In an age when less than 50% of hetero hook-ups (I think that's the current vernacular isn't it) involve marriage and single parent families are becoming the norm rather than the exception, Margaret Somerville's quaint ideas about the problem with same-sex couples making a commitment that hetero couples no longer care to make is utterly laughable.

Talk about a solution where there is no problem to be solved.

Perhaps same-sex couples have something to teach the rest of us.

It’s hard to be that irrelevant: I hope she has tenure.

An insane black mark for McGill University is this woman and her holy crusade to equate religious morals with ethics for us all - I have no idea how McGill could get snookered into thinking this woman had anything to do with modernity and not a simple apologist for eons old religious bigotry - oh how the mighty(McGill) have fallen!

Thanks for the article. By Somerville's standards, my own marriage in not "normal" because I didn't marry to procreate, I married out of love.

Her argument is pure bigotry.

Margaret Somerville resorts to aconvoulted argument, about what is natural or is not, to explain that her opposition to same-sex marriage is not discrimination, rather than stating plain and simple that she just does not like it.
She believes that opposite-sex marriage establishes children's rights with respect to their links with their biological parents, but her distinction between natural parenthood and legal parenthood does not hold up in the real world: there are adoptions, common-law relationships with children, blended families, divorces where the state defines the rights of the parents or, when the natural parents are negligent, the state intervenes to remove the children.
There is no neat and tidy definition of marriage, natural biological reality and social constructs are inextricably mixed.

That was: "a convoluted argument"

It is dissapointing when people use children as a justification for discrimination. Human adults are going to choose for themselves how they enjoy themselves sexually... do we really need to make the kids in any family more embarrassed about how their parents 'do it' by calling some folk's actions 'transgressive'? What consenting adults do together is no one's business but their own, so please let the children just be kids, not 'breeder's kids' or 'homos kids' or any other 'science backed' category...just plain ol' kids who don't need to be under pressure for their parents' choices.

Governments really need to get out of the marriage business entirely. Sure, govs should recognise a couple's legal commitments and recognise any person's right to name whoever they want to their insurance policies, living wills, hospital family access, etc, and let individuals decide whether or not to call it a 'marriage,' a 'union,' a "happy bliss connection' or 'our very own personal widdle hell.'

In her article "The Case against Same-Sex Marriage", Somerville makes the statement, " to change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples would destroy its capacity to funciton as outlined above (namely, for procreation) because it could no longer represent the inherently procreative relationship of opposite sex pair-bonding".

Apparently, using the word "marry" for same-sex couples will stop opposite-sex couples from having children. That's some magical prophylactic!

I think she has issues.

A curious feature of human populations seems to be that the more affluent they are the less children they have. With this realization (and given Somerville's statistical obsessions she must have been exposed to it) there seems to be an unusual paranoia among certain ethnicities in western nations (usually white, usually christian) centered on the fact that their replacement population rate is insufficient. This fear of being out-bred seems to be eliciting all manner of unusual arguments under the rubric of ethics and moral propriety that frequently feature some aspect of encouraging or deifying childbearing.

The arguments usually try to avoid the whiff of outright bigotry at their core, but they really just seem to be elaborate attempts at mental gymnastics to avoid the underlying fact that these people really hate the idea of a multi-ethnic society where caucasian-europeans are no longer the central and dominant focus around which the rest of the community revolves.

A case in point was a recent racist and fear mongering cover of Macleans magazine featuring an article about Islam that dealt with exactly such topics (Mark Steyn was the vile creature who wrote it). That example, and bizarre notions like Somerville's: that gay marriage undermines ethical social relations, because in her mind it some how undermines procreation and the proper care of children; are really just the revealed ignorance of book smart intellectuals who have been immersed almost exclusively in the western humanitarian dead white male tradition, but have little real immersive exposure, understanding or love for any other culture or ethnicity (including that of so-called transgressive communities within their own self-identified community). What is a tragedy is just how dangerous these people are in in their ignorance. They construct elaborate justifications for hatred and fear, precisely to avoid seeing themselves promoting such behaviour, and then actually have the gall to call themselves ethical. It's disgusting.

Quote:"Governments really need to get out of the marriage business entirely. "
It seems that the problem is not that the government is in the marriage business, but that the churches are. The government has delegated the ability to make a marriage legal to the churches, who have their own idea of who should be able to marry, or not.
In France there is a diiferent approach. A marriage is legal only when the "ceremony" is performed by a government official (a mayor for instance) first. Then the newly legally married couple is free to go, or not, to a church of their choice for a religious ceremony, and of course the church can agree, or not, to perform that religious ceremony. There is no reason for religious groups to tie themselves up in knots over something that should be none of their business, but of course their whole reason for existence is to control people's lives.

Relax people. As an academic, her job is to create a system that creates a seamless argument from fundamental premises to a logical conclusion. And she’s done that. Good for her. I don’t agree with her and neither do any of you. Fortunately, we don’t have to take her seriously because she’s not dangerous: she’s preaching anachronistic irrelevance, like academics who think we could return to a state of grace if we all followed the divine dictates of Pythagoras and learned to fart mathematically.

