Gay Marriage Fact Check
by Jason GodeskyWhen slave owners tried to justify their practice, they came up with things like drapetomania—a psychological disorder that only affected negroes, causing them to flee captivity. A whole psuedo-science arose around the need to generate apologia for such a despicable practice. Today, the boundaries have moved forward, and today’s despicable practice—the second-class citizenship given to homosexuals—finds itself in similar need for pseudo-scientific hogwash to justify the bigotry that forms the basis of our systems of control and exploitation. Much of this defense consists of repeating patently untrue “facts,” over and over again, until they seem like they’re true. I’ve become sick of this perverse strategy and the damage it does to real human beings, so here’s a little fact check for some of the more common lies that the religious right has been repeating over and over again in the hopes that slander repeated often enough will become true.
1. Marriage has always been between one man and one woman.
Any anthropologist can tell you that this statement is patently absurd, and yet it forms the entire bedrock of the religious right’s case. First of all, monogamous unions are distinctly uncommon among human cultures. According to Murdoch’s Ethnographic Atlas, only 16% of the world’s cultures are monogamous, but 84% of the world’s cultures are polygamous (83% polygynous, 1% polyandrous). While our overall reproductive strategy skews K (see r-K Selection), males can easily reproduce even into old age; for males, the maximal strategy for genetic reproduction is to inseminate as many females as possible. In other words, males are more r selected. Females must invest time, effort and even life-threatening labor into offspring; this makes them inherently K reproducers. Where males seek to inseminate as many women as possible, females look for males who will help rear offspring and provide for them and their children. Polygamy is the perfect compromise for these two competing strategies; males get as many mates as they can support, while females have the providers they are looking for. By contrast, monogamy is enitrely a K strategy, entirely ignoring male interests. Humans are perfectly adapted to polygamy; if monogamy is the only form of marriage condoned by G-d, then the only, blasphemous conclusion left is that the Christian fundamentalist god is a piss-poor designer.
More to the point, even monogamous, homosexual unions are not uncommon in the ethnographic record. There is a wide-ranging tradition of a “third gender,” from the North American “Two-Spirits” like the Navajo nadleeh. In fact, it is far easier to list the Native American cultures that did not have some form of the two-spirit, than the vast majority that did. In many of these cultures, two-spirits were held in high regard—not only were they “permitted” to marry, they were often seen as having a shamanic calling, and possessing great power, twice that of a normal person with only one spirit. Nor were third genders only a North American phenomenon. Polynesian Fa’afafine were transgendered; the Zapotec Muxe often married other men; the Bugis of Sulawesi in Indonesia recognize three sexes and five genders. The most extreme case is probably that of the Sambia, Etoro, and other New Guinea tribes, who believe that semen holds all life, and that it is incumbent upon older men to give up some of their semen for young boys so they can grow healthy. The Etoro do not even believe that young boys have any semen until it is put into them. A woman who desires sex with men is considered an evil witch trying to steal their life away. Among them, the only sex that is socially sanctioned and experienced as pleasurable, is between older men and younger boys.
That is admittedly an extreme case, but it does show how bankrupt the religious right’s claim is. Most marriages have been between one man, and several women, but there is a long tradition, reflected both in the ethnographic record, and in our own history, of sanctioned homosexual unions, and even marriage.
2. Gay marriage undermines families.
I must admit, even in the bizarro world of Christian fundamentalism, I could never understand the “logic” of this one. Even if we accept the narrow, recent vision of the nuclear family as it’s been idealized in the United States in the past 50 years—and no longer than that—doesn’t a 50% divorce rate and serial monogamy pose a far greater danger to such an unrealistic and uncommon idea of the “family” than homosexuals forming families of their own? Anthropologically, “family” has been notoriously difficult to define, because the cross-cultural experience of “family” varies so widely (this PDF from MIT OpenCourseWare is an outline for the first of five lectures trying to come up with a definition; here’s three, 4, and 5). Many anthropologists have simply decided that a “family” is any group of people who call themselves a family. As already mentioned, the “American family” as typically portrayed is largely a product of post-war realities that are quickly fading into obsolescence, so it’s no surprise that our ideas of family must also change to keep pace. What is surprising is the complete lack of perspective that’s led so many to hysterically assert that such a recent and bizarre form of the family is somehow the only mode it’s ever seen. Families have often been extended, and kinship systems can be much more complicated than our own. Among the !Kung, someone who shares the same name is a sibling, and not in any figurative or metaphorical sense. In many societies, totems are used to reckon kinship for means of determining incest. In the Hawai’ian kinship system, all females of the mother’s generation—the mother, and all aunts, maternal or paternal—are considered mothers, and all males of the father’s generation—the father and all uncles—are fathers. So to have “two mommies” or “two daddies” in the Hawai’ian system is an unusually small family.
Gay marriage is hardly a major interruption in this range. This claim is usually made in the context of how gay marriage is harmful to children—that a single mother and a single father are somehow essential parts of the human condition. This is actually a radical departure from the real human condition. Among foragers, children typically maintain good relationships with their parents, in large part because they are not raised by solely one mother and one father. It’s usually the mother’s brother who takes on the role of disciplinarian. Children are raised less by the parents as mother-and-father, than by the band as a whole, hence Hillary Clinton’s slogan appropriated from some uncited “African” proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.”
