Bruce Jenner and the Emotive Theory of Gender

If you tried your hardest you could not make up the farcical drama we have seen played out on the national stage over the last two weeks in regard to Bruce Jenner (now calling himself "Caitlyn"), who has convinced a credulous national media that he has been able to change his sex by the simple expedient of a little cosmetic surgery and the donning of a corset for a national magazine.

The whole XY chromosome thing that we were all told in high school science class was the way to determine gender in human beings is now a victim of political fashion. Now, in a move hard to justify as an actual scientific improvement, gender is determined by feelings.

You are a man if you feel you are a man. You are a woman if you feel you are a woman. The actual biology is now incidental. Let's call it the "Emotive Theory" of gender determination, on contrast to the "Biological Theory" of gender. And of course the move to the Emotive Theory doesn't clarify anything; in fact, it makes things a lot more confusing, partly because, unlike the Biological Theory, where there are hard and fast rules, under the Emotional Theory of gender determination, anything goes.

One chapter in the historical chronicles of the early 21st century will be about why, in a time when science is worshiped with more reverence than any god, scientific principles got thrown to the wind when it came to anything having to do with sex.

It wasn't too long ago that Paul Gross and Normal Levitt could write a book like Higher Superstitions: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, about the political distortions of even basic science. It was greeted with accolades by the hard-nosed scientific community at the time. Today the academic and popular left has become so predominant in academia and the media that Gross and Levitt would be thought old-fashioned, and scientists expected to tow the party line.

In 1996 Alan Sokol took the criticism of postmodernist thought to new and hilarious heights when he wrote a paper filled with deliberate nonsense and submitted to Social Text, a prominent postmodernist academic journal. The editors published it, making themselves a laughing stock among their academic colleagues and attracting the derision even of the public that had never heard of Social Text.

Again, here we are in 2015 living in a time when what Sokal wrote in his paper is no more nonsensical than what you hear on E! television, or the View, or CNN. The heights of nonsense have been scaled and conquered.

Some day history is going have a good laugh at the expense of our generation, which has managed to confuse itself so badly about gender that it has literally rendered itself incapable of making sense of the common, everyday world. And not only that but they are even more confused about the reality they have created for themselves.

Their ideology makes them scratch their head about the world, so they create another one for their own political convenience that ends up making them scratch their heads even harder.

I would say that the Emotive Theory of Gender awaits its Alan Sokal, but in reality I don't think there is anything more nonsensical than what the media feeds us on a daily basis. You could try to make up something more ludicrous than what we are now seeing with the Bruce Jenner story, but you just wouldn't be able to do it.

Not only are the doctrines of the Emotive Theory nonsensical in themselves, but they blatantly contradict themselves.

How many times have we been told that our distinctions between the masculine and feminine are arbitrary and socially constructed. But right on the tails of that lecture, we watch Anderson Cooper's interview last week with Buzz Bissinger, where he solemnly asks,

AC: You've spent hundreds of hours with Bruce Jenner, a lot of time with Kaitlyn, are they different? Do they seem different? You know obviously their appearance obviously ... 

Buzz: Yes they're very different, very different in appearance obviously. 

And they blather on about this, making no sense at all, going so far as to refer to the "soul of Bruce" being replaced by the "soul of Caitlyn."  It's amazing what reconstructive surgery can do nowadays.

For one thing, how can Bruce become a woman if he has already been one from the beginning, which is what he claims? If he is simply bringing his body into alignment with his soul, then why are we all gushing about him "becoming" Caitlyn and the "soul of Bruce" leaving (and by the way, were exactly did it go?), and the "soul of Caitlyn" inhabiting this highly trafficked body?

And for another, are there now really two Jenner selves--one inhabiting the body before the transformation and another entering it and taking over after the transformation? And when did this transformation occur? When he started taking estrogen? When he shaved his legs? When he put on the corset? Is the seat of the soul now the breasts, of which Bruce got a brand new and significantly larger set?

What happened to masculinity and femininity being arbitrary social constructs? If they are arbitrary and don't reflect reality then how can Bruce be said to be different from Caitlyn?

We now live in a society that believes that men and women are not fundamentally different from one another unless they have been first switched through reconstructive surgery.

You just can't make this stuff up.

CNN's Chris Cuomo criticizes Fox's Duggar interview, in denial about Bruce Jenner's deadbeat dad past

CNN's Chris Cuomo criticizes Fox's Duggar interview for being a "conversation among friends." That's nothin'. He should check out his own network's treatment of deadbeat dad Bruce Jenner, who hurt his children far worse--and while they were wide awake, no less.

In fact, the double standards and self-righteousness have reached fever pitch at CNN over the Duggar interview. Armies of psychologists have been enlisted in the campaign to lecture the Duggars about whether they did enough to protect their daughters from a brother who groped them in their sleep (as opposed to humiliating them fully conscious before the public, which is what CNN has done).

We have yet to hear words of advice and reproval about what Bruce Jenner did to his children, who, by the way, are still dealing with what he did to them--as opposed to the Duggar children, who are over what Josh did to them and are now dealing with what CNN is doing to them.

Where are the calls, like those CNN has been issuing for the Duggars, for Bruce to undergo treatment to come fully to terms with his deadbeat past (not to mention is self-indulgent present)?

No. They are too busy rubbing the noses of the victims in what their brother did to them.

These people are a menace to society.

