Homosexuality — what to do about it, what not to about it, whether to pay it tribute — is the number-one domestic political issue in the United States today. It’s part of every campaign, courts play it out in elections, members of Congress resign over it if they’re Republicans, governors even in Red states resign over it if they’re crooks, too. It’s the obsession of one of the first, biggest and sometimes best bloggers; it’s a jealously guarded electoral interest group and a weapon against adversaries by the Democrats; it’s a bête noire for conservative Republicans; it’s danced around by moderate politicians; it turns city clerks into national figures. It’s on display in the park, demanding equal time for public displays of affection;
it’s the washboard abs on the Abercrombie models; it’s teaching the straight guy how to dress and make his apartment fabulous. It’s on everyone’s lips.
It’s a once and former sin turned by many churches into a very sacrament. It’s here, it’s queer, and we’ve got to get used to “it” — whatever exactly it means, however, is the debate.
I don’t have an overarching theory about why homosexuality (mainly male) has become the political obsession of the day. But it has. The number of homosexuality-related scandals in the political realm, counting from Jim McGreevey through the allegations (denied) that came out just yesterday against the Rev Jim Haggard — which is politically significant — is astonishing, without precedent, and a phenomenon with which we are having a great deal of trouble coming to grips.
I don’t have any reason to assume there is “more homosexuality” about in our society today than there was 100 years ago. But is it possible that the obsession, the challenge, the moment comes about now because we have no idea, post-feminism, post-agricultural-society, post-industrial-era, post-sole-breadwinner, what manhood is any more, or even what right such a concept has to demand of us personally, as a society, or at all?
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 76 comments }
Ron,
first and foremost I think I agree with what you seem to be saying in the subtext of this about whether or not homosexuality should be called a “scandal” and the detriment of having homosexual be often a political label rather than a social one (and we can argue about whether it should be a label at all).
but are you honestly suggesting that homosexuality is “caused” by some deficiency in masculinity? or caused by not having sufficiently manly role models? i think Esera Tuaolo may have something to say about that.
Andrew Sullivan as “sometimes best bloggers”: if by “sometimes” you mean pre-2003, pre-self obsessed then yes, I agree with you.
Personally I am getting fed up with this fascination with homosexuality.
Honestly, I just don’t care who people lust after. In fact, I don’t want to know.
That doesn’t mean that I’m anti-gay marriage (I’m not).
Gays need to decide whether they want to be treated as equals – in which they case they will lose their minority identity – or whether they want to be treated differently – in which case they are not equal.
Zach, I couldn’t have tried harder to make it clear, in my last paragraph, that I am asking about the cause of the obsession, not the behavior.
I could, however, have succeeded better, I guess.
I’ve struggled with this issue–politically I mean–going back to the 1980s. It’s a rather amazing experience, actually, to be told occasionally that I’m a homophobe or expressing anti-gay attitudes when I first befriended gay people in the early 1980s, well before it was fashionable, and have been a supporter of gay rights ever since. But I’ve had more than one queer tell me that there was something evil and rotten in my soul because I expressed any doubts whatsoever about gay marriage. Which is doubly funny because I’ve been on public record as supporting giving gay couples the same legal protections as hetero couples.
This is going on too long, and in a direction I didn’t mean to. So let me back up a bit:
Gay rights advocates consistently inflate the number of gay people. They love to claim gays are 10% of the population. This is based on bogus science and spurious reasoning; basically, it came from a Kinsey study of male prison inmates and was based on whether they’d ever had a homosexual encounter. 10% was what he got back, and that 10% number has been stuck in the popular imagination ever since.
Some religious traditionalists point to a few passages in the Bible, most of them far more tenuous than they suggest, and say that the entire phenomenon of gay people is proof of a dangerous slope toward degredation and perversity and every form of wickedness. To be blunt, they’re exaggerating. Sorry, but they are. Those verses stem from a time thousands of years ago when the average lifespan was less than half of what it is now, and where the need for fairly rigid sex roles was pretty strong. A man who married but then indulged in gay sex was possibly a health danger to his wife and children, and also possibly might neglect his family. This happened in more than one society; more than one Roman emperor tried to stamp out homosexuality because he had the notion that virile young men were dallying with each other and thus not producing the much-needed future generations with their wives.
Further, to me it’s obvious that there are probably two strains of homosexuality: one that comes from some sort of deep psychological scarring, and another that comes from what we might call a simple biological error, along the lines of being born with one green eye and one brown eye. It’s a little odd (or might I even say, “queer?”) but it’s nothing more than that and it’s also nothing you can really change, or should be forced to hide.
The fact is that there has been a gay substrate in every civilization in history. Sometimes it was viewed as a threat, sometimes as a harmless indulgence of the young, and sometimes as simply accepted.
But the fact is that we probably all know someone who’s gay. Some of them are bad people, some are not. There was a gay subculture in the 1970s and 1980s in this country that was basically a mirror of the “free love” movement, with wild orgies and such, but that’s not the norm that most gay people today live in.
And so it becomes an issue because these people are here, and we all have a relative or a friend like it. Realistically, gay people are 2-3% of the US population, and furthermore, it seems very unlikely that they will ever make up more than that. So why care about 2-3%? Well gee, that means gay people are somewhere between Muslims and Jews in terms of how big their numbers are. That’s significant. It means anyone with a wide enough circle of friends will know someone who’s gay.
What’s really also happened in the last few decades is that this tiny 2-3% who are congenitally gay have managed to find each other and form communities, whereas in the past they didn’t know each other and were fairly isolated. Now they have more clout.
To me it’s really very simple: these people don’t need your approval, but they deserve the tolerance and respect for basic rights and civility that any decent human being deserves. Those who can’t handle that are usually people who are trying to take traditionalist dogma and apply it to a world where it no longer fits so well.
I agree with you, Dean.
I have no trouble with gay people and — though it’s a cliche — some of my best friends are gay.