"Fortunately, we don’t have to take her seriously because she’s not dangerous..."

Sure, just another straw on the camel's back. I mean hell what's so important about academically legitimized bigotry anyway? Not like it affects me or anything.

"This fear of being out-bred seems to be eliciting all manner of unusual arguments under the rubric of ethics and moral propriety that frequently feature some aspect of encouraging or deifying childbearing."

Now, how about the people who might be in the business of outbreeding us - how tolerant might they be of all sorts of 'deviants' as they would define them?

Could there be more to this fear of being outbred? Is it possible, that some people might be caring about certain values and freedoms and in fear of losing them, rather than just being in fear of 'their kind' not being the top guns? Way way back in tribal times, color was never the thing strictly adhered to, but conduct was. Those fair-haired and blue-eyed could equally be tossed out and banished, if they broke the rules. I believe the trouble is that the intermixing of all and sundry people now is happening at a rate which can overwhelm any attempts at holding on to tribal values, and that may be what people fear and resent.

I also believe you have it backwards that fewer children are due to better living standards. It would rather be the other way around, but that is not politcally correct to say, of course, for that means that those third-worlders who have more children than they can feed are to some extent accountable for their own misery, and then we don't owe them, and Bono and cohorts would not like to hear that. It is such a comfortable cheap shot to lay a guilt trip on everyone for living within our means.

I could say more on same-sex marriage, which I believe is people's own decision to make, but I think we need to get this aside first.

Good article, if somewhat preachy.

I am not familiar with Somerville, except that I watched her speak on this issue once in an interview. She seemed reasonable, even though I disagreed with the thrust of what she was saying (although she makes a number of meaningful tangential points in her critique). So I would caution against dismissing her argument as "bigotry" plain and simple. She's articulating a valid, sincere and carefully reasoned difference of opinion on a serious question of public policy, society and culture. In a general sense, I get what she's saying about *norms* (as opposed to "normal") and the danger of tampering with cultural memes, of which language is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The fundamental error of Somerville and people like her, however, is that she has misidentified the origin of the threat. If there is a disconnect between family, marriage, and children, it's sure ain't because 3% of 3% of the population might marry in condradiction to those norms. Many people are aware on a visceral level that a lot of things are becoming unglued; and for those who channel this profound anxiety into political engagement, "gay marriage" is one of the most visible *apparent* (not actual) symptoms of this deterioration. What they have to realize is that this is not new - it's older than the pyramids and as natural a manifestation of primordial humanness as speech, mythmaking, and procreation. The secret lives now being laid bare in all their anguished hypocrisy (Foley, Haggart, the teachers, scout leaders and priests...) are the inevitable result of this refusal to deal with this fundamental human reality.

Somerville may have lot of valid points about language and culture and social norms, but the real danger lies in denying the reality that has *always* been part of these things under the surface.

It would be interesting ask Somerville why she refers to marriage as "inherently procreative", and why she feels that society needs to sybolically recognize that particular definition. (I don't recall ever hearing in anyones marriage vows a reference to procreating.) She states that "society needs marriage to establish cultural meaning, symbolism, and moral values around the inherently procreative relationship between a man and a woman, and thereby protect that relationship and the children who result from it".

Does society need that? Apparently, a majority of Canadians think not.

"Is it possible, that some people might be caring about certain values and freedoms and in fear of losing them, rather than just being in fear of 'their kind' not being the top guns?"

No. What values and what freedoms are under threat of being lost, and who is going to take them away? The greatest removal of freedom western societies have suffered recently are those taken by our own governments in their so-called efforts to combat terror, The only values that have been lost are those against war and killing, as western societies send troops halfway around the world to make war on ethnically different populations, murdering hundreds of thousands, and displacing millions. All of these atrocities are the result of having to respond to radicalized fringe elements trained and supported by our very same governments to commit acts of violence and terror against our ideological opponents. These governments are composed overwhelmingly of wealthy white men, steeped in our so-called values and freedoms.

"Way way back in tribal times, color was never the thing strictly adhered to, but conduct was. "

Really, which tribes and what times in particular are you referring to then? Which documents of tribal conduct do you make reference that demonstrate the established egalitarian nature of tribal life?

"It is such a comfortable cheap shot to lay a guilt trip on everyone for living within our means.."

Since when has western society lived within its means, particularly within recent memory? You can't be so phenomenally ignorant to have not heard about global warming, pollution and environmental degradation. You can't possibly be so deaf and blind as to have not heard or read about the exploitation of third world labor that enables western nations to enjoy so many goods at so cheap a cost.

"I believe the trouble is that the intermixing of all and sundry people now is happening at a rate which can overwhelm any attempts at holding on to tribal values, and that may be what people fear and resent."