House Democratic leaders holding Student Privacy Act

Yesterday's Family Foundation press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 9, 2015

LEXINGTON, KY – The Family Foundation said today that Democratic leaders in the State House who are now holding the bill should stop blocking SB 76, the Student Privacy Act. “There seems to be widespread support for this bill.” said Martin Cothran. “For House Democratic leaders to block it will be a disservice to students—and it won’t do much for their own political fortunes either to oppose such a popular measure.”

“Two of our Facebook posts on this bill have reached over 55,000 people, indicating there is huge interest in this bill,” said Cothran, a spokesman for The Family Foundation. “There is more interest in this one piece of legislation than anything we have supported since the Marriage Protection Amendment in 2004.”

Cothran pointed to news reports quoting House Speaker Greg Stumbo (D-Prestonsburg) as saying the House would not deal with the bill. “The Speaker has indicated he doesn’t think student privacy is an important issue. We think many Kentuckians would beg to differ.”

SB 76 would ensure the privacy of students by preventing students of one biological gender from using the bathroom, locker room, and shower facilities of the other while still allowing local school administrators to accommodate transgender students.  It would also provide a safer environment for transgender students.

The "Gender" Follies

As gender ideology invents more and more sexuality fictions, we are all supposed to nod our heads and uncritically accept the newest "sexual identity." Here's Crisis Magazine, bringing some sense to the nonsense:

The sexual buccaneers inform us that “gender” is assigned at birth, usually by the doctor who delivers the baby, and that the doctor often gets it wrong. Gender is something chosen by the person and the choosing can be amazingly fluid, constantly changing, changing even between lunch and late afternoon tea time. 

... Gender Reality holds that human beings are ‘always or for the most part’ women or men, female or male. Gender Ideology holds that human beings fall along a continuum of 3, 5, or even 15 different loose groups of genders. Gender Reality is rooted philosophically in a descriptive metaphysics (Aristotelian and Thomistic grounded) and Gender Ideology is philosophically rooted in a revisionary metaphysics (Neo Platonist or Cartesian founded). Finally, Gender Reality depends upon a hylomorphic (soul/body composite unity) understanding of a human person, woman or man; Gender Ideology leads to a deconstructionist approach to the human person as a loose collection of qualities, attributes, or parts.

Read more here.

Sex is Not Complicated: Binaries and other road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia

The level of intellectual absurdity people are willing to engage in to justify their ideological beliefs about sex and gender is really something to behold.

Here is where we have come in the debate over sexuality: While your sanity is automatically called into question if you hold to traditional beliefs about sex (as well as basic reproductive science), you can basically believe anything you want if it comports with a permissivist view of sexuality.

Anything.

Any evidence for the traditional view of sexuality is immediately suspect, while any assertion, no matter how preposterous, is to be admitted without question into the discussion if it supports the permissivist view.

Reason, evidence, testimony, all are road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia.

In Slate magazine, Jillian Keenan writes in her article "Sex is complicated," of how she called a few scientists one day who told her that all that stuff that you learned in science class in the 8th grade is wrong.

Science? Wrong? I thought that was what those Evil Conservative Republican Science Deniers do?

Now if you missed science class that day when they discussed "calling a few scientists on your cellphone" as a legitimate research technique, you might want to bone up on it before reading Keenan's article. As it turns out, this kind of methodology is characteristic of her approach to the topic in general.

The proximate cause of her article was a piece by Kevin D. Williamson of National Review magazine in which he argued against the  “delusion ... that transcends the biological facts in question." Keenan's response to Williamson's argument about the biological facts in question was to question the biological facts.

[NOTE TO SELF: Add "biological facts" to the list of things that are road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia.]

Keenan admits that her biological education is not good, which is why she took to her cell phone to execute the rigorous research program that yielded the conclusions outlined in her article:

My biological education peaked at age 3, when the boy next door and I played doctor and discovered that the differences in our hair length weren’t our only physical differences.

Based on a reading of her article, the trauma of this experience had lasting effects.

But what Keenan figured out by the age of 3 (and what anyone who grew up in even remote proximity to, say, household pets also figured out) has now been called into question in the interests of gender politics.

A new book, Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome, even makes the case that we should abandon the term “sex chromosomes” entirely, because it encourages an “empirically wrong” binary understanding of sex.

A "binary understanding of sex"? Since when do scientists give Derridaean readings of scientific questions? [ANSWER: Whenever the topic turns to sexuality]

When Paul Gross and Norman Levitt wrote Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science a few years back, scientists―even politically liberal ones (like Gross and Levitt themselves) cheered them on. There was legitimate science, which was good, and politicized science, which was bad.

That, by the way, is still a good binary (as opposed to a bad binary, a distinction which is also a good binary).

In those days postmodernist claptrap was universally reviled by the people who discussed scientific questions, even those having to do with sex. Now, however, when it comes to the birds and the bees (one wonders if that is still an acceptable binary), Higher Superstition rules.

[ADDITIONAL NOTE TO SELF: Add "revulsion against postmodernist claptrap" to list of things that are road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia.]

In fact, Keegan's article is just one of many examples one could cull from the ideological bestiary of modern gender politics that demonstrates how the once lofty ideals of science have been co-opted by postmodernist ideologues with the seemingly sheepish cooperation of the same people who once professed an opposition to politicized science.

In fact, come to think of it, they still express an opposition to politicized science, but only when that so-called "politicized science" is in express support of the science we all believed in before politicized science changed it.