What I see happening is this, though: For many gays their entire identity is based around what they screw. That is, they are gay and that’s all they allow themselves to be, at least in public. That is, in fact, their own obsession. And we obsessed over that obsession.
I can’t imagine it’s healthy for them. I can see how it happened, though. They were so tired of being ridiculed for being gay that they “owned” it. But now, I think, the gay community has gone too far.
We get it. You’re homosexual. Most people on the coasts don’t give a crap. Chill.
But why has all this taken such hold of our political landscape??
Because doing another guy in the butt is gross.
Ron,
sorry, I clearly missed the point. but clearly you are implying that the obsession comes about because of some confusion about what it means to be masculine. i guess i just see these things as non sequiturs. what does masculinity or manhood have to do with an obsession with homosexuality?
more to the point, do you think it really has taken hold of our political landscape? moreso than say health-care, taxes, social security, the usual suspects? i don’t really see that being the case. to the extent that it IS present on the political scene, i would say that it’s cause is more mundane. gay rights or gay activism has been around for 30 years or more, and has sort of organically risen to a current peak of national prominence. this has caused the predictable backlashes, re-lashes, etc. as activists on both sides move further to the extreme before phasing into irrelevence (see militant feminism).
the reason “why now??” is probably mostly just: “because.” but it almost certainly has nothing to do with any post-industrial concepts of manhood.
Ron, your question seems odd. It’s obviously big in part because gay people having been speaking up and demanding things, and Republicans have found that the issue is something important to make hay out of politically, much like stem cells for the Democrats. Note the number of do nothing anti gay marriage bills: Virginia is case in point: they have a conservative judiciary appointed by the legislature, bills already passed in the legislature, DOMA, and now a constitutional amendment. It can’t be the sole blame of gay people that they are being pushed into the spotlight and made a huge deal out of.
Haggard is a story because he’s been so anti-gay (not just anti gay marriage) and is also so influential in the evangelical: a startlingly common phenomenon for personal hypocrisy on this score.
Yes, issues related to homosexuality are more newsworthy, and will probably influence more votes, than “health-care, taxes, social security” next week, yes.
I do think the role and meaning of manhood is in play when you discuss men who depart from the traditional cultural understanding of the one thing that distinguishes men from women, mainly that men have sex with women and vice versa, and make babies that way.
That doesn’t mean homosexuals can’t and don’t have the masculine virtues, and that heterosexuals all do. Well, it does as regards one masculine virtue, though, already adverted to.
I don’t think “because” makes a compelling counter-hypothesis, Zach.
“Gays need to decide whether they want to be treated as equals – in which they case they will lose their minority identity – or whether they want to be treated differently – in which case they are not equal.”
I find this view to be pretty disingenuous. Gay people aren’t treated as equals. They cannot have normal quiet lives because people do care and do react and do attack them for it. You can mention your wife in passing. A gay person can’t mention his partner in passing in most places without people treating that as some huge statement.
And the idea that gay is merely some sexual act done under covers that no one should ever have to hear about is just downright demeaning and ugly. Sometimes it seems like people with this view think more about gay sex than gay people do.
I know Vic doesn’t want to hear me think about gay sex anymore, but….
It seems like there’s an “obsession” because this issue represents a zero-sum game for each side engaged in the “obsessing”.
Homosexuals believe their 14th Amendment rights are being infringed because they are not being treated with “equal protection”. Meanwhile their opponents believe that such legal recognition infringes upon the 10th Amendment powers of their states, renders the 9th Amendment meaningless, and in many cases infringes upon 1st Amendment rights to freedom of religion by requiring those who disagree to recongize an immoral activity as a state-sanctioned institution.
An example of this last position is what has happened to the largest adoption agency in Massachusetts – Catholic Charities. By requiring the Church to place children in the homes of homosexual couples or lose its license, the commonwealth forced the Church to shut down its adoption operations.
Each side in this debate thinks they lose something intrinsic and valuable when the other side wins. And we’re setting ourselves up for a situation where neither side will be satisfied until one side or the other is forced to capitulate completely. It cannot end well.
Gee Ron, I thought I explained it pretty well. Maybe I was too rambling. Let me try to get it more specific:
A certain percentage of the population has always been inclined toward homosexuality. It’s not really all that big a percentage. Historically they were few and far between and only occasionally found each other.
Since the advent of modern technology it’s become easier for them to form into groups to support each other, so they have. By forming into tight communities, they wind up with more political clout. With more political clout means more of them are willing to “come out.” With that comes increasing visibility.
None of this was really plausible until the mid to late 20th century because the technology, the mass communication, etc. simply wasn’t there.
This will eventually go away as an obsession. Of all the things for Christians to obsess over, for example, there are clearly far worse sins than this. In the 1960s and the 1970s the “counterculture” started, and an un-noticed conservative counter-counterculture also got its start. Both will follow the predictable pattern of Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis and it’ll all settle out.
Ron,
I was being glib, sorry. My point was what I made above, and what Vic alluded to. The reason “why now?” is a complex one that involves the evolution of the political landscape over 30 years and longer. gay rights activism, anti-gay activism, the rise of political and nonpolitical evangalism, the acceptance of gay rights in foreign countries, the plight of gay rights in other foreign countries, theo van gogh, AIDS (or “AIDS,” let’s not have that debate now), hollywood, and many other factors have all played important roles in this rise. So many things contribute that I can’t see how you can pin one cause as the definitive one, or what it buys to make that analysis. It’s just an organic growth that happens to have reached a peak now.
Also, I reject your thesis that cultural norms of manhood or womanhood are based on are the ability to make babies or whom they chose to screw. I’m in the middle of reading the medieval grail romance Parzival, where the author focuses quite a bit on masculinity and femininity. From what I’ve gleaned so far, masculinity at that point in time was primarily a function of how many lords you could send over their cruppers in a jousting tournament. So what does the concept of masculinity mean when it’s such a culturally and temporally moving target? Can you spell it out a little clearer exactly what you’re trying to say here? How has a loss of clarity regarding your arbitrarily chosen definition of manhood caused a national (or global!) obsession with homosexuality?