I agree. It's so much harder to discriminate these days than it used to be, isn't it? I can understand why you might fear and resent that "freedom" being taken away from you. You can't sit comfortably within the confines of your "tribe" protected from the intermixing of those "all and sundry people". The thing is, what you fail to realize is that that is a good thing.

Well as long as we're playing a game called speculative anthropology, let's step outside the box containing the patriarchy and Christianity and try to figure out why marriage ceremonies prevail in so many cultures. How about, raising kids is really hard work and without a formal, public bond in place to prevent it, men would run away as soon as the going got tough? Throw in punitive sanctions like the threat of terrors after death and Bob's your uncle, you have a marriage concept that can be fossilized in linguistic stone and protected by cultural Chicken Littles like the Christian right.

“What values and what freedoms are under threat of being lost, and who is
going to take them away?”

- There have already been attempts made at putting Sharia law in place in Canada, as well as elsewhere in the world. In Austria, the demand has been made, that all school teachers should be compelled to cover their hair, whether they themselves were Muslim or not. Groundless fear? I think not.

“which tribes and what times in particular are you referring to then?”

- I am referring to the indo-European steppe pastoralists, who, wherever they eventually settled down, carried with them a 10-12% component of blood type B in their population, a distinctly non-indo-European gene. The 10-12% is too large a number to be a fringe phenomenon, and is very consistent. I am also referring to the codes of conduct found in Rig Veda and in the Norse Eddas, which clearly spell out, as does the entire mythology, that following the law is what counts, not who you descended from. Hindu society has later become hierarchic, but that is another story.

I am noticing that you creep around the central issue in my argument, namely that the world is over-populated. Exploitation of other populations is only possible, because they themselves have decided to become a cheaper commodity by delivering the numbers. This is what the ‘odious’ white westerners are not doing, because they smelled the coffee and refused to play. The rich and famous are trying to fix their comfortable situation by importing – yes- ‘all and sundry people’. I would like to know, now that I have answered your questions, for whom and in what way this is ‘a good thing’?

wow! that sure killed debate

How can a man fertilize a man? or a female fertilize a female? Years ago this was hidden in the woodwork and now it is out in the open. I thought that a man amd women would get married and live happily ever after. But I guess I am not with the times or do not understand.

right on dorothy

There still remains the unavoidable question of norms and the extent to which language and fundamental institutions (like marriage) must reflect those norms if they are to hold any meaning.

Somerville does have a valid point in asserting that a connection must be upheld, and that lines must be drawn. Where I differ is *where* that line must be drawn. This is not a question of tolerance, it is a question of equipping institutional bulwarks with the flexibility they need in order to brings those norms (which I and Somerville both seem to believe are central to long-term communal survival) forward into the future.

The socio-political order or the reproductive continuation of the community is not threatened by expansion of the definition of marriage to include that relatively tiny number of same-sex conjugal relationships seeking to be formalized. In fact, the model (and ideal) of the monogamous two-adult household providing an emotionally and financially stable creche for the nourturing and support of life is *upheld* by extending those norms to gay people (too late for my wounded generation, but good news for the next).

The socio-political order and reproductive health of the community *would* be threatened, however, if we fail to draw the line on something like polygamy (or as the kids now call it - polyamory).

So norms or not invented or illusory, and they are important to uphold to the extent that it is realistic to do so. But elevating norms to the status of inflexible dogma only places them in danger.

"There have already been attempts made at putting Sharia law in place in Canada, as well as elsewhere in the world."

And where has it been successful? How many places in the west have restricted freedoms on the basis of so-called muslim law? The emphasis on these kinds of stories is way out of proportion to their effect. It's a mammoth joke of fearmongering when placed next to the real restrictions of freedom enacted by our own governments in a so-called effort to "protect" us. Something which you simply ignore in favor of continuing to extol the "dangers" to our freedoms from muslim religion. What joke.

"I am referring to the indo-European steppe pastoralists, who, wherever they eventually settled down, carried with them a 10-12% component of blood type B in their population, a distinctly non-indo-European gene. The 10-12% is too large a number to be a fringe phenomenon, and is very consistent."

So what? How does appearance of a particular set of genetic markers indicate anything about egalitarian behaviour on a tribal level? All it shows, if what you say is accurate and not junk pseudoscientific extrapolation and misreporting of legitimate research, is that there seems to be, based on limited evidence ,a proportion of certain genetic markers in a particular population. It says nothing about how those markers got there. And it certainly doesn't say a damn thing about the cultural behaviour of those populations. To suggest it does is pure fantasy on your part.

"I am also referring to the codes of conduct found in Rig Veda and in the Norse Eddas, which clearly spell out, as does the entire mythology, that following the law is what counts, not who you descended from. Hindu society has later become hierarchic, but that is another story."