[ONE MORE NOTE TO SELF: Add "opposition to politicized science" to list of things that are road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia.]

Here is Keenan herself, offering a textbook example of politicized science:

Even those of us who distinguish between sex and gender, who understand that gender is a cultural construct, too often reduce sex to a binary. But when we dig into the science of sex, it turns out that the fundamental categorizations we take for granted—male and female—are not fundamental at all. The assumption that there are only two sexes is wrong. Sex, like gender, is a construct—and it varies.

The constructivist idea that human characteristics like sex did not originate (nor is it confirmed) by science. It originated in the faux sciences like sociology and psychology and education theory―in other words, among the same people who think that science itself is a social construct.

In fact, just watch those who have forsaken their lab protocols for political slogans who say that sex is a social construct scatter like roaches when you suggest that they apply the same interpretation to their own discipline. They're fine to give a constructivist reading to sex and gender, but try to apply it to their own field of study and they'll all faint dead away.

This is what the philosophers call a "performative self-contradiction": When you want to apply a certain criterion to everyone else but yourself.

One of the "binaries" that sexual revolutionaries like Keenan no longer apparently accept is that between "A" and "not-A," otherwise known as the Law of Non-Contradiction. Although central to logic, it poses an insurmountable problem for gender politics.

While saying on Tuesday that homosexuality is inborn (in other words, not culturally constructed), they will say on Wednesday that gender is culturally constructed―the only apparent difference being that on Tuesday it is politically convenient to hold the thesis and on Wednesday politically convenient to hold the antithesis.

Let's just call it the postmodern sexual dialectic: The ability to hold two mutually exclusive beliefs about the same thing at the same time without batting an eyelash.

One more binary bites the dust.

And who are the scientists Keenan quotes as she slouches toward Gomorrah? Well, apparently Keenan's cellphone can only reach scientists who happen to agree with her. There's JoAnne Keatley, the director of the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health. Now there's an open mind just waiting to ... well, just waiting to stay open to any opinion as long as it doesn't conflict with progressivist ideology.

And then there is Melissa A. Wilson Sayres, a "geneticist who studies sex chromosome evolution" who thinks she has proved that male and female are sexual constructs because "The Sambia people of Papua New Guinea, who have high rates of hermaphroditic conditions, have three different words to describe three distinct sexes."

The "Sambia people of Papua, New Guinae"? Really? This is our new model for progressive views on sexuality? Get out!

My first thought here was to point out that if we are now taking cultural tips from this particular tribe in Papua New Guinea, why not take dietary tips from them as well―the only trouble being that one of their favorite food groups might very well be homo sapiens.

Well, then, in preparation for writing the previous paragraph, I clicked over to my Google Chrome to do a search on the "Sambia people of Papua, New Guinea." I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny if the same people Sayres was extolling for their progressive views on sex were actually cannibals."

As it turns out, not only were the Sambia cannibalistic, but, I swear, the first hit I got on a Google search was this article: "The Social Construction of Gender: Female Cannibalism in Papua, New Guinea," by Ilka Thiessen, in which Thiessen asserts, "In Papua, New Guinea, gender identity has been described as the strict segregation and oppression of women."

Didn't catch that part in Keenan's article? Just read it again and you find that ... well, it isn't there.

And then there was this:

However the imagery of cannibalism can give us new insights into a gender identity in which gendered substances are exchanged. Culture creates boundaries that imply division, though sameness is experienced. This social experience is projected onto the body. In the act of cannibalism, substance and power are exchanged, and women and men cooperate for the common goal of transcendence. The difference between the sexes, then, cannot be understood within the framework of hierarchy ... Gender identity reflects an ideology, not a bodily function.

Now this may give a whole new meaning to the slang expression, "man eater," but does this mean what I think it does? If so, I'm now even more worried than I was before I wrote this post about what might be next on the progressivist menu.

[FINAL NOTE TO SELF: Add cannibalism to the list of things that are not road kill on the highway to the new sexual utopia.]

Removing the organ and demanding the function

"From what I can see, the [White House] initiative against sexual harassment in colleges is the height of hypocrisy. Nothing about coed dorms, nothing about wild drinking and drugging, nothing about immodest dress, nothing about Sex Weeks and sex toys and the frankest kind of sexual advice dispensed in student newspapers, and nothing about taking responsibility for one’s own behavior. They want to protect the atmosphere of sexual license while tightening the rules to make it easier to accuse someone of assault."

--Carol Iannone, Phi Beta Cons

State Department joins war on marriage

The U. S. State Department has now officially joined the War on Marriage:

Goodbye, Mom and Dad. Hello, Parent One and Parent Two.

The State Department has decided to make U.S. passport application forms "gender neutral" by removing references to mother and father, officials said, in favor of language that describes one's parentage somewhat less tenderly.

The change is “in recognition of different types of families,” according to a statement issued just before Christmas that drew widespread attention Friday after a Fox News report.

Every time you see an organization doing something like this they try to take cover under the language of necessity, when in fact it is simply another instance of a government entity taking a politically activist stand on a controversial social issue.

Was there really some problem the State Department is trying to solve here? Was it causing an administrative problem for somebody? Of course not. It's just another way of throwing a bone to gay rights groups who have political power far out of proportion to their actual numbers.

What other government procedures are we going to change in order to kowtow to gay rights groups? Will passport application forms still ask the gender of the person applying? Or are we going to take full account of gay rights ideology and instead start asking applicants where they fall on the gender spectrum between male and female?

