Posts Tagged ‘homosexuality’
sex and gender in bonobos, humans, etc
So there’s been a lot of talk lately about trans people, whatever that may mean, and whether or not they should be taken seriously. It seems to relate to the ‘woke’ issue, for some people, and it has become a hot button issue for the most divided and tedious nation in the WEIRD world. All of this has to do with sex and gender, it seems to me, and I’ve had many thoughts on this topic ever since I was a kid, over fifty years ago.
I’ve written about this before, briefly, but I want to go into it in more detail now. I was around eleven or so, pre-pubescent, in primary school, year 5 or 6. It was school assembly, and we were standing in line outside the school buildings, listening to some headmasterly homilies. I was at the back of the two lines for our class, one for girls, one for boys. It was probably towards the end of the year, because I was very familiar with my classmates, at least by observation. As I looked at them this day, I considered which ones were the most, and least, attractive, and why. I knew nothing about sex at the time (unlike most eleven-year-olds today), but I knew about physical attraction – and attraction generally. My thoughts ran along lines which I still feel proud of to this day, though no doubt I’ll exaggerate their sophistication, as is the way with memories.
I decided that the prettiest kid in the class was a boy, and I was ‘turned on’ by the naughtiness of this thought. I also noted that of the two prettiest girls, one was much more attractive to me than the other, not because of her physical appearance, but her manner – perhaps her air of gravity, her intelligent expression, the clothes she wore, her way of walking. And then there were girls I was attracted to, but not physically. They were fun, good sports, approachable. And on further reflection I noticed that the kids who least interested me were the ‘girlie’ girls and the ‘tough guy’ boys, and that the kids in front of me could all be put on a spectrum from most masculine to most feminine, regardless of their actual genitalia. Which led me to wonder – where was I on this spectrum?
It so happens that throughout my school years I was the shortest kid in my class, male or female, and skinny with it. A less masculine male could hardly be imagined. I never considered myself homosexual though. By the time I fully understood the term, the blokes my age were developing face fuzz, which was a total turn off. That didn’t stop me from falling in love with Bowie at sixteen – the music, that is, and the in-your-face androgynous persona. This tended to make me persona non grata in the socially conservative working-class environment of my childhood and early youth.
All of this is to say that I was highly sensitised to issues of sex and gender from an early age. Some years later, well into my twenties, a certain family kerfuffle came to my attention. A married cousin had a daughter, aged about six or so, who insisted on keeping her hair short and refused to be dressed in a dress. I encountered her once or twice, and she seemed morose, withdrawn, smart, and yes, kind of masculine, if that makes sense for someone so young. My mother seemed worried, as did other family members, but the mother not so much. There was talk of doctors, of taking a firmer line, and I didn’t know what to make of it. Nobody asked my advice of course, but I would’ve argued for letting the girl, or boy, be what they wanted to be. I was thoroughly fascinated, however. But I soon lost touch with family, became as solitary as an orang-utan, and know nothing of the outcome.
Returning to modern times, people talk today of the LGBTQIA+ community, and I can probably work out what each letter signifies, but only just. It seems to me that if there is a problem here, it’s a problem of categorising and compartmentalising – maybe of working out which ‘tribe’ you supposedly belong to. I myself have never been particularly tribal, so it all just flies over my head. And anyway, is there a community here, a community of difference? I hope so, but I’m doubtful.
I’ve mentioned orang-utans, but it’s the far from solitary bonobos I’m really interested in. Opposites attract, they say. Recently I’ve been pondering sex and gender in our primate cousins, and other mammals. Does our pet dog know she’s a girl? Does our pet cat know he’s a boy? We call our pets such things to eternally infantilise them, but that’s another story. Let’s consider bonobos – when, if ever, do they learn that they’re male or female? And when do we humans learn the same? For humans, it seems straightforward – we have language. One of the first things a child learns is that they’re ‘a pretty/naughty/clever girl, or boy, as the case may be. This sort of makes up for the fact that we rarely get to go about naked and notice the difference in each others’ genitalia – unlike bonobos. But our bonobo and chimp cousins are smart and complex – they know the difference between the one who nurses and protects them and the adults who are sometimes friendly but at other times indifferent or hostile. They might not conceive it in terms of gender, but they might discern a pattern. And of course hormonal and developmental differences both between and within the two sexes will play their part. So they too have ‘gender issues’, if we can call it that.
