Positive Liberty

I found an odd argument from Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, around pages 48-49.

Coontz begins by suggesting that in the last couple of centuries, the power of “kin, community, and state to arrange, prohibit, and interfere in marriages has waned,” which is certainly true. And this is not a shocking, unprecedented development, but rather a return to the norms that prevailed during hunter-gatherer times, when marriage wasn’t about property or dynastic succession, and when partners enjoyed much greater freedom. They could choose freely among potential mates, they worried less about infidelity, they loved even illegitimate children, and they could enter and leave marriages more easily. She writes,

Legal scholar Harry Willekins argues that in most modern industrial societies, marriages are contracted and dissolved in ways that have more in common with the habits of some egalitarian band-level societies than the elaborate rules that governed marriage in more complex societies over the past 5,000 years. In many contemporary societies, there is a growing acceptance of premarital sex, divorce, and remarriage, along with an erosion of sharp distinctions between cohabitation and marriage and between ‘legitimate’ and out-of-wedlock births.

This may seem good or bad depending on one’s own beliefs about marital norms. Yet it’s debatable whether what’s being said about past societies is even true. Most of us, I suspect, have heard neither of moieties nor of phratries, but we should all pity the person who wanted to marry against the rules that these kinship divisions entailed. The much-discussed same-sex unions among Native Americans were actually quite rare. And the reason preliterate marriage had little to do with wealth transfer is in part because there was so very little to go around.

But let’s ignore all that and grant that hunter-gatherer societies did have fluid enough marriage norms to make the comparison apt. Coontz continues,

In hunting and gathering bands and egalitarian horticultural communities, unstable marriages did not lead to the impoverishment of women or children as they often do today. Unmarried women participated in the work of the group and were entitled to a fair share, while children and other dependents were protected by strong customs that mandated sharing beyond the nuclear family.

This is not the case today, especially in societies such as the United States, where welfare provisions are less extensive than in Western Europe.

One wonders: Would today’s single mothers be better off as hunter-gatherers? Clearly this isn’t what Coontz means, so I’m searching for what this passage is supposed to get at (aside from a gratuitous swipe at the United States, and some doubtful praise for Europeans, who now seem to be better ersatz hunter-gatherers as well as everything else that they do better).

No, the absolute difference in wealth between the two types of societies is so vast that it’s hard to get too worked up about relative differences at all. Even the poorest of us does better than the richest hunter-gatherer. But perhaps what’s being said really is that when compared to single-mother hunter-gatherers, today’s single mothers are relatively worse off when each is compared to the married people in their respective societies.

Yet it’s a bit hard to believe that in hunter-gatherer societies, unstable marriage “did not lead to impoverishment of women or children.” Certainly it did. Aside from the general poverty, which was extraordinarily severe, these women and children would by far have had the worst of it.

I also think that their relative poverty would have been worse, and that losing a husband would be a bigger step down from an already very low level. Today’s labor is vastly different from the kind done in hunter-gatherer bands; it favors mental skills rather than physical ones, and here men and women have the greatest degree of natural equality. Today’s battle of the sexes is fought on considerably more even turf, which may explain why men are so uneasy lately.

Men are physically stronger, and therefore relatively more valuable to hunter-gatherer societies. By the same token they are, relative to women, less valuable today: Men are not more adept at using their minds and may even be less so on average. This makes single mothers’ labor more valuable as well.

Let’s also add the great benefits of a commercial economy: Whereas marriage in prehistoric societies might have been the only way to get the goods that men provided (meat, protection), today’s women can earn money — a new invention — and exchange it for whatever they want. It doesn’t matter whether the goods they want are produced by the father of their children or by unknown factory workers on the other side of the globe. Every working man (and woman) in the entire world is competing, potentially, to provide goods and services for her. This increases her wealth still further.

Again, this may be why men are so uneasy these days. But it also suggests that even relatively speaking, there are powerful institutions and social processes favoring women and women’s labor in the modern world, and that even by relative standards, it would be better to be a single mother today than one in a noncommercial, non-monetized society where brute force had a higher economic value relative to mental traits. Frankly, women never had it so good, single or otherwise, relatively or in absolute terms.

