Is sexual freedom now an official heresy?

Sometimes I find the statements that come out of our leaders so mind boggling that I don’t know where to begin.
Earlier I read that President Obama is complaining about a rise of “tribal attitude”. It’s one of my pet peeves too; I have written several posts about tribalism, which I think is indistinguishable from identity politics. Tribalism begets tribalism, and the struggles between oppressor tribes and oppressed tribes (whether the oppression is genuine or only perceived) fuel endless cycles, with each tribe taking “turns.” While I am not saying that there are not occasional elements of tribalism on the right, for the left to accuse the right of tribalism (as Obama seems to be doing) is the height of hypocrisy.
I cannot think of a more classic example of modern leftist tribalism than gay identity politics. Things have reached the point where it is considered a form of “bigotry” to even say that there such a thing as a “gay lifestyle.”
Glenn Reynolds (who was once accused of “demonizing” gays to strengthen his “cultural tribalism” by one of the leftosphere’s leading gay chieftains) linked a post by Ann Althouse which attempts to examine how Obama spokesperson Valerie Jarrett ran afoul of the newest tribal rules, and was forced “to apologize for the heresy of calling homosexuality a ‘lifestyle choice.’”
Here’s what Jarrett said:

“These are good people. They were aware that their son was gay; they embraced him, they loved him, they supported his lifestyle choice,” Jarrett told Capehart. “But when he left the home and went to school, he was tortured by his classmates.”
Blogger Michael Petrelis slammed Jarrett for the reference, accusing her of taking “talking points from Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council,” a socially conservative organization that condemns homosexuality.

Personally, I think the kid shouldn’t have been ashamed, and he would have probably been better off taking a Pink Pistols firearms course than hating himself and jumping off the bridge, but what’s news to me was to read that the Family Research Council thinks the “gay lifestyle” is a talking point. Last time I looked, I thought they refused even to use the word “gay.” So in terms of the big picture, if they are now talking about the gay lifestyle it may be progress.
Anyway, Jarrett groveled about her poor word choice:

“I meant no disrespect to the LGBT community, and I apologize to any who have taken offense at my poor choice of words,” Jarrett said. “Sexual orientation and gender identity are not a choice, and anyone who knows me and my work over the years knows that I am a firm believer and supporter in the rights of LGBT Americans.”

Ann Althouse points out that the “rules” seem to be changing over what you can and cannot say:

I remember back in the 1980s, in the radical enclaves of the University of Wisconsin Law School and similar places, when it was heresy to say that sexual orientation was inborn. I remember getting snapped at by a very prominent left-wing lawprof for referring without scorn to research that showed some evidence that sexual orientation was innate. It was all about choice back then, and the choice model was deemed to be the framework upon which gay rights would be built.

