I must admit, when my head topic scout Fred flagged the Equal Voices apology for the antipathy toward LGTB (or is it LBTG? Does it matter, if the letters still stand for the same things?) engendered by organized religion, I didn’t expect it to be controversial. As the comments revealed in due course, it was. Looking back deep into Ethics Alarms posts and even into the foggy past of the Ethics Scoreboard, I have tried to clarify the distinction between the moral rejection of homosexuality by those who are faithfully following a religion that still holds to ancient taboos, and those whose attitudes toward gays are rooted in irrational fear, gate and bigotry. Ethically, however, the distinction became hard to jutify. The harm is palpable, and the facts are clear. The religious tended to embrace false facts (no, homosexuals do not indoctrinate heterosexual children; no, same sex marriage does not threaten Western civilization; yes, gays are a likely to be decent, law-abiding, ethical people as anyone else) to avoid doubting their faith; the bigoted and hateful frequently used religion to justify their bigotry. The Equal Voices apology, I believe, is just one more positive step towards full cultural acceptance of the sad truth that the treatment of gays was a mistake, based in ignorance, and no longer defensible on religious or any other grounds. Ethics evolves when morality does not; that’s what’s good, and unsettling, about ethics. Things we thought were right turn out to be wrong, and vice-versa. There’s no shame in that, unless one denies what is right in front of one’s face.
Now comes veteran Ethics Alarms commenter Pennagain with a general commentary sparked by the post, focusing not on LGBT bias but bias against the religious and irreligious.
Here is his Comment of the Day, on the post, The Equal Voices Apology To LGBT Individuals:
I am addressing this to all interested readers of Ethics Alarms, not just the wonderful Steve-O, who has heard it all before, but it’s been a while since the subject has come up. It is clear that Ethics Alarms has a preponderance of commenters who have (and sometimes vigorously find it necessary to defend or decry) a religion. That everyone has a religion seems to be taken for granted, the way homosexuality was automatically assumed to be completely wrong/bad/sick/whatever not so very long ago, and the conversation went on from there. . .The way being politically conservative is the norm here as well.
But once in a while, I have to respond to this kind of statement:
I remain a member, partly because I loathe atheism and atheists,
I understand the part about your dad, Steve, but the “loathing” of atheism doesn’t make any more sense than your oft expressed loathing of homosexuality and homosexuals. And the loathing of atheists makes even less sense. People cannot believe what they disbelieve (or not be what they are) anymore than they can do the opposite. Nor is a disbelief any more negative than a belief. It am what it am. That is the power of faith reinforced by an individual’s conscious existence and identity. Not to mention your or anyone else’s inability to distinguish an atheist (and most homosexuals, for that matter) from anyone else.
Some people may go to church because it is the thing to do according to family, peers or community, not because of belief. Some people may declare atheism because of the same casual but pressing external reasons. I think the majority of people who feel one way or the other do so not by active choice but by an inherent “knowing” that something (usually called a god or higher power) has a presence — or NOT — in their minds. The intellectual argument is that of the agnostic who doesn’t “believe” in either direction, feeling that we can’t “know” either way. [okay, that’s an oversimplification, but I think that gets it across.]
I am aware that neither of us are going to change our spots so I will respectfully read any response you care to make (I have appreciated and often enjoyed the ones you create when not in your Mr. Hyde mode), but I don’t see any purpose in arguing it on a subjective level, a futile exercise that never ends in enlightenment on either side. I will simply loathe your loathing aloud when I am able to do so.
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Graphic: Inquisitr
Ethics Alarms 
Ethically, however, the distinction became hard to justify. The harm is palpable, and the facts are clear. The religious tended to embrace false facts (no, homosexuals do not indoctrinate heterosexual children; no, same sex marriage does not threaten Western civilization; yes, gays are a likely to be decent, law-abiding, ethical people as anyone else) to avoid doubting their faith; the bigoted and hateful frequently used religion to justify their bigotry. The Equal Voices apology, I believe, is just one more positive step towards full cultural acceptance of the sad truth that the treatment of gays was a mistake, based in ignorance, and no longer defensible on religious or any other grounds. Ethics evolves when morality does not; that’s what’s good, and unsettling, about ethics. Things we thought were right turn out to be wrong, and vice-versa. There’s no shame in that, unless one denies what is right in front of one’s face.
Homosexual culture, very clearly and very obviously indoctrinates. It happens through movies, TV programs, novels, daily interactions, and is simply completely and thoroughly — need I say absolutely? — obvious.
To understand how this came about, and how modernity has been shaped to modify deeply-set notions that anteceded Christianity, and are part of a world-wide and constant discomfort with homosexuality and homosexual culture, I suggest (as I have before): “After the Ball: How America will Conquer its Fear & Hatred of Gays in the 90s” (Kirk and Madsen). These are two advertising men and psychologists who outlined a social engineering plan that was carried out, and which has succeeded.
Now, please tell me again that ‘Homosexuals do not indoctrinate heterosexual children’. The point is NOT (in my case) to think of these things are of anyone with hate, the point is much larger and much more important. It is to understand SOCIAL ENGINEERING of culture by powerful forces, and to understand how traditional culture, in people and communities, has been attacked and transformed. When one sees the conjunto of different forces that operate together, and when one grasps the degree to which they represent forces of ‘cultural Marxism’ which became very powerful in the 60s and post-Sixties, one can better understand (in my view though I accept that other people do not see things like this) a general breakdown in social structure, as well as the destruction of social values and established mores.
I would suggest that the paragraph I quoted above you cannot, or perhaps have chosen not to, take any part of this into consideration. By this I mean the social engineering which is detailed in the book I mentions (which states its intentions openly, calmly and clearly).
If it comes down to a discussion, or an argument, or a culture-wide conflict as to what constitutes ‘harm’, then I would definely and do definitely take the unpopular side of the religiously-inclined. Homosexuality, as a cultural practice, as an inculcated ‘life choice’ which is inevitably presented to children as a viable option, and then supported by image, propaganda and novel social conventions, is definitely harmful. It does not have a noticible *positive* aspect in fact. It has been made to seem that way though, through social engineering!
Homosexuals exist and they will always exist. This is historical fact. But homosexuality must be repressed, and it is moral and ethical to do so, not the other way around. The only way that this will happen is when people grasp the most bedrock and philosophical aspect of the arguments, and only if they accept them. When that happens there will occur a natural social reaction, as has always been the case.
Without the understanding that presently homsosexuality is a sort of 5th column for general decadence and general destruction of institutions of culture, there is no way to resist it. Sexuality is a tremendously powerful weapon of manipulation and, sadly, culture is being manipulated away from the more bedrock understanding.
Is it about ‘hate’? No, it isn’t. Read Kirk and Madsen where they describe how to make the opponent look like a hater and they gay as the victim and the one filled with love and correctness. Sometime back, this was pointed out to me, when I watched ‘American Beauty’ I saw that the only two normal people in the whole film were the two gays who lived next door to the military ‘hater’. This is how people get twisted up inside theirself. This is manipulation. (And the author of that film was projecting his own attitudes toward his own father, I read).
That is absolutely propaganda, and it is overy and it is obvious!
Eight paragraphs and not a single example of the so-called “harm” of homosexuality.
You rant and bloviate and you say nothing.
Typical.
There is no harm in the actual orientation. There can be harm in the activity, particularly if it is uncontrolled, and there are certain illnesses that are, if not unique to homosexuals, more common among them. There can be harm in the culture, at least in the bathhouse era when uncontrolled sex was much more common. I do not think the mythology that’s sprung up around it, which Alizia points out, it terribly helpful. I do think there is harm in using it as a lever for coercion.
“There can be harm in the activity, particularly if it is uncontrolled”
“There can be harm in the culture, at least in the bathhouse era when uncontrolled sex was much more common”
Please, daddy, control my sexuality! Without you, I’m liable to start fornicating with whatever I can find, straight men who might or might not like it, children, animals, cheese graters, maybe even tree knotholes of an appropriate height. Please save me from myself!
NOT THE CHEESE GRATERS!!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Won’t someone think of the cheese graters?
There is no grater cause.
…
I regret nothing.
Be ashamed EC! Be grately ashamed!
Cheese graters? Sounds painful. Some of the rest sounds like Portnoy’s Complaint, where the narrator talks about the milk bottle he used to “drive wild with my Vaselined upright” and how he cored an apple on a picnic, saw what it looked like, and ran off into the woods, to “fall upon the cool and mealy hole.”
All silliness aside, no one is saying anyone needs to be saved from themselves. Most CAN discipline themselves. Those who can’t, though…
Blessed are the cheesegraters…
“…maybe even tree knotholes of an appropriate height”…
I’ve instructed the park managers to fill those holes with cement. But only from ground levels to 8-10 feet. If you are seen at high elevations having your fun up in the branches the authorities may be called, photos published.
Stay home, I recommend. A closet is at least warm and safe and will involve you in no acrobatics or embarrassing situations. 😉
(Though it just occurred to me that Arbory is nowhere considered a crime …)
Chris wrote, “You rant and bloviate and you say nothing.”
I honestly think there are a few of your past comments that fit into that category; maybe I’ll save your quote for future usage as a reply to you. Thanks for the addition to my rhetorical quote list, I’ll make sure I reference you with a nice #Chris when I use it. 🙂
Chris,
I’m not sure anyone around here has been as hard on Alizia comments as I have been in the past but I think you went overboard with your reply; try rereading her comment a few more times, no one is saying you have to agree with it.
Chris writes: “Eight paragraphs and not a single example of the so-called “harm” of homosexuality.”
I’ll go to work on that when I have the time! Over time I will construct, brick by brick, rock by rock, a sufficient barrier against what I see as your hyper-liberal excess.
My understanding is that without the social engineering effort, carried on over time and as outlined in the book I mentioned, traditional social aversion to homosexuality was shamed. Having such a view of it was made to appear bad. What I think this indicates is what I call ‘social coercion’. And I believe that it was carried out by ‘elites’ of sorts, like what they say about Hollywood. The people that fabricate culture began to *sell* it.
To understand the shift in morality, I think you have to go back in time and understand the methods by which sexual morality changed in the culture. I have listened to and watched numerous E. Michael Jones videos (you will of course have to hate him because he is appearing on the SPLC watch-out list) and he speaks about how the guidelines changed.
The kind of material that I read and examine, and think about, is stuff that you cannot read or examine or think about.
Let’s face it: Gays are neither better nor worse than than anybody else. We do have the phenomia of pedophile priests who do have a propensity for seducing young altar boys. How big a group they are is uncertain. I have worked with many gays in education: Many of them were dedicated teachers, speech therapists, and classroom aides along with some true jerks. I do object to special university programs for gay and lesbian studies. Instead I suggest a human sexuality course that all students are required to take.
Wow, I agree with Alizia, will wonders never cease?
The fact is that no society in history that normalized homosexuality has survived for very long afterward. The family is the central unit of a healthy society. When that unit is shattered (and it starts with immorality between heterosexuals, in case you think I’m being reactionary) society loses it’s stability. Abortion/euthanasia and embracing homosexuality are at the end of the cycle.
Recognizing that historical reality has nothing to do with religion or bigotry.
The post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Classic.
Even if it happens almost every time? I’d call that a pattern.
It’s not. Over time, mature societies learn that there’s nothing to fear about homosexuality. Over time, all societies, empires and civilizations run out of gas. The common element is time, not gays..
No, the common element is corruption.
Truthful statements always have an odd power …
(The below one was wrongly placed, here is where I meant it).
You mean you get a strange positive feeling when someone asserts something that you already believe? I’ve noticed that, too.
That is an interpretive-assertive statement! By interpretation you assert. That is not quite what I mean. I say that corruption is possible, is real, is deleterious, and can be seen and described. If that is so, then its opposite can also be sketched.
True indeed that aspects of my observation of the effect of corruption are value-assertions, but so it is for everyone, even octopii with no exoskeleton. 😉
As I clarify my understanding (of corruption and then its opposite) there is little doubt that I will make you (in the plural and general sense) uncomfortable. The Tenth Avatar of Vishnu is Kalki after all!
That is one of my central premises: that many people cannot be decisive in terms of assertion of *strong values* when they swim in seas of relativism. To turn against that current is to become decisive.