This guy:

A gay man is suing two heavyweight Christian publishers, claiming their versions of the Bible that refer to homosexuality as a sin violate his constitutional rights and have caused him emotional pain and mental instability.

Bradley LaShawn Fowler of Canton, Mich., is seeking $60 million from Zondervan, based in Cascade Township, and $10 million from Nashville-based Thomas Nelson Publishing. . . .

Fowler, 39, alleges Zondervan’s Bibles referring to homosexuality as a sin have made him an outcast from his family and contributed to physical discomfort and periods of “demoralization, chaos and bewilderment.”

The intent of the publisher was to design a religious, sacred document to reflect an individual opinion or a group’s conclusion to cause “me or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence … including murder,” Fowler wrote.

Fowler’s suit claims Zondervan’s text revisions from a 1980s version of the Bible included, and then deleted, a reference to homosexuality in 1 Corinthians without informing the public of the changes.

The other suit, against Thomas Nelson and its New King James Bible, mirrors the allegations made against Zondervan.

Boo freakin’ hoo. I’m sorry your feelings were hurt, but whatever sorrow I feel is completely erased by your choice of remedies. Complaining about the Bible being anti-gay is like complaining that a kosher cookbook doesn’t have any decent lobster recipes. Is the Bible anti-gay? Perhaps. That’s just life. Get over it.

Look, if these Bibles’ texts are accurate representations of God’s word, then you’re screwed anyway. There’s no real point in suing, because you’re going to fry in Hell for all eternity. But if they’re not accurate representations of God’s word, then at any rate they’re accurate representations of the opinions of some other people. And you have no right to sue over an opinion, even if it is a stupid and mistaken one. (And it is stupid and mistaken, on so many different levels.)

Yes, I know that various passages in the Bible have caused a lot of misery over the years, and a good deal of religious history consists of finding increasingly creative ways to get beyond the barbaric stuff in various holy books. But this isn’t the way to do it. In a society that values free speech, your only alternative is to write a better Bible. Or maybe just to grow up a little and stop whining about what other people think of you.

Same-sex couples from Wisconsin who travel to California to get married will face nine months in jail and up to ten thousand dollars in fines.

“Someone has to prosecute them… That’s a defrauding of the government,” says a supporter of the law.

Now wait a minute. Sure, the law says that they should be penalized, but on what basis? Where is the harm that would make this a just penalty? How are the taxpayers being defrauded here? Why should the government consider itself “defrauded” over the mere existence of a non-binding piece of paper?

Most folks understand that homosexually oriented people are more likely to be depressed at some point in their lives. Different sides in the culture war interpret the phenomenon differently (obviously). Gays and their allies say it’s because of societal mistreatment. The religious right and their anti-gay allies try to blame gays themselves, citing social science that shows the same higher rates of depression in modern gay friendly Scandinavian countries, places that longer than most have had gay friendly cultural environments. Hence chosen homosexual practices must cause the psychological trauma, not hostile antigay environments.

Mistreatment is relevant to “sexual orientation as a legitimate civil rights category.” Such is a traditional criteria for enhanced “civil rights” protection; we protect things like race, gender, religion, ethnic origin, etc. in large part because of a history of mistreating these various social groups. No one doubts why “race” should have such protection. But there is controversy regarding “sexual orientation.” And social conservatives often play “race” against “sexual orientation,” trying to rile up blacks to indignation about gays having the “gall” to make civil rights arguments.

While I caution the pro-gay side against trying to make too close an analogy to race, I also remind folks that we do not live in a world where race is the only recognized “civil rights” category. If it were, then perhaps gays would have no business trying to make civil rights arguments. Rather we live in a world where it’s race, gender, ethnic origin, religion, age, disability and many other categories that receive “civil rights” protection.

