RoR: Forum

Cass,

Thank you for your sympathies, but I really must say that although I do genuinely -- and I think appropriately -- feel bitterness towards the way things currently are, achieving bitterness is not my priority.

My priority is to forge and/or find happiness. But, as an Objectivist, I first and foremost have to assess what true reality is. And the true reality -- right now -- is that things are awful. I am always actively attempting to maintain my own high personal quality, but sadly, the resentful, daddy-hating societal saboteur known as Gloria Steinem has made sure that all females are conditioned to hate and amusingly torture all males, who are thereby "punished" for her father's apparent abandonment of his family, and her mother's subsequent lifelong mental illness.

To this day, I optimistically -- but reservedly, of course -- await the appearance of a female in my daily life who is not the typical psychopathic feminist nightmare, thanks to the mind-bending legacy of Gloria Steinem, through such insidiously brainwashing venues as the music of Shania Twain and The Dixie Chick's ever-so-reasonable-and-fair song, "Goodbye, Earl".

Gosh... thanks, Gloria. Don't forget to burn in hell! :-)

If Ayn Rand's writings have taught us anything, it's that the world is shaped by individuals, not some vague, unseen forces or any "collective". The current state of femaledom is appalling, and I blame one individual who did everything humanly -- or should I say demonically -- possible to make it that way:

Ms. Gloria Steinem.

Post 21

Friday, October 15, 2004 - 9:33pm

Cameron & Jeanine,

I let this article through because it offers some sound arguments against the desire of so many gays to be sucked into the purview of state control & have their relationships nationalised. I accept that there are powerful arguments *for* such an arrangement in an imperfect world, & indeed have lent my support to the Civil Unions Bill in this country. But I see perfectly valid Objectivist/libertarian *objections* to such moves, & am willing to have them aired. Alec's remark about "self-harm" is just plain stupid, but I'm not in the habit, as editor, of removing parts of articles I disagree with & leaving in only those parts I agree with. If he wished to diminish himself with such a silly remark, then far be it from me to protect him from such ... er, self-harm.

As for that risible nonsense about marriage & its referents, in a couple of posts to the article, of course you're right. Actually, such rationalistic humbug could come from only one source, & it did.

Linz
(Edited by Lindsay Perigo on 10/15, 9:36pm)

Post 22

Friday, October 15, 2004 - 9:48pm

Linz,

In all honesty, "gay marriage" is much less than a "non-concept" to me, as Cass refers to it... It is a non-issue.

I could care less, and it doesn't bother or threaten me in the slightest. I am completely baffled that we live in an era where third-world, medieval lunatics are trying to actually kill us all, and there are still people who are able to summon up the psychological energy reserves to actually have a woodchuck up their asses about people who choose to gracefully bow out of the hetero rat race, and enjoy themselves in alternative ways. In terms of what should actually be our priority as a society, the goddamn gay marriage issue is about as low as whale shit on the bottom of the ocean.

After reading enough counter-culture medical literature, I am wholly convinced that HIV does not cause AIDS, and thus a main quasi-argument that "homos are filthy disease-spreaders" goes right down the toilet, which is hypocritical rubbish when you especially consider how disgracefully swine-like the average frat boy and sorority girl live and practice their sexuality. Those people are overgrown petri dishes of theater-floor sexual hygeine, and almost nobody complains about them.

Post 23

Friday, October 15, 2004 - 10:23pm

"My priority is to forge and/or find happiness."

But it almost sounds like that your priority is to find a Japanese wife! � Sorry, just joking.

Orion,

This is a surprisingly irrational post that comes from you. Blaming others for your own (un)happiness is NOT the way to go. And you just elevated Gloria Steinem to a statue that she does not deserve.

Relationships between young people (or between anybody for that matter) is never easy, not today, and certainly not before. The struggle and torment in finding that happiness is an eternal theme that has changed little in its basic premises over the ages. It is a life lesson everyone has to learn for himself. Don�t despair, yet. Life is a constant struggle intermitted with fleeting moments of blissful joy and happiness. The important thing is that you should be able to say that you have lived your life full when you look back at your older age.