That is my object.
The fact is that no society in history that normalized homosexuality has survived for very long afterward.
This is ahistorical bullshit.
The family is the central unit of a healthy society. When that unit is shattered
Good thing gay marriage doesn’t “shatter” any families, then. I do know families that were shattered when parents refused to accept their gay kids, though.
Moral collapse has often preceded actual collapse, like with the Greek and Roman empires. That said, acceptance of homosexuality was more of a problem in the Roman Empire, where it was something of a taboo until late in the game, than in the Greek, where male pederasty was fairly common.
Truthful statements always have an odd power …
Do you have a list of societies that have normalized homosexuality, collapsed or not?
Most people say the Roman Empire, so I’ll use that as an example. At the risk of oversimplifying things, they rose to prominence through war and violence, and they split apart due to complacency, infighting, and overextending their borders. Their success or failure seems to be based on how ready they were to conquer, subjugate, and defend territory, rather than where they chose to put their genitalia, or their moral values, or their overall quality of life.
I’d argue that in order to become an empire in the first place you have to have a certain amount of immorality, because you usually have to threaten and kill people. I’d also argue that many societies have collapsed despite great family values, due to decadence and excess unrelated to morality. The Dust Bowl comes to mind. Thoughts?
Just realized that the Dust Bowl example doesn’t do anything to address your argument; if I’m not mistaken, you were arguing that heteronormativity is necessary to sustain a society, not that it was sufficient. I was trying to avoid making such a redundant argument, but failed. Feel free to ignore it.
Actually I am not blaming homosexuality at all. I’m simply noting that moral decay which is related to the sustaining of the family unit, is a symptom of the decline of many if not most civilizations. The embrace of homosexuality and the devaluation of human life (not saying that they are related in any way except that they both appear at the end of the decline and they both serve to destroy the family and are not usually present as acceptable behavior until the decline is well on its way.)
When I assert this as truth it’s always rejected vigorously. No one has changed my mind about it, but I know it’s not going to be accepted. I suppose I should just give up on expressing it.
So, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that the Ancient Romans managed to conquer and hold Europe and parts of Africa and Western Asia because of their strong family structure and valuation of human life, and those disappeared later, which led to their collapse?
Where did you read or hear about the Ancient Roman family structure and their valuation of human life over the lifespan of their empire?
Also, as has been said before, homosexuality is not sufficient or necessary to destroy a family structure. It’s rather incidental. I agree that family is important, but I don’t see how it follows that heterosexuality is important.
That is not at all what I’m saying. If what I am saying is so poorly reasoned or expressed that it’s not coming across, I give up. No point in continuing what will end up angering people I have no wish to offend and using up my time.
We have all the time in the world…
Angry? Of course not. I save my anger for the arrogant and disrespectful, and even then I use it sparingly.
I’m just trying to figure out where we got the idea that the Roman Empire’s success and failure was in any way contingent on their family values, and what other civilizations we’re using as examples of how the decline of family values leads to collapse. If we’re using it as evidence, we should at least make sure it’s well-documented.
Please note that I didn’t use the Roman empire as an example. I refer to civilizations, which are not necessarily the same as empires.
Good point. I wasn’t sure which civilizations you meant, so I pulled one of the ones Steve mentioned.
What civilizations did you have in mind when you said that all of the ones that neglected family values had collapsed?
An answer to the question of ‘decline’ (corruption, et cetera), what it is, where it occurs, and how, if it is an honest question, requires a careful, structured and footnoted response. To be able to see and understand ‘corruption’ comes about because of antecedents that are part of a person’s perception.
You could refer to Spengler: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West. You could also refer to Rene Guenon and ‘The Crisis of the Modern World’, or Rama P Coomaraswamy in ‘The Destruction of the Christian Tradition’. One of the first substantial works that had an effect on me was Robert Bork’s ‘Slouching Toward Gomorrah’. But in order to be influenced by this sort of work, you have already to have a realtionship to the perception.
My own view is that Hyper-Liberalism is a sort of disease of the mind. But a disease of the mind that begins as a disorder in the body. And one of the primary agents of disorder is seduction. I know, I know, that is a hard one for libertines to take in. Surely sexuality is not the only area where it is manifest, but it is a large one.
But to say all this, and to talk about it, really is a project of explanation. My view is that when people do not want to hear it, they simply block themselves off from the intuition needed.
Reform movements always begin though when the bottom is reached. That is true for a sole person and it is also true for a society.
Based on the Wikipedia article, Spengler barely mentions corruption, doesn’t mention the family, and the decline of a civilization is caused by dogmatic authority and a lack of independent initiative. I think he’s got some good ideas that are awkwardly expressed. What does any of that have to do with homosexuality?
Alizia, I think the schema that you are using to describe concepts and relationships are not shared by other people. That doesn’t mean they don’t understand. It just means you’ll have to find basic schema that people can easily recognize and build the concepts from there. I’m trying to understand your schema, but they seem to be based mostly on a “natural order” that’s governed by aesthetics, and I can’t identify the basic principles.
Can we just get a list of societies from Earth’s history that have experienced a decline in their quality of life that can be connected to a break from 1950s American family values? People keep bringing this up, and then failing to provide any examples. I’m not asking for a doctoral thesis, but an excerpt from a middle school essay would be nice.
Let’s start with the examples, and then we can ask whether there is any causal connection between homosexuality and civilizations “declining”, or whether it’s some sort of thematically symbolic Fisher King phenomenon, like Pride Rock experiencing a drought because Scar took over as the Lion King.
This snark brought to you by having to ask the same question repeatedly. Steve, feel free to chime in if you’ve got examples you’d like to explain. Shall we start with the Ancient Greeks and Romans you mentioned earlier?
Certainly it is true that a group of people ‘share’ some basic ideas. And when they are united in their agreement it makes sense that an alternate or opposing or challenging view is rejected. Unlike you, I do think that sometimes we have a tendency to close ourself off, and in this sense to not understand can also be not to have a will to understand. And I also think that there is such a thing as descent and a falling away from the capability of understanding. In other places I have recently written about lack of ability to grasp and appreciate complex symbols. You will not be able to convince me that it does not happen that the spiritually alive cannot become spiritually dead, or that spiritual death is not real. In my view, if there is anything at all that a person must pay attention to, both in him and herself and in the world around her or him, it is the ascendent, spiritual possibility. And I clearly outline an aspect of what I think dampers that.
I gave a couple of references to understand the perception of ‘decadence’ as a sort of *mood*. You know, like ‘Spenglerian gloom’ as I think William Buckley said once. But I mentioned 3 other sources too: Guenon, Bork and Coomaraswamy. I do not have enough of a handle on what ‘descent’ or ‘decline’ is to spell it all out for you or anyone. Sometimes it seems quite clear to me what the root of *the problem* is, and then it gets obscured again.
You are not going to be able to convince me that I should alter my notions of homosexuality and gender-decadence as a symptom of decline and corruption. And this is how it works: a social coercion. It is a force of a group which, one way or another, shames those who hold to (what I suppose must be called) the traditional view. It is easy to observe just in these exchanges.
I am farily careful in what I say though, and what I say is simple: homosexuality should not be encouraged, advertised, sold, presented as a viable option. To understand my perspective you’d have to enter into it and discover its terms and predicates. You likely will not. See for example ‘The Marketing of Evil’ to understand a phenomenon of our present.
I referred to a book where the manipulative propaganda campaign that was carried out was all explained and detailed (‘How America Will Overcome It’s Fear and Hated of Gays in the 90s’). If you are comfortable with that level of social engineering and coercions, well, what can I say? This is top-down social engineering and it is not really democratic. It is something else altogether.
To unravel our present seems to me insanely complex. Why is this?
Finally, I am not really interested in making some case against gay lifestyle, it is not really my area. I see sexual deviation as a symptom. How to finally interpret it, I am uncertain. But I say what I think.
You are not going to be able to convince me that I should alter my notions of homosexuality and gender-decadence as a symptom of decline and corruption. And this is how it works: a social coercion. It is a force of a group which, one way or another, shames those who hold to (what I suppose must be called) the traditional view.
That’s really too bad, because your theory is bats. Some of the most conservative, family oriented people I know are gay. The idea that homosexuality endangers any values at all is just batty, pure, ancient fear and disgust gussied up with psychobabble. How people have sex as adults simply does not have an impact on society. None has been shown none has been proven.
Homophobia is literally a twin of antisemitism. Any decline going on has been squarely caused by that 95-85% majority, not the rest.
“Can we just get a list of societies from Earth’s history that have experienced a decline in their quality of life that can be connected to a break from 1950s American family values”
This is thing that make answering your questions futile. You are not seriously asking in order to understand.
In that scenario I’m not going to engage. I’m glad Alicia is up to it. I find myself agreeing with her far oftener than I would have believed possible. Especially since I reject all of her white supremacist rhetoric.
“Can we just get a list of societies from Earth’s history that have experienced a decline in their quality of life that can be connected to a break from 1950s American family values”
That sounds like a Chelsea Clinton question!
Sorry, I thought it was clear that I didn’t literally mean ‘50s values. I was using that as shorthand for the values you describe. It was supposed to be light humor, and not intended as a mean jab. I apologize and retract the phrase.
That said, it is suspicious to me that you would use my mild facetiousness directed at someone else as an excuse to avoid answering a simple question. I could be wrong, but your reticence leads me to suspect that you absorbed this idea as common knowledge without ever having been aware of any evidence for it. Again, I could be wrong, and I encourage you to establish that I am.
I assure you that at least inasmuch as I can make it, this is a very friendly environment for you to support your points, irrespective of whether I agree with them. You don’t have to have a list of examples on hand; we can both do research on the topic. However, it is not a friendly environment for you to make a point and refuse to support it. Making assertions unsupported by fact is something Trump and the Democrats do. If that comparison makes you feel uncomfortable, it should. Respectable people don’t make unsupported assertions, and they try not to believe them, either.
I’m being less than maximally pleasant here because this is serious. What you allow yourself to believe and assert to others is an ethical issue, and carelessly spreading inaccurate information is a public disservice and a bad habit to get into. You can take some time and come back with examples. I’ll wait. However, if you continue to assert that homosexual behavior is an indicator of societal decline with zero facts to back it up, that is willful ignorance, which is much more dangerous to society (and I can cite evidence for that).
That’s really too bad, because your theory is bats. Some of the most conservative, family oriented people I know are gay. The idea that homosexuality endangers any values at all is just batty, pure, ancient fear and disgust gussied up with psychobabble. How people have sex as adults simply does not have an impact on society. None has been shown none has been proven.
Homophobia is literally a twin of antisemitism. Any decline going on has been squarely caused by that 95-85% majority, not the rest.
To say it is bats is just an opinion. What is bats for one, is sound for another. But what interests me more is the group-coercive aspect. My researches have led me to conclude that the present attitudes toward homosexuality, which also connect to an entire revolution in respect to general sexuality, and in my view a political use of sexual seduction to undermine people and their internal value system, is a genuine concern. You can call me an idiot, a bat, a terrible person, and anything you wish and it will not bother me at all. I understand how shaming as a tactic woks so it is less impactful on me.
To say that there are some homosexuals who are family-oriented, or conservative, has very little to do with what I have been saying, clearly and ethically: Homosexuality should not be encouraged, advertised, sold, nor should it be made to seem equal to the union of a man and a woman and, absolutely, in the traditional family. You would in some other context demolish your own argument and say something like ‘There was likely some very upstanding, family-oriented, dog petting, alms giving Nazi who loaded the bodies into the ovens’.
I would not attack any homosexual at the level of his or her personality, that is a non-productive way to go about opposing the notion of it, and certainly the selling of it. Again I suggest, and it will not be taken up my suggestion, to read and understand the ideas behind ‘The Marketing of Evil’. In my view this extends far beyond the problem of homosexuality and into sexual ethics, but also to general social ethics in a corrupt, decadent, rudderless nation and situation like is now. To make an analysis of ‘evil’, to be able to name it, and to get out from under social coercion and its so many different techniques, and to be able to get clear about what one oneself means and what one values, is not an easy process.