Oh, there’s another reason:
Even before the “sexual revolution” got started, gay people tended to flock to those attracted to bohemian lifestyles and thus found themselves heavily concentrated in academic and arts communities.
Much like Jews, they’re overrepresented in those careers, thus increasing their visibility.
If one were to be silly, you’d guess that Hollywood is run 60% by Jews, 30% by queers, and 10% by everyone else. That’s a stereotype of course, and I inflated my numbers just to emphasize the humor, but it ain’t far from the truth my man.
Zach, I’d say you’re slightly missing the point Ron’s trying to make with this comment:
I’m in the middle of reading the medieval grail romance Parzival, where the author focuses quite a bit on masculinity and femininity. From what I’ve gleaned so far, masculinity at that point in time was primarily a function of how many lords you could send over their cruppers in a jousting tournament. So what does the concept of masculinity mean when it’s such a culturally and temporally moving target?
I’d have to say that’s not a moving target at all. It’s the age-old–as age old as the human race I’d say–desire of men to best each other in some form of competition in order to impress women. That’s a constant in just about every culture, currently and going back in time.
What does it have to do with homosexuality? Now that’s a different, more subtle question. Historically, in some cultures it was considered a good thing for an older man to take a younger male lover on as his protege, and one of the things a young man’s older male lover was expected to do was help him pick out a suitable wife. On the other hand, in other times and cultures, it’s been assumed that a man who is homosexual has removed himself from the normal competitive cycle men put each other through–they’re treated like noncombatants and therefore possibly trusted advisors, artisans, etc.
So I don’t think Ron was off-base completely. I think where gay men settle out in terms of masculinity is more culturally defined than anything else. And where our own culture is on that right now I’m not sure–seems like we’re struggling to figure it out.
Dean,
actually it seemed that winning a woman was merely a periphery benefit, since in Parzival the men end up leaving their wives after about two weeks of marriage to go off to another jousting tournament or save their cousin’s threatened land.
my point though is more that both what it means to be “gay” and what it means to be “manly” are currently and have been throughout history widly varying. so what is it about Ron’s current vision of the manly man does he think is causing the global gay obsession?
Zach, you can’t make such deductions from a book! Men like to hang out with each other. They also like to have women. Negation of the latter in a given moment does not in any way imply a lack of interest in male sexuality as traditionally expressed.
The manly man, Zach, is no longer necessary — this the feminists tell us. Physical strength and size are not meaningful economic assets in our economy. As Dean has pointed out, girls can shoot guns and missiles and pilot vehicles on, over and above the earth. Sperm you can buy over the counter. Jobs are available for both sexes pretty much up to the top. Why isn’t “being a man” pretty much obsolete?
If it is perceived as being, it may follow — I don’t know that it does — that men, seeing the one last thing men do also under attack, socially — are obsessed with homosexuality? Or, that sensing this weakness, and the traditional mores having no presumptive validity in the society at large, homosexual men are making their move for power? But then why the scandals, the closeted homosexual men exploding governments and institutions?
Maybe you’re right — because!
Haggart now says he bought meth because he was curious, but didn’t use it, and he got sexy massages, but never had sex.
Sounds plausible enough, right? Though, actually, buying meth is a little more seriously involved than having someone pass you a joint at a party and you “not inhaling.”
Zach: I am not disagreeing with you, but I’m almost feeling like you’re not “connecting” on the basic point. Ron at least seems to get it, even though Ron and I disagree with each other on certain points. Look, let me put it as crassly and primitively as possible: men seek power, status, and pussy. Every culture I’m aware of through history has provided avenues for men to gain those things. It’s degrading at a certain level to say it so crassly, and denies a sophistication that’s always been part of the whole thing, but that’s been the undercurrent pretty much forever. So when you tell me that a few hundred years ago it was “different” because the way you got those things was to beat another man on the jousting field I say, “Uh, how so?” Now it’s on the football field, or in the business arena, but the basic drive hasn’t really changed. So to me that’s not a moving target at all, it’s the same unchanging target just expressed different ways depending upon time and place.
Although I guess I will grant that “impressing women,” as I put it above, isn’t exactly right. Sometimes it wasn’t impressing the women, it was impressing whoever controlled access to the women. But even then, in most societies the women had more to say about that than we generally credit. How many men in Parzival’s time do you really think would have given out their daughters or sisters’ hands in marriage if their wives and mothers were totally opposed to it? You’re misunderestimating those women if you assume they were not involved even if it wasn’t always stated that way openly.
Anyway, now that I’ve said all that–most of which isn’t really in disagreement with you by the way, except on that one narrow point–I must cogitate upon Ron’s latest comments, and where I agree with him and disagree with him.
Ron, where I disagree with you:
I think it’s a misreading to view the wider-spread acceptance of homosexuality as an expression of men’s increasing obsolescence, or the obsolescence of the traditional manly virtues. You’re a smidge older than me, but only a smidge; we both remember the silly over-the-topness of many of the radical feminists of the 1970s and early 1980s.
I submit to you as a prime example of the answer to that: our compatriot Mary Madigan. Who is in roughly the same age bracket as us. She will call herself a feminist and a progressive in many contexts, but just wryly chuckles at people who suggest that all those male-female differences are entirely a matter of “socialization” or “oppression.” Probably because she’s a mom. Anyone who’s a committed parent has a pretty hard time denying that little boys and little girls are often very different from birth. And there’s no reason to be condescending or angry or apologetic about this. (She can speak for herself of course, and will correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ll bet I’ve read her right because I’ve been reading her for years.)
Heck, she really liked me and John’s novel Methuselah’s Daughter, and there’s all kinds of stuff on male-female dynamics in that book that would give the rad-feminists and the simpering liberals a bad case of the hives. And the conservatives won’t like it all either.
