The Grand Experiment...

Liberal Indoctrination in Canada's Schools

The indoctrination extends past the curriculum and into extracurricular activities. Gay-straight alliances (GSAs) have become more and more common across Canada and have been pushed aggressively by left-wing provincial governments. But these too are unnecessary. The TDSB's 2006 survey found that body image, academic performance, language background, race, and culture were more likely than sexual orientation to cause students to feel unwelcome from school activities. Only 1% of students felt unwelcome based on their sexual orientation. On a list of 10 factors, sexual orientation was found to be the second-least likely cause of bullying (after Aboriginal background). Sexual orientation was also the least likely factor for students to feel that school rules had not been applied fairly to them. The left loves to claim that the reason for GSAs is to build tolerance and curb bullying. If these were their real goals, they would be promoting white-black alliances, muslim-infidel alliances, rich-poor alliances, able-handicapped alliances, ugly-attractive alliances and stupid-intelligent alliances before they got to gay-straight alliances.

Interestingly, I know Liberal homeschoolers who keep their kids out of school because they think our  public school system is too conservative/Christian.

Apologetics Makes a Comeback Among Youth: Youth ministry sees the return of reasons.

Apologetics Makes a Comeback Among Youth: Youth ministry sees the return of reasons.

Challenging the cultural climate is a major component of the new apologetics, said Sean McDowell, head of Worldview Ministries. "The apologetics resurgence has been sparked ultimately by teens who are asking more questions about why people believe the things they do," he said. "Those who thought that kids in a postmodern world don't want an ideology were wrong."

 I've have been seeing some interesting cultural shifts of late, including among our youth and young adults.  It's something I've described seeing to people I've had debates with on various topics, but those I've mentioned it to do not see it.  I'm not surprised by that.  What they are seeing is what the mass media and certain alternative media that they follow want them to see.  They are seeing the results of popular polls and superficial trends.  In their eyes, religion is being destroyed by "science" and "rationality"; they see opinions towards SSM going in their direction, which they describe as "the right side of history" and other such meaningless catch phrases; they see the abortion issue as decided and beyond debate.  Everything around them is telling them that "their side" has won.

I follow enough of popular media to know what they are seeing - and who is telling it to them.  However, I follow both sides, and what I'm seeing is something very different.  Even as the mainstream media claims that the abortion debate is no debate at all, painting pro-lifers in the worst possible light, I am reading the blogs and articles and watching the videos of those who were there.  I am seeing the astonishing increase in people who are now openly and unwaveringly pro-life, even in the face of sometimes violent attacks from pro-abortion supporters.  In popular and social media, I see the assumption that people of science are all atheists, and the claims that religion is anti-science and ignorant.  The verbal attacks on those who hold religious views by those who claim to be "rational" and "scientists" are inevitably rude, crude, vile and completely unreasonable and unintellectual.  Meanwhile, I am seeing people of faith make polite, rational and evidentiary defences in the face of these attacks.  I read the papers, articles, books, blogs and reports written by men and women of both science and faith, and their careful claims blow away the irrationality of their attackers.  I am also seeing, in complete contradiction of the claims made by those who support SSM, a rise in support of traditional marriage - a rise based on logical argumentation, rationals discussion and evidence based claims.

In all cases, this shift that I am seeing is very much a grassroots thing, and the demographics are completely at odds with how the opposition portrays anyone who disagrees with them.  They are not the "old, rich white men of privilege" or "Christian bigots" and so on.  No, I'm seeing this shift happening across the board.  Men and women, rich and poor, of all colours, religions (or lack of them!), cultural backgrounds, even sexuality.

Most of all, however, I am seeing this shift increase among youth.  For all the social experimentation of our public schools, some youth are still managing to be exposed to both sides of issues.

And when they are, they are seeing through the politically correct shadows and lies, recognising truth for what it is, and taking a stand.

Conservatives and Homosexual Marriage

Conservatives and Homosexual Marriage

“‘Fiscal conservatives’ recoil from this kind of talk like homophobes at a bathhouse: The sooner some judge somewhere takes gay marriage off the table, the sooner the Right can go back to talking about debt and Obamacare without being dismissed as uptight theocratic bigots. But it doesn’t work like that. Most of the social liberalism comes with quite a price tag. The most reliable constituency for Big Government is single women, for whom the state is a girl’s best friend, the sugar daddy whose checks never bounce. A society in which a majority of births are out of wedlock cannot be other than a Big Government welfare society. Ruining a nation’s finances is one thing; debauching its human capital is far harder to fix.”

Same Sex Marriage Is Not the Same As Opposite Sex Marriage

LAW/POLITICS: Same Sex Marriage Is Not the Same As Opposite Sex Marriage

At the core of the two same-sex marriage cases argued this week before the Supreme Court is the fundamental question of whether the Constitution requires the state and federal governments to treat same-sex marriage exactly the same as traditional, opposite-sex marriage for all purposes for all time, or whether it is permissible to draw reasoned distinctions between the two, ranging from California's simple reservation of the term "marriage" to opposite-sex couples to the federal government's comprehensive reservation of all federal benefits of marriage (including joint tax filings, Social Security benefits and immigration status) to opposite-sex couples. I respectfully submit that this should not be a difficult question. Common human experience, basic biology, and existing social science all confirm that there are significant differences between SSM and traditional marriage. Whether or not you support SSM as a political and policy matter, there should be no doubt as a legal matter that the state has the same legitimate right that it has always possessed to draw distinctions between the two in the many, many areas of law that touch on marriage and family life.

h/t Wintery Knight

Abortion Survey at Jeff Watson MP - Essex

Jeff Watson MP - Essex


There's a survey at the above link right now, asking for positions on abortion. Note that the default selection is for fully taxpayer funded abortions for any reason at any time, so be careful not to accidentally vote for a position you might not agree with.



At the time I'm posting this, the results are:

Which best describes your position:
4283 total votes

I support fully taxpayer-funded abortion, at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason at all;
66%

I support some legal restrictions on access to abortion, for example restricting full access to abortion to the first trimester of pregnancy;
8%

I support abortion for any reason but it shouldn't be taxpayer-funded;
1%

I support creative policy options and supports that help women with unexpected pregnancies keep the baby; or
3%

I support a complete ban on abortion.
21%

Bill Whittle on The Narrative: The origins of Political Correctness

Bill Whittle on The Narrative: The origins of Political Correctness

FALLING ON PRINCIPLE

Todd Akin and Manufactured Controversies

There are two things about the Todd Akin controversy that amazes me.  1) that it happened at all (especially considering the complete lack of controversy over Biden's recent bout of foot-in-mouth-disease) and 2) that it's still going on.

When I first saw the headlines after Akin's interview, I could see right away that there was a case of how not to report the news going on again.  The headlines made it obvious.  Virtually every headline had the words "legitimate rape" in it, in quotes, followed by claims that Akin said women who've been rapes "don't", "won't" or "can't" get pregnant.  A few had some variant of how women can somehow "shut down" their bodies if they're raped to prevent pregnancy.

Of course, with headlines like that, people were in full freakout mode.  I expected that from the political left, of course.  They'll freak out over the most minor of gaffes by those on the political right, while pretending the most heinous comments from their own side never happened, or simply brush them off as irrelevant.  What amazed me is the vicious attacks from those on the political right.  From what I've seen (and I admit, I've missed a lot of it) the attacks on Akin from his fellow conservatives has far exceeded the attacks from his liberal opponents.

The problem is, everyone seems to be freaking out over what they think he said, or some projection of what he apparently meant when he said it.

What was it that he actually said?  Well, see for yourself.



Here's the transcript of his actual words.

Well, you know, people always want to try and make that as one of those things... "Well, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question?"
It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. Let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment. But the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.

And then all hell broke loose.  But why?  What did he say that was really so wrong or terrible?  Let's look at the key phrases everyone is blowing a gasket over one part at a time.

"...from what I understand from doctors that's really rare."

Okay.  So what's controversial about that?  Pregnancy from rape is rare.  He's not saying it doesn't happen, as so many headlines and commentators have claimed.  He just said that doctors have told him it's rare.  How rare?  Well, that's difficult to say, since rape statistics are understandably questionable in the first place (more on that below).  What percentage of rapes result in pregnancy?  There have been many claims that the pregnancy rate in rape cases is the same as for consensual sex, but I'm not seeing any legitimate data to back those claims up.  Then there's this example.