I start from the premise — it is simple enough — that in our society and in any society, but definitely in Occidental culture and society, the primary union and institution is, and it must be, the child-producing man-woman relationship. This is bedrock for me. You can try, go ahead, but you will not I do not think be able to move me from this predicate. Therefor, people, all people, in all sectors of society, should clearly see this, and live in accord with it. Homosexual culture, when one looks into its origins and its activities (in the mass culture) is deviant in the precise sense of the word. It is an attempt to create, somewhat parasitically, an alternative or adjacent possibility which, obviously and foundationally, operates couner to the primary premise I have outlined. If one examines this culture — and I lived in the Bay Area and I did my research and went around with my eyes open and saw fantastical things — one discovers, at the core of it, the catagorical deviancy I am attempting to name. It does NOT mean that a given homosexual is a *bad person*. All that I have said is that homosexuality should be generally shunned, somewhat as it was in Greek times. Homosexuals exist now, and they will always exist. They themselves should ethically and morally limit their own activity to the private and they themselves should not enter society as a political movement nor to establish a gay alternative universe.
I oppose this now, I will oppose this in idea and philosophically, and I will continue to do this despite any shaming pressure you or anyone else brings against me.
Everything that the individual does, be it in thought or in the deed, has an effect, and very directly on culture and society. That is why, that is precisely why, the homosexual movement as political and social movement is having destructive effect. In my researches I have come to see how it is linked with Sixties radicalism and thus to Marxian praxis. It also has clear links to militant feminism and indeed these two camps team up. One can look into that and make decisions about it.
There is a whole array of different ideas which as I say, because I believe it to be true, originate in corruptions that start within the social body, but this means the actual body of an actual and sole person.
The medicine against that corruption is of course spirituality and though that requires much explanation I start from a premise such as ‘You cannot simultaneously masturbate and pray to God’. This means that you cannot simultaneously allow yourself to slip and slide down into materialism and honor and uphold the higher ideals of culture.
I finally suggest that what is important and necessary is to be able to define and defend these premises, to articulate them, and that doing this is the beginning of a reversal against hyper-liberalism which in the end destroys the capacity to reason.
No, it’s not opinion, just like when the crazy man outside the subway says he’s God and I conclude he’s bats, it is not an opinion. We can often discern the facts. Rhetorical cheats cab confuse the issue, and claim that life is a dream, or reality is an illusion, but that has to be discarded by anyone who wants to have a productive life. Yes, the family unit is a core building block of civilization: that’s been conclusively demonstrated by history and logic. Yes, a base level of reproduction in these groups are essential for the species to continue.
No, homosexuality, gay couples and gay marriage have no deleterious effect on any of this. Indeed, the many stable, long time gay couples bolster society. Promiscuity? Prostitution? Unwed procreation? Cohabitation without legal commitment? You have a valid argument. This one is like arguing that underwear styles worn by my neighbors destabilize my marriage. Opinions have to be moored to reality, or they aren’t opinions, they are delusions. This delusion, the bias against gay people and gay people doing what every other kind of people do, form stable relationships, is very old, and once could be defended—say, about 2000 years ago, when size of population was a matter of survival, AND when there was insufficient knowledge to avoid designating homosexuality as a volitional sin.
It’s just faith, an unsupported belief that you have unfortunately lodged in the foundation of your belief systems, so you are desperate to maintain it. It doesn’t wash. It hurts and stigmatizes people for no just reason. How many of our most potentially brilliant artists, inventors, writers and thinkers have been sent into depression, seclusion, suicide or isolation because of this irrational fear, supported by the rationalization for bigotry that you keep banging as if it is social science.
To begin to say that to have a posture that discourages homosexuality, or that articulates a perspective or foundation the opposes it, is like antisemitism, is an interesting line to take!
It is similar to the general use of the Fascist! label when one encounters an idea or activity that one opposes.
There is no possible way, that I can see at least, to put them on the same platform.
I am a Christian convert out of Judaism. I think I can say a few things about what a Jewish-critical position is. And in that, I also prefer to remain free of all coercion and shaming (emotionalized argument).
My God, how interesting it is to participate in a forum as this is and to encounter all these rigid conventions! I see these as problems of thinking. That is to say, coercions that enter into a person’s thinking and make him or her unfree. The issue is ‘thought control’ and the cure is free thinking.
How difficult it is to get out from under these pressures that control it!
Especially since I reject all of her white supremacist rhetoric.
I have never, and I will not ever, use such terms as ‘supremicist’, nor do I think in those terms. I have never, not once, said such a thing and I have not advocated for it.
What I have advocated for is identitarianism and a recovery of a verifiable and necessary link between one’s physical being, one’s locality, and one’s mental and also spiritual self, as something requiring 1) self-consciousness, 2) protection against adversaries.
But note the folowing: the ethical and commmon-sense idea I just described — one that is valuable and necessary for any people, anywhere — when it is heard, is transformed. It is like with a microphone that records speech but modifies it. And when it is repeated back it is transformed into something else entirely!
This effect, this mechanism, is very interesting. It is a sort of active interpretation which involves an imposition of one’s own idea or perception on an idea which one fears or does not understand.
In our mass-culture, in a mass-market, it has become imperative to break down all the hierarchies that differentiate people. This is how regional cultures have been destroyed. And much of this happened in the aftermath — but as related processes — as the permanent war-culture and war-economy has been established. These are military-governmental processes. They are profoundly anti-democratic. You can research this by examining the work of E Michal Jones who writes about the deliberate destruction of regions and neighborhoods in ‘The Slaughter of Cities’.
If anyone wants to understand the rising tide of opposition to the present and reigning hyper-liberalism, it has to be undertaken in a methodological manner. If one does not want to, it is then best to use easy and already manufactured labels. Just peel it off and stick it.
I have been trying to point out that *the next cycle of time* within the Occident will be one of conscious turning against hyper-liberal excess. I am speaking of shifts that will occur over a 50 year period. It is well to have greater understanding of the thinking and the thinkers that are heading these efforts.
Alizia Tyler,
There is something that you still haven’t learned very well, that’s when to shut up; and I mean knowing when to shut regardless of whether you “think” you’re right or wrong. Sometimes it’s better for everyone to just walk away.
Why is it better?
Jack, I do understand every point that you make. I have read just about every post of yours over the last year and a half on the topic. I feel I understand your position and the *structure* of it.
I actually get the impression that by continuing I will anger people, and possibly even you. But I have said pretty much where I stand on the question in the various posts I have written in this blogpost. I stand by it all.
If I am going to be institutionalized I just hope they have a decent cook. I am something of a food-snob.
Alizia Tyler wrote, “Why is it better?”
Really?
A deep thinker like you can’t figure this one out on your own?
Alizia,
There is a point in some conversations where continuing to beat a dead horse unnecessarily builds walls between you and those around you. Have you ever heard the phrase “irretrievably broken”?
There are consequences to your choices, some consequences are simply not worth the choice. The Julie Principle.
Don’t beat dead horses.
This is an ethics blog/forum. If this isn’t the place to discover the truth, then where? How can we live in the same society with different beliefs about right and wrong and no way to resolve them? Do we just have lots of children, raise them to believe what we believe, and hope that we can vote the other side into submission? Democracy doesn’t work if people aren’t interested in updating their beliefs and sharing what they learn.
I have neither the authority nor the desire to stop people from talking simply because I disagree with them. I just want to engage in collaborative truth-seeking, which can’t happen if we stop talking. People who are wrong don’t make me angry. The people who make me angry are those who aren’t interested in discovering whether they’re wrong and those who aren’t interested in explaining why they think they’re right–even if I agree with them. We can’t get anything done like that.
It doesn’t matter where you are. You can’t help where you are. What matters is where you’re going.
Extradimensional Cephalopod,
Since you didn’t say who your comment was directed towards, I’m going to assume (just because I can and it directly followed mine) that it was directed at me and based on that assumption I respectfully state that you missed the point of my comment. If it wasn’t directed at me then please ignore this.
You’re right; I was replying to you. I may very well have missed the point of your comment. Even knowing that, though, I’m having trouble understanding what it is. Why is it important that Alizia stop arguing? Thanks for clarifying.
Extradimensional Cephalopod wrote, “I may very well have missed the point of your comment. Even knowing that, though, I’m having trouble understanding what it is. Why is it important that Alizia stop arguing?”
Honestly EC, I thought this was pretty clear when I said above “There is a point in some conversations where continuing to beat a dead horse unnecessarily builds walls between you and those around you.” and “There are consequences to your choices, some consequences are simply not worth the choice. The Julie Principle.”
Applying that to Alizia’s comments is not a stretch; Alizia has a tendency to endlessly argue in a verbose manner, rehashing many of the same things over and over again and accomplishing little to nothing in the process, this builds communication barriers by encouraging others to tune out what she writes. At some point in conversations, and in overall commenting patterns, Alizia needs to apply the Julie Principle (as some of us have done with her), accept the fact that what she is doing is not being effective instead of continuing endlessly and risking alienation. I think Alizia enjoys her time in discussion here, ad do most of us, but knowing when to shut up, listen, and be brief really is important too.
Alizia has made strides over the last year, and I’ve noticed the efforts but sometimes we all just need to be reminded.
It’s my opinion, you don’t have to understand it and you don’t have to agree with it.
I would have answered as Extradimensional did. I took your comment as an advise to stop communicating. If there is a place to discuss such things, it is here!
Myself, I am very obsessive about these things, and I like tallking and discussing. I don’t take offense. Even when, as it sometimes happens, I get told to ‘shut up’. ::: grin :::
I don’t think we’re going to agree on this point. I have no problem with committed gay couples, I have no problem with committed gay couples adopting children. But, committed gay couples are more rare than committed heterosexual couples. By embracing homosexuality I am more concerned with gay pride parades, and the completely degrading behavior I see there. I also am concerned with feminists in vagina costumes. I’m talking about flaunting of degrading and disgusting behavior. I’m talking about children having to hear about homosexual sex before they even care about any kind of sex. I think you know what I’m talking about and I don’t think you can deny that it is happening as part of a breakdown in society. If we can have committed homosexual couples without all the flamboyant and socially degrading flaunting of societal norms then go for it. But it doesn’t happen that way.
“But, committed gay couples are more rare than committed heterosexual couples”
On a percentage basis? I’d love to see the data. Thanks to AIDS, I’d be willing to bet that the opposite is true.
“By embracing homosexuality I am more concerned with gay pride parades, and the completely degrading behavior I see there.”
When you explain it like that, I think I agree. Popularizing the idea that people are not only free to do what they want, but should do whatever they feel like, is a bad trend. Somewhere between Martin Luther King, Jr. and the present, oppressed people in the United States went from dignity to “pride” to disregard. Who needs to feel proud of something they have no control over? The point is just not to be ashamed. Heedlessness is never a good thing for a society to value, and we need to show its realistic consequences and stop idolizing it. What we need to heed is a different discussion topic, but we definitely need to heed something. Does that sound reasonable to you?
I’ve noticed that liberals tend to toss the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to erasing social rules. Then, of course, they impose rules of their own that can’t possibly work. “We are allowed to do this, therefore it is good. You are not allowed to criticize us for doing something we’re allowed to do.” They are trying to use the semantic playbook of the conservatives without understanding how it works.
Gay pride parades? Seriously? They began as a pushback to the closet mentality, and the societal attitude that gays needed to be in a perpetual state of shame. The flaming personas were controversial among straights and gays, but the message was effective and valid: 1) there are more of us than you think 2) come out, the weather’s fine! 3) we’re not ashamed, so cut it out, plus a little bit of showmanship.
Irish parades had similar origins. No parade has ever hurt anyone, except in Animal House. When the defense of the proposition that gays weaken healthy social norms gets this low, we are in the Desperation Zone. Scary.
I completely agree with your take on gay pride parades, Jack.
It reminds me of an exchange I had yesterday. Someone on Twitter didn’t understand why #BiTwitter was trending. Why do they need to draw so much attention to themselves? Well, when someone is told that they either a) don’t exist or b) shouldn’t exist, those people tend to feel a need to make a case for their existence…and when sexuality is shamed and repressed, it tends to come out in aggressive and controversial ways. Hence: Pride Parades.
“However, if you continue to assert that homosexual behavior is an indicator of societal decline with zero facts to back it up.”
