First
in importance, probably, if not in the order in the blog, I'll caution
you(se) that I have one and only one absolute language taboo: I won't
pronounce the name of God. I thought I should have a taboo, and that is a
traditional one. Otherwise, I try to be ethical and not hurt people
unnecessarily and even try to be prudent enough to try to avoid even
offending people unnecessarily — but that's ethics and commonsense; I've
named my one taboo and outside of that I'll use the words I think
decorous for getting the job done, including "
B*d Words"
(although I'll sometimes nod in the direction of the taboo with an
asterisk replacing a letter, and I'll concede upon request the arrogance
of my claiming an absolute right to make word choices).
Second,
this blog will be even less linear than usual, and I know my circuitous
style pisses some people off (or "p*sses," for adherents of that
taboo).
Third, I'm going to start off on my
labyrinthine ways with kind of sort of a defense of Texas Governor Rick Perry's remark, quoted above, relating homosexuality to alcoholism.
To
begin with, on the Perry part, Mr. Perry does seem to be somewhat
stupid, and intelligence appears to be largely genetic; so we shouldn't
particularly praise people for being smart nor condemn others for, let's
phrase it, not being smart. The characterological question is what
people
do with their brains. In that analysis, Daniel Keyes's Charlie Gordon in "
Flowers for Algernon"
is admirable when he's intellectually defective because what he has,
brainwise, he uses. The semi-literate Charlie tries to think things
through, and, all in all, he does a pretty good job. If Molly Ivins and
some of her fellow Texans (and others) were correct in their analysis of
George W. Bush — not stupid but "
intellectually lazy, incurious, ill-read" — then G. W. Bush is culpable, but not someone like Charlie Gordon and only partially Rick Perry.
Now
by such logic we shouldn't much praise people for natural beauty but
admire those who beautify themselves with diet, exercise, cosmetics,
surgery, drugs, and such — so I'm not going to push this point too hard.
But we should allow that Perry isn't a deep intellectual and cut him a
bit of slack when he's operating in one of the most difficult areas of
American politics.
So, I
will attempt to extricate Mr. Perry from his thoughts and comments,
which I can do far more easily than he can since I'm not politician, I'm
not running for anything, and I'm an old
curmudgeon who can say shit he can't.
The
current mainstream line is that homosexuality is largely genetic and,
usually stated far from any comments on sexuality, it is standard
teaching that alcoholism is largely genetic. It's widely held that one
is
homosexual by nature and that one may become an alcoholic if one is
genetically susceptible to alcoholism and goes on to consume ethyl
alcohol, and then consumes it to excess. In the immediate background
here is the idea of genotype: one's complement of traits, and phenotype:
how those traits get expressed. Also in the immediate background is the
doctrine that most of us apply as a practical matter that people have
free will and can, within limits, make significant choices.
As
Mr. Perry says, people may have "the genetic coding" to incline them to
alcoholism, but that doesn't necessarily mean they become alcoholics.
They may be fortunate enough to be born in one of the rare cultures in
which booze is not the drug of choice, cultures in which they might
become responsible users of hashish or peyote or coca leaves or a mild
opiate. Or they may be born in our culture into a social context where
drunkenness is strongly frowned upon and learn how to drink moderately —
or they may choose to abstain from alcohol entirely (as the AA people
would advise).
People can
be genetically primed to become alcoholics and for a number of reasons
not exhibit the behavior (or overcome it), and we usually praise them
for not becoming alcoholics and pretty much never condemn them for not
fulfilling their nature.
Genotype is only partly what determines phenotype.
Similarly,
one could be genetically primed (and imprinted or whatever) such that
by a very young age you are not attracted to the sex genetically other
than yours but to those of your own sex and gender. Crassly put, a
genetically XX
female person can be attracted to other XX female people, or XY males
to XY, with most of the direction of attraction established prior to
adolescence or even "the age of reason" (say, seven years old).
The question is then what one
does
with the attraction — one's sexual orientation — and a homosexual
person could choose to do without a sex life even as some heterosexuals
have done.
