Letters to the Editor
Ballsee
Published Letters: 233 Editor's Choice: 19
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@callypigous
[Read the article: Hillary's slick willies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Origins of......
While I find a great deal of Paglia's self-indulgent twaddle to be beyond tiresome, I agree with her, and a number of other academics and researchers (some of whom themselves are gay) when she disbelieves in "gay genetics." No such gene has ever been found and no such gene ever will because it doesn't exist, anymore than "straight genes" exist. I know you're going to write back with a dozen URL's as to all the research that has been done and what the preponderance of the genetic evidence is. Save yourself the trouble. I've already been there. None of these studies have held up over time. Sooner or later, they've all been shot down.
The search for a "gay gene" is the same mentality that equates homosexuality with "disease"...as in "there must be some CAUSE for it", something beyond good old common human horniness. (There's a reason you don't hear about the search for "straight genes".) The hope of those who believe in gay genetics is that once found, once identified, once isolated, society will stop its infernal silliness and outright hatred toward gay sex. It's a fool's bargain. Once identified (some scientist may yet convince themselves and most of us that they've actually found THE gay gene), there is nothing whatever to stop people from genetically selecting to disappear such "genes". After all, a host of other human maladies have roots in our genetics but that doesn't make us love cancer.
Paglia's unartful tagging of homosexual behavior as an "adaptation" is no more insightful than to tag heterosexuality as an "adaptation." In fact, it is less so, since most human beings adapt and conform to norms of proscribed behavior on all kinds of behavioral fronts, not only the sexual. The odds are against most people behaving homosexually, not because of genetics, but because of adaptation to the norms of sexual indoctrination and societal expectation. Even those who enjoy homosexual sex are raised to be straight. Here's the only truth that matters, human sexuality is all over the map, as it is in a number of other animals, including other primates. It feels good.
Which brings me to the real point about all this obsessing over the causes of and the impacts of homosexuality. As a gay man, I don't care what nonsense others, including scientists, choose to believe about what the cause of my sexuality is. It's like trying to pin down the cause of WHY (not how) the sun comes up every morning. It's irrelevant to the sun shinning and doesn't matter a damn as to how the day turns out.
Recommended Reading:
"The Trouble With Nature, Sex in Science and Popular Culture" by Roger N. Lancaster
"Biological Exuberance, Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity", by Bruce Bagemihl
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The President is not the country......
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The things that have happened in the U.S. over the last seven years haven't just magically emerged. They had actors behind them and ideas underlying them and acting as though it's all just a matter to leave politely in the past -- even though none of it has really changed -- is just a recipe for guaranteeing that it continues.
Once you start to pay attention to how often this kind of Orwellian construction is used to cover illegal and unethical behavior, it's quite startling. You find it most often used in the official documents of governments and corporations and of course the media. I fought against it for years as an editor of official audit reports of a multi-national corporation. The auditors would write, "the company [insert verb here]..." or "the department engaged in....." They got my sermon on how it is that companies and departments and buildings don't make decisions, people do. I always encouraged specificity as to which manager(s) did what, if not by name then by title.
It's an attempt to deflect responsibility and ownership of decisions and actions as if they just happen all on their own without human actors. There are times when it's appropriate to use a blanket description of who is doing the acting, but it is overused and misapplied through lazy, sloppy thinking, or willful diffusion of accountability.