Homosexual behavior is not the issue. Homosexual behavior is universal in all societies I’ve heart 3% I believe that I can’t remember exactly. The embrace of homosexual behavior and the changing of established societal norms is. Very broadly stated societies build up and become strong because they adhere to certain universal truths. Those truths are the foundation of the society. As time goes on for various reasons there is a decay in the original foundation. This is true across all of the building blocks of the foundation. Families and the idea that families transmit those values to their children is one of those building blocks. There is a degree of deviation from the norm that doesn’t harm the structure enough to cause it to fail, but eventually if deviations continue the structure is weakened. When families for any number of reasons begin to be replaced with less stable structures an important part of the foundation is weakened. Heterosexual marriage breakdown is by far the most serious source of decay and the beginning of it.
I don’t think this is out of the mainstream of social theory, but it is a religious as well as secular theory so that may be a stumbling block.
Nothing in your statement explains why in the world you think gay couples undermine heterosexual marriage in any way. They adopt children: so did I and my wife. Do you really think they teach their children bad values? To be gay? Not to value stable families? Why would you think any of that? And how does a gay couple, living their own lives, possibly affect society in a negative way? It’s impossible.
That’s a nice, coherent thesis statement. I’m fine with ignoring any religious affiliation it has and just looking at it on its own merits.
Where did you get the idea that the mainstream acceptance of homosexual behavior as a legitimate way of living one’s life would lead to the destabilization of families? I am reasonably certain that heterosexual people, who have always been the majority by a relatively enormous margin, are not going to be inspired to eschew traditional family units simply because they are comfortable with their homosexual friends. That goes double if gay marriage becomes an accepted aspect of the institution of marriage. I can’t claim to have a comprehensive understanding of humanity’s idiosyncrasies, but I can’t picture anyone having the train of thought, “My gay friends are all getting married and settling down. That makes me feel like having lots of children with no commitment whatsoever.”
Personally, I am looking for a nice, committed relationship with a human female. I don’t do casual intimacy, and I almost never do anything without a plan (which can also be a weakness sometimes). I don’t feel like I’m influenced in a negative way by accepting nontraditional lifestyles, but maybe that’s because although I am comfortable with deconstructing principles that don’t make sense to me, I hold all the tighter to the ones I have, because I know exactly how and why they work.
wyogranny:
When families for any number of reasons begin to be replaced with less stable structures an important part of the foundation is weakened.
Because as we all know, gay people do not have families. They emerge fully-formed from the head of Zeus, and then live the rest of their lives in crystal fortresses of solitude a la Superman.
Interesting. As distinct from Wynogranny my perspective is different, but it must be clearly stated that I am a theory-oriented person, and I do not make (and do not know how to make) rules and regulations for society.
But as I have said I see *society* and *civilization* in a very difficut position. I do have some of the Spenglerian Gloom. I have come to see, and I do believe it true, that the faith of a culture, and in the Occident this means the Christian faith, is essentially *the soul* of a nation. When the relationship to the physical manifestation of the church is destroyed, and it is quite collapsed in Europe (America is a different case), I am relatively certain that there is a corresponding break in the relationship to *soul*. I know these terms, and the ideas standing behind, are problematic for some people. The only thing I can say is that ‘these are European and Occidental categories’ of thinking and understanding. The more that I understand the Occident, the less able I am to escape from the Christian revelation and the Greek rationalism that articulates it.
Therefor, it is homosexuality, as a thing in itself, which is part of the problem. That is, as a perverse eruption from out of the understructure of society. Now, what I notice, is a resurgence of a rather untamed Pagan or Heathen spirit. Again, once a people has lost the link to its *soul*, which is symbolized and actual in a relationship to church, that people begins to go adrift. To go off the rails.
My lamentation is that I see this as a congeries of issues, but sexual deviancy, and diving back into the body, and turning away from the mind-frame that is capable of seeing and holding to *higher things*, is surely one of them. I put this under the general heading of ‘seduction’. But my critique, and the one I am developing and will develop, would, will, and should be interested in a general critique. I mean for example of a economy and a foreign policy built on the war-footing (this is undeniably so), and then so many other things that can and should be criticized. I mention ‘The Marketing of Evil’ and reviews can be read on Amazon (I won’t bother to outline it).
I do not accept Jack’s idea that there was a surge of perversity because it had been suppressed and now the drag-queens are just acting up. I see the assault on conventional society as arising from a Marxian subtext, and one of the main strategies of Marxian psychology is to weaken and undermine the family. I do not accept, and I will not ever accept, that we now *should* accomodate two levels of family: the heterosexual couple-family and then the gay couple-family which must get its children from elsewhere. I do not see this model as having a real future. Therefor, I oppose them as alternatives, as choices, but I have no power to control what people do.
And that brings me to my own main point. If a culture once was establsihed on a Christian theological foundation, and if a community oriented itself around its church and those teachings (the teachings of the saints essentially, as this is what Christianity is); but then if a culture gives up on all that and no longer desires to hold to that anchor, no longer values that, and no longer wants to be guided by those voices, then who can oppose them? The Christian seems to moan his fate: he no longer has substantial influence and other interests are (indeed!) runnign the show. And what is happening is that culture-at-large is saying ‘Get out of the public sphere! We are no longer interested in this!’
I personally understand that thi sis the sort of time we live in, though it is true that the process has been going on for a loooonngg time now.
To construct a position of ‘opposition’ to Gay culture or the ‘homsexualization of culture’ means that you have, in my way of seeing things, to reconstruct a whole alternative. This is what people of faith tend to do: retreat, educate their children separately, and try to hold to the essentials where value resides.
I do not know if I agree that homosexuals bring down a culture, but rather (like Camille Paglia, a rather odd messenger!) that sexual deviancy and excess is a symptom of decline (and she is a Spenglerian).
So, I stay with my original assertion: homosexuality must be and should be suppressed, not encouraged, not sold, not broadcast. This is going on though, and will keep going on, until the nadir is reached and a broad-based social movement begins to construct an opposition to the advance of decadent and corrosive processes. I personally think this is beginning.
I would further recommend those studies that deal on sexual addiction and sexual obsession, seen from a psychological perspective. To consider social phenomoena at this level (psycho-sociological) has problematic features, I admit, but I suggest that these outrageous manifestations of pure forms of hedonism that seem to lack control, are psychically dangerous.
And with this I offer another area of ‘proof’ which certainly, you will dismiss!
http://www.scoop.it/t/sex-addiction/p/1397230628/2012/03/11/carl-jung-on-sex-addiction-recovery
I would suggest examining the researches done on sexual obsession and addiction, and those studies that have to do with pornography and its influence on the mind, and especially the young mind. I have read some of these studies. I am only limitedly interested in doing the research to find the *perfect* links so I submit this one, which seems to touch on important topics.
http://www.scoop.it/t/sex-addiction/p/1397230628/2012/03/11/carl-jung-on-sex-addiction-recovery
“On a percentage basis? I’d love to see the data. Thanks to AIDS, I’d be willing to bet that the opposite is true.”
If the study is based on break-ups per year you might be correct. But, there (of necessity) have not been long term studies. Studies that have been done using more than one year’s statistics show about 50%.
ARGGH!!! Second time this week! There are NO valid stats showing the marriages break up 50% of the time! It’s fake stat!
From E2 on the Bill O’Reilly Post, to Spartan:
I am really getting sick of this 50%-of-marriages-end-in-divorce statistic. Do you know how HHS (or whomever) they figure this out? They take the total marriages in a given year and compare/contrast it to the total divorces in the SAME YEAR. So, in 2016, for example, they might show 500,000 marriages and 250,000 divorces. Ergo (!) 50% of marriages end in divorce. Does that make any sense at all if you think about it? What about the people married in previous years — 2, 5, 10, 20, years ago who happened to get divorced in 2016? Those people and their divorces are figured into the 2016 figures and thus oft-quoted 50% divorce rate statistic. It does not mean that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Think about it.
This is just one more example of misuing/miscalculating statistics to make our culture seem even less viable than it really is. Stop it!
She is 100% right. Now you have made TWO allegations bases on dubious or no facts. No, marriages don’t break up 50% of the time, and no, gays have no effect on the decline of civilizations. It’s not like you are alone in this, but its a good thing to work on.
By work on you mean what exactly?
That I can’t hold my own in this discussion?
That I’m clearly not as smart as you are?
That my dearly held beliefs are stupid?
That you can quantify and measure truth better than I can?
That I’m out of my depth in an intellectual discussion?
That I’m unethical?
Answers:
That I can’t hold my own in this discussion?
Nobody can hold their own flailing with misconceptions, myths, half-truths and biases while being unwilling to re-examine one’s own weak arguments having been confronted with legitimate flaws.
That I’m clearly not as smart as you are?
Nobody is saying that. But bias makes you stupid, like anybody else.
That my dearly held beliefs are stupid?
Stubborn and fact free. Stupidity is the product of bias. Once the bias is dealt with, the stupidity does too. I’m sure there are topics where my bias makes me stupider than you. This is not one .
That you can quantify and measure truth better than I can?
In this case, yes. Not making any general assertions beyond that.
That I’m out of my depth in an intellectual discussion?
Now you’re playing victim. See above.
That I’m unethical?
Spreading bias leading to the marginalization of law abiding, decent, honest individuals is unethical. Ethical people do unethical things sometimes. That’s why we depend on others to let us know we’re doing it.
By work on you mean what exactly?
I thought it was clear: work on getting your facts straight. This is something we should all work on, and we have all been called on it here at some point or another. Your defensiveness is unnecessary, and reveals a deep discomfort with the rightness of your own position.
Exactly.
“marginalization of law abiding, decent, honest individuals is unethical. Ethical people do unethical things sometimes. That’s why we depend on others to let us know we’re doing it.”
Yes, I’m flailing, but not about the core of my belief which is that the gay agenda as represented by people who behave in public in disgusting and degrading ways and who force an agenda of exposing children to sexualized discussions that they are not ready to hear and are not what their parents want them to either hear or see are damaging society and are a symptom of societal decay in its last stages.
I’ve repeatedly attempted to clarify this and keep getting called back to “Oh, but the good gay people aren’t like that.” I don’t care what people do in their own homes, but they owe society the respect of behaving decently in public. And just in case you think this is a gay bias, it isn’t. I feel the same way about indecency in feminism, politics, race relations, law, education and every other block at the foundation of a successful free society that allows all people the best chance to be free, happy, and productive. There are consequences to indecent, illicit behavior and the people who pay them are not always immediately the people who deserve them.
I see Jack’s argument as basically a coercive one, at least that is what it looks and feels like. I think it has to be pointed out because, generally and often, it is an example of how the processes of social shaming are carried out. Shaming and coercion are big elements in today’s social politics.
The problem with the accusation — unsubstantiated — of having weak arguments, or misconceptions, or dealing in half-truths is that one can just reverse it and assert the same against the one making the assertion, in this case Jack. It does not function as an argument.
It basically comes down to a statement like this: “I am right and you are wrong. End of discussion.”
There are many serious people who have issues with homosexual culture, or who interpret it differently, and have non-conventional views of what it means for society. (My own view fits more into a view similar perhaps to Camille Paglia in ‘Sexual Personae’. It is theoretical, based in ideas, and only seeks to influence by logical persuasion.)
I think that Wynogranny’s position has integrity. I think she has the right to be able to say ‘I do not want the children of my world to be exposed to this’ (and any other statements that stem from this position) and to make her opinion, and the value-set that stands behind it, known. It is a moral position and not necessarily one of ‘bias’. She has said that it is not so much the union that is an issue, but the behaviors that attend it.
It’s not coercive. It’s burden of proof.
I believe that I could, though I really do not want to because it is really so ugly, assemble evidence that would clearly indicate that the general gay manifestation such as in gay parades, in a social underground, in sexual behaviors, in social relationships (lovers, partners, b-friend, g-friend), in literature, and in psychology, and in a general effect on the social structure of the land, is evidentially a bad influence. (I made this effort when I lived in Sacramento near to San Francisco and I saw and felt things that I never want to have to see or feel again).
I would present all the evidence and I would make the case, and then I would support it with opinion/study like what I mentioned with “\’The Marketing of Evil’ (a documented, footnoted critique) and what would happen? You would disregard it.