But very, very,
very
few people choose to do without a sex life, and for good and ill people
in our culture express who they are by their sexual choices even more
than by their choice of drugs or abstinence from drugs.
Which gets to the objections put to Mr. Perry as to when such choices are anybody's bloody business.
There
are people who can be pretty confident that their genetic makeup and
upbringing combine to make them strongly susceptible to alcoholism: for
sure people whose parents were both alcoholics, and whose extended
family and peers blatantly tended toward drunks. There is a good chance
that such people will become alcoholics if they use alcohol, and that
alcohol
ism, the expressed disease, will cause social problems.
And some of those problems can be serious: spouse and child abuse, drunk
driving, assaults, and worse; some people can be exceedingly mean
drunks.
As of now, most
of us would not have the State "intervene" with potential alcoholics,
and our experience with culture-wide Prohibition of alcohol was very
bad. But we do want strong social pressure on potential alcoholics to
lay off the booze, and many of us would even endorse sobriety as a
condition of probation for an alcoholic with a record of DUI.
And
that "strong social pressure" can include disapproval and
stigmatization, plus nagging and "interventions" even before there is
any criminal behavior or serious anti-social fuck-ups.
Now social condemnation of homosexuals — plus stigmatization, discrimination, and threat of criminal penalties up to
burning at the stake
(at least for male "sodomites)" — have been part or occasional parts of
Western civilization since Moses and, later, Caesar Augustus. Such
policies are pernicious and wicked, but
defensible.
Consider George
Orwell's comment in "Politics and the English Language" that in his time, 1946: "[…]
political speech and writing are largely the defence of the
indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the
Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on
Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too
brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the
professed aims of the political parties."
Similarly,
or similarly enough when I'm dealing seriously with the
homosexuality/alcohol analogy — similarly, condemnation of homosexuality
can be defended coherently but only by arguments too theological or
Machiavellian for most Americans to deal with.
"The Abominations in Leviticus" probably got there to preserve Israel's holiness and
Mary Douglas asserts plausibly
"that holiness is exemplified by completeness. Holiness requires that
individuals shall conform to the class to which they belong. And
holiness requires that different classes of things shall not be
confused." Homosexuality is sexcrime in Leviticus most directly because
it confuses male and female in the sex act, and Israel and "the
nations," specifically those gentile nations that were less hung up on
heterosexuality than the Jews, and/or whose major concern for status for
a guy was not the sex of the sex-partner but more on whether he was the
fuckor or the fuckee.
Anyway,
Douglas can make sense of many of the prohibitions in the Biblical Book
of Leviticus in terms of maintenance of categories, and as much as they
are in Leviticus by conscious, human choice, that's probably how they
got there. The sexual prohibitions, however, also make excellent sense
as part of a
pronatalist
program, and fit in with such programs outside of the Abrahamic
religions and, indeed, religion entirely. The logic is simple: most
human beings want sex; if you want lots of people for military and
economic reasons, do all you can to ensure that their sex acts are
likely to lead to reproduction and raising kids until those kids are old
enough for military and/or economic service (and/or more reproduction).
With Earth's
human population at over seven billion and climbing, pronatalism is a bad idea, but that's irrelevant if you accept as an "
undisputed maxim in government, ‘That people are the riches of a nation,’" or if you accept "Be fruitful and
multiply" as an absolute, enduring obligation — or if you accept Leviticus as part of a Bible that "is
without error
or fault in all its teaching" and that "the autographic text of
Scripture, ... in the providence of God can be ascertained from
available manuscripts with great accuracy."
Now
add here some pieces of Christian doctrine on salvation and damnation
and you get that homosexual acts put homosexuals in risk of damnation,
and open and notorious gayness tempts others to abomination, hence to
damnation: cf. condemnation of the
Serpent
in Eden in Genesis, and the fate of heretics, also logically killed
horribly as "both due vengeance to themselves, / And wholesome terror to
posterity," as the old play of
Gorboduc
says should be done with mere traitors to a kingdom and not those far
more dangerously putting at risk immortal souls of infinite value.