Pregnancy is rare after a single act of forcible rape. In a prospective study of 4000 rapes in Minnesota, there were no pregnancies. In a retrospective study covering nine years in Chicago, there were no pregnancies. In a prospective study of 117 rapes there were no pregnancies among either the 17 victims who received DES or the 100 who did not.

Eugene F. Diamond, MD

Professor of Pediatrics and Past Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine

April 11, 1985 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine

Now, that's old data in just one area, but I don't know that women in Minnesota are any more or less fertile then women in other parts of the US, and while the number of reported rapes may have changed, I have not seen anything to suggest the percentage of pregnancies as a result of rape has increased since then.

So basically, then, his first statement - that pregnancy due to rape is rare - is true.  He didn't say it doesn't happen, or that he doesn't believe raped women get pregnant.  Obviously, he knows it happens, and that is reflected in the interview.  Yet if you read only the headlines, you'd think he said that rape due to pregnancy doesn't happen, which is clearly false.

What's the next part?  Ah, yes.  This one.

"If it's a legitimate rape..."

People are just losing their heads over the use of the word "legitimate."  There are all sorts of accusations that he was somehow implying that there's rape, and then there's rape-rape.  Kinda like Whoopi Goldberg.



Now if only people had flipped out over Whoopi's comments the way they are now over Akin's comments, because hers were far more condescending and insulting to rape victims!

What confuses me is how anyone could have any confusion about the use of the word "legitimate."  To be honest, I think Akin's detractors know full well what he was talking about, but it's far more satisfying to get all offended and pretend he was saying something else.  It fits into the "Republican War on Women" narrative so much better.

For those who still refuse to see the obvious, he's talking about ... well, legitimate cases of rape vs things like false accusations or false claims of rape. 

Here is where things get muddy.  Rape statistics are unclear at the best of times.  Part of the problem is that there is an unknown number of women who never report their rapes, or report them years after the event.  It's said that 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted (all types of sexual assault, not only rape) in their life time, which is meaningless, since it's a prediction.  Then there's the problem of false rape reports.  Again, it's hard to know how many false rape claims there are.  On one end of the spectrum, it's claimed that only 2 percent of reported rapes are false (which is higher then the percentage of abortions due to rape).  Yet a US Dept of Justice report from 1996 found that about 25-26% of rape cases were proven to be false!

So here we have a problem of there being an unknown number of unreported rape cases, coupled with what may be as much as 25% of reported rapes being proven false (some have claimed that number is actually as high as 51%, but I don't find it reliable).  It's entirely possible the unreported vs false accusations cancel each other out, but there's no way to know.

To further mess up the numbers, there's also statutory rape, which can include consensual sex as well as forcible or coercive rape.

In other words, when it comes to rape statistics, we really do need to know what is, or isn't, "legitimate" rape!

In context of the interview, this sort of thing was obviously what he was referring to.  The headlines would have us believe he was somehow claiming that rape victims weren't really raped, or somehow making light of the seriousness of the crime committed against rape victims.  Personally, I think that's a stretch.  It does make me wonder, though.  Just how could he have been more clear?  Some have suggested that he should have just said "rape" without any qualifiers, but in context of the interview, that would have actually made his statement worse.  So what would be a more appropriate word to us?  Real?  Authentic?  True?  Actual?  I can think of a lot of potential adjectives, but they all end up making his statement sound worse, too.

Which leaves us back with the word "legitimate."  Personally, I can't think of a better, less offensive, way to differentiate between actual rape events and false claims. 

Which leads us now to the next part that has people's heads spinning.

"... the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Wow, have the responses been over the top to this part!  Akin is accused of all sorts of things, from being stupid, unscientific, and crazy, to associating him with Nazi experiments and linking him to some bizarre claim from the past that "spastic tubes" somehow prevent pregnancy.

First, let's make it very clear what he ISN'T saying.  He is NOT saying women who have been raped do not, cannot or will not get pregnant.  That's what's in the headlines and in the interpretations.  That's not what he said.  He is also not suggesting that women have some magical ability to voluntarily make their bodies prevent pregnancy during rape.  Again, that is something others are claiming is meant, but it's not what he actually said.

Is there any truth to the statement?

Actually, yes, and it's been known for ages.  Long before we knew about the chemicals our bodies produce, and the roles hormones play in reproduction in particular, it was known that trauma and high levels of stress can affect a woman's ability to conceive and/or prevent miscarriage.  Such things affect male fertility, too, but when it comes to women, our bodies actually do have ways to prevent pregnancy when conditions are not optimal for conception.

First, there are the effects of stress on the reproductive system.  This can be long term stress, of it can be stress from a single traumatic event. 

The female body is, from a purely biological point of view, a baby making machine.  We are awash with chemicals and hormones that are there to ensure optimal fertility.  That may not be true as individuals but, as a general statement for healthy women, that's how our bodies work.  Aside from stress, a number of things can trigger our bodies into becoming hostile to conception.  Nutritional deprivation is one such example.  When we're starving, women are less likely to conceive, and if we do conceive, we're more likely to miscarry.  Likewise, if we have too much or too little of specific nutrients, it can prevent pregnancy.  I remember seeing an interview, several decades ago, with a doctor from a Toronto fertility clinic.  He talked about how most of his patients didn't need extreme interventions such as IVF; most needed to only make minor lifestyle changes.  He described two cases to illustrate.  One couple he treated lived an extremely "healthy" lifestyle.  They were both marathon runners, and were in peak physical condition, yet they could not conceive.  In the end, it turned out the wife did not have enough body fat.  They relaxed their marathon training regimen, gained some body fat, and promptly got pregnant.  Another woman he described was also a "healthy" eater.  He talked about how one of the first things he did was look at the palms.  When he saw this woman's palms, he noted a distinct orange cast to them.  As he talked to her, he learned that she had read a lot about antioxidants and had been supplementing with beta carotene.  For some reason, she was taking very high amounts of it, which is why her palms started to turn orange.  She stopped taking the excessive supplements and was soon pregnant.

Calorie restriction can also affect fertility.  Our bodies can't tell the difference between starvation due to famine or starvation due to dieting.  It can tell when we are not getting enough nutrition to support a pregnancy, causing changes in our chemical balance that make it more difficult to conceive.

These are just a few examples of ways our bodies create conditions to prevent pregnancy by shutting down our reproductive system.  In the context of Akin's interview, it is the stress related responses of our bodies that kick in, creating conditions hostile to conception.  Such conditions also cause miscarriages and prevent lactation.  This is old news.

Do women still get pregnant, even in non-optimal conditions?  Obviously we do, and he never claimed we didn't.  He just said that our bodies "try to shut that whole thing down."  Which is accurate.  Sometimes, it fails.  The idea that he was suggesting women can somehow control whether or not they can become pregnant is ludicrous, but that doesn't stop people from making that assumption.

Now, I have no idea who Akin is and, frankly, I don't care all that much.  What I do care about is accuracy and truthfulness.  I've seen his interview and compared it to the many headlines and column inches dedicated to tearing him apart, and it bothers the heck out of me.  The attacks against him are inaccurate, in that they claim he said things he didn't, and dishonest in how they extrapolate meanings to what he said that are, at best, pure conjecture or, at worst, deliberate misrepresentation for the purpose of destroying him both personally and politically. 

Was what he said clumsy, "misspoken" and or insensitive?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  I think the "shut things down" part of what he said was clumsy and unclear, but only to those who don't know anything about the effects of stress on the reproductive system. 

Was what he said false?  No.  Though he was repeating what he says he was told by doctors, and he was in no position to expand on the claims during the interview, his actual statements were correct.

Of course, you won't know that by the headlines. 

With all the focus on one sentence of what he said, people are completely forgetting about the closing sentence.

You know, I think there should be some punishment. But the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.

People are completely ignoring what he's pointing out here, which is that it is the rapist that did something wrong and should be punished for it.  This brings up the obvious question for pro-abortionists using the rape and incest argument: Why should any child conceived in rape be killed because of what the father did?




 

Boycott to Buycott - or game changer?

Starting a post at 1:30 am is probably not a good idea, but I wanted to take a moment and post about some observations I've noted in the past few months.  We're still in the busiest time of year for my family and it won't slow down for a couple more months (at least I hope it will!), and I haven't been on top of things like usual.  Even so, I've still managed to hear about some of it.