Where I think you are mistaken–or at least, possibly exaggerating–is in the assumption that somehow homosexuality plays a deep role in sexual identity in the early 21st century. I don’t think it does. While I don’t leave out the possibility of entirely psychological reasons driving homosexuality in some cases (the boy who grows up totally hating his abusive mother and thus repulsed by all women, or the girl who is horribly abused by men and becomes a lesbian) I honestly believe that in most cases homosexuality is basically a wiring issue: those deeply embedded circuits in your brain that are supposed to make you sexually attracted to one sex get wired wrong early on and you’re attracted to the “wrong” sex instead.
I must admit that this position makes me unpopular with many liberals AND many conservatives. So be it. But my operant assumption is that there has always been this undercurrent, this substrate, of people whose brains are just kind of wired differently, like being left-handed, and they are thus confusused and insecure early on in their development. And historically they were always a minority, often persecuted, and usually confused. But because of the last half-century of improvements in communications technology, and mobility, these folks have found a way to contact each other, move into mutually supportive communities, and carved out a niche for themselves.
As it happens, a lot of them have found themselves in creative and artistic fields. Is it historical forces that drove that, or something else? I remain agnostic on that point. Although I’m not above making gentle jokes about it. Hey, if you’re a man and you’re looking for advice on a good outfit? Find a gay guy, he’ll usually hook you up and make you look good. Cuz he knows what looks good on a man.
This is the entire premise of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and guess what? It often works.
Although just to be politically incorrect in another direction? I have also often found that as a white guy, black guys are often a good source of fashion advice. Oh, is that racist for me to say? Or does it recognize the cultural fact that black American men tend to take pride in masculine appearance, have been very sensitive to “appearances” for generations, and are thus also thus often good sources of advice? I’ve had more than on (very straight, very macho) black guy say, “Dude, you’re going to wear that?”
So I guess my argument for you is that this whole “obsession with the homosexualists” thing may have, at one point, looked like a sort of radical assault on mainstream society, but as we learn more it seems increasingly obvious that this is really not what it’s all about. Just as, 30-40 years ago, feminists may have sometimes seemed like “crazy man-haters” and rigid ideologues, over time sanity and a sense of humor has mostly been restored.
Of course, I am at heart a progressive not a conservative. And I’m not sure exactly what I’d say to an Orthodox Jewish couple who just discovered that they had a gay son. Just for example. But this is how I see the broad social trends of the last few decades, and it’s where I think we’re going.
As I noted in On Masculinity, my worldly experience is that most women actually like men and the traditional manly virtues. They’re often frustrated and confused by men, but they basically do like and respect men. When expressed virtuously and respectfully. So I really do not believe we are on a path that is going to wind up “obsoleting men.”
I suppose this must all seem like a “Den Beste-ian” response, but it is what I think. Take it or leave it.
I possibly won’t comment on this post, except to say that I’m appalled by Dr. Dean Schlessinger’s contention that homosexuality could be caused by a “biological error.”
As if I’m the mistake.
One more thing. Ron said:
Because it polls well for Republicans on the far right.
(I’m not convinced it polls well for moderate Republicans. In fact, I’m almost convinced they’re repulsed that they have to answer questions about it when they would prefer to talk about the issues.)
Uh… why? Isn’t it — by technical definition — exactly that? It naturally prevents the reproduction of the species and continuance of your DNA.
Jesse, answer me this: How does my being gay “naturally prevents the reproduction of the species and continuance of your DNA.” ??
If necessarily, I will begrudgingly put my pee pee in some woman’s hoo hoo if I’m needed to propogate the species.
There is nothing “naturally” preventing me from doing that. There IS something naturally preventing me from enjoying it, however.
Michael: Laura Schlesinger was wrongly maligned and demonized by the gay left.
I’m not the first person to say it. There have been many gay persons who’ve said it. Tammy Bruce is one example but there are others. She got kicked around for something she didn’t deserve to be kicked around for. She may deserve to be kicked around for other things, but she didn’t deserve to be kicked around for this.
Please get over the cheap-ass comparisons to Nazis and eugenics. That’s a frickin’ LIE, dude.
“Error.” What is your problem with the word “error?” Why do you assume that “error” means “deserving of contempt and destruction?”
I myself am an example of a person who has a simple biological error. I have a condition known as Tourette’s Syndrome. I don’t wear it on my sleeve, I don’t make it the center of my existence, but I do have this simple biological condition–this biological error–that may be genetic, or may be based on environmental factors, but which I cannot make go away. There are even medications I could take which might make its symptoms go away, but I refuse to take them.
I used to know a girl who had webbed toes. It was clearly a simple biological error. Did it mean she should be treated with contempt? Did it mean she should be ostracized and treated as less than human?
I once knew another girl with one brown eye and one green eye. It was kind of queer. But it was also kind of charming. Clearly, a minor biological error. So by saying so, do I mean “To the gas ovens she must go?”
I once met a man with six fingers on his left hand. Clearly, a minor biological error. So, what, he needed to go to jail? He needed to be forced into having surgery to remove it?
Look, damn it: it’s pretty obvious to anyone who looks at it really hard that sex, at a very primitive level, is about reproduction. It may have social and other benefits too, but at the most primitive, basic level it’s about reproduction. And clearly, homosexuality is not pro-reproduction. Neither is masturbation. So what’s that mean? Does that mean anyone who ever masturbates should be treated with contempt? Does that mean any woman who is infertile or any man who is sterile should be shunned?
We all of us–all of us–have simple biological “errors” in our makeup. If we didn’t we would all be tall, healthy, good-looking, non-overweight math wizards and straight-A students who were High School Football and Chess champions. And none of us would ever lie, none of us would ever be selfish, none of us would ever be unfaithful to our spouses, and we’d all live up to society’s best aspirations at all times.
Get over it, dude. I’m not saying that MICHAEL DEMMONS IS AN ERROR. All I’m saying is that something in Michael Demmons’ makeup made him attracted to boys instead of girls. Is that an “error” in a primitive sense? Sure. Sure it is. If we were all perfect then none of us would ever deviate from the mainstream on any topic.