That is the question that I find most interesting, as a theorist I say this. It is a question of value ultimately. What people choose to value. But that question is really much more complex I am coming to find out. I mean, how people come to value what they value. The ‘culture wars’ are at their base a war between systems of valuation. But there also is an internal psychology. It is not easy to talk about.
The argument that you bring forward, in my humble estimation of things, is part-and-parcel of hyper-liberalist activism. (I have a careful definition that I am developing of what ‘hyper-liberalism’ is).
It is at the end of a long chain of analysis of social phenomena that I begin to isolate ‘hyper-liberalism’ as an infectious *mood*. It has more to do with sentiment than with reason. It captures people and it carries them along. I also make the suggestion that it is coercive at its core. The base reason why it is coercive is because it is sentimental, not reasonable.
I am interested not in carrying forward hyper-liberalism and its *mood* but in seeing it turned back, confronted, reversed. The battle has begun in my view. It is cultural, psychological, sociological, spiritual, regional and personal.
That is why — despite Zeus and his thunder! — I feel inclined to keep insisting as I have here, tedious as it may be.
My concerns are ethical and moral and no one can dissuade me. And no one can shame me not to see what I see, think what I think.
😉
I believe that I could, though I really do not want to because it is really so ugly, assemble evidence that would clearly indicate that the general gay manifestation such as in gay parades, in a social underground, in sexual behaviors, in social relationships (lovers, partners, b-friend, g-friend), in literature, and in psychology, and in a general effect on the social structure of the land, is evidentially a bad influence.
Then do it. Saying you have proof but it’s too ugly to show is a transparent rationalization, and a cop-out, or a bluff. Show your cards. Such evidence doesn’t exist. And post hoc ergo propter hoc isn’t evidence.
(And I do apologize if it seem that I intervene between your comments to Wynogranny, but this sometimes happens on a forum where there are 2 poles, or more, in a conversation. Wynogranny has her own sense of things of course. I just say what is mine and what I think).
Jack asks for ‘proof’. But here is the problem: the proof is in the examination of attitudes, in certain visuals, and in the sense that one picks up where one is in these communities. I did a very brief search for a video in YouTube that indicates — if only to me — that there is something amiss in these people’s realtionship to sexuality, to themselves, to love, and to a range of different sentiments that are necessary to construct, within family life, and within the neighborhoods and communites, a strong, moral, decent people. Yes, I base this from within something that exists in me. It is therefor my *make-up*, a part of my own philosophy and spirituality, I accept this. And I am forced to accept that other people does have and will have a different inner structure. (That is why I say it is a battle between differing value-systems).
You cannot simultaneously masturbate and pray to God. I take this not at the level of a mojigato (a ‘prude’) but because I strongly feel, and I have observed and tested by observations, that a general corruption that creeps in has effect all over the range of person and the personality. And this certainly creeps into society. It is simply a given understanding that it will. What we do, our children will do.
In my view, and it is surely not mine alone, the things that we consider the highest and the best, in art, music, poetry, in architecture and in all other categories, have come into being because there is resistance to the lower manifestations, that which drag us down into materialism and crude, and also violent, sensuality. This is what ‘pornographic culture’ means. It is not intelligent (to use your term it is stupid) to deny that this has destructive effect.
I suggest — and I have been saying this all the way on through — that the homosexual phenomenon, as part of the Sixties phenomena, is connected in all sorts of different ways to a general decline in the culture, and not to an ascent.
You ask for ‘proofs’ but I suggest that the only way to proove any of this is to begin a project where one makes a detailed analysis. I have made some of this effort. I have read on both sides. From ‘Jane Sexes It Up’ (a collection of essays by pro-sex feminists) to ‘The Marketing of Evil’ (a Christian denunciation of perversion and immorality).
This is one video (it is disgusting but not overtyl pornographic) that shows to me young people who — in my view — very clearly on a wrong track. Unfortunatley, the social body is a connected body and the evil here is evil that contaminates society. It radiates out. As to further proofs, it would be in books and studies, a few of which I have already mentioned.
You will dismiss it all ….
In other words, you got nothin’. As I thought.
I agree that the video demonstrates a decline in public standards of how to be. Most of the people interviewed have very little class, taste, or eloquence. Now, that element of society has always existed, but we see that now people are proud of it on the Internet.
Lacking sophistication is not something to wantonly revel in. People should at least try to be poised and in control of what they say and do, even if they’re deliberately pushing limits. Bubble-headed party people are just so hard to sympathize with.
I still don’t see the inherent problem with homosexuality, though.
What would you accept as evidence?
I told you: you would simply dismiss the allusion to an area that has to be carefully researched and carfully thought through. It is moral thinking and is thinking of another sort.
I read this book and thought it well researched and quite persuasive. I would submit a study like this as part of my ‘evidence’ for consideration and conversation. But I also think that moral thinking, for the morally and ethically drowsy, is a slow process. You have to have been hurt by evil or by sin (and I mean ‘sin’ in the sense of what one realizes, deeply inside oeself, has hurt one and others) to understand what it is and why it requires moral opposing action.
The blurb is instructive, and so are the little essays that people have written in the reviews:
The two posts, above, were meant to follow the link to The Marketing of Evil and are some of the ‘proofs’ I would offer for conversation and consideration.
The link below, to papers having to do with sexual obsession and addiction, would be another element of my argument, which is that homosexuality, and sexual deviancy generally, must be recognized as dangers, and should be repressed.
Since my argument is not really against gays, which exist and always will exist, I instead focus on the ‘marketing’ of deviant sexuality as a *tool* for social manipulation and engineerings.
I would also suggest E Michael Jones’ books and talks on the use of sexuality, and specifically the gay movement, as part of an assault on democracy and genuine social ethics.
http://www.scoop.it/t/sex-addiction/p/1397230628/2012/03/11/carl-jung-on-sex-addiction-recovery
Sexual obsession and pornography have nothing to do with homosexuality. The fact that you think so is evidence that you’re beginning your inquiry from a point of confusion.
Sexual obsession, sexual perversion, psychological issues that get expressed through sexual deviation, pornographic culture and the business of it, and the employment of media-culture to encite or propogate certain forms of sexual expression in culture, are questions and issues which involve the present mass-media effort to normalize homosexuality, but homosexuality is part of it, not the whole of it.
To make it appear just one choice among all sort of choices, or like ‘You like vanilla, I like chocolate’ sort of taste. In my view, one must accept homosexuality, somewhat begrudgingly, but society must not encourage it for political purposes. And I certainly question whether it is wise to more or less teach it in the schools, to present it as a possibility, and one equal to ‘normal’ sexual life. And I would present to you *evidence* (which you would not consider of course!) where these propositions are explored. There are dozens and dozens of them, hundreds and thousands of them. And there are concerned, thoughtful people who attempt to get their position worked out with no resort to ‘hate’.
You seem to me unwilling to look beyond what I see as a narrowness of assertion, which is respectable because (I think) you want to see gays protected from harm and violent attack.
It seems to me that these manifestations in a psychological-sociological sense need to be seen in a larger context. I do not get the impression that you are interested in exploring that larger context, and so you shut it out.
Well, I think that is what is done in general in the culture. Your view is popular, of that there is no doubt, and it is *sold* through many different channels.
I see it as a manifestation of political correctness and it comes about through a group of influences. But the first order of business is to hook people at the sentimental and emotional level. By that I mean to appeal to their good will sentiments, a spirit of justness, or to the spirit of *love* and desire for social harmony…
…but if they don’t respond appropriately then they are free-game for the other tool: social shaming, ridicule and association with suuch other evils as Nazism. That there is a key for me that coercion is occurring.
Well, let’s leave it there for now. I am sorry to have so obviously devastated your position but, well, someone has to do it! 😉
Alizia, Zoltar may be right about you needing to stop and listen. Instead of learning the paradigms of others, you try to fit what they say into your own weak paradigms, it seems. You read about all these theories of “identity” and “principled foundation” which superficially fit history and have a poetic, narrative appeal to them, but which overlook an important fact: cultures are made of individual people and the causes and effects of their actions. If you want to accurately describe what matters about the identity and moral foundation of a culture, which are important, you need to pay attention to the identity and moral foundation of the individuals and how it affects their behavior.
You neglect the individual and impose poetry as a norm in the criteria you use to distinguish elevated cultures from more base ones, or just distinguishing between equal human cultures. When you draw these lines, think about what it means in terms of people and behavior, and ask yourself what actual difference it makes to an individual. Cultures are different, sure, but you’ll find they’re not the antithetical abstracts you make them out to be.
I’m not sure if this is quite getting at the core of your beliefs, but I think it’s getting closer.
Interesting. Yes, I have heard it all before, perhaps more than most, since I am a bit more studied on both faith (Catholic high school, college, and law school) and the role of faith in society, though more in Western society than others. I would highly recommend Tom Holland’s excellent “The Forge of Christendom,” Geoffrey Regan’s “First Crusader,” and much of Rodney Stark’s work. There is another book called “Defending Constantine” by Peter Leithart that I keep meaning to read but haven’t gotten to yet.
My response there was a shorthand response for continuing to believe because I am uncomfortable with unbelief and uncomfortable with its spokespeople. As I have written elsewhere, my family is Catholic, but we are generally pretty easygoing. No one is forced to attend Mass, though more than a few go when they otherwise wouldn’t at family events just to avoid potential friction. No one is quizzed about their personal lives. Like any family we’ve seen a few members fall, and they’ve been judged, but on the trouble they’ve caused for others, not on how they’ve fallen short of the Church’s teachings.
I’m not ignorant of the Church having its share of problems. I attended high school under the Christian Brothers, at least two of whom were later outed as pedophiles and a half-dozen more of whom had hair-trigger tempers and didn’t hesitate to enforce discipline with their fists, including the infamous Thomas Ford, who you can Google. I’m aware of Cardinal Law’s despicable handling of the problem of pedophilia in the Archdiocese of Boston, I’m aware he got off lightly, and I’m aware of how that looks. I’m also aware of all the good that Catholic Charities has done, and my parish was blessed with a series of very good pastors.
I’m aware of the Crusades, including the Reconquest, the Northern Crusades, and the Albigensian Crusade. I’m also aware of what came before, and I’m aware of the historical context they took place it. I’m aware of the Inquisition, and I’m also aware of the historical context IT took place in. Suffice it to say none of it happened in a vacuum.
I’m also aware of other denominations and other faiths (with Islam at the top of the list) having THEIR share of problems, which I won’t give a long list of here. No faith operates with completely clean hands.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t give a damn if someone else believes or doesn’t believe. That’s his business. If your family didn’t follow any faith, or you drifted away from the faith as you got older, or faith plays a minor role or no role in your life, that’s fine. So-called “weak atheists” who just don’t believe anything and just live and let live, are no problem.
So-called “strong atheists,” who take or push the affirmative position that there is no God, are another matter. In a way, that position can become a faith in its own way, since there’s no proving that position. Yes, yes, I’ve heard the argument that you can’t prove a negative, but if you are going to push a position, positive or negative, you can’t just say that it has to be accepted because there’s no proving it, while telling the other side to prove theirs.
Strong atheists also tend to be rude, condescending, arrogant, and a number of other objectionable things. Often they resort to name-calling or accusations of stupidity for those who disagree with them: calling them “religitards” and throwing out pithy, insulting, snarky phrases like “if God is your co-pilot you have chosen to lose your way.”
They often resort to selective history like blaming religion for the various wars (one meme even goes so far as to say atheism would solve the Arab-Israeli conflict), while ignoring atheism’s own less than wonderful history with regard to human rights – Robespierre and Marat sending thousands to the guillotine, Lenin and Dzerzhinsky turning the snow red in Russia, Stalin liquidating anyone who looked at him the wrong way, Mao starving millions, and let’s not forget Pol Pot murdering 1/3 of his country.
