World opinion on homosexuality: The World Values Survey asked more than 60,000 people in 50 countries if homosexuality is ever justifiable. Respondents could answer "never" on one extreme, "always" on the other, and 2 through 9 in the middle. Close to half (48.3%) of the world said it is never justified, and only 11.2% said always.
Elites have managed to convince almost half of Americans (48.5%, GSS 2008) that homosexual sex is never wrong (and we see state courts following suit with gay marriage decisions) but only 1 in 9 people around the world feel the same way (only 1 in 10 men). Liberals are only concerned about world opinion when the world--or the right part of it--is on their side.
I can imagine the jokes being written all around the world (if they haven't been written already): "America: where men are men, and the men are nervous." "Lonely? Go to America, the women are dying for someone to notice them." "Ameri-cun? No, no, no. Ameri-c*nt."
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
Gay sex isn't immoral. This just shows you that most of the world follows their instincts when deciding morality.
ReplyDeletesince when do you care about the opinions of the rest of the world, especially non-whites?
ReplyDeleteRon Gunhame, internationalist and lover of the Third World masses.
ReplyDeleteI believe I recall an ancient manuscript by Ron saying something like:
ReplyDeleteLiberals are only concerned about world opinion when the world--or the right part of the world--is on their side.This doesn't strike me as a claim that he believes "world opinion" is evidence that one's opinion is valid. Of course, his opinion may have changed since he took reed in hand to impress that thought on Assyrian clay.
And who can authenticate it after all this time? Maybe it was a hoax!
Soul Searcher: Right, we HBD guys are constantly running down Chinese folks. They are roughly one-sixth of the world, but only 2-3% of the WVS sample. There were more Canadian respondents than Chinese. A whopping 1.5% of people in China think homosexuality is always justifiable.
ReplyDeleteIt is also strange that there's this permanent meme in social conservative circles that they are fighting against "elites". The people I'm reading have above-average incomes, college educations - if not graduate-level ones -, enough leisure time to try their hand at punditry...but of course, in the typical American fashion, they can't possibly be the elite.
ReplyDeleteThe intellectual class overestimates its power, and thus the myth continues to perpetuate itself - of course, they also write the histories and the anthologies and the critiques, so it's not like anyone else has the ability or the time to rebut them. But both you and they are wrong; the moral codes that you yearn for are never coming back, simply because the pill and modern baubles have made sexual immorality cheaper to indulge in, though Betty Freidan's acolytes in academia would like to believe they instigated it.
As an aside, I think Lawrence Auster is correct when he claims that "Darwinism" as understood today for all intents and purposes invalidates the concept of Christian God. I say "Darwinism" to distinguish it from a generic "theory of evolution", where it is possible a non-materialist being exists who guides the process at every step. But how does that square with techniques like parsimony analysis that generates the cladograms of human genealogy? True Randomness is anathema to teleological models of evolution. To pretend there is a consilience makes the whole thing pathetic, because your belief is not in a God of parsimony; for we are supposed to be made in "the image of God", and "known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the World. (Acts 15:18)"
Also - how can one reconcile Biblical statements like "In the Beginning Was the Word...and the Word Was God" with an understanding of human morality as contingent and essentially, only a particular adaptation out of a collection of many, possibly an infinitude? That is the crux of your dilemma with modern society, that our mores are changing in response to our increasingly urban environment, and yet you claim to accept HBD's reality without any real introspection. If you allow yourself to accept that the core substrate of the mind has rapidly evolved and become variegated between racial groups, to the point that core Western ideas like the independence of free will are invalidated (Ron, do Blacks have the capability for the Protestant work ethic?), how bizarre is it to also believe that a "correct" moral code exists, which also has been unchanging throughout the different fitness landscapes that have confronted humanity? I think, at most, it is only possible to express a preference, a "should", and only when the time and the technological possibility to consciously decide such things arrives, begin to impose your will on others by consensus or by force. Since you want to raise the price of "aberrant" yet individually pleasurable sexual activity, I tend to see "by force" in my mind's eye. All the same, who knows whether or not human "intelligence" can really choose whatever the favored path, whether or not we can escape the "tyranny" of natural selection, and the sometimes disturbing logic it represents?