(Gee, never thought I�d preach like this. )

Post 24

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 1:02am

I am loath to put words (or anything else for that matter, heheh) in Alec's mouth, but I think that by referring to gay marriage rights as the "right to self-harm," Alec meant to denigrate the institution of marriage itself as a kind of self-imprisonment or shackling of oneself to another person, that homosexuals would be ill-advised to seek for themselves. Perhaps others understood this point as well, but it did not seem that clear in your posts. I am sympathetic to some criticisms of marriage, but in general, I think Cameron's analogy to racism is spot on. Objectivists should be far more worried about the religious conservatives looking to ossify their "venerable social institutions" than about the handful of homosexuals who have embraced an unfortunate (and, in many cases, understandable) form of identity politics. Also remember, it isn't just welfare payments and payouts that are at stake here, there are also tax breaks and certain contract rights that are enjoyed by married couples. And when it comes to giving someone a tax break, I think any old excuse will do.

... which is hypocritical rubbish when you especially consider how disgracefully swine-like the average frat boy and sorority girl live and practice their sexuality. Those people are overgrown petri dishes of theater-floor sexual hygeine, and almost nobody complains about them.

Ah Mr. Reasoner, it's sentences like these that make your posts so much fun to read. You are of course correct, and I would add that at my university, the frats and sororities are also breeding grounds (figuratively speaking) for an especially virulent strain of homophobia.

Post 25

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 1:03am

Well, I get along with Scandinavian people pretty well... except they smoke like chimneys.

And yes, I do get along with Japanese people... and Spaniards, too. UK'ers are also very humorous and I click with them well.

But those New Zealanders... Ugh, they smell like duck farts, and they breed like rabbits!

And don't get me started on those miserable, fat, Belgian bastards!

Post 26

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 1:04am

Thank you, Linz... and to be clear, I wouldn't ask you to rule out any articles because of their author's infliction of self-harm. I follow Voltaire. After all, was he so slutty-minded! (read his Philosophical Dictionary, where he goes on for page after page fantasizing... ah, speculating, about hermaphrodites.)

Now, Msr. Reasoner...

>In terms of what should actually be our priority as a society, the >goddamn gay marriage issue is about as low as whale shit on the >bottom of the ocean.

Ah... forgive me, not my taste in metaphors. But seriously, let us speak in context. I could care less whether my own relationships were state-sanctioned; indeed strictly speaking the state can outlaw gay marriage but not prevent it; there have long been gay marriages in my city, unrecognized by any law. Law is not essential to marriage (indeed, law is not as old as marriage). Slave marriages in the antebellum South were such unrecognized marriages, and I know of no historians who would say the slaves involved were not 'really' married.

But 'our priority as a society' is hardly a relevant stance to those despised by much of that society. As individuals, what precisely else should be the priority of two females or males who have found happiness- and fear exclusion from the rights the state allows only the married? I find it strange that Objectivists, who idealize binding love more than I, and would not shrink from registering patents or incorporating business because of any resulting legal privileges and entanglements, should not be very understanding of the position of those not allowed legal recognition not of business, but of romantic love. Surely for such persons, it is rightly their priority?

I myself am engaged, and though I myself wouldn't want the state to recognize our relationship on principle, I'm sure my fiancee Aster would contest that our relationship's legal status is of necessary low priority sub specie aeternatis.

My point here is that while I respect that every libertarian, including the Objectivist, rightly has his or her issues; mine are free expression and abortion rights as social keystones, and decriminalization by prudence, I see no reason to claim that 'gay issues' are minor; they are central to some people; I personally would have fled at any cost from the cultural Hell of mainstream America to come to this free republic of San Francisco.

As for why a person who desires no state validation would care seriously about the right to marry, it is more than anything else because married gay couples in mainstream life would say irrevocably to America 'we're here, we're queer, get used to it', an all too rare victory for the Enlightenment over premodernity and one that would let me breathe more easily and consider calling the rest of America my country. That is something worth fighting for, and not exclusively for gays and lesbians.

I myself, merely offer my observations.

regards,

Jeanie Ring
also
Herakleita the Exile {))(*)((}

Post 27

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 1:08am

Andrew,

Well, fully communicative communication is very important to me, so I try to choose terms and language in my writing and speech which evoke a graphic, visceral recognition.

