Stephen Roney's Blog, page 187

Banning Conversion Therapy

 

Ex-gay Milo Yiannopoulis

Friend Xerxes has written a column opposing “conversion therapy,” which seeks to shift preferences among those with homosexual attractions in the heterosexual direction. Justin Trudeau has said that, if elected, a ban is an “absolute priority.” The Conservatives and NDP have also promised a ban.

Xerxes’s first argument against conversion therapy is that nobody ever convinced anyone of anything.

Our parliamentary system would not work if this were true.

People on the right, at least, enjoy exchanging accounts of their “red-pill” moments. The religious similarly exchange their conversion stories, most often due to a particular sermon, or a talk with a Christian friend.

Some people, it is true, cannot be persuaded by evidence or argument. These people are the insane. There are a lot of them, the number is growing, and it is not always obvious that they are insane. We tend to see it only when their core beliefs are challenged. They may then become violent or abusive, or they may just ignore what was said and repeat their point. Or they may begin speaking obvious nonsense.

Alcoholics, for example, are insane. It is never rationally coherent to be an alcoholic. 

Are homosexuals insane? That’s a harsh claim. If so, even so, we do not simply give up on other mental illnesses. We do try to offer therapy.

Xerxes’s second argument is that conversion therapy is coercive. 

“You set up a situation where the victim desperately wants a break from the constant barrage of pressure to change. Sleep deprivation. Tag-team arguments. Aversion training. Noise. Pain. Never left alone.”

No existing conversion therapy does any of this, because itr is already illegal. It would be the crime of coercion, or duress. Conversion therapy is necessarily far more like going to a diet centre, or a psychotherapy session, or an AA meeting. Should they be banned?

Another argument that might be made is that conversion therapy does not work: people are born homosexual, we are told, so how could it? Yet I know personally of former homosexuals who have switched; perhaps you do too. There are public examples. And there are many public examples of people who switch from a heterosexual lifestyle, suddenly divorcing and running off with a gay lover. How can we assume it only works one way?

There may be no solid scientific proof that conversion therapy works. There is no solid scientific proof that psychiatry works either, or psychiatric medicines, or AA.

The final argument that might be made is that nobody could possibly have a reason not to want to be gay. But this is obviously false as well. Leave aside for now all possible moral objections to homosexuality. Being homosexual makes it much more difficult, at best, to have a family, to have children and to pass on your genes. It severely limits your choice of partners, and sets you up for a lifetime of mostly unrequited love.

It is unjust and cruel discrimination against homosexuals to ban such therapies. If some homosexuals do not themselves understand this, and actually want such therapies to be made illegal, they are indeed insane.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Is the Fall of Kabul the Fall of the Left?

 

Does the chaos in Kabul mark an inflection point?

It seems to me an inflection point is due, and overdue. And current events in Afghanistan are surely shocking enough to burn for some time in collective memory. Someone needs to be blamed for thiis, and someone needs to be punished. “Never again.”

It looked as though we were already hitting an inflection point in 2016; first we had Brexit, and then we had Trump elected. Both seemed miraculous, a turning of the tide. The cognoscenti, the clerisy, the managing elite, did not want either. Moreover, the elite predicted with confidence that neither would happen. It was as though the common man was rising up and refusing to do as he was told.

We should have expected a response, even a hysterical response, and for the past four years we have seen it. 

Realizing that a wave had swept over the gunwale, it was all hands on deck for the brass-polishers of the regular navy. So we got cancel culture, deplatforming, critical race theory, an openly partisan press, lots of fake news, multiple impeachment attempts, and branding at least half the country, or respective countries, racist and fascist. They didn’t manage to reverse Brexit; the voters remained adamant, dramatically endorsing Nigel Farage, and dramatically rejecting Jeremy Corbin. But they did manage in America, with or without the help of electoral tricks, to frighten enough ordinary folks back into their habitual cap-doffing to their betters. For the moment.

But now they have demonstrated their incompetence in the most dramatic terms. People are dying. Biden was their guy; now they own him. Covering his own away-from-the-mirror parts, Biden insists constantly he was following the advice of the experts. He ran promising to do so, and has claimed all along to be doing so. 

So it is natural and proper to hold the elites responsible for the unfolding Afghanistan disaster. They can’t tag it on Biden personally, because Kamala Harris is on record as saying she signed off on the decision. Nancy Pelosi insisted it was wise at the time. Blaming Biden and pressuring him to resign would only pass the presidency on to one of them.

it now looks possible, in the shadow of Kabul, that Gavin Newsome will be recalled, and replaced by Larry Elder—not just a Republican as governor of the ultimate “blue” state, but a libertarian Republican. If California falls to the “fascists,” who on the left is going to feel safe? Who on the right who has been cowed until now into silence won’t feel emboldened?

It now also looks possible that, in defiance of expectation, and also in the shadow of Kabul, the Liberals might fall to the Conservatives in Canada.