Yes, gays, like every other social group, haven’t suffered slavery or Jim Crow as blacks have. But, that doesn’t mean gays haven’t suffered. In one of my most widely read posts I noted:

Homosexuals historically have been subject to sodomy laws which led to imprisonment or worse, being banned from government jobs, institutionalization with a whole slew of sadistic treatments like electroshock therapy, reputation ruining, all which have led to at worst suicides like that of World War II hero Alan Turing. In short, if mistreatment is a criterion for being a civil rights victim, homosexuals easily pass that test.

I write all this as a preface to what I see as a profound example of what’s probably a typical example of human suffering related to homosexuality. It comes from an unlikely source. Ryan T. Anderson of First Things writes about a friend struggling with his homosexual orientation, yet at the same time who wants to remain “chaste,” true to the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings, perhaps one day live a normal functional heterosexual life. Anderson writes this with the opposite worldview that I argue for here and tries to score the opposite “political points” that I would. I want to ignore all that and instead focus on the human suffering, the real psychological trauma about which his friend testifies:

He came out to me in an email. I’ve known him for years, long enough that I can’t remember when we first met….Over the past three years, “Chris” (let’s call him) has experienced a pronounced attraction to other males-for one old friend from high school in particular….

Chris’ situation is sad, but it seems to be moving somewhere. He told me how he had cried daily for the first two years of his same-sex attractions, knowing that he was becoming someone he didn’t want to be.

Mind you, this isn’t, from the information we’ve received a person who has chosen to act on his homosexual orientation (also keep in mind that both Anderson and his friend are relatively young, in their early 20s). But someone who is merely struggling with an unchosen sexual orientation. Indeed, someone who is attempting to “do the right thing” according to his own religiously conservative conscience:

A crush, maybe, or an infatuation. Whatever it was, he knew it wasn’t healthy. And though he had never acted on the attraction, he explained, it led to fantasies and lusts he didn’t want. So he made a resolution never to embrace them as essential to his identity or accept them as permanent or untreatable-a resolution he has kept practically alone, without the support of community, family, or friends. Over the course of many phone calls and emails, he shared with me his reflections on what he thought had created his problem of same-sex attractions.

I don’t want to politicize this moving article too much. I just want readers to appreciate the following facts: 1) This is someone who presumably never chose to do what religious conservatives consider “immoral,” that is engage in homosexual behavior (indeed, he appears to be one such conservative); but also 2) someone whose suffering over his blameless, unchosen sexual orientation led him to CRY daily for over two years.

I think we all know what it’s like to be sad; but crying daily for two years…just stop and reflect on that. That illustrates the psychological trauma from which homosexually oriented people suffer simply because of their blameless, unchosen orientation.

Hopefully this sheds light on why younger homosexually oriented folks more likely attempt suicide. And also consider the many who may take their lives without revealing why they suffer. Indeed Anderson notes

[o]ther than his confessor and therapist, I’m the only person who knows. His parents would be devastated-his mother wondering whether she had caused it, his father fearing he had failed his son. His roommates and friends wouldn’t know how to take it.

How many young people actually do take their lives because of their unwanted, unchosen, sexual orientation? We may never know.

However we properly resolve this divisive culture war issue, just stop and realize that many people really do suffer profoundly for their unchosen, blameless sexual orientation.

There’s a very good chance that homosexuals will cease to exist, and soon. And the rest of you — You’ll cheer. Or at least you’ll breathe a little easier. You’ll be glad we’re gone.

No, it’s the truth. Parents overwhelmingly don’t want to have gay kids, and the science is getting better all the time. Eventually, there will be screenings in utero, and treatments, and it will all be a big relief to parents — never to have a kid like me. Never to have to worry.

After that, the only serious questions will be whether the treatment works on adults, too, and whether it’s ethical to force adults to take it. (And how well-armed and willing to fight the adult homosexuals may be.)

