This discrimination John Nolte speaks about is already here, in our country where states have okayed it, and in countries where it has been legalized. See #3 in my cumulative case for more info:
If anyone wants to argue that the same government currently forcing religious institutions to purchase the abortion pill through ObamaCare will not eventually use civil rights violations in order to attempt to force the Church to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies — good luck with that.
But this would have been unthinkable five years ago.
It was just three months ago that the White House and media piled on a reverend for preaching the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality. The result was his invitation to speak at Obama’s inauguration being rescinded.
This would have been unthinkable five years ago.
[….]
With all that in mind, am I really supposed to buy that, within five years (maybe five days), the left and the media won’t be incessantly asking this question: “If the Church cannot legally refuse to marry an interracial couple, how can it legally refuse same-sex couples?”
There are many good and well-intentioned people who believe same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. Much of the support from the right comes from our “live and let live” philosophy, which I share. But another liberty is on the line, and that is religious liberty. This push from the media has never been about allowing gay couples to marry; it’s about the left’s lifelong crusade to destroy the Church.
The endgame is to declare the Bible and Christian beliefs de facto bigotry:
I have a right to defend myself. And to point out the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by pointing to the Bible, and insisting we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other.
That is not some crackpot talking. That is Dan Savage, who has worked with no less than President Obama. And Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi… And the media loves him.
Once this idea turns into anything close to mainstream with the left, the left’s legal harassment and outright harassment against the Church will be unceasing.
[….]
But when the State and its media attempt to force the Church to condone such a thing (and they will), what is unthinkable to many of the well-intentioned today will become a terrible reality.
Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God’s own established plan. In some places this is already happening. …
The left cannot allow Christians to continue to preach the full gospel. We already see this in, of all places, Canada. Gay marriage is incompatible with a religion that preaches that the unrepentant are condemned, even of a sin the world has decided is not one. The religious freedom will eventually be ended through the judiciary. We should work to extend that freedom as long as we can.
Now many of you have read through this and you are shaking your head in denial. “No way this is possible,” you say. But then just a decade ago no one seriously considered gay marriage as possible. And we are already seeing signs we’re headed in this direction. It’s coming. Get ready.
If wanting some examples of current harms that have come to others from same-sex marriage, see #3 in this post. Here is my post on Webster’s site via FaceBook:
What needs to be done is that Christians have to be equipped to defend their worldview. “Instead of thinking of Christianity as a collection of theological bits and pieces to be believed or debated, we should approach our faith as a conceptual system, as a total world-and-life view” ~ Ronald Nash. Often times this means not even using the Bible when talking to those who reject it to begin with. It will end with it, but you can defend key-concepts within this conceptual system with appeal to reason/logic/biology/Natural Law. In other words, this conversation should be encapsulated in the language/philosophy the Constitution was written in. A good place to start are the many resources I have compiled on the subject, here (see video description): http://youtu.be/kDh4gZ2yaMg.
I use Natural Law, biology, Laws of Logic as well as leaning on others to point out the many non-sequiturs from those using emotion as the foundation for changing a norm. There are conservative gays who should be able to reasonably put forward the case for fair and equitable reasons for civil-unions in states that lack the protection that California offers their civil-union partners. HOWEVER, these same gay conservatives should be able to note what Canada’s leading gay sociologist points out:
————————————– One of the most respected Canadian sociologist/scholar/homosexual, Paul Nathanson, writes that there are at least five functions that marriage serves–things that every culture must do in order to survive and thrive. They are:
• Foster the bonding between men and women.
• Foster the birth and rearing of children.
• Foster the bonding between men and children.
• Foster some form of healthy masculine identity.
• Foster the transformation of adolescents into sexually responsible adults.
Note that Nathanson considers these points critical to the continued survival of any culture. He continues “Because heterosexuality is directly related to both reproduction and survival,… every human societ[y] has had to promote it actively…. Heterosexuality is always fostered by a cultural norm” that limits marriage to unions of men and women. He adds that people “are wrong in assuming that any society can do without it.”
Going further he stated that “same sex marriage is a bad idea”…[he] only opposed “gay marriage, not gay relationships.” ———————————————-
Is he “homophobic? From the stone age? Anti-Gay? I think not. He is merely stating the importance of a society that stays cohesive… their bond… what Nature has wrought. But much like the left thinking they can control climate, so to do they think they can control gender… at someone’s detriment:
✞ “If God is ‘dead,’ somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Heffner” ~ Malcolm Muggeridge.
Which is why a lesbian, Tammy Bruce, can pen this:
▼ Even if one does not necessarily accept the institutional structure of “organized religion,” the “Judeo-Christian ethic and the personal standards it encourages do not impinge on the quality of life, but enhance it. They also give one a basic moral template that is not relative,” which is why the legal positivists of the Left are so threatened by the Natural Law aspect of the Judeo-Christian ethic.
And if I need to remind anyone what happened the last time one of the strongest movements “relativised” their message:
卐 “Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition…. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth… then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity…. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable” ~ Mussolini.
“Consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually” Abba Eban
Sad. Democrats will roll over — again — a protection enumerated specifically in the Constitution, that is, religious freedom. Breitbart reports:
☕ The Colorado government, now completely run by Democrats, has done an about-face regarding civil unions for gay couples. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed a bill allowing same-sex civil unions roughly a year ago after the same idea went down to defeat in what was then a Republican-led House. But last November Democrats won the House, having control of the Senate already, and the new alignment allowed the bill to be passed. It will go into effect May 1.
Most of the Republicans in the state government held fast against the measure because they wanted religious exemptions granted to those who oppose same-sex unions. Although churches are exempt, businesses and adoption agencies are now subject to the new law.
What this will do is shut down adoption religious agencies, which are the most successful at finding families for children, will have to shut down like in Massachusetts and in Illinois. When they had to shut down in Massachusetts many decried this as hurting the kids, which is what ultimately happens when rights are trampled on. Families are hurt:
“Everyone’s still reeling from the decision,” Marylou Sudders, executive director of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC), said yesterday. “Ultimately, the only losers are the kids,” said Maureen Flatley, a Boston adoption consultant and lobbyist. (http://tinyurl.com/a5ypfle)
You see, when the left is in control of this movement, they lay waist. Which is why conservative and libertarian minded persons, gays, and the like would want to try and frame the debate as Civil-Unions that allow religious institution to adopt to whom they wish (even if that is hetero couples only), and not create — like in Canada — the diminishing of religious views as hate crimes. As was pointed out in a review of same-sex marriage’s impact in Canada: “When one understands opposition to same-sex marriage (SSM) as a manifestation of sheer bigotry and hatred, it becomes very hard to tolerate continued dissent (http://tinyurl.com/bx9zjaa).
Conservative gays are allowing the left to control this movement, and they should reject it until calmer heads can influence it. The left is famous for knee-jerk reactionary legislation. And for gays to applaud this passage shows — much like Ann Coulter showed in her town-hall with libertarians, all these young libertarians asked about was weed, and SSM:
…Instead of creating alliances with fiscal conservatives, libertarians would rather tell people that libertarianism is about “pot and gay marriage” in order to garner the attention of the youth. The result of making libertarianism about social issues is that there are therefore people, who claim to be libertarians, that do not understanding the philosophy of libertarianism in the slightest.
[….]
The audience booed Coulter for stating the obvious truths about the travesty of the modern libertarian movement. To demonstrate her point, there was another high-profile guest of an entirely different political persuasion who received applause. When Dennis Kucinich entered the stage, he was applauded. When Kucinich advocated for government regulations in order to save the world from the global warming catastrophe, parts of the audience applauded. When Kucinich mentioned how evil profits were for banks and health-care corporations, parts of the audience applauded…. (http://tinyurl.com/aoj3lwq)
Gay men and women that think they are advancing a right that is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, as opposed to religious freedom, are tearing their rights up bit-by-bit. And it’s sad to see.
The left hates religion, and soon to follow, like in Massachusetts, is an attack on gender. The left tries to legislate control of weather (climate taxes), and now gender (no-distinction, nature or God is of no consequence to their thinking — the ultimate narcissists). You see, religion teaches ideals. And the left and left leaning libertarians do not like ideals. And it is precisely these ideals that the Constitution was written in, and when these ideals are rejected, the Constitution crumbles:
Even if one does not necessarily accept the institutional structure of “organized religion,” the “Judeo-Christian ethic and the personal standards it encourages do not impinge on the quality of life, but enhance it. They also give one a basic moral template that is not relative,” which is why the legal positivists of the Left are so threatened by the Natural Law aspect of the Judeo-Christian ethic.
Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville: Prima, 2003), 35.
It is this movement based in a Rousseau’lian worldview that pushes this positivism. I wrote about this in 2006:
…Homosexuals like to argue that, since people are by nature free to choose, the choice of sodomy should be protected, at least as much as any other choice. However, the fact that people are free by nature to make choices does not mean that any choice they make is good or that all choices should be equal before the law. Some people choose to steal and lie. Some abandon their children or their wives or husbands. Some sink into the grip of drugs. Some evade the draft at their country’s need, or abandon their duty in the face of battle. These are bad choices, and when they are made, the rest of us must bear part of the cost. These things are wrong in a constitutional democracy, as much as they are wrong anywhere else.
On the other hand, liberal societies recognize that all sins cannot be, and must not be, punished under the law. A state powerful enough to do that is too powerful to control. That is why we are cautious in a free country, about telling others what to do. That is why Presidents often appeal to us to be upright, moral citizens, but they do not bring charges against us unless we break the law.
Still, we must not forget that democracies have the greatest in the practice of virtue by citizens, because in democracy the citizens themselves are the rulers. So it is that George Washington, one of the greatest moral examples in history, said in his First Inaugural Address: “There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness…”
A liberal society might, then, find it prudent to ignore homosexuality. It might well deem it unwise to peer into private bedrooms. However, this is not the issue before us. Today the demand is that homosexuality be endorsed and promoted with the full power of the law. This would require us to abandon the standard of nature, the one standard that can teach us the difference between freedom and slavery, between right and wrong.
Once we abandon the standard of nature, what is to forbid us from resorting to any violation of nature that we please? Why should we not return to slavery, if we find it convenient? Or the practice of incest or adultery or cannibalism? Without an understanding that there is a higher law that limits human will – whether divine law or the “law of Nature or Nature’s God” which we can grasp through our reason – there is no basis to prohibit any activity. Anything becomes possible (which is why some [me included] refer to murder and homosexuality in the same stroke of the pen/keyboard, this analogy is now detailed in a more exhaustive manner above).
In fact, the rights sought by homosexual activists are not natural or constitutional rights (for the best chapter on this subject – why homosexuals should be fighting to keep the traditional definition of family – I suggest the book Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air). They are the special rights granted ethnic minorities by affirmative action policies. These special rights would force businesses, schools, and virtually every institution in the land, public and private, to open their doors to homosexuals, and allow lawsuits to be brought against those that refuse….
One way this liberal narcissism rears its head is that no longer are we trying to find a family for the child through adoption… the child is the tool to make a gay-couple feel like a family. And to do this they must chase out of the business the most successful at finding families for the children. Sad.
Dennis Prager plays and analysis — as he only can — audio of Senator Rob Portman’s interview giving his reasons why he now supports Same-Sex Marriage. (Posted by: https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/) Besides the usual use of non-sequiturs in arguing for the position, we see the usual mixing of categories that lead many conservatives into not standing firm on this issue. While I disagree with Prager on a minor issue (the immutability of sexual behavior), as conservatives, we can point out that even if a gay man’s sexual orientation is determined by non-environmental reasons, changing the definition of marriage is still a no go. Very powerful.
I have many resources available for those seeking to know how to knowledgeably respond to this cultural movement that is a first in human history:
Minnesota-based blog POWER LINE discovered this little fact about the legislation, GAY MARRIAGE, MINNESOTA STYLE (source: Star Tribune):
In the Star Tribune, Katherine Kersten casts a gimlet eye on developments:
The marriage amendment may have fallen short at the polls in November, but a majority of Minnesotans continue to support marriage as the union of one man and one woman, according to recent polls by KSTP/SurveyUSA and the Star Tribune. In the Star Tribune poll, only 38 percent said they favored legalization of same-sex marriage.
Clearly, the amendment vote wasn’t a green light for same-sex marriage, and legislators would be wrong to see it that way. Most likely, voters were spooked by a lavishly funded campaign in which supporters of same-sex marriage warned that placing the current definition of marriage in our state Constitution would “end the conversation” about marriage.
