The New Birds and the Bees - by Mark Regnerus

In The Public Discourse 

For all of their intelligence, sophistication, and cosmopolitan ways, Westerners are increasingly uncomfortable with where babies come from.

I realize it’s a humorous and ironic claim to suggest that moderns—who dwell in an over-sexed, over-sensualized world—might actually be uncomfortable with the subject matter of sex. But I’m serious. They’re growing increasingly uncomfortable with where babies come from.

Confused?

While over 98 percent of babies are still generated by vaginal sexual intercourse—the clinical term I use so that everyone understands what I’m saying—it’s become increasingly commonplace to disassociate sex from babies in the mind.

Birth control is widely practiced, and almost an assumption. Surrogacy is surging. Artificial reproductive technology (ART) is too, and not just due to rising reliance on in vitro fertilization. Additionally, alternative forms of heterosexual sex—in which ejaculation occurs outside the vagina—are increasingly common in accounts of sexual relationship behavior (and in porn are normative). In step, reported use of “withdrawal” as a contraceptive method has actually increased over time—from 41 percent in 1995 to 59 percent in 2008. Homosexual sex doesn’t involve ejaculation at all—in the case of women—or, with men, is not poised to fertilize anything.

Thus “sex” is an inclusive word. In that sense it’s a bit like “hooking up,” a catch-all term that leaves to the imagination the details of what did or did not happen between a couple. Unless, however, such sex is “unprotected.” We know what that means.

In other words, what we mean when we think of sex has shifted—and expanded—rather dramatically. Some celebrate this, concurring with Huxley’s Brave New World character that “fertility is merely a nuisance.” Some lament it. Others struggle to have it both ways, echoing the words my wife and I heard one physician’s assistant utter: “Isn’t it strange how we spend our twenties trying our best to avoid pregnancy, only to spend our thirties doing the opposite?”

Yes, we are increasingly uncomfortable with where babies come from, no doubt about it. Our lingo betrays us. And it doesn’t take a social conservative to perceive it.

Anthony Giddens is a premier social theorist from Britain, a leading intellectual figure in England’s Labour Party, and one of the most famous sociologists alive today. Before retiring, he was director of the London School of Economics. He wrote a book called The Transformation of Intimacy, published a full twenty-one years ago already. Although not chock full of statistics or even original data analyses of any sort, it’s nevertheless excellent as a masterful work of prediction.

Giddens asserts:

Effective contraception meant more than an increased capability of limiting pregnancy . . . [It] signaled a deep transition in personal life. For women—and, in a partly different sense, for men also—sexuality became malleable, open to being shaped in diverse ways, and a potential “property” of the individual. Sexuality came into being as part of a progressive differentiation of sex from the exigencies of reproduction. With the further elaboration of reproductive technologies, that differentiation has today become complete. Now that conception can be artificially produced, rather than only artificially inhibited, sexuality is at last fully autonomous.

Fully autonomous. In other words, free from embeddedness in relationships. By extension, having little to do with moms, dads, and babies. See what I mean? We’re ambivalent about the procreative aspect of sex. Sex is rather all about pleasure, or, to use the lingo of a public-health friend of mine, all about the f***ing. (Forgive my being blunt and crude, but if the shoe fits . . .)

Indeed, the very word procreative is typically met with eye-rolling, guffaws, and LOLs.

Our reticence about where babies come from is also reflected in a new children’s book—ironically titled What Makes a Baby—that’s generating plenty of attention, including over at The Atlantic Monthly where Noah Berlatsky describes its unusual approach to explaining the birds and the bees:

Indeed, the book doesn’t even mention the word “mommy” or “daddy.” Instead, What Makes a Baby explains that “Not all bodies have eggs in them. Some do, and some do not”; and that “Not all bodies have sperm in them. Some do, and some do not.” Similarly, sex isn’t so much tip-toed around as it is relegated to one unspecified option among many. “When grown ups want to make a baby they need to get an egg from one body and sperm from another body. They also need a place where a baby can grow.”

We’re becoming boosters of both outsourcing babies—aided considerably by its association with gay rights—and treating ART as if it’s as plausible and natural as intercourse. As Giddens puts it:

[W]hat used to be “nature” becomes dominated by socially organized systems. Reproduction was once part of nature, and heterosexual activity was inevitably its focal point. . . .

Even though nearly 99 percent of human reproduction remains of “nature” by this definition, it makes a big difference that we no longer automatically associate the two, since naming something in the social world—unlike in the natural world—not only classifies it but often acts back upon the social world, changing how people navigate it. Giddens wrote about that, too—the double hermeneutic—as did sociologist James Hunter, who notes that “to classify something in the social world is to penetrate the imagination, to alter our frameworks of knowledge and discussion, and to shift the perception of everyday reality.”

Done.

ART cycles have increased 37 percent between 2001 and 2010. Live-birth deliveries from ART have jumped 60 percent in the same time, constituting just under 62,000 babies. That may or may not sound like a large number, but it works out to be just under four babies per state per day (to put things into time-and-space perspective).

Together with birth control and rising familiarity with diverse sexual acts, the social result is a univocal shift in our thinking about sex and where babies come from. Instead, sex is primarily about pleasure—something with which even our most distant ancestors were no doubt acquainted—secondarily about bonding, and somewhere down the list are the babies that were once equated with consistent paired sexual expression.

