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fpbThe Victorians were very frank and open in their discussion of sex. It was quite a passion of theirs, and the terms in which and by which we discuss it ourselves have not changed from their time. The idea of "free love" is Victorian; the defence of homosexuality, late-Victorian. By 1900, Germany had an organized homosexual movement based in Berlin. (People do not remember it much, because it ended up being a part of the German extreme right and one of the component parts of Nazism.) Freud and Havelock Ellis were typical late Victorians, and they inherited a tradition of intellectual debate of sex that went back to the late seventeen hundreds and such figures as Lord Hamilton (the husband of Emma, Nelson's lover), who wrote earnestly scholarly treatises on sexual matters. To think otherwise makes it impossible to understand such a writer as George Eliot, or such works of art as Tristram und Isolde and Dejeuner sur l'herbe. It makes it impossible to understand why, seventeen years after the death of Queen Victoria, Lenin should include in his revolutionary program a commitment to destroy the family, liberalize sex, and legalize abortion and homosexuality. All these things were in the air, in the intellectual climate and thought.
The reason why we are under the impression that the opposite is true is that the Victorians generally recognized an obligation not to involve the young in this discussion. There was a general sense - which some wit called "the tyranny of the Young Person" - that under-age people, especially girls, should not be exposed too early to explicit treatment of sex; and therefore, every novelist and every publisher felt under the burden not to put anything in a novel that might corrupt the crowds of fifteen-year-old girls who devoured them. (A memorable image of teen-age enthusiasm for novels can be found in Louisa May Alcott's virtually autobiographical LITTLE WOMEN, where the four sisters form a club in imitation of the Pickwick Circle and elaborately assume the roles of Dickens' characters. Such things were all the rage.) The discussion of sex, however frank, was restricted to adults; among other devices, by a simple and ingenious means - sexually-related passages in classics or specialist works were written in Latin, a language which every educated adult knew, but which few teen-agers could be expected to possess to the required precision. Clearly, this was not a device that intended to seriously exclude anyone from the debate, at a time when not only educated women, but almost any self-educated working class person could be expected to learn Latin. It is found even in Pandit Ganguli's Victorian English translation of the Indian epic Mahabharata.
We are now in virtually the opposite position. Adolescents, whose "hormones" are usually said to be not only uncontrollable but positively not to be controlled, are showered with explicit sex. The excuse is to avoid them making foolish mistakes out of ignorance, but considering that the rate of adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases is growing across the board and in every Western country, this hardly seems to add up. Adults, on the other hand, are increasingly discouraged from debating an ever-increasing and ever-deepening spectrum of propositions and areas of interest related to sex and especially to homosexuality. For instance, I have never encountered any really frank discussion of the details of male and female homosexual practice. The fact that anal intercourse inevitably involves getting your cock dirty with shit and sometimes - according to the fragility of the anal channel - with blood, is something that did not dawn to me until a specific response in a question-and-answer column on sexual matters. That was very instructive. The questioner was a young man who, like me, had learned about anal intercourse from artificially positive pornographic accounts, and had been disgusted by the reality. The expert, while waffling a bit, virtually said that there was no avoiding the problem - even condoms were not altogether reliable under the extreme pressures of the sphincter - and suggested trying a soapy enema up the anal canal concerned.
This is the sort of thing that we are simply not allowed to discuss in the matter of sex. It is swept under the rug. And that is why people live, where sex is concerned, in a dream-world. A staggering symptom of this, to me, was the comment frombufo_viridis, normally the wisest, most penetrating and most poised of all my f-list. To my statement that homosexual practice inevitably narrowed people, he answered "I would be interested to hear how" - implying, one, that he had never come across a motivated statement of this viewpoint, and, two, that he found it hard to understand. To which I can only say, where have you been? Which part of "I am a Catholic" do you not understand? Have you not heard the screeching of the media when a Vatican document, hedged about with a million caveats, said that it was not a good idea to consecrate homosexuals to the priesthood? Do you not know that the Catholic Church has taught from time out of mind that homosexual desire is disordered and homosexual acts sinful? Of course you do; you are an educated and intelligent person from a Catholic country. Have I not written an essay on the Catholic view of the sexes within man, and of the union of the sexes as an image of God on Earth? (http://www.livejournal.com/users/fpb/84324.html) You may not agree with any of this. You may find our arguments wrong, our posture repressive, our activities criminal. But to express surprise that such a view should exist; to talk as though nobody had ever said or thought anything like that - and this not from the average teenie fangirl, this from bufo_viridis - just shows how narrow our field of discussion on these matters really is.
Think about it. Is there any reason why a person should not entertain the point of view that - as opposed to ordinary sex - homosexual practice tends to narrow experience and focus? Is it an absurd - I do not say an unlikely - an absurd notion? Is it stupid? Does it not apply to the categories? I do not think it is. I do not think that it can be argued that it is absurd, unreasonable, to say that to restrict your options to your own sex, rather than to the distance and difference of the other, must tend to narrow. I do not think that it is even stupid, in the sense of being a category mistake, a comparison of apples and oranges; to the contrary, it makes a suggestion very much in the correct area - it is about experience and practice, and what experience and practice might do to perception and to personality. In other words, it is a possible viewpoint, one for which it is possible to argue, one whose wrongness is by no logical means self-evident. Certainly, it will give offence; but most of us take pride in defending positions that give offence, if we consider them valid. Certainly there is no louder screaming, no angrier rejection, from what I have come to regard as the opposing party, than at any notion of censorship.hijja even contests my right to delete posts to my own blog; to her, this is "censorship". And yet the censorship on these matters is so profound and automatic that Bufo, a brilliant and wise person, with personal knowledge of Catholicism, and a professional anthropologist to boot, finds the very proposition unexpected and bewildering.
