Herodotus in his
Histories describes the primitive tribes that lived on the western shore of the Caspian sea in ancient times. Some, he reported, were said to "couple in the open...like animals in herds." Perhaps that's what we as a culture are coming to: animalism.
But before getting to that, a brief review: Modesty means keeping private things private. I argued that our country's radically revising its longstanding collective opinion on homosexuality, placing a gold star of approval on men "marrying" men, would also mean approving the culture that too often goes with male homosexuality. The normalization of that culture would hurt women by pressuring them to adapt, even more than now, to male crudity -- represented in its most extreme form by a strain of gay culture. Our prime illustration was the shamelessly crude writing of gay activist Dan Savage at Seattle's
The Stranger, which he edits, and the comments left here by his fans. It's hardly a marginal publication, by the way. You'll find
The Stranger in any local Starbucks, any Tully's. Here in King County, it's given away in stacks in the foyer of
public libraries. Amazing. As kids walk in on their way to story hour, they can pick up a copy.
Anyway, my friendly correspondent writes:
The truth, that is, about the impact on women if Savage's dreams of men marrying men come true. In the gay marriage debate, heterosexual women are a crucial swing vote. Every poll I've looked at shows this: men are more opposed to creating this radical new social institution than women are. Nationally, the margin of difference between the sexes on the issue
is about 11 percent. Obviously, women's support is crucial to the cause. Lose it, and you've lost.
I think that explains why
after I wrote on the subject, Savage in his blog at
The Stranger attacked me several times in increasingly obscene and personal terms. So did his readers in the comment box here, creating a task for me in unpublishing the really foul ones. Oh well, you get used to it. However there's a serious point here that needs to be understood. This is not about Dan Savage, who edits an alternative paper here in Seattle, but he serves as a useful illustration.
One commenter on this blog, Monique, wrote to me about how Savage with his sex column in the
Stranger had helped her when she was 14 years old, as a sort of "cool" gay uncle figure, full of sound advice on when to dump jerky guys. Uh huh, very nice. What she didn't see is that the very same sexual culture that fed the animalism of the boys who hurt Monique is the culture that Savage seeks to advance.
Some of that culture's tenets include rejecting: 1) the normative value linking sex with reproduction, 2) insistence on faithfulness to a single spouse, and 3) any concept of modesty where private expressions of passion are kept private.
Homosexual male culture is the way it is because it centers upon encounters between men and men alone. Everything that's most animalistic about men when they are not in the company of women has an excellent opportunity to emerge to the fore. The Biblical story of the two angels who visit Sodom, and of what Lot proposed to do to his daughters (give them over to the vicious crowd outside his house), has this as one of its lessons.
So wouldn't you know it, I sat down at Tully's yesterday and there in the newspaper bin across from me was the latest Stranger with an article by editor Savage highlighted on the front cover. This one was not quite as obscene as much of the rest of his writing, but still too much to link to from this blog. He talks about making peanut-butter cookies for his "husband," here referred to as his "boyfriend," and son. How domestic! But then he goes on to describe the rest of his lifestyle, which is not exactly domestic. I'll spare you, but one detail caught my eye.
The news that babies in the womb can hear
and enjoy music
leads Chuck Colson to a helpful formulation: "worldview-induced blindness." A PBS documentary,
The Music Instinct: Science & Song, notes and demonstrates this amazing fact about unborn children but the documentarians totally miss its significance for abortion. Surprised? Writes Colson, who is almost unfailingly enlightening in his daily BreakPoint commentaries (
subscribe here):
Regarding the
little interchange on gay marriage you may have noticed going on between this blog and Dan Savage readers at
The Stranger, it's been a minor nuisance unpublishing the obscene, angry, abusive comments from gay-marriage advocates. From dealing with the Darwinist faithful, I was already used to that kind of thing. Certain views seem inextricably tied up with a weakness for petulant, uncouth public self-expression. Coincidence?
What made it all worthwhile was a wonderfully telling comment from one earnest gay man, a
Stranger reader who, bright guy though he seems to be, couldn't see the distinction between what a person feels tugged to do and what he actually does -- as if tugs and temptations, which we all have, of different kinds and to various degrees, were there not to be transcended but to be accommodated and worked into one's "lifestyle." For him, as for many people today, homosexuality means both the tug and therefore
automatically, because a person really has no choice in the matter of whether he follows his inclination or not, the activity as well. My assumption to the contrary he found "a bit disconcerting."
How incredibly revealing of the sick times we live in, when belief in free will is largely rejected as a myth from the Iron Age. To one extent or another, we are all, myself included, infected by the sickness that causes us to doubt that we can tell ourselves: no. Among sins, homosexual activity is far from unique but it does stand out as a leading indicator of the Zeitgeist.
Oh, now I know where all the incredibly nasty and vulgar commenters came from who joined our discussion when I posted
Joshua Berman's reflection on the threat gay marriage would pose to women. It was linked by editor Dan Savage at
The Stranger, one of our two local alternative papers here in the Seattle, on his blog.
The Stranger can be amusing but Savage himself is a shockingly vulgar writer, so much so that I won't link you back to his link from this blog which, after all, should be readable by your whole family.
Speaking of families, I've heard Savage on the radio talking about his "marriage" to another man with whom he has adopted a son. Who knows what Savage is like as a father. Maybe he's a model dad -- as well as being a wonderful, faithful "husband." Let's stipulate that he is both. I do know, however, that I would never publish anything that I wasn't comfortable with my kids reading. The idea of any father engaging in such public displays of vulgarity -- well, it could hardly be a worse advertisement for the societal stamp of approval on homosexual activity that
Savage himself ardently seeks. If he really thinks he is advancing his own cause, what a delusional trip the gentleman is on.
Incidentally, on further reflection, the instructive point I took away from Professor Berman's citations from Roman literature is that a society that formally approves male-male sexual intimacy is approving something else that goes along with it. What's that?
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