Great (infertile) sex is now a priority, a hallmark of the elusive good life. Hence the rise in talk of “needs” and even “rights” when discussing sex. You’d think that quality sexual experiences were as pivotal to human flourishing as clean air, potable water, edible food, and ample shelter. To many today they are. Giddens asserts that our new approach to relationships has introduced the idea of sex as an art form

into the core of the conjugal relationship and makes the achievement of reciprocal sexual pleasure a key element in whether the relationship is sustained or dissolved. The cultivation of sexual skills, the capability of giving and experiencing sexual satisfaction, on the part of both sexes, [has] become organized reflexively via a multitude of sources of sexual information, advice and training.

Even when sex becomes about reproduction, we presume—incorrectly, given rising ART rates—that we retain complete control over the when, where, and how we have children. Popular cultural author Wendell Berry recognizes this, but has chosen to tag it with less optimism than many as constituting an element not of the organic and virtuous life but as a synthetic compound of our penchant for more, larger, and cheaper—a postmodern intersection where Wal-Mart meets Dan Savage. Berry writes:

…our “sexual revolution” is mostly an industrial phenomenon, in which the body is used as an idea of pleasure or a pleasure machine with the aim of “freeing” natural pleasure from natural consequence. Like any other industrial enterprise, industrial sexuality seeks to conquer nature by exploiting it and ignoring the consequences, by denying any connection between nature and spirit or body and soul, and by evading social responsibility. The spiritual, physical, and economic costs of this “freedom” are immense, and are characteristically belittled or ignored. The diseases of sexual irresponsibility are regarded as a technological problem and an affront to liberty. Industrial sex, characteristically, establishes its freeness and goodness by an industrial accounting, dutifully toting up numbers of “sexual partners,” orgasms, and so on, with the inevitable industrial implication that the body is somehow a limit on the idea of sex . . .

Meanwhile, the most organic citizens in our midst are portrayed as the most restrictive, misogynist, and backwards. Among all the ironies that greet us in the domain of human sexuality, this is one of the most profound. Our language about sexuality is dominated by public health, with its talk of risk, “protection,” health, choice, and rights. It’s not natural and productive. It’s mechanical and consumptive.

And hence we scoff at babies—the crowning glory of natural human creativity—and where they come from.

We are not a rational people. We are a strange people.

Mark Regnerus is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Homosexuals are born that way, gay activists argue vehemently. How is it that so many have changed? - by Robert R. Reilly

In MercatorNet

Science has been enlisted to depathologize homosexuality in so far as it can lend credence to the assertion that homosexuality is an immutable condition. The immutability issue is as irrelevant to the moral nature of homosexual behavior as it is to alcoholic behavior. Alcoholics, by definition, are alcoholics for life. If they wish to remain sober, they may never drink again.

Are homosexuals like this, also? Will they forever suffer from (or celebrate) their inclination? There is mixed evidence regarding this. Of those wanting to change, some have been able to; some have not. However, except in the very real terms of personal hardship, it does not really matter. After all, everyone is disposed in some morally disordered way or another. The immutability of the condition or of the inclination is irrelevant to the moral character of the acts to which they are disposed.

Of course, some homosexual apologists find the genetic excuse exculpatory. Therefore, they need it for the rationalization of their behavior: if I am this way by nature, how can I help what I do? However, the alcoholic could use the same justification for his drunkenness. In neither case does the inclination neuter free will or responsibility for actions.

However, this issue is extremely important here in the US because homosexual activists wish to establish the immutability of their condition in order to constitute themselves as a “class”. Legally, a “class” can be determined only by accident of birth, by such traits as race or sex. This explains the enormous interest in establishing sexual orientation as genetic or biological. Homosexuals want to be designated a “class” so they can game the legal system for the spoils of discrimination. Therefore, this issue has huge legal and financial consequences.

We can see the burgeoning significance of this matter in Attorney General Eric Holder’s 2011 letter to Congress, explaining why the Obama administration would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as being between one man and one woman, in court. A group can be defined as a “class”, explained Mr. Holder, if individuals “exhibit obvious, immutable, or distinguishing characteristics that define them as a discrete group”. Therefore, everything hinges upon whether homosexuality is an unchangeable characteristic. Mr Holder announces that, “a growing scientific consensus accepts that sexual orientation is a characteristic that is immutable”. So great is this consensus that, according to him, claims to the contrary “we do not believe can be reconciled with more recent social scientific understandings”.

This bestows upon homosexuals the privilege of being a class, just as are blacks, Hispanics, or women. As a class, they can be discriminated against. Has there been such discrimination?

Mr Holder answers that, “there is, regrettably, a significant history of purposeful discrimination against gay and lesbian people, by governmental as well as private entities, based on prejudice and stereotypes that continue to have ramifications today”.  One of those ongoing ramifications is the restriction of marriage to one man and one woman by the Defense of Marriage Act. Thus, he concludes, this law is discriminatory against homosexuals as a class and, therefore, unconstitutional and indefensible.

Judging “immutable characteristics”

But let us try to put these claims in perspective. Let us say that in cannibals, cannibalism is an immutable characteristic. They simply can’t stop eating people. Identifiable as cannibals, they could be discriminated against as a class. But this begs the question as to whether discrimination against them would be justified or not. Surely, one would think, it would be warranted because eating other people is wrong. Therefore, the discrimination against them is based not so much on cannibals as people, but on their activity of eating other people. If there were nothing wrong with eating other people, there would be no moral basis for discrimination against cannibals.