And this might look to all like a swelling wave, encouraging others to resist and to speak out. 

We seem already to be seeing it at school board meetings across the US.

In a few years, the fashionable leftist positions of today may look as bad as Joe McCarthy did by the 1960s, or Chamberlain and isolationism did by 1945. 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Wow

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Advice for Life

 A friend to all is a friend to none. -- Aristotle

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Charlie Watts Dies

 

Charlie Watts has died. He was a great drummer. Some drummers are more celebrated for their attention-grabbing performances. This is not what good drumming is about. The drummer is responsible for the roll in rock and roll, and this means consistency, not flash. Watts was flawless.

On Aussie TV, remembering Watts, the presenters shared opinions of the best Stones song. One suggested "Wild Horses." A great song, but not a true Stones song. The best Stones song, to my mind, against stiff competition, is "Gimme Shelter."

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Canadian Election Prediction

 

As a fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic gained steam, on the day that Kabul fell, with two years left on their mandate, the Liberal government of Canada thought it was a good idea to call an election.

I cannot understand why the polls looked promising. This is a government that has careened from scandal to scandal, failure to failure. Their foreign policy has been disastrous; their spending has been profligate, even before the pandemic. The Governor-General who formally called the election was a recent replacement for a bad appointment. 

They expected to be rewarded for their management of the pandemic. But their management of the pandemic has actually been awful. They bungled the acquisition of vaccines. Canada has done well against the virus, but this is not their doing. The distribution of vaccines has been remarkably efficient: a provincial responsibility. The uptake has been fast: a credit to the Canadian public. In general, the feds have just imitated whatever the US government did in the crisis, meaning they have been spending recklessly. We will probably have an eviction and foreclosure crisis, and inflation to reckon with for some time to come. 

Perhaps the people have been paying attention. Contrary to everyone’s expectations, a week into the new campaign, the Conservatives are suddenly tied with the Libs in the polls.

The voters seem to be in the mood to punish the government for the unnecessary and cynical election. Against the backdrop of Afghanistan, there seem to be more important issues the government should be dealing with. 

Erin O’Toole and the Conservative campaign also seem to be performing so far above expectations. O’Toole has done an impressive job of improving his French. The Tory platform has come up with some novel ideas that sound forward-looking. People may want a clean broom and a fresh start after the dark days of the pandemic, just to emphasize the feeling that they are behind us. O’Toole seems to be projecting those vibes.

I dislike O’Toole’s lack of principles, running for the Conservative leadership as a “true blue” Tory, then swerving left. Having unprincipled leaders is never a good idea. But it might be good politics. It has often been said that the Liberals lose if they run to the right of the Tories. That equally means the Tories win if they run to the left of the Liberals. O’Toole seems to be trying to do this. 

Over the longer term, this is likely to shatter the right into warring factions. But over the shorter term, it might win O’Toole a term in government. Luckily for him, the further right is fatally splintered: there is the PPC, the Maverick Party, and now the True North Party. Bernier will not qualify for the leadership debates, so there will be no voice there to O’Toole’s right. 

In the meantime, running to the left as a Tory encourages the left to fragment. If the Conservatives look scary to the left, they unite behind the Liberals to keep the evil Tories out. If they look friendly, the NDP vote swells, at Liberal expense. 

The NDP’s Jagmeet Singh is personally rather popular. Yves-Francois Blanchet, leading the Bloc Quebecois, is also popular. The BQ pulls votes in Quebec mostly from the Liberals.

For now, the Conservatives have the momentum. Momentum feeds on itself. It can shift, but the Liberals, cynically, chose the shortest possible campaign, in hopes of freezing in their advantage. Now it tends to freeze in the Tory momentum.

Biden’s collapsing popularity in the US also hurts the Liberals. Nobody wants to admit it, but Canadian politics is largely monkey see, monkey do. Canadian leaders tend to be chosen in imitation of a recent popular American leader. Trudeau came in as a Canadian Obama; his father rose as a Canadian JFK. O’Toole was selected by his party because he looked faintly like Trump. Justin Trudeau got a second wind when Biden beat Trump. Now that Trump is looking better and Biden worse, the Canadian kid brother factor tilts in O’Toole’s favour.

I predict the Conservatives will get the most seats.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Biden Their Time

 

One thing about the American withdrawal from Afghanistan strikes me as insane. But I see no one else commenting on it.

Before and since the pullout. Biden and his people were saying they expected the Afghan army to hold out for another nine months. 

But if it was clear enough to them that the country was likely to fall in nine months, wouldn’t it have been clear to the Afghans? And if you are going to lose in nine months, why would anyone continue fighting? You would be risking death for nothing, and ensuring the Taliban would see you as an enemy once they came to power.

Accordingly, the idea that the Afghan army could or would keep fighting for nine months was always delusional, and obviously delusional. Yet Biden and his team made policy based on it. Only on such an assumption did it make sense to leave so many American civilians in country.

