Over the past few days we have had some discussion on this weblog about the marriage of individuals of the same sex from different vantage points. As an empirical matter I think Andrew Stuttaford is correct to predict that this is one argument that the social conservatives are going to lose in our time. I also lean in Andrew’s direction when it comes to accepting this change. This is not to say that I think that homosexual marriage is wrong and I am accepting it as a point of pure pragmatism. In fact, there are all sorts of things which I find inevitable, from my own death proximately, to the futility of baryonic based life ultimately, that I am not positively inclined toward & wish to postpone as long as possible. This is why I understand why social conservatives may oppose this change, even if they also agree that it is an inevitable development, for they oppose it as a matter of principle and not pragmatic utility, and postponing what they consider to be wrong is naturally a mitzvah in their eyes.
But a dispositional conservatism serves more than a periodoc brake upon the inevitable march of history toward its final Utopian state. In fact the empirical record shows some cyclical dynamics in human morals and values. After all, Western liberal democracy is a throwback in many ways to the individualism of the hunter-gatherer phase of human history. I believe that the institutions and norms of communitarian “traditional” cultures were in fact ad hoc kluges which attempted to reconcile our “caveman psychology” with post-Neolithic mass society. Conservative and liberal dispositions seem to be partly hardwired; as humans we place ourselves along the spectrum. It is not simply a matter of conservatives always being a few generations behind liberals along the inevitable secular ascent up toward earthly paradise. Rather it seems possible these different political tribes are like two cylinders which serve as the motive force behind a winding and unpredictable journey.
“Western liberal democracy is a throwback in many ways to the individualism of the hunter-gatherer phase of human history.”
What? this is a bunch of hooha. If ever “it took a village”, certainly it was during the hunter-gatherer phase of human history.
It sounds like you’ve read Clan of the Cave Bear too many times.
David Hume frequently makes us think more than we usually do. His superior knowledge of genetics plus his eclectic reading of history allows for greater insight than many of us seem to possess. That he sees a utopian final state is something, however, that invites incredulity because mankind (humankind for the under-thirties) is almost instinctively following the general path discussed by Robert D. Kaplan in his superb book called Anarchy.If Kaplan’s wisdom describes our future course, then liberal utopia will require untold destruction and suffering. Furthermore, its victory, which is very doubtful, would require totalitarian governance similar to that emerging ever so subtly in the EU.
Gays and their defenders who claim to be conservative and secular surely must lack the capacity to think critically and see the defects in Political Correctness and moral relativism. Of course gays are smart enough to see the great benefits of liberal attacks that continue to deride and degrade Christian values that have served as our moral foundation for two centuries.However, Christians are right that the two forms of sexuality are not the same and only one is “normal.” As a secularist I use science as my foundation for such distinctions rather than the Bible, but my experiences with gays as a young man were negative enough to tell me that the sex drive can be distorted severely, influencing the personality of the person often profoundly.In general gays behave in unique ways that are usually obvious to a neutral observor. Non-judgmentalism may be the supreme value pushed by liberalism but it crushes and distorts reality and permits only “living by the lie” that would be unnecessary if we had real freedom of speech and association.Our debate over the gay marriage issue may soon be restricted by “hate crime” laws as in the UK where James D. Watson was crucified. Distinctions are indeed the essence of the scientific method and reflect the fact that nature itslf is built upon differences of many kinds. While science seeks to find laws based upon unity, it must measure and describe a myriad of differences.Human differences, with the possible exception of medically-inclined ones, may soon be out-of-bounds under an Obama administration with socialist values.Liberals hate distinctions that oppose their egalitarian agenda, a misguided belief that is aimed at a kindly version of the Soviet State.
Gays have much greater acceptance because the same young who voted emotionally for Obama have not the will or interest in looking at the moral and biological aspects of the issue.Raised on the Mother’s Milk of multiculturalism, they lack the capacity to discriminate constructively when differences really matter. Their naivete and ignorance is breathtaking.Universities today brainwash millions into states of mind akin to liberal tolerance of all differences. Alas, the world cannot progress unless great minds take the lead and brilliant kids are separated out and cultivated by demanding educational systems.Successful societies rise or fall depending upon their capacity to generate wealth and freedom while safeguarding valuable human differences.