Now that could create some interesting administrative headaches.

HT: Gene Veith

On further denying reality: Do sexual ambiguities support the distinction between sex and gender?

Our old friend Josh Rosenau of the National Center on Science Education (NCSE) exercises his idea of science (although perhaps 'exorcising' might have captured my meaning better) on the question of the meaning of the new political term 'transgender." Normally, the NCSE occupies itself in going around the country giving finger-wagging lectures on how creationism isn't science. But Rosenau lives a double life, on one day condemning creationism for not being science, and on the next championing political ideas masquerading as science--and feeling very scientific as he does so.

Someone really needs to keep him in his little laboratory so that he doesn't wander so far off in the logical wilderness that he can't find his way home.

I had made light of the idea being espoused in higher education circles (and, incidentally, the term 'higher' in the expression 'higher education' must now be taken in its pharmaceutical sense) that people can simply change their sex by deciding to be something else.

Josh the Science Man, however, abandoning the standards he claims to apply to other scientific issues, seems himself to be as intoxicated by the idea of "transgenderism" as the silly postmodernists that came up with the concept.

Rosenau--and another commenter on my blog--invokes cases like that of Caster Semenya, as evidence for the idea that one's sex can differ from his or her gender. Now, I hesitate to try to explain fine logical distinctions to Rosenau, a proud practitioner of the fallacies of guilt by association and undistributed middle, so maybe I should just ask him the question: What does the case of Semenya have to do with the question of whether sex differs from gender?

The case of Semenya, the athlete whose actual sex came into question because of her masculine characteristics, has nothing to do with a difference between sex and gender; it has simply to do with whether she's a male or a female. It says absolutely nothing about whether sex and gender are different categories of things.

Here's what the "transgender" advocates do: Whenever you question the legitimacy of terms like 'transgender', which, used the way it was used in the article I was criticizing, are political in nature. It's as if someone were to say that they believed that race and ethnicity were not distinct categories, and someone (I'm picturing Rosenau here) responded, "How can you say such things when there are people whose racial makeup is ambiguous?"

Does racial ambiguity support the idea that there is a difference between race and ethnicity? I strongly suggest to Rosenau's colleagues that they refrain from divulging to him the existence of such natural phenomena as mules, lest he conclude from their existence that biological species must therefore be distinguished from zoological groupings.

But Rosenau's remarks do prove one thing: there is a definite distinction to be made between being a science graduate student and being a logician.

"Transgender" athletes, and other oddities colleges have to deal with

Another step in the decline of Western civilization: colleges must now accommodate "transgender" athletes:

Transgender is a broad term used to describe the experiences of people whose gender identity and expression do not match the sex they were assigned at birth. Some people transition to live as their preferred gender by changing their names and the pronouns they use to refer to themselves. They express their preferred gender through choice of clothes, hairstyles and other manifestations of gender expression and identity. Some transgender people undergo reconstructive surgery or take hormones to make their bodies more congruent with their internal sense of themselves. Others do not.

Since the increased visibility of a transgender rights movement in the 1980s and a school-based LGBT "safe schools" movement in the 1990s, more young people have the language and information they need to identify the gender dissonance they experience between the sex they were assigned at birth and the gender identity that they know to be true for them. They are increasingly identifying themselves as transgender and they are doing it at earlier ages.

...Many of these young people want to play on their schools' or colleges' sports teams. As a result, athletic directors and coaches increasingly find themselves unprepared to make decisions about what team a transgender student is eligible to play for. As the number of transgender students who want to play on school sports teams increases, school athletic leaders must identify effective and fair policies to ensure their right to participate.

Read more here.

So who is it that is mistakenly "assigning" their gender at birth? Nature? In the postmodernist world, we get to simply decide what we are. We are nothing by nature. We can decide whether we're male or female. Can we decide whether we're humans too? I mean if X and Y chromosomes are not determinative of gender, then why should we pay any attention to the DNA that tell us we're human?

Transhuman. I can see it now. Can I be a plant? I can think of some people that are not terribly unlike vegetables.

There's nothing to stop people from denying reality, but are the rest of us really obligated to play along?

In defense of "traditional Western civilization WASP heterosexual culture": Another response to Richard Day

In a previous post, I criticized the promotion for a movie called, "Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up." I made the general case that it was one more strike against reason, common sense, and one more contribution to the decline of Western culture. In doing so, I managed to incur the wrath of feared the Gender Department of the Tolerance Police, who, after clicking their heels, explained that, in expressing my opinion about such things, I am being intolerant and insensitive.

I have therefore been issued several directives, dripping with tolerance and sensitivity, ordering me to zeaze und dezist from zese ekshpreshons of incorrect zought, und eksplaining zat such views vehr zimply verboten, although really the only danger I have felt during this controversy is the kind one would feel when in the presence of Colonel Klink.

One of these directives has come from Richard Day, who explained, in a post at his own blog Kentucky News and Commentary, why such views were unacceptable.

Richard has recently expanded his writing style from pretty lucid educationese to sounding now more like a women's studies professor having a bad hair day. He criticizes me for "clinging to the vestiges of western cultural domination."

I have apparently deviated from the more acceptable neonarrative about gender by returning to a preconstructivist paradigm which is undergirded by a pretextual patriarchalism that fails to take account of the poststructural sublimation of sexual identity and does not recognize the nonstatic nature of sex.