It’s often said that sex is biological, gender is cultural. That, of course, is way too neat, and too hard to prove, because every single family in which a child is brought up is a micro-culture of sorts, and every child has a slightly different genetic and epigenetic inheritance. The problem again is our tendency to compartmentalise. What is more important, as bonobos might teach us, is acceptance of variety and difference.
Another obvious difference between bonobos and the only clothed apes, is of course, clothing, covering, hiding our ‘naughty bits’. It’s a topic I tend to be squeamish about, being human, but it needs to be addressed. We wear clothing for a whole variety of reasons – for keeping protected and warm, to display solidarity with our tribe, to be fashionable and attractive, to show contempt for fashionable elites, to avoid being arrested for indecent exposure, and so on. We certainly learn from very early on that it’s ‘rude’ and ‘uncivilised’ to go about in the altogether. It’s interesting to note that the term ‘savage’, used regularly by Europeans well into the 19th century, precisely coincided with the degree of covering used by the indigenous populations they encountered. The more covered they became, the more civilised and intelligent they became in our minds.
It’s also worth noting that, until recently in the WEIRD world, clothing and other visible accoutrements have been used to distinguish the two sexes – hence the concept of cross-dressing, which now seems dated. In my own youth my hair was long and bushy, and it seemed to me that most of the girls’ hair was shorter than the boys’, which I found titillating. At the time I thought it was revolutionary, and went along with free love and the dissolution of marriage, but sadly it turned out to be just another turn of the fashion wheel.
And yet, not quite. Or not at all. Some of us might be slaves to fashion, but the percentage has considerably reduced. Gone forever are the days, revealed in 100 year-old photos and newsreels, when men were obliged to wear more or less lookalike homburgs, and women cloche hats. Jeans, t-shirts and casual jackets are as commonplace now as they were fifty years ago, and casual apparel has maintained its non-binary style in that time. Fashions may go in cycles but they never return to the same place. Marriage is still popular, but it’s not what it was when my dad were a lad.
So at a time when sexual identity and politics are being fought over to a degree that I find laughable, it’s a relief to turn to the bonobo world. Bonobos females tend to engage in same sex acts a lot more than males do, according to research by the Max Planck Society, and this activity creates more lifelong bonds than occurs with mixed-sex pairs. The research suggests that this has to do with increased oxytocin levels after these interactions. Oxytocin, the so-called ‘feel good’ or ‘love’ hormone is often associated with the bonding of mother and child. These increased levels didn’t occur after male-female sex. Interestingly, and very surprisingly (and rather disappointingly to me) male-male sex is rare among bonobos. Considering that some 75% of bonobo sex has no reproductive purpose (compared to 99.999% of human sex, according to my own extensive research), this seems to me a missed opportunity. Then again, this female-female bonding appears to be the key, not only to female dominance, but more importantly that species’ lack of aggression compared to chimps and humans. Obviously the answer for us humans is to ban male homosexuality on penalty of death, and encourage the female version with prizes and worldwide fame for the loudest and longest orgasms.
Okay, I was a bit drunk when I wrote that.
There’s a lot more to be said, though, about how bonobos have broken the aggression habit, or how they’ve targeted aggression to reduce aggression, and so to become less aggressive overall. I’ll explore that in my next post.
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-insights-same-sex-sexual-interactions-important.html
21 – dolphins, bonobos, sex and pleasure
bonobos at Jacksonville zoo
I enjoyed a little boat trip off the north-east coast of Kangaroo Island recently. The owner, our guide, bounced us up and down the shoreline east of Christmas Cove to view caves in the limestone cliffs, seabirds such as wedge-tailed eagles on the cliff-tops, and above all to search for a pod of dolphins known to be using the area as a daytime resting-place.
After a few bouts of bouncing eastward and westward we were becoming skeptical, though by no means annoyed. A year before, the island, Australia’s third largest after Tasmania and Melville Island, had been ravaged by bushfires, devastating vegetation and wildlife, and seriously damaging the island’s fragile economy, not to say ecology, and we were happy to make our tiny contribution without great expectations of sighting fabulous beasties.