I haven't been living under a rock enough to miss out on the Chick-fil-A fiasco, and it's been fascinating to see how things have played out.  Being in Canada, we have no Chick-fil-A's, so it's has no effect on us, but there's no shortage of Canadians weighing in on the whole thing anyhow.

What I find the most interesting is comparing the Chick-fil-A boycott is comparing it to others I've seen. Especially after I saw someone sharing this on Pinterest.

My first thought when I read this was along the lines of "that's not quite how things unfolded."  It's a pretty typical strawman response, though; portray an alternate to reality, then attack the alternate as if it were the reality.

Right off the top, in the above example, whoever made this used the term "anti-gay rights organizations", which in itself is a strawman.  Gays have the exact same rights as everyone else in Canada and the US.  What gay "rights" activists and their supports want are for the restrictions of granted rights to be removed so as to accomodate a tiny sub-group - plenty of whom disagree with the activists that claim to speak for them - forcing the rest of society to redefine it's foundational institutions while at the same time endorsing their proclivities.  This isn't about equality - we have that.  It's about special treatment and recognition.

Now, let's take the list at the top.  Right off the top, we can write off the Electronic Arts one, which was faked.   The end statement is accurate.  They (whoever "they" are) are indeed exercising their free speech.

Let's use the JC Penny example, simply because I'm more familiar with it.  JCPenny hired Ellen Degeneres (or, uh, "Degeneress").  Personally, I don't see understand what the big deal is with her; my few attempts at watching her show left me decidedly unimpressed, but so does most TV.  I don't find her funny or interesting.  Actually, I find her boring and bland and, quite frankly, I think more people watch her show because she's a lesbian and want to prove they're not haters then out of any real interest, but that's just me.

Now, JC Penny can hire whomever they want.  They are free to do that.  The One Million Moms (OMM) group made a statement and called for a boycott.  I thought that was a rather bad idea, but again, they are free to do that.  You know; freedom of speech and all.  What was interesting was the fall out from that.  The level of pure, head exploding hatred levelled against this group was pretty amazing.  Of course, anyone who disagrees with anything gay activists demand are labelled "anti-gay", "homophobe", "bigot", "intolerant" and "haters."  Which is really funny to see, considering the terrible things they themselves were saying against the group or anyone who doesn't cave in to their demands.  Now, if someone actually called for gays to be hung (as in one of the images above), I would have a problem with that.  For someone to say that gays are "possessed by demons," well, that's free speech, too, and I'd just laugh and think they were idiots.  I don't actually see the context of any of the images across the top of that graphic, though, except for the first one with Ellen, and the use of the term "anti-gay moms" is just another illustration of what I'm talking about.

The point is, however, people who support traditional marriage are allowed to say so.  Doing so doesn't make them "anti-gay" or "haters," but hey, that's free speech, too.  One group can call for the boycott, others can condemn them for it.  And condemn them, they did, with a level of hatred far exceeding the perceived hatred coming from the OMM, and that's when things started to cross the line.

JCPenny, however, seemed to enjoy their notoriety and went a step further.  Hiring Ellen, after all, had nothing to do with her being a lesbian.  For Father's Day, they were more blunt.  Sort of.  That's when they put out an add featuring two guys with kids.  When I saw the add, I actually just assumed it was a couple of male models posing as dads with their kids.  The image I saw was difficult to read, so I completely missed the bit at the end that revealed that the two guys in the photos were a couple, posing with their own children.

At this point, I think JCPenny was counting on OMM, or some other group, to object, because of the surge of support they got with Ellen.  I saw plenty of people condemning OMM, and again, the level of pure hatred aimed at them was startling.

I also saw plenty of people claiming they would shop at JCPenny to support them.  I'm not sure that that actually translated into increased sales for JCPenny.  I've read claims that their sales dropped significantly as a result of the boycott, but I've also read claims that their sales soared.  I don't think either is true.  I expect they got a modest increase, and then everyone promptly forgot about it.

Then there was Oreo.  This was interesting, because the ONLY reason I found out about the rainbow Oreo cookie ad was from people who posted about it or shared the image, slagging "homophobic" groups that were calling for a boycott of Oreo because of their support of gay activists.  I actually had not seen any of these calls for boycotts at all.  I'm sure they were there, but whoever they were, they got more publicity from those condemning them then they ever would have otherwise.

As soon as I saw the ad, though, my thought was that the marketers at Oreo saw what happened with JCPenny and figured publicly stating they supported gay activist causes, inviting controversy, would result in a surge of supprt - and sales - from gay activists and their supporters.  I don't know how well that worked out for them.  The people I saw voicing their support for Oreo say they planned to buy more Oreos, but there were so few of them, and I didn't see anyone claim they already had, because of this.  Personally, I think Oreos are kind of gross, unless they're in ice cream. ;-)

Now lets go to the second part of the graphic, where is points out the percieved hypocrisy of how the call to boycott Chick-fil-A is "infringing on... free speech."

That's where the maker of this little bit of catch phrase activism gets it wrong.  Gay activists are free to call for a boycott.  Likewise, others are free to condemn them for it, just as the activists were free to condemn OMM for wanting to boycott JCPenny.

Calling for a boycott was never the problem.

The first problem was that the boycott was based on a lie.  Many lies, actually. The owners of Chick-fil-A are well known for being supporters of traditional marriage.  This is not news.  Of course, the activists translate this as being "anti-gay" and "hate speech," etc.  This recent controversy, however, was based on the CEO of Chick-fil-A saying "guilty as charged" in an interview, which was re-written as him saying he was against gay marriage.  The thing is, he was never even asked about gay marriage.  The conversation had nothing to do with gay marriage.  If anything, it was anti-divorce.  No one it going around saying he was "anti-divorcee", however, or that he "hates divorced people."  Becuase that would be a lie, too.

So the whole thing was a manufactured controversy, right from the start.

The other problem is the claims by pro-gay activists that Chick-fil-A - the company - was discriminatory.  It was claimed that their policies were discriminatory and anti-gay.  That's just plain slander.  If, as a company, Chick-fil-A refused to hire gay people, they'd have a case, but they *do* hire gay people.  If, as a company, they refused to serve gay customers, again, they'd have a case.  Of course, they do no such thing.  What these activists and their supporters have done was not just twist around the actual statements made by the CEO of the company into something else entirely, but they're outright lying about the company itself.

That still isn't quite restricting the free speech of the CEO.  What *is* restricting free speech is the demands of activists to punish the company for the personal beliefs of the CEO.  When politicians promise that they will not approve new restaurants in their areas because the personal beliefs of the CEO is not what their own personal beliefs demand, it's actually illegal.  Yes, even fascist.  This is government officials abusing their powers to force private individuals to change their beliefs, or keep those beliefs to themselves.  Many of these activists, who so loudly claim they are for "equality", "equal righs" and "tolerance" not only fully supported this abuse of power, they demanded it. To them, this dictatorial behaviour was "noble" and "brave."

To be fair, I saw some people who started out supporting the boycott of Chick-fil-A draw the line here.  This, however, is where the gay activists lost the game.  This is on top of the most vile and hateful attacks being aimed at Chick-fil-A, all because of something the CEO didn't actually say.  Foul language is pretty standard for these sorts and, unfortunately, so is wishing death and all manner of terrible things (Rosanne Barr's tweet being the most infamous) on the CEO, his family, his employees and their customers.  There have even been bomb threats.

It was the same level of vitriol aimed at OMM, but this time, the attackers were the ones calling for the boycott.

So, first was have the "anti-gay organization" calling for a boycott of a company because of their corporate level support of gay marriage (I have no idea what the private beliefs of anyone involved are).  Yes, that's free speech.  Then we have the pro-gay activists and their supporters condemning the boycotters, while claiming they are haters, bigots, homophobes, etc. for supporting traditional marriage.  That is also free speech.

Now we have the pro-gay activists calling for a boycott of a private company because of personal opions of the CEO, which were misquoted and misrepresented, in the process declaring him anti-gay, homophobic, a hater, etc.  It is falsely claimed that the company discriminates against gays.  When people step up to support the company, they too are called haters and bigots and homophobes, along with wishes of illness, pain and death, even though the people supporting the company and its CEO includes gays.  These people absolutely tried to infringe on the free speech of the CEO through bullying tactics, and some were willing to do so illegally through dictatorial abuse of political power.

