The website bears the aptly unwieldy name Think before you speak. Don't say "That's so gay." A project of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, the campaign employs posters, print ads and videos with the aim of curbing an element of teen slang that gay ideologues find particularly vexing.[Hat tip to Fr. D.J.]
For the uninitiated, it may be well to explain that saying "That's so gay" does not condemn the object of disparagement as characteristic or suggestive of homosexuality. The fascinating point, on the contrary, is that the word gay in this slang has become a general term of disapproval, semantically indistinguishable from "wrong." As Prof. Wittgenstein said, usage is meaning.
This is illustrated with admirable if unintentional clarity by the instructional videos provided at the site....
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
That's so gay
Diogenes, "That's so gay" (Off the Record, December 10,2009):
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9 comments:
What is an eight letter word meaning you must do (or not do) what someone else orders you to do (or not do)?
SLAVERY
A three letter word would be GAY.
Are these your friends? http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/2009/12/slouching-towards-kampala-ugandas.html
An insinuation is not an argument.
Gays cannot be "legislated out of existcence," unless you mean something like the Nazi holocaust, which I don't see happening either in the first or third world. The higher echelons of power in the Third Reich, in fact, were riddled with gays.
The refusal to pass legislation granting things like "same-sex marriage" legal standing, just as legislation depriving "same-sex couples" of traditional familial rights, does not "legislate gays out of existence." It merely gives them, as individuals, the same equality before the law that any other individuals have, and refuses to give any special legal recognition to them as an interest group. Should white people be granted special recognition as an interest group simply because of the color of their skin?
If you have a problem with those who see same-sex inclinations as disordered and the same-sex life style as an abominable degradation, I suggest you take it up with the God of Abraham.
Is he the god who created gays?
Anonymous,
My response would run along these lines: God made you and me and everyone and everything else in the world. These are individuals and things, having given "natures" according to their kind.
Your question seems to suggest that "gays" belong in this inventory of items with established "natures" or "essences." I beg to differ. It may be true that men have more or less testosterone, are more masculine or feminine, etc., but there is no "gay gene." To "come out" as a "gay" is a life-style commitment. It's a choice.
So, no, God did not make "gays"; rather, human choices result in the embrace of a gay lifestyle. If you're a human being who calls himself "gay," then God made you human; you identified yourself as "gay."
But "gayness" isn't a "nature" or "essence" or a thing created according to its kind. It's a disordered disposition resulting from disordered choices, which, like many other kids of choices can habituate one in such a manner as to feel hopelessly caught up in habits he feels he can no more shed than a leopard can shed his spots -- like those addicted to pornography or alcohol. It's a plight not uncommon to man.
God bless.
"there is no "gay gene.""
Just as there is no "straight gene" but it would still be pretty uncontroversial to say god created heterosexuals, I think.
" To "come out" as a "gay" is a life-style commitment. It's a choice."
I'm sure that's true'. But sexual orientation is pre-existent to any coming-out processes. Even animals exhibit sexual orientation and they do not know anything about coming out.
"human choices result in the embrace of a gay lifestyle. If you're a human being who calls himself "gay," then God made you human; you identified yourself as "gay."" Orientation and lifestyle are very different. The word "gay" is commonly used of both. Should I say "homosexual" orientation and "gay" lifestyle? And there is not such thing as a single gay lifestyle, of course, any more than there is a single heterosexual lifestyle.
"It's a disordered disposition resulting from disordered choices,"
False, and not what the Roman Catholic Church teaches.
" which, like many other kids of choices can habituate one in such a manner as to feel hopelessly caught up in habits he feels he can no more shed than a leopard can shed his spots -- like those addicted to pornography or alcohol. It's a plight not uncommon to man."
Here you seem to be talking of sexual practices rather than basic orientation.
Or do you seriously believe sexual orientation is a matter of choice -- including heterosexual orientation?
1) You claim there is no "straight gene" as there is no "gay gene." Fair enough, but perhaps you miss my point, which is this: There is physical and psychical disorder as well as health. Whatever individual bishops may say, Church teaching is that homosexual inclinations themselves, and not only the actions that they invite, are disordered and contrary to nature as God intended it.
2) It would be uncontroversial to say that God "created homosexuals" as long as we were agreed that God created the human being, but not that He intended the disorder as part of His good creation. A defect, such as blindness, is not a positive being but a privation of being (health and sight). One therefore might say that God permitted someone to be born blind, but not that He created blindness as a good He intended as part of His perfect pre-lapsarian creation. Genesis 3 and Church teaching makes it abundantly clear that natural evils are a result of Original Sin.
3) You say "sexual orientation is pre-existent to any coming-out processes."
Depends what you mean. While one might be born with a certain dispositional disorder (such as a tendency toward angry outbursts, alcoholism, or effeminacy in a man), I reject the notion that one is born with a full blown homosexual inclinations of the sort that outed 'gays' intend, any more than one is born an alcoholic or a pathological criminal. (I'll come back to this under #4 below.)
Animals are irrelevant, since they are not gifted with any capacity for over-riding their inclinations.
4) You state: "Orientation and lifestyle are very different." Again, it's possible that we agree, but it would depend on what one meant by each term.
My concern is that the supposition of a tidy distinction between these things tends to blur the fact that what you call "orientation" can be significantly shaped by "lifestyle," as Aristotle's distinction between habit and actions suggests.
If one allows himself, amidst a culture in which diverse "gay lifestyles" have been increasingly celebrated and mainstreamed, to go beyond noticing that he has a "feminine side," and begins to entertain "putting on" this orientation as an identity; if he begins to seek out those who have more openly embrace one form or other of a "gay lifestyle," who have perhaps "come out," etc., or to engage in homosexual activity, this will inevitably have an effect of hardening his conviction that this disposition in him (and not only the choices so far made) is an ineluctable identity. As Sartre would argue, however, this is a species of essentialism that completely denies human freedom.
5) You deny that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is "a disordered disposition resulting from disordered choices."
The Church teaches that homosexual acts are morally wrong and stem from homosexual inclinations that are disordered, true. Church teaching does not go into the question of how choices may in turn affect one's inclinations, such as I have detailed in #4 above. What I have said under #4, however, is in complete harmony with Church teaching, unless you can point out something I have missed.
6) You ask whether I seriously believe sexual orientation is a matter of choice -- including heterosexual orientation.
First, I think self-professed 'gays' often try to have it both ways: a) when they're accused of choosing their orientation, they insist that it's a genetically-determined disposition and something the cannot help; b) when they are told that their condition is genetically or otherwise pre-determined such that their very "nature" is homosexual, they protest against such Aristotelian "essentialism" and insist, Rousseau-like, that their identities are freely-chosen, subjectively constituted, "constructed," etc.
What both sides are in danger of losing sight of, however, is that regardless of how much 'nature' or 'nurture' or 'choice' is involved on one's life (and I recognize some role of each of these), there is a critical distinction between health and sickness, order and disorder.
In some cases (when nature, nurture and choices have cooperated to yield health and order), one has a much easier time of simply "cooperating" with nature to cultivate and strengthen one's natural virtues. In other cases (where nature, nurture, and choices have yielded disease and disorder), one has a much harder time of achieving some balance and normalcy in life. This is true whether one has to struggle to overcome shyness, a violent temper, addiction to pornography, effeminacy in a man, or even entertaining heterosexual inclinations and fantasies if one is a priest who intends to protect his celibacy or a husband who wishes to cultivate purity of life.
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