You can't just pick and choose which consequence of your empirics to embrace.
"Ron Gunhame, internationalist and lover of the Third World masses."
ReplyDeleteI need to keep a consistent policy of responding in kind to people who call me a hater.
And I won't bother being clever: Go f*ck yourself.
(Ron, do Blacks have the capability for the Protestant work ethic?)
ReplyDeleteIf they do, they hide it well.
I think it's likely that many or most straight men have an innate revulsion towards homosexual behavior. I know I do. However, just because I find something revolting doesn't mean that I should go around telling everyone that thing is revolting, much less pass laws against it. Thinking that anything you feel is gross should be illegal is pretty primitive thinking.
ReplyDeleteAs for world opinion, I find it funny that liberals tend to want things to be more like Western Europe while conservatives tend to want things more like Muslim theocracies.
(Haven't you noticed this? Abortion, gender roles, homosexuality, prayer in schools, guns, capital punishment, torture... basically every social issue, conservatives agree with the Muslim extremists on, albeit with a different theo- in their theocracy, while liberals agree with other Western democracies.)
(Or immoral. Just because you find something gross doesn't mean it's immoral.)
ReplyDelete"the moral codes that you yearn for are never coming back"
ReplyDeletePeople said that in the 70's about teen sex and drug use. How's that been workin' out lately?
History doesn't move in a straight line.
"the moral codes that you yearn for are never coming back"
ReplyDeleteOf course not. Islam allows 4 wives!
"[H]ow bizarre is it to also believe that a "correct" moral code exists, which also has been unchanging throughout the different fitness landscapes that have confronted humanity?"
ReplyDeleteSo you support racial sepratism?
"I think the harm resulting from incest between adults and children is well-understood, and harming children is immoral."
ReplyDeleteSays who? Incest has been going on for thousands of years and the world hasn't ended. Honestly, Jewish Atheist, you should really broaden your outlook and be a bit more open and progressive. How can you be in favor of gay sex and gay marriage but be against incest or pedophilia? We are breaking down old conventions and restrictive rules so that people can express themselves however they wish. Sure there is a possibility that sexual family relations or man/child love could result in some problems, but that's the chance we have to take. Free expression outweighs any such concerns. Just because you find something gross doesn't mean it is "immoral." In the future I hope you'll be a little more accepting and tolerant of other people's lifestyle choices.
Abortion, gender roles, homosexuality, prayer in schools, guns, capital punishment, torture... basically every social issue, conservatives agree with the Muslim extremists on, albeit with a different theo- in their theocracy, while liberals agree with other Western democracies. - Jewish Atheist
ReplyDeleteThe most prominent Muslim I've known to take a strong stand on abortion is the late Benazir Bhutto. Extremist?
Conservative and Muslim extremist views of gender roles have little in common. I've never known a Muslim extremist to praise either Jane Austen nor the values of her time. Since her time, gender roles have been getting more liberal in the West. Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson would be consider extreme considers were they alive today; they wrote their magnum opuses a generation before Sexual Politics, two generations before Erica Jong and the Naomis. I can't imagine either Lane or Paterson (a) complaining about housework or (b) letting a man talk to down to her.
I've never heard any Christian or secular conservative call for homosexuals to be stoned to death. Fred Phelps (former friend and supporter of Al Gore) talks about them being punished in the afterlife. A very few conservatives want homeexuality banned. Some want private organizations to be able to exclude gays. And most but not all want gay marriage banned.
On prayer in public schools ... take a poll at secularright.org, or ask a conservative Jew.
I don't know a single Muslim country with gun control laws erring on the side of liberty. Do you know of any? The only countries I know of with gun laws approaching America's in terms of individual freedom are Norway, Finland, and Switzerland, though I haven't looked at the details in many years.