What's the fall out?

Well, the calls to boycott JCPenny and Oreo seem to have fizzled out of the limelight, as have the calls for a buycott to support these companies for their support of gay activist demands.

The Chick-fil-A boycott seems to have backfired completely!  The bullying tactics used by the pro-gay activists were stood up against.  I began seeing comments everywhere from people saying that they had gone to Chick-fil-A to support free speech.  I saw people saying they'd never gone before, and even some who said they'd spent the last of their money before payday, to support the company and stand up to the attacks against it.  I read people describe how they went several times a week - some every day - when they had only occaisionally gone before.  I heard from others saying that they were gay, but they still went to Chick-fil-A because of the what the boycotters were saying and doing.  Over and over again, I heard people describe restaurants packed, some so full they couldn't get in at all, with drive through line ups that wrapped around the block.



(h/t Blazing Cat Fur)
Then there was Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, and the response is out of this world!

Watching all this has served to confirm some of my other observations.  For all that SSM is legal in Canada now, and polls in the US supposedly show that support for SSM has increased over the years (this despite the fact that ever state that put it to a vote has maintained the definition of traditional marriage), the tide may be turning.  Just as the abortion issue, which was supposed to be a done deal, is now seeing a resurgance of opposition as more and more people recognise the damage it does to society, people are starting question the notion that accepting SSM is benign.

It had been my belief that SSM would eventually be accepted in general, though at the cost of personal and religious freedom for anyone who dared challange it.  I thought it would follow the typical pattern I see elsewhere.  After acceptance, it would take years - probably a generation or two - before the damage we were told would never happen would be recognise, and then eventaully a backlash would begin.  That is the state the abortion issue is at now.

Oddly, I think the Chick-fil-A fiasco has become a game changer.  There is an unexpected momentum in the backlash to the gay activists.  We've already got evidence showing that SSM hasn't resulted in sunshine and roses for all, and that there is, in fact, quite a lot of damage resulting from even the most stable of SS relationships.  Now, as the totalitarian behaviour of pro-gay activists crawls out into the open, people have noticed, and large numbers are standing up to it.  Not by protesting or becoming angry, but by going out, having fun and buying chicken.

Is it possible that the humble chicken sandwich can become the final straw that revealed the hypocrisy of activists who are trying to redefine our society into their own image?

update:

Check out Bigotry and Chick-Fil-A

Give this a watch, for those still under the delusion that allowing gay marriage won't affect everyone else.



Also, When hating on Chick-fil-A, try to hide it better.

Kids these days...

Today was errands day, so after constantly running around town, we gratefully went out for supper.

There was a couple at the table behind me, and the woman had a scooter.  As they left, Youngest and I could see the big sticker on the back of the woman's scooter.  Since Eldest and Dh couldn't see it, Youngest told them what it said.

"Proud to be everything the right wing hates."

To which Eldest immediately responded, "Stupid?"

So young to be so cynical. LOL

The Marriage Debate: Why marriage?

I've been slowly working on this for some time - long enough that I can't even remember what originally triggered the whole thing - made several false starts and deleted some draft versions.  In the end, my problem was that there was just too much I wanted to cover.  So now I start again, but will be splitting things up into specific topics.

For this post, I will focus on one thing.  Why marriage?  In other words, what is the purpose of marriage?  Why do we bother to get married, and why has marriage been elevated and recognized throughout human history?

First, I want to make clear that when I use the word "marriage," I am referring to marriage between one man and one woman; the so-called "traditional" or "Judeo-Christian" marriage.  When discussing other types of marriage, I will be more specific and use terms like SSM (same sex marriage) or polygamy, etc.

So what is the purpose of marriage?

This is a complex question to answer, since the purpose of marriage is both public and private, religious and secular.  Many of the reasons for marriage are also intertwined, and cannot really be separated, one from the other.

Marriage has been viewed as many things throughout the millenia.  It has been a rite (both religious and a rite of passage), an obligation, a responsibility.  It has even been mandated by secular law, as well as by religious decree.  It has long been an expectation, and those who never married were often viewed with pity, while those who deliberately chose not to marry were often viewed with derision.

Marriages around the world continue to take place by choice, arrangement and even by force.  At times, people could only marry with permission, either from family members or from rulers.

One thing marriage has never been, however, is a right.  It can be a privilege to be earned or qualified for, an obligation that had to be met, but never a right.  At most, it is a granted right, like the right to vote or the right to drive.  Granted rights have qualifiers.  There are many, many granted rights.  Human rights are rights we have simply because we are human, and there are very few of those.  The problem is, too many people are demanding granted rights as though they were human rights.  I will discuss rights more later on.

Another thing marriage has never been about is love.  Oh, we have been admonished to love our spouses.  Love is a verb; it's something we do.  What has never been a requirement is to be "in love" - a passive term that makes for a rather shaky foundation for marriage.  Either way, love itself has never been a requirement of marriage.

So after looking at two things marriage is NOT, what is marriage about?

The primary reason for marriage, however, is procreation.  More specifically, it is a recognised institution dedicated to the creation and protection of future generations, connected largely (with recognised exceptions) by biology.  When you have a single wife and a single husband, you are pretty much reassured that the children born of that coupling are genetically related to those two individuals.  Adoption, of course, is a necessary and recognised exception.

But what about those marriages that don't produce children?  Are they less valid?

Well, historically, yes, they were.  If a married couple did not have children, this was considered something shameful.  It was also generally assumed to mean something was wrong with the female, so it was extra shameful for her.  Lack of children was considered a valid reason for divorce, and some couples went to extremes to produce the required children.  What those were depended on the culture of the time.

The need to procreate was so vital, that in some (usually patri-linial) cultures , if someone died childless, they considered truly dead.  If a person died with progeny, then they still lived on through their children.  To die without children was a greater tragedy then death itself.

Procreation within marriage served other purposes.  It ensured the continuation of the family line, as well as the continuation of the community.  Inheritances and lineages were assured, often through complex rules, customs and negotiations.  It also served the communities.  It was not unusual for cultures to restrict marriages within the village.  Instead, marriages had to be arranged between neighbouring villages.  This not only prevented intermarriage (for those cultures that saw intermarriage as a bad thing), but ensured ties between neighbouring communities.  One was far less likely to cheat or go to war with your neighbours when you had family there.  Kinship ties could be incredibly complex, and custom required special behaviour and treatment of those ties.  Such recognisable ties could not exist without the recognition of genetic relationships, and those relationships could be determined with assurance only through marriage.  Infidelity was a scandal as much for its effect on these kinship ties as it was for the betrayal involved.

In essence, marriage between one man and one woman attaches children to their parents and each other.  It ensures that those children belong to those parents, and they are responsible for those children.  That recognition and responsibility is a nucleus within the community that expands outward, connecting the community through expanding, concentric ties.

Which leads me to another, overlapping, purpose of marriage.  The joining of families and communities through recognised ties.  Nations could be built and wars ended on the marriage bed (or the other way around, I suppose).  Kinship through marital ties often accompanied elaborate ritual recognition that established responsibility between groups.  People could be complete strangers, but if it was found that they had kinship ties, there were proscribed ways that they had to treat each other, ranging from care of children, care of the elderly, inheritance, gifting, and ensuring that those kin who were undergoing hardship would be assisted by those who could, even if they lived far apart.

Another important part about marriage is that it is absolutely and necessarily exclusive and discriminatory. 

First, what does it mean to discriminate?  From Merriam-Webster, we have:

transitive verb
1 a : to mark or perceive the distinguishing or peculiar features of 

   b : distinguish, differentiate <discriminate hundreds of colors>
2 : to distinguish by discerning or exposing differences; especially : to distinguish from another like object

intransitive verb
1 a : to make a distinction <discriminate among historical sources> 

   b : to use good judgment
2 : to make a difference in treatment or favor on a basis other than individual merit <discriminate in favor of your friends> <discriminate against a certain nationality>

What about exclusive?  The Free Dictionary give us:

adj.

