Wednesday 11 March 2015

Making Gay Okay

I have just finished reading Making Gay Okay, by Robert R.Reilly, and published by Ignatius.  The subtitle is How Rationalizing Homosexual Behaviour is Changing Everything.

It is a compelling and very informative read. Part 1 is The Rationalization and How It Works. Reilly starts by describing the current culture war: the war that has as its goal that we should all approve of homosexual activity, and that is being waged with increasing vehemence as the gay agenda goes from strength to strength. Any dissent must be crushed. He then gives an overview of Natural Law as described by Aristotle, and describes how Rousseau turned that on its head. This philosophical tension, between the idea that we can know the truth of the meaning of human acts by inquiring into their nature, and in particular the end to which they are ordered (the telos), and the contrary idea that we can decide for ourselves what is good - this philosophical tension underlies the culture war.

Reilly's thesis is that the militant gay lobby needs to rationalize their behaviour, and to get everyone else to approve it, precisely because it is against the Natural Law, and at some level they know that.

He continues to advance his argument by looking at the nature of justice and how that applies in this case, and then he examines the Lessons from Biology about the telos of human sexual behaviour, and the harm that is done when sex is used contrary to that telos. This is heartbreaking stuff: one of the truths that gay activists acknowledge amongst themselves but decided the public should not know, is how harmful the gay lifestyle - as lived by many gay men - really is.

It should be noted that Reilly applies his Natural Law and Justice arguments equally to divorce and contraception, which he rightly sees as both wrong and as opening the door to the legitimisation of sodomy. Once you divorce sex from its innate meaning of procreation, you open the door to... well, anything, really.

He concludes this section with a chapter called Inventing Morality, which charts the series of legal cases in the US that gradually overturned the traditional moral prohibition on sodomy, and continued until same-sex marriages were declared to be equal to real marriages.

The second half of the book is called Marching Through the Institutions. This documents the relentless way in which the gay lobby, having won in the courts, proceeded to overturn the way we view homosexuality in psychiatry, and with regards to parenting; how they conquered the schools and the military, and are gradually overcoming the resistance of the Boy Scout movement, and have completely infiltrated US Foreign Policy.  This is all fascinating, if depressing reading. 

But perhaps the most important part is the first chapter in this section, which documents how militant activists got homosexuality removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. That is important because it provided the leverage for so much else. The declaration that homosexual behaviour was not a disorder, was a huge weapon in their armoury: and it flew in the face of the facts. Even sympathetic liberal psychiatrists were shocked at what had been done and how: 'the first time in the history of healthcare that a diagnosis or lack of diagnosis was decided by popular vote rather than scientific evidence.'

I should, perhaps, have mentioned earlier that one of the many strengths of the book is the research that has gone into it. The quotations are voluminous and referenced, and taken from many publications on both sides of the debate.

This is an important book on an important topic.  For anyone who thinks that legalising Gay Marriage is unimportant, it should serve as a wake-up call. SSM is not a neutral concept, still less is it about any meaningful equality. Rather it is a direct assault on traditional morality and the family, and therefore on society itself. 

The saddest part of the book is the wealth of statistics and quotations - from gay sources in many cases - detailing the depravity of those in the grip of the gay lifestyle at its worst. That is the other reason we must oppose this: it is doing those with homosexual tendencies terrible harm - and the gay lobby clearly wants to recruit more and more people, at younger and younger ages (when they are most likely to be confused about their sexuality), to the 'lifestyle' and convince them (against the evidence) that it is immutable.

7 comments:

retrochbabe said...

Oh dear I thought you could come up with better than a regurgitation of the old 'Gay life style' Gay lobby nonsense
Whenever anyone wants to demonise add the word culture or lobby or life style to the end of the sentence Really sad to see this Thought better of an intelligent man
As the mother of a Gay daughter I am by now used to this but surely even'religious' people know by now Gay people are not children of a Lesser God who doles gayness out at random It is not a choice This is plainly just another book in the long line of books demonising human beings who are a minority

Ben Trovato said...

Retrochbabe,

The reason I add 'lobby', or 'lifestyle' to the ends of specific sentences is to make it clear that I am not talking of all people who suffer from same sex attraction. It is an explicit attempt not to demonise, in fact.

Perhaps you should read the book before condemning it out of hand. It does not in any way suggest that anyone is a child of a lesser God. What it maintains is that homosexual attraction is a disorder, and that acting on it is very damaging to those who do so; and further that equating homosexual relationships to matrimony is toxic to civil society.

It provides plenty of evidence from self-identified gay writers in support of its various theses, as well as evidence, particularly from psychiatrists, about the problems associated with de-classifying it from being a recognised psychiatric disorder - which, as noted was a decision taken for political, not scientific reasons: truly shameful for a professional body.

retrochbabe said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ben Trovato said...

Retrochbabe

Thank you for taking the trouble to comment on my blog. However, I do wonder why you do so.

Surely you cannot be thinking that your rather muddled comments - a mix of inaccurate and illogical - will lead me either to give up my faith in what the Church teaches, or to reject as false the well-argued, philosophically sound, well-evidenced, well-researched and well-referenced theses in the book I reviewed.

Just to take one example: 'if disordered, then not a sin.' You seem to be conflating desire (or orientation) which is disordered, and not a sin, with behaviour in response to that desire (or orientation), which is subject to free will, and may therefore justly be identified as sinful.

To say that you agree with Freud rather than the Church is your prerogative - but don't expect me to see that as something I should emulate.

And so on...

retrochbabe said...

Sorry -was your blog just for your fans? Those who nod agreement ? I commented because I hate homophobia thinly disguised as religious dialogue or book review
'And thus I clothe my naked villeny
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ
And seem a Saint,when most I play the Devil

Ben Trovato said...

Retrochbabe

No; if I only wanted those who agree to read or comment, why would I publish your remarks?

If you think I am homophobic, you have either misunderstood me, or re-defined the word.

I have homosexual friends, and do not seek to harm or hurt them or anyone else. On the contrary, it is because I am concerned for them that I feel so strongly about this.

I think it is the lies promulgated by those who tell people that sodomy is good that do the real hurt and harm: they are costing lives on a huge scale. Not what I would call charity.

If you don't want to read Reilly's book, why not read some of the actual research, such as the Multicenter AIDS COhort Study, the most rigorous study done, which surveyed nearly 5000 homosexual men?

It really isn't the gay life you seem to imagine: a significant majority reported having 50 or more sexual partners in their life...

Or look at the US Department of Health and Human Services statistics to see how, as a result of this massive promiscuity, a vastly disproportionate number of men who have sex with men contract AIDS.

To promote such behaviour, and to legitimise the recruitment of adolescents into such a risky lifestyle, strikes me as extraordinarily misguided: if that is how you show your love for people who suffer from same sex attraction, it is a very strange kind of love. Real love seeks the good of the other, not the easy complacency of approving what is harmful, just because it is desired.

Lepanto said...

"just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire." Letter of St. Jude 7
Which part of this don't the gays and their supporters understand?