I was debating with myself whether or not to post a dissection of the next chapter of this guy's rabid fantasies, when I read this letter by "Rev. Stephen Boisson". (A letter that spawned an ongoing human rights investigation at both the federal and provincial levels) The first thing that occurred to me is that both authors are making similar logical and rational errors in their arguments.
So, on with the examination of Esolen's arguments:
5. It will curtail opportunities for deep and emotionally fulfilling friendships between members of the same sex, opportunities that are already few and strained. This is particularly true of men.
My first reaction to this was "what?" - where on earth does this piece of illogic stem from.
First, he launches into a very odd tangent about the social taboos that surround incest:
The incest taboo is surely not irrational: it allows members of a family the freedom to share each other’s company, in what might otherwise be often embarrassing circumstances, and to touch, in ways that would mean something, were it not a brother or an aunt giving the kiss.
First of all, he is making the ridiculous - and incorrect assumption - that the incest taboos have anything at all to do with family intimacy. Families are, by nature, intimate. The taboos around incest run very deep for some very good reasons - primarily the known fact that children of incestuous relationships often suffer horrendous health problems stemming from the comingling of overly similar genetics. The origins of the actual taboos are quite likely rooted in early tribal societies where such children were seen as a "punishment from the gods", and once mankind started to associate sex with these punishments, the legends simply grew.
He then lurches his way back to his thesis about treating homosexuals as social equals with the following:
If homosexuality is at the least not publicly condoned, then that may clear away sufficient ground for men to forge the emotionally fulfilling friendships that they once enjoyed in the past. Such friendships have been at the base of many a cultural renaissance: the men of France who assisted Louis Pasteur in his work;...
Now, if you are going to play social scientist, you could at least have done a little bit of research and learned a few things about human socialization.
As near as I can tell, the author is projecting his own internalized response to homosexuals on the rest of the population, and is assuming that the accusation of being homosexual would result in the collapse of 'male bonding'. It would seem that he has an innate horror at the possibility of someone ELSE labelling him as gay simply because of his friendships, because it is utterly ludicrous to assume that two men (or women) are anything other than friends until they tell you otherwise - either by action or words.
When you consider the small percentage of the population that is gay or lesbian, it seems a trifle silly to claim that any of those people getting married is going to undermine the "social order" of the majority of the population.
He then goes on to argue that even asking a pair of young men if they are gay is somehow damaging to them:
A young lady walked up to them and chirpily asked them if they were gay.
The effect upon boys is devastating; it is hard for women to understand it. Their own friendships come easily, and in general are not based upon shared conquest, physical or intellectual. It is simply an anthropological fact that male friendship is essential for the full development of the boy’s intellect: the history of every society reveals it.
This is possibly the closest to a rational statement that I've seen in the entire series of arguments. It might even be supportable by reasoned facts - at least the bits about human contact and friendship being essential to achieving complete development.
Sadly, he nests this in the assumption that treating the GLBT members of society as equal participants in law is somehow damaging. It is an underlying assumption that the religious people make all the time, and I have never once seen them put forth a coherent argument as to why this causes damage. It seems to me that the history of mankind has shown time and again that we lose far more on balance when we treat any of our society as lesser beings.
Now, he returns to his root argument:
The sexual revolution causes them to rouse themselves to interest, or to pretend to interest, in girls long before they or the girls are emotionally or intellectually ready for it; and now the condonement of homosexuality prevents them from publicly preferring the company of their own sex.
Ah - that's really the problem. We can't possibly let little boys get girl cooties, can we now? Goodness knows that boys are damaged irrevocably by associating with girls. Just to top off his irrational argument he claims further that "normalizing" homosexuality will somehow constrain the ability of "normal" boyhood relationships to grow. Of course, this is utterly ridiculous - little boys don't become sexually aware of themselves until their teen years. Unlike the anti-gay types, young people don't assume that the world is all about sex and spend most of their time learning about the world, quite unaware of the complexities of adult relationships.
Confess, reader: if you come upon two teenage boys in a pond skinny-dipping, it is the first thing you will think, and you will think it despite the obvious fact that before bathing suits were invented it was the only way two boys could ever be found swimming.
Huh? What planet to do you live on, pal? Did it occur to you that not all of the world is fixated on other people's sexuality? I can't say as I think anything about two boys playing.
6. It leaves us with no logical grounds for opposing any form of consensual intercourse among adults.
No culture in history has accepted (even celebrated!) homosexual acts between adult men or adult women.
This is complete nonsense. Most societies that predated Christianity found ways to accomodate the homosexuals in their midst. (We can start with plenty of the North American native societies and go from there - there are plenty of examples).
The argument that "in the past" we haven't accepted homosexuality is silly - first because there are examples of societies which have, and second, the fact that "in the past we didn't do X" doesn't mean we shouldn't re-examine those questions. In the past, we didn't sail around the world because we thought we'd fall off the edge, or we got lost because we didn't understand how to navigate once we lost sight of the shore.
In the last hundred years, we have learned a great deal about human behaviour and it seems quite reasonable to re-examine our behaviour in light of new knowledge.
Then, he turns around and starts to self-justify why polygamy is acceptable in some societies:
There are natural justifications for the many instances of polygyny.
A rich man can thereby father, and support, dozens of children; the tribe as a whole benefits from the fecundity. A man can beget several children virtually at once.
Of course, this completely ignores the fact that in "westernized" societies women are economically quite capable of supporting themselves. We actually believe that educating women is a good thing - unlike what is typical in societies that practice polygamy. Polygamy is essentially an anti-feminist power game. It is intended to do one thing - enable a limited number of males to reproduce, but it does so at the implicit cost of a woman's control over her own destiny. (In such societies, women are often seen as being "of lesser value than men")
It amazes me that this clown can sit there and justify polygamy and then turn around and complain bitterly about homosexuals.
He then moves onto a classic "slippery slope" argument:
What grounds could we possibly have to deny people the opportunity to marry more than one person? If we establish as a matter of law that marital relations are free to any two people who consent, why limit the number to two?
I can think of plenty of grounds without engaging in "society will collapse arguments". We can start with the fact that polygamous marriages tend to devolve into pseudo tribal environments, where one or more of the "spouses" actually has an unequal status in the collective relationship - a serious problem in a country where equality is the underlying principle of our entire doctrine of rights. I'm sure if I sat back and thought about it, I could come up with more reasons.
The fact is that polyamorous relationships happen all the time. It's often called "playing the field" {if the various partners don't know about each other}, or an "open relationship" if they do}. In reality, these situations are typically rather fluid and seldom remain constant for any length of time.
A little further along:
If homosexuals claim rights based upon their sexual actions,
Once again, we return to a fundamental error in Eselon's reasoning. He remains fixated upon sexual acts, instead of recognizing that relationships (especially romantic ones) are far more complex than that - regardless of the genders of the participants. The gay and lesbian couples I have known do not define themselves in terms of their sex lives, but in terms of shared interests and values - not unlike any heterosexual couple.
Further, using Eselon's logic, one would have to conclude that a man and woman couldn't possibly share a pleasant conversation over lunch without it being necessarily sexual in nature. Eselon's conclusions are ludicrous, for they are focused around his own internal horror at someone being homosexual, or worse, the stigma he perceives he would suffer if labelled as homosexual.
The whole point of normalization is to remove a stigma that are socially and personally damaging to those tarred with it. I should point out that it was less than a century ago that women were considered "incapable" of the reasoning necessary to vote, and even today there are those who argue that a woman cannot make her own moral and ethical decisions - especially where her ability to produce children is concerned.
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