Likewise, even if homosexuality is an immutable characteristic, what distinguishes homosexuals is their sexual activity. Therefore, like cannibals, discrimination against them would be based not so much on who they are, as on what they do. The whole question, then, turns upon whether what they do is right or wrong. Mr. Holder’s letter clearly assumes that this question has been settled and, in his answer, we see the profound ramifications of the Lawrence v. Texas case and its vindication of sodomy. Using Lawrence, Mr. Holder declares, in an opprobrious tone, that, “Indeed, until very recently, states have ‘demean[ed] the existence’ of gays and lesbians ‘by making their private sexual conduct a crime’. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 578 (2003)” – meaning, of course, that it was wrong to do so.

Change you can believe in

However, even if one were to grant that sodomy is a morally fine act, the contention that homosexuals are a “class” is indefensible because sexual orientation is not an immutable characteristic – even if some are unable to change it. There is simply too much clinical and other evidence that proves otherwise. A black man has never become a white man, or an Hispanic, a Chinese. A woman has never become a man, or a man, a woman – without massive surgical and hormonal intervention. However, there is ample fluidity, particularly in younger years, in sexual orientation. Straight men have become homosexuals, and homosexuals have become straight. The mutable cannot be immutable.

In 2003, Dr Jeffrey Satinover, a board-certified psychiatrist, testified before the Massachusetts Senate Judicial Committee on this subject. He said that the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS) study of sexuality was completed in 1994 by a research team from the University of Chicago and funded by almost every large government agency and NGO with an interest in the AIDS epidemic.

“They studied every aspect of sexuality, but among their findings is the following, which I'm going to quote for you directly: ‘7.1 [to as much as 9.1] percent of the men [we studied, more than 1,500] had at least one same-gender partner since puberty. ... [But] almost 4 percent of the men [we studied] had sex with another male before turning eighteen but not after. These men. . . constitute 42 percent of the total number of men who report ever having a same gender experience.’ Let me put this in context: Roughly ten out of every 100 men have had sex with another man at some time – the origin of the 10% gay myth. Most of these will have identified themselves as gay before turning eighteen and will have acted on it. But by age 18, a full half of them no longer identify themselves as gay and will never again have a male sexual partner. And this is not a population of people selected because they went into therapy; it's just the general population. Furthermore, by age twenty-five, the percentage of gay identified men drops to 2.8%. This means that without any intervention whatsoever, three out of four boys who think they're gay at age l6 aren't by 25”.

In “Homosexuality and the Truth”,  former homosexuals Sy Rogers & Alan Medinger, both involved in the Exodus Global Alliance, provide the following references for the contention that homosexuality is not immutable:

“Dr Reuben Fine, Director for the New York Centre for Psychoanalytic Training, says in his 1987 publication 'Psychoanalytic Theory, Male and Female Homosexuality: Psychological Approaches': ‘I have recently had occasion to review the result of psychotherapy with homosexuals, and been surprised by the findings. It is paradoxical that even though politically active homosexual groups deny the possibility of change, all studies from Schrenck-Notzing on have found positive effects, virtually regardless of the kind of treatment used...a considerable percentage of overt homosexuals became heterosexual... If the patients were motivated, whatever procedure is adopted, a large percentage will give up their homosexuality. In this connection, public information is of the greatest importance. The misinformation spread by certain circles that 'homosexuality is untreatable by psychotherapy' does incalculable harm to thousands of men and women.’ (pp.84-86)”

Here is what Dr Irving Bieber and his colleagues concluded:

“The therapeutic results of our study provide reason for an optimistic outlook. Many homosexuals become exclusively heterosexual in psychoanalytic treatment. Although this change may be more easily accomplished by some than others, in our judgment, a heterosexual shift is a possibility for all homosexuals who are strongly motivated to change.”

Bieber stated 17 years later: “We have followed some patients for as long as ten years who have remained exclusively heterosexual.”

Dr. Robert Kronemeyer, in his 1980 book, Overcoming Homosexuality says: "For those homosexuals who are unhappy with their life and find effective therapy, it is 'curable'." "The homosexual's real enemy is... his ignorance of the possibility that he can be helped." says Dr. Edmund Bergler, in his book, Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life?

In his 2003 testimony to the Massachusetts Senate, Dr. Satinover said,

“A review of the research over many years demonstrates a consistent 30-52% success rate in the treatment of unwanted homosexual attraction. Masters and Johnson reported a 65% success rate after a five-year follow-up. Other professionals report success rates ranging from 30% to 70%”.

Stanton L Jones, Provost and Professor of Psychology, Wheaton College, conducted a more recent study of people seeking change in sexual orientation “through their involvement in the cluster of ministries organized under Exodus International”. The span of the study was 6 to 7 years. His reported results are as follows: “Of these 61 subjects, 53% were categorized as successful outcomes by the standards of Exodus Ministries. Specifically, 23% of the subjects reported success in the form of ‘conversion’ to heterosexual orientation and functioning, while an additional 30% reported stable behavioral chastity with substantive disidentification with homosexual orientation. On the other hand, 20% of the subjects reported giving up on the change process and fully embracing gay identity”. Dr. Jones said, “I conclude from these data and years of study that homosexual orientation is sometimes mutable”.

The futility of immutability

If it is even sometimes mutable, then it cannot be immutable. The evidence for this is often disregarded or treated with tremendous hostility by homosexual activists because it imperils their “class” designation and all the goes with it. Therefore, tremendous pressure has been exerted within and on the American Psychological Association and other professional societies to declare that such change is impossible and, in fact, undesirable. Homosexuals who have made the change are viciously attacked and attempts are being made, and have so far succeeded in places like California, to pass legislation prohibiting reparative therapy.