Gay marriage, even if universal, will not change the reality of its deviance from normalcy. This is no crime whatsoever but merely states the aggressive politicizing of a biological abnormality. All kinds of handicapped people push for “rights” they once lacked, but deviance from normal states and conditions are not improved by refusing to acknowledge them. While the will to improve or succeed is admirable, it is still better to acknowledge the facts of the real world.
A Brave New World where late term fetuses are routinely destroyed, where all forms of what once were perversions are openly celebrated, where blacks are “inserted” into AP classes to create equality, and where a slip of the tongue can land you in jail is surely a bleak world with no future. If the massive slide from equality of opportunity to equality of outcomes steamrolls our meritocracy, we then represent one of the main tributaries flowing toward Hume’s utopia. Old conservatives like me may be acting out of a genetic predisposition, but this debate over the future of our declining society and world is too serious to avoid.
Cornelius J. Troost–is that your real name?–I wasn’t aware that an obsession to enforce “normalcy” on society was conservative. I thought you guys believed in a little something called freedom.
I’m in favor of norms only to the degree that 1) they act as gentle guidelines rather than straitjackets and 2) there’s some useful purpose to their existence.
What good is it to maintain an arbitrary norm? Deviation away from such a norm harms nothing and no one, and I fail to see why we should devote energy and effort into encourage people to behave in a certain way for no good reason.
Even the idiotic and counterproductive rules for English spelling at least make it possible to communicate intelligibly by reinforcing the consensus about how words should be represented – i.e., they have a function.
If you think a norm should be preserved, convince people of that. Acknowledge their freedom to behave as they will and try to change their minds by presenting arguments.
That he sees a utopian final state is something, however, that invites incredulity because mankind
christ, don’t be so literal. and read my final sentence. in short, no, i don’t believe in an end of history. perhaps i should stop making implicit references in my posts, but one competency i assume in others is that sometimes you refer to the mental state and viewpoints of other human beings without sharing those viewpoints yourself.
Civilization is defined by laws and norms of behavior. Initially hierarchical societies of early civilizations used political power to “tame” or domesticate people from their hunter-gatherer wildness.Such control was a necessary condition for the gradual development of various institutions. In The 10,000 Year Explosion there is a good description of this process.We have indeed domesticated ourselves but by no means uniformly.
All societies struggle with the problem of order. Remember Rome? All more advanced societies developed a public morality based essentially upon religion and the rule of law enforced on a regular basis. The Sixties revolution struck down our faith in public morality and civility while encouraging individualism that was often radical. Cynical narcissists make very bad citizens. The decline we see everywhere around us is an almost inevitable consequence of the loss of authority and respect for institutions we once held very dear. Vietnam and civil rights for blacks were exploited by Marxists and a whole range of well-meaning Americans called Baby-Boomers. Confused by the loss of America’s moral guideposts, they raised a new generation of cynical, unpatriotic miscreants whose multicultural and social justice instincts now helped elect a socialist named Obama, a hollow egotist with little or no love of country.
Arbitrary norms? We are glorified apes who quickly degenerate without parents with high standards and schools that reinforce higher values. Tattoos and sexual promiscuity are marks of degeneracy that cannot stop because all social institutions are much weaker and we depend almost entirely on the police for protection. Irresponsible behavior is common as more “freedom” is demanded by zombies interested in entertaining themselves to death.Muslims are right about the forms of evil they see before them, but their solutions could be formidably indigestible.
Our schools seethe with problems as a new generation of perfect children demand their rights and ignore responsibilities. Discipline is passe as teachers battle to sustain a modicum of order amidst chaos. Catholic schools, the last frontier of order and discipline may soon become extinct in a wasteland of redistributed wealth, universal gambling, public pornography, and porcine incivility. Welcome to a normless America where all the unequals were crushed into the noisy squalor of faux equality.Lord of the Flies, anyone?
uh, where is this decline and degeneration that “we see everywhere around us”? Unless you’re referring to the world economic crisis. But i’m pretty sure you got something else in mind, considering that meltdown has nothing to do with a loss of respect for institutional authority–kind of the opposite, really.