Schlesinger was wrongly vilified. All she said was that it was a simple biological error, like being born with six toes or eyes of two different colors. Is it a little queer? Well yeah. Does this invalidate the whole person? No it damn well does not.
And by the way, is society fundamentally harmed if some people are a little odd–a little QUEER?
I don’t think so at all. In fact, I think that people who are a little odd, a little queer, have often made invaluable and outstanding contributions that a totally “normal” person never would have been able to.
Einstein was very queer. So was Socrates. So was Beethoven. So was Michelangelo. So was Mary Shelley.
In fact I think that if you look at the entire history of the human race, many of the greatest advancements have been by people who are odd, i.e. queer.
Not “queer” in the homosexual sense. Some of them were and some of them weren’t. That’s not the point. The point is that being different, being outside the mainstream, being a little odd, is often extraordinarily valuable.
Oh, big news flash: it may be valuable to society for some people to have a lot of children, but there aren’t many gay men who are going to sire a dozen kids. So, what, that’s the ENTIRE measure of a person’s value?
Come off it, Michael, you’re queer. Meaning “A little different, and sort of odd in some ways. But maybe incredibly valuable in many other ways.”
Queer is a great word. Because it takes it outside of the “gay vs. straight” mentality. Queer: kind of odd, kind of different.
Einstein was queer. Bill Gates is queer. Frank Lloyd Wright was queer. Coco Chanel was queer. Socrates was queer. Marie Curie was queer.
So far as I know none of those persons was homosexual, but they were all queer: a little odd in some ways, beyond the mainstream in many ways, but incredibly valuable.
Yep: But Tourettes impedes your life – not because of other people, but because it just does. And I hope we find a cure for it.
Being gay is not an error. If it is, there are certainly one hell of a lot of errors in the animal kingdom.
And what’s with the Nazi and eugenics admonition. You know I’ve never thought of you like that, and I certainly don’t think most people think of it that way.
Oh, and by the way, have James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Rick Santorum, and a host of other people gone on the air and told the world that your Tourette’s disqualifies you from basic rights and privileges?
Ahmmm, no.
Well you must know, Michael, that I do not in any way support any sort of persecution of gay people. Which is why I am (mildly, not angrily or shrilly) offended by your suggestion that by saying “homosexuality is a minor biological error” this means that I think that YOU are a biological error.
But you know what? My Tourette’s does not impede my life. In very extreme cases Tourette’s does that to people. But in many cases it’s minor: I make funny noises now and then, and have some funny tics that make people look at me a little oddly. It makes me a little QUEER, i.e. KIND OF ODD.
But you know what? Offer me a “cure” that will make it all go away and I’m not sure I’d take it. Even if it was the perfect cure, the one-time pill I could swallow, with no side effects whatsoever, would I take it? Probably not.
A lot of musicians, artists, scientists, and poets have had this “affliction.” Some of them were even given medications to “fix” it, and then stopped taking it because they found that it took away something valuable at the core of their being.
I can’t quite describe Tourette’s to you since you don’t have it. But as odd as it is, as queer as it is, as goofy as it is sometimes, I can tell you it also sometimes brings on a spontaneity I can’t quite describe. Indeed, I was recently fascinated to learn that Keith Moon, the legendary drummer of The Who, had Tourette’s. And now any time I watch videos of him in concert I am blown away: not only was he an incredible drummer in his heyday, but I can see–I can really see–how his Tourette’s drove some of his creativity.
I can’t describe it to you but I can see it quite clearly. You probably can’t, but I can. Just looking at his face as he performed, just looking at the way he did things: I immediately recognized him as a fellow Tourette’s guy, and I was simultaneously just BLOWN AWAY by how amazingly he channeled that into incredibly creative directions. Give him some meds to make it all go away and he would have ceased to be as great as he was.
I guess my point is: dude, embrace the word QUEER. It’s not bad to be QUEER, meaning a little odd, a little unusual, a little out of the mainstream. It’s okay to be queer. It’s okay to be different. It’s not BAD to be a little odd. The world would be such a sterile place if no one was ever a little odd, a little queer.
If it is, there are certainly one hell of a lot of errors in the animal kingdom.
Thank you for catching up. Now that we’ve completed discussion of the Scopes Monkey Trial, we can continue with Biology 101.
Please continue, Professor Esmay.
Damn, Dean beat me by 60 seconds.
Mainstream opinion: sex is about reproduction first, and other things second.
Queer position: well yes sex is partly about that, but it can be about so much more.
Is it bad to be QUEER?
If it is, there are certainly one hell of a lot of errors in the animal kingdom.
Yes, yes there are.
My God life would suck if it were not so.
Labeling gay as an error and claiming to be speaking scientifically is probably wrong: it doesn’t really mean anything. Whether you acknowledge it or not, labeling gay as an error has no factual, descriptive sense, only a judgemental sense: it denotes a knowing and implied sense of purpose and design that being gay is outside of. I don’t see how there is much of a way around that.
Mostly just a nitpick, since I don’t think you mean anything by it.
Vic: Not a nitpick. Exactly right, in fact. I’m not amused at being labelled “the mistake” – which is exactly what that does.
Gay – the new disease. We’re a disorder that has to be corrected. No one dies from it. No one suffers from it (aside from how others make us suffer)
But whatever. People can think what they want.
I once met a man with six fingers on his left hand. Clearly, a minor biological error. So, what, he needed to go to jail? He needed to be forced into having surgery to remove it?
What he needed to do was to come up with some words to tattoo on his knuckles.
Vic and Michael: You both disappoint me.
You both seem to presume that “genetically a little different and a little odd” means “inherently inferior and in need of condescension.”
That’s very sad.
Do you presume that a person with one brown eye and one green eye is fundamentally inhuman and in need of “correction?” Do you presume that left-handed people (who are less than 10% of the mainstream) need to be treated like freaks?