The ideological pressure is to restrict discussion to one area, and one area only - the sufferings of the poor suppressed homosexuals at the hands of the wicked persecuting society.lonicera's comment is a perfect example. It is not an argument, it is a piece of emotional blackmail. ...I'm enraged and cannot at all share the writer's or your point of view. As the poster you answered to said, the unhappiness of the families would not have happened if these men had had the possibility to just go with the flow and not be programmed by their homophobic social surroundings. And the point you raise that no one actually cares what other people do in bed - be their hetero- or homosexual - may be in wide parts accurate for Europe, but the US of A is quite another story as I can only deduct from my own experience with bible-toting, nonsense-spouting born again christians. I haven't seen the film yet, but am told by people who have, that in fact it's not a film about sex, but a film about love. Those guys *love* each other, but their society forbids the _expression of their love and so everyone suffers, not only them, but everybody connected to them. A condition that could have been avoided by exercising the tinyest bit of tolerance - which is supposed to be a christian virtue, I believe?
I can only interpret the closing sentence as a demand that I should stop expressing opinions or endorsing the opinion of others, about the moral quality of homosexual practice. "Tolerance" (which, by the way, is not a Christian virtue; perhaps you mean "charity") demands that no such opinions should be held. That there is absolutely no difference between homosexual and normal "love", indeed no difference between any kinds of love, is a given; even though, if I were to follow this statement literally, I should express my love for my brother by committing incest. Above all, that there is no difference of kind and degree in love, that there is no such thing as corrupted or ignorant love, that all love is equally meritorious, that all love is equally binding, must at no cost be even brought into question. There is no thought in this statement, only a rockbound ideology reinforced by emotional blackmail - uhh, I had such a hard time in those terrible USA, so I demand that you should not multiply my sufferings - and expressed in a language that is nothing short of threatening.
What surprises me is that, of all people, this commenter is the one who ought to know that I am not very open to this kind of reaction: that I do not accept demands to follow viewpoints I disagree with, and that I do not react well to threats. She came to know me through the recent Blaise Zabini kerfuffle, during which she took my side in so extreme a way that I had, as I recall, to post more moderate reactions myself once or twice. And this, in a way, is as symptomatic as Bufo's bewilderment. By nature, Bufo is broad-minded, gracious, thoughtful and open to debate; by nature,lonicera tends to admire and support independence of mind, indeed to grow angry on its behalf, even where she does not share views. But the culture in which they live (aided, if I understand correctly, by a personal stake in her case) have made the very possibility of debate on this subject so remote, and so hedged it around with taboos - all around the ghastly sin of being "demeaning" - that neither of them ever awakened to the possibility that these views might be exposed to any question. When they were, bufo_viridis reacted with bewilderment, and lonicera with anger, according to their natures.
This word love is the biggest begged question of the lot. It is used in a way that I can only describe as sentimental: to wrap all aspects of the phenomenon under one undifferentiated blanket called "love" and to give it a sort of blessing, by the inevitably positive overtones that word has in the post-Christian imagination. That love is what Anna Karenina and Othello felt does not seem to cross the minds of many people much of the time; nay, we reassure ourselves that love means wanting the good of the beloved, and that jealousy and the greed for possession are the very reverse of love.
Yet possession is at the very heart of this. The passion we are discussing, the passion outlined by Aung Lee and his cohorts, has this difference from ordinary male friendship: the desire to possess the body of the other person. If that desire was not there, there would be no issue, no point to make, no disagreement. Sexual possession and enjoyment, not love in any universal way, is the difference. I love my brother, but I feel no desire whatever to possess his body. I love the music of Beethoven or Schubert, but I do not masturbate to it. I love the city of Rome and the Italian nation, but neither has ever done anything to make my cock hard. Love does not imply sex. (Nor, for that matter, does sexual desire imply love in any shape or form, but that is another matter. Love, not desire, is being used by Hollywood to validate homosexual desire; so let us talk about it in the context of love.)
We are back, therefore, to what I mentioned earlier: the matter of bodily possession, physical sex. Homosexual love wants the body of the beloved. And this essay started with a little look at some of the mechanics of this bodily possession. And it would surprise me to hear that anyone could connect the sort of detail we came across with the notion of love. In my view, just as the use of the word "love" serves to smother debate about matter of fact, so attention to matter of fact immediately removes the very idea of love to an infinitely remote distance. How is love in any way to do with the idea of, say, easing the physical revulsion of the - uh, "lover" - by the notoriously painful and not very healthy process of pushing soapy water up the rectum of the, uh, "beloved"? I have been in love four times in my life, and I assure you that I do not disassociate sex from love; but this is at the absolute opposite end from anything I ever thought or felt about the body of the woman I loved. It is, to be blunt, enslavement and usage, reduction to matter, reduction to a thing.
No need to bother telling me that there is real love, love for that particular person, behind the act. I have lived with enough homosexuals of both sexes to know that. I have made a study of Virgil in the context of homosexual passion (http://www.livejournal.com/users/fpb/7089.html), translated Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite and written It was all on account of the little Russian girl (http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/fabio_p_barbieri/IWAOAOTLRG01a.html). I am saying that in my view that this kind of love is crippled, deviated, or, as the Church says, disordered; aimed at the wrong thing.