I’ve written about this till I’m blue in the face, but once again, I will point out that I disagree with the all-or-nothing dichotomy. I don’t think there is any one explanation for human sexuality. There are too many variations, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, fetish-object-sexual, or asexual for anyone to assert with any degree of confidence that there is but one “cause,” and that whatever “it” is, it has to take place before birth. This is not to say that there aren’t many gays who were born with that propensity, but many is not all. And lots of things can influence the development of sexual tastes along the way. Why are some gay men into big hairy muscular guys, while others are into smooth, slim, and hairless? Why are some turned on by raunchy hippie types, and others by clean-cut all-Americans who look like Brooks Brothers models? Were they born with genes for those attractions? Why are some straight guys into women’s breasts, others into legs, and others into specific articles of clothing? Are some heterosexual baby boys born programmed with a genetic attraction to high heels?
The idea that all gays are necessarily by definition born that way just reeks of identity politics, and tribalism. It violates common sense, and beyond that, I think it violates sexual freedom, because the implication of sexual attraction being innate reduces the rights argument and sexual freedom theory to irrelevancy. It is determinism, and I think determinism is tyrannical because it is at odds with free will. Determinists argue that none of us have any control over what we are or what we do, and I can’t think of any system more calculated to lead to tyranny.
No one has the right to tell people how they have to be. Neither the bigoted gay tribalists (better known as Gay Inc.) or their bigoted opposites, the anti-gay tribalists (which I have called “Anti-Gay Inc.“). The former like to say that being gay is not a choice, while the latter say it is a choice and an evil one.
I will grant that I think there are a number of people born with the gay propensity. Whether it’s genetic or whether it’s a result of the prenatal environment can be debated, but these people certainly exist and I think they have every right to be homosexually inclined, and they also have the right to live the “gay lifestyle” — whatever that may be to them. That right is grounded in freedom, though, not in genetics. Genetics does not convey rights, nor should it. It mixes apples and oranges to suggest otherwise. But I don’t see how anyone who is thoughtful and objective can deny that far from a single “gay lifestyle,” there is a spectrum of lifestyles. I have long been puzzled over the idea, for example, that gay men should like the music of Barbra Streisand, or prefer certain occupations. It makes no sense. There are people who have homosexual feelings but do not acknowledge or express them. Call them “repressed homosexuals” if you will, but that is their lifestyle, and unless they are hurting anyone, it is their inherent right to live that way, even if they were born with an irresistible homosexual inclination. Then there are those we would refer to as being “closeted.” There are many degrees of being in the closet; some are open to themselves and family, but not their workplace, while others are open in the workplace but haven’t told their mother. Are these not lifestyle choices for them to make? Or should the ruling tribal leaders have a right to intervene? And there are of course, totally open and “out” gays who have told their friends, families, employers, and everyone else. That too is a lifestyle choice I would defend without reservation.
But just as lifestyles are not inborn, there is hardly a monolithic “gay lifestyle” which someone must choose or reject, and in that respect Jarrett was wrong. But that’s not what she was made to apologize for; her crime was in saying something contrary to the determinist view, which has apparently become politically dominant in gay identity politics. I see an additional problem with her phraseology, though. To say that “sexual orientation and gender identity are not a choice,” while that is apparently an endorsement of identity politics, it also means that there is no freedom to choose these things. Which is tyrannical in a free country. That means that not only does a gay man or a lesbian have no right to become heterosexual, but a man or a woman who is heterosexually inclined has to right to become gay. Why not? If there is a right to change one’s gender, then why isn’t there a right to change one’s sexual orientation? What if you just want to do what doesn’t come naturally? Who gets to decide what is natural? If you are bisexual and can enjoy sex with either gender, how is the way you have sex not a choice? Or is the fact that you have a choice said through determinism to be not a choice? Philosophically, that could mean that determinism has swallowed free will, which the determinists probably consider a delusion. Fine, but don’t we have the freedom in this country to be as deluded we want in the eyes of some, and actually believe that they’re the ones who are deluded? There is still a right to be wrong, is there not?
Who put Valerie Jarrett in charge of our sex lives?
And what about the Bonobo chimps? What gives them the right to screw around any way they want without being dragged into identity politics? Why should they have more sexual freedom than humans?
Sorry, now that I’m ranting, I didn’t mean to neglect the culture warriors who insist that being gay is always a choice, and a wrong choice! and that gays must be encouraged to “leave the lifestyle.” Presumably, these people think that teaching gay men the fine arts of penile-vaginal intercourse will benefit them and society, although I have never been able to understand why. Especially if you factor in the inborn/genetically gay people, it strikes me that if they were rounded up and forced to attend whatever kind of therapy sessions Anti-Gay Inc. demands, the success stories would consist mainly of those who learned to be facultatively heterosexual. More likely they’d be quasi “bisexual” — a sort of gay equivalent of the straight guys in prison who learn to do without women and sexually use men as the equivalent. Common sense suggests that just as the straight guys in these circumstances seek women and not men after they leave prison, over time these “converts” would tend to revert to what they liked before, regardless of what sexual identity they might claim. In whose interest is that? Theirs? The women they’ve been hooked up with? For the life of me I don’t get it, and I have never understood why so many cultural conservatives who insist that gay is always a choice and can be “cured” also tend to say that pedophilia can never be cured. Which is it?
I wish all of these various people didn’t care so much about the sex lives of others, but it has become big business, and highly politicized.
I used to think that modern gayness in the western sense was a reactive stage (gay to anti-gay) of human evolution on the path towards full sexual freedom (which I would define as that point where people no longer cared about such things), for sex ought to be the business of the people involved.*
But sometimes I wonder whether some people just want not individual freedom, but sexual tribalism — with endless reactions and counter-reactions to keep it going. Anti-Gay Inc. has at least as big an investment in gayness as does Gay Inc.
To not care is heresy.
*Barring harm to others, of course. (Accuse me of inconsistency if you will, but I don’t think sexual freedom includes pedophilia or bestiality, because they are non-consenting activities that do harm.)


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12 responses to “Is sexual freedom now an official heresy?”

  1. Veeshir Avatar

    It’s the argument of “Nature or nurture”, to which I always say, “Yes”.
    Or may “No” if I’m in a bad mood.

  2. Eric Scheie Avatar

    Yes nature or nurture! And no nature or nurture!
    Both positions can sometimes nearly always be right.

  3. M. Simon Avatar

    Funny thing is. I was in boot camp (US Navy) for three months straight (things got extended a bit when JFK got shot). I?m about as straight as they come (heh). Yet near the end of the three months the guys in the shower were looking good. And I thought to myself. That is rather strange.
    I?m sure some where there is a study on this. So the military has to know.
    What do I think it means (purely based on my personal anecdotal evidence)? Regular contact with females is what makes most men straight.
    ======
    I suppose for the folks disposed the other way cutting off all contact with their preferred sex might have similar results.

  4. dr kill Avatar
    dr kill

    Fuck, fight or hold the light.