As far as I can tell your main complaint seems to be that young people have sex. My response to you is, yes, and so the fuck what? It might be more helpful to your case if you actually cite some statistics or data showing a decline in the moral values among the young. But of course you can’t because by the statistics we’re doing just fine. Better than your generation in fact.
What’s wrong with cynicism?
While this website has attracted a variety of interesting people who apparently call themselves”conservative,” it strikes me that some are crude and profane while others are civilized and respectful. I must wonder if an age gap exists? Decline and degeneration are hardly to be acknowledged by the very people “doing it.” While you might worry enough to avoid high crime ghetto areas, you also enjoy vulgar entertainment, high quantities of beer at ball games, and would never deign to censure any sexual conduct between consenting adults. This means you have been brainwashed into liberal values emerging from the Sixties.How on earth are you a conservative?
Heather MacDonald’s work has tapped into some of our degeneracy, and the Government’s Dept. of Justice crime stats speak for themselves. We are doing far more crime than in 1950. Much more.But in my era NO SCHOOL had security guards and surveillance cameras!! People in general were much more subdued and humble because they respected authority and parents and teachers wielded that authority very emphatically. Sports teams-even the NFL- did not need huge security appendages and armies of legal counsellors. Bad behavior is now the norm! School shootings did not exist and children failed very often in school due to a basic belief in merit. Sound strange??
I don’t have time now to provide you with data you can find for yourself. However, only older folks like me haved actually lived through these eventful years since the mid-twentieth century and can recall the great contrast between then and now. You who doubt the real decline must protect your egos at any cost, including the truth. What would you do if you determined that Iam right? Hang yourself? I suspect that you will find a way to rationalize it.
Ironically, as ugly as is our descent, that of the UK is even worse.Recall that a few years ago British police did not even carry guns!All Brits I have known were immensely proud of the vast cultural achievements of England and British good manners and good grammar were among their best assets. In the Spring, 2009, edition of City Journal is a scathing article by Claire Berlinski called The Dark Side of British Crime. Britain has descended into a dungeon of depravity based upon the great shift in political beliefs and values toward the Left. Wealth and child-rearing anomalies all contribute to that decline. Bradlaugh might have thoughts on this issue.Sadly, the decline I have witnessed and the one Berlinski discusses are deep manifestations of two societies in grave trouble as the old Christian foundation of morality crumbles and social institutions quake under a hedonist mud wrestling we once called civilization.
If society needs a strong foundation to replace Christianity and assorted ideologies of the past, what should it be replaced with?
Why is a rejection of homosexuality and same sex marriage a desirable part of the needed foundation?
Pingback: The Caveman Roots of Liberal Democracy
No body is rejecting homosexuality. Do we reject spina bifida? It is a biological abnormality that was a mere inconvenience for most societies in the past.My own 12 or so clashes with predatory gays may well have been a function of the Fifites, when gays felt repressed and had difficulty finding suitable prey. Today they can readily congregate and celebrate their condition any way they wish. Finding partners should be much easier in an “open society.”
Humanists are hard at work tring to fabricate moral principles that will replace Christian ones. If using humanistic psychology to inform criminal justice principles and laws wins out, we face a brave new world of depravity and injustice that for most of us is intolerable. Liberalism at its extreme could never succeed because limitless tolerance may work to the benefit of absolutist cults. Muslems may have a huge advantage in a society too liberal to defend itself and unsure re what to defend! Again, read the City Journal article on Britaish crime to taste the fruits of degenerate liberalism. Could that be our future?
I’m reminded of society’s attitudes towards left-handed people more than fifty years ago, when children were punished for writing with their left hand and were looked down upon as defective and wrong.