Again, so what? You have a mythology that tells stories, but yet again you present no evidence of egalitarian behaviour in the societies that produced these things. The Norse kept slaves, and routinely pillaged and murdered other tribes. India still has a highly evolved caste system that those promoting the Vedas used to dominate society to enrich themselves. Where is the evidence of egalitarianism there? You're constructing lies of ommission, by ignoring the historical facts that tarnish the behaviour of those cultures at the root of the west.

....continued

....continued from above

"Exploitation of other populations is only possible, because they themselves have decided to become a cheaper commodity by delivering the numbers."

What kind of garbage is this? "....they themselves have decided to become a cheaper commodity...." Which neatly excuses the exploiters. Do you really think this way? Is there no bottom to the depths of your ignorance? Poverty stricken societies produce more children and greater population growth due to a huge number of interrelated factors. The lack of easily available heath care, birth control and abortion are some. The lack of sanitary food, water and living conditions are another. All the negative inputs encourage more children in order to make sure there are some who survive to adulthood. The lack of available birth control prevent people (women in particular) from having much control over when they reproduce. Coming at this with the idea that reproducing is simply a matter of personal choice, especially in other cultures just underlines the depths of your ignorance. In many poor parts of the world reproduction is a matter of survival. Environmental conditions have a huge impact on the rate of reproduction.

If people in the west really wanted to reduce the problem of explosive population growth, then they would be working to improve the lives of those in the third world, as they have managed to do for their own populations, which is why we don't have huge population growth. Take a look at the history of the poor and transgressive populations of pre-20th century Europe and America. Take a look at the views of the establishment about poor or "transgressive" white western cultural groups like the Irish, or Jews. You'll see a rather eerie reflection of the kind of garbage you spew about other cultures, particularly those who share the muslim faith you so love to hate.

In the west, instead of exploiting cheap labor, and maintaining trade policies that impoverish third wold nations, that cram their populations into giant slum cities; improving their lives would do a world of good for slowing population growth. And it's not like you have to turn them all into the vacuous consumers like we are in the west, polluting the planet with our trash and carbon emissions. In Cuba the population consumes a tiny amount per capita in comparison to us, yet their population is shrinking due to a low population growth rate. The availability of excellent free health care, birth control, and abortion, along with a society that provides a standard of living for everyone that meets every individual's basic needs. They do sacrifice a considerable amount of personal freedom in comparison to us. But they live vastly better lives than people in real poverty in third world countries. Cuba certainly isn't the solution, but it may provide some sense of direction.

Your problem dorothy is that you're a bigot. You simply ignore the negative evidence of not just history, but of the current cultural environment when you cast your eyes over the problems of the west. You blame other cultures for problems that are in some cases actually created by western depredations in those cultures. And you try to buttress your arguments with flights of fancy about the ancient past, yet offer absolutely not a shred of evidence of anything inherently "better" in "western" civilization. In fact, that whole notion starts on a innately flawed premise for it biases the very search in favor of finding a positive result.

So, Do I take it that you don't know for whom and in what way it is a good thing?

So, do I take it you have nothing more to offer than invented fantasies about a mythical tribal utopia for your unwarranted sense of superiority?

These are, in my opinion unwarranted, extrapolations from the somewhat controversial findings of a Lithuanian American (Harvard) cultural anthropologist: Marija Gimbutas...whose musings played a part in some of the conclusions drawn by another cultural phenomenon and ‘myth maker’ Joseph Campbell.

Why Dorothy noticed them as a 'proof' for her own disinclination to support the value of certain sorts of immigrants as part of the Canadian cultural mosaic, James Burns, your guess is as good as mine?

Anyone can read more, if they’re interested, in the Journal of Indo-European Studies.

Ironically, apart from her curious conclusions about the danger of extending the marriage contract to include same-sex relationships, Somerville is generally all about finding the common themes of shared ethical behavior and norms that are common to all human societies and peoples.

At least that is the way I see it.

Alcibiades:

Thank you for actually addressing the issues rather than sinking into name-calling and fly-swatting. This is not about ‘winning’, but about pooling resources and thoughts, isn’t it?

I am perplexed at the label ‘bigot’. Have I attached any value judgments to the differences in life strategies I have pointed out? Called one superior to the other? I don’t think so. I have merely pointed them out. A drug store around the corner is not a prerequisite for family planning; many indigenous groups around the world do not have the problem of overrunning their habitat, nor did our own ancestors wait for imports from Malaysia, before they started reducing family sizes. Ergo, it remains a choice. This choice may be made for good reason, based in tradition so on, but the fact of it as a choice should lift the guilt from our shoulders, where some people insist on placing it for their own political ends.

I have not specified ‘certain sorts’ of immigrants I would rather not see enter the country. I have on the contrary expressed worry about huge enclaves of just a few sorts of immigrants throwing their weight around; I would rather see a wide diversity. Total numbers is something else again, which we are not discussing here. I did mention Sharia law, because it is a recent example of immigrant groups getting a hearing they really should not have had, due, I suppose, to their numbers and loudness.