  5. guy on internet Avatar
    guy on internet

    Accuse me of inconsistency if you will, but I don’t think sexual freedom includes pedophilia
    Inconsistency!
    A -philia is a liking. Someone who just thinks kids are sexy isn’t a problem. Almost everyone does it, occasionally, in the same way even the most heterosexual of heterosexuals have fleeting “gay” ideas. It’s certainly not psychologically or socially good to be a diagnosis-level pedophile, but it doesn’t necessarily criminally involve anyone else.
    Pederasty is the term for objectionably age-mismatched fucking. It’s fallen out of use, I think because it was invented to refer to man-on-boy action (and it has that “ass” sound in it), while the current “pedophilia” rage is mostly at adult men attracted to physically mature teenage girls. There’s no medical-sounding scary Greek word for that, because it’s not abnormal, and it wasn’t considered universally objectionable until very, very recently. I mean, there were openly “pedophilic” hit songs?about fucking?as recently as 1989.
    Then some madness came over the people who worry about other people fucking, and they had no word for the thing that was suddenly pissing them off for the first time ever, so they stole “pedophilia.” I miss it. It was a perfect word for what it was for. Now there’s no word for that, so there’s no idea of it, either. Its loss shoves a huge number of people?the vast majority innocent?into a single despised tribe. The guy who jacks to Nickelodeon and the guy who rapes his own baby to death are one kind of guy, now.
    That’s very bad for the future of not-caring-about-fucking.

  6. Eric Scheie Avatar

    That’s a valid correction. I meant sex with children, not thoughts. Fantasizing about sex is not sex, and fantasizing about murder is not murder. Moreover, pedophilia could in the technical sense refer to actual love of (and not sex with) children by anyone. Words are contaminated by usage.
    Unfortunately, mental health professionals tend to use the term to refer to sexual activity as opposed to mere attraction (hence my use of the term that way):
    http://www.minddisorders.com/Ob-Ps/Pedophilia.html
    ***QUOTE***
    Most mental health professionals, however, confine the definition of pedophilia to sexual activity with prepubescent children, who are generally age 13 or younger.
    ***END QUOTE***
    From the wiki entry:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia
    ***QUOTE***
    According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), pedophilia is a paraphilia in which a person has intense and recurrent sexual urges towards and fantasies about prepubescent children and on which feelings they have either acted or which cause distress or interpersonal difficulty.The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) defines pedophilia as a “disorder of adult personality and behaviour” in which there is a sexual preference for children of prepubertal or early pubertal age.[5] The current DSM-5 draft proposes to add hebephilia to the diagnostic criteria, and consequently to rename it to pedohebephilic disorder.[6]
    In common usage, pedophilia means any sexual interest in children or the act of child sexual abuse, often termed “pedophilic behavior”.[7][8][9][2] For example, The American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary states, “Pedophilia is the act or fantasy on the part of an adult of engaging in sexual activity with a child or children.”[
    ***END QUOTE***
    Which means the term generally means sex with children.

  7. M. Simon Avatar

    One other thing I noticed. I craned my neck just to see a woman walking 300 ft away towards the end of boot camp.
    I wonder if all this might not explain Arab society or at least its origins.

  8. M. Simon Avatar

    This post “forced me” to post the next entry“. Heh.

  9. M. Simon Avatar

    We have acronymns:
    LUG = Lesbian Until Graduation
    Maybe we need:
    GWIP = Gay While In Prison

  10. Kate Avatar
    Kate

    All these flipping useless bloody labels. Words always shift with usage, so labels grow inaccurate at best.
    The really dumb thing is that the entire flap is over what consenting adults (or in the case of teens near the age of consent, near-adults) do mostly in private. It’s nothing more than yet another attempt to reduce people to faceless groups. You’re not “Eric”, or “Simon”, or “Kate”, you’re gay, straight, bisexual, whatever-else-the-label-of-the-day-happens-to-be.
    Sir Terry Pratchett nailed it long ago, I think in Carpe Jugulum. As soon as you start treating people as things you have evil. It’s not where evil ends, but it’s where it begins.
    I’m not a narcoleptic, I have narcolepsy. It’s a subtle but profound difference. I don’t define myself around having narcolepsy, any more than I define myself around my job, my avocation, my marriage, or any other part of my life.
    Screw the labels. So long as it’s being done by consenting adults (and I include the teenagers in that definition because they’re consenting in the sense they know damn well what they want to do even if they’re kind of vague on the consequences side – and at that they’re no less vague about consequences than your average politician) in private, it doesn’t matter. In public is a different question because then people are being forced to observe, which impinges on their rights. Besides, it’s a traffic hazard (joking, kind of. A well-endowed young woman jogging is just as much of a traffic hazard, but I’m not suggesting we ban female joggers based on cup size and attractiveness).
    My basic view here – if you hadn’t already guessed – is if you don’t like it, don’t do it. (And yeah, that applies to the anti-abortion crowd: if you think it’s immoral, don’t have one. If you think gay marriage is immoral, don’t marry a gay person.) I don’t have the right to force you to follow my morality, and you don’t have the right to force me to follow your morality.

  11. Daryl Herbert Avatar
    Daryl Herbert

    It sounds like the kid was not mistreated not as a result of his sexual identity, but for his lifestyle choice (being out, rather than in the closet).
    I thought we were supposed to support gay people making the lifestyle choice of coming out of the closet?

  12. […] the puritanical left has been claiming to support free and open human sexuality, while waging a not-so-covert war on sex. I’m not the only one to notice, and while it’s probably normal for […]