I considered these issues four years ago, when I saw that John Derbyshire had written the following:

A young woman in the late stages of pregnancy, or carrying a small infant, shows up at her doctor’s office. “Doctor,” she asks, “is there some kind of test you can do to tell me if my child is likely to become a homosexual adult?” The doctor says yes, there is. “And,” the woman continues, “suppose the test is positive — would that be something we can fix? I mean, is there some sort of medical, or genetic, or biochemical intervention we can do at this stage, to prevent that happening?” The doctor says yes, there is. “How much does the test cost? And supposing it’s positive, how much does the fix cost?” The doctor says $50, and $500. The woman takes out her checkbook.

Of course this is not happening anywhere in the U.S.A. right now. If my understanding of the state of current research is correct, however, it might very well be happening on a daily basis ten years from now.

It would also be a very miserable one for homosexuals, as they became an aging, fading cohort, with practically no younger people of their inclination to socialize with. The situation would also be self-reinforcing: As more and more parents took the test and got the fix, the loneliness facing homosexuals would become so dire that no person of conscience could think of raising a person who might become homosexual. The fix might even be applicable later in life, with adult homosexuals “converting” en masse.

In which case, there would be someone, somewhere, who was the last homosexual. What a situation! Think what a playwright or a novelist could do with it!

The legal logic is ironclad: Either parents have the right to make medical decisions for their children (an ancient and indisputable right), or else the gay community will be found to have some collective right to impose gay kids on parents who would otherwise prefer to be rid of them (a fanciful creation without any legal warrant). Want to lay bets on which way that one will turn out?

It’s a fairly good test, I think, of my own political beliefs, for there is nothing in libertarianism that forbids the extinction of homosexuals through technology. I have to let it go, hate it though I may — and I do. I think there’s something wrong, perhaps not at the level of government, but at least at the level of individual respect for human diversity, to the urge to wipe out all human differences. We will have lost something of our wonder, when this difference disappears.

Today’s young people more likely than not think that it’s brave, and kind of cool, that gays and lesbians are getting married in California, Massachusetts, and a few other places around the world. Soon, though, they may have the ability to rescue their children from homosexuality — and they will think of it as a rescue. Then another generation will grow up, who will look on gays and lesbians as being kind of like polio victims: Yes, they’re human, of course, but what a shame for them. And what a shame that we had to make such strange accommodations for them, in our laws, even. It’s a good thing no one has to suffer like that anymore.

But it’s not suffering, I’ll say to them from my grave. Will they listen?

I don’t know. I’m simply glad I won’t be the last living homosexual, and that I have already found a lifelong love, with whom I can watch the coming extinction at some degree of remove.

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of seeing the premiere of the Acton Institute’s “The Birth of Freedom,” in Washington, DC accompanied by my friend and co-blogger Jason Kuznicki and friend David Boaz.

I give it a mixed review. The production values were great. My biggest problem was with the content. And given I have very strong opinions on the subject matter, it should surprise no one that I might have issues with it.

First, in fairness, the special was only an hour and therefore time constraints prevented them from including everything they could have, everything I thought they would. I expected to respond to a different documentary. There were stronger arguments, I thought, they could have made. Continue Reading »

This post from Joshua Claybourn seems worth passing along to the gay blogosphere:

On Father’s Day Barack Obama delivered a stirring speech on fatherhood, and in particular on the need to strengthen families through more committed fathers. Here’s a brief sample:

Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation. They are teachers and coaches. They are mentors and role models. They are examples of success and the men who constantly push us toward it.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are missing - missing from too many lives and too many homes. . . And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.

In light of the numerous recent moves toward homosexual marriages, where does a lesbian couple with children fit into Obama’s worldview? Assuming fathers are as “critical” as Obama says they are to the “most important” rock in our lives, does not this hetero-centric worldview clash with those who say lesbian parents are equal to heterosexual ones?

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that this was a giant snub to lesbian moms.

On the bright side, I guess that kids with two dads are just that much better off.

I was front and center at San Francisco’s City Hall today, on a photo assignment for The Bilerico Project and IN La Magazine…

One gentleman, a supporter dressed head to toe in leather, was playing his guitar and suddenly dropped like a tree at my feet, before I could bend down to check his pulse, cops swarmed the guy and started CPR. They were very professional.