In Major League Baseball, a left-handed pitcher is often viewed as something formidable. A left-handed batter–or better yet, one who is a switch-hitter–is viewed as a major assett.
I don’t think you guys get it at all.
Gay – the new disease. We’re a disorder that has to be corrected.
Total insult, total insult.
Simple question: Is it BAD to be a little unusual, a little different?
Please answer me this question Michael: is it BAD to be a little unusual, a little different?
Does being a little unusual, a little different, mean you have a DISEASE? Does it mean you have a DISORDER that needs FIXING?
You’re so damned conservative it’s destroying your objectivity my old friend. For you have just declared that being QUEER is akin to having a DISEASE. I don’t believe that, so why do you?
I submit to you as a prime example of the answer to that: our compatriot Mary Madigan. Who is in roughly the same age bracket as us. She will call herself a feminist and a progressive in many contexts, but just wryly chuckles at people who suggest that all those male-female differences are entirely a matter of “socialization” or “oppression.”
I guess I do. I assumed that my daughter would love trucks and dinosaurs, just like my son did. But she would rather make up stories and play with stuffed animals.
However, I’m not sure what sexual identity (having “female” characteristics, like recognizing emotions in someone’s expression, tending to express yourself in emotional terms, or “male” characteristics like being protective of women, liking to take physical risks, etc.) has to do with homosexuality. Most of the homosexual men I’ve known are just as likely to be protective of women, just as risk-taking as the heteros. Lesbians are just as ‘female’.
Homosexuals supposedly make up 10% of the population. I’d guess that less than 10% of the population is (naturally) blonde. Neither is a genetic aberration.
Many years ago, before he went senile, Kurt Vonnegut once theorized that human reproduction is more complex than we’d assumed, requiring the proper ecological balance of a certain amount of pollens in the air, young females, young males, old people and homosexuals. Somehow, all of these factors work together.
I’d guess that less than 10% of the population is (naturally) blonde. (It isn’t) a genetic aberration.
It most certainly is if you’re black or Eskimo.
And carrying around a lot of melanin in your skin is quite normal – unless you’re Scandinavian.
Jeez, did anyone else other than Dean actually pass biology?
Mary: to my total lack of surprise, I find that we are in nearly-complete agreement.
The theoretical “progressive/liberal” view is that if raised without preconceptions the boys will be as interested in dolls and the girls will be as interested in trucks. But no matter how hard you try, it just doesn’t work out that way.
Give the litle girl the toy truck, and 90% of the time the girl will construct games in her head about who gets in the truck and where they go and what they do with the truck.
Give the little boy the toy truck, and 90% of the time he’ll imagine what he can build with the truck–or, more often, what he can crash the truck into and what he can destroy with the truck.
I don’t think that’s a gay vs. straight thing. And while I grant that socialization may be part of it, I really don’t think that most of it is social conditioning. When you watch 2-3 year-olds do this you realize suddenly that it can’t just be “social expectation” that drives it all.
To me the really enlightened attitude ought to involve good humor and grace and appreciation. You know what I mean?
And by the way, you’re right: at their worst little boys love destruction and mayhem. But if you challenge their protective instincts then those instincts kick into overdrive. And isn’t that a wonderful thing about little boys?
The so-called “manly virtues” and “feminine virtues” can be pathological if you let them be. But if you channel them into constructive directions they can be good things for everybody.
I think boys and girls should like and appreciate each other.
Is there any judgment made in the following?
Heterosexuality vis-a-vis sexual intercourse is the only natural way for the human species to reproduce itself. Any desire or physical limitation contrary to, or any scientific technical manipulation accomplishing that end is merely arbitrary.*
(*WNCD-1973: 1, depending on choice or discretion; 2a, arising from will or caprice; 2b, selected at random and without reason.)
You’ll get no argument from me – but I’d put on a flak jacket if I were you.
“Vic and Michael: You both disappoint me.
You both seem to presume that “genetically a little different and a little odd” means “inherently inferior and in need of condescension.”
That’s very sad.”
I didn’t say that. I said that any attempt to present the idea that homosexuality is an error as a simple fact, rather than a judgement of some sort, is wrong. The concept of “error” is a judgement, not a fact, especially in a biological context.
“Do you presume that a person with one brown eye and one green eye is fundamentally inhuman and in need of “correction?” Do you presume that left-handed people (who are less than 10% of the mainstream) need to be treated like freaks?”
No, but how often do people call them “errors”?
“I don’t think you guys get it at all.”
I think you either used language poorly, or aren’t examining your position closely enough.
There is no biological meaning to something being an “error,” because there is no intention in biology. The idea that something is in error is a judgement of some sort: maybe a strong moral judgement, or maybe just a mild remarking on how one thinks things “ought” to be and how they rarely work out that way (and you certainly seem to be in the latter category).
Well if you don’t like the word “error,” what word do you like better?
I’m willing to state it bluntly: if your sexual chemistry makes you homosexual, then it’s an “error” at some level. If all the wiring in your system works right it’d be “if I’m a girl I like boys, and if I’m a boy I like girls.”
But something goes off “wrong” in your chemistry that defies that. Does that make you evil, or inferior, or worth less as a human being? I don’t think so myself.
Vic, you seem to be confusing biology with physics. There are no value judgments in physics because there are no functions and purposes. But there certainly functions and purposes in biology, and an organ or a behavior which fails at its biological function is a biological error.
The function of a bird’s song (for some species) is to attract a mate and the purpose of attracting a mate is to reproduce. If a particular male bird of such a species ended up singing a song that attracted other males, that would be a biological error. The bird in question would be far less likely to reproduce because it has faulty mating behavior.
Again I note that I once knew a girl who had webbed toes.
I did not think that made her inferior. I thought she had a simple biological error in her genome.
And I think we all have such simple biological errors in our genetic structure. If we didn’t, we’d all be chess champions and honor students and tall and slim and muscular.
I don’t think “error” is a pejorative in this sense.
