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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I try not to read Paglia but I let the gay genes teaser draw me in. I wish I hadn't. The facile psychobabble she tosses off is insulting to anyone whose bodies went through a gay puberty long before their minds could recognize it. She should consider that gay people may have leapt on biological evidence because it felt innately valid to them. There is a vast range of personalities within every sexual preference; her reduction of homosexuality to the result of simplistic social conditions is ridiculous. There are real, non-oblivious thinkers out there who could write for Salon for reasons other than trying to shock with witless contrarianism. This is bilge.
TIMOTHY GEITHNER'S CONFIRMATION
Seriously, are we really going to make Mr. Geithner the Treasury secretary? How is it, a man of his experience and education did not know that he owed Social Security & Medicare Taxes for working as an independent contractor for the IMF for SEVERAL years? If Mr. Geithner had simply bothered to use Turbo Tax/Tax Cut, he would have avoided this violation. As a tax payer, I expect a more competent person to be the Treasury secretary. After all, he will be responsible for allocating TRILLIONS of tax payers’ hard earned money the next several years in the form tax dollars for corporate bailouts! How can we trust him to administer that huge program when he has demonstrated that he cannot even properly file and pay his personal income taxes?
Respectfully,
Paul Warn, (Lansing,IL)
Over the years, I've learned to ignore most anything Paglia has to say because its vapid witlessness, flabby political nonsense and stomach churning self-aggrandizement are like total intellectual downers, man. But goddamnit I find myself in agreement with her on the whole gay gene thing. No such thing as gay genes. No such thing as straight genes either. There are only horny genes! Her explanation for homosexuality is total crap however, a pile of sociological scatology that has never held up to empirical evidence, or even the most cursory inventory of one's own life and the lives of one's gay associates or friends, but then facts never stopped our Ms. Camille. How does she explain heterosexuality, which frankly seems far more improbable, far more fraught with danger and failure than homosexuality.
@Tangerine, I'll take up your challenge.
Twelve (12) Congressional Democratic elected officials introduced the "Fairness and Accountability in Broadcasting Act" (H.B. 510) in 2005, based on findings that:
(4) Since the rescission of the Fairness Doctrine, the country has experienced a proliferation of highly partisan networks, news outlets, and ownership groups that disseminate unbalanced news coverage and broadcast content.
(5) News consumers, particularly those of talk radio, are overwhelmingly exposed to a single point of view. A 2004 survey by Democracy Radio revealed that 90 percent of all broadcast hours on talk radio are characterized as conservative. This imbalance results in issues of public importance receiving little or no attention, while others are presented in a manner not conducive to the listeners' receiving the facts and range of opinions necessary to make informed decisions.
I can't say whether it's been reintroduced since then, but I wouldn't be surprised. The efforts of the Left to silence critics has a long history.
I've read several of your responses to the letters posted herein, which depict that you have a stable mind, so I humbly request your response to the following musings.
Now that the left have installed their president, he will have to govern according to the dictates of reality rather than ideology or he will fail to keep America safe or prosperous. For the sake of my own amusement, I've been reading the left's mournful responses to Obama's centrist appointments. It seems they are now waking up to the fact that the real test of any ideology's validity per se is whether it works in the real world rather than whether it works in campaign rhetoric or political opposition.
So what policies have worked these 8 years past? Certainly, tax cuts increased tax revenues while promoting sustained economic growth for a time. Now that the economy is shrinking, Obama and cadré look set to continue this policy, thereby implicitly acknowledging the per se validity of the same. Playing offense against the Islamic extremists seems to have prevented new attacks on the American homeland, and Obama and cadré look set to continue in this policy, too. Obama promises to close Gitmo, but not before his legal, diplomatic, and security teams figure out what to do with all those inmates no other country will take because they pose too grave a threat to their own citizens. (Isn't that why they were at Gitmo in the first place?) In the meantime, Gitmo's inmates will continue to cool their heals as if no decision to close Gitmo had ever been taken. Finally, the culture wars rage on, with the gay rights movement's egregious overreaching coming back to bite them in the worst possible way, even pitting them squarely against blacks at the ballot box. Which special interest group do the Democrats love more, and what will such a declaration of love cost them politically?
Concerning the particular policies described above, a few words from your side regarding what you believe will work in the next four years would be much appreciated from my side.
Sexual orientation is probably the result of brain structure, which is probably the result of conditions in the prenatal environment (e.g., exposure to various hormones in the womb and other things like that). I doubt there's a specific gene that causes homosexuality. I think it's probably more accurate to say that naturally occurring prenatal conditions (in all women, in all cultures) result in heterosexual offspring about 95% of the time and result in homosexual offspring about 5% of the time, give or take a few percent. Either way, the result is a natural, regular occurrence, no matter which section of the gene pool you're talking about, or even which species you're talking about.
In my opinion, the term "homosexual" needlessly complicates the issue of sexual orientation. The issue isn't whether a person is attracted to people of the same gender; the issue is which gender a person is attracted to. Gender and sexual orientation are two separate things; they are not directly related. People who have one type of brain structure are attracted to men, regardless of their own gender, and people who have another type of brain structure are attracted to women, regardless of their own gender. I think it would be nice if we could get away from the emphasis on "same sex" and "opposite sex" and just keep it simple by focusing on which gender people are attracted to. Perhaps that might help to change the terms of the "debate".
I suppose we need special terms to identify men who are attracted to men, and women who are attracted to women. (In the social world, sometimes you need to know where other people stand.) The term "lesbian" is unambiguous, so perhaps it fits the bill (as long as it is used with respect), but unfortunately, the term "gay" lacks the necessary precision to apply specifically and exclusively to men who are attracted to men. For the same reason, the term "homosexual" isn't any better. Does anyone have a better suggestion? (I'm seeking an answer that is dignified and respectful.)
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