Now, just months later, these advocates are mounting an aggressive campaign to do just that. They are pressuring the Legislature to pass SF925, a bill described as “the marriage between two persons authorization.”
More conversation? Who needs it? same-sex marriage supporters seem to say. The issue, they insist, is a no-brainer — a simple matter of “equality,” and the logical next step in the struggle against “discrimination.” The point is so obvious that anyone who questions their project must be a “bigot,” and so drummed out of hearing in polite society.
But a look at SF925 reveals that something much more insidious than advocates let on is underway. This bill would strip the words “mother” and “father” of meaning under Minnesota law. Henceforth, the bill states, these words — among the most beloved and culturally freighted in the English language — “must be construed in a neutral manner to refer to a person of either gender.”
Hmmm. Mothers are Fathers. Boys are Girls. Orwell! thou should’st be living at this hour.
Oh, I can’t wait for the day when we can say that every “boy” and “girl” deserves a “mother” and “father” construed in a neutral manner to refer to to a person of either gender, as required by Minnesota law.
Editor’s note – libertarian Republicans believe if two gays wish to get married, Matzletoff! Hire a couple lawyers, invite all the friends, get a priest or a rabbi, have a big gay wedding in the public park, and then dance the night away to disco tunes. Why get the government involved? And why go out of your way to poke the eyes of those who support heterosexual marriage?
Democrats are trying to be God.
Top-Ten Considered
(Click “Wayne’s Top Ten” to go to article) Perhaps no issue is more nerve-wracking today than same-sex marriage. It’s a magnet for controversy, evoking strong reactions from those on either side of the debate. But beneath all the fiery passion and rhetoric, there are real arguments to evaluate. In this article, we’ll examine the 10 most common ones made in favor of same-sex marriage, many of which you’ve probably heard before. By pointing out the flaws, we’ll show how each argument ultimately comes up short.
However, before we begin, let’s note a few things. First, this article concerns civil marriage — marriage as defined and promoted by the state. It doesn’t deal with the Church’s sacramental understanding, although the two often overlap. Second, the responses to the arguments are emphatically nonreligious. They don’t depend on any sacred text or divine revelation. They’re based on reason, philosophy, biology and history. Third, this article only refutes arguments in favor of same-sex marriage. It doesn’t touch upon the many positive arguments supporting traditional marriage.
…Of course, “mother” and “father” aren’t “gender-neutral” words. That’s a fiction. All Minnesotans have a mother and a father — female and male, respectively. Our state’s legislators may view themselves as powerful, but they can’t repeal this fact of human biology. Yet same-sex marriage advocates must pretend this is possible, if they are to convince the rest of us that a “union” of two people of the same sex is identical to that of a man and woman whose sexual complementarity is the only thing that produces the next generation.
This stripping of meaning from “mother” and “father” is just one signal of the tectonic shift our society will undergo if we try to redefine marriage in a way that portrays the anatomical, social and psychological differences between men and women as irrelevant to human life — just as shoe size and eye color are. We urgently need a conversation at the State Capitol that grapples seriously with the unknown implications of such a step — as they unfold next year and 50 years from now.
Legislators should begin by considering why marriage has been a male/female institution throughout recorded history. Is it really because people in the past weren’t as smart as we are, or were “bigots?” Of course not. It’s because marriage has a vital public purpose: It binds fathers to mothers and the children their sexual union creates. This bond is crucial to children’s well-being — and to society’s future.
To succeed in redefining marriage, same-sex marriage supporters must deny this public purpose of marriage. Instead, they tell us, the only criterion for marriage should be that people love each other. It’s just emotional intensity that distinguishes marriage from all other human relationships.
This claim has far-reaching implications:
First, if marriage is merely about emotional intensity, marital norms based on male-female complementarity — like sexual exclusivity and permanence — no longer make sense, or at best become optional. People can have a number of emotionally close relationships at the same time, and when the intensity fades, so does the reason to stay together.
Second, if emotional attachment is all that’s required, the logic for limiting marriage to two people — or even to people in sexual relationships — disappears. It becomes difficult to distinguish marriage from friendship, which the government does not regulate. That’s why some prominent commentators are already calling for government to “get out of the marriage business” altogether.
Third, making marriage “gender-neutral” would radically alter parenthood. Children need both a mother and a father, who bring different and complementary qualities to child-rearing. Two lesbians or two gay men (or two lesbians and a sperm donor), no matter how loving, cannot replicate this.
Most important: Redefining marriage as a unisex institution would decisively delink marriage from procreation and child-rearing in the public’s mind. Our marriage culture is already seriously frayed, and our children are paying a devastating price. Same-sex marriage would accelerate this trend, by telegraphing that government is now wholly indifferent to whether a child’s mother is married to his father.
The hour is late and the stakes are high. Let the conversation begin.
In some schools, this would allow boys as old as 14 in public school bathrooms with girls as young as 5. Now I ask you, what could possibly go wrong?
BOSTON, February 19, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Massachusetts Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester has issued orders to the state’s K-12 public schools requiring them to permit “transgender” boys and girls to use the opposite sex’s locker rooms, bathrooms, and changing facilities as long as they claim to identify with that gender.
Many elementary schools in smaller Massachusetts towns include children from kindergarten through eighth grade, making it possible for boys as old as 14 to share toilet facilities with girls as young as five.
Under Chester’s leadership, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) released an 11-page document on Friday outlining this and other new guidelines giving “transgender” students special status and privileges in Massachusetts schools. Some family advocates are calling the document, which was prepared with assistance from homosexual and transgender advocacy groups, “the most thorough, invasive, and radical transgender initiative ever seen on a statewide level.”
The policy does not require a doctor’s note or even parental permission for a child to switch sexes in the eyes of Massachusetts schools. Only the student’s word is needed: If a boy says he’s a girl, as far as the schools are concerned, he’s a girl.
“The responsibility for determining a student’s gender identity rests with the student,” the statement says. “A school should accept a student’s assertion of his or her gender identity when there is … ‘evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held as part of a person’s core identity.’” That evidence, according to the document, can be as simple as a statement given by a friend.
That means, according to the newly issued school policies, that boys who say they identify as girls must be addressed by the feminine pronoun and be listed as girls on official transcripts.
They must also be allowed access to girls’ facilities and be allowed to play on girls’ athletic and club teams. The same is true for girls who say they are boys.
Again, I recommend the book, “Paper Genders,” to wit, here is a quote, and remember, Walt (the Author) lived as a woman, Laura, for 8-years!
ONE LAST EXAMPLE This last example has all the elements: misdiagnosis, suicide attempts and early childhood experiences that twisted this poor boy’s perception of his gender identity into a knot.
The young boy was normal from all accounts until some events begin to alter and reshape his view of who he was. Sometimes when Grandma babysat him alone, she would dress him in female clothing that she made especially for him. His uncle, a troubled teenager, had a favorite sport: making fun of the little boy and yanking down his pants. The uncle turned more aggressive and fondled the boy far too many times over several years, especially while intoxicated.
The young boy started to fantasize about becoming a girl. After years of obsessing, along came Christine Jorgensen in 1955 and the first media reports of a gender change. Then the young boy started to think it was true and he, too, could change genders. The boy in his silence adopted a female name, Cristal West, but only he would know this name and the battleground that was inside him: this silent struggle lasted for years.
Trying to battle against the female trapped inside his body, the boy excelled at all that was male: football, track. cars and yes, girls. All looked normal from the outside, but inside there was pain and confusion about his gender.
As a young teen. the boy attended Eagle Rock Episcopal Church on Chickasaw Avenue. In his teens. the boy sought guidance for his struggle with the internal female from the pastor, Father Carol Barber. At their second meeting, to his shock, Father Barber moved out from behind his desk, unzipped his long black robe to reveal his naked body, and tempted the boy to have homosexual sex. The boy. appalled by the overture, quickly departed and never met with Father Barber again.
In his early twenties, the young man got married, had children and developed skills for high achievement in the business world, first as an aerospace associate design engineer, then by his forties, achieving a national operations position for a major corporation. But his internal struggle with his gender identity never went away and he used alcohol to numb the pain. Alcohol became the pathway to drugs which would bring, his impressive career to an abrupt and tragic end.
In his forties, his marriage failed. His two teenage children suffered a great betrayal when their father turned to hormone therapy in San Francisco. A skinny old doctor named Garfield who asked no questions and took no names provided the hormone injections. Over the course of time, Dr. Paul Walker approved him for surgery and Dr. Biber performed the surgical gender change.
In 1983, the man became Laura with a new birth record that specified gender as female. She had success after a few years —good looks and good jobs, recovery from drugs and alcohol—but living as a female just did not resolve the internal struggles. It was during the time Laura was studying to be a counselor at U.C. Santa Cruz in the late 1980s that she came to understand that as a transgender, she was living a self-imposed exile from her true identity.
As Laura’s intellect and thought processing ability reemerged from the alcohol- and drug-induced fog, a sober Laura could see that being a transgender was not real, but a fantasy forged out of very powerful obsessive thoughts and feelings that took over her life. As a young boy, the expression he had used to express his feelings of hurt and pain was “girl trapped in a male body.” Hiding in a transgender persona was her elaborate way to escape the deep hurt. Acting out was very important to Laura in expressing how she felt, but letting feelings define identity is never a good idea. She later commented that transgender life was like living in a temporary zip code not located near reality. She learned that the transgender feelings would be overwhelming at times, but no matter how strong the feelings are, they can never define her real identity.
Laura was determined to recover on every level, including her male birth gender. She learned in her counseling studies that recovery requires an unwavering persistence with good people supporting her. Recovery was a bit rocky and the path twisted and difficult, but now with 25 years in the rear view mirror, he is restored and has been married to a wonderful lady for 14 years. He made it back.
I know this story all too well, because that was me, the little kid from Glendale. Most of my life I thought I had been born in the wrong body but my traumatic experiences occurred after birth, not in the womb. Regrettably, I learned to dislike the boy who was fondled by an uncle, cross-dressed by a grandmother and propositioned by a homosexual clergyman. I was never a homosexual or felt the desire for men. My rejection of my birth gender was the result of abuse I suffered from several adults.
I learned after surgery that my primary issue was called dissociative identity disorder, which in turn either caused the gender disorder or displayed symptoms that looked like it. The treatment was strenuous psychotherapy to address the primary disorder, not undergoing irreversible surgery to treat a symptom. Comorbidity, the presence of more than one disorder in an individual, is common in transgenders.
So, what made me so different from other transgenders? That is simple—I wanted to recover. Like any recovery, it started with the desire to recover. Without desire, no change is even possible. I did not want to live my life in a masquerade, but in truth. I discovered there was no real medical necessity for the surgery. It was a lie.
Even the doctors who were advocating for me to change genders did not have a clue what it was all about. Psychologist Paul Walker said adaptability is the key to success in changing genders. Surgeon Stanley Biber said success is defined by the ability to physically engage in sex. Psychologist John Money at Johns Hopkins said hormones make the new gender work. Not one, however, said surgery was medical necessary, so it must not be. Dr. Paul McHugh reflects views that more closely align with my personal experience when he said, “It’s a disaster.” Sadly, a gender wreck is not one you bounce back from easily.
In my view the history of psychosurgery demonstrates a lack of accountability and oversight in the medical community that continues today. Activist lawyers and doctors join together to lobby for, and effectively get, more and more laws passed that provide even more protection for reckless, medically unnecessary surgeries. The evidence suggests a need exists for a broader base of nonsurgical therapies, such as psychological interventions, in an effort to improve care.
Now the children have caught the eye of the activist surgeons. Soon young kids will go under the knife and we’ll see television shows like “Twelve Year Old Transgenders in Tiaras.” Who should hold accountable the doctors who are playing with children’s hormones? A 2007 Dutch study says, “Fifty-two percent of the children diagnosed with GID [gender identity disorder] had one or more diagnoses other than GID…Clinicians working with children with GID should be aware of the risk for co-occurring psychiatric problems.'” Treating GID with irreversible surgery, while ignoring co-existing conditions, is a recipe for patient regret and suicide.