Neither has any evidence been marshalled to support this absurd claim. South Park’s episode #910, “Follow that Egg!,” repeats the claim, over and over, that no study has ever conclusively shown the effect of homosexual parents on children. This is patently false. Many studies have been done, but they have all consistently shown that gay parents have absolutely no ill effects on their children.1, 2, 3 The only ill effects ever noted came solely from the prejuidice and bigotry of the homophobes trying to destroy their families and deny their right to exist. (That’s not entirely accurate—there have been a few studies indicating that gay parents might be slightly better for children, but let’s give the absurdists the benefit of the doubt and leave it simply as “no difference.”)
3. Marriage is about making babies.
Here, we start to get to the heart of the matter. Marriage is here used as a euphemism for “sex,” because we’re too uncomfortable with ourselves as animals to admit that we engage in such activities. The notion that sex exists solely for procreation is an idea that goes back to St. Augustine and an application of “natural law.” Augustine noted that all other animals engaged in sex only for procreation, and derived that recreational sex must be an egregious breach of natural law and a terrible sin. This idea has remained the ultimate cornerstone of Christian morality ever since, while the morals Jesus taught about forgiveness were pushed into the background—an understandable progression for a religion that betrayed its god so early in its history.
Like so many of our ideas (like Hobbes), this was developed on premises derived from a limited knowledge set. We now know the original rationale to be utterly and completely wrong, but we have not since revisited the reasoning, so the conclusion remains widely accepted even though the evidence for it has since disappeared. In this case, that evidence disappeared with the discovery of Pan paniscus, more commonly known as the pygmy, dwarf, or bonobo chimpanzee.
Bonobos are the only animals other than humans that engage in sex recreationally. For bonobos, such sexual activity replaces aggression as a means of resolving conflict—leading to the characterization of bonobos as the “hippies of the forest” that “make love, not war.”4
So, humans are not the only animals that engage in recreational sex. In fact, we and the bonobo are unique in the capacity for recreational sex. If we had estrous cycles like other animals, we would not have recreational sex. So, if G-d intended sex to be only for procreation and never recreation, why didn’t he create us like every other animal? Then we wouldn’t be able to commit such a sin. Why did G-d give us such a unique capability that he intended us to never use?
4. Only humans are so perverse as to be homosexual!
Bruce Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance provides over a thousand pages of detailed counter-examples. In fact, homsexuality is so commonplace through the Kingdom Animalia that this absurd statement is so brazenly false that it evidences an ignorance of G-d’s creation so profound as to question whether the claimant could identify anything as basic as a “cloud” or a “tree.”
The range of sexual behavior in non-human animals is as broad as it is among humans.
Every herder knows that certain traits can be selected for. If you want bigger cows, you let your biggest cow mate with your biggest bull, and you don’t let any of the others mate. After a few generations, your cows will be substantially bigger. Darwin’s idea of natural selection could be characterized as the notion that G-d is at least as smart as the average human herder, and that other elements in the environment could have the same effect by impacting the reproduction of some parts of the population differently than others.
Another thing every herder knows is that a random, 15% cull will produce a stronger herd—not culling the weak, the infertile, etc., but a random 15%. Homosexuality also provides a random cull, in that it limits reproduction. This is probably why there is such a long list of non-human animals that engage in homosexual acts. The prescence of homosexuality in animals is the norm; it’s the abscence of such behavior that is bizarre and requires explanation.
5. G-d hates fags!
If you get a fundie this far, congratulations. You’ve finally stripped away the excuses, the pseudo-scientific apologia, and the avalanche of bullshit they use to hide, obfuscate, and conceal the fact that they’re just the same kind of hateful bigot that gave us all those atrocities of the modern West, from the slave trade to the Holocaust, cut from the same cloth as Jim Crow, Adolf Hitler, and every other twisted villain who’s played the hatred and bigotry of the masses to oppress groups too small to defend themselves, as contemptible as any bully.
There is no basis for the opposition to gay marriage except this: in one novel and esoteric interpretation of Christian scriptures, homosexuality is a “sin.” The seperation of church and state—our right to sin if we so choose and the fact that virtue is meaningless if it is coerced, much less our right to believe differently—is precisely what they want to abolish. Increasingly they are calling quite explicitly for an American Christian theocracy. Ironically, while Southern Baptists demonize Thomas Jefferson for the seperation of church and state, at the time, they were staunch supporters.
Even though Jefferson was labeled anti-religion by some, he had become a hero to evangelicals—not in spite of his views on separation of church and state, but because of them. By this point, Jefferson had written his draft of the Virginia statute of religious freedom, and he and James Madison were known as the strictest proponents of keeping government and religion far apart. Because Baptists and other evangelicals had been persecuted and harassed by the majority faiths—the Anglicans in the South and the Puritan-influenced Congregationalists in the North—these religious minorities had concluded that their freedom would only be guaranteed when majority faiths could not use the power of the state to promote their theology and institutions.5
Like other minorities that become majorities, they want to pull the ladder up behind them. Like any bully, they’re craven when they’re alone or outnumbered, but as soon as there’s more of them, they’re more than willing to commit all the crimes they cried so loudly against before. It’s difficult to think of an image more despicable and loathsome—or more accurate in its portrayal of America’s religious right.