Obviously, you will want to use my religion to dismiss my views. Well, I do not think that there is such a person as someone without a religion, unless of course you mean someone in a deep vegetative state. The point is however that this view does not depend on its being Catholic, and that it is certainly not limited to Catholics. If you meant to refuse the view that matrimony is a sacrament and involves the presence of God, well and good, that is a Catholic doctrine. But the view that there is design in human nature - whether or not you admit a Designer - is widespread, natural, and eminently defensible. And the view that the two sexes are, in this design, complementary and meant to encounter, is equally easy to reach. And that from it follows that what orientates sexual desire away from its obvious target and to one which has no evident design value at all, is a disorder. None of these propositions depends on Christianity in any way, and I would be grateful if you restrained from attacking the Church in this context - not that you won't, alas.
My view is that homosexual desire is natural in the same way that blindness or congenital disease are; because there are flaws in everything, and all things tend to go wrong. And that it is not as homosexuals - there is the error - but as human beings and citizens, that people who carry this particular feature or flaw have a right to be respected. This, in my mind, parallels the rights of disabled people. It is because a disabled person is still a human being, with the same basic value as all other human beings, that he or she has a claim on our respect; certainly not because he or she is blind or deaf or paralyzed or mentally disordered. Not as a victim, but in spite of being a victim. To go further: in certain ways, and in certain fields, disability may actually spur human beings to achievements that they might not have otherwise made or even thought of. One instance, in one area, would be the fairly numerous brilliant blind musicians; another, in a different way, is the development of elaborate sign languages. But for that we do not praise blindness or deafness, but the power of the human spirit to make use even of misfortune. By the same token, the number and greatness of homosexual artists and thinkers - from Sappho and Virgil to Tchaikovsky and Craig Russell - bears witness not to any value in homosexuality itself, but to the way that the human spirit reacts even to painful and incorrigible situations by creating the spiritual equivalent of pearls. In that sense, the homosexuality of a Tchaikovsky is the functional equivalent of the deafness of Beethoven or of Schubert's knowledge that he had syphilis and would die soon: it was the point of pain in the flesh around which, to make sense and value, music grew.
The dogmalonicera accepts unconditionally and tries to force on me, is that the pain and lack of self-love of homosexuals is entirely the fault of society, and that if and when society is finally brainwashed into being "tolerant" on her terms, it will vanish. I do not believe that for a minute. I have had a few close friends who were homosexual, and in every case you could see the direct link between their desires and some deep and ineradicable wound in their past, something that often manifested itself in ways other than homosexuality. It is not out of ideology alone, but out of experience, that I believe that homosexuality is itself painful. Indeed, the hysteria with which the discussion on these subjects is excluded and denounced, the loud claim that it makes them feel demeaned or insulted or degraded, is itself evidential in the extreme. The world is full of people who carry a real load of contempt from their neighbours: Jews, Muslims, negroes, and so on. This has no effect on their own self-regard, certainly none comparable with the violence evident in lonicera's comment; a violence which, in my experience, is endemic. Sane Jews do not start howling at you for a vicious anti-Semite if you question their claim to be the Chosen People; a few of them question it themselves, and all will recognize that it only means something within the context of Jewish beliefs. I very much doubt whether many Jews may be found to argue that any challenge to their own self-view must be silenced because it is demeaning.
The reason why we are under the impression that the opposite is true is that the Victorians generally recognized an obligation not to involve the young in this discussion. There was a general sense - which some wit called "the tyranny of the Young Person" - that under-age people, especially girls, should not be exposed too early to explicit treatment of sex; and therefore, every novelist and every publisher felt under the burden not to put anything in a novel that might corrupt the crowds of fifteen-year-old girls who devoured them. (A memorable image of teen-age enthusiasm for novels can be found in Louisa May Alcott's virtually autobiographical LITTLE WOMEN, where the four sisters form a club in imitation of the Pickwick Circle and elaborately assume the roles of Dickens' characters. Such things were all the rage.) The discussion of sex, however frank, was restricted to adults; among other devices, by a simple and ingenious means - sexually-related passages in classics or specialist works were written in Latin, a language which every educated adult knew, but which few teen-agers could be expected to possess to the required precision. Clearly, this was not a device that intended to seriously exclude anyone from the debate, at a time when not only educated women, but almost any self-educated working class person could be expected to learn Latin. It is found even in Pandit Ganguli's Victorian English translation of the Indian epic Mahabharata.
We are now in virtually the opposite position. Adolescents, whose "hormones" are usually said to be not only uncontrollable but positively not to be controlled, are showered with explicit sex. The excuse is to avoid them making foolish mistakes out of ignorance, but considering that the rate of adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases is growing across the board and in every Western country, this hardly seems to add up. Adults, on the other hand, are increasingly discouraged from debating an ever-increasing and ever-deepening spectrum of propositions and areas of interest related to sex and especially to homosexuality. For instance, I have never encountered any really frank discussion of the details of male and female homosexual practice. The fact that anal intercourse inevitably involves getting your cock dirty with shit and sometimes - according to the fragility of the anal channel - with blood, is something that did not dawn to me until a specific response in a question-and-answer column on sexual matters. That was very instructive. The questioner was a young man who, like me, had learned about anal intercourse from artificially positive pornographic accounts, and had been disgusted by the reality. The expert, while waffling a bit, virtually said that there was no avoiding the problem - even condoms were not altogether reliable under the extreme pressures of the sphincter - and suggested trying a soapy enema up the anal canal concerned.
