First off, both terms have clearly been altered.
“Homophobia” in a traditional sense would be “fear of the same”, and has been altered to mean “homosexualphobia”, which would be a fear of homosexuals. There is ZERO evidence that Christians (and others) are actually afraid of homosexuals. What they believe is that, in their reading of the Bible, homosexuality is wrong, and to be good Christians they must condemn the sin and love the person.
Now, the main response on the part of the Left is simply to assert that they are wrong. That the Bible can’t say that, and if it does, then their religion is wrong. One can readily see close readings of Leviticus in public court, with State lawyers striking out everything they don’ t like. This is anti-Liberal, even if I agree on the overall theological point (that God doesn’t care what we do with our privates, as long as there is actual love.)
This response reminds me of Hoffer’s observation that freedom is often what you are free NOT to do, in this case bake a cake or perform a wedding for people whose lifestyles you believe you must condemn. I readily grant Jews the right not to bake Nazi cakes, and gays not to bake Christian cakes. I grant Muslims the right not to cook foods with pork in it, but not to deny others that right. The principle of equality remains the principle of equality, with the “more equal than you” principle being that of tyranny.
What the “aha” was that hit me though this morning is that what Scott Page called both Groupthink and “Dominant Logic” is both a method of tyranny, and a more or less systematic method for generating large errors of perception. What is the error?
Simple: gayness is often the result of psychopathology, and only so-called homophobes remain willing to admit this or even consider it. Take so-called “transgenderism”: the likelihood is that Bruce Jenner endured some major emotional insults/traumas at some point in his life, causing or largely contributing to his sexual confusion.
Here is a career psychiatrist from a very respectable major university:
Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder. . .
He also reported on a new study showing that the suicide rate among transgendered people who had reassignment surgery is 20 times higher than the suicide rate among non-transgender people. Dr. McHugh further noted studies from Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic of children who had expressed transgender feelings but for whom, over time, 70%-80% “spontaneously lost those feelings.”
“This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken – it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.”
The transgendered person’s disorder, said Dr. McHugh, is in the person’s “assumption” that they are different than the physical reality of their body, their maleness or femaleness, as assigned by nature. It is a disorder similar to a “dangerously thin” person suffering anorexia who looks in the mirror and thinks they are “overweight,” said McHugh.
It is a commonplace that the elite in most fields are dealing with or have dealt with demons. Greg LeMond was sexually molested. Lance Armstrong had a lot of issues in his early life. There is no reason not to assume the same of Bruce Jenner.
This is my point: the Groupthink with regard to transgenderism, and gayness, and race, make it impossible to perform the sorts of judgments which alone render it possible to improve their situations.
I have dealt with gayness several times. I do think some people are born that way, but I also think most people are made that way, typically by a sexual trauma of some sort–which may not be perceived that way, admittedly–before age 14 or so. This trauma affects–at least theoretically–both their sexuality and their overall emotional well-being.
Remember Rupert Everett, who committed career suicide three years ago?
The actor best known for “Shakespeare in Love” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding” told Britain’sSunday Times Magazine that his mother has met his boyfriend but “still wishes I had a wife and kids.
She thinks children need a father and a mother and I agree with her,” he said. “I can’t think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads.
For my part, I think of the movie “Bird Cage”, as I’ve mentioned at least once and likely multiple times. I started watching that movie with my youngest daughter–who is quite tolerant of gay people, and has a couple in her circle of good friends, and who condemns me routinely for the faintest whiff of anti-gay sentiment– and she couldn’t make it through the first ten minutes. Seeing Nathan Lane dressed up like that just completely messed with her mind. Our instinct–our immediate, untrained instinct, unmediated by social indoctrination and/or getting used to that thing through exposure–is revulsion and confusion.
It may be that we should not privilege fully our instincts, but must we also ignore them fully as well? Much of the comedy in that movie–which I once found profoundly funny, but have a hard time watching now–comes precisely from the fact that everyone in that home is nuts. And it does not improve things that Hackman is a and judgmental cynical hypocrite.
Can we not wonder how Val is as sane as he is–while inferring some major covert neuroses–while granting to him the emotional need to get married young to confirm for himself his own heterosexuality? Can we not grant that denying him a two sex home has likely left significant psychological scars that are not papered over in reality by their political correctness?
And race. Who says that you can starve a black man by hiding his welfare card under his work boots? Racists. People who truly believe that black people in this society are inferior.
But, then, who challenges black people? Who does in fact judge them and tell them, socially, when they are fucking up?
Let’s make this a social situation. Let us say that I get drunk one night and show up hazy for work, as I’ve done many times. What got me into work at all was the fear I would lose my job. And even short of that, a fear being called unprofessional, undisciplined, or in general a fuck up. I have my dignity. I may come in not fully ready for work, but I come in, even if I only slept 2 hours.
Let us say that no matter what I do or say, my job is never threatened, that nobody will ever condemn me or even say anything, and that I can do whatever I like as long as I like, and instead of having to be judged, I MYSELF can judge anyone who judges me? Is this system of incentives–and life is a complex system, and all complex systems depend on incentives–going to bring out the best in me? Fuck no: it will bring out the WORST in me.
And this is PRECISELY what has happened. Black people in this country have been subjected not only to all sorts of perverse economic incentives which have served to further break apart families, but even worse to SOCIAL incentives of a sort which were INTENDED to build them up psychologically, but which in fact have served to support and rationalize all of their own worst impulses, impulses which exist in all of us, but which are largely fed only in them, in this country. Everyone else has to measure up to the standards of hard work, education, consistency, and social responsibility.
Helping people consists BOTH in empathy AND in challenge. If I accept a mediocre you as the best you, then I am failing you.
And by focusing on eliminating perceptual and verbal diversity, Leftists hurt the very people they claim to want to help. Our nation has thrived in large measure precisely because it has fostered ACTUAL diversity of belief and practice, and universal conformity can only mean stupidity and violence of a sort we have never, yet, seen.