Freedoms which have been taken away – well, there is the fact that women in many Western European countries, traditionally used to enjoying respect and equal position, now must think how to dress and where they can go, not in respect of their own men, but of strangers, who are new to their country. Or the country that used to be theirs. Failure to exercise caution in this can have dire consequences, as to some recent immigrants, who shall remain unnamed, normal Western female dress denotes being ‘a slut’ and so up for grabs, so to speak.

What can we not do now, that we could before the ‘protection’ laws? I am not aware that constitutional rights have been trod underfoot in the broader sense in this country. If one is of Danish descent and travels to Denmark while there is a dispute over Hans Island, one should realize this may look fishy and may call forth some degree of scrutiny. Just Canada looking after its interests, fair enough in my book.

I am not leaning on Marija Gimbutas, but on far older sources, such as
Herodotus, Strabo, Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus and others, as well as the Norse Eddas, the Rig Veda and the Rama Yana, etc.

Of modern sources, I have been interested in the works of Sergei Rjabchikov, Jeannine Davis-Kimball , and Thor Heyerdal.
Egalitarian socities – I would refer you to the World Values Survey, an extremely interesting work in progress, which attempts to map the values held by various peoples all over the world, and how they pan out in financial, societal, and political terms. Here is the URL:

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/

Lastly, I would say, that people perpetrating attacks on our values and freedoms should not have to be successful, before we take action. Just that they try shows that we are not being perceived as guarding what is ours, and that is an error on our part, which will cost us dearly later.

Dorothy,
First of all, thank you for the kind words. I suspect James Burns can speak for himself so I won’t offer any explanation of his interpretation.

That said, although I am a supporter of intrinsic equality and level playing fields I must say my initial reaction to your posts did not lead me to believe that you were exactly welcoming to those immigrants with whose cultural practices you were not in agreement.

In short, I read your offerings in a negative way also, as evidence for this I’d submit my own rather curt remark immediately after one of your posts. So, let us say I was mistaken and leave it at that.

As to my reaction to what you’ve subsequently written, there is certainly room, given what I take to be a more nuanced approach on your behalf, to have some useful discussion.

But, although I love this country with a passion, I find it hard to be as exercised with what you see as cultural discontinuities with our, forgive me, ‘superior’ mores as long as our own practices, especially as regards economic, legal and educational opportunity are as skewed toward a certain ‘class’ of Canadians of a certain economic strata.

I can see that you are well read and I would assume you are familiar with the fact that this country suffers from a severe case of economic immobility and has done so since at least the start of the 1980s. Added to this are the deplorable conditions under which virtually all of Canada’s First Nations live.

There are countries, a few of them, which have managed to tackle these problems much more successfully that Canada has.

So, forgive me if I say that my concern, going forward, is less with what you may perceive as a ‘foreign’ threat to our cultural traditions and ethical mores, and more with our own capacity to address the economics of inequality.

My view, feed, clothe, house and educate the population; treat them with a fairness that instills the value of a rule of law and a system of taxation which is based upon true equity, and we won’t have much problem integrating the new Canadians who come here to share these benefits.

And getting back to the question of social norms, language/institutions, and gay marriage...

Indeed, although I do not think we left the issue. The conversation above goes to how we try to influence other people’s choices, and why. Someone said there is a fear of being ‘outbred’. Same fear of losing ‘more white babies’ go towards many people’s resistance to choice on abortion, so this is on the page, even if only on the sidebar.

For those who have a problem placing homosexual people in the social fabric, I would recommend a text written by B.E. Kann some decades ago. I do not know the English title, since there seems to be no reference on the web, only on Danish Google have I found the book referenced at all. Its German title would be something like Instinct and Procreation. I am currently trying to get someone to get me the ISBN or LCC. B.E. Kann accounts for the function of a certain proportion of homosexuals among us going back to the hunter-gatherer society, where there were more people needed than breeders in order to maintain our balance with the habitat, and so this small percentage persists to this day. Thus, we should not crab about their presence as it was once extremely important and could easily become so again, after Rganarok. We should protect them and let them do their thing, and there’s an end to it.

About our own idigenous population, being an immigrant myself, I was vastly disappointed that they were and are not a powerful component in mainstream Canadian culture. This wrong assumption was one of the things which attracted me to Canada, and it remains, for all of us, an outstanding issue of magnum proportions. We cannot fix it by no matter how big a bankroll, but we must nevertheless pay up, and then leave the rebuilding to them, as no one can do it for them.

I have little hope, however, of this kind of improvement being helpful with immigrants integrating. If you look at the three-dimensional graph in the World Values Survey, you will see that the nations near the top are those now struggling very hard to find at least some peace with immigrant groups, who do not have the slightest intention of integrating, because they consider the people they have landed themselves amongst to be trash. There are people on this Earth who are like oil and water together, and we fail to realize it at our peril. I hail the Tyee for hosting this kind of open debate, as the mainstream papers will certainly not allow it, no matter how desperately neede it is.

