Prop 8: A Fork in the Road For Modern Latter Day Saints I

[_Droopy]

Prop 8: A Fork in the Road For Modern Latter Day Saints

At the outset, I’d just like to provide both a doctrinal and personal philosophical foundation for my position on the details of the issue, and than go over a set of the most common leftist (or, from a Book of Mormon perspective, Korihorist) perspectives, with what I consider to be the salient refutations.

From the perspective of settled Church doctrine, homosexuality is one of a class of sins or transgressions against the laws and divine rules of conduct that govern the integrity and boundaries of human sexuality. Among all forms of transgression, it is classed, with other of the more serious moral lapses, of various kinds, as an abomination; as a sin of a degree of seriousness such that its continued indulgence, if not repented of in this life, will result in the “second death”, or a complete separation from God and all things “pertaining to righteousness” once the spirit leaves the body in death. It is a gross form of Telestial wickedness, classed with other forms of sexual immorality such as pre-marital sexual relations, adultery, and all forms of sexual perversion or fetishism that fall outside the bounds and conditions set by the Lord.

From a restored gospel perspective, never, in the history of humankind since Adam, have the commandments and counsel relative to human sexuality in this context been altered, amended or negated. Continued perusal of a lifestyle grounded in behaviors of this kind place one in a position of the living of a Telestial law, with all the implications and consequences attendant to that form and manner of life (whether such a life involves sexual sins or other forms of rebellion against the moral and ethical standards of the gospel).

Beginning in the sixties, the “sexual revolution” began a long and sustained assault on gospel standards of human sexuality across a broad front, of which the legitimization of homosexuality was, in the beginning, a peripheral concern. The broad based assault (exemplified by Hugh Hefner’s “playboy philosophy”) was on the primarily heterosexual aspects of normative Judeo-Christian sexual ethics as well as focused on the normalization or domestication of a society wide cult of eroticism as a fundamental aspect of a modern, affluent late 20th century western social structure.

A philosophy of unrestrained hedonism and “self fulfillment” paralleled the rise of the New Left and a spasm of social upheaval across range of social and political issues, many of them focused on the subversion and overturning of both Judeo-Christian social norms as well as classical liberal political and economic philosophy. “Liberation” was the cry from a cacophony of idiosyncratic voices each seeking their “rights” in their own way but all being united in their hostility to what we would understand as gospel standards of behavior in many areas, but for our purposes, in the area of sexual relations.

The “Gay Liberation” movement (there were a plethora of “movements” arising out of the cultural turmoil of the late sixties through early seventies era, all of which played upon some variant of the theme of “liberation” and “equal rights”) gained organizational and political experience in the late sixties, and blossomed over the next 20 years into a powerful and vocal political presence in American political and cultural life. Its original claimed aspirations, as with so many of the other “rights” movements of the era, was “tolerance” Discrimination against homosexuals in hiring, housing, and other venues of social life were to be opposed and made illegal by statute law, where applicable, in the same since as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made overt discrimination against blacks impermissible. Homosexuals were to be tolerated within the context of the Bill of Rights and other protections of the Constitution even when strong dissent regarding their chosen lifestyle was present in the one extending such toleration.

By the time the 80s were well underway, however, this original intention (as with many of the movements that proliferated during this period) that been abandoned, first for acceptance of homosexuality and the Gay lifestyle, and then for celebration of that behavior and lifestyle. Militant homosexual groups (like Queer Nation and ACT UP), supported by the cultural and political Left across a broad spectrum of groups and organizations (including much of the mainstream Democratic party and its activist core), embarked in that and primarily the next decade upon the cause of homosexual marriage, a concept virtually unknown in the 80s and that probably would have struck most homosexuals and homosexual activists in the 70s as preposterous.

While an idiosyncratic movement of its own with its own specific agenda and points to make, the homosexual marriage movement can also be seen as the relative culmination of a half century of sexual radicalism, beginning with the work of Alfred Kinsey and his associates and blossoming in the "sexual revolution" of the late 60, and early 70s, that has sought, in conjunction with other allied concerns, to overthrow the entire conceptual basis of normative sexual ethics and behavioral boundaries for a society of what many on the cultural Left would understand, with leading late 20th century leftist intellectuals such as Michel Foucault or Judith Butler, as a society of "self crafting" involving the liberation of the self from all, what are considered to be artificial and imposed cultural constraints upon sexual identity construction and expression.