This is the sort of self-serving delusion that is typical of a narcissist. Biden is not rational.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

A Thought for Bad Times

 

The Bwa Kayiman

Friend Xerxes wonders why Haiti has had such a grim time of it—inspired to this thought by its latest earthquake. Why always Haiti?

Televangelist Pat Robertson had a theory. God has been punishing Haiti because the nation was actually founded on a pact with the devil. The Haitian revolution began with a voodoo ceremony, the Bwa Kayiman (Bois Caiman, Alligator Woods).

On the face of it, Robertson has a point. The Bwa Kayiman was, in Christian terms, a pact with the devil: all pagan gods are demons.

But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God, and I don't desire that you would have fellowship with demons. – 1 Corinthians 10:20

And such pacts with devils, like Moloch, are why, in the Old Testament, Yahweh destroys the Canaanites. In effect, a pact with the Devil—gross inherent immorality--is why Nazi Germany had to be taken out.

However, Robertson’s theory ultimately does not work, because the point of such destruction would be to punish individuals, but to eliminate a system that seduces people into sin. The calamities that have struck Haiti since independence have not done that, over two centuries. If this, then, were their intent, they are gratuitously cruel. 

There is another possibility: those whom God loves, he chastens. He tests them, like gold is tested in fire. Look at the prophets. Look at the Jews.

Too many of us have been corrupted by the errors of the “prosperity gospel.” If one has had a happy, contented, comfortable life, one ought to be worried. 

See the parable of Dives and Lazarus.

“But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.’”

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Living in Harmony with Nature

 

Eve iin the Garden of Eden; Rousseau le Douanier.

There is a pervasive and dangerous myth that before the coming of the European settlers, the First Nations of Canada “lived in harmony with nature for thousands of years’’ to quote a claim seen recently online.

I suppose “harmony” here might have different possible meanings here. No doubt the Iroquois did not sit around humming. But I think war is the clearer analogy. Nature was likely to kill them at any moment; not, perhaps, in the form of a large predator, but of starvation, hypothermia, or disease. It is almost certainly a myth, although a common one, that they lived largely disease-free until they were exposed to smallpox and other plagues to which they had no natural immunity by European explorers and settlers. Tuberculosis, the second-worst killer, has been found in Peruvian mummies from millennia ago. Smallpox actually seems to have first appeared in Europe and the Americas at about the same tiime; yet it was far more devastating in the Americas. During recorded history, new waves of smallpox and a variety of other illnesses seem to have swept the continent every two generations or so. It seems that, because their hunter-gatherer lifestyle forced low population densities, herd immunity to viruses could never be developed and maintained. Whether the Europeans came or not, there would be an inevitable epidemic of whatever viruses were circulating and a large die-off every few generations; as we see in many animal species.

And, of course, as hunter-gatherers, they lived by killing nature--by killing, raping, and pillaging nature.

Living in harmony with nature fits far better as a description of the European settlers. There is a reason why a farmer is called a “husbandman.” He is wed to the land, and faithful to it, in a reciprocal relationship. He reaps only what he sows; he must forever put back into the land what he takes out.

Not that such harmony is the necessary ideal. An engineer, an artist, or a technologist, at least in principle, improves nature. For they, in one way or another, transform pure nature into spirit, which is a greater thing.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Personality, Personhood, and Self

 

Friend Xerxes suggests that COVID rates don’t mean anything until a person you know is affected. Although Confucian morality might agree, that is wrong for Christians, who hold that all men are brothers. This is the point, for example, of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The fact that people are dying right now in Afghanistan does not affect me personally, or involve anyone I know. Probably not you either. Yet we have a moral duty to care and to do what we realistically can.

It is similarly wrong to “take things personally” when a general principle is at stake. That violates the universal moral principle: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Which translates in political terms to always supporting not self-interest but the greatest good to the greatest number. 

The feminist phrase common some years ago, “the personal is political,” uses “personal” in this selfish sense. 

There is another sense in which making things personal is good: when the person referred to is not one’s self, but another. One ought to treat other people as persons, not as things; in Kant’s formulation, as ends, not as means.

Including God. William Blake caught the point when he said “Picture a holy cloud, you cannot love it. But picture a holy man within the cloud, and love springs up.” He also said “man cannot conceive anything greater than a perfected human.” This is one reason why the incarnation is vital, and why it is necessary and necessarily correct to conceive of God as a personal being, not an abstraction. Anything else is less, to the human mind, and so falls short of reflecting God’s greatness. Anyone who imagines God as something other than a person is in fact imagining God as lesser than themselves.

This is the same point Buber makes with his “I-Thou” relationship. We must understand God as a person, like ourselves. Indeed, every encounter with another person is indirectly an encounter with God: personhood or thou-ness is the essential divine attribute.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.