So we were delighted, on heading eastward again, to spot a few fins bobbing and dipping in the water ahead. Slowing toward them, we were told there were about 25 dolphins in this pod (the term was first used by whalers in the early nineteenth century, for reasons unknown). I soon gave up trying to count them as identical-looking fins appeared and disappeared and vaguely discerned bodies twisted and turned just below the surface. They seemed to form pairs now and then, breaking the surface sleekly and synchronously in elegant arcs. Dolphins, I learned, spend their days lolling about near the shore in these pods after a night of hunting out at sea. They seemed aware but unconcerned about our presence, and at one time the whole group disappeared then reappeared on the other side of our boat, bobbing and slow-twirling as before.
I was struck by a remark by our guide that dolphins are one of the few mammals that mate for fun or pleasure. Of course I made an immediate connection with bonobos, but then I wondered, what does the verb, to mate, exactly mean? We humans never describe ourselves as mating, that’s for the birds, etc. We fuck, screw, bonk, shag, hump and bone, we more coyly sleep together, and more romantically make love (not allowed for other species), but we’re way above mating.
‘Mating’ brings up two internet definitions, the action of animals coming together to breed, and copulation. So dolphins, and bonobos and humans, often come together to breed – but actually not to breed. As for copulation, that’s rarely used for humans, just as fornication is rarely used for non-humans. The latter is, of course, a term of mostly religious disapproval, and non-humans are too lowly to be worthy of moral judgment.
Of course we do apply mating to humans with a pinch of irony, as in the mating game, and this blurs the line between humans and others, but not enough for me. The point is that dolphins and bonobos use sex, which may not be the full rumpy-pumpy (dolphins don’t even have rumps to speak of), to bond with each other, to ease tension, to have fun, as our guide said. But then, don’t all species have sex purely for pleasure, or at least because driven to do so, by sensation? Do cats, dogs, birds and flies have sex with the intention of reproducing? I don’t think so.
Human sex is pleasurable, so I’ve heard, and I expect bonobo sex is too. Fly sex probably not, or so I thought, but I’m probably wrong. Researchers have found that male fruit flies enjoy ejaculating, and tend to consume alcohol when denied sex. I know exactly how they feel. Anyway, fruit flies have long been favourites for biological research, and more recently they’ve found that ‘a protein present in the ejaculate of male fruit flies activates long-term memory formation in the brains of their female partners’. It rather makes me wonder what effect this kind of research has on the researchers themselves, but I’m sure it’s all for the best.
One thing is certain, cats and dogs, and I’ve had a few, feel pleasure. Cats are appallingly sensual, and I’ve probably had more sexual advances from dogs than from humans, though whether they involved pleasure I can’t be sure. Generally our understanding of non-human sex has expanded in recent decades, as our sense of our specialness in everything has receded. It’s also true that we’ve tended to look at other species with a scientific instrumentalism, that’s to say from the viewpoint of evolution, breeding, genetics and other forms of categorisation, rather from an emotional or sensory viewpoint.
When I was very young I read a book by Ernest Thompson Seton called The biography of a grizzly. This story of Wahb, a male grizzly whose family was wiped out by hunters, and who survived to become the most powerful bear in the region, before inevitable decline and death, had an unforgettable emotional impact. I’m glad I read it though, as, sentimentalised though it might’ve been, it inoculated me against the scientific tendency, now changing, to see any animal as an it, rather than he or she or dad or mum or brother or sister. So this idea of putting oneself in the paws of a grizzly or the feet of a bonobo has long been perfectly legitimate to me.
In 2014 Jason Goldman wrote an article entitled Do animals have sex for pleasure?, in which he cited many instances of other species – bonobos of course heading the list – engaging in oral and penetrative sex ‘out of season’, when pregnancy is precluded. They include capuchin monkeys, macaques, spotted hyenas, bears, lions and fruit bats. It stands to reason that the physiological, whole-of body pleasure we derive from sex is shared by other species, and is indulged by them, and this includes what we call homosex, and masturbation. Australia’s premier science magazine, Cosmos, claimed a few years ago that some 6000 species (or was it 600?) have been observed engaging in homosexual activity, which does sound funny when talking about what we would habitually call lower life forms.
All of these findings have had the effect, and perhaps the intention, of loosening our uptight attitudes toward sex, as well as upending our notions of human specialness. But the behaviour of bonobos, who at times look strikingly like us, is more immediately impactful than anything fruit flies or fruit bats might do. Just the other day I watched a video of bonobos in Jacksonville zoo, Florida. Two of them were lying on the ground close together, and kissing each other, on the lips, again and again. Were they male? female? one of each? Who knows, it was so beautiful to watch.