Transgenders want more freedom when perhaps they actually need more boundaries. The real life-threatening harm to transgenders is not a consequence of bullying; it results from the transgenders’ own high-risk sexual behaviors, illicit drug use, and alcohol abuse. Transgenders have been shown to be prone to harming themselves. Unfortunately, the activist agenda is directed toward more laws to protect transgenders instead of finding better treatments to reduce the number of suicides and regretters.
The evidence is clear—the surgery is not medically necessary and many problems occur as a result of changing genders. The personal testimonies are further confirmation that changing genders can result in very painful regret. In the next chapter we conclude with an explanation of how effective treatment got derailed by the activists and we explore some possible solutions for reducing the number of transgender regretters and deaths by suicide.
I will put the Rabbi’s Second Part first, truncated a bit (will not include the Conclusion). After which I will put portions of his First Part below the Second. The entire article is worth reading, I was impressed with the input from the Rabbi… what a great addition to the ongoing discussion.
Part Two Rabbi Bernheim shows that in this debate there is a confrontation between two worldviews. On the one hand is the worldview of the LGBT activists who wish to deny sexual difference and replace fixed sexual identity with a chosen sexual orientation, in service of the project of destroying marriage. On the other is that of the biblical vision of the irreducible difference between man and woman and of their complementarity, a constitutive difference that opens up transcendence.
Part One Rabbi Bernheim offers an analysis of arguments advanced by those who favor a law establishing homosexual marriage, first giving the argument that we hear for it and then what we often neglect to say.
LGBT activists wish to deny sexual difference. One of their tools is “gender theory.” First used by feminists in their struggle for sexual equality, gender theory was taken up by homosexual activists in their fight against sexual difference. In the 1960s, Anglo-Saxon feminist movements denounced the social differences that persisted between men and women based solely on sexual difference. Their ideas gave birth to the notion of “gender,” which can be defined as the social role attributed to each sex. Gender is relative to norms and standards that determine what is considered masculine or feminine. In other words, it defines the difference and the social hierarchy between men and women as a function of their sex. Such gender norms are supposed to be the systematic basis for male domination over women.
Whereas sex is a matter of biological difference between men and women, gender refers to social differences based on these sexual differences. Gender could therefore be described as the social dimension of sexual difference. Theories that confine individuals to certain roles, jobs, or images, such as “the man at work and the woman in the home,” are thus denounced as oppressive.Gender theorists believe, as Simone de Beauvoir said, that “one is not born a woman, one becomes a woman” by assuming certain “gender characteristics” that are, for the most part, cultural constructions that these theorists denounce. One is born “neuter,” and it is society that imposes a male identity on each man because of his masculine sex and a female identity on each woman because of her feminine sex, with all the inequalities implied in this difference.
These theorists do not define the individual by his or her sex (man or woman) but by his or her sexuality (homo-, hetero-, etc.). They tend to efface the biological and anatomical dimension that separates the two sexes in order to see only multiple genders, dictated by culture and by history. Since they consider sexual difference to be a social and cultural construction and therefore artificial, feminist movements denounce existing social relationships and demand a culture capable of protecting women. One implication of this protection is the renunciation of heterosexuality.
The most radical theorists go further: They express the wish to eliminate all disparities between men and women and to achieve perfect equality between them. Since they believe there can be no difference without inequality, they demand the end to sexual difference between men and women. (What a paradox it is, in a society where we swear by nothing so much as the acceptance of difference, to perceive difference as a problem. But there is no antinomy between difference and equality; the opposite of equality is not difference, and equality is not contradicted by sexual difference.)
Since these theorists presume that sexual difference is the enduring cause of the submission of the woman to the man, equality necessarily implies the end of sexual difference. Thus it appears that the final goal of the feminist revolution is not only to have done away with the privilege of masculinity but also to eliminate the very distinction between the sexes. If gender is a pure social construction, then all social representation of sexuality is acquired and artificial. In this way, little by little, sex understood as a natural category is put in question and sexuality itself as a natural given is relativized.
Queer theory pushes gender theory to its extreme point and blames as heterosexist the assumption that heterosexuality is the norm and therefore superior to other sexual orientations. Once heterosexuality has lost its self-evidence, all forms of sexual construction become possible. Queer theory demands the creation of a new anthropology that would not be subject to “obligatory heterosexuality” or to “the self-evidence of heterosexuality,” with the aim of returning to some earlier stage before the existence of sexual or “gendered” difference. It wishes to have done with the “gendered” perception of the individual and with all “gendered” usage of words, so that “man” or “masculine” might designate a feminine body and the body itself is no longer understood as a given reality. Being only a social construction, sexual identity no longer in any way determines the psychic constitution of the individual. Thus there is no point in taking it into account.
In the place of sexual identity, which is considered a thing of the past, queer theory proposes the notion of a “sexual orientation” chosen by each individual based upon the gender that somehow defines his or her interior being. By distinguishing the sexed (sexuality as a given fact) from the sexual (sexuality as a behavior), queer theory defends the idea that one can be physically masculine but psychologically feminine, or the reverse. It follows that, independent of one’s biology or sex, one can experience desires that are homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual.
Queer theory thus invites the individual to leave behind the straitjacket of “manhood” or “womanhood” that he did not choose and express himself according to his self-perceptions. For example, a person who is male biologically and “gendered” as a woman could have heterosexual desires and thus live with another man. From this point of view, the sexual orientation chosen by the individual would never be definitive and could vary over the course of one’s life. If gender is constructed, it can thus be deconstructed. Femininity and masculinity become simple roles that one can choose to take on or to reject, to parody or to exchange as one wishes. Women, men, heteros, homos, bisexuals, or transsexuals . . . . In this merry-go-round of genders, sexual identities are replaced by individual expressions, which are ceaselessly created and recreated in relationship to one another. What is authoritative is no longer an individual’s sexual identity but his sexual orientation.
A Tammy Bruce Quote
Even if one does not necessarily accept the institutional structure of “organized religion,” the “Judeo-Christian ethic and the personal standards it encourages do not impinge on the quality of life, but enhance it. They also give one a basic moral template that is not relative,” which is why the legal positivists of the Left are so threatened by the Natural Law aspect of the Judeo-Christian ethic…. these problems don’t remain personal and private. The drive, especially since this issue is associated with the word “gay rights,” is to make sure your worldview reflects theirs. To counter this effort, we must demand that the medical and psychiatric community take off their PC blinders and treat these people responsibly. If we don’t, the next thing you know, your child will be taking a “tolerance” class explaining how “transexuality” is just another “lifestyle choice”…. After all, it is the only way malignant narcissists will ever feel normal, healthy, and acceptable: by remaking society – children – in their image…. and now all manner of sexual perversion enjoys the protection and support of once what was a legitimate civil-rights effort for decent people. The real slippery slope has been the one leading into the Left’s moral vacuum. It is a singular attitude that prohibits any judgment about obvious moral decay because of the paranoid belief that judgment of any sort would destroy the gay lifestyle, whatever that is….
It is in the name of tolerance that defenders of queer theory demand social recognition for all forms of sexual orientation, but tolerance in this case is nothing but a Trojan horse in the fight against heterosexuality, a social norm that they judge to be an obsolete imposition, since it is built upon sexual difference.
This fight clearly aims at the current model of the family, which is felt to be a form of social conditioning and an obstacle to the expression of the activists’ “deep self”—that is, their gender. Medicine and law will have to adapt themselves to these personal expressions of sexuality. If an individual who is physically masculine can in fact be psychologically feminine or the reverse, and if it is the will of the individual and no longer nature that determines sex, then why not institutionalize the union of two people, whoever they might be? And, in particular, what would be the point of refusing to confide children to such a couple, since all the different models are considered equivalent?
Faced with such a series of demands, we are justified in asking whether the activists’ purpose is not finally the destruction, pure and simple, of marriage and of the family as these have been traditionally conceived. With this aim in mind, homosexual marriage and the right to adoption for same-sex couples appear as nothing more than a means for exploding the foundations of society, making possible all kinds of unions, finally liberated from an ancestral morality, and therefore definitively doing away with the very notion of sexual difference.
The Biblical Vision
The complementarity between man and woman is a fundamental principle in Judaism, in other religions, in some nonreligious intellectual traditions, and in the organization of society, as well as in the opinion of a very large majority of the population. For me, this principle has a biblical basis. Others will find its foundation elsewhere. Here I will concentrate on the biblical view, not to the exclusion of other views.“So G-d created man in his own image, in the image of G-d he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). The biblical account grounds sexual difference in the act of creation. The polarity of masculine–feminine pervades all that exists, from clay to G-d. It is part of what is given primordially and what guides the respective vocations—the being and the agency—of man and woman. The duality of the sexes is part of the anthropological constitution of humanity.
Thus, every person is brought sooner or later to recognize that he possesses only one of the two fundamental versions of humanity and that the other will remain forever inaccessible. Sexual difference is thus a mark of our finitude. I am not the whole of humanity. A sexed being is not the totality of the species; it needs a being of the other sex to produce its likeness.
Genesis finds the similarity of the human being with G-d only in the association of the man and the woman and not in each one taken separately. This suggests that the definition of a human being is perceptible only in the conjunction of the two sexes. Because of his sexual identity, each person is referred beyond himself. From the moment a person becomes conscious of his sexual identity, he is thus confronted with a kind of transcendence. The person is required to think beyond himself and to acknowledge the independent existence of an inaccessible other—that is, of one who is essentially related to himself and desirable yet never wholly comprehensible.
The experience of sexual difference thus becomes the model for all experiences of transcendence; it designates an indissoluble relation with an absolutely inaccessible reality. On this basis we can understand why the Bible so readily uses the relation between man and woman as a metaphor for the relation between G-d and man: not because G-d is masculine and man is feminine but because it is man’s sexual duality that most clearly manifests an unsurpassable otherness within the closest relation.
It is significant that, in the Bible, sexual difference is mentioned just after the affirmation of the fact that man is in the image of G-d. This means that sexual difference is embedded in this image and thus blessed by G-d. Sexual difference must therefore be understood as a fact of nature infused with spiritual intentions. This, we think, is indicated by the fact that in the seven days of creation, the animals are not presented as sexed beings. What characterizes them is not the difference between the sexes but the difference of orders and, within each order, the differences among species: There are the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the earth, etc. All living beings are produced, according to the repeated refrain, “after their kind” (Gen. 1:21). In this account, sexuality is not mentioned except in the case of mankind, for it is precisely in the loving relation, which includes the sexual act by which man and woman “become one flesh,” that the two fulfill their proper end: to be in G-d’s image.
Sex is therefore not an accidental attribute of the person. Genitals are the bodily expression of a sexuality that affects a person’s whole being—body, soul, and spirit. It is because man and woman perceive themselves as different in their sexed being, while they are both equally persons, that there can be complementarity and communion. “Masculine” and “feminine,” “male” and “female,” are relational terms. Masculine is masculine only insofar as it is oriented toward the feminine—and, through the feminine, toward the child; and this holds true for every instance of paternity, carnal or spiritual. The feminine is feminine only as oriented toward the masculine; and, through the man, toward the child—in every case, then, toward the maternal, whether carnal or spiritual.
The second account of creation deepens this teaching by presenting the act of creation of the woman in the form of a surgical operation by which G-d extracts the one who will become Adam’s companion from what is most intimate to him. Henceforth, neither man nor woman will make up the whole of humanity, and neither one will know all that is human. This expresses a double finitude: I am not everything; I am not even all that is human; and I do not know all that is human: The other sex always remains partly unknowable to me. This double finitude implies that self-sufficiency is impossible for a human being. This limitation is not a privation but a gift that allows for the discovery of the love that springs from wonder in the face of difference.
Through desire man discovers sexual difference at the heart of nature. “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” Openness to this other leads to self-discovery as complementary difference: “She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” In Hebrew, “one flesh” refers to “the One,” Ehad—the divine name par excellence, according to the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is G-d, the Lord is one.” It is in this union, which is at once carnal and spiritual, a union made possible by difference and by complementary sexual orientation, that man and woman reproduce, in the created order, the image of the One G-d.
As a counterpoint, the third chapter of Genesis presents sin as the refusal of limitation and therefore of difference: “For G-d knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be as gods, knowing good and evil.” “The tree of knowledge of good and evil”—“the tree of knowing good and knowing evil”—symbolizes precisely the two ways of apprehending the limit. First, “good knowing” respects otherness and accepts the fact of not knowing all and consents to not being all. This way of knowing opens toward love and therefore toward “the tree of life” planted by G-d in the middle of the garden. Second, “evil knowing” refuses limits and difference. It eats the other in the hope of reconstituting the whole within the self and of acquiring omniscience. This refusal of the relation of otherness leads to greed and envy, to violence, and ultimately to death.