More, "
Choose life"
in Biblical terms means choosing life under God's Law, and choosing
otherwise can be deadly to oneself and to the community. Indeed, sodomy
puts the whole community — God's new Chosen, let's say, America — at
risk of destruction like unto that of Gomorrah and, way more to the
point,
Sodom.
Sooo
… so if Rick Perry had the wit and education to make the argument — and
any popular venue allowed him the time to make it — and if he didn't
want to be elected US President, he could argue that private sex lives
have public meaning, that "the personal is the political" with a
(divine) vengeance, and that homosexuality is far more a matter for
social, political, and legal consideration than alcoholism.
Indeed, back in the bad old days of that really Old Time Puritan Religion, he could start from a hard-ass
Calvinist
view and celebrate finding homosexuality largely genetic and pretty
much irresistible: God would make those he's eternally hated gay "in
thought, word, and deed," and therefore obviously deserving of the
damnation he has in store for them anyway.
But
the hard-ass Calvinist view raises the question of why a society should
bother to suppress vice (to keep the Elect from being annoyed, as a
practical matter) — and, more important here, Rick Perry is obviously
not a hard-assed Calvinist but one of those unconflicted believers in
free will. In Perry's Christian-inflected view: even as those
genetically predisposed to alcoholism can choose not to drink booze,
even so those genetically gay can choose to refrain from homosex (or any
sex). And homosexuals should so refrain if they don't want to be damned
or risk divine vengeance on America. And gays should definitely stay
closeted and not tempt the temptable, annoy the Elect, and make it
obvious that we American
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God deserve divine wrath for not suppressing homosexuality.
Now
in American culture, anyway, one's choice of drugs is fairly important
for who one is, and total abstinence more so, especially among
subcultures where heavy drinking is the norm. Which gets us to a useful
analogy between alcohol use and homosexual acts — Prohibition of either
is very stupid and dangerous — and the question of whether those who'd
compare the two would have a right or obligation to use more moderate
means to discourage both.
My
answer for society is that we're endangering human civilization in
encouraging births and, if anything, we ought to be encouraging people
to focus their sex lives on sex that is not reproductive: contraception
to start with, but much of the Xtube gamut as well.
Away from law and public policy, however, I'm more ambivalent.
I
was intellectually brung up, in part, in the biological sciences, and
I'm convinced that between genetics and environment ("nature and
nurture") there's not a whole lot of space for the exercise of free
will. On the other hand, I was also brought up intellectually when
Existentialism was in fashion, and I would like to believe that
"Existence precedes essence" and that — even given a shitload of "
facticity" — we define who we are by what we choose to do, or refrain from doing.
But
philosophical thought isn't really my strong suit, and I'll resolve
this issue as much as I can starting from a concrete scene in a movie.
The scene is from DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, the one with Jared Leto's character Rayon
meeting with Rayon's father.
It's
a brilliant scene in all ways I could notice, including makeup,
hairstyling, and costuming. It's the first time we see Rayon —
apparently an XY person — in men's clothing, and in men's clothing he's
in drag. And that is the point, and one that leads to a further point:
Rayon in men's clothing is a violation of what Orry calls "Rale" in
Ursula K. Le Guin's
City of Illusions and which the older man Falk understands as Tao (from the
Tao Te Ching). The male costuming on Rayon isn't just sartorially off but violates the Tao of Rayon, the personal being of the character.
Well, duh, you might say.
Well,
you might — you got this far in this blog post — but Rick Perry and a
lot of other Americans might find that assessment weird, or wicked.
Rayon's
sex life, or Jared Leto's or yours or mine, is none of their business;
Rayon's public presentation of self however — that's something the
neighbors and friends and family can have opinions on and comment on.
Rayon
comes across right in female clothing and somehow off in male.