The great irony, of course, is that the Bible could not care less about homosexuality. It is a huge book, yet combing through it closely, these bigots have only found six “clobber verses” that they can twist, through a combination of sophistry and total historical ignorance, into mentions of anti-homosexuality. In actual fact they are, at best, ambiguous—at worst, celebratory. In the main, though, the Bible is unconcerned with homosexuality—it prefers to spend its time on forgiveness, not judging others, social justice for the poor and the widows—in short, everything the religious right is against. Naturally, they do not say anything about the Bible’s gay heroes, like Ruth & Naomi, or David & Jonathan.
Reading Paul seems very damning at first—unless you know Greek, and notice that he’s referring to temple prostitutes. Then, it is much more like the oft-cited laws in Leviticus, regularly quoted out of all context so that no one will realize that these are injunctions against the worship of Molech. In all of the most damning of the “clobber verses,” the injunctions are not against homosexuality, but cruel pagan rituals that included, amidst other things like burning children alive, ritual homosexual acts.
The interpretation of the sin of Sodom as homosexuality is a rather recent one, and nowhere found in the Bible. The Bible does say what Sodom’s sin was—the Prophet Jeremaiah implies that their sin had something to do with adultery, deceit or other, generalized “wickedness,” and Ezekiel quite explicitly states that Sodom’s sin was pride and a failure to aid “the poor and needy,” items that do not appear on the religious right’s agenda—but nowhere in the Bible will you see Sodom condemned for homosexuality. Josephus claimed their sin was pride; in the Talmud, it is cruelty and greed, as in the Midrash. Of course, fundamentalists are no strangers to such blasphemy; they routinely prefer the teachings of their own pastors to the interpretations offered in scripture itself.
In fact, Jesus only refers to homosexuality if we accept the novel interpretation of Sodom and Gemorrah adopted by fundamentalist Christians in contradiction to the Bible’s teachings; even in this interpretation, though, the only thing Jesus has to say on the subject is–repeatedly–that the Last Day will render far harsher judgements on various religious leaders who look after their own wealth and political power by sowing intolerance and bigotry with a deceitful interpretation of G-d’s Scriptures.
5. If we allow gay marriage, then everyone will become gay!
The only more basic element to the homophobic hysteria of American political discourse than the bigoted, nigh-diabolical twisting of scripture, is the sheer terror of closeted homosexuals and others who lack any sense of who they are and cling to hatred as a means of delaying a confrontation with their own Shadow. Paul Cameron, for example, the founder of the so-called “Family Research Council” and an oft-cited “authority” (with no credentials) on sexuality by the religious right, had this to say:
If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get—and that is what homosexuality seems to be—then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm….
I’m convinced that lesbians are particularly good seducers. People in homosexuality are incredibly evangelical. It’s pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush. They are committed in almost a religious way. And they’ll take enormous risks, do anything….
Martial sex tends toward the boring end. Generally, it doesn’t deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does.6
Evangelicals talk about homosexuality as if it were some kind of disease, and while it was listed in the DSM in the “bad old days” of psychiatry, homosexuality is not like cancer.7 The idea that allowing gays to exist in society might lead to an epidemic of gayness is not only contradicted by all those societies that had a proper place for homosexuals and remained at the normal 15%, it also runs on an assumption that everyone else’s sexuality is a fragile thing hanging by a thin cord, ready to snap at the merest existence of an example. This argument simply does not make sense unless we take, as a premise, that we’re all closeted homosexuals simply waiting for the social sanction to abandon our spouses and children to fulfill all the wild, homosexual fantasies we’ve nursed in the long years of our unfulfilling sex lives, hiding away our secret shame and forcing ourselves to live the “normal” life we’d rather not. In short, it only makes sense if we’re homosexual, and in denial. The fact that this argument remains so prevalent regardless is certainly telling about where this is all coming from, though, isn’t it?
Conclusion: Evangelical Christians are Devil-worshippers.
Gnosticism is one of my favorite kinds of Christianity, and I could certainly bring up the Demiurge here, but let’s look at what we’re left with, if we accept the Evangelical Christian’s claims to speak for the Almighty.
- G-d intelligently designed humans. He made us as perfectly adapted to polygamy, but he only wants us to be monogamous in heterosexual unions.
- Any population with a 15% random cull will produce a stronger whole. So, any population in which homosexuality arises will do better than one where it doesn’t. So, even if G-d snapped everything into existence a mere 5,000 years ago as purely heterosexual, homosexuality in animals would immediately jump up and stabilize at 15%. So, under the rules G-d devised, at any given time, any animal population must be 15% homosexual. G-d hates homosexuals, but the rules of his creation require a substantial number of them.
- G-d intends humans to live in a very specific family structure, but made it a very non-intuitive structure that was very unlikely to emerge on its own, relies on an extremely unlikely coincidence of converging resources, and is extremely difficult and expensive to maintain. As a result, almost no one ever figured it out.
- G-d doesn’t want us to have recreational sex, so naturally, he gave us and bonobos the unique ability in the animal kingdom to have recreatonal sex.
- In all of this, G-d created his universe along lines that required things he despises, and kept the knowledge of his hatred quiet, finally letting a few Semitic nomads in on the cosmic joke.