Although left-handedness is statistically associated with various neurological and developmental problems (as trouble with a developing fetus seems capable of interfering with the process by which we become handed), the vast majority of left-handers are perfectly healthy and normal people, and as a group they’re not grossly different from right-handed people.
Face it, Troost: your positions about homosexuality are as outmoded as the stigma attached to being a lefty is in the modern world.
You are right to assume a similarity between gayness and handedness. Both are based upon poorly understood genetic mechanisms that may involve developmental factors. Handedness, however, has no moral consequences and little effect upon society while gayness often involves predatory attacks on young people, including children.Only liberalism could create the illusion of normalcy that feeds the frenzy for recognition or legitimacy. Pride is a good word for this misguided crusade.Liberalism is wrong about equality but powerful enough in its distinction erasure to win a pyrrhic victory over those who managed to retain a moral sense. If all 50 states sanction gay marriage the sordid dalliances and predatory behavior may well still flourish.
The accusation of pedophilia is the gay version of the blood libel for Jews.. and yes I do mean to compare you with an anti-Semite
Pingback: Notes From Bradlaugh « Around The Sphere
For Danilo
All gays are not pedophiles but the gay man I knew very well as a friend had in his wallet dozens of pictures of boys ages 9-15.He talked about them with reverance. He dreamed of meetings with them. Please don’t tell me that the attacks against me as an adolescent stopped after age 25 by chance!Many gays do indeed prefer youngsters but certainly not all.
Iam not an anti-Semite in any sense, pure and simple.Being Jewish and being gay are entirely different biological states.Jews, unless gay, are heterosexual. Surely you believe that heterosexuality is the normal biological expression of the evolutionary drive toward procreation? Humans have literally thousands of disorders and diseases, including many directly affecting genetic expression.Why can’t you live with the idea that you got dealt a slightly different hand than most and adapt accordingly. There is no “sin” involved and certainly no crime-unless young victims are involved.
OK, so you say you met a pedophile, I wouldn’t call him “gay” if he is into children rather than men. A pedophile is someone who molests children, usually because he has been abused as a child and is repeating a cycle of violence. Someone like that isn’t attracted to a person, he’s acting out a psychological disorder. They often go after children of both sexes. It has nothing to do with being gay or straight. The vast majority of pedophiles are (otherwise) heterosexual men. Heterosexual men are FAR more likely to become pedophiles, molestors or rapists than gay men are, even taking into account the difference in population. Very occasionally we do read about a “gay” doing that but usually every day in the newspaper we read about straight men doing far worse. Joseph Fritzl anyone? So any assertion that gays are somehow more likely to be predatory is ridiculous and a libel that has been propogated for political reasons. I am saying that the pedophile accusation is just like the blood accusation for Jews
That’s not what people used to think!
‘Morality’ is just societal convention about right and wrong. It has no objective significance. Homosexuality has just as many ‘moral’ consequences as we decide it does.
Do you have any reasons for why we should care about homosexuality that precede construction of moral assertions, rather than prior to them?
Another question:
Did it never occur to you that you would be unlikely to ever see evidence of homosexuals acting just like normal heterosexuals as you were growing up, and that the only gays you were likely to come into contact with were those that were fixated on soliciting and attacking teenage boys such as yourself, in the same way that a young girl would only be propositioned by heterosexual adults that were pedophiles?
Did it never strike you that your association of pedophilia and homosexuality might be spurious and based only an unrepresentative subset?
Really Troost, try applying some critical thinking.
After age 25 I was never again propositioned by gays. Does that tell you something? I haven’t checked the statistics on pedophilia but the Catholic Church finally paid quite a few “boys” for the damage done to them by priests. Surely you are right re straight men being more often pedophilic, but I would like to see criminal data on the percentage of gays. It might surprise you. Perhaps years ago boys were perceived as easier prey by gays.To say that the categories are mutually exclusive and my gay friend was only a pedophile is patently wrong and an indictment of your reasoning ability.This gay man only liked boys and despite his unusual Italian good looks, he told me how revolted he felt even thinking about women sexually. Yes, my subset may well be unrepresentative, but you gentlemen are in supreme denial if you think that Catholic priests who exploited male children only were really only pedophiles. Something there is about youth that may well turn on many gays. I did not say all or even most.