1. Excluding or tending to exclude: exclusive barriers.

2. Not allowing something else; incompatible: mutually exclusive conditions.

3. Not divided or shared with others: exclusive publishing rights.

4. Not accompanied by others; single or sole: your exclusive function.

5. Complete; undivided: gained their exclusive attention.

6. Not including the specified extremes or limits, but only the area between them: 20-25, exclusive; that is, 21, 22, 23 and 24.

7. Excluding some or most, as from membership or participation: an exclusive club.

8. Catering to a wealthy clientele; expensive: exclusive shops.

9. Linguistics Of, relating to, or being a first person plural pronoun that excludes the addressee, such as we in the sentence Chris and I will be in town tomorrow, so we can stop by your office.

These days, when people talk about discrimination and exclusivity, they tend to use the terms as entirely negative.  Discriminate, in particular, is mostly a positive term - it's choosing the best; making good judements, etc.  One would hope people would be discriminating when it comes to choosing spouses!  If anything, we need more discrimination in marriage, not less.



Exclusivity is another important part of marriage.  When a couple marries, they are publicly stating to all that they are now exclusive to each other.

Which brings me to the next purpose of marriage.

Sex.

Yup, marriage is about sex.  Married couples have exclusive sexual access to each other.  This is important and related to the expectation of procreation, since without exclusive sexual access to each other, the assumption of paternity cannot be made.

Of course there's more to marriage then the sexual relationship, but that does not change the fact that one of the purposes of marriage is to show, to the entire community, that this couple has sexual exclusivity.  This is a public statement, not a private one.

This leads to another reason for the exclusivity of marriage.  The more sexually active people are outside of monogomous marriage, the greater the risk of contracting and spreading disease. 

Now for the recognition of marriage.

With few exceptions, marriage has restricted to one man, one woman.  Even when, in the interests of procreation, other sexual relations were condoned, the marriage itself was the official, recognised relationship.  Even in cultures where homosexual relationships were mandated by the state, marriage itself was limited to one man, one woman.

State recognition of marriage, however, follows community recognition of marriage, and community recognition of marriage has its foundation in religion. With few exceptions, regardless of what god or gods or spiritual beings were worshiped, marriage was a religious rite.

So when people tell me that oppostion to various alternative types of marriage is religion forcing itself on everyone else, they have it backwards.  It is those groups who demand recognition of their alternate marriages that are forcing their version of marriage on everyone else.

State recognition of marriage tends to take on two forms; it either reflects the religious and community recognition of marriage, or it tries to control its populace through marriage.  Therein lies the danger of the state imposing marital law on the populace, rather then the other way around.  I will leave that topic for now, however, as that will be discussed in another post.

For now, let's look at the secular side of marriage.  Secular, by the way, is a word rooted in religion and meant "in/of the world."  Specifically, medieval Christianity.  When men and women reached the end of their religous training, they had a choice.  They could continue to live a "religious" live of academia, or they could chose to live "in the world."

Today, the word is defined as

adjective
1.of or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal: secular interests.
2.not pertaining to or connected with religion ( opposed to sacred): secular music.
3.(of education, a school, etc.) concerned with nonreligious subjects.
4.(of members of the clergy) not belonging to a religious order; not bound by monastic vows ( opposed to regular).
5.occurring or celebrated once in an age or century: the secular games of Rome.
6.going on from age to age; continuing through long ages.

noun
7. a layperson.
8. one of the secular clergy.

 However, whem people use the term these days, it tends to be anti-religious, rather than non-religious.

Secular or state recognition of marriage reflected religous and community recognition of marriage, and that includes its restrictions, and like religious recognition of marriage, what is recognised is not the same everywhere.  Canada, for example, now allows first cousin marriages, but other countries still do not, so a first cousin marriage in Canada would not be recognised in those countries, even though it's legal here.  Likewise, Islamic countries recognise polygamous marriages, while Canada does not.  The issue of polygamous marriages among immigrants is starting to cause all sorts of problems in Canada, but that's a discussion for another time.

Meanwhile, not only are there cultures and states that recognise polygamous marriages, there are those that recognise marriages to non-humans and objects.  In some Indian cultures, a man who's astrologer told him his first marriage would be a failure, but his second a success, could marry a dog or a doll, and that marriage would be recognised.  He would then divorce his "wife," and what would be seen as satisfying the astrological prediction.  

So why did countries like Canada recognise "traditional" marriage, but not polygamous marriage?  In essence, it's because Canada is a Christian country, whether people are willing to admit it anymore or not.  The state reflects the people, and the foundational culture of Canada was based on Judeo-Christianity, even if individuals may not have been.  

State recognition of marriage has its own purproses outside of religion.  Once again, procreation plays a large part.  The state recognises that children within a marriage as being the product of that marriage, and that in turn affects such things as the rights and responsibilities of the parents over their children, and influences laws of inheritance, property, etc.  

  

Though Judeo-Christian history included polygamous marriages, it is the union of one man and one woman that holds special status.  Why?  

Because the union of one man and one woman has been found to be the most beneficial to all, whether on an individual basis to society as a whole.  Polygamous marriages almost always devalue women.  The rare cultures that practice polyandry have the problem of breaking paternal recognition.  We always know who the mother is, but which husband is responsible for which children?  It also tends to devalue women, as it often takes the form of brothers "sharing" a wife, who gets passed around to various male relatives for sexual purposes.   

"Traditional" marriages have also been found, through centuries of experience, to be the most stable unit for the upbringing of children and the strengthening of society, as well as for the individuals involved.  Mental and physical health, for parents and children, is improved, they tend to be more stable, the children raised have better outcomes, including education and mental, physical and even financial health.  

Ah, but what about all those divorces?  Infidelity?  Abusive relationships?  etc.  Traditional marriages are badly flawed, so preventing people who love each other from marrying is wrong and denying them their equal rights, right?

The problem of that particular argument will be the subject of my next post. 

What people see

An atheist friend shared a graphic recently.  It portrayed what people see when they first get to know someone (nice words like kind, friendly, etc surround a line drawing of a person), then what they see when they find out that person is atheist (nice words replaced with nasty ones, as well as words like depressed, lost, confused, etc.).

I don't doubt her experience.  It's unfortunate that it happens, though when I showed it to my daughter, her response was "people don't necessarily think that *because* they are athiests."  She has a point, too.  There are atheists like my friend, and then there are ... the other kind.

I get what she's saying, though.  I get it, too, though obviously not because I'm atheist.

Then, my wonderfully talented daughter drew this for me to illustrate.

*snerk*

Extra snerk when we were adjusting the image on the computer and she added a potential caption of, "I'll bet those kids are home schooled!"

Oh, and in case you have trouble reading the text, the book reads "Sky Faerie Handbook," the big sign read "G*D HATES FAGS and foreigners are taking our jobs" with "Science is SIN" taped to one side and "1%" taped to the other.  Taped to the older daughter is a sign that reads "Future Mom."

The pistol dangling out of her pocket was a nice touch, as are the melon boobies on the little girl's doll. 

LOL!  Thanks, Sweetie.

update:  Wow!  Thanks, Blazing Cat Fur, for the plug and the traffic. :-)  I hope you all have enjoyed your visit.

If anyone would like to see more of my talented daugther's work, you can see some of it here, including her new online comic.

Who is what?

I haven't been going out of my way to follow the situation going on with Occupy Wall Street (OWS).  Despite that, I'm still learning more about this than I ever wanted to know.

Of course, the usual folks are practically creaming their jeans over this US version of the "Arab Spring."  Somehow, they forget that revolutions have a tendency to leave hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people dead and many more struggling.

For now, there's just one area I want to focus on about the OWS folks and their supporters.  That is their "we are the 99%" thing.

According to these folks, there're two types of people in the world.  There's the 1%, who are all evil capitalists stealing money from and taking advantage of everyone else, with the everyone else comprising the 99%.  They've even got a website up where people share their tales of woe, which is all because of those dastardly 1%'ers, forcing them to take on loans they can't pay, buy houses they can't afford, and generally keeping a boot on their throats.

There's a slight problem with this issue.

First, though they talk about that 1% being comprised of "the rich" who control almost all the money in the world (they tend to swing back and forth between "the world" and "the US" a lot), that 1% represents the wealthiest of the wealthy.  A few years back, the numbers were that 5% of people controlled 95% of the wealth.  Then I heard it was 2% and 98%.  Now it's 1% and 99%.

