Against Heterosexuality

[brandelynmarie]

Bunny rabbit hole, indeed. :rabbit:

[Not The Philosopher]

I am somewhat sympathetic to the author, though I am also starting to get tired of these gay vs SSA vs Godzilla arguments.

 

I mean, there are concerns that are worth taking seriously here, but a lot of it has been getting increasingly tedious and unhelpful as of late.

[Didacus]

I am somewhat sympathetic to the author, though I am also starting to get tired of these gay vs SSA vs Godzilla arguments.

 

I mean, there are concerns that are worth taking seriously here, but a lot of it has been getting increasingly tedious and unhelpful as of late.

 

Very much my position. 

It is no longer helpful to try and devise justifications on any group under such terms or debate them.  It's really in my opinion just building up as a big joke.  Even those on the homosexual support camp know their stances is illogic and weak, they simply don't care and carry on as they will.

[The Bus Station]

I don't identify as "SSA".  Being gay is ass-backwards enough without an acronym to remind me.

 

[Kia ora]

a response.

 

I recently had the misfortune to come across this article in the journal First Things. Written by Michael Hannon, it is entitled ‘Against Heterosexuality’ and subtitled ‘The Idea of Sexual Orientation is Artificial and Inhibits Christian Witness’. It is a symptomatic piece of ‘radical’ Christian writing for our time, in that it attempts to out-deconstruct the deconstructors in order to return us firmly to a teleological, hierarchical Christian order.

 

Hannon embraces the way that theory post-Foucault has unearthed the genealogy and the arbitrariness behind the creation of fixed categories of sexual orientation. He does so, not in order to advocate what he refers to as the ‘postmodern nihilistic libertinism’ of queer theory, but in order to replace socially constructed identities with a Christian anthropology grounded in nature. Measured against nature, sex is procreative. That, so we are told, is its obvious goal. In contrast, the modern categories of ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ float free of this mooring. The first ‘binds us to sin’ (since it encourages people to remain enslaved to unnatural sex) and the second ‘blinds us to sin’ because it implies we have no choice in the matter of what we desire. Heterosexuality is seen as especially pernicious, since it creates a normative identity, but one that is detached from procreation, and which legitimates all manner of deviancy.

 

Why bother drawing further attention to an article which is frankly nauseating to read? As I said, I believe the kind of argument deployed here is symptomatic of contemporary intellectual reassertions of Christian orthodoxy, even if it goes further than most in the joy it extracts from use of the term ‘sodomy’. The first move is (in a banal sense) deconstructive: expose the contingent origins of ideas and categories often taken to be natural. The second is to contrast these naturalised inventions with a true nature, with a law embedded in creation, and modelled by Christ. In a notable hyperbole, the article’s invocation of the catastrophic nihilism gnawing away beneath the feet of modernity means that the Christian tradition becomes ‘the only place left to stand’.

 

Of course, it would be easy to return the genealogical favour: to shine a light on the constructed nature of the ideals of chastity, family and procreation lauded by the article; to undermine its hermeneutic, so blithely assured that the traditions of the church and the scriptures are beyond historical contestation.

 

However, I think there is something deeper at work, to which we need to pay attention. The article is scathing about constructed ‘identities’, but it clearly advocates an alternative identity and orientation: a teleological ordering to the perfect identity disclosed in Christ, the path to which is the freedom won for us by Christ’s sacrifice. Here we have orientation, norm and model, written into the very power which sustains creation.

The orientations and identities of the 19th century may be inadequate (though they remain open to diverse deployments, and they have at least been the occasion for protesting against the persecution, torture and murder of people because of their sex life). What this article misses, though, is the likelihood that the pattern for these orientations and identities was provided by the very Christian orthodoxy that now turns on them. This pattern instrumentalises desire in the most extreme way, because it is grounded on the notion of body-as-sacrifice. Your identity is to take upon you the mind, the yoke, the cross of Christ and make children for his kingdom. It is a colonisation of body, a conversion of flesh, outside of which all is Sodom.

 

Hannon’s article may make you laugh, it may make you feel sick. But don’t underestimate the tendency which lies behind it, and its capacity to offer intellectual justification for biotheological imperialisms yet to come.

[mortify ii]

My sexual orientation does not define me

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

 

 

*** most of what is out there on chastity is Alcoholics Anonymous style 12-step approaches, which fail to address root problems in chastity in the same way AA fails to address root problems in alcoholics.

 

Both a.a. and n.a and s.a do address the supposed causes of alcoholism, drug addiction and lust. I think it is the 4 through to 9.  4th step being ' made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves' 5th step is 'admitted to god, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact natures of our wrongs. 6th step ' where entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.' 7th step ' humbly asked him to remove our short comings.' 8th ' made a list of all the persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9th ' Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

 

This is all pretty much the catholic churches view as well, 1 examine your concience, 2 confess your sins. 3. repent and make some kind of amends. The only difference is those at a.a and n.a don't receive what we catholic christians call absolution, same as the protestants, jews and muslims. The root problem could be a resentment/unforgiveness, drugs, alcohol, pride, jealousy, envy or any other sins that aren't lust.

 

A priest told me for lust plenty of exercise helps to let out that excess energy. Not plonk yourself in front of the television. Also st paul says something like ' How i wish you all to be like me but i know that is not possible, have many times of abstinence.' I assume he was talking to a married person or couple.

 

Onward christian souls. 

 

Jesus iz LORD.

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

I think the Gay in the form of homosexual debate is rated XX and at the least X and should be removed from the G rated boards and moved to the 18+ board.

[4588686]

My sexual orientation does not define me

 

 

#privilege 

[NotreDame]

#privilege 

#entitlement

[4588686]

#entitlement

 

 

I guess it is.  Some people feel entitled not to be treated like poo in public spaces and from the law because of somebody's superstition.  

[NotreDame]

I guess it is.  Some people feel entitled not to be treated like poo in public spaces and from the law because of somebody's superstition.  

Maybe if you lived in Riyadh I'd agree with this ^^^. 

 

[4588686]

Maybe if you lived in Riyadh I'd agree with this ^^^. 

 

 

I have a good friend who is gay and from Riyadh.  What's your point?

Edited March 2, 2014 by Hasan

[4588686]

Wanting to have equal access to service at a public restaurant is not 'entitlement' it's a basic assertion of equality before the law.  Maybe you think that the law the was utilized to deconstruct Jim Crow was unnecessary and a bad idea.  Fine.  But that's an entirely separate conversation from claiming that somebody living in that legal context asking that the logic of those laws be applied equally is 'entitled.'

[NotreDame]

Wanting to have equal access to service at a public restaurant is not 'entitlement' it's a basic assertion of equality before the law.  Maybe you think that the law the was utilized to deconstruct Jim Crow was unnecessary and a bad idea.  Fine.  But that's an entirely separate conversation from claiming that somebody living in that legal context asking that the logic of those laws be applied equally is 'entitled.'

Gays run some of the biggest companies in the world.  They are all over daytime television with their own shows, they are a protected minority at most major companies (ie. quotas!)  and they just bullied the governor of a state into vetoing a bill that would have protected religious freedom.
 

Please, don't try to compare the "plight" of gays to the struggle of blacks under Jim Crow laws.  There is no comparison.