Isn’t this what is implied in the notion of gender: the refusal of otherness, of difference, and the demand to take on sexual behaviors independent of sexual difference, the first gift of nature? Is this not, in other words, the pretension to “know” the woman as the man, to become the whole of humanity, to emancipate oneself from all natural conditions, and therefore “to become as gods”?
PART ONE
Homosexual marriage in the name of equality?
What we hear: “Homosexuals are victims of discrimination. They must have the right to marry, the same as heterosexuals.”
What we often neglect to say: From the fact that people love each other it does not follow necessarily that they have the right to be married, whether they be heterosexual or homosexual. For example, a man cannot marry a woman who is already married, even if they love each other. Likewise, a woman cannot be married to two men on the grounds that she loves both of them and that both want to be her husband. A father cannot marry his daughter, even if their love is uniquely paternal and filial.
Of course, we understand the wish of people who are in love that their love be recognized. Still, there are strict rules defining what kinds of unions can be recognized as marriages and what kinds cannot. Thus “marriage for everyone” is only a slogan, since after the authorization of homosexual marriage the law would maintain forms of inequality and discrimination that would continue to apply to those who love each other but to whom marriage is not available.
The argument for marriage for all conceals a split between two existing visions of marriage. According to one worldview, which I share with a great number of people, both believers and nonbelievers, marriage is not only the recognition of a loving attachment. It is the institution that articulates the union between man and woman as part of the succession of generations. It is the establishment of a family—that is, a social cell that creates a set of parent–child relations among its members. Beyond the common life of two individuals, it organizes the life of a community consisting of descendants and ancestors. So understood, marriage is a fundamental act in the construction and the stability of individuals as well as of society.
According to another worldview, marriage is an obsolete and rigid institution, the absurd legacy of a traditional and alienating society. Is it not paradoxical to hear those who share this worldview raising their voices in favor of homosexual marriage? Why do those who reject marriage and prefer free unions demonstrate alongside activists in favor of homosexual marriage?
Whichever worldview you hold, it is clear that what is going on behind the slogan of “marriage equality” is a substitution: An institution fraught with legal, cultural, and symbolic significance would be replaced by a de-sexed legal category, thus undermining the foundation of individuals and of the family. In the name of equality and the struggle against discrimination, should we suppress all references to sexual difference in relations between citizens and the state, beginning with the marriage ceremony and the family records that issue from this ceremony?
[….]
Homosexual parenting in the name of love?
One Adopted Woman Speaks
Dawn knows from personal experience that the environment in which a child is raised matters. Her story delivers a provocative, gripping, no-holds-barred account of what it was like to grow up with a homosexual father, his partners, and a chronically ill and passive mother. Candidly, transparently, yet respectfully, Dawn raises the blinds on a home shrouded in secrecy, conflict, confusion, and abuse.
What we hear: “What is most important is love. A homosexual couple can give much love to a child, sometimes even more than a heterosexual couple.”
What we often neglect to say: To love a child is one thing; to love a child with a love that provides the necessary structure is another. There can be no doubt that homosexuals have the same capacity to love a child and to convey this love as do heterosexuals, but the role of parents extends beyond the love they feel for their children. To reduce the parental bond to its affective and educative aspects is to overlook the fact that the parent–child bond is a psychological vector of fundamental importance for the child’s sense of identity.
All the affection in the world will not suffice to produce the basic psychological structures that address the child’s need to know where he comes from. For the child establishes his own identity only by a process of differentiation, which presupposes that he knows whom he resembles. Thus he needs to know that he issues from the love and the union between a man, his father, and a woman, his mother, thanks to the sexual difference between them. Even adopted children know that they originate from the love and the desire of their parents, even when these are not their biological parents.
Father and mother represent a genealogy for the child. The child needs a clear and coherent genealogy in order to find his place as an individual. What has always and will always constitute our humanity is the capacity for language in a sexually differentiated body and as part of a genealogy. To identify a child’s parentage is not only to indicate who will raise the child, with whom he will have affective relations, and who will serve as his adults of reference. It is also, most important, to situate him in a generational chain. The chain guarantees each individual a place in the world in which he lives, for he knows where he came from.
Today we face the immense risk of irreversibly scrambling the chain of generations. Just as one cannot destroy the foundations of a house without the house collapsing, one cannot reject the foundations of our society without putting that society in danger.
“Homosexual parenting” is not parenting. The term itself was invented to mitigate the impossibility of homosexuals’ being parents. This new foundation, invented to promote the legal option of giving a child two “parents” of the same sex, is part of a fiction. Neither marriage nor parenthood has ever been based on the sexuality of individuals but rather on sex itself—that is, on the anthropological distinction between man and woman.
Thus, by abandoning the man–woman distinction in favor of the heterosexual–homosexual distinction, homosexual activists demand not parenthood (paternity or maternity) but the right to some new abstract parental status that reduces the role of the “parent” to the exercise of certain functions such as education. This overlooks the fact that, even in the case of adopted children, to be a parent is not only to educate the child but also to recreate lines of paternity and maternity.
We must therefore strongly reaffirm that to be a father or a mother is not merely an affective, cultural, or social function. The term “parent” is not neutral; it involves sexual difference. To accept the term “homosexual parenting” is to strip the word “parent” of its intrinsic bodily, biological, and fleshly meaning.
The Association of Gay and Lesbian Parents and Future Parents has proposed several substitutes for the term “parent” depending on the various functions to be performed: “stepparent,” “co-parent,” “homo-parent,” “mother to another,” “biological parent,” “legal parent,” “social parent,” “second parent,” etc. It seems unlikely that a child could manage naturally to find a stable meaning in relation to all such terminologies.
[….]
Adoption to protect the right to a child?
What we hear: “Homosexuals are victims of discrimination. Just like heterosexuals, they must have the right to have children.”
What we often neglect to say: The right to a child does not exist. The desire to have a child in no way establishes the right to have a child, neither for heterosexuals nor for homosexuals. The wishes of an infertile heterosexual couple may not be honored if conditions are not optimal. For example, one may judge that a young and healthy couple is better suited to have a child than an older couple in fragile health. If a right to a child for homosexual couples were recognized, then all heterosexual couples denied children would feel themselves victims of discrimination in one way or another and would have grounds for claiming the same right.
There is no question of denying the suffering experienced by homosexual couples owing to their infertility—a suffering they share with heterosexual couples who cannot procreate. Such homosexual couples now demand that their suffering be recognized and alleviated. But no one has the right to be relieved of suffering at another’s expense, particularly when this is to the disadvantage of the weak and innocent. Their suffering is not a sufficient reason to give them the right to adopt.
The child is not an object of rights but a subject of rights. To speak of a “right to a child” instrumentalizes and objectifies the child. In the current debate, the child as a person, as a subject, is absent in the arguments of those who demand adoption for homosexual couples. This absence allows adults demanding rights to avoid asking about the rights of the child, what the child might need, and whether the child might prefer having a father and mother instead of two parents of the same sex. This is a case where our carelessness borders on cynicism. The right of the child is radically different from the right to the child. The former right is fundamental. It consists in particular in giving the child a family in which he will have the best chance to have the best life.
Adoption to help the children waiting to be adopted?
What we hear: “Thousands of children are waiting for adoption, and it would be better for them to be adopted by a homosexual couple than to remain in an orphanage.”
What we often neglect to say: The adopted child needs a father and mother even more than other children. At the deepest level, viscerally, he desires to find a place close to the basic cell that gave him life: a father and a mother. The adopted child is burdened by the simultaneous traumas of abandonment and of the family’s double identity. Even more than other children, this child needs a clear sense of a biological chain. This is because he or she has no sense of being the fruit of a loving union. He was not desired, he has no one’s eyes, and he cannot recognize himself in any member of his new family.
It is common for the adopted child to reject one of the two sexes. It is therefore important that the child be able to identify with two parents of different sexes: with his mother, because he needs to be reconciled with the woman; and with his father, in order to know the presence of a man, without whom his mother would not have been able to have a child.
Money Quote
Adoption exists to provide the child a family, and not the reverse.
Homosexual adoption thus risks aggravating the trauma of the abandoned child, for the generational chain would be doubly broken: first in the reality of the child’s abandonment, and second, symbolically, in the fact of the homosexuality of the adoptive parents. Do we have the right to ask a child who has already been wounded by his past to adapt to the affective situation of his parents, a situation that is very different at once from that of the great majority of other children and from what the child aspires to rediscover? Is it the adopted child’s responsibility to adapt to the affective life choices of his or her parents?
Adoption exists to provide the child a family, and not the reverse. Adoption is intended to address the child’s hardship. It is thus essential to clearly discern the intentions of every couple that submits a request for adoption: Is the child to be adopted for himself, or to satisfy the couple’s need? Does the couple want to remedy the child’s hardship, or does it seek a remedy for its own pain in not being able to have a child? To be sure, a couple would not adopt a child if it did not feel the need to do so. Nevertheless, we must be sure that the child’s interests come first, as this is stated in our family law: Every child has the right to a family—first of all to his own family, and, failing this, to a family suited to become his own by adoption. This is why it is necessary to remind ourselves that desiring a child is not sufficient grounds for adoption, and that apparently simple solutions based on compassion are not always good solutions: Much harm can be done in the name of the good.
New forms of homosexual parenting to create equality?
What we hear: “The meaning of parenting is evolving, particularly thanks to medically assisted procreation. The law must take account of such developments.”
What we often neglect to say: The lesbian and feminist association LesBienNées (The Well-Born) gives the four forms homosexual parenting would take following its legal authorization: “It can be the result of a family’s recomposition with a partner of the same sex following a heterosexual union. It can come about within a system of co-parenting in which gays and lesbians agreed to have a child who will be raised cooperatively between the two households. It can also be the result of an adoption. Or, finally, it can be the result of artificial insemination or of a medically assisted procreation.”
LGBT activists seek to advance the idea that any limits on the rights of “parenting” would be a violation of the principle of equality and thus an injustice, thereby setting aside the fact that a child is always born of the union of a man and a woman—even if this union may sometimes be medically assisted. These activists demand the consistent application of the principle of equality to leverage their cause, in particular in the case of medically assisted procreation for lesbian couples.
These new forms of homosexual parenting have opened the door to a frightening array of possible combinations. For example, a lesbian might donate an egg to her partner, who would then be inseminated and carry a child for the couple. The sperm might be provided by a couple of male homosexuals who would then function as co-parents for the child, who would thus have four parents. Such combinations and others are now a reality. These invented combinations give rise to two demands. The first is to legitimize them because they already exist. The second is the creation of a universal right to any such combination, on the grounds that access to these means of reproduction in foreign countries is expensive and therefore a source of inequality.
It is well understood that, in many domains of life, an infraction—that is to say, a failure to respect a prohibition—cannot be sufficient grounds for lifting the prohibition that has not been respected. In other words, the reality of certain facts is not sufficient to create a legal reality. This holds as well for the new forms of homosexual parenting.
It is also clear that what is at stake in medically assisted procreation and in surrogate pregnancy goes far beyond the mere question of homosexual parenting and far exceeds what is provided for in French family law. It is essential, therefore, that the subjects continue to be treated in the proper framework of the law of bioethics and that this framework not be taken hostage by demands aiming to erase all sexual difference in our society.
(PART 2 discusses homosexuality and biblical dietary law) I was graciously invited to a site that is a depot for many conservatively minded homosexuals as well as supporters of these Republican leaning folk. For the record there are many independents and libertarian leaning guys and gals in the group as well. The person that invited me to the Facebook group, JK, soon after posted a link to one of my blog posts to help submerge me into the site’s ethos a bit. Which I did. I have to say, it makes my heart joyous that good, calm dialogue — even in disagreement — can happen. Why can it happen? Because they are conservative. No matter if I talked to heterosexual or homosexual persons from the Left about this, almost always you are hit with name-calling, pigeonholing, and straw-man arguments. So kudos to the guys and gals on the Facebook group.