In 2012, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 1172, which “prohibit[s] a mental health provider, as defined, from engaging in sexual orientation change efforts, as defined, with a patient under 18 years of age. The bill would provide that any sexual orientation change efforts attempted on a patient under 18 years of age by a mental health provider shall be considered unprofessional conduct and shall subject the provider to discipline by the provider’s licensing entity”. Therefore, but for the stay of a court order, it would now be illegal in California for therapists to aid teenagers struggling with same-sex attractions from performing any type of reorientation therapy on lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender minors.

The Bill announces the premise upon which it is based: “An individual’s sexual orientation, whether homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual, is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming”. The Bill also quotes an article in the journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2012, which states “Indeed, there is no medically valid basis for attempting to prevent homosexuality, which is not an illness”.

While the bill speaks volubly about the dangers of conversion therapy, for which there is only anecdotal evidence, it never once mentions the far greater dangers of the homosexual life, for which there is ample scientific evidence. Perhaps the reason is that its principal sponsor was a homosexual legislator, which also helps explain why the bill does not prohibit therapists from helping straight youths to become homosexual – only the other way around. The totalitarian impulse underlying the rationalization of homosexual behavior is here revealed by the attempt to forbid those seeking help from obtaining it.

Even some pro-homosexual rights scientists are appalled by the outright denial of reality. Dr Nicholas Cummings said:

“I have been a lifelong champion of civil rights, including lesbian and gay rights. I [was] appointed as president (1979) [of] the APA's first Task Force on Lesbian and Gay Issues, which eventually became an APA division. In that era the issue was a person's right to choose a gay life style, whereas now an individual's choice not to be gay is called into question because the leadership of the APA seems to have concluded that all homosexuality is hard-wired and same-sex attraction is unchangeable. My experience has demonstrated that there are as many different kinds of homosexuals as there are heterosexuals. Relegating all same sex-attraction as an unchangeable – an oppressed group akin to African-Americans and other minorities – distorts reality. And past attempts to make sexual reorientation therapy ‘unethical’ violates patient choice and makes the APA the de facto determiner of therapeutic goals… The APA has permitted political correctness to triumph over science, clinical knowledge and professional integrity. The public can no longer trust organized psychology to speak from evidence rather than from what it regards to be politically correct”.

The effect of this political correctness on those seeking help was poignantly related by former homosexual Rich Wyler. His therapist’s name was Matt.

“The first order of business on my first visit with Matt was for me to sign a release form required by the American Psychological Association. Reparative therapy was unproven, the form said; the APA’s official stance was that it didn’t believe it was possible to change sexual orientation; attempting to do so might even cause psychological harm. Yeah, right, I thought, as if the double life I was living was not causing psychological harm enough”.

In fact, the Journal of Human Sexuality (Volume 1, 2009) has reported that, “Those who have received help from reorientation therapists have collectively stood up to be counted—as once did their openly gay counterparts in the 1970s. On May 22, 1994, in Philadelphia, the American Psychiatric Association was protested against for the first time in history—not by pro-gay activists, but by a group of people reporting that they had substantially changed their sexual orientation and that change is possible for others (Davis, 1994). The same thing happened at the 2000 Psychiatric Association convention in Chicago (Gorner, 2000), and again at the 2006 APA convention in New Orleans (Foust, 2006)”.

As mentioned before, some homosexuals who wish to change their orientation have been unable to do so, but many others have. By itself this is substantial and incontrovertible evidence against the theory that homosexuality is an immutable characteristic. (If it were immutable, where has this “class” been throughout thousands of years of recorded history? As Justice Anthony Kennedy said in Lawrence v. Texas, “the concept of the homosexual as a distinct category of person did not emerge until the late 19th century”.) As such, the case for constituting homosexuals as a “class” falls apart and, with it, all the legal and financial benefits from having been discriminated against.

Nonetheless, society as a whole is now being invited, or rather coerced, into the double life of the big lie – to pretend what is, is not: and what is not, is. There is something worse than disease; there is the denial of its existence. This is all part of what Fr James Schall calls the “systematic effort not to name things what they really are so that we are never faced with what we are actually doing”. However, a double life leads to a double death. One is physical, the other spiritual. The worst thing, Socrates warned, is the lie in the soul about “what is”.

La naturaleza real del matrimonio y las consecuencias de su adulteración

In ForumLibertas

Una vez más, Francia a vuelto a sorprender. Con la ley del 'matrimonio' homosexual aprobada, ha conseguido movilizar a centenares de miles de personas, sobre todo en la gran concentración de París, pero también en otras muchas poblaciones de Francia. En este caso, cuando se echan las cuentas, los medios de comunicación olvidan de manera reiterada que, además de la gran concentración humana que se ha producido en cada convocatoria en la capital francesa, también se han reproducido a menor escala grandes movimientos en términos relativos en muchas localidades de aquel país. La razón por la que esto sucede pensamos que radica en el hecho de que la sociedad francesa, a pesar de su laicismo institucional único en Europa y la gran secularización de su sociedad, tiene mucho más clara la naturaleza del matrimonio que en la desarmada España.

Aquí hemos pasado en un fugaz tránsito histórico, porque desde esta perspectiva el tiempo transcurrido no es nada, de la obligación del matrimonio religioso al homosexual en un plis-plas sin que a muchos se les cayera la dentadura por el camino. La razón profunda de por qué esto sucede es digna de meditación y de análisis, pero en cualquier caso el hecho está ahí y no ha sido suficientemente debatido ni profundizado. Las fuerzas sociales que defienden el matrimonio natural, clásico, el único que ha existido en la historia de la humanidad, una vez aprobada la ley se han desarmado no solo como agentes movilizadores sino incluso intelectualmente. Y así siguen. La actitud del PP, que controla o al menos controlaba una parte de este electorado, tiene mucho que ver, porque su menosprecio por cambiar esta ley dice mucho de la visión que tienen las elites dirigentes de nuestro país, incluso en sus sectores más conservadores, sobre el matrimonio.