Plenty of Catholics are conservative and they generally oppose the death penalty.
Chuck Baldwin and John McCain both strongly and unequivocally opposed the use of torture in their 2008 campaigns.
Americans attitudes have changed because they realize that people don't choose their orientations. Biology trumps everything here.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that is not to say things will stay on this path. Oh no.
If you read gnxp, you've probably read Greg Cochran's story about the tribe in which boys of a certain age, working in rice paddies, peed blood. The tribe decided this must be male menstruation and began celebrating the male coming of age.
Someone, I guess a man of medicine traveling to the area, recognized immediately that the boys were being infected by a pathogen in the water; thus, the bloody pee.
Lesson: When we don't understand something, yet it's fairly constant, we get used to it, odd though it may seem. Some have taken to calling homosexuality a normal expression of sexuality. Without getting into a huge discussion about what is and what isn't "normal", let's just say that evolution hasn't worked to produce men who are, in effect, sterile by behavior. It's maladaptive.
It's inevitable--in the not so distant future, look for the doctor to come wandering in and telling people why a small but persistent percentage of people "have been peeing blood" so to speak.
And, when you know the cause of something, you find the cure. (Oh, yes, I know, gays don't like to hear that word. Ahhhh, science.)
In contrast, Muslim traditionalists and the most sexually progressive Westerners support polygamy. American liberals, the leftist establishments of Western Europe, and Muslim extremists pretty much agree that Islam is not to be criticized. Other issues they agree on: whether European countries have a right to restrict immigration, whether 350 years of trans-Mediterranean slavery perpetrated by Muslims against the peoples of Southern Europe is worth talking about, who is at fault in any dispute involving Serbia, whether Islamic families deserve welfare when they have enough children to fall below the poverty line, and whether Islam is a "religion of peace".
ReplyDeleteYour move
Americans' attitudes have changed because they realize that people don't choose their orientations. Biology trumps everything here.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that is not to say things will stay on this path. Oh no.
If you read gnxp, you've probably read Greg Cochran's story about the tribe in which boys of a certain age, working in rice paddies, peed blood. The tribe decided this must be male menstruation and began celebrating the male coming of age.
Someone, I guess a man of medicine traveling to the area, recognized immediately that the boys were being infected by a pathogen in the water; thus, the bloody pee.
Lesson: When we don't understand something, yet it's fairly constant, we get used to it, odd though it may seem. Some have taken to calling homosexuality a normal expression of sexuality. Without getting into a huge discussion about what is and what isn't "normal", let's just say that evolution hasn't worked to produce men who are, in effect, sterile by behavior. It's maladaptive.
It's inevitable--in the not so distant future, look for the doctor to come wandering in and telling people why a small but persistent percentage of people "have been peeing blood" so to speak.
And, when you know the cause of something, you find the cure. (Oh, yes, I know, gays don't like to hear that word. Ahhhh, science.)
Women find it disgusting too. We're just not as open about our revulsion toward it.
ReplyDeleteFace it. We are nicer than men, taught to hide our distaste.
However, to a woman, a gay man is just not....well, something is missing. A big part of the essense of manhood and masculinity is just missing.
That may not be what a woman would ever say at the party, but on the way home, to her husband or boyfriend, that is what she'll say and mean.
"I think the harm resulting from incest between adults and children is well-understood, and harming children is immoral."
ReplyDeleteSo you have no objection to a father marrying his daughter as long as she gets a tube-job, or if he gets his nads clipped?
Blode0322 said...
ReplyDeleteI've never heard any Christian or secular conservative call for homosexuals to be stoned to death. Fred Phelps (former friend and supporter of Al Gore) talks about them being punished in the afterlife.
The Westboro Baptist Church is a Christian Reconstructionist church, and a central tenant of Christian Reconstructionism is theonomy, the belief that the moral laws of Moses still apply and should be enforced universally, which includes but is not limited to Leviticus 20:13.