The point being that that 1% is a tiny minority of the world's richest people.  According to the Forbes list of billionairs, the No. 1 slot is held by a Mexican named Carlos Slim Helu and his family ($74 billion).  He's a self-made billionaire, meaning that he didn't inherit his wealth or win it in the lottery, nor did he get make it as an employee of someone else.  He started his own business.  No. 2 on the list is Bill Gates ($59 billion), another self-made billionaire.  Warren Buffet  ($39 billion) weights in at No. 3, and is another self-made billionaire.  No. 4 gives us Bernard Arnault ($41 billion), a purveyor of luxury goods.  No. 5 takes us to Larry Ellison  ($33 billion), yet another self-made billionaire.  No 6 brings us India's Laksmi Mittal ($31.1 billion), No. 7 is the Spanish Amancio Ortega ($31 billion), No. 8 is Brazillian, Eike Batista ($30 billion), No. 9 brings us back to India with Mukesh Ambani ($27 billion), and No. 10 brings us back to the US with Christy Walton and family ($24.5 billion).  That's just the top 10.  You can see the full list of the world's billionaires here.  The list of the top 400 Americans is here. 

What you'll note about these people is that they are all billionaires.  And only the top numbers of these people, worldwide, consist of the evil 1% of the world's wealthiest people.

You know what that means?

The 99% the OWS protesters claim to represent includes all the millionaires and low-end billionaires that didn't make it to the top 1%.

A blog worth reading.

Alan Caruba gets it. 

Oh, the outrage!

Taking a moment to skim through the news, and this headline caught my eye.

Tough justice outrages Opposition and critics.

What they're talking about is the Safe Streets and Communities Act.

Bob Rae tells us "the legislation provides no additional protection to the public and that it’s an ideological bill that panders to the Conservative base."

Interesting.  Will have to take a closer look to see. Meanwhile,

Inmate advocacy groups said the cost to implement the justice package is foolish with the economic uncertainty facing Canada.
“Canadians are telling us and politicians that they would rather see their hard-earned tax dollars spent on public housing, child care, pensions, health care, mental-health services, education, victims and other social services,” the Elizabeth Fry and John Howard societies said in a statement.

So their objection to it is the money?

Their comment reminds me a lot of a problem I'm seeing in our co-op (who'd have thought being on the finance committee would be so ... entertaining...).  Group 1 proposes a change. Money for it is to be paid out of budget item A.  Group 2 doesn't like the change proposed.  They start a campaign vilifying the proposal, saying the money would be better spent elsewhere, such as for things covered in budget item B.  What they are ignoring is that the money allotted to the proposal has nothing to do with anything else in the budget.  You can't just arbitrarily take money budgeted in A and reassign it to B because you don't approve of something that would be paid for out of A.  B already has its own budget.  The money for A isn't at the expense of B.

What we really have is a bunch of people who don't like a particular proposal.  So they twist things around to imply that the money going to pay for the proposal out of A's budget is somehow depriving B's budget of funds.

A similar mindset is what I'm seeing in the above quote.  By saying Canadians would rather see tax dollars going to other things (of course, by saying "Canadians are telling us..." they make it sound like they are speaking for all Canadians, which they don't). Fair enough.  What they make it sound like, however, is that this act will somehow take money away from these things, or that the money should be reallocated to these things.

Here's the problem.  We have a budget that allots money to a lot of things (including a lot of things that government shouldn't be paying for at all, but that's a different topic), and the government can't arbitrarily remove money from one area and reallocate it to another.  That's not how it works.  Can you imagine if we had a style of government that could just ignore the budget and throw money at whatever cause is popular at the moment?

If these advocacy groups want more money for these things, they need to fight to get more money for them in the next budget.  They're not going to accomplish that by complaining about the money spent in areas that have their own budget.  The money for prisons is the money for prisons.  Preventing that money from being spent isn't going to magically increase the amount of money being spent in their preferred area.

Near the end, the article makes a brief mention about new prisons being needed for this, even though current prisons are not full.

Personally, I have a problem understanding why people are against new prisons being built.  Some of the old prisons are over 100 years old.  They are horrible places, expensive to maintain and inadequate to the needs of the prison population.  I especially don't understand the objection from people who focus on the rehabilitation of prisoners.  The current facilities make rehabilitation much more difficult.  The resources and infrastructure isn't really there.  Building new prisons will allow us to do a number of things.  The buildings themselves could be built with better materials, making them more efficient and cost effective to run.  They can be built with better infrastructure and resources, including educational, therapeutic, medical, etc., depending on the need.  Instead, it's being portrayed as new prisons would automatically be some sort of warehouses to shut prisoners away and forget about them.  Why?  On what basis are they assuming that new prisons will be a bad thing, rather than an improvement on our existing, antiquated, facilities?

A discussion for another time, perhaps.  For now, let's look at the proposed act.
 

The Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act (former Bill C-54), which proposes increased penalties for sexual offences against children, as well as creates two new offences aimed at conduct that could facilitate or enable the commission of a sexual offence against a child;

I have no problem with something that gets the sexual predators of children off the streets longer. 

The Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act (former Bill S-10), which would target organized crime by imposing tougher sentences for the production and possession of illicit drugs for the purposes of trafficking;

Specific to organized crime.  Looks good to me.

Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders) (former Bill C-4), which would ensure that violent and repeat young offenders are held accountable for their actions and the protection of society is a paramount consideration in the treatment of young offenders by the justice system;

I've got no problem with this, either.  Violent and repeat young offenders are being enabled by the current system.

The Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act (former Bill C-16), which would eliminate the use of conditional sentences, or house arrest, for serious and violent crimes;

Specific to serious and violent crimes; again, I have no problem with this.  I never understood how repeat violent offenders qualified for house arrest in the first place.

The Increasing Offender Accountability Act (former Bill C-39), which would enshrine a victim's right to participate in parole hearings and address inmate accountability, responsibility, and management under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act;

Yes!  More voice and rights to the victims of crime!

The Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act (former Bill C-23B), which would extend the ineligibility periods for applications for a record suspension (currently called a "pardon") from three to five years for summary conviction offences and from five to ten years for indictable offences;

Again, specific to serious crimes.  Sounds good to me.

The Keeping Canadians Safe (International Transfer of Offenders) Act (former Bill C-5), which would add additional criteria that the Minister of Public Safety could consider when deciding whether or not to allow the transfer of a Canadian offender back to Canada to serve their sentence;

Additional criteria added.  I'd like to know what those are, but more tools to make a decisions is usually a good thing.

The Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and related amendments to the State Immunity Act (former Bill S-7), which would allow victims of terrorism to sue perpetrators and supporters of terrorism, including listed foreign states, for loss or damage that occurred as a result of an act of terrorism committed anywhere in the world; and

Ha!  Does that mean Canadian victims of 9/11 can sue the Saudi government?  Love it.

The Preventing the Trafficking, Abuse and Exploitation of Vulnerable Immigrants Act (former Bill C-56), which would authorize immigration officers to refuse work permits to vulnerable foreign nationals when it is determined that they are at risk of humiliating or degrading treatment, including sexual exploitation or human trafficking.

I would want to know more about this.  It's one thing to prevent work permits, but what recourse is there to investigate if these foreign nationals really are being exploited, and how can they be helped or protected?

Going through all this, I have a hard time seeing what the Opposition is outraged about.

Choose to be gay?

This is a piece I have been slowly working on in response to something that happened several weeks ago. 

(note: I have tried to thoroughly link throughout this piece.  In come cases, these are links that portray contradictory points of view.  Unless I state otherwise, these do not reflect what I, personally, do or don't agree with, but rather are used to illustrate the controversy.)

I recently made a comment about how the only person I know well that is gay is someone who chose to be gay.  I was promptly told that NO ONE CHOOSES to be gay.

Now, aside from that fact that this statement essentially declares this person, a family member, to be a liar, it is completely false.  The concept that homosexuality is anything other than a choice is completely modern, as is even the word "homosexual."   The idea of homosexual behaviour as separate from any other sexual behaviour was a foreign concept throughout much of human history. 

There is no question that some people, from an early age or later in their lives, realize that they are sexually attracted to their own gender.  They account for approximately 3% of the human population; 10% if you include the entire LGBT-etc. community.  Note that these are only approximations, as it is extremely difficult to get accurate numbers on such a thing.