In this scenario, G-d set us up. He created us, stacked the deck against us, and kept secrets from us to ensure our damnation. Why? Do the tortured screams of the damned simply make him giddy? If he’s so merciful, why didn’t he make a universe that was inclined against the things he hated? Or at least let us know what bizarre and arbitrary standards he was holding us to?
The G-d posited by Evangelicals is an evil god—or incredibly stupid, it’s hard to tell.
I don’t think G-d is evil, or stupid. I think G-d’s message is written more clearly in his creation than it has ever been in scripture. I don’t think Evangelicals are speaking for anything but their own bigotry and hatred, and that makes them an incredible force of evil in this world that must be stopped. If there’s any spirit involved in this at all, it is most certainly not any god I would ever worship, but it just might be a different spirit, that also likes to go about making jealous claims to monotheistic devotion.
Stewart v. Bennett
Bennett Look, it’s a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a woman.
Stewart I disagree, I think it’s a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.
Angry? You bet. With the gay marriage thing in the news, and people actually taking this seriously … this should not be a matter of discussion. This is open and shut. There is no other side here, and the very thought that we’re here pretending like they have some kind of point enrages me.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 June 2006 @ 5:11 PM
First of all… down, boy. Calm down and have a Natural Brew. Second of all…
I’m not sure you could compare Jim Crow to Adolf Hitler. Jack McFarland, perhaps, but not Hitler.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 8 June 2006 @ 5:17 PM
I’ll calm down as soon as I hear one of these bastards answered on CNN with, “Yes, but you’re insane, and what you’re saying is absolutely foundless. Being an insane, stupid, and evil creature, no one gives a damn what you have to say.” When they are thus put into their proper perspective, I can be calm again.
Yes, I know Jim Crow wasn’t a real person … but when people drop Hitler’s name they’re not talking about a real person, either.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 June 2006 @ 5:20 PM
But Hitler WAS a real person, and he DID kill millions of real people, unlike Jim Crow, who was merely a loathsome stereotypical character. By even trying to compare the two, you’re not only Godwinizing yourself, but you’re also overstating your case to a ridiculous degree.
This would have been a really great article, worthy of reprinting all over the internet, if not for such examples of your anger running away with you and turning it into a shrill screed. Yes, it’s horrible that these homophobic views are taken seriously. But that doesn’t mean we have to turn into the people we’re fighting against. They’re losing - and yes, when you feel the need to preface a homophobic statement with “I’m not a homophobe, but…” or an attack on the freedom of people to live as they choose with “I think everyone should have the freedom to live as they choose…” that DOES mean you’re losing - and it’s because all they have to their arguments is emotion. (Specifically, “yuck,” “ew,” and “ick.”) When the facts are on your side, you don’t need to stoop to their level.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 8 June 2006 @ 5:36 PM
Jason.
This’ll be the 2nd or 3rd time you’ve posted about the flawed rhetoric of anti-gays. Is there a personal reason, or are you just fed up with them?
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 8 June 2006 @ 6:24 PM
Just fed up. I can’t stand such deceptive practices, and I can’t stand this “debate,” as if the freedom of another human being is something for us to talk about and decide amongst ourselves like some kind of lunch order. There are some things that are simply not up for discussion. Talk to me about how Xenu, Prince of Space, bound the Thetans inside a volcano billions of years ago and blew it up with thermonuclear bombs–it’s a far more reasonable discussion to be having.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 June 2006 @ 6:30 PM
In that case, I guess there couldn’t possibly be any parallels. Furthermore, Adolf Hitler was a mammal. Since Hitler is evil, we can therefore conclude that the character of Jim Crow was, in fact, written to be an ampibian. In many ways, he was a precursor to Kermit the Frog.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 8 June 2006 @ 7:35 PM
Actually, in many ways, he was a precursor to Kermit the Frog. Kermit picks up a lot of minstrel elements, as did a lot of cartoon icons, like Mickey Mouse.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 June 2006 @ 7:41 PM
Yeah… fed up is right. This debate is nonsense. But I’m wondering…
Jason: gays, oddballs, and other freaks (many of our so-called mental disorders), in tribal situations, are seen and celebrated for their unique views and contributions. They can often be shamans of their tribe. I see you defending one of your “own” a bit more passionately; the underdogs in this culture. I think it reveals a bit of your private and sensitive side, in a backhanded way. I think it’s cool and sincere.
Comment by JCamasto — 8 June 2006 @ 8:19 PM
I’m not saying you should never compare Hitler to anyone. I wrote a whole article about that, remember? But that doesn’t mean you should compare Hitler to everyone. Stalin, I could get behind. Mao, sure. But Jim Crow? Yeah, Hitler and Jim Crow’s creator were both racist, but that’s where the parallel ends. It ends pretty hard at the “fictional character” point and again at the “who killed millions of people” point.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 9 June 2006 @ 9:07 AM
Hitler did many things besides engineer the Holocaust, and in the context I was using it, I was very obviously referring to Hitler as one point on a spectrum of atrocities where Hitler gets a mention not only for the Holocaust, but for the entire cynical manner in which he exploited bigotry to obtain power for himself. Hitler is less a person than a symbol of that entire complex, in exactly the same way that Jim Crow is a symbol of American racism. The phrase “Jim Crow” in the United States does not refer to the minstrel character nearly so strongly as the Jim Crow laws. So the context was quite clearly two different symbols (whether the original character was real or not is largely irrelevant–just like the “historical Jesus” is largely irrelevant to modern Christian theology) representing the cynical abuse of biogtry to obtain political power, and the codificaton of such bigotry as law. I think it’s very much an apt comparison.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 June 2006 @ 9:17 AM
If anti-gay marriage proponents are gonna argue point #3, then they need to include infertile couples, “fixed” couples, elderly couples who can no longer have children, and couples who don’t want children on their ineligible-for-marriage list.
