[lit-ideas] Re: virtue-practical example of being taught
- From: Eternitytime1@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 15:25:10 EST
In a message dated 1/2/2006 12:20:56 P.M. Central Standard Time,
judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
the following (re gays stating that gay and paedophile
are different, searching by paedophile +gay) are from
the UK +NZ, perhaps because my browser defaults to
google.uk:
Hi,
Thanks for the links. It does showcase some of the conflict in this
situation.
Here is the official site of the North American Man/Boy Love Association.
(the political science professor at UMKC is quoted in it a couple of times in a
couple of spots...as I said, he really has done no good service towards the
whole issue of gay marriage/gays in BSA/etc. in this area...by stating that
being gay is not inborn/genetic, he is contrary to a lot of what is being
stated elsewhere. Thus, the confusion)
_http://www.nambla.org/_ (http://www.nambla.org/)
Here are some quotes from an essay on their site (it's actually a speech
that was given) regarding Homosexuality and their movement.
As you can see, they argue *against* the issue of sexuality being inborn and
genetically determined. They state that it is a cultural choice--and that
those who are calling for what NAMBLA states is an assimilationist position of
homosexuality are wrong.
It is extremely interesting to read their material and the group probably is
more vocal in some areas than in others. (like the professor here who regular
speaks out on this issue...)
Having known far too many women and men who have been abused as children by
pedophiles (both male and female children--), I have a major problem with the
NAMBLA folk who say that there is no abuse occurring with a child who is of
the age 14 to 18.
Discussion on the main scouting site which deals with political and social
issues has been talking about the new report that is supposed to be released
from Sweden shortly. It is reportedly going to be a major report [I've heard
nothing about it except on the scouting websites which have forums devoted to
scouting topics]--and is going to state that homosexuality is definitely
inborn. The thinking is that this is going to radically change a lot of
viewpoint in regards to allowing gay folk into BSA. The biggest problem is
that
NAMBLA argues against the inborn nature--and [it seems] states that they are a
gay organization. While it was promising to see the links you posted which DO
state the differences and that do disassociated themselves from it, they have
not done a very good job (at least in this area) of doing so.
Whose job is it to monitor who says they are 'gay' or not? I don't know.
It does seem that NAMBLA considers itself a gay organization--and that their
viewpoint of sexuality as simply being repressed and that boys ages 14-18
ought to be free to 'love' a grown man (I suppose they believe that girls and
men
ought to be free to 'love' at ages 14-18, too). They state that sexuality is
simply repressed and needs to be 'free'.
It is this group which has caused a lot of the confusion in the typical
heterosexual protective parent type. They cloud the issue. I believe that they
keep a lot of dialogue from occurring because people simply point to what they
say (ie that homosexuality is a cultural/social action and not inborn) and can
then say that the first step towards legitimizing sex with a kid ages 14 to
18, is to legalize/legitimize things like gay marriage, etc. and, if I were
trying to legitimize that sort of position and to break down the 'walls'
towards it, well, that would be a first step--so I can see the fear and
understand
it. I do NOT think that is what is really happening--but because I can see
the fear and understand where it is coming from and who is feeding it--well,
I can (hopefully) do something about it.
anyway...here is a bit from that essay...
"The issue of love between men and boys has intersected the gay movement
since the late nineteenth century, with the rise of the first gay rights
movement in Germany. In the United States, as the gay movement has retreated
from
its vision of sexual liberation, in favor of integration and assimilation into
existing social and political structures, it has increasingly sought to
marginalize even demonize cross-generational love. Pederasty - that is, love
between a man and a youth of 12 to 18 years of age - say middle-class
homosexuals,
lesbians, and feminists, has nothing to do with gay liberation. Some go so
far as to claim, absurdly, that it is a heterosexual phenomenon, or even
"sexual abuse." What a travesty!
Pederasty is the main form that male homosexuality has acquired throughout
Western civilization - and not only in the West! Pederasty is inseparable from
the high points of Western culture - ancient Greece and the Renaissance.
In Germany, in the late nineteenth century, pederasty was an integral part
of the new gay movement. The first gay journal in the world - Der Eigene,
published beginning in 1896 (one year before the formation of the first
homosexual rights group, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee of Magnus
Hirschfeld) -
was a pederast and anarchist journal "for male culture" with an
individualist anarchist outlook based on the ideas of Max Stirner (author of
Der Einzige
und sein Eigentum). Its publisher, Adolf Brand, was a leading figure of the
gay movement throughout the first decades, until the Nazis came to power. The
journal continued to appear until 1933. Brand died in an Allied bombing of
Berlin in 1945."
Another leading pederast and writer, Benedict Friedlaender, was also a
leader of Hirschfeld's committee, until 1908 when he committed suicide. Not
unlike
today, the two groups - the pederasts in the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (the
Community of Self- Owners) and the Hirschfeld group - constituted two wings of
the gay movement. Although they collaborated in some things (for example,
both opposed the sodomy statute, Paragraph 175), sharp ideological and sc
ientific differences separated them. In uncanny ways, many of these
differences
persist in the quite different circumstances of today.