This is the sort of thing that we are simply not allowed to discuss in the matter of sex. It is swept under the rug. And that is why people live, where sex is concerned, in a dream-world. A staggering symptom of this, to me, was the comment from
bufo_viridis, normally the wisest, most penetrating and most poised of all my f-list. To my statement that homosexual practice inevitably narrowed people, he answered "I would be interested to hear how" - implying, one, that he had never come across a motivated statement of this viewpoint, and, two, that he found it hard to understand. To which I can only say, where have you been? Which part of "I am a Catholic" do you not understand? Have you not heard the screeching of the media when a Vatican document, hedged about with a million caveats, said that it was not a good idea to consecrate homosexuals to the priesthood? Do you not know that the Catholic Church has taught from time out of mind that homosexual desire is disordered and homosexual acts sinful? Of course you do; you are an educated and intelligent person from a Catholic country. Have I not written an essay on the Catholic view of the sexes within man, and of the union of the sexes as an image of God on Earth? (http://www.livejournal.com/users/fpb/84324.html) You may not agree with any of this. You may find our arguments wrong, our posture repressive, our activities criminal. But to express surprise that such a view should exist; to talk as though nobody had ever said or thought anything like that - and this not from the average teenie fangirl, this from bufo_viridis - just shows how narrow our field of discussion on these matters really is.Think about it. Is there any reason why a person should not entertain the point of view that - as opposed to ordinary sex - homosexual practice tends to narrow experience and focus? Is it an absurd - I do not say an unlikely - an absurd notion? Is it stupid? Does it not apply to the categories? I do not think it is. I do not think that it can be argued that it is absurd, unreasonable, to say that to restrict your options to your own sex, rather than to the distance and difference of the other, must tend to narrow. I do not think that it is even stupid, in the sense of being a category mistake, a comparison of apples and oranges; to the contrary, it makes a suggestion very much in the correct area - it is about experience and practice, and what experience and practice might do to perception and to personality. In other words, it is a possible viewpoint, one for which it is possible to argue, one whose wrongness is by no logical means self-evident. Certainly, it will give offence; but most of us take pride in defending positions that give offence, if we consider them valid. Certainly there is no louder screaming, no angrier rejection, from what I have come to regard as the opposing party, than at any notion of censorship.
hijja even contests my right to delete posts to my own blog; to her, this is "censorship". And yet the censorship on these matters is so profound and automatic that Bufo, a brilliant and wise person, with personal knowledge of Catholicism, and a professional anthropologist to boot, finds the very proposition unexpected and bewildering.The ideological pressure is to restrict discussion to one area, and one area only - the sufferings of the poor suppressed homosexuals at the hands of the wicked persecuting society.
lonicera's comment is a perfect example. It is not an argument, it is a piece of emotional blackmail. ...I'm enraged and cannot at all share the writer's or your point of view. As the poster you answered to said, the unhappiness of the families would not have happened if these men had had the possibility to just go with the flow and not be programmed by their homophobic social surroundings. And the point you raise that no one actually cares what other people do in bed - be their hetero- or homosexual - may be in wide parts accurate for Europe, but the US of A is quite another story as I can only deduct from my own experience with bible-toting, nonsense-spouting born again christians. I haven't seen the film yet, but am told by people who have, that in fact it's not a film about sex, but a film about love. Those guys *love* each other, but their society forbids the _expression of their love and so everyone suffers, not only them, but everybody connected to them. A condition that could have been avoided by exercising the tinyest bit of tolerance - which is supposed to be a christian virtue, I believe?I can only interpret the closing sentence as a demand that I should stop expressing opinions or endorsing the opinion of others, about the moral quality of homosexual practice. "Tolerance" (which, by the way, is not a Christian virtue; perhaps you mean "charity") demands that no such opinions should be held. That there is absolutely no difference between homosexual and normal "love", indeed no difference between any kinds of love, is a given; even though, if I were to follow this statement literally, I should express my love for my brother by committing incest. Above all, that there is no difference of kind and degree in love, that there is no such thing as corrupted or ignorant love, that all love is equally meritorious, that all love is equally binding, must at no cost be even brought into question. There is no thought in this statement, only a rockbound ideology reinforced by emotional blackmail - uhh, I had such a hard time in those terrible USA, so I demand that you should not multiply my sufferings - and expressed in a language that is nothing short of threatening.
What surprises me is that, of all people, this commenter is the one who ought to know that I am not very open to this kind of reaction: that I do not accept demands to follow viewpoints I disagree with, and that I do not react well to threats. She came to know me through the recent Blaise Zabini kerfuffle, during which she took my side in so extreme a way that I had, as I recall, to post more moderate reactions myself once or twice. And this, in a way, is as symptomatic as Bufo's bewilderment. By nature, Bufo is broad-minded, gracious, thoughtful and open to debate; by nature,
lonicera tends to admire and support independence of mind, indeed to grow angry on its behalf, even where she does not share views. But the culture in which they live (aided, if I understand correctly, by a personal stake in her case) have made the very possibility of debate on this subject so remote, and so hedged it around with taboos - all around the ghastly sin of being "demeaning" - that neither of them ever awakened to the possibility that these views might be exposed to any question. When they were, bufo_viridis reacted with bewilderment, and lonicera with anger, according to their natures.This word love is the biggest begged question of the lot. It is used in a way that I can only describe as sentimental: to wrap all aspects of the phenomenon under one undifferentiated blanket called "love" and to give it a sort of blessing, by the inevitably positive overtones that word has in the post-Christian imagination. That love is what Anna Karenina and Othello felt does not seem to cross the minds of many people much of the time; nay, we reassure ourselves that love means wanting the good of the beloved, and that jealousy and the greed for possession are the very reverse of love.
Yet possession is at the very heart of this. The passion we are discussing, the passion outlined by Aung Lee and his cohorts, has this difference from ordinary male friendship: the desire to possess the body of the other person. If that desire was not there, there would be no issue, no point to make, no disagreement. Sexual possession and enjoyment, not love in any universal way, is the difference. I love my brother, but I feel no desire whatever to possess his body. I love the music of Beethoven or Schubert, but I do not masturbate to it. I love the city of Rome and the Italian nation, but neither has ever done anything to make my cock hard. Love does not imply sex. (Nor, for that matter, does sexual desire imply love in any shape or form, but that is another matter. Love, not desire, is being used by Hollywood to validate homosexual desire; so let us talk about it in the context of love.)