Yes, the anthropological and evolutionary origins of homosexuality and homoeroticism are a fascinating topic, if little examined. I've believed for some time that sizeable clusters of non-reproducing males have always gatthered at the tribal fringe, self-contained within a ruthlessly hierarchal and highly transient satellite "tribe" outside the firelight, governed by internal codes reminiscent of the brutality and exploitative homoeroticism we now associate with male prison culture. The modern analogues to this anthropological dynamic are legion, once you get the knack of identifying them for what they are. Look at urban gay male enclaves (esp. during the secretive pre-emancipation era) with their uncompromising and arcane codes of belonging, their byzantine social hierarchies, and their often visceral animosity towards women; look at all priesthoods the world over; aspects of military culture (particularly prior to the rise of the nation state and the Napoleonic "nation in arms"). Men on the margins have a way of creating their own parallel 'societies' and then moving into the firelight from a position of strength and inserting themselves at the top of the normative hierarchy, so long as they conform to those norms, at least externally...like traditional priesthoods, or the clique of extremely effective circle of senior servants to who ran the British Empire, and their counterparts in the arts and academe (the Bloomsbury group). The examples abound.

...that should have read:

"...like traditional priesthoods, or the circle of senior civil servants to who ran the British Empire, and their counterparts in the arts and academe (the Bloomsbury group)."

In rereading my post, I'm not sure if I explained my point very well. What I was trying to describe the basic dynamic of the archetypal male "out-group" organizing itself on the fringes of the archetypal (heteronormative) "in-group" and then moving in over time to appropriate motes of power within the in-group.

Oh dear, I'm starting to sound like a sociologist...

Like the upper echelons of the US Republican hierarchy I guess. And fundamentalist christianist cliques too?

sorry nightbloom, I just couldn't resist:
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/11/the_vaticans_ha.html

You've probably seen it already. I go to Sullivan's blog now and then for the politics but you often find something else that's interesting there too.

"A drug store around the corner is not a prerequisite for family planning"

Nope, but as I stated the availability of contraceptives and a decent standard of living, along with a functioning and supportive civic society where some measure of upward social mobility or at the very least opportunities to improve your standard of living is. Provide for me a historical example that demonstrates otherwise.

"many indigenous groups around the world do not have the problem of overrunning their habitat"

Sure their environment shapes their behaviour.

"nor did our own ancestors wait for imports from Malaysia, before they started reducing family sizes."

Nope they waited for a more egalitarian economy, much of which arrived in the middle of the last century during the depression, and particularly in the aftermath of WWII. Birth rates dropped dramatically with the improvements in people's standard of living. It certainly wasn't any sense of ethical responsibility toward the planet that has caused birth rates to decline. I mean even the suggestion of that is a colossal joke. Particularly when we pause for a moment to examine just how massively our individual levels of consumption have mushroomed during that period.

"Western European countries, traditionally used to enjoying respect and equal position, now must think how to dress and where they can go, not in respect of their own men, but of strangers, who are new to their country"

More garbage fearmongering. The MSM loves these kinds of stories because they sell papers, but the actual dangers are so fantastically overblown that they are laughable. The fears over terrorism are an example. People in the US are more likely to die from a meteor strike than from a terrorist attack. Yet they murder hundreds of thousands and spend hundreds of billions on a statistically insignificant threat. Your concern over the "loss" of freedoms due to islamic radicalism is just such stupidity. Of course a lot of that radicalism is driven by humiliation created by the bigoted attitudes you espouse, particularly your claims to ethical superiorty.

"Ergo, it remains a choice. This choice may be made for good reason, based in tradition so on, but the fact of it as a choice should lift the guilt from our shoulders, where some people insist on placing it for their own political ends."

As I've pointed out, the problem isn't reproduction. It is merely a symptom. The wrong choice is the exploitation of third world resources including their populations for the benefit of western nations. Their governments are in many cases bought and paid for where a tiny elite controls the vast majority of the wealth, and those elites are kept in power by the support of economic and military power from western nations. That creates an environment of abject poverty for a huge proportion of the population in those countries, that leads to all kinds of adaptive survival behaviours by human beings. Not everyone in the world is an existentialist philosopher making reasoned decisions, weighing the global impact of their particular decisions. Many of them go from day to day struggling to simply scrounge enough to eat and drink. Absolving the west of blame because we have the luxury of being able to make reasoned decisions, and have immense privilege afforded to us does not in any way make us or our culture inherently superior. In fact, your attitude highlights an incredibly willful blindness to the massive exploitation of those societies that directly leads to the problematic behaviours their populations experience.

We are the ones that have a far easier time making choices. We are the ones that instead of making the slightly more difficult choices that we can much more easily make to cease exploitation, instead choose greed. Your failure to acknowledge that is damning enough. That you then go on to laud our superiority is simply a disgusting misinterpretation of reality.

...continued

....continued

"Lastly, I would say, that people perpetrating attacks on our values and freedoms should not have to be successful, before we take action."

