A writer at the Daily Caller maintains that having a gay group at CPAC will lead to the “crack-up of conservatism,” but what fascinated me the most about the piece was to read that it is the conservative position that human sexuality is fixed and unchanging. Apparently, the acceptance of gays is causing a lot of people (gays included) to believe that gays can go straight — which directly contradicts conservatism:
….the acceptance of same-sex relationships is metastasizing into a postmodern notion of sexuality as fluid and changing over time.
For example, an article in the Utne Reader highlights individuals who came out of the closet as homosexual, but were later attracted to heterosexual relationships again. The article quotes psychotherapist Bret Johnson explaining that people today “don’t want to fit into any boxes — not gay, straight, lesbian, or bisexual ones.” Instead “they want to be free to change their minds.”
What we’re seeing, Johnson concludes, is “a challenge to the old, modernist way of thinking ‘This is who I am, period’ and a movement toward a postmodern version, ‘This is who I am right now.’”
In other words, yesterday I was straight, today I may be homosexual, and tomorrow I could be bisexual. One’s psychosexual identity is said to be in constant flux.
In the past, homosexuals employed the defense that they were born that way. But now they are beginning to embrace the postmodern idea that you can be anything you want to be along a sexual continuum.
This contradicts conservatism at its philosophical core. Conservatism bases human rights on the recognition that there are certain non-negotiable givens in human nature, prior to the state, which the state is obligated to respect.
Does conservatism really maintain that human sexuality is a non-negotiable given in human nature which cannot change?
How can I have missed that?
Will someone please tell the anti-gay activists (most of whom have long echoed a very steady chorus of “homosexuals can change”) that they are contradicting the philosophical core of conservatism while gay activists like Andrew Sullivan are upholding it?
If anti-gay activists are actually into a form of post modernist liberalism, while traditional gay activists are actually into a form of conservativism, then I would say a lot of people are in for a crack-up. Especially those who don’t believe in leaving people alone.
But the author has an anwser to those who do believe in leaving people alone to choose the sex of their partners. What others do in their bedrooms does affect you!
The CPAC walkout is a chance to highlight what is at stake. Jesse Hathaway at NewsReal Blog defends CPAC, saying “I’m a bit fuzzy on why it matters what a person does in the privacy of his or her bedroom, as long as it doesn’t affect me.”
But it does affect him — and everyone else. Every social practice is the expression of fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human. When a society accepts and approves the practice, it implicitly commits itself to the worldview that supports it — all the more so if the practice is enshrined in law.
Every social practice is the expression of fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human?
That statement sounds supiciously like the sort of thing I used to hear in Berkeley. And while I have trouble seeing private sexual conduct as “the expression of fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human,” even granting for the sake of argument that it is, so what?
Unless he has asked my opinion about them or is trying to harm me, why would someone else’s “fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human” be my business?
Comments
5 responses to “Freedom of expression for fundamental assumptions?”
So if I marry Jane rather than Mary I’m making some fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human since to be sure their sex practices are different. Jane likes being kissed on the lips best and Mary likes it on the neck best.
With civilization at risk how can anyone be sure what the right choice is? Suppose we later find out necking is hazardous to your health? Will Mary need to be reeducated?
Oh, gah. Just… gah.
Look, I used to tell my kids “don’t anybody touch anybody else” — I suppose that would work, but it would lead to voluntary human extinction. So how about “just everybody stop staring at what everybody else does in bed. Sheesh. With all the problems we have, THIS is the think to fixate on?” GAH
Does conservatism really maintain that human sexuality is a non – negotiable given in human nature which cannot change?
Lets check. Homosexuality – Conservapedia
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” Volition as a Causal Factor of Homosexuality – Homosexuality as a Choice
In regards to the issue of homosexuality and choice, given the existence of ex-homosexuals and given the existence of human cultures where homosexuality has apparently not existed, the position that homosexuality is ultimately a choice in individuals or at the very least can be a choice in individuals has strong evidential support. In short, there is a strong argument that one can leave homosexuality.”
There you go. Straight from the elephant’s mouth.
And that right there is why I tell people I’m a libertarian conservative.
I’d like to think it was about just political stuff, not social but some people just won’t leave me with my delusions.
FWIW, I confess that I was formerly rather virulently anti-gay. The reason was that I thought that once gays were widely accepted, the general outlook of the far Left would also be enacted.
In particular, I saw the hydrophobic hatred of gun owners in San Francisco, and thought that if gays were more open to come out of the closet, that we would see draconian gun control on a nationwide level as a result of the changing society.
In fact, the opposite happened. Over the last decade, we have seen a liberalization of both gun rights and gay rights simultaneously, mostly because people are more willing to accept something once they see that it doesn’t intrude on their freedoms.
The take-home here, I guess, is that if you are one of the conservatives who wants to restrict the rights of gays, you should at least understand this: your beautiful philosophical “proofs” that gays shouldn’t have this or that right, while they may make you feel good about yourself, come at a political cost. A gay person reading what you have to say, and who hasn’t yet found his political bearings, will discount what you have to say on all the other, more important issues, as well. That’s millions of potential allies down the drain.
So the question then becomes: just how many issues are you willing to lose, permanently, just so you can indulge your desire to feel morally superior to gays?