In Laura Schlesinger’s case, all she said was that most boys like girls, and most girls like boys, but occasionally an error shows up and you have boys who like boys and girls who like girls. That doesn’t make them bad people. Not in my estimation anyway. Especially because I believe that exceptional people are a blessing not a curse.
I guess I’m prejudiced, but I think we should be able to have these converstaions bluntly.
Is this a biological error? Or just a very uncommon individual?
Dean, think back to fundamental communications: denotations vs. connotations. The word “error” denotes something which functions in a way different from its design, which is literally true. (And sorry, Vic, organs do have a design, whether that design is intentional or evolutionary. If my lungs decide to start exchanging nitrogen for nitrous oxide, they’re not functioning as designed, even if they’re perfectly happy that way.)
But the connotation of “error” is that it must be fixed. And I can understand why Michael might be offended at the idea that he needs fixing, when he feels perfectly natural and well adjusted just the way he is. Without knowing him personally, I can only guess that he’s like gay folks I know, in that it was a bit of a struggle getting to that well adjusted state; and if so, then it’s natural for him to resent any suggestion that his adjustment is an error.
While I don’t think you’re wrong in a literal sense, I think you could make your point with a less value-laden term. “Anomaly” is the best I can come up with at this hour of the morning.
Dean: “I guess I’m prejudiced”
Not guilty.
Martin: Chimerism is a fascinating phenomenon. I wouldn’t call it a biological “error” so much as a biological miracle. Somehow two completely separate organisms mesh into one seemingly normal and perfectly healthy organism? The odds are staggeringly against it, so when it happens it’s amazing.
On the other hand, there’s some evidence that this may actually be an important driving factor in evolution, and may be one of those things that helps explain things that are otherwise hard to explain by traditional ideas about evolution. Lynn Margulis has written at length about how synergy between two separate organisms that eventually leads to them merging may be a significant force in evolution. And Peter Duesberg is convinced that cancer is, in fact, a new organism that comes about due to a replication error.
As for the pejorative connotations of the word “error,” I suggest to you that any alternative word you came up with could be equally interpreted as a negative, nasty thing. Misfire? Anomaly? Freak? Sport? Accident? Strange? Queer?
Name your term and someone will find some way to be offended.
It should be entirely obvious to most people that sex is in evolutionary terms primarily about reproduction, and secondarily about emotions and bonding. So people naturally inclined to non-reproductive sex are clearly a little odd, a little queer.
Not evil. Not disgusting. Not horrible. Just queer.
And by the way, would that make heterosexual couples who practice birth control methods in order to avoid pregnancy a little queer?
Well yes it would. In evolutionary terms anyway. They’re taking the driving force behind sex–the urge to reproduce–and channeling it into something that can’t possibly result in reproduction.
Would that make cunnilingus and fellatio between heterosexuals a little queer? Yeah. So what?
Clearly, someone determined to be offended will be offended. I know people who would call “normal” an offensive label.
But I think you can still look for minimal offense. A more clinical term is less offensive, I believe.
Errors are to be fixed.
Freaks, sports, and accidents are to be shunned or gawked at.
Strange or queer people are to be whispered about, or maybe giggled at.
Anomalies are to be studied. And while that’s still gonna offend some people, it’s less offensive than someone trying to fix you gawk at you, or giggle at you.
Of course, your comment was about the cause of the condition, not about the individual who embodies that condition. My eyes have an error, so I wear glasses. That doesn’t mean I’m an error, just that I have parts of me that function differently than designed.
But again, someone determined to be offended will be offended.
Martin: You make a good point. “Anomaly” may be the most clinically precise word. It is probably better than “error.”
But I maintain that if Laura Schlesinger had said “it’s a biological anomaly” she would still have been attacked as an evil, wicked woman who hated gay people.
And worse, it would have missed her overarching point: when she said it, she was trying to tell the parents of gay kids not to hate their kids or think they were perverse and evil and behaving improperly. “It’s just a biological error, don’t worry about it, it doesn’t make them or you bad people or failures somehow.”
She really didn’t deserve all the kicking around she got. On this topic anyway.
Is Andrew Sullivan gay?
I just thought all men from Big Cities acted and dressed that way.
That’s not what you said Dean. You said:
E-R-R-O-R
Dictionary.com: a deviation from accuracy or correctness; a mistake, as in action or speech
American Heritage Dictionary: An act, assertion, or belief that unintentionally deviates from what is correct, right, or true.
American Heritage Medical Dictionary: A defect or insufficiency in structure or function.
Michael, it is not an error. It is evolution.
The biological basis is profound and undeniable.
Check Dr. Cochran.
In fMRI there are morphological differences between male, female, AND homosexual brains.
The best explanation i ever read is in Cryptonomicon.
i paraphrase.
“…from when the first humans crawled up on a rock and began spamming the environment with copies of themselves. It made sense that through the grace of the largess of civilization some individuals could also be supported without the imperative of reproductive duty.”
He was talking about Alan Turing, homosexual and the father of computer science.
Evolution is four dimensional; genetic, epigentic, symbolic and behavioral. At 10% of homosapiens, there must be some evolutionary advantage, some fitness selection.
So, Michael, u r not erroneous.
u r evolved. =)
What an amazingly obtuse argument.
BR, pray explain significant morphological and functional differences across fMRI between men, women and homosexuals, then.
In parts of the world homosexuals are defined as the “third gender.”
there are stranger things under heaven and earth than are known in your philosophy, horatio. =)
How can anyone possibly doubt a biological basis for homosexuality will be discovered and mapped?
and…what is obtuse about it?
10% is too high a frequency for a competely deleterious phenotype (ie non-reproductive).
there must be selection advantage or linkage.
or else greg cochran’s gay germ theory is true. =)
“But there certainly functions and purposes in biology, and an organ or a behavior which fails at its biological function is a biological error.”