Post 28

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 1:30am

After reading enough counter-culture medical literature, I am wholly convinced that HIV does not cause AIDS, and thus a main quasi-argument that "homos are filthy disease-spreaders" goes right down the toilet, which is hypocritical rubbish when you especially consider how disgracefully swine-like the average frat boy and sorority girl live and practice their sexuality. Those people are overgrown petri dishes of theater-floor sexual hygiene, and almost nobody complains about them.

Msr. Reasoner-

On a wholly different note, I too have heard, from sources as diverse as ACT-UP and Reason Magazine, a denial of the mainstream HIV/AIDS theory. I have a definite through critical respect for countercultural medicine, and have often wondered about the dissident claims on this issue.

But I have yet to find any conclusive argument... This pharmakeia speaks a little ruefully that her material knowledge of alternative medicine is narrowly limited to the frightening looking but mostly harmless arsenal at my bedside. Would you be willing to refer me to a source? What do you think causes AIDS, however you conceive of it?

As for your sentences regarding fraternities and sororities, I must protest! Pigs outside confinement are very clean animals.

regards,

Jeanine Ring {))(*)((}

P.S. the 'filthy disease' spreader claim has also been used against prostitutes... which is factually false, ultimately for the obvious reason that sex workers adopt the scrupulous professional ethic of a competent physician is such regards... or take the consequences. Yet when the city fathers of Seattle, trying to stamp out prostitutes precisely as disease-carriers, in their wisdom invented the 'common prostitution' charge which justified the arrest of (nonrespectable) women for carrying condoms, the result was that some of the most desperate prostitutes did stop carrying condoms, resulting in the very situation the politicians supposedly wanted to prevent, at a horrific human cost. Though I tend to believe the human cost- the deliberate infliction of misery among people viewed as less than human- was the purpose. Too bad about the married customers' wives, though. Yes, this really happened... and cops in other cities have picked up on the idea. Sometimes when it isn't even law.

Post 29

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 1:47am

Andrew - thanks for your fair-minded comments. I'd like to hear from Alec as to whether that was what he meant. I doubt it, but I'm willing to stand corrected.

Jeanine - the comments you made about the unintended (or as you suggest, perhaps intended?) consequences of attempts to restrict prostitution have their parallels with the decriminalisation of homosexuality of a bygone era before my time. In many ways, it's the unintended (or again, perhaps intended) consequences of laws restricting same-sex marriages that have to be understood in the here and now. It's for *that* reason that gay marriage is most emphatically *not* a non-issue. Anything but that.

Post 30

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 1:49am

To Cameron, Linz, and all whom it may concern:

I had trusted the members of this site to have enough of a sense-of-humor to be able to distinguish between the obvious humor in the article, and its hardcore argument.

My comment about "self-harm" was a joke based on my attitude toward marriage as a whole--as Andrew correctly realized--but most of all, A FREAKIN JOKE! I'm surprised, Linz, that you didn't get this!

Ditto my line about "closet homosexuals." Humor. Cameron, you really have to loosen up. My "gay" comment was also used in a humorous tone, and as a somewhat accurate description of this entirely silly national debate.

For your information, Cameron, several and probably most of my closest friends are gay. Indeed, I am a de facto faghag. You, due to your heart-drying political correctness, humorlessness, and stereotypical frame of mind, have made the most preposterous psychologizations of both me and my column.

If you looked at my words with a clear mind, you would realize that what I said about forcing something on an unwanting public was a refutation of a certain belief that this will directly result in greater acceptance. It was only in response to that claim, which is a poor argument for something anyway, and hence fell in the context of poor arguments, which it was the purpose of my article to lampoon. Your comparison with racially-divided marriage is convoluted and ridiculous, and it has nothing to do with what I said.

It's great to know that the spirit of G. Stolyarov is alive and well on this site.

Alec

Post 31

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 2:01am

Jeanine,

Here is what has been realized by Dr. Peter Duesberg of Berkeley, and Dr. Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, for his discovery of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (or PCR) Method for easily and quickly copying DNA:

1) HIV isn't always found in people who are diagnosed with AIDS. In fact, in many parts of the world, all you have to have is a major illness, and even if you test HIV negative, they'll still say you have AIDS. So, HIV doesn't cause AIDS.