Strong atheists are also usually wet blankets and pains in the ass in ordinary life – the faux-intellectual, scruffy-bearded college student nephew who walks out of the room at Thanksgiving as the family patriarch gives the blessing, the loudmouthed feminist mom on her third husband who not only won’t let her daughter sing in the school Christmas concert, but kicks up a stink with the PTA to get the whole shebang cancelled, the Portland millennial couple with an abortion and a dog who just moved to the small town just outside Philadelphia for his job and then call up the Freedom From Religion Foundation (more accurately called the Hatred of Religion Foundation) to bring suit because there’s – gasp – a CROSS on a memorial to an Irish Civil War regiment in the local park.
Where are the atheist orchestras, the atheist hospitals, the atheist charities, btw? I’m not talking about the secular ones, like the Boston Pops or Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia or Doctors Without Borders, I mean can you find one such institution that is based on OPPOSITION to faith? Religion may have its share of problems – but Judaism has Moses and the Baal Shem Tov, Christianity has Christ and St. Francis, Islam has Haroun al-Rashid, and Hinduism has Gandhi. Affirmative Atheism offers us who? The ranting Richard Dawkins, who said mild pedophilia is ok? Professional jerk Christopher Hitchens, who drank himself to death? Rageaholic Craig Stephen Hicks, who filled cyberspace with insults and hate when he wasn’t flashing a gun, and ended up killing three Muslim students over a PARKING SPACE?
There’s not too much to loathe about those who simply don’t believe. There’s a LOT to loathe about those who push unbelief, often harder than those who push belief. Trusting I have clarified my position.
You show a Trumpian level of self-awareness.
You’d be in serious error to assume Steve hasn’t acknowledged his own rude outbursts…
I have had my go-from-zero-to-asshole-in-five-seconds moments, which I’m not going to pretend didn’t happen. I do not usually lead with insults and accusations, however, I will admit I have a finite level of patience when a discussion isn’t going anywhere.
I’ve found the experience is vastly different based on location.
In the bible belt, atheists have much to be grumpy about. They’re exposed to a strong, monolithic group opposed to their views and are on the receiving end of more than they should be.
But I’m a non-religious person living in a West coast state. Here the religious are not a powerful force. That doesn’t stop the atheists from still feeling the need to be obnoxious. I respect the constitution, and among them all of the clauses of the first amendment. I respect the rights of people to practice any religion of their choosing, and that the government should stay out of their way so long as they’re not busy interfering in the rights of others. I’m also not personally an A-hole, so I don’t denigrate anyone’s religion.
Atheists won’t accept that. They go to the point of wanting freedom from religion, not freedom of religion. They wish to establish atheism as the established religion of the United States.
Well said and honest although there’s a little hyperbole here. I must admit that the atheist position seems to me to be arrogant and has lead to things like Mao’s, Stalin’s, Pol Pot’s systematic murder of 100s of millions of people. Even as a non-Christian I would much rather live in a society based on Judeo-Christian values than one based on the rejection of religion.
I push the affirmative position that the Judeo-Christian deity makes no sense on the metaphysical, philosophical, ontological, or existential level. However, I’m not impressed with the atheists who are jerks and futilely attempt to use science to refute something which explicitly is not bound by the laws of physics as we know them. What we need are atheists who are well-versed in philosophy and ethics and who can engage in collaborative truth-seeking.
As a truth-seeker, I try to understand the reasons why people believe in a deity, and then try to rephrase them in a way that still describes them accurately, but also makes it more clear why they don’t make any sense. There are a few major arguments for believe in a deity. If I leave out any that are important to you, please let me know.
1) Yes, the world is painful now, but everything will be alright when you die if you do what we tell you. You just have to trust us.
2) Everything you like that you currently experience is evidence of a deity’s goodness and all-power, and everything you don’t like is your own fault or is for the greater good in a way you can’t understand. Don’t think of it the other way around, or ask why you were created with faults. That’s someone else’s fault, but not God’s, and now it’s your fault.
3) If you empty your mind of questions and beg for belief and joy to fill your soul, then you will believe and be joyful, no matter what’s actually happening. That proves that there is something to believe in and be joyful about.
4) People need to believe in things they don’t understand, even if they are vacuous, unproven, unprovable, or internally or empirically inconsistent, in order to behave ethically: the cognitive deficiencies of humanity make us unethical and superstitious, but superstitions can evolve to make us ethical even if we don’t have a coherent and reasoned way of evaluating what is and is not ethical, and we should purposefully buy into them. If new situations arise, new superstitions will evolve through ignorance and violence, same as the current ones.
If you would like to read about the incoherent nature of the Abrahamic god, you can read some of the articles on IronChariots.org, which is an atheist website but also takes an in-depth look at the actual reasoning behind theist beliefs and deconstructs it in an even-handed manner. The Euthyphro dilemma is one of my favorites: “Is that which is good commanded by God because it’s good, or is it good because God commands it?”
Human sexuality courses are an excellent idea. They should start in pre-school when children learn the names of some outside and a few of the inside parts of their bodies, and trace and measure their hands and feet along with the beginnings of arithmetic and how things work; followed by the rest of that subject most fascinating to human beings — Human Beings & How To Take Care Of Them, Grades 1-12 — as a expanding science course well integrated with chemistry and physics and all the great fun and games one can have in the lab when you add a little skin and literal blood, sweat, tears and pimple-pus to it. Being graded on something from Day One, and having to research and discuss it and – horrors! – write about it, is a good antidote to the fear and confusion engendered by the sudden excitement of “sex” in the classroom. It’s a “what are you making a fuss about” gob-stopper for later controversy.
And thank you, Jack. It’s always a privilege to have a COTD. I would write more but I’m writ out.
The apology from this group is neither honorable nor worthy of praise. Equal Voices is an advocacy group based on religious or biblical precepts. Its mission is
“To connect LGBTIQ+ people and advocates across the Australian church, resourcing and equipping them and their churches to be a truly welcoming and affirming Australian church; one which acknowledges, respects and utilises the gifts of all, regardless of sex, sexuality or gender.”
See, https://equalvoices.org.au/about-us/
To me, this ‘apology’ rings hollow and pointless.
jvb
Chicken-egg issue, don’t you think? So a group of Christians who feel that Christianity-based anti-gay rhetoric is unfair and hurtful for a group “To connect LGBTIQ+ people and advocates across the Australian church, resourcing and equipping them and their churches to be a truly welcoming and affirming Australian church; one which acknowledges, respects and utilizes the gifts of all, regardless of sex, sexuality or gender.” What’s the matter with that?
I think he’s saying it might mean more if it came from the actual hierarchy or even a mainstream group of folks, rather than obvious apologists. Maybe that day is coming. We’ll see.
Steve-O,
Agreed.
jvb
There is nothing wrong with that. If the church wants to reach out to a particular community, great. I am all for it; I frankly couldn’t care less about someone’s sexual orientation. As a (mostly lousy) Catholic, has the Catholic Church done things that I am not proud of? Yep. Has the Catholic Church much to atone for over the centuries? Yep. Does Equal Voices atone for the Catholic Church’s many failings over the centuries (the De Medicis)? Nope. Does that Mission Statement sound nice and welcoming and loving? Sure. So what. Joel Osteen reaches out to millions of people every week. I have absolutely no interest in anything he says or does.
jvb
NJ Steve wrote: “As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t give a damn if someone else believes or doesn’t believe. That’s his business. If your family didn’t follow any faith, or you drifted away from the faith as you got older, or faith plays a minor role or no role in your life, that’s fine. So-called “weak atheists” who just don’t believe anything and just live and let live, are no problem.
“So-called “strong atheists,” who take or push the affirmative position that there is no God, are another matter. In a way, that position can become a faith in its own way, since there’s no proving that position. Yes, yes, I’ve heard the argument that you can’t prove a negative, but if you are going to push a position, positive or negative, you can’t just say that it has to be accepted because there’s no proving it, while telling the other side to prove theirs.”
I find the first part problematic. But I am obviously in a more doctrinaire phase. I have recently begin to study the actual doctrines of the Church and to understand the philosophical and the metaphysical base of the ideas that animate their rules and laws. I find them sound and well-grounded. But of course they are all grounded in the one Event which one either feels a relationship to, or doesn’t. When one does, one tends to reinforce ones’s own self as one proceeds further into it.
E. Michael Jones writes of the way that the Church with general socially conservative doctrines, and the social power o enforce them, was weakened and subverted, to the detriment of culture. If this is so, and if he is onto something, what another or the others believe and don’t is highly relevant. It becomes a question of what is the basic, underlying, operative and commanding metaphysic.
It becomes imperative, in our collapsed and collapsing present, to be able to communicate to someone what is the metaphysic that one is defending. It is a question of communication, persuasion in the original sense and in the ethical/moral sense. If one does not make that effort then it is inevitable that *the other side* advance. On one hand that is nescience, i.e. people who have surrendered any interest in or capacity to reason and who live exclusively in sensation and in the contingency of the moment, and this includes the easily influenced, controlled and manipulated demos; but on the other side I think one does have to keep in mind that there does exist ‘destructive forces’ and people who are minded to destruction. But many who get involved in destructive projects, maybe even all of them, never see themselves in this way!
In one way or the other, now or in the future, the essence of these questions will emerge as paramount. Today, at least I notice this, people live within a culture of relativism. They’d really rather not have to think about any of this, and they would rather not have to choose a side, and define where they stand, concretely. But this will change. We are in a nadir of descent. The movement has now shifted. Once people begin to define (redefine) and strengthen (reconfirm) their basic metaphysics, it will happen invisibly and automatically that a culture-wide will becomes to emerge. It is happening now but it is only just beginning.
Jack wrote above, “homosexuals do not indoctrinate heterosexual children”
I’m not too sure what you wrote fully reflected what you intended to say.
Everyone in our society indoctrinates our children whether they are their own children or someone else’s children. Children are indoctrinated by what they see and by what they are taught is acceptable; they are taught both directly and indirectly, to deny that is to deny the realities of society.
Good point, Zoltar.
A lot of the times when anti-gay people use the term “indoctrination,” they are referring to things like gay characters appearing in television and movies which are targeted towards the young.
Arguing over whether this is indoctrination or not seems pointless to me, but you make a good case that it is indoctrination. The real argument seems to be whether or not this indoctrination is good and positive. To me, it clearly is. Instead of telling anti-gay people that this isn’t indoctrination, maybe we should spend more time explaining why it’s a good thing.
A different discussion would be when this indoctrination is generally appropriate. Some parents get very funny about when it’s appropriate for their kids to learn about different forms of sexual behavior. Slipping a gay reference into an otherwise generic kids’ movie like Beauty and the Beast either to push that particular lesson or to be trendy shouldn’t be something you expect to get universal applause for, any more than you should expect to get away with some ah, less than politically correct lyrics in Aladdin (“I come from a land in a faraway place, where the caravan camels roam, where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face, it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”)
Steve:
Some parents get very funny about when it’s appropriate for their kids to learn about different forms of sexual behavior. Slipping a gay reference into an otherwise generic kids’ movie like Beauty and the Beast either to push that particular lesson or to be trendy
Steve, do you know what the “gay reference” was? It was a man dancing with another man.
How does that constitute teaching kids about “different forms of sexual behavior” any more than the original, with its many opposite-sex dances?
Is there something inherently sexual about a same-sex dance?
I think there’s another subtle nod towards homosexual marriage as well. If I hear correctly.
…and a flirty wink by the same man during the lyrics about “whose team they prefer to be on” as in “playing for the other team.” Please tell me what ANY of this has to do with the main plot of Beauty and the Beast?
I’ll save you the trouble. It has nothing to do with the main plot. It’s gratuitous and put there partly to be politically correct, partly to create controversy and drum up buzz by getting seal-like claps from the left and ginning up outrage on the right. Of course the producers will deny it, but who do they think they are kidding?
…and a flirty wink by the same man during the lyrics about “whose team they prefer to be on” as in “playing for the other team.” Please tell me what ANY of this has to do with the main plot of Beauty and the Beast?
What does the romance between the candelabra and the feather duster have to do with the main plot of Beauty and the Beast?
Nothing.
Your notion that every line and moment in the movie must have something to do with the main plot is ridiculous, and I highly doubt you apply it consistently. The only moments that you object to are the ones that mention gay people exist. These moments don’t reference sex, either directly or indirectly, but apparently you take them as references to “sexual behavior” because your mind goes straight to the gutter whenever the subject of gay people existing comes up.