Now I have no idea what the previous paragraph means, but I'm quite sure that when Richard gets good in this new post-textual ideological semantics, we'll be hearing something very much like it over at his blog. Pretty soon, he'll be ready to submit articles to Social Theory and have them enthusiastically accepted.

"Vestiges of western cultural domination?" What is that? Have they run out of pop psychological fads at teachers' colleges and replaced them with neomarxist ideology? I guess when you've rejected legitimate intellectual endeavors, it's hard trying to find things to replace them with.

After quoting my summary of the movie's promotional text and expressing what appeared to me to be the clear implication of the promotional language that a Lexington's student's suicide was the fault of traditional views on sexuality, Day remarks:

Is Cothran suggesting that the nail that sticks up will be hammered down; or should be; and somehow, that's OK? ...because it's majority rule? ...it's traditional? ...because the kid's asking for it by daring to be different? Shipman seems to be cast as having caused his own torment.

If I was suggesting that, I would have actually..., oh, I don't know, suggested that. But I didn't. And if he thinks I was suggesting that, then he should produce some evidence that I was. What I do think (although I didn't say it in my post) was that schools should uphold the traditional family as the ideal. I think that because the traditional family is actually good for society, a belief that is not controversial among those who are familiar with the evidence on the subject, but which is apparently controversial in places like education colleges.

But now that schools have given up on passing on Western culture and are now engaged in actively undermining it--and being encouraged in the endeavor by people like Day--I suppose that is now too much to expect. So those of us in the home and private school movement will have to continue to take the refugees from the public schools, where learning is slowly being replaced with ideological indoctrination, and do it ourselves.

The boy that was the subject of the movie was bullied by his peers at school, in addition to having Multiple Disorder Disorder (MDD)-- suffering everything from a problem with "self-mutilation, feeling rejected by his mother and battles with his dad ... ADHD, bipolar disorder and an attachment disorder," to "becoming overly close to people who expressed even a minor interest in him." He also apparently suffered from too many people who were enthusiastic about coming up with names for things he was suffering from. His was a condition which, when we were ignorant teenagers, we simply referred to as being "weird." But this is a diagnosis which the modern medical and psychological establishment is reticent to give, not being nearly as scientific sounding--or lucrative--as the other alternatives.

Regardless of the boy's problems, I'm against bullying, and think it should punished. Although I realize that punishment is a vestige of Western cultural domination, I still think it's a pretty good idea. But bullying has nothing to do with whether there is behavior specifically appropriate to males or females, respectively. Bullying is bullying, and the people who run our schools have the tools to deal with it. One wonders, in this case, why they didn't.

And then we get the customary lecture about the "natural inclination" to be gay:

Shipman [the Dunbar High School student who killed himself] had every citizen's right to be whatever his creator made him. Shipman's father told H-L it was pretty clear that Josh was gay from the age of 4 or 5. That does not sound like a choice to me. It sounds more like a natural inclination.

Of course, I addressed this logically contradictory doubletalk in my original post, but Richard studiously ignored it. I don't blame him. If he could have explained the coherence of the view that, while masculinity and femininity are not inborn, homosexuality is, he would have been the first to do it.

Day, in protesting my rejection of the nonscientific and exclusively ideological view that holds gender and sex to be disconnected, rejects the heterosexual view of the connection between them. He clearly thinks my rejection is intolerant and his is not. One wonders why. But in making his case, he calls my view the view of "traditional western civilization WASP heterosexual culture."

Is it a measure of the lack of historical knowledge among public educators that they think that the historical view that heterosexuality is the norm is limited to White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs)? I mean, we all know about the historical acceptance of homosexuality among Catholics, don't we? And how about the traditional acceptance of homosexuality as the norm among African, Asian, and Latin American cultures?

I think Richard must have gotten himself confused by all that multiculturalist propaganda over at the teacher's college, where modern Western liberal ideology is mapped onto other cultures (which are largely racist and sexist by modern Western standards) and passed off as a genuine appreciation of these cultures. But it makes multiculturalists feels so accepting and tolerant, and that's its primary purpose after all, isn't it?

"WASP," Richard? Think about it.

Says Richard:

I wonder if part of the issue involves how folks see human sexuality. Many heterosexuals, it seems to me, see sexuality as a dichotomy. You have "outdoor plumbing" - you're a man. Act like it. Indoor? Get in the kitchen. Fix me some meatloaf.

I wonder if it isn't more of a continuum, albeit bimodal.

Nevermind those pesky XY chromosomes: we've got a political agenda to pursue here.

And speaking of mapping onto others our own preconceptions, Day repeatedly attributes to me views he would apparently like me to have but which come as a surprise to me, the person who's supposed to have them. He repeatedly attributes to me the view that being "different" is bad:

It was another of his regular strawmen who did it - the "modern liberal secular society" which is "constantly championing social policies" that allows folks to be different. That's the problem.

Regular strawmen? Maybe he should read this paragraph and then compare it to what I actually said and then think a minute about pots calling kettles black.

And then he goes into the obligatory sermon about what Christianity is really all about and what Jee-sus said and all that. Now because my audience on this blog is, in good part, antagonistic toward traditional Western culture in general and Christianity is particular, I rarely appeal to Christian principles or explicitly Biblical beliefs as evidence for my positions--not because I don't believe them because I do. I don't to that because I believe in the Natural Law that is evident not just to Christian believers, but to everyone (a Biblical belief, by the way). In fact, not only do I not do that on this blog: I don't do it in any of my policy work. Despite this, I seem to attract these little sermons from my detractors.