2) The term AIDS came from when it was changed from GRIDS (or, gay-related immune deficiency syndrome). And the only reason that doctors started calling a certain disease GRIDS was because certain gay men started getting these splotches on their skin, called "Rous's Sarcoma".

But it turns out that these men had been inhaling this stuff called amyl nitrate, and it is highly cancer-causing, and causes the Rous's Sarcoma. When the doctors got them off that stuff, the Rous's disappeared. And the whole GRIDS/AIDS thing should have been regarded as solved and forgotten.

3) Before that happened, however, there were a lot of virologists who were scared that there were no more viruses to battle, and they would be out of jobs. Their leader was this doctor named Robert Gallo. He was desperate to believe that AIDS was caused by a virus. In certain patients' blood, he found a virus. He didn't want to be wrong, so he did a rush job and did bad science, so that he could lie and say he'd found a whole new virus, and called it the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV.

4) At the same time, the dishonest drug companies pulled off their shelves, this crappy drug that they realized years before was even too toxic to use in fighting cancer. It was called AZT. It shut down DNA synthesis, and they told everybody that it would kill the HIV's DNA synthesis process. That was a lie, because it also kills the body's own healthy DNA synthesis process. In other words, your immune system will shut down and you will die from taking AZT. But they can then blame it on "HIV"... and when you take AZT or any other so-called "anti-AIDS drug", THAT is what is causing the AIDS, because you've shut down the immune system and started making people sick.

5) So, people who do not use crappy street drugs and never take the AIDS drugs, but who do have this virus in their body that the doctors have wrongly called HIV, they don't get AIDS and die. They don't get any sicker than normal.

6) People under constant stress, who have poor nutrition, who don't sleep enough, and who use lots of street drugs, their immune systems shut down, they get sick all the time. And under current AIDS criteria that have recently been written, they don't even have to have this virus called HIV in their body to be labeled as having AIDS. They just have to be sick from something.

7) there are many websites that explain all this, and here is a link by Dr. Peter Duesberg:
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/pddrdrugaids.htm

8) There is also an amazing book by Christine Maggiore, called What If Everything You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?. You should read it.

Post 32

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 2:59am

Alec,

Re the "self-harm" thing: It's good to know that *wasn't* what you meant. But I think that, given all the debate on this site over homosexuality in recent times, it wasn't unreasonable for some of us to think you were taking the Reginald Firehammer line that homosexuality is harmful.

As for your "closeted homosexuals" thing, my point was to point out that you didn't have much of an argument, and you can't just fall back on humour to make up for it.

As for the "gay marriage is gay" thing being funny - I repeat, it's juvenile. It's not witty. I'm quite willing to have a good laugh - but the schoolyard stuff just isn't working for me, sorry.

Post 33

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 4:12am

Cameron,

The "gay" thing is obviously a tongue-in-cheek, lighthearted parody of the schoolyard stuff. You may not find it funny and that's fine; others have, for the surprising and context-mixing nature of its inclusion, which was the entire purpose. Nobody thought I was using it in the exact same way that a 14 year old uses it--I was obviously making fun of the whole thing.

The "closet homosexuals" thing was not an argument and was never meant to be one. My response to the point I described was in the following line, where I expressed skepticism about how true the claim is about engendering castigation. The argument of the article was not about whether banning gay marriage results in castigation: it was about how flawed and misdirected the entire current debate about "gay marriage" is, and the political nature of marriage in general. Whether the claim about castigation is true or not, is irrelevant to the fundamentals of the issue as I describe them. That's why I make fun of the claim.

As for the self-harm thing, sorry, but given the context of my column--in which I made fun of the religious right's treatment of homosex as harmful, if you remember--it was absolutely unreasonable for anyone to infer what you inferred. Nobody whom I've spoken to, beyond SOLO, interpreted my self-harm comment as you did.

There is a pattern here. You treated almost every aspect of my column unreasonably and took seriously almost every instance of obvious humor, even though there was evidence right under your nose that contradicted your intepretation. (That is, in this very short column, I satirized the very ideas you enden up attributing to me!)

