Friday, July 08, 2011

Weekly round up


Well it's Friday, nearly time to kick back and start shopping! (yawn) it's been an interesting week, the last ever space shuttle launch (see above) and the end of the News of the World newspaper, I'm pretty sure I know which humanity will miss most.

In other news the Dutch parliament has decided that it will outlaw the religious practice of slaughtering animals by cutting their throats and letting them bleed to death without stunning the poor beasts first. In a textbook example of Godwin's law, some Jewish commentators were sufficiently outraged (what's new) to liken the Dutch government to the Nazi's, apparently they should be free to inflict pain and suffering onto hapless creatures because that's what their dusty old books say that the creator of the universe demands, this seems highly unlikely to me since there are other equally certain religions that forbid the consumption of meat acquired by such means because it is cruel; any rational person would simply conclude from this that these apparently arbitrary rules are obviously man made, not God made. I applaud the Dutch move, anything that reduces the special privileges religious sects get to cause suffering just because they demand it is progress in my book; shame our UK government would never have the balls to do it here.

Professor Richard Wiseman launched a new book in the USA this week called Paranormality, its essentially about waving a shitty stick at everything paranormal, ghosts, psychic experiences, superhuman powers and all of that, it presents a scientific view of these topics and guess what there is no evidence for any of them. The funny thing is that after publishing the same book all around the world he was unable to secure a US publisher; it would seem that publishers in the USA feel that the American public don't actually want to be disavowed of their delusions, or even risk such a thing. Wiseman is publishing the book himself, I guess that some people are quite dogmatic about their belief in belief.

Michele Bachmann, the scary right wing Bible thumping presidential candidate who denies evolution has signed a pledge created by the Family Leader a group of Christian conservatives in Iowa USA. The list of 14 bullet points includes such enlightened items as,

- Marriage is only valid between a male and a female
- Homosexuality is a choice
- Homosexuality is a public health risk (on a par with second-hand smoking)
- All forms of pornography should be banned
- Sharia law should be outlawed

This woman is clearly as mad as a box of frogs but no doubt millions will love and vote for her regardless. It must be intensely frustrating for rational Americans to present rational, evidence based arguments against this kind of stuff to people who don't value evidence, I can only hope she has some unpopular liberal skeletons in her closet, fortunately such people usually do.

2 comments:

OP said...

I had an interesting recent conversation on whether or not "Homosexuality is a choice".

In the end it comes down to whether definition of sexuality is an identity based upon activity or biology.

For example Kenneth Williams, though one of the campest individuals in history, suffered from his abhorrence of sexual contact due to inherited social values and consequently defined himself as asexual - clearly a matter of choice.

His close friend Joe Orton, though one of the outest and gayest men in history, suffered from percieved ghettoisation arising from the limitations of social choice inflicted by definition as homosexual and consequently sought to define himself as bisexual - clearly a matter of choice.

Anyway, identity politics is notoriously volatile, as it encompasses both inclusive and exclusive definitions, which leads to interesting distinctions, such as that it is possible to be gay when a virgin, but not homosexual - ie that the two are not the same and should not be assumed to be so - therefore people should be careful about the language they use for the ease in creating confusion with non-applicable synonyms.

For the record, I think the question of 'choice' is ill-defined, as this itself is a complex interaction between biological, environmental and other political factors, so whether any particular identity (sexual, racial etc) is a choice or not is a false question, and individual responses will naturally vary from person to person. And it is the emphasis placed on these reference points which are more important than any definition.

Is homosexuality a choice or not? It only matters to people who think political decisions should reflect areas of personal choices and leave nature alone.

I find it bizarre that anyone should seek to justify their actions by claiming compulsions cannot be controlled, but I find it equally bizarre that others might claim actions can be eradicated by delegitimizing their positive choice.

The two opposites are equally conservative, ignoring as they do either half of the harm-consent paradigm.

And maybe you should ask yourself if you aren't hiding from your own homophobia by seeking excuses for it.

What about porno actors who go 'gay for pay'?

Steve Borthwick said...

Hi OP, certainly not a problem that will be solved by more semantics IMO. Either sexuality is defined by our genes or it isn't, a (conceptually) simple scientific question, one which adds (perhaps unwelcome) clarity over the divisive mush that you point out exists when such definitional matters are left to people with certain agenda's.

Now of course what Biology actually gives us is not the "everyone in their little labelled box" world that some politicians and religious bigots like Bachmann would prefer, it gives us a continuum; an area under a distribution curve. Gay people occupy an area of roughly 2-3% under that curve regardless of where or how they were raised, which incidentally is great evidence that the source is genetic. Does this mean that some people adopt it by choice, does it mean some move around or indeed occupy more than one point over time, of course it does! To think a static definition is what is implied by biology is simply to misunderstand the idea of distributions, pointing out outliers doesn't really add much to the debate.

As for me being homophobic, what an odd comment? If my position is that sexuality is defined by our genes and that genetics are not a matter of choice then how could I see it as an "excuse" for any particular behaviour, "excuse" implies that I think there is a choice?

Now of course the next obvious straw man often raised at this point is to say, "ah well what about serial killers their motivation might be genetic too!", well yes, quite possibly, but unless you think the Old Testament actually articulates the wishes of the creator of the universe then being gay is not intrisically harmful to anyone, quite the opposite, whereas serial killing not so much (although genocide is warrented in the OT as well as killing gay people!)