"With the spread of the medical model of homosexuality in the late
nineteenth century came an increasing influence of doctors and psychiatrists
in the
gay movement. These viewed homosexuals as a "third sex," or as "intermediate
sexual types" (Zwischenstufen in German), a "male soul trapped in a female
body" (or vice versa for lesbians) - a view advanced by Hirschfeld. The
pederasts
actively combated this view. They believed in an inherent bisexuality of
human beings and argued that the influence of the medical profession gave the
gay movement the aura of a hospital. Most felt that younger and older males
were naturally attracted to each other and that pederasty was a positive good
for society because it helped to socialize young males and provided them with
a
necessary sexual outlet, thereby reducing undesirable social phenomena such
as unwanted pregnancies and prostitution. A few (Hans Blüher, for example,
famous for his book on the Wandervogel movement) believed that pederasty and
male bonding provided a basis for a stronger nation and state - a view that,
in
a perverted form, found a distorted expression in the militarism of the
Hitler Youth.
Friedlaender, for example, ridiculed the concept of "a poor womanly soul
languishing away in a man's body, and of the `third sex,'" and attacked the
third sex concept as "degrading and a beggarly...pleading for sympathy." He
insisted on a historical approach that also took into account anthropological
evidence, and wrote: "A glance at the cultures of countries before and outside
of
Christianity suffices to show the complete untenability of the
[Zwischenstufen] theory. Especially in ancient Greece, most of the military
leaders,
artists, and thinkers would have had to be 'psychic hermaphrodites.'" _1_
(http://216.220.97.17/pederasty.htm#Footnote 1)
In their critique of the third-sex concept and their recognition of the
ambiguities and potential bisexuality of the human animal, the pederasts had
their feet more securely on the ground than did the larger "mainstream" gay
movement. The third-sex argument has been thoroughly discredited for years.
Increasingly, the assimilationist gay and lesbian groups in the United
States, in a kind of throwback to the nineteenth century, argue that
homosexuality
is inborn, that it is genetically determined ("we can't help it that we're
gay, we were born that way, so please don't discriminate against us" - an echo
of the nineteenth-century argument that practically solicits pity and that
in no way challenges the built-in social repression of same-sex love). The
middle-class gay movement today seeks special treatment for a special kind of
person who has adopted a "gay" identity - "gay people" - rather than seeking
to
liberate the repressed sexual potential of everyone. For them, what matters
is identity, not practice. The basic argument of the gay movement today boils
down to the following: Homosexuals are born that way, and heterosexuals are
born that way; therefore, homosexual liberation poses no threat to the status
quo and dominance of hetersupremacy. This is the old "nature versus nurture"
argument dressed up in new, accommodationist clothes.
The theoretical poverty of this view can be seen in the fact that many
people - including, no doubt, some in this room change their sexual behavior
depending on the circumstances or over the course of their lives. If there is
a
genetic basis for homosexuality and heterosexuality - that is, our behavior is
determined by our genes, rather than myriad social and cultural variables
that differ from person to person - it is not as distinct and mutually
exclusive
categories, but as potentials for varieties of sexual expression that lie
within everyone's reach. (This line of antighetto thinking has been eloquently
expressed by the late Italian gay activist Mario Mieli in his book,
Homosexuality and Liberation.)
The real motivation behind this revival of the "inborn" argument is
political, not scientific. The gay assimilationists want to become part of an
existing, inequitable capitalist society, not change that society in any
fundamental
way. Their approach is inherently selfish, not altruistic. They seek minor
adjustments in the status quo, not radical social change. They have been
co-opted by the heterosupremacist power structure.
One obvious contradiction in the assimilationist position is that if
homosexual identity is inborn, as they say, then why do they oppose freedom of
sexual expression for minors? Assimilationists argue that sexual identity is
fixed
by age six, but they deny young people the right to enjoy sexual pleasure
with the person of their own choice. For them, "protection" is the key word,
not "liberation"; they call on the state to "protect" young people from
expressing and exploring their own sexual behavior. They want to "protect"
young
people from "dirty old men" (I, incidentally, am speaking as a "dirty [gay]
old
man" - something I take as a positive goal), but in reality are protecting
them from themselves. They support criminalization of young people's
sexuality,
especially if it involves sex with an adult man. They condemn any adult who
helps a young person to explore his or her sexuality. They are like parents -
only worse, because they pretend to offer a guide to the gay future.
Of course, money plays a role in this too. This is very clear, for example,
in the many scandals in the United States over sex between priests and
youths, in which the Catholic church has paid out millions of dollars in an
effort
to resolve them. If, as has happened frequently in these scandals, (1) the
boy came back regularly over a period of years in order to have sex with the
priest, and (2) the "victim" waited twenty to thirty years before denouncing
the priest, one is entitled to wonder whether his motive was not financial
above all; and if there is a sense of guilt, it results mainly from the
medieval
and hypocritical attitude of the church, and not automatically, nor
necessarily, from the sexual relationship itself.
etc etc
Anyway, there's more on that site that shows how this group feels-and what it
is doing.
That is why there is a lot of confusion and a lot of concern as to this
situation? Is homosexuality inborn and genetic or not? Is this a fringe group
or
not? Would legitimizing gay marriage/families/etc open the door for their
viewpoint to become legit? Why or why not? (I don't think so--but that is
because I think that there is a lack of emotional maturity between the ages of
14-18 ... and that adult/child relationships (male to male, male to female,
female to female) are not healthy in the emotional/sexual connotations that
NAMBLA portrays as being fine.) But, the 'fear' is that by legitimizing the
one,
the other will become the next item on the
Best,
Marlena in Missouri
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