References
Ernest Thompson Seton, The biography of a grizzly, 1900.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/male-fruit-flies-take-pleasure-in-having-sex-30867
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/sex-promotes-lasting-memories-in-female-flies-66763
Bonobos at Jacksonville Zoo (video)
three problems with Islamic society, moderate or otherwise
As a teacher of English to foreign students, I have a lot of dealing with, mostly male, Moslems. I generally get on very well with them. Religion doesn’t come up as an issue, any more than with my Chinese or Vietnamese students. I’m teaching them English, after all. However, it’s my experience of the views of a fellow teacher, very much a moderate Moslem, that has caused me to write this piece, because those views seem to echo much that I’ve read about online and elsewhere.
- Homosexuality
It’s well known that in such profoundly Islamic countries as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, there’s zero acceptance of homosexuality, to the point of claiming it doesn’t exist in those countries. Its ‘non-existence’ may be due to that fact that its practice incurs the death penalty (in Saudia Arabia, Yemen, Mauritania, Iran and Sudan), though such penalties are rarely carried out – except, apparently, in Iran. Of course, killing people in large numbers would indicate that there’s a homosexual ‘problem’. In other Moslem countries, homosexuals are merely imprisoned for varying periods. And lest we feel overly superior, take note of this comment from a very informative article in The Guardian:
Statistics are scarce [on arrests and prosecutions in Moslem countries] but the number of arrests is undoubtedly lower than it was during the British wave of homophobia in the 1950s. In England in 1952, there were 670 prosecutions for sodomy, 3,087 for attempted sodomy or indecent assault, and 1,686 for gross indecency.
This indicates how far we’ve travelled in a short time, and it also gives hope that other nations and regions might be swiftly transformed, but there’s frankly little sign of it as yet. Of course the real problem here is patriarchy, which is always and everywhere coupled with homophobia. It’s a patriarchy reinforced by religion, but I think if we in the west were to try to put pressure on these countries and cultures, I think we’d succeed more through criticising their patriarchal attitudes than their religion.
Having said this, it just might be that acceptance of homosexuality among liberal Moslems outside of their own countries (and maybe even inside them) is greater than it seems to be from the vibes I’ve gotten from the quite large numbers of Moslems I’ve met over the years. A poll taken by the Pew Research Centre has surprised me with its finding that 45% of U.S. Moslems accept homosexuality (in 2014, up from 38% in 2007), more than is the case among some Christian denominations, and the movement towards acceptance aligns with a trend throughout the U.S. (and no doubt all other western nations), among religious and non-religious alike. With greater global communication and interaction, the diminution of poverty and the growth of education, things will hopefully improve in non-western countries as well.
2. Antisemitism and the Holocaust
I’ve been shocked to hear, more than once, Moslems blithely denying, or claiming as exaggerated, the events of the Holocaust. This appears to be a recent phenomenon, which obviously bolsters the arguments of many Middle Eastern nations against the Jewish presence in their region. However, it should be pointed out that Egypt’s President Nasser, a hero of the Moslem world, told a German newspaper in 1964 that ‘no person, not even the most simple one, takes seriously the lie of the six million Jews that were murdered [in the Holocaust]’. More recently Iran has become a particular hotspot of denialism, with former President Ahmadinejad making a number of fiery speeches on the issue. Most moderate Islamic organisations, here and elsewhere in the west, present a standard line that the Shoah was exactly as massive and horrific as we know it to be, but questions are often raised about the sincerity of such positions, given the rapid rise of denialism in the Arab world. Arguably, though, this denialism isn’t part of standard anti-semitism. Responding to his own research into holocaust denialism among Israeli Arabs (up from 28% in 2006 to 40% in 2008), Sammy Smooha of Haifa University wrote this:
In Arab eyes disbelief in the very happening of the Shoah is not hate of Jews (embedded in the denial of the Shoah in the West) but rather a form of protest. Arabs not believing in the event of Shoah intend to express strong objection to the portrayal of the Jews as the ultimate victim and to the underrating of the Palestinians as a victim. They deny Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state that the Shoah gives legitimacy to. Arab disbelief in the Shoah is a component of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, unlike the ideological and anti-Semitic denial of the Holocaust and the desire to escape guilt in the West.