We are back, therefore, to what I mentioned earlier: the matter of bodily possession, physical sex. Homosexual love wants the body of the beloved. And this essay started with a little look at some of the mechanics of this bodily possession. And it would surprise me to hear that anyone could connect the sort of detail we came across with the notion of love. In my view, just as the use of the word "love" serves to smother debate about matter of fact, so attention to matter of fact immediately removes the very idea of love to an infinitely remote distance. How is love in any way to do with the idea of, say, easing the physical revulsion of the - uh, "lover" - by the notoriously painful and not very healthy process of pushing soapy water up the rectum of the, uh, "beloved"? I have been in love four times in my life, and I assure you that I do not disassociate sex from love; but this is at the absolute opposite end from anything I ever thought or felt about the body of the woman I loved. It is, to be blunt, enslavement and usage, reduction to matter, reduction to a thing.
No need to bother telling me that there is real love, love for that particular person, behind the act. I have lived with enough homosexuals of both sexes to know that. I have made a study of Virgil in the context of homosexual passion (http://www.livejournal.com/users/fpb/7089.html), translated Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite and written It was all on account of the little Russian girl (http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/fabio_p_barbieri/IWAOAOTLRG01a.html). I am saying that in my view that this kind of love is crippled, deviated, or, as the Church says, disordered; aimed at the wrong thing.
Obviously, you will want to use my religion to dismiss my views. Well, I do not think that there is such a person as someone without a religion, unless of course you mean someone in a deep vegetative state. The point is however that this view does not depend on its being Catholic, and that it is certainly not limited to Catholics. If you meant to refuse the view that matrimony is a sacrament and involves the presence of God, well and good, that is a Catholic doctrine. But the view that there is design in human nature - whether or not you admit a Designer - is widespread, natural, and eminently defensible. And the view that the two sexes are, in this design, complementary and meant to encounter, is equally easy to reach. And that from it follows that what orientates sexual desire away from its obvious target and to one which has no evident design value at all, is a disorder. None of these propositions depends on Christianity in any way, and I would be grateful if you restrained from attacking the Church in this context - not that you won't, alas.
My view is that homosexual desire is natural in the same way that blindness or congenital disease are; because there are flaws in everything, and all things tend to go wrong. And that it is not as homosexuals - there is the error - but as human beings and citizens, that people who carry this particular feature or flaw have a right to be respected. This, in my mind, parallels the rights of disabled people. It is because a disabled person is still a human being, with the same basic value as all other human beings, that he or she has a claim on our respect; certainly not because he or she is blind or deaf or paralyzed or mentally disordered. Not as a victim, but in spite of being a victim. To go further: in certain ways, and in certain fields, disability may actually spur human beings to achievements that they might not have otherwise made or even thought of. One instance, in one area, would be the fairly numerous brilliant blind musicians; another, in a different way, is the development of elaborate sign languages. But for that we do not praise blindness or deafness, but the power of the human spirit to make use even of misfortune. By the same token, the number and greatness of homosexual artists and thinkers - from Sappho and Virgil to Tchaikovsky and Craig Russell - bears witness not to any value in homosexuality itself, but to the way that the human spirit reacts even to painful and incorrigible situations by creating the spiritual equivalent of pearls. In that sense, the homosexuality of a Tchaikovsky is the functional equivalent of the deafness of Beethoven or of Schubert's knowledge that he had syphilis and would die soon: it was the point of pain in the flesh around which, to make sense and value, music grew.
The dogma
lonicera accepts unconditionally and tries to force on me, is that the pain and lack of self-love of homosexuals is entirely the fault of society, and that if and when society is finally brainwashed into being "tolerant" on her terms, it will vanish. I do not believe that for a minute. I have had a few close friends who were homosexual, and in every case you could see the direct link between their desires and some deep and ineradicable wound in their past, something that often manifested itself in ways other than homosexuality. It is not out of ideology alone, but out of experience, that I believe that homosexuality is itself painful. Indeed, the hysteria with which the discussion on these subjects is excluded and denounced, the loud claim that it makes them feel demeaned or insulted or degraded, is itself evidential in the extreme. The world is full of people who carry a real load of contempt from their neighbours: Jews, Muslims, negroes, and so on. This has no effect on their own self-regard, certainly none comparable with the violence evident in lonicera's comment; a violence which, in my experience, is endemic. Sane Jews do not start howling at you for a vicious anti-Semite if you question their claim to be the Chosen People; a few of them question it themselves, and all will recognize that it only means something within the context of Jewish beliefs. I very much doubt whether many Jews may be found to argue that any challenge to their own self-view must be silenced because it is demeaning.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 10:45 pm (UTC)First, thank you for compliments, I'm flattered.
Second it's obvious I need to clarify. I confess to skim rather than thoroughly read the previous post; I become interested in the the phrase "a condition that inevitably impoverishes the experience and narrows the humanity of its practicitioners", because I personally do not perceive this "inevitability" especially in the matter of "humanity", although I agree that due to many reasons it may indeed happen. How often I'm unable to say. My experience with homosexuals is limited to the extreme, never known any, and I always treaded lightly around the subject, lest my ignorance offends anybody.
The phrasing of my comment - too curt - was unfortunate, appearing as if I was to pick a quarrell, rather than ask out of genuine curiosity. Actually, the equally curt answer "because of my Catholic views" would suffice; yet because I don't think you a person who'd accept a dogma before thinking it over, I preferred to ask (I was not aware, or I had forgotten, about your essay: it was posted before I started using my L-J).