It doesn’t matter. Someone who wants to have sex with pre-pubescent children is a pedophile. It’s a crime, it’s wrong. And yes, it is mutually exclusive with being gay or straight. If you are gay or straight you want to have consensual sex or a consensual romantic relationship with another person who is capable of consenting. The difference is super clear.
It’s ridiculous to say that gay men are more into younger guys. Many gays only want older guys. I’m 28, I still get hit on by gays all the time (or I would if I still went out), and I really prefer guys in their 30s. Most gay people want someone not more than 5 or 10 years apart in age. You are imagining a tendency that does not exist.
Your story sounds fake, too. Gays are usually not revolted by women, they are just interested.
just not interested, I meant to write
Danilo,
You are wrong on all counts but other readers can decide for themselves. I care not to belabor the issue to try to convince you of facts you oppose so strongly.Blacks don’t accept IQ data but it is a waste of time to try to argue with them. Parties to an argument or discussion do need some degree of respect and a willingness to let logic and evidence lead wherever it may.Pedophiles have a complex psychological problem which may have various forms, but I know for a fact that some gays are also pedophiles.By that I mean they have a preoccupation with youth of ages as low as 10 or 11.This conduct is extreme enough to warrant concern by a society that probably is far more worried about the pedophilia than the gay aspect. It would be interesting to search for research reports that try to disentangle these two conditions when they are conjoined.It is possible that the attacks on me were functions of the “slim pickings” of my era, when gays were genuinely ostracized.However, what is striking about all the attacks was the brazen nature of them.In nearly all cases the perp stood to lose friends and look terible. There is a gene for risky behavior but I refuse to tackle that issue now!
@Cornelius J. Troost “Parties to an argument or discussion do need some degree of respect and a willingness to let logic and evidence lead wherever it may.”
Logic and evidence! I invite you to re-read your own contributions to this thread. What a shambolic mess of unsubstantiated and angry opinion, underwritten it would seem by some past personal unpleasantness, and basted in a genetic determinism that would be staunchly rejected by the vast majority of working biologists.
I am not going to attempt to reply to the specifics because quite frankly I am at a loss to know what to say about non sequitars such as “Jews, unless gay, are heterosexual” or outright nonsense like “Britain has descended into a dungeon of depravity” (been to the UK lately?). And in the end it is still unclear what objection you have to marriage equality.
I hope he’s wrong, because I will be crushed if my days of being attractive to gays are over so soon 😉
That you probably lived in a time when most gays hid as far back in the closet as they could get, and the only ones you noticed were those that were driven out obscurity by their specific compulsions.
JohnC, Danilo, and Caledonian:
All of you who are assiduously defending gay marriage have deaf ear to any arguments that offend you emotionally. We are on the verge of genetic findings that will add a tone of determinism to your case and some of you seem to detest this outcome. Interesting.Alas, you know so little genetics that you are hung up on the “threat” of determinism.
Yes, my experiences are personal and certainly unscientific in the usual sense of being potentially unrepresentative, but my experiences were spread out over several states, involved gays of ages ranging from about 20-45, and NEVER was consensuality an element. BRUTE FORCE was the common denominator. At Bowdoin College one summer I attended an NSF Institute in which one of 40 particpants was black. The first chance he had to attack he entered my room, locked my door, and physically assaulted me. I knocked him across the room with one hard punch and he expressed great disappointment that I did not appreciate his advances.He left and I never again had a problem; however, I aggonized again over the issue of reporting this assault. I decided against it because of the sensational aspect of it in those days.