Which leads me to the below. While being a bit long, I must post this dialogue here in the hopes that others will a) find what I am arguing for persuasive, and b) be able to incorporate these arguments into ones apologetic. And I must say, that the only positive argument I have seen put forth is one from the Left. That is “equality” (not liberty) being the main driving force. It is an ethic closer to the French Revolution which denied [capital “N”] Natural [capital “L”] Law but almost an earlier form of “legal positivism.” Here is Francis Canavan speaking to this topic just a bit for the person interested in this dichotomy, after which I will post the dialogue from FB:
Liberty, equality, fraternity was the slogan of the French Revolution. Liberty and equality were the Revolution’s operative goals, and fraternity was brought in as a cement to hold them together. For liberty and equality are not necessarily in harmony and, in fact, are often at war with each other. Keeping the peace between them therefore became the role of fraternity. Alas, fraternity has not been terribly successful at it, as the history of class struggle since the French Revolution has shown.
In the evolution of democratic theory in the past two centuries, two main currents have emerged from the same wellspring of radical individualism: the liberal stream, emphasizing liberty while acknowledging equality of civil rights, and the egalitarian stream equality of civil rights, emphasizing equality while preaching the liberty guaranteed by civil rights.
Liberal democracy understands rights as immunities from governmental interference. Their function is to prevent government from unduly restraining any individual’s liberty. The egalitarian conception of rights is much broader than the classical liberal one and includes a wide range of positive benefits to be conferred by government. It tends toward an equality of results rather than merely of opportunities. To put it crudely, it means not only that you are free to apply for the job, but that you get it and you keep it.
Liberal democratic thought has as its economic counterpart the ideology of capitalism and a free-market economic system. The egalitarian stream ushers in the ideology of socialism and a government dedicated to bringing about substantial economic equality among all citizens.
Liberalism as it exists in the United States today is an effort to have the best of both ideological worlds. It assigns to government the duty of fostering, not complete economic equality, but general and a more equal share in it for all citizens. At the same time, through an ever-expanding array of civil rights, it seeks to emancipate the individual from religious, moral, and social restraints that are not of his own choosing. The contemporary liberal ideal would be a country in which everyone was employed at high wages in work which he/she found fulfilling, without distinction of race, color, creed, gender, ethnic origin, educational background, or sexual preference, and could live by any “lifestyle” that he/she chose.
Contemporary American conservatism is largely a reaction to this brand of liberalism, and therefore is a mixed bag of views. Among its adherents we find “conservatives” who are really nineteenth-century liberals eager to get government off the back of business. We also find “social-issue” conservatives angered by the liberal dissolution of our public morality. Still others are “libertarians” who want no public morality at all but oppose liberalism because of the large role it gives government. Another group of conservatives are regionalists or “states-righters” who are against not government as such, but the federal government.
The ideological conflict between and among liberals and conservatives is carried on in terms of liberty and equality.
Francis Canavan, The Pluralist Game: Pluralism, Liberalism, and the Moral Conscience (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), 127-128.
What is the founding zeitgesit of our country?
Remember, if marriage is just about happiness or love, then why not polygamy, polyandry, or the like (“I’ve married my sister – now we’re having our second baby” ~ Daily Mail). Because, marriage is NOT about those things. JK is the person who invited me to the group, and who promptly posted a link to one of my excerpts from a book I posted on my blog (see, right). (*Caution, RAW Language*) Without further adieu:
JK: I have not found many gays that were molested. I can only think of two that were in fact. Have you known many? I’m just wondering.
AC: I “think” I was at a YMCA camp when I was very young,I DO remember sitting on the head (lol) dudes lap and being felt up after that its a blank,I do remember crying that I didn’t want to go the next year and I was able to NEVER go back,wish I could sue LOL
JA: Yep… when I was 10 here, 17 year old next door to grandma’s got me. No entrance but got froddled. I held a long grudge until I talked to a psycologist that suggested the same sex attraction was going to happen anyways, but the event was the first same sex stimulus, etc. I think it was reported the percentages of perfectly straight men that were molested is 17%… it happens to be the same 17% for gays which indicates molestation is not the shooting gun for guys being gay.
AC: I KNOW I always have been gay,even “thought” of stuff I wanted to do BEFORE I knew what gay was and what sex was……it was like natural?
JA: On the other hand of that above statement from me. We know the act of writing, which hand we use, language or languages spoken, at young ages the brain physically modifies itself to adapt to be able to do what is taught well. I believe there may be some genetic capability to go gay, but actually playing with other boys or being molested at ages under 15 can actually concrete in the gayness and once the brain molds itself into same sex attraction, it is irreversible.
AC: I wore a pink ballarina dress to kindergarden LOL yes escaped from the nanny and ran to school in it and refused to take it off THANK GOD I aint into drag LOL but what straight boy would do that LOL
JA: Maybe because you had that gay potential, it made you more vulnerable to being used? I think that’s what happened here. The older kid asked if I wanted to do what the big kids do and took out what looked like a 12 inch dick to me, I never had an erection before then but looking at his made me get one and I was intrigued. I had no idea was sex was or that boy/boy stuff was wrong.
JPC: I only know one that was molested. And he had a very difficult life as a young man.
KC: My (maternal) first cousin (4 yrs older than me) lived with us for about a year when I was about 12 (he was in high school) and he used to fondle me. He made me jerk him off while he did me. I was afraid at first but I didn’t see that it was wrong … also, whenever I would spend the night with my school mates, we slept in the same bed and the same thing would happen. Then, in high school, I remember riding in the back seat of the coach’s car going to an away game and some of the guys would fondle each other. As far as I know, I’m the only one who has admitted of being gay. The rest are all “happily” married (or divorced). My older cousin (the one that fondled me first) is also still married. We’ve not had communication in over 20 years. Looking back, I now realized my cousin actually molested me but the fact that I liked it, is that still considered molestation?
[….]
What’s the difference in “molestation” (my cousin) and “experimentation”?
GC: I consider molestation to be an abusive situation with an adult over a child. Most of what I’ve read here falls under the experimentation category.
This is where I finally wade in. So far, as you can see, many have had a sexual encounter during a young age with someone older involved in leading these people (adult or teen) to be fondled or to fondle them.
PAPA GIORGIO:
About me. I have over 5,000 books in my home library (politics, religion, philosophy, science, history, ethics, theology, economics, and the like) as well as many DVD documentaries/lectures/presentations that are not “Time to Kill” with Prince’s protege movies (“The Last Dragon” or “Time to Kill”). Some could argue they need to be these types of movies and I should lighten up a bit. But so be it.
“By-the-by, for those reading this I will explain what is missing in this type of discussion due to the media used. Genuflecting, care, concern, one being upset (does not entail being “mad”), etc… are all not viewable because we are missing each other’s tone, facial expressions, and the like. I afford the other person I am dialoguing with the best of intentions and read his/her comments as if we were out having a talk over a beer at a bar or meeting a friend at Starbucks. (I say this because there seems to be a phenomenon of etiquette thrown out when talking through email or Face Book, lots more public cussing and gratuitous responses.) You will see that often times I USE CAPS — which in www lingo for YELLING. I am not using it this way, I use it to merely emphasize and often times say as much: *not said in yelling tone, but merely to emphasize*. So in all my discussions I afford the best of thought to the other person as I expect he or she would to me… even if dealing with tough subjects as the above. I have had more practice at this than most, and with half-hour pizza, one hour photo and email vs. ‘snail mail,’ know that important discussions take time to meditate on, inculcate, and to process. So be prepared for a good thought provoking discussion if you so choose one with me.”
About me. I have over 5,000 books in my home library (politics, religion, philosophy, science, history, ethics, theology, economics, and the like) as well as many DVD documentaries/lectures/presentations that are not “Time to Kill” with Prince’s protege [movies]. Some could argue they need to be movies and I should lighten up a bit. But so be it.
Dialogue is important, and I will discuss my many years of research on this and any topic. But if we, discuss, say rape ~ there are two levels we can discuss this on. The emotional, or the legal/ethical/etc level. When I talk rape, and universal absolutes, I will bring up books like,
▼ Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, 1997). ▼ Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000).
showing that if evolution (atheistic, philosophical naturalism) rules the day, that “rape” is a process used by our species (in the past, and in nature) as a way to propagate our kind. It is therefore, ethically speaking, merely [currently] “taboo.” In theism it is morally wrong at all times and places in the universe. So when we are talking “foundational aspects” of worldviews (side-note: all 10,0000 religions in the world can be broken down into 7-at-the-most worldviews), we leave the emotional and deal with the many other aspects of the issue.
RAPE:
✂theism: evil, wrong at all times and places in the universe — absolutely;
✂atheism: taboo, it was used in our species in the past for the survival of the fittest, and is thus a vestige of evolutionary progress… and so may once again become a tool for survival — it is in every corner of nature;
✂pantheism: illusion, all morals and ethical actions and positions are actually an illusion (Hinduism – maya; Buddhism – sunyata). In order to reach some state of Nirvana one must retract from this world in their thinking on moral matters, such as love and hate, good and bad.
ALL THAT [above] makes no difference to a woman who was raped. Especially the closer you are to the event. It is emotional. And I would never talk about the above with a women versus doting over her emotional needs. Agreed?
SO, if you cannot get into the weeds with me if you truly want to see the hurdles that need to be jumped in this discussion with thoughtful conservatives. Then you shouldn’t engage in polite, but sometimes emotional, topic such as what JK has really given his blessing to. (Never thought you would be a priest, huh JK?)
Are you — who are reading this — tracking? Sound fair? Reasonable? Take note, I am a federalist, and lean libertarian (small “l” on this). If states pass these initiatives by the consent of the people in those states (same-sex marriage), then so be it. It is how our Constitution was set up. If we want to codify marriage as between a man-and-women, legally binding for all the states. Then we need 2/3rds of Congress and 3/4ths of the states. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. So I am only here talking about societal impacts and reasons behind many of the “choosing” of this lifestyle.
To better explain, here are two calls from gay listeners to conservative talk radio (full audio upload):
And this is just the call:
So know as well that I believe a very small minority (but still due to environmental reasons) do not truly “choose” this lifestyle.
We all on the same page? Somewhat? Decorum being the word in the face of personal subjects.
JK:
So when I was about 10 I was kissed on the lips by a kid 3 or 4 years older. Was I molested? I was certainly surprised and knew I didn’t like it. That girl really pissed me off. When I was 12 I went to church camp as I was a very pious child. Living with, being with and showering with boys helped me to know my place in the world.
PAPA GIORGIO:
Just got to work… I will share that I have talked to Walt and he has mentioned that the many people he helps and deal with in his ministry have sexual trauma when they are young. I shared with you two co-workers that I love (one when I worked at Borders, the other at Whole Foods). One friend had his “coming out experience” when he was 12, by a family member. The other, who was very flamboyant with his past (and shared it with anyone who would listen) had his “coming out experience” by a stranger when he was thirteen.
Also, I shared with you that my mom has known quite a few lesbians that are fellow trailer-parkers (I am sure there is some colloquial term to use better than that?) and they have all confided sexual acts done by close family or close confidants to the family.
There is also this from a favored author of mine, Tammy Bruce:
✿ Here come the elephant again: Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood — molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult. The gay community must face the truth and see sexual molestation of an adolescent for the abuse it is, instead of the ‘coming-of-age’ experience many [gays] regard it as being. Until then, the Gay Elite will continue to promote a culture of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and suicide by AIDS. (Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values [Roseville: Prima, 2003], 99.)
This may not be everyone’s experience JK, but it is enough for some to say that unlike color/ethnicity [immutability], that homosexuality is mutable.
I believe there are a whole strain of environmental causes (abuse, issues in the home, hormonal influence in and out of utero, etc.) But you must admit that one cause CAN BE taking an adolescent when they are sexually vulnerable, and damaging this delicate time in a youths life? Right? In other words, if this life (the gay life) is something you (the general you, not you specifically) didn’t choose, and it has been hard, you would want to then try to make sure the ideal environment to teach young men and women the proper relationship between their sexuality and the world they live in (while respecting peoples choices and private matter) would be your goal. Yeah?
Just a side-note. There seems to be an unhealthy dislike for the sexes in the gay community. This has worked its way into many areas of the same sexes who happen to be gay. For instance, when I was in jail many years ago I was a trustee (worker) that fed the jail masses. Some of those masses were the gay men, who were pretty normal in appearance and attitude. A separate group were the very feminine gay men, and the third group were transvestites. I asked why they were separated and the officer said that they would kill each other if not. Similarly, there is some good work showing that the very “butch type” female gays and men were key in helping incarcerate the many effeminate homosexuals in the camps during WWII. While the next response isn’t as extreme, it does offer up some insight into gay community and its biases brought on by nurture [or nature]? (I will emphasize where someones experience and scholarship is rejected do to gender):
JK: I believe that the clergy and social service types would get more stories like this naturally and from my own experience I never hang out with lesbians. Lesbians stay to themselves mostly as many do not like men. I love Tammy, but I will bet she doesn’t hang with the boys too often.