All sexual boundaries, demarcation lines, and conceptual limitations based in any form of normative "morality" are considered to be arbitrary and oppressive, and worse, maintained in the service of the dominant classes or power structures of society. Human sexuality, gender, gender roles, and the possibilities of sexual experience are considered here to be (as no core "self" or underlying individual essence, or consciousness, is thought to exist) is as expansive and varied as the human imagination can conceive it to be.

Kinsey brought these ideas to a place of intellectual respectability, Hefner popularized them in their prurient, artistic form, and the critical theorists and postmodernists of late 20th century academic world baptized them in the waters of philosophical sophistication.

[_MrStakhanovite]

While an idiosyncratic movement of its own with its own specific agenda and points to make, the homosexual marriage movement can also be seen as the relative culmination of a half century of sexual radicalism, beginning with the work of Alfred Kinsey and his associates and blossoming in the "sexual revolution" of the late 60, and early 70s, that has sought, in conjunction with other allied concerns, to overthrow the entire conceptual basis of normative sexual ethics and behavioral boundaries for a society of what many on the cultural Left would understand, with leading late 20th century leftist intellectuals such as Michel Foucault or Judith Butler, as a society of "self crafting" involving the liberation of the self from all, what are considered to be artificial and imposed cultural constraints upon sexual identity construction and expression.

CFR for your bibliography and all citations of Michael Foucault used to support this sentence.

[_honorentheos]

I think, Droopy, that your argument is misapplied. Rather than seeing the efforts to recognize SSM as an extension of the sexual revolution, it is better seen as an extension of the civil rights movement.

One sees, in the sexual revolution, a movement looking to re-examine the traditional values and mores of society and western culture.

The civil rights movement, OTOH, was/is aimed at extending traditional rights and privileges to more and more people.

It's a fundamental flaw of understanding.

Ask yourself honestly what, within the sexual revolution, SS couples fail to "enjoy"? Really.

Then ask yourself honestly what, from the perspective of the civil rights movement, SS couples fail to enjoy.

As a conservative seeking to strengthen traditional values and social institutions, once one recognizes that SSA is biological rather than a true choice (at least as much as heterosexual behaviour is) then recognizing SSM stops being an impediment to your overall aim.

[_Droopy]

I think, Droopy, that your argument is misapplied. Rather than seeing the efforts to recognize SSM as an extension of the sexual revolution, it is better seen as an extension of the civil rights movement.

It would appear that my argument here is not misapplied for the reason that homosexuality is a behavior, a practice, and a body of sub-cultures within a larger "gay" culture that is crafted, structured, nurtured and maintained by each individual within it within the various sub-cultural manifestations of the Gay identity.

Race is an indelible, inherent characteristic transferred through heredity in the same manner and at the same genetic level as eye color, bone structure, hair texture, height, body composition, and susceptibility to genetic maladies etc. Your opening observation then, begs the question of homosexuality's origins, which usually quickly resolve themselves, for ideological purposes, into the question of its "cause".

One sees, in the sexual revolution, a movement looking to re-examine the traditional values and mores of society and western culture.

In is more urbane, sophisticated academic/philosophical mode, this is surely the case. But to just to use the rather mundane, pedestrian term "re-examine" here hardly captures the larger revolutionary, or, as modern critical theorists would now say, "transformational" aspects of the sexual "revolution" (this term found its popular way into the names and naming of a rather large number of movements arising or deriving from the sixties counter-culture, and one could hardly call its overarching presence accidental). In the popular application of the philosophical theory; or in the social activist, educational, and political spheres, the idea was much more one of cultural warfare than reexamination.

The civil rights movement, OTOH, was/is aimed at extending traditional rights and privileges to more and more people.

It's a fundamental flaw of understanding.

Precisely because of this (the extending of "traditional" rights, i.e., the unalienable rights of the Declaration and the constitutional protections derivative of those rights), the Gay rights movement long ago moved outside the perimeters of "rights" as understood and encompassed within a civil society based in both individual liberty and a coherent moral order upon which individual liberty can root and remain stable.

Long ago, some forty years now, when the Gay rights movement was only about toleration, it could be argued that there was some connection to the black civil rights movement, but that time passed as homosexuals became a special, protected class (subject to Affirmative Action type status within society in certain venues), and as the point of the movement went beyond tolerance to, first acceptance, and then celebration, through the force of law.

Ask yourself honestly what, within the sexual revolution, SS couples fail to "enjoy"? Really.

Then ask yourself honestly what, from the perspective of the civil rights movement, SS couples fail to enjoy.