Comment by Raku — 9 June 2006 @ 9:30 AM
How can you compare Hitler to Stalin? Sure, they were both oppressive dictators, but that’s where the parallel ends. I mean, come on. Stalin was Georgian. Hitler was Austrian. They’re clearly not the same. And really, context be damned. What’s the point of comparing two things unless they are identical in every way?
See Jason, what you should have said is that Hitler is like Hitler. Can’t argue with that, can you?
Comment by Mike Godesky — 9 June 2006 @ 9:46 AM
I think it’s an excellent posting. It’s not as objective or impartial as it could be, but that is the author’s choice.
Comment by Dan — 9 June 2006 @ 9:53 AM
This is a good article. Angry, but good. Reading it, I was considering how my socially conservative-christian mother would respond to it. She probably would argue that its less about marriage in other cultures (and would probably see your example of the Etoro as a reason to protect marriage), but rather that since its been a foundation of OUR culture it should be “protected” as such. It strikes me as similar to the argument that English should be the official language of the U.S. (the gay marriage issue having much more explicit hatred surrounding it). Both seem to be attempts at top-down control to prevent social decay. I’d be interested in hearing your opinion of this issue from the perspective of collapse. Is this issue really about a desperate effort by the status-quo to ward off an inevitable social collapse? Obviously its misguided, but I think most people at some level feel things crumbling around them and tend to place blame on people with different sexuality, skin-color, language, income, etc.
Comment by chris — 9 June 2006 @ 10:19 AM
If it’s just about our culture, then that implies that it doesn’t have to be this way, and that other ways have been used, successfully. A lot of people see the Etoro as an example of how “sick” homosexual society would become, but it also shows just how extreme cultural construction is—we think of pedophilia as one of the most basically horrific and unquestionably wrong things that can be done, but that’s not necessarily so. Most importantly, the Etoro have never committed a Holocaust, so to quote a book no Christian would ever read, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Society is beginning to buckle. Adjustments and changes are being made to adapt to the present reality. This will only continue to increase. The weak who have no personal center can only define themselves in terms of the safe, comfortable systems they’ve always known, and cynical politicians will always manipulate their fears, inflate them into irrational hatred adn bigotry, and use that to motivate the mob for their own power.
Of course, with collapse, you can’t afford to cling blindly to the old patterns as they become outdated and obsolete. You can’t afford to marginalize a whole segment of your society. Traditional societies incorporated marginal elements, rather than alienated them. Shamans, two-spirits, and others were given a place in society, rather than removed from it. We cannot afford to exclude people on such useless criteria. If we do, we will die. Period.
If there’s any solace in this, it’s knowing that these cretins will not survive to see the next century. They will either cease to be such cretins and repent of their ways, or they’ll be dead. Cold solace, to be sure, but there it is.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 June 2006 @ 10:32 AM
My parents told me when I was 18 that if I was gay, they’d disown me because they loved me, they loved me so much. And I would have to leave with the clothes on my back. Needless to say I understood that to be supremely upgefucked and yet I was still devastated that my own mother could say such ugly things to me, the summer before I was to leave for college.
24 years later, I look back on that episode and I’m actually grateful for it, because it was some sort of cosmic confirmation that something in my world was off, and in the intervening years I’ve been able to watch the nuttiness unfold around me without getting too wrapped up in it all. For gosh sakes, the town I went to high school in was the site of ye olde Columbine massacre!
It’s because my parents threatened me with banishment that I have developed a flexibility and a willingness to look elsewhere for familial bonds. And to see that “liberal-biased reality” and even Gaia and the Gods and Goddesses themselves actually support me in my gay Self-hood has been received as a real gift and blessing.
My parents have come around in the years since then, though I’m not “out” with them about my forays into shamanism, wicca and gnosticism. And I’ve tried to speak with my mom about peak oil, but she says it’s all a hoax and quotes some fellow she heard on TV “who’s real smart.”
Today I came across a wonderful statement that summed it all up for me that relates directly to what’s spoken here. It was in a book by June Singer called Seeing Through the Visible World. I think it was +Rosamonde Miller of the Ecclesia Gnostica in Palo Alto who commented that people are intoxicated by their own ignorance.
The demented, frantic look in the Pat Robertsons and Ann Coulters of this world have always reminded me of my drunk Uncle Art who died at age 52 of all sorts of toxic sludge coursing through his body. It was emphysema that killed him, but he was filled with other sorts of drugs, not the least of which was resolute ignorance. (Not to say that I’m any different. One bit of German Chocolate Cake and I wonder if I’ll ever been again!) These Uncle Arts of the world serve as examples of “there but for the grace of [insert god-concept here] go I.” The question I now ask when someone wants to present a range of choices for me with one earmarked they’d really like for me to make is to ask myself “does this person have what I want?” Usually that answer is “NO FUCKING WAY!” I have witnessed others being serene and calm and joyful. Usually people are taking some kinds of actions they wouldn’t necessarily have chosen unless someone else had modeled it for them–helping others, reaching out and asking for help, taking inventory of one’s own character, etc. If people are walking the walk, they can talk the talk. But more often than not they don’t even have to do that and it’s best they zip the lip. They’re embodying the spark that’s within.