This pattern indicates an excruciating PC oversensitivity toward this issue and thus, my column, which even led you to make some outrageous accusations of homophobia. If that's your reaction to any opinion about this issue that you even perceive as differing from your own--well, that's very sad, very narrow-minded, and very reminiscent of the radical Gay Left.

And as far as Firehammer, if you go back to the thread of his last presence here, you will find that I had a very ardent argument with him about something he said that I found totally asinine. In that same thread, from what I remember, you chimed in only to essentially tell him to take his gay-hating religionists-in-objectivist-attire comrades and get lost from this site.

Very open to dissent, you are.

Alec

[P.S. My mention of Firehammer is not meant to imply any opinion regarding his whole affair with Lindsay.]

Post 34

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 5:46am

Alec - There was *no* affair between me & Firehammer! Please credit me with *some * taste. :-) Certain folk here chose, & choose, to butt-lick that entity, but I wasn't, & am not, one of them.

I've chided Cameron in private already not to be so super-sensitive & PC. He gave me bollocks for posting the article *at all*. But I have to say that it was by no means self-evident that the self-harm thing was tongue-in-cheek. I'm attuned to tongue-in-cheek, & to your own humour, having met you. But I also got an underlying hang-up about gay issues from you, which is what I saw coming through here.

Ah well, I think we're all clear now.

Linz

Oh, & more important than this rubbish is the evil of Saddamism that stalks even this site.

Post 35

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 12:30pm

Linz, yes, yes, I know--I realized the alternate meaning of my line about you and Firehammer as soon as I posted it. But it was 4:30am by then, and, well, I wanted to inflict some payback anyway. So there!

Here's the thing about my "self-harm" thing. If I was trying to say that homosexuality was harmful, why would I have put it like that? I would have said, instead, "I support the legalization of sodomy..." or some such. It was clearly the act of marriage which I was referring to, and I can't understand how that could be taken as a comment about homoism itself. I mean, if homoism is harmful, it's harmful whether or not in wedlock (and, it would be argued, even more harmful out-of-wedlock because of promiscuity, yada yada).

On the other hand, given your false interpretations, more kudos to you for publishing this article in spite of them. I mean, if THAT's what you thought, then it was very open of you to publish this.

But I'm not sure I know what you mean by "underlying hang-up about gay issues."

Alec

Post 36

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 2:41pm

Alec - as I say, I think we're all clear about everything now. And on reflection, I take back my comment about a hang-up re gay issues. When I read the self-harm comment, I inwardly said, "Aha," remembering that you liked to *talk* about matters gay a lot. But then, you like to talk about sex *generally* a lot!

Now I'd better examine the carnage on the Barbara thread. Sheesh! And here was I expecting a quiet weekend!

Linz

Post 37

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 7:39pm

Alec,

Given that the whole "self-harm" thing has been cleared up, I don't think you're a homophobe. I do maintain, though, that if homophobia is ever to be broken down we need to begin by challenging homophobic language. You've suggested it's tongue-in-cheek, I'm saying it can't be divorced from part of a wider picture. If that makes me PC, so be it. You know, as libertarians an awful lot of what we stand for (secularism, personal freedoms and civil liberties for example) is condemned by conservatives as "PC".

You're no Reginald Firehammer. Yes I did go off at him on that other thread, and loved every moment of it. I'm not a relativist - I don't believe one view is as good as the next or that I have an obligation to be "tolerant" of anyone's position (except, of course, of their right to express their position).

Actually, I've just come across you saying that name of his would make a great gay porn-star name. Now, *that* is funny!

Seeings as you went off to see what I've done on other threads, I thought I'd take a look at your profile. Now I've forgotten all about gay marriage and am curious as to the activities of the People for the Revival of Speedos. Why not write your next article on your vice-presidency of PRS - with supporting photos? I'm quite sure Lindsay would put that in the next Free Rad centrefold. :-)

Post 38

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 7:54pm

Ok, I've been silent so far, but I've got to draw the line when there is an organization promoting the Revival of Speedos. They should be banned on every continent simply for aesthetic reasons, and I don't care how fascist a statement that is. Should this activity continue, I shall have to launch my own organization, NIMFOS, short for Not In My Field of Sight.

Post 39

Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 8:23pm