PAPA GIORGIO: By-the-by, just to explain why I posted those two calls
I am making clear that I believe some — a very small minority — are born with no desire for the opposite sex. But in a person, like Walt Heyer’s life, much of what happened to him likewise was not his choice either. Choice sometimes comes later in life. One example from faith is this, and Ravi mentions Henri Nouwen in his response:
[….]
Ravi refers to Henri Nouwen as a Saint. Many of us cannot keep a “lid on it” like Henri did (that is Saint status in my book), but society as a whole should seriously discuss what IT should normalize or keep in the private sphere. I believe a mutable attraction is one of them. this is what serious discussion should be over.
Just saying “Tammy doesn’t know” is not good enough. She knows a lot of gay men in the field she has chosen to be in over the years. As she even states in that quote. Time to get to work. Love your way JK.
JK: I have lived in L.A. all my life and don’t know any gays that know Tammy Bruce other than listening to her on the radio. I have been in all the bars since I was a kid and have never seen her or heard her mentioned, but let’s say she is a huge fag hag lesbian. Her experiences like mine are probably skewed. I know I have slept with far more men that Tammy Bruce and the subject rarely comes up. That’s why I am trying to get some dialogue here to see what other peoples experiences have been.
[….]
Ravi also says that being a polygamist wouldn’t work in Christianity. We it worked for Solomon, Abraham, Gideon, Elkanah, Saul, and David. David had many wives and loved Jonathan more than any of them btw.
PAPA GIORGIO: @JK, you mentioned Bible camp. But have you studied the Old Testament (New as well) as an adult? Maybe with some reliable Bible helps by people who know the language, culture, history they comment on? Or….
and I am not trying to demean you in ANY way, these are serious questions
… have you traversed the internet to liberal and gay sites to see that the Bible has stories of polygamy? I do not mean to get religious, but since you quoted characters from the Bible, I will lightly touch on the same issue in it that I have talked about above. that is, “ideals” vs. the “private.” This same subject/object distinction takes place in your mentioning these stories.
But the question I am curious about is if you have gone to reliable sources on the matter. in other words, if you are to share stories that challenge an ideal about good music and you share stories of, I don’t know, say John Lennon. Would you have a wider more trusting conversation with the person you are conversing with if they knew you got much of your information from “John Lennon: The Life,” by
Philip Norman, who had unprecedented access to archives, interviewed over the years the Beatles, wrote the previously definitive book on the Beatles, “Shout.” Or the book “The Lennon Prophecy,” where author Joseph Niezgoda says Lennon made a pack with the devil, lauded by the once good WND site. Now crap.
So. like my analogy, have you [honestly, and this is not to judge you, I truly am curious and want an honest answer] done the hard work to see if the above statements about polygamy in the Bible make your case?
Side-note, I dealt with a popular meme in an older post on this topic. I explain some of the “hard work” here:
JK: Thanks so much Papa Giorgio. I love your insight.
[….]
I don’t actually want to change biblical marriage, but state sanctioned marriage. Nobody straight or gay should have a tax benefit over another as we are all guaranteed equal status under the law. Marriage is between you and God. The government should not be involved.
HH: Papa, Anyone who reads the OT will be horrified to read some of the strange tales it harbors.
PAPA GIORGIO: No, that wasn’t my question JK, I will ask again:
⚑ “So. like my analogy, have you [honestly, and this is not to judge you, I truly am curious and want an honest answer] done the hard work to see if the above statements about polygamy in the Bible make your case?”
I will continue to the main point after you respond openly/honestly to this simple question. Yes or no will suffice.
I continue, but in response to HH.
PAPA GIORGIO: @HH, I would recommend a book for you, two actually:
Ideals vs. Practice (per God [Jesus & YHWH]). You do not have to respond to this, consider it as a short lesson in what God has designed as an ideal (or if believing in neo-Darwinian non-God guided evolution, what nature has set as an ideal), and how we dilute that ideal. All men/women, not just homosexuals.
The interesting thing about the Bible JK, is that it records many of the foibles, murderous acts, and missteps men and women make. UNLIKE comparable writings of the day that re-wrote their histories to display a sense of perfection in both battle and life in order to lift whichever king to an almost deistic level. For instance, if the Apostles had been attempting to create a story about (lie) about Jesus’ Resurrection, they would have not inserted the first people to find the tomb empty, women. In that day and custom women’s testimony was not allowed or accepted.
This goes a long way to realize God set up an ideal. Which Natural Law does as well (which is the spirit and philosophy our Founding documents were written):
—————————————— In Matthew 19:4 we are told by Jesus that God created one “male and [one] female” and joined them in marriage. Mark 10:6-8:”But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, ‘and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh.” The two as one is the pattern on how marriage was to be conducted from the start. NOT three or four as one.
The Hebrew is very specific, God always spoke of man’s “wife,” as singular, not wives. Notice it also states one father one mother. It wasn’t until sin made man fall (Gen. 4:23) that polygamy occurs. Cain was cursed, Lamech is a descendent of Cain and the first to practice polygamy. The first time polygamous relationship is found in the Bible is with a thriving rebellious society in sin; when a murderer named “Lamech [a descendant of Cain] took for himself two wives” (Gen.4:19, 23).
The same Godly pattern of one man and one wife is lived by Noah. At the time of the Ark (Gen. 7:7), Noah took his one wife into the ark, all his son’s took one wife; God called Noah’s family righteous and pure. If polygamy were ordained of God, it would have made sense that Noah and his sons would have taken additional wives with them to repopulate the earth faster from the cataclysm.
This was to be a permanent union between man and woman that they might be helpful to one another (Genesis 2:18). Marriage represents a relationship of both spiritual and physical unity.
[….]
God never condoned polygamy but like divorce he allowed it to occur and did not bring an immediate punishment for this disobedience. Deut. 17:14-17: “I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’ “you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. But he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, for the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall not return that way again.’ “Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.” This is the command of God, and he has never changed it.
1 Kings 11:3 says Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines violating the principle of monogamy that he was given through the law of Moses. Consider that Solomon at one time was the wisest man in the world. In I Kings 11:4: “For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.” Notice Solomon became a polytheist because he was influenced in polygamy. In his case many wives, became many gods. Scripture has always commanded monogamy (Ps.128:3; Prov. 5:18; 18:22; 19:14; 31:10-29; Eccl. 9:9).
The fact is that God never commanded polygamy or divorce. Scripture says (Bible) He only permitted it because of the hardness of their hearts (Deut. 24:1; Matt. 19:8). Matt. 5:31-32: “Furthermore it has been said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.” God hates divorce as well as polygamy, since it destroys the family (Mal. 2:16). Whatever the patriarchs or any Christian did wrong does not change the fact the Bible condemns it….
JK posted a video he quickly mentioned to me at a dinner meeting with like minded conservatives:
PAPA GIORGIO: I have already dealt with the non-sequitur of comparing the mutable aspect of homosexuality with the immutable characteristic in color/ethnicity of one’s skin color. There is no difference between a black man and a white man. There are differences between male and female. Ann Coulter notes one black women who was questioning John Kerry:
////////////
When gay marriage was first thrust on the nation by the Massachusetts Supreme Court during the 2004 presidential primary campaign, Senator John Kerry said what was at stake was “somebody’s right to live equally under the same laws as other people in the country.”
But of course, gays do live equally under the same laws as other people. There are no special speed limit laws or trespassing laws or murder laws for gays. What gays can’t do is get married to members of the same sex. Nor can heterosexuals, immigrants, whites, blacks, the rich, the poor or the homeless.
The Democrats’ comparison of gay marriage to civil rights ultimately led to the ridiculous spectacle of Kerry basically accusing a black woman of being a bigot because she did not appreciate the comparison of gays to blacks under the equal protection clause. It had to happen.
At a “town hall” meeting in Mississippi during the campaign, a black woman in the audience asked Kerry to reject the comparison of gay marriage to civil rights. “I don’t care what they say,” she said, “there is no correlation between gay rights and civil rights in terms of what black Americans have gone through.”
In response, Kerry said it was important to recognize that “we have a Constitution which has an equal protection clause.” (Because black people had probably forgotten that.)
The woman “was not satisfied” with Kerry’s answer, in the delicate phrasing of the New York Times. She said: “My point is, homosexuality is an idea. You have never heard a doctor say, ‘Mr. and Mrs. John Doe, you have a bouncing baby homosexual.’ It’s an idea.”
Ann Coulter, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (New York, NY: Sentinel [Penguin], 2012), 149-150.
/////////////
Similarly, through abuse or hormonal influence one cannot “become” “black” or “Asian,” etc. Again. Mutability vs. Immutability. Ted Olson is wrong in his view of the 14th Amendment.
[….]
I also reject the idea that marriage is a religious institution. My chapter on the matter (✌http://tinyurl.com/8unujfs✌) in my book is where I explain how civil law recognizes the already codified nature of marriage, in nature. The state does not create the ideal of one-man one-woman ideal. Just as it does not create the First and Second Amendments in the Constitution. These are…
…truths [that are] self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…
So, for instance, Nature and Natural Law (since Grecian/Roman days) have recognized a pattern (ideal) in nature. Robert George notes this in a more modern way — analogy:
——————————– However, there is a “created order,” or, even a natural order (if you do not believe in God). My argument for heterosexual (between a man and a woman) unions is usable both by the atheist (non believer in God) and the theist (a believer in God – in the Judeo-Christian sense). Here is the crux of the matter in regards to “nature’s order:”
✂ “…take gold as an example, it has inherent in its nature intrinsic qualities that make it expensive: good conductor of electricity, rare, never tarnishes, and the like. The male and female have the potential to become a single biological organism, or single organic unit, or principle. Two essentially becoming one. The male and female, then, have inherent to their nature intrinsic qualities that two mated males or two mated females never actualize in their courtship… nor can they ever. The potential stays just that, potential, never being realized…..
✂ “….Think of a being that reproduces, not by mating, but by some act performed by individuals. Imagine that for these same beings, movement and digestion is performed not by individuals, but only by the complementary pairs that unite for this purpose. Would anyone acquainted with such beings have difficulty understanding that in respect to movement and digestion, the organism is a united pair, or an organic unity?”
So you see, the two heterosexual organisms that join in a sexual union cease being two separate organisms for a short time and become one organism capable of reproduction. This is what the state and the church are sealing in a marriage, this intrinsic union. The homosexual couple can never achieve this union, so “natures order” has endowed the heterosexual union with an intrinsic quality that other relationships do not have or could never attain. Both the atheist and theist can argue from this point, because either we were created this way or we evolved this way. Either way, nature has imposed on the sexual union being discussed.
Remember, the Constitution was written with Natural Law as its ethos. Do you wish to undermine this understanding of Nature and man’s relationship to it (It)?
[…] Small Talk […]
HH: I don’t know why anyone wants to get married with the divorce rate well over 50%. Of course, there are economic factors when it comes to end of life or catastrophic illness decisions or taxes (can’t forget taxes). I have been saying for years the homophobes need to shut up. It’s beneficial to the economy to have weddings and divorces. It’s all about $$$.
PAPA GIORGIO: I am with you (in many examples, and if I ever get on a high horse), just ask my wife to knock me down from it. And I understand many a persons frustration in talking about issues with me, it is not too often I have met people who have read 2,000 books (or so) cover-to-cover and have another 3,000 (or so) for reference/future reading. Often times this knowledge can come across as prideful, and I admit that whether my fallen nature tends that direction or I inadvertently come across as an asshole — I apologize.
I have to laud YOU however JK. Many will have already broken down to personal attacks. These are tough, personal issues. And I would only want YOU to “know that which you reject.” What do I mean? Often times (and you know this from dealing with Leftists I am sure), that there is little understanding of the better arguments out there. For example, I would want a Democratic friend or family member (someone I care about) to read the following:
☮ The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek;
☮ Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, Thomas Sowell;
☮ The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, Thomas Sowell;
☮ A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, Thomas Sowell;
Etc.