El homosexualismo político postula que para conseguir su pleno reconocimiento han de poderse casar. Es un error profundo. El rechazo a la homosexualidad no se resolverá a base de que una ínfima minoría de personas del mismo sexo se casen. El problema es otro, pero en todo caso sí hay que subrayar que prosperan en su intento de transformar las instituciones de la sociedad para que estén pensadas a su servicio y no al de la mayoría. De ahí que en la legislación española ya no exista, derivado del matrimonio, el hecho del 'padre' y la 'madre', el 'marido' y la 'esposa', sino 'progenitores' y 'cónyuges'. El lenguaje es representativo de las profundas transformaciones mentales y políticas que el homosexualismo político persigue en una operación de diseño social a gran escala.

El resultado final es malo para todos, porque no solo no existe relación entre la mayor o menor tolerancia y el 'matrimonio' homosexual, como lo demuestra la historia, sino que además la destrucción de la idea del matrimonio conlleva graves consecuencias a medio y largo plazo. En realidad, la tesis del homosexualismo político ha prosperado en España y otros lugares en la medida en que previamente se ha degradado la concepción que del matrimonio tenían amplios sectores de la sociedad, que han empezado a rechazar cualquier compromiso fuerte con el mismo, que incorporara el largo plazo y la descendencia. Desde esta perspectiva, el 'matrimonio' homosexual es una derivada absolutamente lógica. Pero ésta no es la función social del matrimonio, esto no es un matrimonio. La finalidad del matrimonio y de ahí su reconocimiento prepolítico es otra: consiste en reconocer y fortalecer la única institución que es capaz de generar descendencia y educarla, socializarla en la forma adecuada. Nadie más es capaz de hacerlo. Si observamos las causas del crecimiento económico a largo plazo, veremos que tienen una estrecha relación con lo que acabamos de decir. Solo una economía muy marcada por la escuela neoclásica y por lo tanto por una ontogénesis liberal que ha dado papel solo al individuo sin contemplar la función económica de las instituciones sociales ha llevado a tamaño error, a prescindir del papel económico del matrimonio y de la familia que se genera. Es bien sabido que el crecimiento económico a largo plazo depende de la productividad y que ésta a su vez tiene, entre otros, dos componentes absolutamente determinantes porque son los que generan la mayor parte de aquélla. Se tratan del capital humano y del agregado que denominamos productividad total de los factores.

El capital humano está en función del rendimiento profesional en igualdad de condiciones técnicas y de inversión; y este a su vez del rendimiento escolar. Un mal rendimiento escolar, como norma general, va acompañado de un bajo nivel de capital humano. Pues bien, es notorio que el factor determinante de él es la familia y, concretamente, el capital social localizado en ella, que está determinado por la existencia de la pareja, del padre y de la madre, de la estabilidad del vínculo, del tiempo de dedicación a los hijos como factores más determinantes, por encima incluso, aunque también influye de una manera importante, del nivel de ingresos y la renta. En la sociedad del bienestar, que ha tenido una cierta cohesión social, los ingresos de los padres son menos decisivos que el capital social que posee aquella familia en términos de capacidad educativa.

Por otra parte, la productividad total de los factores se ve influida por el capital humano y por derivadas concretas del capital social en el entorno y de la propia empresa. Además, el sistema de bienestar, tanto público, a cargo de las instituciones, como privado, cuando quien lo realiza es la familia, guarda una fuerte relación con la existencia de matrimonios estables que garanticen la sostenibilidad familiar a lo largo del tiempo. El sistema del bienestar depende de la productividad, a la que ya nos hemos referido, y de otros factores más. A largo plazo, de la natalidad; y a corto y a largo, en la vertiente de los costes, por el mayor o menor dimensión de sus costes sociales y de sus costes de intermediación. El eliminar la idea de matrimonio, cuyo fin es la estabilidad para que pueda procrear hijos y cuidarlos adecuadamente, tiene una trascendencia económica frívolamente subvalorada y que está también en parte en el origen de aspectos concretos de la crisis que aún experimentaremos en mayor medida. No es que solo el 'matrimonio' homosexual tenga esta consecuencia, dado su carácter muy minoritario. No, no se trata de esto, sino que él constituye el estadio máximo, el símbolo máximo de desvirtuación del hecho matrimonial entre los heterosexuales. Y en este elemento de contagio es donde radica el problema. Acentúa la tendencia a degradar la naturaleza y fines del matrimonio y esa es la razón del rechazo que debe producir, de la misma manera que objetivamente la ruptura familiar, llevada al extremo de facilidad y en número que registra entre nosotros, es también una causa negativa que afecta a nuestra capacidad de bienestar y de prosperidad.

Cultural imperialism on the march - Obama Promotes Gay Pride Worldwide - by Robert R. Reilly

In MercatorNet

As June approaches, get ready for the official celebration of “Gay Pride Month” by US embassies abroad.

If sodomy and same-sex marriage are constitutional rights, what is their relationship to American foreign policy? Despite the tremendous controversy regarding these issues within the United States, the Obama administration has gone ahead and placed them at the center of US diplomacy. Why? In Libido Dominandi, E. Michael Jones wrote that the rationalization of sexual misbehavior “could only calm the troubled conscience in an effective manner when it was legitimized by the regime in power… [which] went on in the name of high moral purpose to make this vision normative for the entire world.”