Sure, but that you complain about largely powerless fringe elements of particular ethic communities and not the actions of the powers that be, is truly bizarre, that is if you really care at all about true freedoms. Frankly, your attitude smacks of more of your concern for the culture you personally identify with maintaining dominance. Why else do you ignore the murderous behaviour of western nations in their efforts to maintain their exploitation of third world nations?

"If you look at the three-dimensional graph in the World Values Survey, you will see that the nations near the top are those now struggling very hard to find at least some peace with immigrant groups, who do not have the slightest intention of integrating, because they consider the people they have landed themselves amongst to be trash."

Given the attitudes you express wherein you promote having an innate superiority, I would suggest the problem of who views who as trash is rather obvious. How well immigrants integrate is usually a function of how welcoming the society they immigrate to is. If it is largely ethnically homogenous, and believes it is inherently superior to other ethnicities, then those attitudes will be reflected in the daily behaviour of those of the dominant ethnicity toward those visibly different immigrants. It is the daily humiliations that build intense resentment.

You know though it is interesting you should mention Denmark. I've been reading progressively more and more about the serious problems of entrenched cultural racism in that country. Since you're including links I'll include a few of my own.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy

http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/(1kwi5445svgrb03pvv0ggr45)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,2,8;journal,25,28;linkingpublicationresults,1:104729,1
The abstract from the above link:

The tactic of hiding behind liberal egalitarianism to extol racist attitudes is certainly a departure from the ravings of outright hatemongers. But presenting hatred and disdain under a frosting of "science" and "authoritative" academic sources is nothing new. I mean hell you already started trotting out "genetic evidence". But then again the worst racists are those who trenchantly believe their virulent justifications for their own superiority are anything but racist.

Since the above link screwed up, here it is in tiny form:
http://tinyurl.com/yfrlfy

Oh and one other bit:

"I am not aware that constitutional rights have been trod underfoot in the broader sense in this country."

Two words: Maher Arar. But his being muslim, I suppose, the violation of his constitutional rights may have escaped your notice.

Appeals to selective anthropology, pseudo-perennialism, crypto-traditionalism, revealed social norms, the socio-political order, reproductive health, etc., etc., etc. ... if wishes were horses, if conjecture were truth ...

None of it will pass muster. Same-sex marriage is here, and it is here to stay; polygamy and polyandry, like same-sex relationships, have yet to arrive in Canada, but have been living in numerous cultures for thousands of years. Even if they were to visit our bountiful land, it is unlikely in the extreme that civilization as we know it, let alone the socio-political order and reproductive health, would be threatened in any but the most imaginative manner. This is, undoubtedly, a source of deep concern if not impotent rage for many in our society (no pun intended).

The last time I checked (about a minute ago) there were 6,555,945,943 people on this planet. Same-sex marriage? Deal with it. Polygamy? Get over it. Or don't. Either way, it won't make much difference. Fantasies, no matter how cogent, well constructed, and articulately expressed, are only fiction, and rarely conform to the realities of life.

colossal joke
garbage fearmongering
so fantastically overblown that they are laughable
just such stupidity
an incredibly willful blindness
a disgusting misinterpretation of reality.
the attitudes you express wherein you promote having an innate superiority
virulent justifications for their own superiority

Man, you really do hate me for not swallowing World Vision’s assertions hook, line and sinker, don’t you?

While you are certainly strong in superlatives, I think you sometimes fail to use the ‘privilege’ we have of reasoned decision-making. Why is it, by the way, a privilege and not an accomplishment? Do you think we are obligated to some deity for our ability to cut the proverbial and see which side our bread is buttered on?

I would like to call you to account for accusing me of being racist. Quote those passages in my writings that clearly show I think I am superior, because I am white, dark-haired and brown-eyed, as opposed to some other hues of skin and hair. And I deplore your statement that I ‘trot out genetic evidence’, when you well know I used it to show non-racist attitudes among the people on the steppes of Kazakhstan 3,000 years ago and not, as you imply, to show some notion of white superiority today. Shame on you for hoping most people won’t remember the debate closely enough to know how misdirected that lump of mud is!

It seems to me, that you are the one inclined to downgrade and patronize people in third-world countries, when you see their chosen cultural traditions and their adherence to them as a failure of reasoned thought-process and a victim position. I can assure you that when a pater familias in Ethiopia decides that not 1.3, but 10 children is the right number, it is a reasoned and qualified decision. I happen to know that, because I have actually had the privilege of discussing these issues with people from Ethiopia. It may be that it would be wise of him to examine the premises, and he might decide a smaller number would be better. Or, his wife might decide that, for apparently, there is close correlation between the equal position of women in a society and the rate of procreation. It is hard to give up traditional views and mores, which have served one’s kindred well for centuries, even millennia; but that does not mean there is no reasoned decision process taking place.

I hope you are finished frothing at the mouth over the kind of people you think I am walking the Earth, and we can now stick to the original issue. I notice you don’t find me bigoted on that. Think about it.