As I said once (when discussing the unfortuante incident of the gay student and angry teacher in avus journal), being from a Catholic country is not sufficient in learning about why the Church is so opposed to the homosexual act (and I was not interested more than to pick the Catechism and read the relevant passages, which are rather short). That was also a reason for my question - namely if you referred me back to the Church I'd knew I have to look there for answers if I want to educate myself more. If there were other reasons, your own thoughts - well some of them are here and more I'll find in the linked essay; therefore all clear and my question has been answered - thank you.
And so not appear as an example of "narrowness and un-frankness" of sex discussion: I am/was fully aware of the mechanics of anal intercourse, unpleasant fecal details included; and I was also curious if this was main reason or there were other ones (if it was only that, there would be a problem of lesbians; and there are other modes of homosexuals sex possible, none of course including regular peni-vaginal intercouse, for rather obvious reasons :)).
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 10:08 am (UTC)I'll jump the first two paragraphs, because they're a very longwinded introduction to what you intend to say here:
We are now in virtually the opposite position. Adolescents, whose "hormones" are usually said to be not only uncontrollable but positively not to be controlled, are showered with explicit sex.
Well, yes, unfortunately true. The reason has, however, nothing to do with sex of either kind, but to come back to the original essay: sex sells and kids are a money-spending demographic not to be neglected. It is our perverted economical system, not any perverted sex, that makes kids old before their time. Sexuality is not the reason, but the means, it's victimized by economical greed. But what, for heaven's sake, have kids to do with the discussion of homosexuality in this special case? The cowboys were adults as far as I know and the movie is directed as adults as well.
Adults, on the other hand, are increasingly discouraged from debating an ever-increasing and ever-deepening spectrum of propositions and areas of interest related to sex and especially to homosexuality. For instance, I have never encountered any really frank discussion of the details of male and female homosexual practice.
You obviously don't subscribe to the same mailing-lists I do, because I've encountered quite a lot of detailed and frank discussion about these very items among slash-writing women. It is unvaryingly the heterosexual male that shies away from things they find "gross" or repulsive.
The fact that anal intercourse inevitably involves getting your cock dirty with shit and sometimes - according to the fragility of the anal channel - with blood, is something that did not dawn to me until a specific response in a question-and-answer column on sexual matters.
Otoh, many women seem to find *any* body excrete (except tears perhaps) repulsive and so don't make that great a difference between sweat, piss, semen and feces. I can only tell you that from hearsay as encountered on said mailing-lists, as otoh, *I* have a rather clinical view of the body and its excretes. As shit is only the things one has eaten processed through the body and exploited of their nourishing values I really don't understand this puerile reaction of "how gross!". How can anything I have inside me be repulsive?
This is the sort of thing that we are simply not allowed to discuss in the matter of sex. It is swept under the rug. And that is why people live, where sex is concerned, in a dream-world.
It is not mentioned in many accounts of the homosexual act written for entertainment, I give you that. But it is mentioned frankly in accounts of the same act written for instruction. At the same time the tendency of seminal fluid to drop out of the vagina and dirty the sheets is not mentioned in many accounts of heterosexual acts written for entertainment either. (Excuse my frank language, but you provoked it.) In other words, if you can find the dirty, the repulsive in a homosexual act, believe me, please, when I say that many women find the heterosexual act equally repulsive.
Think about it. Is there any reason why a person should not entertain the point of view that - as opposed to ordinary sex - homosexual practice tends to narrow experience and focus? .... I do not think that it can be argued that it is absurd, unreasonable, to say that to restrict your options to your own sex, rather than to the distance and difference of the other, must tend to narrow. .... - it is about experience and practice, and what experience and practice might do to perception and to personality.
Well, yes, I can understand your point here and even partly agree to it - but, and this is a big BUT, it is not a choice that is yours to make. You either *are* homosexual or you aren't, you don't decide your own sexual orientation and if your choice in matters sexual is limited to your own gender, so what? Still enough difference in each character of either sex to widen and broaden your view. I personally find bisexuality the desirable ideal, because I don't think much of limitations either way.
No time anymore. Come back later.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 12:25 pm (UTC)No one denies the suffering of families of homosexuals who wrongfully chose to go against their orientation. The thing is that those families can do something against it. Women can divorce their gay husbands and find a new mate that fits them better. Kids can adjust to parents living apart. It's rather the norm today than the exception. I personally don't think much of matrimony either way. The old matriarchal concept that children belong to their mothers which ever partner she choses to have at the time seems to be far more natural to me than anything else.
But homosexuals cannot chose just to be not persecuted, can they? Mathew Shepard, for example, couldn't chose just not to be killed by homophobic bigots. The rancher in the movie could not chose not to be castrated and killed by his homophobic neighbours. Tough luck that.
I can only interpret the closing sentence as a demand that I should stop expressing opinions or endorsing the opinion of others, about the moral quality of homosexual practice.
You are, of course, entitled to whatever opinion you chose to have on this subject. However, endorsing an article that invokes moral outrage about two guys who didn't do anything wrong other than unfortunately have a sexual orientation that was not socially acceptable at the time and then shows us the reaction of the neighbours of the mutilated and killed rancher as something understandable and normal, deeply imbedded in our moral conscience, really, really bothers me. Torturing, mutilating and killing someone just because we disagree with their sexual orientation (race, gender, belief system, you have it) seems to be considered wrong in almost every religion I've ever heard of. And then to claim that this behaviour is based on a morality based on christianity - I have no words. What will be next? Book and witches burning, religious wars etc.?