Every time I testify in front of a committee in Frankfort that includes Kathy Stein in its membership, no sooner am I done with my testimony, in which I present a case based on reason and publicly available evidence, than Kathy preaches a sermon at me and waves a Bible in my face. These people are the people who get upset when other people bring religion into politics, and yet they're the first ones to bring it up. In fact, this is the second or third time Richard has taken the pulpit in one of our disagreements.

Maybe he missed his calling.

Isn't it a secular impulse to use religion for one's own political purposes?

Yes, Richard, apparently it is. Read your posts.

And then I must endure a final indignity. After listening respectfully to his lecture, given in righteous tones, about the sinfulness of bringing religion into politics (a sin I am unaware of ever committing), I then hear him invoking the Golden Rule as a model policy for schools.

I sometimes wonder if liberal ideology isn't more of a continuum, albeit bipolar.

The fairer sex is also more focused in school, which is why they do better

Here's more information that someone in the Amazon Section of the Bureau of Gender Equity needs to squelch right away. It suggests once again that males and females are ... and I will try to put this in the most gentle way I can so as not to disturb the tender sensibilities of those among the our intellectual classes who get all upset and weepy when such things are suggested ... different:

Gender differences in the distributions of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities might be important in explaining gender differences in the propensities to go to and graduate from college. Gender differences in the means of cognitive measures like IQ are minor, but the degree of variability in cognitive abilities appear to be greater among men than women.

However, the main ability differences between men and women are in the non-cognitive arena. Non-cognitive abilities affect grades and test scores by affecting how much attention students pay to instruction from their teachers, how organized they are in doing homework and preparing for exams, whether they get disciplined for inappropriate behavior at school, and in various other ways.

Oh wait, this reflects well on women. Nevermind.

A quote from Kevin Jennings book, Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling.

Those who teach queerly refuse to participate in the great sexual sorting machine called schooling where little GI Joes and Barbies become star quarterbacks and prom queens while the Linuses and Tinky Winkies become wallflowers or human door mats....Queering education means bracketing our simplest classroom activities in which we routinely equate sexual identities with sexual acts, privilege the heterosexual condition, and presume sexual destinies."

In other words, there is no difference between boys and girls. Not really. I have often said that liberal ideology's chief characteristic is its denial of of human nature. Case in point.

Jennings by the way, is Obama's assistant deputy secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools in the U. S. Department of Education.

HT: Cruncy Cons

Chinese officials stuck in the Middle Ages, still believe gender is determined

Okay, like, what century do these people live in anyway? Here is a country wanting to enter the 21st century that doesn't understand that gender is a social construct. They are obviously still caught up in the patriarchal systems of the past.

Sheez.

Maybe we could ship some professors from the University of Kentucky's Gender and Women's Studies program over to Beijing to set them straight.

To be normal, or not to be normal: that is the question

Comments like these bring to mind once again the bizarre spectacle of a group of people who spend the majority of their public remarks opposing everyone else's concept of normality while at the same time expressing their concern that they be considered normal by everyone else.

Go figure.

Arguing against Christianity by assuming it

There are sites on the Internet devoted to almost everything, which accounts for a site called "De-Conversion," which provides resources for "skeptical, de-converting, or former Christians." I'm not sure I completely understand the psychology of those who get religion about losing theirs, but, hey, it's the Internet.

In a recent post, someone identifying himself as "a Thinking Man" discusses some of the reasons he has now grown skeptical about the whole God thing, having experienced a conversion earlier in life. He discusses two issues in the post which he apparently sees as part of the same narrative, but which in fact are strangely inconsistent--something you would think a "Thinking Man" would have thought about.

He says, first, that he began having doubts about Christianity through his counseling experience, which resulted, he says, in his coming into contact with the "Christian underbelly": Christians who do bad things:

From within the Christian community I have personally come across ’senior’ Christians involved in multiple affairs, anal rape, child sex abuse, cottaging in the local toilets, visiting male and female prostitutes, physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse, wife beating, and bullying.

In other words, our "Thinking Man" apparently hit upon a great discovery: Christians sin--some pretty brazenly. One wonders: is this something that he did not know before? Or, more to the point, does he really think this is inconsistent with Christianity? Does Christianity proclaim that Christians do not sin, so that when we find they do we can press charges when we find out they do?

In fact, not only is the fact that Christians sin not inconsistent with Christianity, it is, in fact, a confirmation of it. The thought that "Thinking Man" had not apparently had before is one that is familiar to every Christian pastor with the least amount of counseling experience: Christians sin too. Had "Thinking Man" been paying attention on Sunday morning, he would have noticed that this is one of the reasons they get together every Sunday morning to confess and ask forgiveness.

To try to blame Christianity because some Christians do bad things is sort of like blaming the law for the fact that people violate it. We don't hold it against the laws on homicide that some people engage in murder; we don't blame the rules of accounting when some people engage in fraudulent business practices; and we don't fuss at the police officer who pulls us over for running a red light that the real problem is that there are laws against red lights. So why are we blaming Christianity for the fact that some Christians sin?

In fact, without Christianity, there is no such thing as sin at all. In his book, The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton points out that the next best thing to being completely inside Christianity is being completely outside of it. The problem that critics of Christianity have is that they are neither completely inside or completely outside of it. They criticize it from a philosophical position somewhere in between. They stay just close enough to it to trade upon the qualities they need to oppose it.