This is an opinion, of course, and may be seen as hair-splitting with respect to anti-semitism, but it’s clear that these counterfactual views aren’t helpful as we try to foster multiculturalism in countries like Australia.They need to be challenged at every turn.
Amcha, the Coalition for Jewish Concerns holds a rally in front of the Iranian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in response to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats against Isreal and denial of the Holocaust, Monday, March 13, 2006 in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
3. Evolution
While the rejection, and general ignorance, of the Darwin-Wallace theory of evolution – more specifically, natural selection from random variation – may not be the most disturbing feature of Islamic society, it’s the one that most nearly concerns me as a person keen to promote science and critical thinking. I don’t teach evolution of course, but I often touch on scientific topics in teaching academic English. A number of times I’ve had incredulous comments on our relationship to apes (it’s more than a relationship!), and as far as I can recall, they’ve all been from Moslem students. I’ve also come across various websites over the years, by Moslem writers – often academics – from Turkey, India and Pakistan whose anti-evolution and anti-Darwin views degenerate quickly into fanatical hate-filled screeds.
I won’t go into the evidence for natural selection here, or an explanation of the theory, which is essential to all of modern biology. It’s actually quite complex when laid out in detail, and it’s not particularly surprising that even many non-religious people have trouble understanding it. What bothers me is that so many Moslems I’ve encountered don’t make any real attempt to understand the theory, but reject it wholesale for reasons not particularly related to the science. They’ve used the word ‘we’ in rejecting it, so that it’s impossible to even get to first base with them. This raises the question of the teaching of evolution in Moslem schools (and of course, not just Moslem schools), and whether and how much this is monitored. One may argue that non-belief in evolution, like belief in a flat earth or other specious ways of thinking, isn’t so harmful given a general scientific illiteracy which hasn’t stopped those in the know from making great advances, but it’s a problem when being brought up in a particular culture stifles access to knowledge, and even promotes a vehement rejection of that knowledge. We need to get our young people on the right page not in terms of a national curriculum but an evidence-based curriculum for all. Evidence has no national boundaries.
Conclusion – the problem of identity politics
The term identity politics is used in various ways, but I feel quite clear about my own usage here. It’s when your identity is so wrapped up in a political or cultural or religious or class or caste or professional grouping, that it trumps your own independent critical thinking and analysis. The use of ‘we think’ or ‘we believe’, is the red flag for these attitudes, but of course this usage isn’t always overt or conscious. The best and probably only way to deal with this kind of thinking is through constructive engagement, drawing people out of the groupthink intellectual ghetto through argument, evidence and invitations to reconsider (or consider for the first time) and if that doesn’t work, firmness regarding the evidence-based view together with keeping future lines of communications open. They say you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and it’s a piece of wisdom that works on a pragmatic and a humane level. And watch out for that firmness, because the evidence is rarely fixed. Education too is important. As an educator, I find that many students are open to the knowledge I have to offer, and are sometimes animated and inspired by it, regardless of their background. The world’s an amazing place, and students can be captivated by its amazingness, if it’s presented with enthusiasm. That can lead to explorations that can change minds. Schools are, or can be, places where identity politics can fragment as peers from different backgrounds can converge and clash, sometimes in a constructive way. We need to watch for and combat the echo-chamber effect of social media, a new development that often reinforces false and counter-productive ideas – and encourages mean-spirited attacks on faceless adversaries. Breaking down walls and boundaries, rather than constructing them, is the best solution. Real interactions rather than virtual ones, and thinking about the background and humanity of the other before leaping into the fray (I’m beginning to sound saintlier than I’ve ever really been – must be the Ha Ji-won influence!)
ten negatory claims about same-sex marriage
percentages of those favouring same-sex marriage (in the US) over twenty-odd years – one of the fastest changes in public opinion in human history
What are the arguments against same-sex marriage? That’s a question I’m asking myself as I hear that conservatives want public money to run a campaign against it if Australia holds a plebiscite – which I’m not particularly in favour of, but at least it makes me reconsider the ‘no’ arguments. Presumably they’d be along the same lines as those of the TFP (tradition, family, property) organisation of the USA, but Australia as a nation is less religiously fixated than the USA, so the weak arguments found on the TFP website would seem even weaker to people over here. But let’s run through their 10 arguments just for fun. You can read them in full on the website if you’ve nothing better to do.
