference whatsoever. Those boys will go on to be leaders and have influence in the community and government. Whether you are a Christian, Jew, Buddhist or Atheist, you will be affected by this issue.

No I won’t and neither will most kids. First gay people exist whether or not Scouts lets them in and kids know that. Second while my stay in Scouts was brief it was long enough to know the last thing you want in a scout leader is any type of discussion of his sex life….even if it’s supposedly a ‘normal heterosexual married’ one.

Most people believe stealing is wrong, but never stop to think about why. Stealing is wrong because when a person steals, they don’t trust God to provide for a perceived need. They are then acting in a way less than fully alive, less than fully human, made in the Image and Likeness of God. The Catholic looks at the question of homosexual behaviour in a similar way, as if to say that homosexual actions are wrong and a certain passion is disordered in the same way that stealing is wrong and a desire to steal things is another passion disordered. The intent being to uphold the true dignity of the human person. The threat to society when human persons forget a central, intrinsic part of who they are has been already expounded upon in previous conversations, and touched on in my post above.

David, I understand your point of view. You believe stealing is contrary to human dignity but homosexual behaviour isn’t. You think sexual attraction within the human person may be equally directed towards the opposite gender or the same gender, and that both are natural human activities, and that gender really is kind of just a decision that evolution made with humanity, (though with decidely un-evolutionary benefit.) You’ve made your position known, and I’ve made my position known. In another conversation, you couldn’t even bring yourself to acknowledge one example of complementarity between male and female. If we can’t come to some consensus on what gender even is, and why it matters, then it will be difficult to go much further.

JDD,

Are you concerned that this will result in more males being attracted to other males? Or perhaps that all males will eventually become attracted to other males, and the species will die out?

What is the threat you see in a change in attitudes toward homosexuality, other than that something you think is morally unacceptable will become more widely acceptable? I can see a legitimate concern if something like stealing were to be promoted as morally acceptable. It would be a threat to property and social order. But the only threat I see from a wider acceptance of homosexuality is . . . a wider acceptance of homosexuality.

In the case of Boy Scouts of America, it is possible that boys in this organization will soon be taught – at the very least through the example of acceptance and endorsement of leaders – that a male member of the species can be healthily emotionally and sexually attracted to a female member of the species…or a male member of the species, it doesn’t matter and makes no difference whatsoever. Those boys will go on to be leaders and have influence in the community and government. Whether you are a Christian, Jew, Buddhist or Atheist, you will be affected by this issue.

If you object to the amount of commentary based on the, “What others choose to believe and do doesn’t affect me,” philosophy, then I understand that it will continue to be an annoyance – maybe even an enigma – that First Things and other forums don’t simply drop it.

I think that is a flawed argument, and in these pages, many posters have put forth reasons why homosexuality and the other sexual practices mentioned impact society: issues of understanding of the human person, male and female differences and complementarity, even the reasons for marriage and procreation, and the attention that any government should give to these social arrangements called marriage. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether any of those arguments have merit and whether you personally have a stake in the outcome.

In the past few months, Chick fil-A and the Boy Scouts have been in the news daily as well. And why have you narrowed your question to homosexuality,

But the larger media does not presume to just ‘lift a mirror’ to culture. If it did, news reports would have to report most of the time that most people woke up today, went off to whatever they do during most days, and came home.

We can’t talk much about Mr. Kristof from a single tweat anymore than it would be fair to talk about First Things from a single blog post. I mean not to long ago there was a post about Tolkien and the Beatles. FT ain’t your goto source for either fandom.

But I can talk about FT in general since I’ve watched it off and on for a while and yea homosexuality shows up quite a bit. I suppose we can excuse sex and contraceptions howing up so often because most people have a sex life of something or other and opposiste sex couples who are fertile do have to consider conception. Chances are homosexuality is not an issue in most people’s day to day life, though. So it is odd that it merits so many mentions here.

Have the cultural developments been there to merit coverage? In the past few months, Chick fil-A and the Boy Scouts have been in the news daily as well. And why have you narrowed your question to homosexuality, and left out the three categories Mr. Kristof listed? The Susan B. Komen Foundation and the DHHS would then join the list of players.

Either way, in answer to the larger question, do a study of the trends in entertainment, art, music, etc – the ways in which we express our values – and get back to me.

What is the basis of George’s certainty that Kristof embraces an “Hegelian-Marxian” (a fine example of a contradictio in terminis, by the way) historical approach? How does he know that Kristof isn’t, in fact, employing some variant of a Kantian, or a Spencerian, or a even a Whiggish theory of history?

My guess is that an alien culture, taking the time to study the goals of the Journal, might conclude that it was holding a mirror up to the Culture.

Perhaps or perhaps it is a culture in its own right. Is the culture really preoccupied with homosexuality and First Thoughts is holding a mirror up to it by doing the topic once, twice or more every week or is it the reverse?

JDD,

I wouldn’t object too much to counteroffensive, although I don’t really think the Obama administration said, “Let’s have a contraceptive mandate to see if we can undermine the Church.” I think that’s paranoia. One might accuse Obama of simply not caring enough, but I don’t think that constitutes an offensive against the Church. I think I have made it clear that the contraceptive mandate, in its original form, at least, was a genuine issue of religious liberty.

However you look at it, it’s not as if contraception would be the last thing to come to mind when thinking of the Catholic Church.