In trying to destroy something without being far enough away, you end up destroying yourself along with it. If you decided to blow up the Empire State Building, you better not be hanging around just outside the lobby when you do; otherwise, you're in for it. But this is exactly the position of someone like our "Thinking Man". If he were really outside Christianity, he would criticize it not because its adherents did bad things, but because there were no bad things for its adherents to do. He would criticize it not because it was wrong, but because there was no such thing as right or wrong.

But as it is, in criticizing Christianity, he is forced to borrow Christian ideas in order to accomplish his purpose, and as soon as he does that, he has undermined his own criticism. When he says that there is something wrong with Christianity because of sin, he is assuming the very notion of sin--something quite nonsensical outside the Christian view of the world.

And if his first point doesn't defeat itself, his second point will do the job quite nicely:

As part of my counsellor training I did a 3 year course that forced me to confront a very difficult issue that I had been wanting to avoid. Up until this point I had taken an evangelical view of homosexuality. Homosexuality was wrong because the Bible said so. I was to be compassionate towards gays, but not condone their practice. That was easy as I didn’t personally know any gays. On my course, two of the three tutors were gay. During the three years I got to know them, deeply respect them, and grew increasingly confused and ashamed as I listened to their stories of their inner struggles. I also started to read up-to-date research on homosexuality (Wilson, G. and Rahman, Q. (2005) Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation. London: Peter Owen) and concluded that I could no longer toe the party line. And if my party line was wrong on this, it could no longer be trusted and was probably wrong on lots of other things as well.

His first argument is that Christianity is bad because some Christians do bad things. His second argument is that Christianity is bad because it calls some of the things Christians do bad. In other words, his two arguments against Christianity are exactly opposite each other. He says on the one hand that Christianity allows too much, and on the other that it condemns too much: that it is wrong because some of its actions are evil and, at the same time, that it is wrong because some of the actions it calls evil are not wrong. It is at once too tolerant and too intolerant--sometimes about the same things.

When someone criticizes something because it does one thing, and also because it does the exact opposite, it is usually a sign, not that there is something wrong with the thing, but that there is something wrong with the critic.

His treatment of homosexuality is especially interesting. Somehow, despite the same experience with several different kinds of sin, his view of homosexuality changes, but his view of other sexual behavior does not. He comes to an acceptance of homosexuality when he gets to know homosexuals better, and finds out about their "inner struggles". Did he not get to know his heterosexual patients, and find out about their "inner struggles"? And if so, why does he come to accept homosexuality, but continue to reject heterosexual deviance?

I have gotten to know homosexuals as well. They've all been nice people. I've also met nice adulterers. I've probably even met nice child abusers and wife beaters for all I know. I'm sure many of them have inner struggles of which I am not aware. But what exactly does that have to do with whether the behavior is these nice people engage in is right or wrong?

The same experience with one behavior results in acceptance, and with another continued rejection. Why?

I don't begrudge our Thinking Man for rejecting Christianity. But if he's going to reject it, then he ought to reject it on some kind of consistent basis--and for reasons that don't assume the very position he is arguing against.

UK surrenders to forces of political correctness

For Immediate Release
April 24, 2007
Contact: Martin Cothran
Phone: 859-329-1919

UK’s decision to fund domestic partners “arrogant,” a slap in the face to
lawmakers, voters, and parents, says family group

LEXINGTON, KY—“Lee Todd and the University of Kentucky are kowtowing to special interest groups at the expense of taxpayers and parents and violating the state constitution,” said Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst with The Family Foundation. The group’s remarks came in response to today’s decision by the UK Board of Trustees to approve a plan to subsidize the live-in sexual partners of its staff and faculty.

“We need leaders at our state universities who are not afraid to stand up to special interest political groups,” said Cothran, “not people who are willing to throw the people who support them under the bus. Dr. Todd had an opportunity to show leadership on this issue. Instead, he surrendered to the forces of political correctness.”

Kentucky voters approved an amendment to the State Constitution in 2004 that not only recognized marriage as between a man and a woman, but included a provision that would prohibit recognition of “a legal status substantially similar to marriage.” The amendment passed with 75 percent voter approval. “Todd apparently thinks that he can ignore the state constitution and that his university apparently is above the law. This decision, which could initially cost the University $633,000 per year during a time of rising tuitions, is not only bad public policy, it is a sign of profound arrogance.”

The decision also comes on the heels of comments by both Gov. Fletcher and Robbie Rudolph, his running mate, that the issue will probably be placed on the call for the upcoming special session of the Kentucky General Assembly. “In thumbing its nose at the clear sentiment of the people of this state, the University has placed itself at odds with lawmakers, with voters, and with the parents of their students. Now they have alienated the Governor. You begin to wonder about the kind of decisions that are being made by the UK administration.”

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Thank you Lee Todd and James Ramsey

Now that UK's Lee Todd and U of L's James Ramsey are using "diversity" politics as an excuse for their universities to join the Left Wing Axis of Intolerance that already controls universities across the country, it might be good for Kentuckians to be aware of what we're headed for. Try this on for size:

Response to Fairness Alliance published in CJ

My response to Wes Right of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance on domestic partner benefits was published yesterday in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Also, I have a response on the page to several of the posters in the comments section. There is the usual chorus of epithets coming from the people who charge everyone else with hate. Isn't it interesting that those who preaching the most about the evils of hate are the ones who use the most hateful language?