No one has ever said that Belle and the Beast’s relationship promotes any kind of “sexual behavior.” But “gay people existing” = “sex” in the minds of so many.
Lumiere might have slightly more relevance since he is a much bigger player in the film and gets one of the most iconic songs (“Be Our Guest”). LeFou, sidekick to the villain, has no such use. Yes, I object to gratuitous gay content in a movie pitched at kids. Hahaha, no, my mind does not immediately scream “EEEEEWWWW!!! BUTT SEX!” the way it used to when I was in high school in the 80s.
Lumiere might have slightly more relevance since he is a much bigger player in the film and gets one of the most iconic songs (“Be Our Guest”). LeFou, sidekick to the villain, has no such use.
This is ridiculous. Are you saying you would object just as much if LeFou danced with a woman, or expressed interest in liking women in the movie? I find that impossible to believe.
Yes, I object to gratuitous gay content in a movie pitched at kids.
What makes gratuitous gay content in a movie worse than gratuitous straight content? Certainly some of the scenes of women fawning over Gaston could be considered gratuitous.
Hahaha, no, my mind does not immediately scream “EEEEEWWWW!!! BUTT SEX!” the way it used to when I was in high school in the 80s.
Then why did you describe the incredibly mild allusions to LeFou’s interest in men as a form of “sexual behavior?”
Chris wrote, “The real argument seems to be whether or not this indoctrination is good and positive. To me, it clearly is.”
My question for you is; do you respect the opinion of those that disagree with the “good and positive” part?
Chris wrote, “…maybe we should spend more time explaining why it’s a good thing.”
There will be a segment of society that will very vocally disagree with you that it’s a “good thing” and you trying to explain it to them won’t change their mind. You can’t explain away core beliefs that have been taught by an indoctrinating society, the new core beliefs must be taught by an indoctrinating society and it might take generations to accomplish. Look at the pile of PC snowflakes in your society, that didn’t take place overnight.
My question for you is; do you respect the opinion of those that disagree with the “good and positive” part?
Not much, though I can respect people who hold that opinion.
Chris wrote, “…maybe we should spend more time explaining why it’s a good thing.”
“Arguing over whether this is indoctrination or not seems pointless to me, but you make a good case that it is indoctrination. The real argument seems to be whether or not this indoctrination is good and positive.”
A very scary smoking gun admission, Chris. I almost wish I hadn’t read it. If a public figure wrote this, it would be the unethical quote of the day. Maybe the year.
Indoctrination is an abuse of power and position, substituting force, implied threats and dishonesty for reason and fair persuasion. It increasingly appears that the Left believes all indoctrination is a good thing, as long as it approves of that which has been indoctrinated. That is the position of totalitarianism.
Indoctrination shows no respect for autonomy and the individual. Indoctrination is imposing slavery of thought.
Perhaps a re-read of *1984* is called for. I’m a little worried that it will show up on Yale’s list of banned books. But no, that could never happen on a university campus, right?
I’m afraid it’s being used as a teaching manual…
Jack, I was using Zoltar’s definition of “indoctrination.”
“homosexuals do not indoctrinate heterosexual children” (to become homosexual).
I think that was pretty clearly my meaning: I have never heard of gays being called indoctrinates in general.
Children tend to absorb the beliefs of their children. Ethical parents, however, do not set out to indoctrinate them. I was not indoctrinated; I cannot recall a time when my ideas and opinions were forcefully attacked by either parent. I was always encouraged to read and learn widely, and to make my own choices.
Typo:
“Children tend to absorb the beliefs of their children.”
should be
“Children tend to absorb the beliefs of their parents.”
Jack,
There is more than one meaning for indoctrinate; it doesn’t always mean to brainwash; it also means to teach/instruct.
It literally means to force doctrine upon. “To teach (a person or group) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.” Using it to mean simply ‘to teach” is labeled “archaic.” We have a word for “teach’—couldn’t be clearer. Teachers who indoctrinate can’t see the difference. Why would you encourage that, by assisting in the blurring of the distinctions between the concepts?
Jack Marshall wrote, “It literally means to force doctrine upon. “To teach (a person or group) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.” Using it to mean simply ‘to teach” is labeled “archaic.” “
Jack did just pick a definition that fits your viewpoint and stop looking?
It also literally means, “to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments : teach” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indoctrinate (Yes I know you don’t like Merriam-Websters anymore but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t existence)
Whether it is “archaic” or not is an opinion that is not shared by all dictionary sources. The fact that it came from sometime around the 17th century is not disputed or relevant as there are lots of words that originated from that time period and we still use them in the same ways today.
Point of fact: just because a word has multiple acceptable definitions does not give one definition superiority over another. I don’t deny your chosen definition exists and you should not deny that my chosen definition exists either.
Zoltar, I think most people use the word to describe something more sinister than “teaching.”
But at the same time, people often describe teaching something they don’t like as “indoctrination,” no matter how it’s taught, which is why I initially agreed with and used your definition. As I said, anti-gay people see any form of teaching that homosexuality is acceptable as “indoctrination,” no matter how it’s done. So while I think you have a point here, Jack’s definition is closer to how I have most often seen the word used.
If people are choosing to use the word indoctrinate when what they’re thinking is more inline with the word brainwash, then I would suggest using the word brainwash; there will be less ambiguity that way.
I’m done with this definition side track.
Stay with it a bit. I’m assuming the reason you think there is “good” indoctrination is that you recognize that indoctrination is how religions keep gaining members: by parents and churches indoctrinating children. True? Is that good indoctrination?
Jack Marshall wrote, “I’m assuming the reason you think there is “good” indoctrination is that you recognize that indoctrination is how religions keep gaining members: by parents and churches indoctrinating children. True? Is that good indoctrination?”
FALSE!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t “assume” that you have any more right to put words in my mouth than anyone else in these threads; you know exactly how I feel about that kind of bull shit.
You’ve honestly disappointed me; I didn’t think you would stoop to this level of rhetoric.
I was just asking. You are wildly over-reacting. And what is false? That indoctrination is acceptable in religious teaching? That teaching religion is indoctrination? That such indoctrination is good? Bad? Unavoidable? Necessary?
A line from Hamlet comes to mind.
Jack Marshall wrote, “And what is false?”
You said “True?” about the statements before that; I said FALSE!!!!!!!!!!
All false then. Got it. It was not an insulting question, and I don’t know why you were insulted by it.
By the way, indoctrination IS, and has always been, how religions continue: by indoctrinating children, by the first and most common definition. So that part is TRUE.
It is an interesting question, really. I would approach it in this way:
To think rationally is to be able to perceive in logical terms. The base of the entire endeavor, then, is in *apprehending logos*. We assume that it is possible to be reasonable and rational and that we can arrive at rational understanding, perception and also statement. If we did not have the knowledge that this is so, we would be divided against ourself. We would have to admit that we live in a world that does not allow logic and reason, or is not created in it and out of it. If this were true we would not be able to decide anything.
In this sense we have faith in reason.
If this is so, we would then be able to say: I believe that there is someone who can reveal truth, and this truth will come to me because logos is real, possible, and existent. If we did not believe such a thing, we would not ever be able to understand anything, or make a true statement.
The word ‘doctrine’ comes from the Latin docere (in Spanish ‘docente’). It means ‘to teach’. But it derives from an older root in indo-european dek, which has meanings such as ‘to be acceptable’, and docile, doctor, document, dogma, disciple, and discere: to learn.
There can be no separation between the idea of healing and well-being (what doctors of medicine do) and the other meanings of ‘doctor’, as in doctor of theology, or doctor of philosophy, and then there is the interesting notion of ‘cura’ for Christian priest (Catholic) as a doctor of the souls. The notion is for this reason deeply embedded in our language and is part-and-parcel of our mental categories.
We assume that right reasoning will lead to truth, well-being and freedom.
In the best of all possible worlds, then, and true to the real meaning of the word, one can only hope to be ‘indoctrinated’! One should only hope to be correctly indoctrinated. But we know that there are more dangers in that process, and more ‘false doctrines’, than true ones. The world is a trap and filled with terrifying snares and lying men and poisonous semi-truths which, when drunk down, poison being.
Yet each of us can recall someone — a teacher, a parent, someone — from whom we got truth. It is the most valuable thing. If we did not have this memory, this knowledge, we could have no faith that there is something like reason and thus truth.
What if it came against our will, so to speak? That is, by a parent or wise person who observed our folly, let us stumble and fall, and then came to us when we were open and vulnerable and ‘doctored’ and ‘discipled’ us: that is the underlying meaning of indoctrination.
And this is the model of the transcendent’s relationship with us.
At some point, the reasonableness and rationality of the student would have to rise to to come to agree with the ‘docente’, and agreement and assent would occur. We like to think of a teacher gaining assent from a student by cooperative, not coercive processes. That is the kind of teaching we respect.
But we have come to see religious indoctrination as an imposition, and the imposition on fragile children who cannot reason. But in the best case scenario teaching and learning would be a mutual activity of discovery. Of what? Nothing more nor nothing less than Logos. We are back to the supposition, and the faith, that logos can reveal truth.
Herein lies the problem. In fact we have given up on logos. We are not adequate to logos. I suppose that the revelation of logos would be like the Platonic realization that hits like a thunderbolt in Platos Seventh Epistle. A person who submits to logos and follows it through will come to logos-revelation.
Again, these things are part of our language, part of the structure of mind.
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”?
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in it”?
“…words, words, words…”?
_________________________
Jack wrote: “By the way, indoctrination IS, and has always been, how religions continue: by indoctrinating children, by the first and most common definition. So that part is TRUE.”
This is rather true, but also it has a false element. I think we must start from the understanding that our *modern rationalism* and all its perspectives derive from Medievalism The base assertion of the scholastics was that the real meaning, or the true reality, about *god* *existence* *the soul’s salvation* et cetera, can only be gained and understood by faith. They had elaborate ways to describe what faith is and how it occurs in a person which are now unintelligible to us. But it was based on the duality between *dense matter* and *angelic intelligence*. Man is mired in the literal materialism which is *leaden*.
It requires a special ‘charity’ of Grace that descends into this leaden materialism to awaken in his darkened being the spark of revelation. If this makes sense to a pure rationalist, it only does if that one is still moved by poetic image.
So, while it is true indeed that monasteries and religious schools were places to ‘indoctrinate’, it was also understood that you could not make a given soul have a revelation which, it is assumed, only Grace could bring about. But what you could do is to construct a world of symbols and surround children, and all peoples, with those symbols. In the best scenario the symbol itself by-passes the mind and speaks to the intuition, in the same way a poem does. It is an idea, tinged with sentiment and image, that is evocative of certain state of mind.
Also, in the schools, which were run by religious orders, it was understood that the pupils would not necessarily be able to penetrate the ‘mysterion’ except in some cases. So, it was taught that in that case it was best to rely on the digested theology of the Catechism. The base revelation that produced *faith* then operated intellectually to devise theological systems, but then out of that too came all the products of jurisprudence, social law, and all else.
That describes, for example, the Catholic school setting. Is it indoctrination in the negative sense? Well, yes, if you are opposed to the social teaching and want to modify it or overturn it. But if you don’t, you see the school as offering ‘indoctrination’ of needed and necessary rules and regulations.
It is true that ‘religions continue’ when the environment is established where the products of the religion are present and are lived, and where the symbols (tropes and metaphors) are visible. But it is necessary to say that the real reason they continue, or rise again when they have been weakened, is when the principles underlying them are re-discovered and re-appreciated.
The attack on religion, and on faith, is a very complex subject! Because to do so as a studied, conscious endeavor, involves undermining the intelligibility-relationship to the Symbols. Strong rationalism can easily do this, and is quite expert at it.
But I think it has to be brought out into the open, and this ties it back to the topic of this blog post, that one very effective means to undermine the religiously-oriented person, and the person who does, inside themself, *see* the invisible thing which is the subject of faith, and which is the utterly non-material object or goal, and source of Grace, is to pervert them at a sexual level. As E Michael Jones quoted (someone, I forgot who), you cannot masturbate and pray to God at the same time. The meaning should be clear, yet I accept that some will not grasp the meaning, and it will not be intelligible to them. Why? Well, that is the question really. It is a question of basic metaphysics but also of *orientation of the soul*.