Unsolicited, I'll make that comment, and, since Rayon is fictional, we
can let it go with my expressing my opinion that s/he should stick to
women's clothing.
Meeting
his father in his father's office, Rayon notes that he "didn't make the
cut" for a photograph (of his father's other children?), and his father
says, "You've made that choice yourself." Rayon responds, "It wasn't a
choice, Dad."
Okay,
Rayon's sexuality wasn't a choice: he could form one or more homoerotic
relationships — I recall him in only one in the film — or he could do
without sex and deny himself as a sexual being. Still, how he dresses
both is and is not a choice. Rayon can dress as a male obviously: we see
him that way in this scene, and it's mentioned in the dialog. But,
again, that's a prudent and courteous decision for him, but wrong; and
this is undoubtedly the case with a thousands of other transvestites
and, more so, transsexuals.
In
other cases, though, I am going to come down on the side of free will,
choice, and "the personal is the political (in complex ways)."
As
that Xtube (et X-al.) variety of uploaded variations makes clear, there
are lots of ways people present themselves for the public, and however
genetic gayness may be, the public presentation part is strongly
affected by the social milieu, and in the final steps leading from
genome to behavior, chosen.
As long ago as the 1960s, in, I think
On Aggression,
Konrad Lorenz pointed out that even in terms of stereotypes, there are
at least two for gays: the painted youth in a Weimar cabaret — Lorenz
was born in 1903 — and Achilles. Achilles's sexuality was complex, but
it's the stereotypes that count here: the "f*ggot" in the cabaret and
the super-masculine macho asshole, and/or epic hero.
Does
a gay male have the right to present himself at those extremes? Well,
of course. I'm a life member of the ACLU, and I'll defend to the point
of significant inconvenience pretty much all forms of expression. But
that which is legally done or even ethically done is not necessarily
worthily done.
And here I'll return (jerkily in terms of essay construction) to the concrete, and personal.
Sometime
in high school in Chicago, I did something unworthy and unwise but
instructive. Talking with a small group of friends I sniffed and
dismissed a guy out of earshot with, "TNSJ," a term I'd recently
learned. Given a quizzical look, I replied "Typical North-Side Jew,"
with which I was challenged, "And aren't you a typical North-side Jew?"
To which I replied something I'll stick with: "I hope I'm not a typical
anything." ("Only pigeons belong in pigeonholes.")
I
later learned the expression, among young Jewish guys of that time and
place, "Professional Jew." Also not a good thing to say, but ….
But
it's not good to reinforce stereotypes, especially by choices that move
one toward living a stereotype: only pigeons should limit themselves to
pigeonholes.
Rayon in
women's clothing is not a problem; but it is not good for gay males to
present themselves in ways that can be seen as a parody of femininity:
"The Feminine" viewed sexistly in terms of male chauvinism. To use a
distinction from the 1960s, repeated somewhere in the George Carlin
opus, but my formulation here: "¡F*g, sí; f*ggot no!"
Achilles
is an interesting literary character, but you probably wouldn't want
him and his bloodthirsty companions visiting your neighborhood. And the
world is way too full of macho assholes for any encouragement for any
guys, of whatever sexuality, to play that role. In this case, Be here
and queer, guys — but leave the heavy leather at home or in the dungeon.
So,
to Mr. Perry et al.: Keep the State out of the sex lives between and
among consenting adults, and be cautious trying to regulate even older
children. To all the neighbors and society more generally: generally,
mind your own business. How humans become gay or lesbian — or straight
or the rest of The Penthouse Variations and YouPorn potpourri — is an
interesting question but not a public policy issue like alcohol abuse;
homosex is not a social problem.
Alternatively,
if you are convinced any form of freely-chosen sexuality is a public
issue, spell out your logic, politely and civilly: too many places
already are bloody from religious violence; we don't need literal
culture wars in the USA.
How
people choose to present themselves is also, usually, nobody's
business. But if people are choosing to go stereotypical in mischievous
ways, a word or two is in order, best delivered civilly by a member of
their larger group.