Ramsey's position continues to evolve, actuarially speaking

The University of Louisville's position on whether it is subsidizing health benefits for the live-in sexual partners of its staff seems to change by the day. The problem, it appears, lies with actuaries, of which U of L seems to have no shortage.

President James Ramsey, the recipient of so much actuarial advice on this issue, originally told lawmakers in a March 6 meeting of the House Health and Welfare Committee that the full cost of the benefits of the domestic partners of its staff was borne by the employees themselves and their partners. But then it was discovered that, according to U of L's own website, it's employees were not bearing the full costs, and that part of the benefits were, in fact, being subsidized by the University.

This was a problem for Ramsey, whose credibility was on the line. So Tuesday, the last day of the session, he showed up in Frankort "begging for mercy," as WHAS-11's Mark Hebert put it Tuesday, "and a chance to explain some things he said earlier this month." According to the same report, Ramsey claimed he was telling the truth "at the time of the meeting," since he was relying on a 2006 actuarial report that indicated that the premiums charged would cover all the medical bills. This, however, turned out later not to be true.

In other words, at the time of his testimony before the March 6 committee meeting, the benefits did not cost taxpayers anything (according to the 2006 actuaries) and so Ramsey was telling the truth (at the time). But something happened after that that resulted in the benefits being subsidized by taxpayers, making Ramsey's testimony false. This became evident when the information U of L makes available to its employees through its website (which is apparently the work of a second set of actuaries) was discovered to say something completely different.

An honest man on March 6, but last Tuesday, a liar. What a bummer.

The 2006 actuaries, the ones who rendered Ramsey's testimony truthful by saying that the university didn't subsidize the benefits, are apparently different from the actuaries who actually run U of L's health insurance program, who made him out a liar by saying the university does subsidize them. But what about the 2005 U of L report (which Ramsey now disavows, as he now disavows the 2006 report) that said that the costs for underwriting the health insurance of domestic partners would be into the hundreds of thousands? Were these figures provided by another, third set of actuaries?

And if so, where do they fit in to the fickle fortunes of this ill-fated university president?

This third set of actuaries would have also made his testimony false, unlike the 2006 actuarial figures, which made it true, but similar to actuaries for the health plan who would have made it false. But it doesn't matter, because we don't believe them anymore either.

Is this getting confusing yet? We hope not, because Ramsey, who gave false testimony on March 6 (but was really telling the truth because of what the first set of actuaries told him) and who was then not telling the truth (because of what the university was telling its employees), is now telling the truth again.

How can this be? "U of L will get private donors to foot the bill," says Hebert, "allowing Ramsey to keep his promise that no tax money or university funds will be used."

Voila! What was true at the time but really false, and was then false (even at the time) is now true again!

How can you give false testimony to state lawmakers in a committee meeting and then make it true later on? Our theory is a fourth set of actuaries, their existence hidden from the public, who have figured out (like the characters in Frank Herbert's book, Dune) how to bend time.

But however he did it, Ramsey has now found a way to make his testimony true ex post facto. Let us call this new technique, "retrospective honesty."

G. K. Chesterton once said of the playwright George Bernard Shaw that he was in a "perpetual state of temporary honesty." Could the same be said of Ramsey?

Think of its ramifications of this new technique. If you cheated on a test because you didn't know the material, for example, you could study later, and claim that even though you didn't know the material then, you know it now, and therefore the fact that you cheated is irrelevant.

U of L students, are you listening? We hope not.

James Ramsey comes clean

For Immediate Release
March 28, 2007

Contact: Martin Cothran
Phone: 859-329-1919

U of L President visits lawmakers, comes clean on misleading testimony on domestic partner benefits bill

U of L President James Ramsey came clean yesterday on misleading testimony he gave to legislative committees. His inaccurate testimony formed the basis for much of the opposition to legislation restricting domestic partner benefit programs at state universities. Ramsey visited several lawmakers on the last day of the legislative session, according to a WHAS-11 news report, and admitted that his testimony was mistaken.

Ramsey had told a legislative committee—and his own Board of Trustees—that the University was not subsidizing the health benefits for domestic partners of its staff in whole or in part. Last week, however, in a press release The Family Foundation pointed to U of L’s own website, which states that the university does subsidize the benefits for domestic partners of its staff.

Ramsey’s statements, and subsequent statements by opponents of the bill were used repeatedly in arguments against SB 152, which would have prohibited state agencies, including colleges and universities, from such subsidies. SB 152, which was passed by the Senate, failed to gain a majority in the House Health & Welfare Committee in an 8-8 tie vote.

“We are pleased that Ramsey has admitted his testimony was false,” said Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst with The Family Foundation of Kentucky, “but we wonder why he waited until the waning hours of the very last day of the General Assembly session, when it was too late for the bill to be reconsidered, to make it clear that the basis for much of the opposition was mistaken.”

Cothran called for more questions to be asked about the timing of the admission. “Someone needs to ask what they knew and when they knew it. It appears as if U of L staff has known about his for some time, and the question is whether this was intentional deception or just bureaucratic incompetence. We’re not saying Ramsey lied; it could be that he doesn’t have good communication with his staff. Maybe the left hand at U of L doesn’t know what the far left hand is doing.”

The Family Foundation was one of the groups that opposed state universities subsidizing the live-in sexual partners of their staff and faculty with tax and tuition money.

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