My Italian gay friend gave me unique insights into the life of gays back then. He pulled out a credit card that was utterly shocking. The owner was the president of a Catholic seminary in Pa. and my friend had exclusive use of it at the plushest hotel in N.Y.C. All he had to do was show up on Fri. night to spend the weekend with the priest!This is the same guy with photos of boys in his wallet. He had attended the seminary and told me of rapes and other messy encounters that you guys deny the existence of today. Maybe times have changed under liberalism so much that your conservatism should be questioned.My friend was indeed confused and rambled on about the dangers of that terrible seminary and his escape. Yet he happily used that credit card to his advantage and enjoyed exploiting the old man. Interesting folkways!
The accusation of pedophilia is the gay version of the blood libel for Jews.. and yes I do mean to compare you with an anti-Semite
**** This is both wrong and malicious. Wrong if being gay does not exclude being a pedophile and malicious because Iam in fact not an anti-Semite. That I made an error in structuring my response does not diminish my main argument that gay marriage will diminish traditional marriage at a time when all institutions are under siege from liberal dogma and opportunism. As conservatives surely you sense the sweeping changes that degrade our sociey or are you so hung up on the marriage issue that you buy into liberal lies and fallacies?
Since genetic explanations are coming soon , it may be wise to think about the repercussions. At least you will have scientific evidence against any who may wish to convert you to heterosexuality, but you should read Hume’s small piece on human nature at Takimag.com first, followed by a book called The Agile Gene by M. Ridley. My own book might burn your hands so I will refrain from recommending it. Determinism ain’t so bad, after all.
@Cornelius J. Troost Consider it possible that your burning certainty that “genetic explanations” are coming soon might not be entirely in accord with the spirit of skeptical inquiry that is supposed to lie at the heart of the scientific enterprise. Your website links to a review of your book by Razib (aka David Hume), which rather gently notes:
And how any of this, or your personal experiences of half a century ago, support the bald assertion that “gay marriage will diminish traditional marriage at a time when all institutions are under siege from liberal dogma and opportunism” is unclear, to say the least.
@Cornelius J. Troost
“We are on the verge of genetic findings that will add a tone of determinism to your case and some of you seem to detest this outcome.”
A strange claim to say the least, since the overwhelming consensus among biologists repudiates the concept of genetic determinism. (I mean really, it’s often taught on the first day of an introductory genetics course). I haven’t read, or even heard of, The Agile Gene before, but a quick skim of online reviews, and indeed, even the title, indicates a clear repudiation of determinism as well. As does Razib’s article at Takimag.com:
“Just as the flow of a river is guided by the topography of the valley, so the expression of our human nature is contingent upon the environmental input of human society. Humans are not born, they are raised. Our genetic endowments are the necessary principal, but environmental richness serves as the compounding dynamic which allows us to grow our investment and fulfill our potential.”
I mean really, if you’re going to cite sources to defend your position, make sure those sources actually defend your position.
@Cornelius J. Troost Might I submit that what lies at the heart of your opposition to gay marriage is a rather … ahem … antique notion (for a scientist) that homosexuality is “a deviance from normalcy” — a view that the American Psychological Association finally abandoned in 1974, two decade after you earned your biology degree. The world has moved on; perhaps you should too.
Dr Troost,
Sure there are men who will try to assault other men, usually smaller younger ones, – either as a sexual outlet (if we think of prison sexuality or colleges or barracks or other situations where men don’t have access to women, such assaults are indeed common) or as a form of humiliation or dominance (sexual abuse of males by enemy soldiers during war for example). And they do count on shame and scandal as ways to keep the victim from speaking out filing charges against them. I also once had to fight off a “brute force” experience when I was visiting a “friend” in Morocco – so I understand how a horrible experience can shape your view. I honestly have the impression that many Arab men have few qualms about forcing people to have sex. I think many such men are mostly heterosexual but take advantage of young males in the absence of women. Maybe 1950s America was a little like that? But I would not call these men homosexual or gay in the sense of gay marriage – it’s a separate phenomenon.
With the Jewish thing, I wasn’t accusing you of being anti-Semitic, I was making an analogy between the two cases. There are people who say “all gays are prone to pedophilia” which I think is a politically based libel that is sociologically similar to claims like “Jews drink the blood of Christian children” or “all blacks like to rape white women”
I admire your collective persistance in trying to refute and belittle my position. You are right re my old fashioned interpretation of events that have at least the virtue of showing you how people once defended morality in an era of far stronger Christianity.I was an atheist oddball who always admired the moral power of Christianity even as I found science a better guide to truth than metaphysics.