1. It is not marriage.
The claim here is that you can’t just redefine marriage to suit changing situations. ‘Marriage has always been x’, (x usually being identified as a ‘covenant between a man, a woman and god’ or some such thing). The response is, we can and always have done. Marriage is a human invention, and like all inventions we can modify it to suit our needs. A table is a human invention, and it can be a chess table, a bedside table, a coffee table, a dining table or a conference table, and none of these uses threatens the meaning of the word ‘table’. Marriage is ours to define and use as we wish, and historically we’ve done just that, with polygynous marriages, which have been commonplace, polyandrous marriages (much rarer) and other more or less formal arrangements, such as handfasting and morganatic and common-law marriages. Of course, marriage has rarely been recognised between individuals of the same sex, though same-sex unions, some of them highly ritualised and contractualised, have had a long history. But the reason for this is obvious – throughout history, homosexuals have been tortured and executed for their feelings and practices. The history of exclusive male-female marriage coincides with the history of homosexual persecution. The two histories are not unrelated, they’re completely entwined.
2. It violates natural law.
WTF is natural law, you might ask. A TFP fiction apparently. Their website says: Being rooted in human nature, it [natural law] is universal and immutable. But human nature is neither of these things. It’s diverse and evolving, socially as well as genetically. Marriage and child-rearing arrangements vary massively around the globe, with varying results, but it seems clear from voluminous research that children benefit most from close bonding with one or two significant others, together with a wider circle of potential carers and mentors. It’s notable that when this organisation lays down the ‘law’ on matters of marriage, sexuality and families it cites no scientific research of any kind – its only quotes are from the Bible.
3. It always denies children either a father and a mother.
Leaving aside the fact that there are often no children involved, this argument relies on the assumption that a father and a mother are indispensable to the proper rearing of children. Research reported on in Science Daily found that ‘children raised by two same-gender parents do as well on average as children raised by two different-gender parents. This is obviously inconsistent with the widespread claim that children must be raised by a mother and a father to do well’. Melvin Konner in his 2015 book Women after all puts it this way: ‘One of the most impressive discoveries of the last decade in child development research is that when babies of either sex are adopted by lesbian or gay couples – and this has been studied very extensively and carefully – the main way the resulting children differ from controls raised with a father and mother is that they turn out to be less homophobic.’ Of course, this is exactly what organisations like TFP are afraid of, as promotion of homophobia is what they’re all about.
4. It Validates and Promotes the Homosexual Lifestyle
And that’s precisely what it aims to do. Of course TFP argues, or rather states without argument, that this would ‘weaken public morality’. Humanists would argue precisely the opposite, that such validation is long overdue, and would strengthen a morality based on the recognition of the fundamental humanity and value of diverse individuals.
5. It Turns a Moral Wrong into a Civil Right
In its discussion of this reason to oppose same-sex marriage, TFP again refers to its bogus ‘natural law’. Same-sex marriage (always in inverted commas on its website ) is opposed to nature, according to TFP. Again this is stated rather than argued, but as I’ve often pointed out, bonobos, our closest living relatives, engage in homosexual acts on a regular basis. Of course, they don’t marry, because marriage isn’t natural, it’s a human construction, and mostly a quite usefiul one, though not necessary for child-rearing, or for permanent monogamous relationships. Further to this, researchers have observed homosexual acts in between 500 and 1500 non-human species, so it seems to be natural enough.
6. It Does Not Create a Family but a Naturally Sterile Union
Again TFP makes ad nauseum use of the word ‘nature’ to give credit to its views. But the fact that same-sex couples can’t have offspring without outside help isn’t a reason to debar them from a union that serves multiple purposes. Moreover, it’s quite reasonable for homosexual males or females to feel that they would make good parents, and to yearn to be parents, and there is no reason why this should yearning should be opposed, if the opportunity to parent a child arises. Adopted children are often brought up in loving and happy environments, and succeed accordingly.
7. It Defeats the State’s Purpose of Benefiting Marriage.
It’s hardly for the TFP or any other organisation to tell us what the State’s purpose is regarding marriage. Most advanced states provide benefits for children, regardless of the marital status of the mother. This is very important, considering the large number of single-parent (mostly female) families we have today. The state also doesn’t distinguish between marriage and de facto relationships when it dispenses benefits. The TFP is obviously out of date on this one.