Comment by Richard Morell — 9 June 2006 @ 11:13 AM
“Another thing every herder knows is that a random, 15% cull will produce a stronger herd—not culling the weak, the infertile, etc., but a random 15%.”
Speaking as an ignorant non-herder, what is the mechanism that allows a random 15% cull to result in a stronger herd? Is it simply the increased per-capita food, water etc., or am I missing something more complex?
If this really is the case, then a 15% cull selecting for the weakest and least functional members of the herd would result in AT LEAST as much increase in herd strength, since you are not only increasing per capita resources, but also getting rid of “dead weight”.
Comment by Clive — 9 June 2006 @ 11:29 AM
Hey Clive –
I’ve never seen an explanation of this random cull, but my guess would be that a non-random cull would have a good chance of eliminating ‘good’ genes (via gene-complexes) as well as ‘bad’ genes.
By contrast, a ‘random’ cull is not truly random, but it is not weighted for a single, or small set of, characteristics. Rather, it ‘targets’ the overall composition of the individual animals. So when farmers/herder try to mimick this functionality, the closest they can get to real natural selection is to use a truly random cull.
Does that make any sense?
Janene
Comment by Janene — 9 June 2006 @ 11:35 AM
“If it’s just about our culture, then that implies that it doesn’t have to be this way, and that other ways have been used, successfully.”
Yes, there are other ways. Some better, some worse. However, our culture is the one being protected. Though I disagree with the method, I can understand the motivation. Marriage between a man and a women has been a fundamental component of our culture for centuries. When people see things falling apart they want to cling to what they know, what they believe holds them together. Other ways of doing things, successfull or not, don’t often make it on the radar.
“Of course, with collapse, you can’t afford to cling blindly to the old patterns as they become outdated and obsolete. You can’t afford to marginalize a whole segment of your society.”
I agree. My point was that perhaps this bizarre gay marriage issue has to do with people trying to hold on to old patterns during a period of deterioration. I guess I’m trying to suggest that their motivations may be more complicated than “God hate’s fags.”
Comment by chris — 9 June 2006 @ 12:16 PM
Thank you for posting this. I was so incensed when I saw that interview on the Daily Show. I’ve been a fan of your website for almost a year now, and I’m very impressed and persuaded by your work. Thanks.
Comment by Jordan Mechano — 9 June 2006 @ 1:04 PM
Chris–if it can work, then what justification do we have for destroying people’s lives? I fail to see how my comfort can justify destroying someone else’s life.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 June 2006 @ 1:25 PM
So some future tribes having taboos against gay marriage for whatever reason while others accepting it is fine? I guess you could argue that pedophilia could destroy people’s lives. At least it does in this culture, because of its context. But then again, what doesn’t destroy lives in this culture?
Comment by Raku — 9 June 2006 @ 2:02 PM
Jason–I agree. We have no real justification for it. I guess I’m attempting to point out that there may be more behind the justifications given (boiled down: God hates fags). I think that the people behind this seemingly insane movement have more than their own comfort in mind–they are desperately trying to keep their culture from falling apart. This is the only way such a strange issue makes sense to me.
Comment by chris — 9 June 2006 @ 2:28 PM
That’s true, but just a little bit deeper than that, why do they want to preserve this culture? Cultures change–even the most stable cultures change, all the time. Change is the only constant. So the goal is hopeless from the very start. Why is it so important to preserve this culture? Why do we need to keep this one, and not another one? The only sensible answer is personal comfort–fear of change. This is what I’ve known my whole life, and there’s something out there that’s different, something I don’t know, and it scares me. And what is it that scares us most of all, the thing we understand least, but that person in the mirror? The culture we’ve always known is our security blanket that keeps that mean boogey-man away, lets us continue to hide, most of all from ourselves. And if I need to crush untold numbers of innocent people in the ground so I won’t have to face myself, then so be it.
I couldn’t write a better villain if I tried.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 June 2006 @ 2:38 PM
The answer to the gay marriage “problem” is really very simple and inherent in the idea of separation of church and state. The state should perform no marriages at all. Marriage is a religious sacrament. The State should only be performing civil unions. If you want to be married, go to your priest, rabbi, imam, shaman or whatever. This way the christian idea of homosexual marriage being anathema is moot. If you don’t want a christian marriage, don’t get one. A civil union would be sufficient to allow the legal rights any committed couple (or triad…or whatever…) has a right to.
Comment by Valnurana — 9 June 2006 @ 2:41 PM
And so the original folly comes to bite us in the ass. But noooo, Napoleon couldn’t stand to think there was a part of human life he didn’t control. That’s where the notion of “legal marriage” came from, and we began to build our laws on that assumption of the marriage license. Only now do you get a case to illustrate how ridiculous that idea was from the start.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 June 2006 @ 2:45 PM
Thanks Janene, but I’m still not convinced on this culling issue. Perhaps Jason could give us a reference?