Being a member of the Democratic Party doesn't make you liberal either and the only reason Phelps supported Al Gore for President in 1988 was because in his 1984 senate race Gore opposed a gay bill of rights and stated that homosexuality was not something that "society should affirm". But when running for Vice-President in 1992 he took a much more sympathetic stance on homosexuality, so Phelps took an active stance of opposition calling Gore a "famous fag pimp" and protesting the funeral of Gore's father proclaiming that Albert Gore Senior is burning in hell.
B.B.
So you have no objection to a father marrying his daughter as long as she gets a tube-job, or if he gets his nads clipped?If the daughter is an adult, I don't see why it would be immoral. Do you?
ReplyDeleteJJ: “So you have no objection to a father marrying his daughter as long as she gets a tube-job, or if he gets his nads clipped?”
ReplyDeleteJA: “If the daughter is an adult, I don't see why it would be immoral. Do you?”
And some wonder why others fear a slippery slope.
Incest is a universal taboo. If your priors lead you to conclude that incest is fine and dandy, then maybe -- just maybe -- you should take a step back and re-evaluate your priors.
Jon Jon:
ReplyDeleteIf you have a reason why it's *immoral*, I'd love to hear it. Things can be taboo just because most of us find them gross. I don't think taboo == immoral. Do you?
Well, "Christian Reconstructionist church" anon, if you think gay folks are in as much danger from Christians who think the laws of Moses should apply as they are from Muslims who apply Sharia with their own hands, we simply have a difference of opinion.
ReplyDeleteThere once was a "sticks and stones" principle in which people were taught to laugh off the sort of attacks which consist of Fred Phelps' parishioners (i.e., his grandchildren) carrying signs, but respond directly to protect themselves from things like Islamic lynch mobs. What happened to this principle?
Blode0322 said...
ReplyDeleteWell, "Christian Reconstructionist church" anon, if you think gay folks are in as much danger from Christians who think the laws of Moses should apply as they are from Muslims who apply Sharia with their own hands, we simply have a difference of opinion.
I don't know how we got from whether or not Fred Phelps supports the death penalty for homosexual acts to comparing whether Muslims or Christian Reconstructionists constitute a bigger threat to the safety of homosexuals.
B.B.
--Being a member of the Democratic Party doesn't make you liberal either and the only reason Phelps supported Al Gore for President in 1988 was because in his 1984 senate race Gore opposed a gay bill of rights and stated that homosexuality was not something that "society should affirm".--
ReplyDeleteI seem to recal a certain racial group, that while voting lockstep with the Democratic pary are quite opposed to gay marriage/gay "rights." There was some kind of vote about a proposition in CA last year or something that involved gay marriage and this group voted against the gay marriage. Maybe someone can refresh my memory...
"If the daughter is an adult, I don't see why it would be immoral. Do you?"
ReplyDeleteThis reveals the moral bankruptcy of libertarianism. It renders a person unable to see anything wrong with consensual incest.
Of course, JA will say, show how it's immoral. The onus is on him to explain how it's not, without using moral libertarianism--a recent bullshit invention--as the arbiter of morality.
"Incest is bad" requires ZERO defense.
B.B., I was refuting Jewish Atheist's assertion that "... basically every social issue, conservatives agree with the Muslim extremists on."
ReplyDeleteHe was trying to link a group of people who, in virtually every country where they're active, commit violence against neighboring civilians (defined as sinful by countless religious laws), to a group of people, a minority of whose views on a single issue can with some exegesis be shown to support the death penalty. I have a problem with that linkage.
If you think Fred Phelps is a huge deal, we have a difference of opinion. As I said, at this point it is Jewish Atheist's move.
Of course, JA will say, show how it's immoral. The onus is on him to explain how it's not, without using moral libertarianism--a recent bullshit invention--as the arbiter of morality.
ReplyDelete"Incest is bad" requires ZERO defense.Uh, no. This is a free country. If you want something to be illegal, you need a reason. Things can't be illegal by default.