Therefore, the Obama administration, after promoting homosexual rights and marriage in the US, has undertaken the task of universalizing the rationalization for sodomitical behavior and is doing so with high moral rhetoric – in this case, by appropriating the language of human rights.

The effort began in earnest on International Human Rights Day, December 6, 2011, with a powerful pair of events. President Obama issued a memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies, directing them “to ensure that US diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons”. Mr Obama said that, “The struggle to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons is a global challenge, and one that is central to the United States commitment to promoting human rights”.

The departments and agencies included the Departments of State, the Treasury, Defense, Justice, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Export Import Bank, the United States Trade Representative, and “such other agencies as the President may designate.” All US agencies engaged abroad were directed to prepare a report each year “on their progress toward advancing these initiatives”.

Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, explained,

“They have directed their embassies everywhere to monitor and assist domestic homosexual movements whether the host country and their people accept it or not. The US is very powerful and can force governments to submit to its social-policy views. They are intent on forcing homosexual ‘marriage’ and homosexual adoption on countries that are offended by such things. They are intent on forcing sexual orientation and gender identity as new categories of non-discrimination that will trump the rights of religious believers… Most people recognize that the homosexual lifestyle is harmful to public health and morals. The effect of the Obama policy is to offend billions of people and force this view on reluctant governments. This is most especially offensive to countries that are predominantly Christian and Muslim. In fact, Christianity and Islam are among the chief obstacles of this agenda and policy.” 

State Department sophistry

While President Obama took the action, Hillary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, gave the rationale in an International Human Rights Day speech on the same day, December 6, in which she proclaimed that that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights”. She also announced that the US would give more than US$3 million to a new Global Equality Fund in order to help civil society organizations promote homosexual advocacy.

Mrs. Clinton came energetically to the defense of those “forced to suppress or deny who they are to protect themselves from harm. I am talking about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people”, whom she described with a strong Rousseauian echo as “human beings born free and given bestowed equality and dignity…” But, if they were born free, why are they not free now? No doubt, because society oppresses them, just as South Africa once oppressed its black population through apartheid – an example Mrs. Clinton gives. But history overcame that, and since, as Rousseau taught, man is a product of history, history can overcome this, too. Thus, Mrs. Clinton ends with the admonition, “Be on the right side of history”.  

It is a testimony to the influence of Rousseau that Secretary Clinton should have appealed to history for the vindication of “gay” rights rather than to moral principle. Had it been the latter, she would have had to say rather that, in order “to protect themselves from harm”, LGBT persons should “suppress” precisely that part of themselves inclined to indulge in disordered sexual acts, just as anyone should resist their inclinations to immoral acts, whatever their kind.

Mrs Clinton averred that “being LGBT does not make you less human”. That is certainly so, unless you consistently give in to one of these disordered inclinations. In a parallel case, being an alcoholic also does not make you less human. However, practicing alcoholism by living life in an inebriated stupor does make you less human in the Aristotelian sense that it impairs your Nature or incapacitates you fulfilling it. If it is virtue that enables man to reach his natural end in becoming fully human, then it is vice that prevents him from doing so, thus making him less human.

Fully embracing the rationalization of the same-sex cause, Secretary Clinton espoused “gender identity” as equivalent to being black or being a woman. It is “who they are”. In a moment of humility, she stated that, “my own country’s record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect. Until 2003, it was still a crime in parts of our country.”

It was? What was it? Being homosexual or lesbian was not a crime in the United States, so what was she referring to? Mrs. Clinton never said, but the it to which she alluded is sodomy, the elephant in the room. She repeated the mantra that “it is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay…” and “it should never be a crime to be gay”. One would have to agree in so far as persecution of and violence against homosexuals is concerned but, as Austin Ruse has pointed out, “Such attacks upon individuals are already recognized as violations of human rights in international law particularly in the 1966 Covenants implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other existing treaties”. This, then, is moving beyond that to the moral and legal endorsement of certain behavior. Some governments continue to have laws against homosexual acts, which is not the same thing as violating their rights as human beings. Was Mrs Clinton saying that it is a violation of human rights to declare sodomy illegal?

Apparently, for that would be consistent with an understanding of Section 1 in the Obama directive, instructing agencies abroad to engage in “Combating Criminalization of LGBT Status or Conduct Abroad”(emphasis added). What kind of conduct might this be? The only conduct that is or has been consistently criminalized by many countries is sodomy. Morally speaking, sodomy is a fairly unattractive act. Why should it not be criminalized? Perhaps there are prudential reasons for not doing so, but what might be the moral objections to such laws?

The somewhat evasive answer in the Presidential Memorandum is because “no country should deny people their rights because of who they love…” In her speech, Mrs Clinton echoed this response and set this test: “We need to ask ourselves, ‘How would it feel if it were a crime to love the person I love?’”

Well, that depends.

What if the person one loves is already married? What if the person one loves is a sibling? How about a teacher in love with a student? Or a pastor in love with a choir boy? Or an uncle with his niece? Acting upon any of these loves in a sexual relationship is, in most places, a crime. It is not so much whom one loves, but how one loves. How it would feel does not really matter since, in each of these cases, it is morally wrong to sexualize the relationship. Feelings do not change the moral nature of an act.

Why, if all the above cases deserve prohibition, do homosexuals deserve an exemption when it comes to sodomy? Secretary Clinton never said why we should feel for them and not for any of those mentioned above, nor did she raise any of the above examples of criminal love as violations of human rights. Why not?