Comment by Clive — 9 June 2006 @ 2:46 PM
I like that Jason. Perhaps our identity is so wrapped up in our culture that we can’t conceive of “being” without the culture to prop us up. In a sense, it is a comfort thing for people. But I think you are on the right track when you talk about fear of change. It is a fear of death: death of culture equals death of individual. Of course this is wrong, but I think a lot of people think it.
Comment by chris — 9 June 2006 @ 2:48 PM
I’ve read the random 15% culling in several sources, but I’ve yet to find a good discussion of the mechanism. This is frustrating, because that’s the obvious first question.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 June 2006 @ 3:00 PM
For Christians to be so terrified of losing their culture is indicitive of where they really place their faith. When one becomes a Christian their identity becomes one with Christ, the person of Christ defines who they are. That so many Christians identify completely with this culture, and will go to such great and evil lengths to save it, tells me that you are close to the truth when you say they are devil worshipers. Though I don’t think all of them are this way. Many, including myself, are highly critical of this culture and along with the rest of creation are waiting with “eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”
Comment by chris — 9 June 2006 @ 3:03 PM
I actually count as a Christian–depending on who you ask. A lot of Christians would deny that I’m one of them, for instance. My Christology is quite Gnostic. But the “Christ” your average evangelical Christian is identifying with is not the same Christ that lived and died two millennia ago. Christianity turned its back on that Christ a long, long time ago. So, if “Christian” refers to a follower of Christ, I’m most certainly a Christian. If it means, “one who follows the set of doctrines set by Paul and the Emperor Constantine to undo everything Christ tried to accomplish,” then I’m the opposite of a Christian. All depends on what the word means, which no one seems to be able to tell me.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 June 2006 @ 3:09 PM
“Growers - of anything from cereals to cattle - similarly use random culling to improve their stock.”
In Animals in Translation, author Temple Grandin talks about the genetics of domesticated animals. What I recall is that though she didn’t talk about culling per se, she did talk about the implied opposite of random culling - breeding for certain traits. What ends up happening is that when you breed for a few certain characteristics (or even just one), the gene potential becomes narrower and narrower because you only select the animals that fit the ONE criteria. Then the animals produced over successive generations have extraordinarily similar genetic makeup. She gives examples of dogs - where breeding of labrador retrievers, for example, has emphasized docility (to make them family dogs) they’re ending up with a lot of genetically inherited disorders because there’s no new “fresh blood” so to speak.
She says to watch out for animals becoming essentially cuckoo because of this phenomenon - look at dalmations which apparently loose their cool very easily, and some would say their intelligence as well. Grandin says an animal with lots of white shows a sign of too little genetic wildness (speaking of domesticated animals that don’t occur as white naturally). They’re often very high strung, among other problems that I don’t recall.
What a truly random cull would do is take out some of the breeding stock that had hitherto been bred for. So you’ve been breeding for giant brahmin cattle and a cull takes out your largest bull and leaves your smallest cow - well, now her genes get a chance to enter the mix where they wouldn’t have before because she didn’t fit the criteria. Ideally, her genetic information includes some aspects of wildness that the big bull didn’t have - maybe an immunity to a certain disease or a tendency toward easy birthing….
There’s something to be said for hybrid vigor (and I don’t mean hybridized crops that don’t produce viable seed, only hybrid in the sense of two “lineages” coming together)…
neighbor
Comment by neighbor — 9 June 2006 @ 5:55 PM
Whenever anyone starts spewing the horseshit about homosexuality being a choice, I respond with, “Wow really? So at what age were you forced to make the choice between going straight or gay?”
It shuts them right up every time.
Feel free to use it.
Comment by Peter — 10 June 2006 @ 2:59 AM
Yeah, that one never really made much sense to me either. As though any of us have a say in who we fall in love with.
If only.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 10 June 2006 @ 11:58 AM
You can talk yourself into loving someone fairly easily. Just like at my past dating record…. Really, knowing anyone deeply enough is bound to result in love.
Whether or not you find them to be a hot slice of sex is a different matter altogether.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 10 June 2006 @ 1:08 PM
I like the “you just haven’t met the right girl” excuse. Because, see, the moral thing to do would be to hurt your boyfriend by breaking up with him, then hurt some girl by leading her on and making her think you have feelings for her that you don’t, and essentially just going ’round the world breaking heart after heart in one fruitless attempt after another to change who you are so some bigot doesn’t have to feel uncomfortable.
That would be the ethical thing to do, don’tcha know.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 10 June 2006 @ 1:51 PM
One of my most vivid memories of junior high at an all-boy’s private Catholic school was the torment that one gay student experienced at almost every break. Imagine a pack of dogs chasing after a solitary fox to get the picture. Let’s call this student “Jimmy”. One day Jimmy had a miscommunication between classes with a much larger guy. The bigger guy called a friend, “Hey you fag.” Poor Jimmy, who must have been nearing the end of his rope at the point, spun around and shouted, “Stop calling me a fag!”, spat on the bigger guy, and took off. The bigger guy quickly caught him and had him down on the ground at his feet. As he was standing over the cowering Jimmy who had curled up into a fetal position to prepare for the kicks, one of the older priests came strolling by on the way to his next class. “Father, please make him stop”, pleaded Jimmy. Without slowing down any, the old priest simply spat back, “Must you always provoke people, Mr. _____?” and marched off.
I’ll never forget that. A priest. A fucking priest didn’t stop the confrontation. I thought to myself, if you won’t stop this sort of thing from happening on school grounds then what use are you?