Likewise, I would want you to chase after the cream of the crop arguments making the case FOR MARRIAGE (hetero) so the case for homo-marriage can begin to respond. However, as you know from dealing with the Left, often times we are left with trying to fill in fallacious thinking we encounter in order to properly respond.
This may be YOUR clarion call to revisit the issue with a new mind or drive.
I will recommend a book to start: “What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense”
It will set you on a path to see what will surely be used as a resource in the upcoming SCOTUS review of marriage.
Much Thought and Love your way JK, Papa G
[….]
PAPA GIORGIO: @HH, if I can show what you have done to the dialogue. You are attempting to mute it, a sort of non-intellectual “fascism”
⌛ “I have been saying for years the homophobes need to shut up.”
No one here is a homophobe. The following is via Prager:
——————– Here is a list of terms liberals apply to virtually every idea or action with which they differ:The “Sweep Under the Rug” Argument
And here is the list of one-word descriptions of what liberals are for:
✪ Peace ✪ Fairness ✪ Tolerance ✪ The poor ✪ The disenfranchised ✪The environment
These two lists serve contemporary liberals in at least three ways.
FIRST, they attack the motives of non-liberals and thereby morally dismiss the non-liberal person.
SECOND, these words make it easy to be a liberal — essentially all one needs to do is to memorize this brief list and apply the right term to any idea or policy. That is one reason young people are more likely to be liberal — they have not had the time or inclination to think issues through, but they know they oppose racism, imperialism and bigotry, and that they are for peace, tolerance and the environment.
THIRD, they make the liberal feel good about himself — by opposing conservative ideas and policies, he is automatically opposing racism, bigotry, imperialism, etc. ———————
You can see this played out in higher education via Indoctrinate U (full movie): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHyvRHrYYBA
[…] Small Talk […]
PAPA GIORGIO: @ SMW, JK, and GC, and MA. Since I do not know you, and my viewpoint of man (me included) tends toward selfishness, pride, and our fallen nature, I will kindly allow people I do not know — and the fact that my close friend refused to share with me his experience until we were friends enough for him to feel comfortable enough to share them with me, to tell me nothing untoward happened to them as a child. Fine. You have read in my very specified thoughts above the following:
⚤ I believe there are a whole strain of environmental causes (abuse, issues in the home, hormonal influence in and out of utero, etc.) But you must admit that one cause CAN BE taking an adolescent when they are sexually vulnerable, and damaging this delicate time in a youths life? Right?
Father issues seem to be a major CONTRIBUTOR. So do gene expressions through hormonal output in utero, diet (low cholesterol stagnates testosterone growth, high soy [milk, tofu, etc] also may have be CONTRIBUTING factor. I do not know the magic soup, but even if one were born that way, the question remains “what IS marriage.” It is not — as Danial said — happiness. [Added: the high rate of mutations in our genome since the fall: Most of the deleterious mutations in the human population arose in the last 5,000 to 10,000 years, a survey claims.]
The ideal need not be replaced. Granted, laws need to be much more open and fair to gay couples (shared property, visitation, etc) — as Ryan Anderson said in his interview (http://youtu.be/g8S9_O9Ln0M). But we are talking the big picture.
In order for the gay community to succeed you have to come out with something more than non-sequiturs and straw-men and labeling.
JK: As a preacher you are concerned foremost with religion Papa, and it’s views. As a constitutionalist I care about the views of the founding fathers when it comes to law, but I don’t really worry about things too much. Staying happy is my foremost concern.
PAPA GIORGIO: @JK, I am not a preacher? And I made the case for Natural Law, Biology, and the like? You brought up Solomon [religion], I merely corrected you on your self-admitted knowledge about the Biblical ideal. Religion has nothing to do with it.
[…] Small Talk […]
GC: I had a very strong father figure and a quite Catholic mother. She did moderately drink and smoke while pregnant with me, but that was in 1959 when that was common. My brother is ‘supposedly’ straight (unmarried), although effeminate and all his friends are gay. My sister is straight, but was a tomboy as a child. I definitely think my gayness is genetic, although I know of no aunts/uncles/first cousins who are also gay (I think one lesbian 2nd cousin). But even if environmental or by choice – as an American I do have that choice between consenting adults – right?
ES: I was molested at the Age of 11 by a 35 year old man. He dressed me up like a girl and did things to me I still detest to this day. No one knows. I feel like I can share with this group.
PAPA GIORGIO: @GC – Yes, in all my rantings lets be clear. I think you can have any relationship you want. But matrimonial law and Natural Law since Grecian/Roman/Church times has noted the new organism created when the two become one (if you haven’t read my posts above you may…. it is a lot though, I sympathize). I am also a Federalist, so I think the states have the right to make the choice themselves, or for them to change their mind on same-sex marriage. What this does is get it out of the courts and a few judges opinions and makes your community have to make a strong case. And making a strong case entails having one. Which is why many WANT unelected officials jumping in.
You can see my little “l” come out (*No* that isn’t a name for anything) in my libertarian streak in many issues that fall to the purview of the state. For instance, where conservatives should stand on marijuana: “Marijuana and the Conservative: Where Should We Stand?“
But society as a whole should not fully endorse or put their stamp of approval on the behavior either, for reasons enumerated in the post.
GC, you also asked, “Why no one turned in Sandusky?”
Shame. Guilt. A feeling that they themselves caused the situation. In the many cases of Buddhist monks, Catholic priests, school counselors, dentists, teachers, etc. (often males molesting males [per capita, males-on-male is astoundingly high], but also males molesting females), these people have often sought out positions of authority over youth where they have the opportunity of privacy and leadership over these youth.
Schools and the church try also to hide their shame by merely shuffling around these teachers due to contractual reasons, and the Church due to embarrassment. Only to prolong the abuse.
Jimmy Savile was an equal opportunity guy:
————————————————- ☁ A total of 18 girls and 10 boys under the age of 10 were abused by Savile, with 23 girls and 15 boys aged 10 to 13…. Of the 34 rape offenses, 26 victims were female and eight male. (http://tinyurl.com/ahzmgbd)
This is about where the substantive discussion petered out. I wanted to add this larger thought to elucidate the crux of the issue. that is, this debate revolves around some very important questions one should be asking, rather than simply defining marriage as “happiness,” or claim that “love” is the binding factor of what marriage “is,” or that some warped progressive view of “equality” is the way Republicans should head. Questions like these:
Disagreements over public policies regarding homosexual conduct and relationships certainly reflect different, incompatible understandings of sexual morality connected to different ‘comprehensive views.’ Underlying and informing these different understandings are, once again, profound differences about the nature of human persons and values. Is pleasure intrinsically good and, as such, a non-instrumental reason for action? Or can pleasure, in itself, provide nothing more than sub-rational motivation? Is the body an aspect of the personal reality of the human being whose body it is? Or is the body a sub-personal part of the human being whose personal reality is the conscious and desiring self which uses the body as an instrument? Is the idea of a true bodily union of persons in marital acts an illusion? Or are marital acts realizations of precisely such a union? Do non-marital sexual acts instrumentalize the bodies of those performing them in such a way as to damage their personal integrity? Or are mutually agreeable sexual acts of whatever type morally innocent and even valuable means of sharing pleasure and intimacy and expressing feelings of tenderness and affection? (Full context embedded at end)
These are questions I see none of these conservative gay men ask themselves in all my hunting around at this group. Instead, many are happy with court room interference, much to the delight of their liberal foes.
The excerpt of questions came from the book by Robert P. George, In Defense of Natural Law (New York, NY: Clarendon Press-Oxford, 1999), 213-218:
EXCERPT
III. HOMOSEXUAL ACTS, MARRIAGE AND PUBLIC REASON
If abortion is the most explosive issue in our ‘culture war,’ questions pertaining to the legal treatment of homosexual acts and relationships are emerging as the second most incendiary. Assuming that public policy issues regarding sex and marriage go to matters of constitutional essentials and basic justice, Rawlsian political liberalism offers itself as the morally best, or most reasonable, way to resolve political issues concerning homosexual acts and other questions of public policy pertaining to sex and marriage. This way avoids, indeed rules out, appeal to underlying moral and metaphysical questions in dispute among people who give their allegiance to competing comprehensive views. If Rawls is right, reasonable people who reject comprehensive liberalism in favor of views which include more conservative positions on homosexual acts and other questions of sexual morality ought reasonably to be able to join comprehensive liberals in an overlapping consensus on the proper political resolution of these questions.
Disagreements over public policies regarding homosexual conduct and relationships certainly reflect different, incompatible understandings of sexual morality connected to different ‘comprehensive views.’ Underlying and informing these different understandings are, once again, profoundly differences about the nature of human persons and values. Is pleasure intrinsically good and, as such, a non-instrumental reason for action? Or can pleasure, in itself, provide nothing more than sub-rational motivation? Is the body an aspect of the personal reality of the human being whose body it is? Or is the body a sub-personal part of the human being whose personal reality is the conscious and desiring self which uses the body as an instrument? Is the idea of a true bodily union of persons in marital acts an illusion? Or are marital acts realizations of precisely such a union? Do non-marital sexual acts instrumentalize the bodies of those performing them in such a way as to damage their personal integrity? Or are mutually agreeable sexual acts of whatever type morally innocent and even valuable means of sharing pleasure and intimacy and expressing feelings of tenderness and affection?
People’s judgments and understandings regarding these and related issues, judgments and understandings that are rarely formal and are usually merely implicit, determine their places on the spectrum ranging from various forms of sexual liberationism to strict forms of conservative sexual morality. Some proponents of moderate liberalism on questions of sexual morality oppose promiscuity and adultery but maintain that the judgment of traditional natural law theorists and others that fornication and sodomy are intrinsically non-marital and immoral is misguided. They believe that non-adulterous and non-promiscuous sexual acts and relationships between loving and devoted partners, whether of opposite sexes or the same sex, can be morally good even outside of marriage. Moreover, they argue that the state should, to be fair to people who are homosexually oriented, make marriage licenses, or at least benefits equivalent to those conferred by legal marriage, available to otherwise eligible same-sex couples.
Together with a co-author, Gerard V. Bradley, I recently debated issues of marriage and sexual morality, including the question of homosexual acts and relationships, with Stephen Macedo in the pages of the Georgetown Law Journal. Professor Macedo argues that government has an obligation in justice to its homosexually oriented citizens to issue marriage licenses on a nondiscriminatory basis to same-sex couples. If I understand Macedo’s argument correctly, he defends a conception of marriage as essentially an emotional and, possibly, spiritual union of two loving and devoted persons who may be of opposite sexes or the same sex. The intimacy and overall value of their union is, or may be, enhanced by the partners’ cooperation in the performance of mutually agreeable sexual acts. Professor Bradley and I defend an alternative conception of marriage—one which we believe to be reflected in traditional American and British marriage law, especially in the law governing consummation of marriage. We argue that marriage is a one-flesh (i.e., bodily, as well as emotional, dispositional and spiritual) union of a male and a female spouse consummated and actualized by sexual acts that are reproductive in type. Such acts consummate and, we maintain, actualize the intrinsic good of marriage whether or not reproduction is desired by the spouses in any particular marital act, or is even possible for them in a particular act or at all.
Macedo is no sexual liberationist. He evidently opposes promiscuity and believes that even consensual sex acts can, in some cases, violate personal integrity or some other moral value. Nor does he maintain that marriage is a mere social or legal convention that lacks a nature of its own and can therefore legitimately be manipulated to serve the subjective ends of individuals or the state, whatever they happen to be. He shares with people such as Bradley and me the view that not all forms of consensual sexual association ought to be recognized as marriages by the state.103 He disagrees with us, however, on questions of the nature of marriage and the role and value of sex within it.
Bradley and I summarize our argument as follows:
Marriage, considered not as a mere legal convention, but, rather, as a two-in-one-flesh communion of persons that is consummated and actualized by sexual acts of the reproductive type, is an intrinsic . . . human good; as such, marriage provides a non-instrumental reason for spouses, whether or not they are capable of conceiving children in their acts of genital union, to perform such acts.
In choosing to perform non-marital orgasmic acts, including sodomitical acts—irrespective of whether the persons performing such acts are of the same or opposite sexes (and even if those persons are validly married to each other)—persons necessarily treat their bodies and those of their sexual partners (if any) as means or instruments in ways that damage their personal (and interpersonal) integrity; thus, regard for the basic human good of integrity provides a conclusive moral reason not to engage in sodomitical and other non-marital sex acts.