Nope. We JUDGE it to be an error, but nothing about biology says that organs have to work, that any particular end result is the “right” one. You think that
Dean: “I’m willing to state it bluntly: if your sexual chemistry makes you homosexual, then it’s an “error” at some level. If all the wiring in your system works right it’d be “if I’m a girl I like boys, and if I’m a boy I like girls.” ”
Right: because you have a preconcieved judgement about how things SHOULD be that homosexuality goes against. How else are you defining “works right”? Biology doesn’t judge work right. Survival and natural selection are happenstance, not purpose. It’s intelligent beings that JUDGE purpose, and hence consider things to be error or success at some intended goal.
How can anyone possibly doubt a biological basis for homosexuality will be discovered and mapped?
Its really easy. Firstly 1 % pr more homosexual in a teenager/formerly abused adult doesn’t mean 100 % homosexual identification even though the gay community may not like it.
If anything is true psychologists have had a good deal of success in sorting through underdeveloped sexual confusions particularly in the sexually abused wherein therapy. the abused person maturely realizes that he/she ain’t gay and never was.
So matoko, where do you come up with the obligatory 10 percent ?
matoko,
and…what is obtuse about it?
10% is too high a frequency for a competely deleterious phenotype (ie non-reproductive).
there must be selection advantage or linkage.
or else greg cochran’s gay germ theory is true. =)
that’s a really excellent observation, certainly one i hadn’t thought of before.
Dean,
I’m in agreement with Martin here. The connotation is off, but I would suggest something other than anomaly, too. perhaps in line with how matoko has phrased the discussion, “variation”? is that too PC?
if we assume that homosexuality is too common to occur by a simple genetic “mistake” or “error,” then we should accept it as simply a variant of the normal phenotype. different but still normal. indeed, as michael has pointed out, homosexuality present in many different corners of the animal kingdom. And while i’m loathe to really pay attention to anything vonnegut had to say, the data suggests that sex and reproduction (speaking evolutionarily across an entire species) probably is the result of many factors escaping our grasp at the moment. to label homosexuals then as being “in error,” is probably premature at the least.
matoko, you’re taking data that is somewhere between unverified and wholly fallacious, making a supposition without even a direct correlation to that data, supporting it with a social norm that defies elementary human biology, then proclaiming normal scientific skepticism to the specious argument untenable based on feeble and unsubstantiated intimidation.
How is this even remotely called “science”?
*sigh*
read my greg cochran link.
i can dig up refs at gnxp for err thing i said.
fMRI scans of male, female, and homosexual brains show morphological and functional differences, with homosexual brains being intermediate to male and female brains.
i can dish some good steve sailer linkage too.
its science dude.
juss that u don’t keep up.
welcome to the 21st century.
here, some reading 4 u. =)
took it from madigan. guess she could be wrong. often she is.
I think that there is the gross assumption that biology has a purpose. If you are a theist, then there is some purpose in biological principles. There are no errors in biology. People forget that we are merely using a set of observations from a very limited viewpoint of the natural world. People’s opinions make something natural or not. Nature is, of itself, not a producer of truths or lies, nature does what it has always done, worked. You can argue that survival depends on reproduction, but that is assuming that the purpose of nature is to survive. It is not the purpose of nature. So, in short, there are no errors in genetics, it is just a simple misunderstanding that humans have; nature can be what we want it to be. Someone with a condition is not queer or odd, they just are. They are only odd or queer when humans label them. Labels are the beginning of the bullshit that has thrust us into all of the problems humans have created for themselves. I’m a jew, muslim, christian…blah, blah, blah…
juss that u don’t keep up
And you were asking me why I said ‘obtuse’? If you choose to make an argument, it’s your responsibility to make it effectively.
Nature is, of itself, not a producer of truths or lies, nature does what it has always done, worked…
But what if it doesn’t work? What if the mutation kills the mutant, and/or prevents it from passing that mutation to a new generation? This is the whole basis for the theory of evolution – the fittest survive, and the failures die out.
If you are a theist, then there is some purpose in biological principles. There are no errors in biology… nature can be what we want it to be… Labels are the beginning of the bullshit that has thrust us into all of the problems humans have created for themselves. I’m a jew, muslim, christian…blah, blah, blah…
It seems to me that you’re the one injecting subjectivity into the discussion, by trying to overcompensate against what you perceive as theism through some rather rigid relativism.
Shouldn’t science be objective instead of relativistic? Whatever happened to the scientific method?
BR, im not doing evolution 101 for u.
other people got my argument without problem.
we talk about homosexuality alla time at gene expression.
thass why i offered u a reading list.
there are many theories presented for the high frequency of homosexuals in homospaiens, which are being tested with the scientific method and published in scientific journals.
but none of them involve theism.
for example, in the behavioral dimension of evolution, there is strong negative selection for homosexuality in some cultures.
still, homosexuality exists, arguing for the genetic or epigenetic component.
and, demmons, labels are part of behavioral or (my preffered)cultural evolution.
they are valid memetic evolution.
and, BR, there are other measures of fitness then reps.
kinship, both genetic and memetic, linkage with beneficial gene complexes, etc.
i think my argument would be less obtuse for u if yerr knowledge of evolution wasn’t so….impoverished. =)
Physics has no purpose. Biology has purpose.
The idea that biology has no purpose save that which intelligent life imputes to it is a self-contradiction, since intelligent life is part of biology.
Unless, of course, you see things from a theist perspective; and if you do, then that perspective also implies purpose.
oh, martin, u r another horatio, with an impoverished philosophy.
u should read susskind, the father of string theory, on The Landscape.
His book is an intro to the theory of darwinian evolution of universes.
=)
i think my argument would be less obtuse for u if yerr knowledge of evolution wasn’t so….impoverished.
All the more reason for you to answer my questions and add your worth to the discussion. To say that you have the answers, but it’s beneath your dignity to educate me, only serves to alienate “the impoverished” from your position. Do you really want to convince me you’re right, or do you only respond because you like to mock me?
no, BR, not beneath my dignity.
dont have the time right now.
other obligations.
peace out!
Comments on this entry are closed.