Sadly, I think he might have died. They resuscitated him for 20 minutes and he did not respond. They started an IV of 1 liter of saline and gave him O2. About 10 minutes in, he swallowed and kinda of coughed and the crowd cheered.

It was so quick. He just fell. Within minutes he was ashen and grey.

One of the Christian protesters was chanting at his body - “Satan Got You!” “What is the Devil whispering in your ear about now?”

I yelled at the guy, “If you are such a Christian, why aren’t you praying for the guy dying on the concrete?” The protester replied, “God killed him for loving fags!!” The cops even stepped in and told the guy to shut his mouth.

Why do I blog this stuff? Because otherwise my grandkids will never, ever believe it.

That’s David and Jonathan from the Bible. I think John Boswell first posited this notion. I bring this up because I noticed this claim advanced in the landmark wedding ceremony of the male priests who married in Anglican church’s first gay wedding:

Mr Dudley blessed the union with the words: “As David and Jonathan’s souls were knit together, so these men may surely perform and keep the vow and covenant betwixt them made.”

From what I know of Boswell’s work, I am not too impressed with most of his claims. As I understand his thesis in short: The Bible is a progay book and its antigay passages can be scrubbed away with proper understanding of the context. In reading what the Bible says in Leviticus and what the apostle Paul says elsewhere, I am not convinced. And neither is Wayne Dynes, the most distinguished gay historian who demurred from Boswell’s thesis.

However one area where I think Boswell gets it dead on right is the story of Sodom & Gomorrah. He leaves himself open to criticism by describing the sin of Sodom as “inhospitality,” clearly not the best word. But he was right insofar as a plain literal reading of the text indicates what these men did was try to gang rape two angels, that this was not ordinary consensual homosexuality. If “inhospitality” equates with the “inhospitality” shown to a fresh faced prison inmate who is gang raped as an initiation, then maybe that term is not improper. But that’s not what “inhospitality” means to most folks. Also keep in mind that the Bible’s text says the whole town was involved in this, and, were that so, how could the town repopulate itself if all were homosexual? Also human nature shows that only somewhere between 3-5% of any given population are going to be exclusively or predominantly homosexual. Thus, if the whole town was involved it had to be mostly “heterosexual” men. But then again, I’m starting to deal with real world facts, and if any of the tales of the Bible seem so utterly and self-evidently unreal, it’s that one.

John Corvino, not someone who wants to scrub the Bible of its antigay passages, writes a good column that pretty much parallels my point on Sodom and Gomorrah. The Bible is not pro-gay; but based on a literal, plain reading of the text, Sodom and Gomorrah by no means identifiably speaks of the kind of ordinary consensual homosexuality associated with places like San Francisco, CA. Rather it condemns the attempted brutal gang rape of strangers. And as I understand the act of homosexual prison rape, this is not at all an act that most of the time predominantly homosexual men perpetrate. Rather it’s an act of violence that most of the time heterosexual men commit.

Though I agree it is wrong to try and gang rape strangers, the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah embeds this moral message in an extremely strange and as noted above self-evidently unbelievable factual context. For more on the utter bizarreness of that biblical tale, see Dr. Corvino’s column.

If Boswell is right regarding Sodom and Gomorrah, it’s relevant in that the term “sodomite” has historically been used to tar homosexuals. If “sodomite,” properly understood, means any person — probably a heterosexual — who forcibly tries to have oral or anal sex with another person of either the same or opposite sex, then we should systematically purge such a term from our language when speaking of homosexuals. Indeed, even though “sodomy laws” as they existed on the books, could have, in theory, applied to ordinary homosexual acts, in America at least they were invariably used to prosecute non-consensual behavior.

But back to David & Jonathan, I am not convinced of their homosexual covenant. The following is the standard Protestant fundamentalist response well articulated by John MacArthur, though I almost entirely disagree with his worldview on these issues. It’s kind of entertaining to listen to him “freak out” a little over the opposing arguments. I think his straight forward reading of the Bible is correct on what the Bible actually says except when he gets to Sodom and Gomorrah where he clearly fumbles. He notes Boswell’s case that the story really isn’t about ordinary homosexuality but gang rape and can’t seem to answer it except note ordinary homosexuality is what Bible scholars have traditionally always associated with Sodom and Gomorrah.