Macedo denies these claims. He argues that the organic bodily union of persons we believe to be possible in marital intercourse, whether or not procreation is possible, is illusory. Thus, the reproductive-type acts of spouses cannot possibly have the unitive value and significance we ascribe to them. Marital intercourse cannot be what we claim it is, namely, the biological matrix of the multilevel reality of marriage. The most sex can do for people, beyond making it possible for them to become parents, is to enable them to share pleasure, thus enhancing and enabling them to express in a special way the caring, affectionate and intimate emotional bond between them.
Macedo also argues that, by confining humanly valuable and morally upright sex to marital intercourse, natural law theorists such as Bradley and I unreasonably exclude sex acts which, though non-marital (at least in our sense), are nevertheless humanly valuable in their capacity to express and enhance the emotional bonds between lovers. Moreover, he maintains that we are wrong to deny, as we do, that pleasure is an intrinsic good, or that the instrumentalizing of the body to the end of gaining or sharing pleasurable sensations is intrinsically bad. Thus, he denies that non-marital sex inevitably damages personal or interpersonal integrity. Bradley and I respond to Macedo’s critique of our views by arguing that his understanding of sex and marriage implicates him in a philosophically untenable person-body dualism. This is most apparent in his denial that human males and females unite biologically when they mate, and in his related understanding of sexual organs as ‘equipment’ that serves the goods of pleasure and procreation but cannot make possible a truly personal union of spouses as the biological matrix of the multilevel (bodily, emotional, dispositional, spiritual) reality of their marriage. Implicit in these denials, we believe, is the idea that the body is a sub-personal aspect of the human being that serves the conscious and desiring aspect—the true ‘self’—which inhabits and uses the body. Were Macedo to acknowledge what we believe to be the case, namely ‘that the biological reality of human beings is “part of, not merely an instrument of, their personal reality,”‘ then it is difficult to see how he could resist our claim that ‘the biological union of spouses in marital acts constitutes a truly interpersonal communion,’ whose value is intrinsic, and not merely instrumental to pleasure or the sharing of pleasure, the expression of tender and affectionate feelings, or any other extrinsic goal.
My point in recalling the debate between Macedo and Bradley and myself is not to try to settle the issues but merely to illustrate that the arguments advanced on both sides plainly implicate a body of assumptions reflective of our respective commitments to very different ‘comprehensive views.’ As a result, I suspect, people whose comprehensive view is essentially liberal will find Macedo’s argument much more persuasive than ours; those with non-liberal comprehensive views—including traditional Christians, Jews, and other believers—are likely to find our argument more compelling. Still, neither side makes any appeal to principles or propositions that are not publicly available to rational persons. Neither side invokes any form of secret knowledge or revelation. Each side offers people on the other side reasons, which such people may or may not find persuasive, for changing their minds.
My concern for now is not with the truth or falsity of the claims made on either side, or the validity of the arguments advanced on either side to support its claims, but with the relevance of the truth or falsity of these claims to the resolution of questions of public policy pertaining to sex and marriage and particularly to questions of homosexual acts and relationships. My claim is that political liberalism does not provide a workable alternative to the conflict of comprehensive views on such questions. On the contrary, law and policy in this area should be shaped in accordance with the truth and will inevitably be shaped by people’s ideas about the truth of the moral and metaphysical claims at stake in the debate among advocates of competing comprehensive views.
The case for resolving policy questions in this area on the basis of ‘political liberalism’ is articulated by Macedo himself. Although he contends that the view of marriage and sexual morality that Bradley and I put forward as a ground for public policymaking ought to be rejected as unreasonably narrowing the range of morally valuable sexual conduct and relationships, he argues, in the alternative, that our view constitutes an illegitimate ground for public policy even if it is true and the competing moral view he defends is false. The upshot of his position for questions of public policy pertaining to homosexual acts and relationships is that justice requires the state to grant marriage licenses to same-sex partners and to recognize their relationship as marital even if, in truth, their sex acts cannot be marital (or morally upright) and their relationship cannot, morally speaking, be a marriage. That is the proposition I am interested in here.
Noting that ‘it may be, indeed, that Bradley and George and I disagree . . . deeply in our understandings of what it is to have reasons for action, about the nature of goods, and perhaps even about the relationship between mind and body,’ Macedo argues that, ‘if our disagreements indeed lie in these difficult philosophical quarrels, about which reasonable people have long disagreed, then our differences lie precisely in the territory that John Rawls rightly . . . marks off as inappropriate to the fashioning of our basic rights and liberties.’ He continues:
It is inappropriate to carve up basic rights and principles of justice on the basis of reasons and arguments whose force depends on accepting particular religious convictions. So too it is inappropriate to deny people fundamental aspects of equality based on reasons and arguments whose force can only be appreciated by those who accept difficult to assess claims about the nature and incommensurability of basic goods, the relationship between intrinsic and instrumental value, and the dispute over whether pleasure is a reason for action.
Macedo’s Rawlsian argument is certainly appealing on its face. The deep moral and metaphysical questions to which he refers are indeed difficult ones about which reasonable people have long disagreed. Claims on either side of these questions are, as he says, difficult to assess. How could it be right, then, to ‘deny people fundamental aspects of equality’ on the basis of such claims? I certainly do not think it is ever right to deny people fundamental aspects of equality. The question is whether we can identify fundamental aspects of equality pertaining to marriage while prescinding from questions of the nature and value of marriage which, inevitably, implicate deeper moral and metaphysical questions of the sort that Rawls and Macedo wish to rule out of bounds as grounds for public policymaking. Macedo implicitly supposes that we can; I think we cannot.
Macedo’s claim about ‘denying fundamental aspects of equality’ can be sustained only if we presuppose the truth of his own comprehensive liberalism. If the nature and value of marriage are, in truth, what Macedo’s comprehensive view supposes them to be, then it is indeed a violation of equality to deny marriage licenses and the full legal benefits of marriage to same-sex partners. This violation occurs, however, only because homosexual partners can in fact realize in their sexual acts and relationships the same constitutive value or values (pleasure, intimacy, the expression of tender feelings) that can be realized by heterosexual spouses. No principle of equality is violated, however, if, in truth, homosexual sexual acts and relationships cannot realize the constitutive value or values of marriage—if marriage truly is, as Bradley and I contend, a bodily communion of persons consummated and actualized by sexual acts which are reproductive in type.
On Macedo’s view and on mine, marriage is an important value which society and government have an obligation to help make available to people and which the government should not deny to people who are capable of fulfilling its requirements. What follows from this, in my view, is society’s obligation to ‘get it right,’ that is, to embody in its law and policy a morally sound conception of marriage. This obligation seems to me especially stringent in view of the fact that whatever understanding of marriage is embodied in law and public policy will profoundly shape the public’s understanding of the nature and value of marriage, and, thus, affect people’s capacities to live out true marriages and participate in their value. This is an area in which moral neutrality strikes me as not only undesirable, but unattainable. The conflict of comprehensive views is unavoidable.
The book, “What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense” (found here: http://tinyurl.com/a69fkuh) is the continuing thought of some big thinkers, like one of the co-authors, Robert P. George, whom I quote prodigiously in my chapter on the matter (http://tinyurl.com/8unujfs) — is, in my mind’s eye one of the better legal minds alive today. The first call taken is from a gay man. Good back-and-forth. (Posted by: https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/) For those that wish to embed using YouTube, this same file is found there.
After listening to Prager for some time, he is not always clear on explaining the impact of what he feels is the cause or root of homosexuality. I think it can be rooted in any one or a combination of the following:
#1)Abuse ~ physical molestation or rape when the person is young by a family member or other adult. Tammy Bruce, herself a lesbian, has mentioned this in one of her books:
☕ “Here come the elephant again: Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood — molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult. The gay community must face the truth and see sexual molestation of an adolescent for the abuse it is, instead of the ‘coming-of-age’ experience many [gays] regard it as being. Until then, the Gay Elite will continue to promote a culture of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and suicide by AIDS.” ~ Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville: Prima, 2003), 99.
#2) Hormonal-Diet ~ I will post below my thinking in this manner in a previous discussion elsewhere:
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In one of the above posts I mentioned “environment” as another cause for homosexuality (the growth in population of). I will only lightly touch on what I have posted a bit on at my “Drinking Hole” blog (which I have neglected). One aspect are the health nuts out there that believe soy based products (cheese, milk, and the like) are good for you. Large amounts of soy — say, more than a glass of soy milk a day — interferes with a woman’s body in producing estrogen, and will also be accepted in the male body as estrogen and suppress somewhat testosterone from being produced in the right amount.
⚑ Side-note: women who are in menopause and are looking for a natural hormone booster rather than prescription can walk into a grocery store (say, Ralphs), go to the section with medicine and purchase Estroven. It is a soy based product whom the maker says of the ingredients used, “have been around for centuries and have a long history of providing menopausal symptom relief.” Because it mimics estrogen.
Women who are pregnant should steer away from any processed soy products… if lactose intolerant, almond or hemp milk is best. The body accepting this as estrogen throws off the prenatal hormonal exchange quite a bit… and soy milk for babies should be forbidden! There have been quite a few cases of young children (almost infant size) going into puberty. I have some technical as well as readable aspects of this here in about 7-blog posts: http://drinkinghole.blogspot.com/search/label/Soy
I just listened to an interesting interview as well that combined with the above made me wince at what people are doing to their kids, often unwittingly. Low cholesterol diets (this would affect pregnant women [their child] I am sure) also have an effect on the male producing testosterone well. A very informative interview:
Ph.D. Nutritionists Stephen Sinatra and Jonny Bowden Talk about Myths of Medicine and Cholesterol
➳ Postscript: If one feels the need to eat tofu, the healthier choices would be Tempe, Miso and Nato for soy intake… as they are fermented and break the chains of amino acids that the body interprets as estrogen. The below post also deals with “Childhood Obesity, Early Puberty, Erectile Dysfunction” ~ add this to low cholesterol diets, and you know why Viagra is booming! One of my favorite posts: http://tinyurl.com/a3mcz73
#3) Mutational Rates ~ This is some commentary and quoting from a recent Nature Journal peer reviewed finding of information still coming from the Human Genome Project:
————————– Most of the deleterious mutations in the human population arose in the last 5,000 to 10,000 years, a survey claims. According to a study published Jan. 10 in Nature by geneticists from 4 universities including Harvard, “Analysis of 6,515 exomes reveals the recent origin of most human protein-coding variants.” By recent they mean really recent on evolutionary timescales:
✪ We estimate that approximately 73% of all protein-coding SNVs [single-nucleotide variants] and approximately 86% of SNVs predicted to be deleterious arose in the past 5,000–10,000 years. The average age of deleterious SNVs varied significantly across molecular pathways, and disease genes contained a significantly higher proportion of recently arisen deleterious SNVs than other genes.
As the human race passes on it genes from one generation to the next, we are compiling mutations in that code at a very high rate. This has an effect on certain aspects of human sexuality, either in utero (the mother producing the right amount of hormones, etc), or the expression of these hormones in said gay person’s life. Whether one believes in evolution or the curse at the fall of man, this problem is still a problem.
#4) Choice ~ Choice, moral will and volition, is still involved in all this. Whether not dealing with abuse issues in counseling and therapy, or pushing one’s sexuality that is not nature’s norm onto society for the first time in human history… choice is still the cornerstone in all this. A total depravity can also play a major role in this (see Romans chpt 1).
Because many “gays” have changed their lives through therapy, religion, and other means. Two examples are as follows, one being a book:
The rest from Mercator-net on this topic is well-worth reading:
Why does the same-sex marriage debate seem so futile?
…Are they really “born that way”? Most supporters of same-sex marriage assume that homosexuality is as genetically determined as skin color. Gays and lesbians were born that way and cannot change. Discrimination against them is as unjust as racial discrimination.
However, there is no settled science on whether homosexuality is hard-wired in one’s genes, determined by childhood experiences or a matter of choice. Even the American Psychological Association – which supports same-sex marriage and same-sex parenting – admits that the cause or causes of homosexuality are extremely murky:
“There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors.”
In any case, genetics does not determine moral value. There is a genetic component to cancer, but cancer is not good. There may be a gene for alcoholism, but drunkenness does not excuse unruly behaviour…