I would suggest that the *real indoctrination* must be in the bringing forth and the production of intelligent, sensitive children. But one must be able to conceive of an opposite training in order to bring the former into relieve. A training that dulls the mind, or dulls the spirit, or dampers the imagination, and that does not nourish a child with beautiful images, which is to say with powerful Symbols behind which actually stands something of value.
I would suggest, and I do suggest, that this is what you lose when, day by day and bit by bit, culture loses its relationship with all that stands behind the symbols, the tropes and the metaphors. I suggest that now, in our present, many and perhaps most no longer can feel and underatand the meaning stands behind the metaphor, the image. Because that meaning is of a extraordinary high type — the meaning of the *angelic* —- it is drowned out in the leaden current of grotesque materialism, and the competition between insanely powerful image (movie for example) that overpowers imagination, pollutes it, contaminates it, drags it down into vile and perverse sensation. The worst of the worst in this is perhaps pornographic image and sensation.
These are tools though and they are used for precise political purposes, or they end in having such effect. They destroy the inner-person’s relationship with the transcendent.
With that said, what must be the role of ‘indoctrination’? It can only be to redefine and point again to the Value that stands behind the Symbol and to — somehow! — get someone, somewhere to respond from within their own self to the higher principle.
Obviously I am describing our human situation.
I believe clear communication is ethical, and fuzzing it up isn’t. Again: teaching and indoctrination have distinct definitions that are important to maintain.
That’s right, given its current political tilt, I’m not surprised that MW wants to whitewash “indoctrination.” Indoctrination is per se bad, wrong, abusive, undemocratic and a totalitarian tool. And so the word will be used here.
Jack wrote, “That’s right, given its current political tilt, I’m not surprised that MW wants to whitewash “indoctrination.” Indoctrination is per se bad, wrong, abusive, undemocratic and a totalitarian tool.”
Here is the definitions for the word indoctrinate from the following online dictionaries:
Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary
“1 : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments : teach 2 : to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle”
Merriam-Webster also published this with the definition:
“Indoctrinate simply means “brainwash” to many people. But its meaning isn’t always so negative. When this verb first appeared in English in the 17th century, it simply meant “to teach”-a meaning that followed logically from its Latin root. The “doc” in the middle of indoctrinate derives from the Latin verb docēre, which also means “to teach.” Other offspring of “docēre” include “docent” (referring to a college professor or a museum guide), “docile,” “doctor,” “doctrine,” and “document.” It was not until the 19th century that “indoctrinate” began to see regular use in the sense of causing someone to absorb and take on certain opinions or principles.”
NOTE: Websters primary definition of this word has morphed over the last 20 years, see the proof below.
Dictionary.com
“1. to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., especially to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view. 2. to teach or inculcate. 3. to imbue with learning.”
The American Heritage Dictionary
“1. To instruct in a body of doctrine or principles. 2. To imbue with a partisan or ideological point of view”
English Oxford Living Dictionaries
“1. Teach (a person or group) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.”
Cambridge Dictionary
“to persuade someone to accept an idea by repeating it and showing it to be true”
Collins English Dictionary
“1. to teach (a person or group of people) systematically to accept doctrines, esp uncritically 2. rare to impart learning to; instruct “
RANDOM HOUSE KERNERMAN WEBSTER’S College Dictionary
“1. to instruct in a doctrine or ideology, esp. dogmatically. 2. to teach or inculcate. 3. to imbue with learning. “
I pulled a dictionary off my shelf…
Websters Universal College Dictionary (Copyright 1997)
“1. to instruct in a doctrine or ideology, esp. dogmatically. 2. to teach or inculacate. 3. to imbue with learning.”
If I could find my older college dictionaries from the 70’s right now, I’d post more of the printed versions to compare.
What’s my point? My point is that not all definitions agree with your personal point of view Jack, some do, but not all, and you are discounting any other definitions and one simply because of the source. That’s intellectually dishonest.
I have no intention of present anything but the truth as I did with my statements above (and of course my opinions) and since it’s now been implied that I’m as some kind of religious hypocrite based on Jacks narrow definition of the word indoctrinate (see above); crucify me for having a different opinion if you must but my opinion is supported.
I will go no further with this nonsense discussion; I’m moving on.
fini
My previous reply still applies. Your attitude is incomprehensible. (And everyone knows what “indoctrinate” means, as its used every day.)
Nobody suggested that you are a religious hypocrite, especially me. I’m sorry you read it that way, but I’m not apologizing, because the delusion is yours alone.
Cowabunga.
Zoltar, you have a point about “indoctrination” but I’m not too sure what you wrote fully reflected what you intended to say. Indoctrination has its most common usage in brainwashing, propagandizing, and proselytizing, etc. …. all of them stronger and carrying the negative connotation you are referring to. I believe “influence” might be what you mean: “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.” Children are certainly indoctrinated but that isn’t what you were answering to.
> LGTB (or is it LBTG? Does it matter, if the letters still stand for the same things?)
I’m not sure, but consider that it started off as GLBT and switched for marketing reasons early on and a time when it was pretty clear that G was suffering the most from society
It started off G, period. Then GL. Then feminist groups got in the act and the initials were switched around. Literally: ladies first. (Yep. One of the dichotomies the lesbidies still practice, when convenient). And yes, too, some of my best friends are . . . .
I am a religious man and I don’t care one bit if people choose homosexuality as their way of life, I simply don’t care. It’s none of my damn business who another person chooses to spend their life with, who they choose to love, or who they choose to have sexual relations with (as long as it’s not forced and not a child); period. It’s also not anyone else’s business who I choose to spend my life with, who I choose to love, or who I choose to have sexual relations with (as long as it’s not forced and not a child); period. I take this lesson to heart; “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
Once people you get that simple concept in their heads the rest of the bull shit just falls by the wayside.
Anyone wanna argue with me about this?
Nope. Not me.
I’ve got an opening at 3:15 tomorrow.
😉
I don’t think people can be talked into accepting homosexuals. I think acceptance has to come as a result of seeing homosexuality among your family members and friends. Until you’ve seen enough homosexuality in people you like and care about, it’s just a foreign concept you’ll never come to terms with. Until Steve has a family member or two or friend or two who are gay, nothing anyone can say to him will persuade him to think other than he does currently, which frankly, is his perogative. Certainly scolding Steve will do nothing to change his mind. I’ve decided it’s best to let both sides live and let live and figure it out in their own time and on their own terms.
One of my favorite quotes: William F. Buckley (approximately) — “If only two or three percent of the population is gay, then I’ve met all of them.”
Scolding another adult is never likely to get you very far. Actually I did have an uncle who was gay, although he didn’t come out to me until I was 39. I am sorry to say I was not that impressed with him as a person, as he spiraled down into depressing, alcoholism, and drugs after his partner died, became a tremendous drain on the family, and his life ended when he let a younger man drive drunk. That said, I also don’t think it was great that he was stripped of his pants and beaten almost to the point of permanent blindness while seeking companionship in the gay underside of Worcester, then forced to make up a ridiculous lie about how it happened to his parents (my grandparents).
I’ve gotten lost in the threads and don’t know which reply I’m replying to anymore. I’m not convinced that committed gay marriages are either better or worse than committed heterosexual marriages. With the exception that I believe a mother brings a unique perspective to a family and so does a father. I’m not sure those perspectives are present in gay marriages.
I also don’t think that “updating … beliefs” is a prerequisite for democracy, but that’s another subject.
I also think that the degrading and disgusting behavior that people who want to destroy societal standards of sexual morality indulge in is harmful and you have to be a blindly dedicated iconoclast to ignore or justify it.
I’ve been thinking about my flailing on this thread and I think I’ve figured out what is happening. Alizia has (to my surprise) articulated it closer than anyone else.
I’ve been trying to express religious convictions in the language of a rhetorician. I’m so worried that my views will be dismissed out of hand if I reveal their religious foundation that I can’t speak or think clearly about what I really believe when I try to hold myself back from expressing religious observations.
So, here it is ethical or not. I believe that successful societies as I describe them are universally based on moral/religious foundations. They stay successful as long as the foundation isn’t assaulted too much. When it is assaulted to the point that it breaks the society fails as a place that produces the most freedom and happiness for the largest majority of the population the largest part of the time. Basically, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
Can I prove this? No, I can only observe that is appears to me to be true.
This forum is a place where I need to come to observe and evaluate, but not to participate until I can get my ducks in a row. No, I’m not taking my toys and going home, but I’m not going to engage until I can feel that I have the courage of my own convictions. Alizia, to my surprise you have inspired me. Not that I completely read most of what you write (TLDR) but that I admire your search and your persistence.
I appreciate your forthrightness. By all means take your time working out what you believe; it’s something people don’t do enough.
It still makes sense to me what you said about the parades and flaunting. I could never identify with the combination of curiosity and celebration that leads people to glorify mindless excess and the destruction of all sensible limits. Partying? Mardi Gras? No thanks. Boring and dangerous to my tastes, and I hate that it’s glamorized. Even hangovers are glamorized. That would definitely be a sign of culture decay, if it hadn’t been done for centuries. Finesse and dignity are downplayed, because they’re harder for most people to identify with. That’s something that needs to change.
I do idly wonder what sorts of foundations you will consider to qualify as moral, because I’m designing a meta-culture for a self-advancing enlightened society and feel it might qualify as religious for the purposes of people who feel that religion is important, even though it doesn’t involve a religion per se. Less “faith” as “unsupported belief” and more “faith” as “commitment to an effort not because of expectation of reward, but because the effort is worthy in itself”.
Terrific and candid post.
Successful societies as I describe them are universally based on moral/religious foundations.
Correct. Successful societies also move on from morality to ethics, because they learn. All religious moralities hold men superior to women, for example.
To remain candid. I don’t believe God holds men superior to women. If a religion holds men superior to women it can’t be of God. Many religions hold men and women equal but not the same. To some that may seem to be holding men superior because of the differences in roles.
Surely you see that this is equivocating, rationalizing and euphemism to beat the band. “differences in roles” as in “Men are in charge,” and “Women do what they say.” You know. Roles.
I don’t think is is all those things at all. I think God is smarter than that and that if the idea of roles is seen as one is superior and one is inferior that is a human misunderstanding of reality, not a flaw in God.
For what it’s worth; I’m going to climb on my high horse for a moment.
I just waded through this thread, and it’s quite an interesting thread.
Here are two guiding principles that I believe might help some of you. First and foremost; “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and the second integrates perfectly within the first “do not judge others, and you will not be judged”. Ignore that those have religious roots; in a nutshell; “what goes around comes around”. Be an example of your beliefs, whatever they are, don’t wear them on your shoulder, don’t banter around thoughts that you need to “force” your belief structure on others by limiting what they can and can’t do based on your beliefs unless you are completely willing to be limited in what you can and can’t do based on someone else’s belief structure – how would you like ISIS dictating your can and can’ts?
It’s really none of your business who others choose to spend their life with, who they choose to love, or who they choose to have sexual relations with (as long as it’s not forced and not a child). It’s also not anyone else’s business who you choose to spend your life with, who you choose to love, or who you choose to have sexual relations with (as long as it’s not forced and not a child).
No one is saying that you must like behaviors that falls outside your belief structure; however, outside the structure of your beliefs there are human beings that are sinful (if that’s what you choose to call it) just like you – things you do are wrong in the eyes of others so get over yourselves. It’s not your place to judge others because they love someone of the same sex, just like it’s not their place to judge you because you might love some truly hideous looking person of the opposite sex – beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
When we pre-judge people based on our own beliefs and intentionally limit freedoms of those that don’t follow our beliefs, we become like ISIS. You and I have no more right to control the lives of others based on our beliefs than ISIS has the rights to control our lives based on their beliefs.
A society will be taken down a lot faster by stripping the rights from specific groups of people based on your beliefs than it will be by allowing others the freedom to choose behaviors that fall outside your belief structure that literally do not suppress your rights. Stripping rights is a rapid path to the destruction of a society.
You may not like some of the things that our Constitutional freedoms allow, but without those same freedoms your beliefs might not be allowed either. Make the The Julie Principle choice and let these things go, your life and the life of others will benefit from this.
Okay, I’m climbing down from my saddle now.