"Tolerance" (which, by the way, is not a Christian virtue; perhaps you mean "charity") demands that no such opinions should be held.
No, tolerance means that you live and let live - in the literal meaning of the word.
That there is absolutely no difference between homosexual and normal "love", indeed no difference between any kinds of love, is a given; even though, if I were to follow this statement literally, I should express my love for my brother by committing incest. Above all, that there is no difference of kind and degree in love, that there is no such thing as corrupted or ignorant love, that all love is equally meritorious, that all love is equally binding, must at no cost be even brought into question. There is no thought in this statement, only a rockbound ideology reinforced by emotional blackmail - uhh, I had such a hard time in those terrible USA, so I demand that you should not multiply my sufferings - and expressed in a language that is nothing short of threatening.
This is such a bloody nonsense that I cannot even be bothered to think about an answer.
What surprises me is that, of all people, this commenter is the one who ought to know that I am not very open to this kind of reaction: that I do not accept demands to follow viewpoints I disagree with, and that I do not react well to threats.>/i>
Uh, where did I threaten you and with what?
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 01:01 pm (UTC)Excuse me, but how differs that from a so-called "normal" heterosexual love? Why is it okay if a man wants to possess a female body out of love or desire, but it is wrong if that body is male? I see no kind of logic in that.
Of course there are different forms of love and not all of them are expressed sexually. If the guys in the movie had had a form of love that finds its expression in friendship, nobody would have any problem with it. The thing is that some people dare to judge what forms of love should be felt, by whom, for whom, and how they should be expressed or not. The gay cowboys' love was a romantic love that found its expression in sexual desire - so what?
We are back, therefore, to what I mentioned earlier: the matter of bodily possession, physical sex. Homosexual love wants the body of the beloved.
And heterosexual love doesn't? That's news to me.
And this essay started with a little look at some of the mechanics of this bodily possession. And it would surprise me to hear that anyone could connect the sort of detail we came across with the notion of love.
This may be news to you, buddy, but many women find the male penis ugly. Many women do not cherish the thought of having that thing inserted into them. And many women I've come across find semen appalling. So, what it all boils down to is just this: *You* find he act of homosexual intercourse particularly revulsing, therefore it cannot be called love and is an anomality. Think what would happen to mankind if womanhood would think like you. You were *forced* to turn to your own sex because none of you were getting any.
In my view, just as the use of the word "love" serves to smother debate about matter of fact, so attention to matter of fact immediately removes the very idea of love to an infinitely remote distance. How is love in any way to do with the idea of, say, easing the physical revulsion of the - uh, "lover" - by the notoriously painful and not very healthy process of pushing soapy water up the rectum of the, uh, "beloved"? I have been in love four times in my life, and I assure you that I do not disassociate sex from love; but this is at the absolute opposite end from anything I ever thought or felt about the body of the woman I loved. It is, to be blunt, enslavement and usage, reduction to matter, reduction to a thing.
You obviously aren't very sexually experienced. I can assure you I've had anal intercourse with different partners at different times and it's absolutely possible to make that experience clean, smooth and enjoyable for both. I didn't feel like a thing in the least.
No need to bother telling me that there is real love, love for that particular person, behind the act. .... I am saying that in my view that this kind of love is crippled, deviated, or, as the Church says, disordered; aimed at the wrong thing.
Well, if you think in terms of what sex is actually for, you're right of course. Sexual desire is nothing but nature's way to ensure the survival of the species, just as hunger is nothing but nature's way to ensure the survival of the specimen. That the act can be filled with enjoyment and leed to satisfaction is just another trick to ensure that it won't be forgotten.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 01:41 pm (UTC)That's all fine, but mankind has long overcome the boundaries of doing what nature intended for a certain purpose and has turned it all into an end in itself. We do not eat to stay alive, we eat because we enjoy it. The same goes for sex. No one I know has sex solely for the purpose of making babies (although apparently your church says you should, but really!), but everyone has sex just for the fun of it. And unless *you* stop having sex for fun and only do it to create new life (which I do not think you've done with your four loves/girl friends - or are you a father four times?), you have no right that I can see to preach others they have to stop having sex for fun. And sex for fun and not for reproduction means sex with same sex partners as well.
My view is that homosexual desire is natural in the same way that blindness or congenital disease are; because there are flaws in everything, and all things tend to go wrong.
Okay, I have no difficulty accepting that view. It seems that ten percent of mankind are homosexual - perhaps it's an aberration, like colour-blindness, left-handedness or flat feet. Maybe. Maybe it has other reasons. Fact is, I don't really care why it exists. It's there.
And that it is not as homosexuals - there is the error - but as human beings and citizens, that people who carry this particular feature or flaw have a right to be respected. This, in my mind, parallels the rights of disabled people. It is because a disabled person is still a human being, with the same basic value as all other human beings, that he or she has a claim on our respect; certainly not because he or she is blind or deaf or paralyzed or mentally disordered. Not as a victim, but in spite of being a victim.
I absolutely agree with you here. But how come that you would probably cry out with righteous indignation if blind, deaf or wheelchair-bound people (who have to deal with their own brand of neglect and abuse, no doubt!) were socially persecuted like homosexuals have been and sometimes still are and can find nothing to say about mutilating and killing people that just have to happen the wrong (for you) sexuality?
To go further: in certain ways, and in certain fields, disability may actually spur human beings to achievements that they might not have otherwise made or even thought of. .... it was the point of pain in the flesh around which, to make sense and value, music grew.