I detect several serious errors in your claims:(1) Morals are NOT something we freely invent.Certainly you can attack the theological underpinnings of morality but that is not a carte blanche solution: or, if it is, we will soon confront total moral anarchy.Instead, humanists depend upon the evolutionary basis of human mind to locate moral tendencies. Reading Marc Hauser’s Moral Minds will help you understand this perspective.For me, however, tendencies, while probably correct in terms of genetics, would leave humankind in a hunter-gatherer psychology in a world of hatred and nuclear arms. It has a poor prospect. Christianity as a moral force-abused as it is- must be protected and promulgated.This is far better than liberal extremism bound to hunter-gatherer psychology. In any case Morality has a weak but distinctive biological foundation.
Is gayness genetic? Please do not count on it being a matter of free “choice.” Determinism is a basic principle of all science, as I discuss in my book. Furthermore, I argue for free will not because it is uncaused but because it seems to emerge from genetic cognitive capacities interacting with environmental factors.Example: malnutrition can profoundly alter one’s mental quickness and abilities.Alcohol or hash can do likewise.While the amount of interaction varies with particular traits, it can be substantial in complex decision-making.While technically we are likely unfree due to complex causality, it is nonetheless true that we “act” in a way that produces effects that make us feel free. It is exactly what Drew Peterson may soon miss when he enters prison.While some forms of meditation provide feelings of power despite no external effects, I am Western enough to prefer the Karouac freedom of the road approach.Anyway, the feeling of freedom is an important part of our mental health.
Science depends upon generalizations. Some may be partly right but still useful. Liberals hate generalizations when they refute their pet beliefs. Example: blacks are more violent than whites or blacks commit rape of whites far more than vice-versa. Hispanics have more illegitimate births to teen mothers than do blacks. This happens to be true although both groups have a serious problem. All gays are not prone to pedophilia but surely there are some in an era where maturation of males and females is problematic and many thirty somethings still depend upon parents for support. I see many 18 year olds who are indistinguishable from 30 year olds. Public behavior seems to reflect greatly inhibited maturation.Culture-induced neoteny!
Danilo is right re the resorting to perversions in prison. In a society obsessed with “choice” and ruled more by liberal values, many will distort the basic sexual drive and experiment with configurations that are entirely selfish if not egomaniacal. Shame, self-sacrifice, modesty, and respect are weak or non-existant in such a brave new world.That’s why I see no solution other than Christianity, even if secularized somewhat. Gays, being likely a product of chromosomal or genetic abberation, are, when they are seeking other adults of like-mind and not children, an otherwise normal part of society but for a few affectations and possible bias where they dominate an occupational niche.
* If you are counting on no genetic influence you are soon to be disappointed.
Rock on Troost!! Keep up the great work.
PS – I’m partway through your book, and it’s been a great find. 🙂
Dr. Troost, I’m curious, what do you think of the work of Daniel Dennett, esp. Elbow Room which I read recently?
Thanks A-Bax, because our present political order stifles genuine dissent that challenges PC.Danilo, please check my videos under DARWIN CENSORED at youtube for a brief reference to Dennett.I haven’t yet read Elbow Room.
I very innocently ordered THE HISTORY BOYS and was reminded of our heated discussion.This film certainly reflects the far greater openness of our society today, but I found the egalitarian camaraderie surreal.This is both playful and implausible compared to my genuinely upsetting and even terrorizing experiences. Very good film in many respects even if unrealistic.The best gay film for me is De-Lovely, the bio of Cole Porter. Kevin Klein is superb in this role and it reflects accurat
ely the pressures on gays to “fit in.” Compare it with the flagrantly open The Hiistory Boys for a huge change in society.
Twin studies show a gay concordance of 76% and at least one gene is highly suspicious.It won’t be long now. Stay tuned.