8. It Imposes Its Acceptance on All Society
States are legalising same-sex marriage around the western world under public pressure. Here in Australia, where same-sex marriage hasn’t yet been legalised, polls have indicated that same-sex marriage is clearly acceptable to the majority. Where it is up to courts to decide, as occurred recently in the USA, the process is too complex to cover here, but it’s clear that the public’s attitude to same-sex marriage in every advanced or developed nation has undergone a seismic shift in a relatively short period – the last ten years or so.
9. It Is the Cutting Edge of the Sexual Revolution
Vive la révolution. Of course, TFP presents the slippery slope argument – paedophilia, bestiality and the like – so hurtful and offensive to the LGBT community. Again, there’s never any presentation of evidence or research, every proposition is presented as self-evident. It’s a profoundly anti-intellectual document.
10. It Offends God
This is, of course, presented as the main argument. Biblical quotes are given, including one in which their god’s mass immolation of ‘sodomites’ is celebrated. I don’t really see much point in questioning the supposedly offended feelings of a supposedly all-perfect, all-powerful invisible undetectable being. It’s all a fairly nasty fantasy.
There’s nothing more to say, and as an intellectual exercise this was probably a waste of time, as people who believe the above guff aren’t listening much. Any critical responses to their 10 propositions on the TFP website will be promptly deleted. There’s definitely no fun to be had with these guys. Their absolute certainty, and their inability and unwillingness to argue cogently or to examine evidence is a very disturbing sign, and a clear indication that they’re fuelled entirely by emotion. A passionate fear of change and difference. It all tends to reinforce the arguments against holding a plebiscite, in which, in Australia, people of this sort would actually be funded to give voice to their certainties with all the indignation of righteousness. They would be ruthless about their targets, and being patriarchal – because preserving extreme patriarchy is what this is all about at base – they would be violent in their language and tactics. The best way to muzzle them would be to resolve this in parliament as soon as possible.
more cardinal sins
protesting too much
Lauryn Oates, an admirable woman in every way, has written an incisive little essay here, wishing the backward-facing hierarchs of the Catholic Church a hearty good riddance. Of course it’s all wishful thinking, of the kind all positive-thinking humanists indulge in, but you have to wonder why it is so many apparently educated, humane, intelligent people still cling to this awful institution. Is it force of habit? Is it fear of offending family and friends? Is it faith, whatever that may mean? Or is it, dare I say, profound intellectual analysis and reflection?
And let’s face it, the evidence of this institution’s awfulness is everywhere. Oates wrote her damning little piece before the latest scandal involving Keith O’Brien, the most senior Catholic clergyman in Britain no less, who has made admissions regarding sexual molestation accusations by a number of fellow priests. After all the focus, the relentless focus, on exploitative priests and cover-ups, we still find this sort of thing going on at the very top. However, O’Brien’s admission (it was feeble and vague – ‘I haven’t lived up to the standards expected of me’, and it’s unlikely anything further will be dragged out of him) is particularly devastating – and some illustrious figures would say, inevitable – because he was so rabidly homophobic in his pronouncements. So, now that his hypocrisy is revealed, the LGBT community is having a field day, and why not? (They recently named him their Bigot of the Year). I’ve just been acquainting myself with the many contemptible remarks this individual has made against homosexuality, and some interesting reflections on him, now that he stands exposed, so to speak. Some to the effect that he’s obviously a deeply troubled person who might be treated with compassion. The thing is, though, we can always find ways to more deeply understand, and even sympathise with, the behaviour of people who have done immense damage to others, but we always have to weigh the suffering they cause against the suffering they experience. And it seems to me obvious that O’Brian’s depredations, combined with his regular and lashing condemnations of the freely chosen sexual activities of others, from a position of exalted religious status, represents something pretty fundamentally disgusting and only partially mitigated by his own inner turmoil. Another mitigating factor, of course, is the gay orientation of many senior Catholic clergy, encouraged and cemented in their youth in seminaries the world over.
O’Brian has now been ‘retired’, and will take no further part in the Catholic Church, but he still retains his title of Cardinal, and he was planning to retire later this month anyway. There are those, though, who’ll be fighting to visit a more fitting punishment on the man, and I wish them well. The Church itself is to conduct an investigation into his activities, but I can’t take that seriously. The secular route is best, but it’s unclear as yet whether his behaviour has contravened the law. It may well be that he’ll end up being let off, if not exonerated, by the very liberal regime that he affects to despise.