Sometimes great suffering can be sublimated into great art. Inspite of that I'm not convinced that makes us entitled to inflict suffering onto other people.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 01:42 pm (UTC)Other than you *I* do not belong to any organisation that requires their members to agree to their dogmatic views. The dogma I would accept unconditionally has yet to be invented. And I for sure don't try to force anything upon you. And yes, the pain homosexuals suffer at the hands of society is entirely the fault of said society. And yes, if people would stop trying to vanquish that which they do not like, share or agree with, this world would be a better place. And yes, this is exactly why I wouldn't force anything upon you however strongly I may disagree with you. But I may take the liberty to express my opposing views.
I do not believe that for a minute. I have had a few close friends who were homosexual, and in every case you could see the direct link between their desires and some deep and ineradicable wound in their past, something that often manifested itself in ways other than homosexuality. It is not out of ideology alone, but out of experience, that I believe that homosexuality is itself painful.
Well, you have your experiences, I have mine. And the gay and lesbian friends I have are perfectly ordinary people without any ineradicable wounds or other deep psychological hogwash. Thank god none of them had to make any experiences the like of which were shown in the movie that started this debate and I would personally fight like a tiger for it to stay that way.
Indeed, the hysteria with which the discussion on these subjects is excluded and denounced, the loud claim that it makes them feel demeaned or insulted or degraded, is itself evidential in the extreme. The world is full of people who carry a real load of contempt from their neighbours: Jews, Muslims, negroes, and so on.
The only hysteria I can see is that of the puerile heterosexual male who feels threatened by "the other". Like so many of your faculty you try to justify your personal tastes by divine and religious support. In other words by that which cannot be proven. Cheap means, indeed! I am no christian, nor do I belong to any other institutionalised religion, no god stands behind me and no community of believers, but you know what? I don't need them. Until the day god tips me on the shoulder and says, "And by the way, my dear, I don't like you to do or think this or that..." I will think and do as I see fit and feel perfectly comfortable with it.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 02:54 pm (UTC)I don't think anyone thinks you don't have a right to your opinion, or to express your opinion. But I do believe that you (by you I mean those that hold your opinion) do not have the right to enforce your view on others through any means, legal or otherwise.
"The world is full of people who carry a real load of contempt from their neighbours: Jews, Muslims, negroes, and so on. This has no effect on their own self-regard"
On this point, I think you are wrong. Oppression and violence always has an impact on the self regard of the recipients, it is what the oppressor relies on to keep people down. But the human spirit eventually asserts itself, and revolts against the material oppression, and the idea of being deserving of contempt.
And frankly, this is happening with gay people: they don't want to be physically harmed, or materially impeded, or to be seen as less deserving.
Some gay people obviously do become damaged by feeling they are sinful, wrong, corrupt and gross, and try hard to remain in the 'right-thinking' camp, but their homosexuality exists nonetheless, and it's going to have repercussions.
This is the type of issue that most people feel very strongly about one way or the other, and I feel strongly that love, sex and marriage, and all the ensuing benefits should be allowed to gay adults the same as heterosexual adults. Especially if you live in a country where church and state are supposedly separate.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 07:35 pm (UTC)My view is that homosexual desire is natural in the same way that blindness or congenital disease are;
Yes, however, you'll see a lot of resistance from the blind community about regaining sight. Homosexuals are "born that way", just as you are "born that way" to be heterosexual.
You make a compelling argument that homosexuality is limiting. I agree. In fact, I agree that loving only one gender is quite limiting. I'm sure you'll agree with me that until you've loved all genders, you really have not had a full and rich experience. Bisexuality is really the only non-limiting option. And no, you do not have to date more than one person at a time. Bisexuals are faithful to the agreements they make with their partners.
You seem like an intelligent man. Why is it, then, that you believe condoms block sexually transmitted infections like HIV, whose particles are microscopic, and yet you think that feces and blood get by?
Many heterosexual couples have anal sex, either with a man's penis in a woman's anus, or a woman using a dildo in a man's anus. Many couples enjoy it. In fact, a court case in one U.S. state deemed sodomy was not illegal because it was the only way a man could have sex with his wife -- he was a quadrapalegic.
How is It is not out of ideology alone, but out of experience, that I believe that homosexuality is itself painful different from the pain and lack of self-love of homosexuals is entirely the fault of society?
You are saying that the fact that gay and lesbian men and woman have pain is based on experience, not their sexuality.
If society was set up in a way that blind people could live as easily as the sighted, blind people wouldn't have pain. We live in a world of visual cues; therefore blind people must compensate for their loss of experience. Because of SOCIETY.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-31 04:00 am (UTC)http://www.sodomylaws.org/usa/rhode_island/rinews08.htm
(from the new york times! -- "advocates for the disabled have been arguing publicly that sodomy laws forbid what can be the only kind of sex possible for the wheelchair-bound")
http://www.sodomylaws.org/usa/rhode_island/rinews14.htm
(from the Newport Daily News "Proponents of the repeal have argued that the law is selectively enforced and discriminates against handicapped and gay couples.")
no subject
Date: 2005-12-31 09:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-31 10:07 am (UTC)You are saying that the fact that gay and lesbian men and woman have pain is based on experience, not their sexuality.
Please read what I wrote. I said the exact opposite. I said that in my view homosexual desire is part of a wounded personality. At least
> I'm sure you'll agree with me that until you've loved all genders, you really have not had a full and rich experience.
Either this is a joke, or it shows a depth of misunderstanding of my whole argument - and of ignorance of what I mean by love and by marriage - that makes it almost impossible to answer.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-31 11:18 am (UTC)Please do not bother. First of all I'm not interested in your idiocy. Second the lonicera-LJ will be deleted shortly anyway as I don't have the time anymore for this internet crap.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-31 07:51 pm (UTC)