Rationalizing immoral behaviour

As with all rationalizations for moral misbehavior, Mrs. Clinton’s speech was rife with denials of reality, three of which came in one sentence. She said, “Now, there are some who say and believe that all gay people are pedophiles, that homosexuality is a disease that can become caught or cured, or that gays recruit others to become gay. Well, these notions are simply not true”.

Well, these notions have to be seen as not true for her to promote the “gay” agenda internationally and get away with it. I have never met anyone who believes that all homosexuals are pedophiles, but many of them are certainly pederasts. By setting up the pedophile straw man, Mrs. Clinton avoids this unpleasant reality. Whether homosexuality is a disease or not (it is certainly a disorder), there is ample evidence that it can be cured. Of course, a fair number of people float into homosexuality in their youth and float out again as they mature – no cure required. So much for its being an immutable characteristic.

Others who have become immersed in this life and who later wish to leave it have successfully done so through a variety of therapies. In 1995, the New York Times reported that “Dr Charles W. Socarides offered the closest thing to hope that many homosexuals had in the 1960s: the prospect of a cure. Rather than brand them as immoral or regard them as criminal, Dr Socarides, a New York psychoanalyst, told homosexuals that they suffered from an illness whose effects could be reversed.” Dr Socarides said that his cure rate was about one third. For Secretary Clinton to deny this is an enormous disservice to the very people whose rights she purports to be defending.

Lastly, the bigger the lie, the bolder the assertion – as in Mrs. Clinton’s outright denial that “gays recruit others to become gay”. In my professional career in the arts, I witnessed such recruitment, saw its occasional success, and was several times the object of it. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the homosexual subculture could not possibly make such a statement.

Otherwise, Mrs. Clinton could have referred to homosexual literature, such as Lavender Culture (1994), in which Gerald Hannon described the need for a youth recruitment campaign: “I believe…we have to behave in a certain way vis-à-vis young people. I believe that means we have to proselytize… The answer is to proselytize. Aggressively so”. He added that, “To attract young people to the gay movement in large numbers should be the challenge to the next phase of the movement. It is a challenge we have set ourselves…” This is not to say that all homosexuals recruit, but to assert that none do is a complete denial of reality – which, after all, is the point of the rationalization.

The State Department celebrates

What this is all about was very clear from the 2006 Yogykarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, adopted by the International Commission of Jurists, the International Service for Human Rights, and homosexual activists to influence the interpretation of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all UN human rights treaties, and international law as a whole. One requirement of the Principles is to: “Repeal criminal and other legal provisions that prohibit or are, in effect, employed to prohibit consensual sexual activity among people of the same sex who are over the age of consent…” This is the nub of the issue. It is not the status of homosexuals that is so much the matter, as it is the status of their conduct.

In 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, France introduced a statement at the UN General Assembly, titled Joint Statement on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Human Rights. It proclaimed that, “We urge States to take all the necessary measures, in particular legislative or administrative, to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests or detention”. The Statement was signed by 66 nations.

Under the George W. Bush administration, the United States declined, but in 2009 the Barack Obama administration signed the Statement. While the Statement did not go as far as the Yogykarta Principles, it was clearly headed in that direction. The majority of the criminal penalties it was decrying were not, as the Statement disingenuously suggests, aimed at orientation, but at activity. It is the activity that must be vindicated and blessed as a universal human right.

One of the most immediate results of the priority given to the homosexual cause by President Obama and Secretary Clinton has been the profusion of “gay pride” commemorations and celebrations in US embassies abroad. June is the month singled out for this because, in 2000, President Bill Clinton declared June “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month”, with the last Sunday reserved as Gay Pride Day. June was chosen to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall riots as the beginning of “gay” liberation. Ever since, every government agency has observed it. As of 2011, it moved overseas as part of US foreign policy.

Therefore, the US Embassy in Islamabad celebrated its first-ever lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) “pride celebration” with an event on June 26, 2011. The embassy said the purpose of meeting was to demonstrate “support for human rights, including LGBT rights, in Pakistan at a time when those rights are increasingly under attack from extremist elements throughout Pakistani society.” Richard Hoagland, the US deputy chief of mission, was quoted on the embassy website, as saying, “I want to be clear that the US Embassy is here to support you and stand by your side every step of the way”.

However, it is Pakistan’s Penal Code, not extremist elements, that, in Section 377 (introduced at the time of British colonialism), states, “Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished… with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than two years nor more than ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.”

If the Pakistani embassy in Washington DC held a public event in which it encouraged that the domestic laws in the United States be changed in order to re-criminalize sodomy, we might be somewhat surprised and irritated. Why should the Pakistani people be less annoyed by the US Embassy telling them to change its laws in order to decriminalize sodomy? Why exactly is that our business?

All Islamic groups in Pakistan condemned the “pride” event as a form of “cultural terrorism” against democratic Pakistan. Students protested against what they called “the attempts of the United States to promote vulgarity in Islamic societies under the pretext of human rights”. One speaker at a demonstration said, “Now the United States wants to project and promote objectionable, unnatural, abnormal behaviors under the pretext of equality and human rights, which is not at all acceptable… If you destroy the morality of the society, you have destroyed it completely.”  

In Nairobi, Kenya, June, 2012, the US Embassy hosted what is thought to be the first “Gay Pride” event in that country. John Haynes, a public affairs officer at the US embassy, introduced the event: "The US government for its part has made it clear that the advancement of human rights for LGBT people is central to our human rights policies around the world and to the realization of our foreign policy goals". Homosexual acts are illegal in Kenya, just as they were in parts of the United States until 2003. Now, as part of our foreign policy, apparently we tell Kenya to change its laws.