Some of the more vociferous discussion here – by which I mean at this blog, not in my threads where I largely concern myself with talking pandas and such – surrounds what counts as marriage and what, therefore, counts as an argument for or against marriages of any sort and marriages of every sort. As always, I take a vaguely Wittgensteinian approach to these sorts of questions, which is to say several things. Continue Reading »

Jennifer Roback Morse recently published this piece offering a number of arguments against same-sex marriage. Several are old and unconvincing, but others I think are worthy of more consideration, even concern. Continue Reading »

Speaking of promising political careers, I give you 13 year old Ralph Hardy who ordered a duplicate credit card on his father’s account and used it for a $30,000 spree with friends that ended in a Texas hotel room with $1,000 hookers playing Halo on XBox.

What separates Ralph and his friends from your run-of-the-mill juvenile thieves, you ask? When the prostitutes balked because he and his friends seemed so young, the boys told the women they were “people of restricted growth” and that refusing them would be illegal discrimination against the disabled!

I am in awe.

There has been a lot of discussion about the California same-sex marriage decision, including questioning whether the state belongs in marriage at all — as well as the old canard that if gays want to marry one another, we are now legally helpless against all those who are eager to marry their pets. (And if Jews are recognized as citizens, pretty soon we’ll have to recognize toads, too!)

Along the way there was also this comment, which strikes me as one of the stronger arguments against same-sex marriage:

It is wrong to equilibrate a generative relationship that provides children both a mother and a father with a NON generative (by design) relationship that provides a mother and guardian or a father and a guardian.

Children are the only reason for marriage, thus gays should not have access to the institution. I thought I’d repost this in reply, since it says everything I think needs to be said about all of these arguments: Marriage is unique to adult human beings, and cannot apply to animals. It is ideally a partnership of two. It is not, however, contingent on the possibility of children. And yes, the government does have a role to play. Here’s why…

Continue Reading »

You can always count on WorldNetDaily to express such an unreal understanding on homosexuality. WND produces two articles about an antigay administrator at the University of Toledo who was suspended for writing an antigay column. Time permits me to discuss only a few points.

First, whatever the legal or constitutional issues involved (whether this is a private school not bound by the First Amendment or a state school that is), it was lame to punish this woman for writing the column. There is plenty wrong with what this woman wrote; and the best way to counter that is to criticize her with more speech, exactly what I’m doing.

Here is one of the offending paragraphs, illustrating her poor argumentation:

“As a black woman who happens to be an alumnus of the University of Toledo’s Graduate School, an employee and business owner, I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are ‘civil rights victims.’ Here’s why. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman. I am genetically and biologically a black woman and very pleased to be so as my Creator intended. Daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle evidenced by the growing population of PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex Gays) and Exodus International just to name a few.

Continue Reading »

This guy is turning out to be almost as bad as Paul Cameron. For those who don’t know, he is a “Concerned Woman For America” who used to work in the insurance industry until he got fired for writing antigay columns on his own time, off work, which although the decision to fire him was perfectly legal, it was also, in my opinion, a lame thing for his bosses to do.

He now works as a professional antigay activist at Concerned Women For America.

Ed Brayton has the goods on one antigay article from WorldNetDaily which quotes Barber. The article is entitled Lesbian demands control over Christian’s daughter, which should tell you all you need to know about it. Now Barber pens his own article for WND entitled Surgeon General’s Warning: Gay sex kills where he goes off the deep end. He thinks he’s informing WorldNetDaily readers of “Just the facts, Ma’am” and proclaims “[i]t’s time to shatter the silence with truth.” Well, he should know that informed readers like yours truly, Ed Brayton and others read WorldNetDaily and expose the lies and distortions that alas are often contained therein. The following is Barber’s lie: Continue Reading »