We don't know why some people are only sexually attracted to their own gender.  There is no "gay gene."  Whatever the possible reasons, this is not the group I am talking about. 

However until we reached a point, medically and technologically, to recognise this, the idea that people didn't choose who they preferred to have sex with was a completely alien concept.  Historically, humans have had sex with whoever and whatever they felt like.  Male, female, adults, children, animals, inanimate objects, it didn't matter.  Through various times in our history, we've gone through veritable sexual smorgasbords of choices over who and what to have sex with. Even concepts of pederasty and pedophilia are modern.  I think the only real overarching taboo was incest, and even that had exceptions.

  

Perhaps the most famous example of cultural homosexuality is the Spartans.  This was a culture where homosexuality was mandated by law.  Males and females were generally kept apart.  Men were expected to have sex with each other, as this was supposed to encourage bonding between warriors.  There was also the practise of pederasty.  An adult male could enter into a contract with the father of a boy  who attracted his attention.  The mentor would be responsible for the boy's upbringing and education, and the boy would be available for sex in return. This was sometimes viewed as an unfair contract - for the adult.  As the boy reached puberty, he would likely turn his sexual attention to his age-mates over his mentor.

Women of Sparta, meanwhile, were expected to keep themselves physically fit and agile, so that they could be good breeders, though they had more freedom than other women of the time period.  The beauty ideal for woman's body was a man.  Or perhaps a boy.   Concepts of fidelity or adultery did not exist, and wife swapping was common.  People, and their children, belonged to the state.  While homosexuality was mandated by the state, so was marriage.  On her wedding night, the bride had her hair cut short, was dressed as a man, and taken to a mattress in the dark to await her husband.  He would later enter, have sex with her, then leave to join his fellows in the barracks.  Heterosexual sex came to be viewed as distasteful, shameful, and required only to produce more strong Spartan soldiers.

The Roman and Greek empires  were both known for their homosexual conquests.  By the time Nero was emperor, early Roman ideals of chastity before  marriage, fidelity during marriage and marriage as the holiest of Roman rites were made a complete mockery of.  Nero was seemingly a sex addict, with several "wives."  One was a boy he tried to have surgically turned into girl through castration.  He then married the youth, in a mockery of the ceremony, dressed him in women's clothing and cosmetics, and engaged in public displays of passionate affection with him.  Nero's ... celebrations, shall we say, were renowned for their debauchery.  He was hardly alone, eagerly joined by the nobility (whom he eventually killed off). 

During the time of Julius Caesar, what we now call homosexuality was culturally acceptable, along with numerous other sexual practises.  Snakes were a favourite of Roman women indulging in bestiality (I have no idea HOW...). It may not have, technically, been legal, but it was common. In Greek culture, it was also culturally acceptable, even preferable.  The use of sex toys (content warning) was also common (content warning). I recall reading a Greek comedy about two women meeting on the street.  One asked the other where she got her excellent leather dildo.  The other was surprised she knew about it, as she had lent her new dildo to a friend before she'd even had a chance to use it herself.  Part of the joke was how the dildo had been passed on from one woman to another, including a woman the owner of the dildo didn't even like.  The play ended with the women parting ways, with one of them eagerly running off to the leatherworker to get her own dildo.  Greek art shows public homosexual group sex, masturbation with sex toys, and various other sexual activities that were considered completely normal.

These cultural sexual practises were not always considered acceptable by parallel cultures.  For example, there is the Biblical admonition for Jews "that Jews were forbidden to sell slaves or sheep to non-Jews, lest the non-Jews engage in homosexuality and bestiality" (slavery being something else that has changed significantly over the millennia).  In fact, Judaism was an anomaly in its adherence to fidelity and heterosexuality - and they weren't particularly good at keeping those laws, either.

These are just a few examples throughout history, and doesn't even touch many other cultures. The thing is, we all choose who we do or don't have sex with.  That includes what gender we have sex with.  That we may or may not be sexually attracted to another gender is a different issue altogether. 

As for my family member who chose to be gay, I won't go into her personal story of how this came about.  Suffice to say that, knowing what I do about her situation, I can actually understand how and why she would make this choice.  It makes perfect sense to me.  She is currently in a wonderful same sex relationship.  She is a fantastic person, and I am happy that she is in a relationship that makes her happy.  That's all that matters to me. 

She is, however, not the only heterosexual who has chosen to be gay.  Just to give other examples, another family member used to be a mortgage broker.  She had several clients that were lesbian couples.  In chatting with them over time (and no, she is NOT the sort to ask such personal questions), every one of these couples revealed that one or both of them had been married to men, some with children, but had left those marriages.  They then swore off men entirely and found themselves female partners.  Such tales are also shared by a number of gay blog writers.

 

Aside from those examples, homosexuality has actually become the newest "thing."  It's trendy and cool.  Weirdly, the cyberworld is filled with 14 yr old girls writing gay porn about young men, written for other 14 yr old girls, because gay boys are just so CUUUUTTTEEEE!!!! [insert anime eyes with floating heart bubbles]  Oops.  Sorry.  That should be "so kawaii!!" It's especially expected of teen girls to experiment with lesbian sex, even if (or especially if) they are attracted to men, because lesbian sex is just sooo hooottt!!!  You have things like "emo culture"  (yes, I know, there really isn't such a thing) where boys are just supposed to have sex with other boys, otherwise, they're not emo. 

I think it's particularly hard on girls, since our sexualized culture frequently uses lesbian sexuality in advertisements.  We've got Lady Gaga and her lesbian porn music videos.  Or Katie Perry with her "I Kissed a Girl" - a song about a heterosexual woman using a lesbian woman for experimentation.  The lyrics of that one are distasteful not only for its glorifying of meaningless sexual experimentation, but also the selfish treatment of the woman the speaker experiments with, as well as cheating on her boyfriend.

Not only are kids encouraged to be sexually active at ever younger ages, but they are *supposed* to engage in homosexual sex as well as heterosexual sex.  They are also being encouraged to explore all their sexual urges, whatever they may be.  It's all good and normal.  Except abstaining or heterosexuality without homosexual experimentation.  On the one hand, we deplore the hyper-sexualization of children, yet we are also expected to see them as being sexual beings, and that they must explore their sexuality if they want to know what gender they really are - the concept of binary genders now being the new taboo. 

Even before this became the new trend, there were other cultural aspects that I suspect play a bigger role in homosexuality than is recognised.  This was illustrated by a friend who was studying for a psychology exam.  She was quite frustrated with it, as she had to give the "right" answers to pass the exam, but she frequently encountered things in her textbooks she felt was wrong.  One of them was being told how important it is to make sure children only played with appropriately gendered toys.  Boys had to play with trucks and cars and other boy toys. Girls had to play with dolls and dresses and other girl toys.  Unless the child was gay.  Only then was it okay to let them play with opposite gendered toys.

When she told me that, I mentioned that, based on her textbooks, I should be gay.  I hated "girly" toys. I much preferred to play with bricks and building toys.  I also hated to dress in girly clothes.  According to her text, I should either have been forced to play with girl toys, or assumed to be gay and "allowed" to play with boy toys.

She agreed with my point, then mentioned some friends that she knew that grew up believing they *had* to be gay, because they liked "girly" things. She also mentioned that they lived in a great deal of emotional pain over their sexuality because of this.  She had come to believe that these were people who weren't actually gay, but because our culture assumes sexuality based on gendered activities, they assumed they couldn't be anything else.  It had nothing to do with who they were actually sexually attracted to.  Because they liked "girly" things, they must be gay, therefore they must be sexually attracted to men.

This brings to mind something my daughter brought up.  Love and attraction are not synonymous with sexual attraction, even if those things are present from birth.  Being attracted to someone and wanting to touch them with your genitals is not the same thing. If you've ever had a chance to read some historical letters, you will see some examples.  J. R. Tolkein and C. S. Lewis were extremely close friends.  Their letters to each other were expressions of deep love and affection.  These sorts of expressions of platonic love were common for the time.  While modern humans tend to view ourselves as being more accepting of relationships, we have a terrible habit of sexualizing them.  Anyone expressing themselves in the same language as those used by Tolkein and Lewis today would be branded as gay.  Even my own parents' generation allowed far more open expressions of love between people that did not involve sex or sexual attraction.  Other cultures still do.  Our own culture (in Canada and the US) does not allow for such intimacy without sexualization, and I think we are much the worse for it.