The US Embassy in Vientiane, Laos, proudly displays webpage news from its 2012 “first-ever Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride event on June 25 in Vientiane. The event, called ‘Proud to be Us!’, was produced by a group of young Lao LGBT activists and featured music, dance, skits, and dramas exploring issues faced by LGBT people in Laos today, such as discrimination, gender roles, and sexual health”.

On the webpage of the US Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic, a joint statement was issued which the US ambassador, Norman Eisen, had signed. It declared: “On the occasion of the 2nd annual Prague Pride Festival (2012), we express our solidarity with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities of the Czech Republic in their celebration… The Prague Pride Festival reminds us that ensuring LGBT rights is an important aspect of fulfilling our broader international human rights commitments since the full recognition of those rights is still one of the world’s remaining human rights challenges. Safeguarding human rights and guarding against intolerance requires constant vigilance in the Czech Republic, as in all our countries. Therefore today, we align ourselves with the Prague Pride participants…”

This type of thing at US embassies has become standard. As then-Secretary of State Clinton proclaimed in June, 2012: “United States Embassies and Missions throughout the world are working to defend the rights of LGBT people of all races, religions, and nationalities as part of our comprehensive human rights policy and as a priority of our foreign policy. From Riga, where two US Ambassadors and a Deputy Assistant Secretary marched in solidarity with Baltic Pride; to Nassau, where the Embassy joined together with civil society to screen a film about LGBT issues in Caribbean societies; to Albania, where our Embassy is coordinating the first-ever regional Pride conference for diplomats and activists to discuss human rights and shared experiences”.

Forcing other countries to adopt US standards

As in Pakistan, there has been some blowback from the effort to legitimize sodomy and promote same-sex marriage. When the acting ambassador in El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte, wrote an op-ed in a major Salvadoran newspaper, La Prensa Grafica, implying that the disapproval of homosexual behavior is animated by “brutal hostility” and “aggression” by “those who promote hatred”, a group of pro-family associations fought back. On July 6, 2011, they wrote,

“Ms. Aponte, in clear violation of the rules of diplomacy and international rights laws, you intend to impose to (sic) Salvadorans, disregarding our profound Christian values, rooted in natural law, a new vision of foreign and bizarre values, completely alien to our moral fiber, intending to disguise this as ‘human rights’… The only thing we agree with from your article, is to repudiate violence against homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, etc.; Against these, just the same as against skinny, fat, tall or short ... This of course does not mean accepting the legal union between same sex individuals or to add new types of families like bisexual, tri-sexual, multi-sexual and the full range of sexual preferences. Not accepting the legitimacy of ‘sexual diversity’ does not mean we are violating any human right. There can be no talk of progress if this is how ‘modern’ is defined. We prefer to feel proudly ‘old fashioned’, keep our moral values, preserve our families and possess the clarity of what defines good and evil.” 

As mentioned above, Secretary Clinton said that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights”. The problem with this should be self-evident. The promotion of gay rights must come at the expense of the promotion of human rights because the two notions are immiscible. One is founded on the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God and the other on moral relativism, which eviscerates the very idea of natural rights and the natural law on which they are based. If you have one, you cannot have the other. You have your rights by virtue of being a human being, and not by anything else – not ethnicity, not religion, not race, not tribe, not sexual orientation.

I deplore, for instance, the persecution of Baha’is in Iran and the persecution of Ahamdis in Pakistan. Being a Baha’i or being an Ahmadi no doubt constitutes the identity of these people who are being persecuted. Nonetheless, there is no such thing as Ahmadi rights or Baha’i rights: there are only human rights. And our defense of them comes precisely at the level of principle in the inalienable right to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression.

Were we to construct such a thing as Ahmadi rights or Baha’i rights or “gay” rights, we would be eviscerating the foundations for those very human rights, which have to be universal by definition in order to exist. If one has rights as a Baha’i, what happens to those rights if one converts to, say Christianity? Does one then lose one’s Baha’i rights and obtain new Christian rights? What happens to one’s “gay” rights if one goes straight?

One does not possess or attain rights in this way. They are inalienable because one possesses them by virtue of one’s human nature – not due to any other specificity regarding race, class, gender or religion. Either they exist at that level, or they do not exist at all. If someone tries to appropriate human rights for something that applies to less than everyone, then you may be sure that they are undermining very notion of human rights. If there are abuses, and this includes abuses against homosexuals, then they should be opposed from the perspective of human rights, not manufactured rights that obtain to just a specific group.

If the United States wishes to promote democratic principles and constitutional rule in other countries, but insists on inserting a manufactured right such as “gay” rights as integral to that program, it will be rejected overall by religious people and by those who, through the examination of moral philosophy, have arrived at the existence of human rights from natural law. If we wish not only to make ourselves irrelevant, but an object of derision in the Muslim and other parts of world, all we have to do is openly promote the rationalization of homosexual behavior, which is explicitly taught against as inherently immoral by Islam and, in fact, by every minority religion in those Muslim-majority countries, including Christianity and Judaism.

If we wish to make this part of American public diplomacy, as we have been doing, we can surrender the idea that the United States is promoting democracy in those countries because they are already responding, “If this is democracy, we don’t want it, thank you; we would rather keep our faith and morals.” This approach not only undermines the foundation of human rights abroad but here, as well.

But, of course, democracy is not the real goal; the goal is the universalization of the rationalization for sodomy. This is now one of the depraved purposes of US foreign policy. The light from the City on the Hill is casting a very dark shadow.