From "within" the sexual revolution, both SS and heterosexual couples fail to enjoy what the sexual revolution destroyed.

As a conservative seeking to strengthen traditional values and social institutions, once one recognizes that SSA is biological rather than a true choice (at least as much as heterosexual behaviour is) then recognizing SSM stops being an impediment to your overall aim.

This argument is drifting in open seas because there is not, at the present, a shred of scientific evidence of a discreet, isolatable, biologically definable "cause" of homosexuality, if by "homosexuality" you mean the entire syndrome of homosexual attraction, ideation, sexual behavior, and socio-cultural structures. If you mean affectual/psychological biases, or predispositions toward SSA, then yes, there is some evidence, and few would dispute biological bias toward any number of things.

The problem is when genetic biases come into contact with the vastly complex psychological, social, environmental, and experiential phenomena of actual life as perceived and lived.

The simplistic positivism of x gene causes y homosexual orientation than washes out in that vast mix. The causal elements just cannot be teased, or combed out of the bio/psycho/social mix in a simplistic reductionist manner as the secular Left would have us believe.

[Guest]

I think, Droopy, that your argument is misapplied. Rather than seeing the efforts to recognize SSM as an extension of the sexual revolution, it is better seen as an extension of the civil rights movement.

It would appear that my argument here is not misapplied for the reason that homosexuality is a behavior, a practice, and a body of sub-cultures within a larger "gay" culture that is crafted, structured, nurtured and maintained by each individual within it within the various sub-cultural manifestations of the Gay identity.

As I indicated in the other thread response, your ideas in the OP are split into a number of issues. The question of if homosexuality is a characteristic or a chosen behaviour is part of that discussion. My first post was aimed at addressing each point in turn. As noted in that thread, my first aim is to determine whether it is true that within the boundaries of US law there ARE very legitimate arguments against opposing SSM.

I don't think that is a subjective subject, and supreme court rulings on related issues make this clear.

So your response above is more a move into the question of whether or not homosexuality is a choice or a characteristic. I think it is critical we come back to this, but first, I think we are really closer than you assume on the first point. When you say this -

From "within" the sexual revolution, both SS and heterosexual couples fail to enjoy what the sexual revolution destroyed.

- you seem to be acknowledging that tieing the efforts to extend the recognition of SSM to the sexual revolution isn't actually valid. It would be counterproductive to their aims to "destroy" (your term) the very social institution they want to become part of.

I think this point in your OP is wrong, and you are not supporting it by example but only by inference. You are trying to say that homosexual behaviour is, prima facie, immoral, and this doesn't need to be demonstrated. We can get to that when we discuss the biological nature of sexual attraction. But for now, we need to get past the political issues first. I'd prefer your response to that issue in the other thread.

[_Joseph]

Hugh Hefner had his philosophy out there well before the Hippies, Free Love and the rest you don't like. Maybe you need to some reserch on the Flappers, the Gay 90's and the various older religious movements through the ages.

[_Droopy]

I hope the mods don't allow the likes of you to derail this thread even in this forum.

[_Joseph]

droppy, don't play the fool here. Hedonism and the rest of what you are whining about comes and goes. Just as does the religious types whining and complaining and looking for the sky to fall. The only thing different is the new group knows little past their own life timeline and that of their immediate seniors.

Why religion is so worried about everyone else but themselves is a mystery to me.

[_Jason Bourne]

This argument is drifting in open seas because there is not, at the present, a shred of scientific evidence of a discreet, isolatable, biologically definable "cause" of homosexuality, if by "homosexuality" you mean the entire syndrome of homosexual attraction, ideation, sexual behavior, and socio-cultural structures. If you mean affectual/psychological biases, or predispositions toward SSA, then yes, there is some evidence, and few would dispute biological bias toward any number of things.

The problem is when genetic biases come into contact with the vastly complex psychological, social, environmental, and experiential phenomena of actual life as perceived and lived.

The simplistic positivism of x gene causes y homosexual orientation than washes out in that vast mix. The causal elements just cannot be teased, or combed out of the bio/psycho/social mix in a simplistic reductionist manner as the secular Left would have us believe.

Droopy

I have not read much on the nature vs. nurture for homosexuals. But I did listen to this recently:

http://mormonstories.org/?p=1158


Would you be willing to listen to this and give me your opinion? This BYU professor seems pretty certain that the evidence shows it is a nature not a nurture thing.

[_Yoda]

I hope the mods don't allow the likes of you to derail this thread even in this forum.

We won't.