Among the conversations I've had with Eldest, we've talked about how things are gendered in our culture.  Having studied historical dress, I find that men today have it pretty crappy.  They used to be able to dress in lace and flounces, wear bright colours, wigs, freaky shoes, clothes that today would be considered dresses, and so on.  Today's males can't enjoy such things without being assumed to be gay.  At least for girls, if they dress or behave boyishly, they're called tomboys and do not as frequently have their sexuality judged for them.  Heaven help the boy who likes pink or satin or lacy frills.  

Unfortunately, though there is some effort to change that, those efforts are being co-opted by gay activists.  The example that jumps to mind is of a boy who wore a pink shirt to school.  He liked pink.  Once at school, he got teased horribly for it and was called gay.  This lead to a backlash of support for him, with many of his fellow students wearing pink to school.  Eventually, people all over the place were wearing pink in support of this boy, and there is even a "wear pink" day.

So what went wrong?  Well, what started out as a backlash against this boy being bullied for wearing pink, with being called gay being part of the bullying, it became a LGBT promotion event.  People started selling and wearing pink t-shirts that read "it's okay to be gay." 

Now, instead of being an anti-bullying campaign, it became a anti-gay-bullying campaign.  Never mind that the boy wasn't gay.  He just liked pink and wanted to wear it.  He was bullied for it, which should not have happened.  That part of the bullying involved calling him gay was pretty meaningless.  The word isn't even used the same way anymore among most public school teens, and is now being used the way people used the word "lame" in my youth. 

Instead of being about bullying, the whole thing became about sexuality.

Why do we have to push sexuality on our children?  Especially when they're so very young, and all they want to do is play dress up.  It isn't any better when some 5 or 6 year old boy wants to wear pink and his parents say, "that's okay, honey.  We love you even if you're gay."  Huh?  He's 6, for crying out loud.  Let him play dress up!  Let him wear pink!  But for crying out loud, why turn it into something sexual?  And then we wonder why some kids are gender confused?  I remember talking to a mom new to our home schooling group.  While her 7 year old daughter was playing with the other kids, conversation somehow got to potential grandchildren.  She announced that she had to get used to the idea of not being a grandmother because her daughter was gay.  What struck me was not only the strange idea that a 7 year old was already sexualized, but the mother's preening body language.  She wasn't just proud that her daughter was gay.  She was proud of what a great mother this made her.  I found myself wondering, was her daughter really gay, or did her mother decide that for her? 

Perhaps this is part of the problem.

The images in the above link give an example of how our culture assigns gender to behaviour.  A boy likes to smell flowers?  He must be gay.  A girl likes skateboards instead of dolls?  She must be gay.  Why can't they just be children who like different things?  Why do we have to sexualize their choices, or assign sexuality onto them for those choices?  That these particular children did turn out to be gay is beside the point. 

There are a number of questions that also come up about the "born gay" trope, when it's used to claim that all people who are gay were born that way.  This is on top of our cultural habit of assigning sexuality based on things like colour preference, choice of toys and preferred activities.  How does this explain people who "discover" they are gay or bisexual later in life, even after they have led completely heterosexual lives before then, and had not felt sexual attraction to their own gender until later in life?   

What about the statistics that show same sex relationships have higher instances of infidelity and domestic abuse? What about the higher divorce rates of same sex marriages (and why do gays even want to get married at all, since it's supposedly such a terrible heterosexual construct in the first place?) Why is homosexuality so often associated with fetishes and offensive behaviour in gay pride parades, which includes everything from full nudity to engaging in sex on floats, to disrupting mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral and desecrating the church and Host while harassing the people inside?  Why are so many in the LGBTetc. community people with incredible trauma and abuse in their past?  Could it be that, in going so far to "normalize" all forms of sexuality, we are inadvertently harming people who actually do need treatment?  That in being so "accepting" of a behaviour, we are in fact ignoring symptoms of a problem?  And what do we tell people who say they are gay, but don't want to be?

 How much of our sexuality is biology, and how much is choice?  Being humans, a species that requires two sexes to procreate, heterosexuality is a necessity.  The biological urge to procreate is a heterosexual urge.  It can be nothing else, since it's the only way our species can procreate.  Like any other species of binary gender, heterosexuality is the default.  That this is necessary for the propagation of the species doesn't mean it's the only type of sex binary gender creatures engage in.  I think pretty much everyone has seen a dog trying to hump a human's leg.  I've seen cows trying to mount other cows, and have stopped one of our male barn cats from raping another male cat - and it was most definitely a rape.  Dolphins will screw anything, even a pipe, and will attempt to have sex with human females.  I even watched a video taken by researchers in the Antarctic of a leopard seal sexually assaulting a penguin.  Talk about playing with your food!  When it comes to sexual urges, it's pretty much no holds barred in the animal kingdom.

Unlike animals, humans are not ruled by our sexual urges.  We are not led by our genitals, though some people certainly live their lives as if they are!  Our physiological responses do not rule us, nor do they decide attraction or even sexuality.  Finding someone sexually attractive does not mean we are sexually attracted to that person, even if there is a physiological response.  Our bodies will respond to things, even at odds with our desires.  Perhaps the most extreme example is in rape.  Men who have been raped by women are often told that this is impossible; that they must have had consensual sex because they had an erection or even ejaculated.  They must have enjoyed it or wanted it.  Their rape wasn't really rape.  This is based on the assumption that their physiological response is one of sexual desire.  Yet how many pubescent boys have found themselves embarrassed by erections at inopportune moments?  Even paraplegics with no sensation will get erections.  One paraplegic man whose interview I read recalled the first time he was bathed by a new and inexperienced nurse.  When, much to his embarrassment, he developed an erection, she actually dropped the sponge and ran away, leaving him helpless in the tub.  An older, experienced nurse eventually came and bathed him.  He felt humiliated, yet had no control over his body's response.  The inexperienced nurse could not get past the idea that his physiological response was also a sexual response, and was never assigned to bathe him again.

It's not only men who are demeaned and humiliated by the assumption that physiological response = sexual desire.  Women who have been raped can also struggle with their unwanted physiological responses.  Some women report their shock and horror when, while being raped, their bodies responded to the rape in a pleasurable way.  This has led to much guilt, shame and confusion (sound familiar?).  If their bodies responded this way, was it really rape?  Did they actually like it?  Did that mean they deserved it?

Of course, the answers are yes, no and no.  Their physiological response does not negate their trauma.  It does not mean they liked being raped, or that they wanted to be raped.  Yet we live in a culture that equates physiological response with attraction and desire, and this can cause unbelievable psychological pain.

This leads us to numerous questions.  What is attraction?  When and why is attraction considered sexual desire, rather than just appreciation?  What role does culture play on what we do or don't find attractive? When and why does attraction determine sexual orientation?  Why do we choose to act on our desires? 

Oh, and to answer the question I know is out there, when did I choose to be heterosexual?  The answer, for me, is about 14 years of age.  Maybe a bit earlier, but not much.  Perhaps I was a late bloomer, but the idea of being sexually attracted to either gender was completely foreign to me until then.  Even when I had the maddest crush on someone when I was younger, it had no sexual element to it at all.  Perhaps because I was raised in a very different culture than my peers - a culture that saw women walking hand in hand, men hugging, and everyone kissing everyone else in greeting, even if they were complete strangers - I did not grow up associating the desire to be with someone with wanting to touch genitals with them.

So how do I conclude an already ridiculously long post?  The original statement was, NO ONE chooses to be gay.  It may indeed be true that some people know they are gay from an early age, though it has yet to be determined if anyone is born gay.  To claim that this is true for all gay people is not only false, but it demeans the reality of those who do choose to be gay.  At the very least, it calls them liars.  It also degrades the relationships they choose to be in, reducing them to nothing but hormones and sexual urges.  This would be equally true of heterosexual relationships.  I find my husband sexually attractive because I love him.  I do not love him because I find him sexually attractive.  And I think my husband is HOT. ;-) 

The point is, the relationship came first.  For some people, their relationship with a person is important enough, deep enough, and loving enough, that becoming sexually active with that person is just one more step in the relationship.  Even if it's a same sex relationship, and they themselves were heterosexual.

We can, and do, choose.