Comment by Peter — 10 June 2006 @ 2:09 PM
Are there any cultures where more than one woman and man can marry eachother at the same time? In other words, could my second wife have a second husband, etc? And would you then be married to the husband too? That sounds like a pretty killer social arrangement to me, have a married family with several husbands and wives all married. Wouldn’t that piss some people off. Of course, it wouldn’t be all that different than cultures with close interfamily bonds and wifesharing (like old Hawai’i).
Comment by limukala — 10 June 2006 @ 2:57 PM
Peter: That’s horrible. Did Jimmy end up okay in the end? Do you know?
limukala: That hasn’t been the case in any naturally evolving societies; only utopian ventures such as hippie communes and the like have attempted to set up such arrangements. And they’re usually undone by jealousy and love triangles and such. It’s pretty much a choice between monogamy, polygyny, or polyandry.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 10 June 2006 @ 4:05 PM
The bigger guy only tapped Jimmy lightly a couple of times with his shoe before leaving. I think he knew that it was all a big misunderstanding.
However, he showed far more decency than the old priest.
Comment by Peter — 10 June 2006 @ 4:37 PM
Well presumably, if you’re “meeting the right girl,” then that means you’re not just “leading her on and making her think you have feelings for her that you don’t.” Having feelings for her is sort of an inherent property of “the right girl.”
Comment by Mike Godesky — 10 June 2006 @ 7:49 PM
But the path to finding “the right girl” is likely to be strewn with broken hearts. Personally, I think this binary view of human sexuality into a strict straight/gay dichotomy is utter, utter hogwash. Anyone, under the right circumstances, could be gay. Everyone could be straight, too. The question is, under what circumstances? How much effort is worth it, to placate the insecurities of bigots? My answer: very, very little.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 10 June 2006 @ 9:17 PM
No more so than it is for anybody else. Most people don’t find “the one” on their first try.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 11 June 2006 @ 8:44 AM
Yes, more so than it is for straight people, because the person in this particular example is gay, and goes into every relationship he has with a woman with the knowledge that it’s an experiment to try to get himself to turn straight. There’s an inherent problem there: he’s not romantically interested in ANY of these women and by definition can’t be, but instead is using them to change himself.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 11 June 2006 @ 2:50 PM
Someone above had the right answer to the random culling making the herd stronger. When you selectively breed, you do narrow the gene pool, leaveing open sucepatbility disease, among many other things, and you prevent DNA from working it’s “response to the environment” magic.
The less variability you have among the species, the more narrow the randomness of sexual(two genetically seperate gametes) breeding can be. In fact, cloning could very well kill TA as baacteria and fungi divide and conquer these monotypes.
Think of genetics as a landscape. A mountain-like region is difficult to cross, whereas a flat lanscape is easy to cross.
Microorganisms reproduce in the conditions that are best to them. Because they reporduce sexually, they are coonstantly sending an army that is randomly able to cross differing types of landscapes. Once a sexual pair finds a way across the mountains of our DNA, that is the beginning of an outbreak of new disease. Through increasing the mountain folds by allowing genetic diversity, we prevent this form happening to ever-increasing populations. By making the landscape flat, we are making ourselves wide open to total annihilation within a few generations (of the opportunitics organisms, which can be weeks or even days long), not mammilian generations.
let me give you an interesting example.
Last week, while preparing new cultures from the wild for sterile growing conditions, I experiemented, and rather than using my standard H2O2 decontamination, I experiemented with sodium hypoclorite (bleach). For the most part, my agar plates were sterile, but the ones that were not sterile had extremely viguorous, even dangerous looking strains of Trichoderma.
Within two days, these strains had made enormous colonies in the otherwise sterile plates, and risked contaminating my entire work for last weekend. As soon as I saw these vigourous, dangerous strains, I taped the plates shut and took them directly outside to the garbage can. They were so vigourous that the white mycelia had already sporulated, giving it its charateristic green appearance.
At first, I was baffled, I had never seen such a vigourous, scary looking strain before, and that’s when it dawned on me. These strains were resistant to the cell membrane-bsuting action of the sodium hypoclorite that is often found in our water. Happy for me, I had just bought a water filter, and I now have sworn off any treated drinking water.
by putting pressure on this species to not exist, I selected and found at least two spores that wasn’t effected by the hypoclorite action. I caused the “death” of my own fungi species, and lost an entire strain.
But as far as gay people are concerned, they are a difficult minority to deal with because they expose many of the things about us that contradict the fundamentalist christian way of life. They show us that we are not one species, but each one of us, genetic mutants taking the journey of evolution. They show us that we are not who we were today, and that we will not be the same in future generations. Giving a voice to genetics and the importance of ending preferrential breeding through the gay rights movement is going to cause a lot of suffering as the demons of sameness, and the ego trip are slowly made more and more unavoidable.
It is very important for “straight” people to come out in support for these issues, not to accuse Jason of beign a zero on the Kinsey scale.
As we, the children of MTV and the interent start becoming adults, we ought not to treat ourselves as outsiders with no power, but as adults with a voice in shaping our communities future.
As with all arguements, those with the facts on their side will win eventually, even if we have to wait for those homophobic bastards to die.
Comment by tony — 11 June 2006 @ 2:55 PM