"Man, you really do hate me for not swallowing World Vision’s assertions hook, line and sinker, don’t you? "

Hate you? heh nope, but it is entertaining pointing out your soft-sell racism.

"Quote those passages in my writings that clearly show I think I am superior.."

That would be easy, but you add the following caveat.

"...because I am white, dark-haired and brown-eyed, as opposed to some other hues of skin and hair."

You see your racism functions by excluding people of color through culture. You construct your racist foundation by defining the range of acceptable behaviour in a way that requires a particular form of western steeped cultural education and an environment of privilege. Those who haven't been raised with those privileges tend not to behave in ways you consider proper. By default that will necessarily exclude people of color. The hedge you get is that you can claim your racism isn't really racism, but that it is based on proper behaviour. If the "all and sundry" to use your term, simply behaved in a manner you considered proper, they would be acceptable. The trick is that they can't, and/or won't because they were raised in different circumstances with different traditions with different priorities, and with very different and often very negative experiences of the behaviour of western society.

So you're a bigot. And this is exactly how it ties in with the subject of homosexual marriage. Bigotry comes repackaged not as hatred directly for homosexuals, but as a soft-sell hatred arguing that ethically, homosexual marriage undermines the notion of marriage and the societal support for children. Pure bullsh*t. Current economic factors do far more to undermine proper child rearing than any other factor. But the former argument allows people to sublimate their distaste for homosexuality under a more palatable guise. It also maintains the economic status quo. Blame can be placed on easy targets, and current economic privilege can be maintained.

There is also the psychological question of what drives racism. Well a claim to superiority justifies the dominance your group has in society. That dominance furthers your interests and your power. So you get to exclude competitors, and you can pretend it's not because of their genetics. It neatly allows you to ignore or perhaps even justify the atrocities committed by western societies, because we are clearly superior, in the moral right. It is exactly the reason why we see such horrors occurring in Iraq. People steeped in egalitarian western tradition extolling the virtue of freedom, who are responsible for the most reprehensible behaviour humans are capable of committing. Namely mass murder.

That said, I'm not saying this is a carefully prepared racist plot by you. You simply seem to be coupling your ignorance to your self-interest, and have just enough intelligence to fool yourself with twisted logic and pseudoscientific fantasy.

"when you well know I used it to show non-racist attitudes among the people on the steppes of Kazakhstan 3,000 years"

It shows nothing of the sort. All it was, was your pathetic attempt to establish a sense of cultural superiority by fantasizing about the reason for the appearance of certain genetic markers. A laughable notion: that it demonstrates "non-racist attitudes" among a particular population at the roots of western culture, ergo the "fact" we are so egalitarian is written in our genes. What a load of crap. It says nothing of the sort.

Now, are there problems with the culturally determined behaviours of ethic groups? You bet, but that is a universal phenomenon. But there are currently far greater problems with the murderous behaviour of western democracies and their policies that promote more of the same, than with any of the cultural behaviours of other ethnicities.

"That would be easy"

So, why don't you? Instead, you proceed to put more words in my mouth, which I haven't said, and stuff your speech with yet more derogatory superlatives. Such as:

"So you're a bigot. And this is exactly how it ties in with the subject of homosexual marriage. Bigotry comes repackaged not as hatred directly for homosexuals, but as a soft-sell hatred arguing that ethically, homosexual marriage undermines the notion of marriage and the societal support for children."

Please read what I actually said about same-sex marriage, and get a grip.

Same sex marriage has been going on for 100 of years in the dark. Now that it has jumped out of the wood work we here a lot of different opinions. I personally don't care what same sex marriages do. I like to marry to opposite sex, but that is not for everone.
Life is short, so enjoy yourself.

Agreed. The sooner mainstream society defeats its "sex neurosis" on this issue the better it will be for everyone. That way we can stop the cylce of marginalization, and there will be fewer damaged psyches out there (like the Foleys and the Haggarts and the many other repressed people who have channeled their denial into the oppression of others).

When we look at the roots of our cultural dysphoria on sex issues (undeniably, these roots include Saints Augustine and Paul, although we could go back much further) it's clear that sexual morality was crafted by reformed profligates who went "dry drunk" on us. That's oversimplifying considerably, but it illustrates the psychological dynamic we can observe in this Haggart fellow. It's amazing how what goes on between one person's ears can effect the entire ambient culture, if that person is influential enough.

Here are some links that may give ideas for further thought on this:

http://www.americandaily.com/article/843

http://www.slate.com/id/2100884/

http://users.cybercity.dk/~dko12530/

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040310-122705-6942r.htm

I should add, that the claim that marriage is seen as ‘outdated’ in the scandinavian countries, especially Denmark, has nothing to do with ‘moral decline’. It has long irked Danes that authorities, particularly the church, owned some prerogative ,when it came to marriage, as it is seen as a contract between two free and equal people, and their word is enough. Even under the auspices of the church, newlyweds do not sign a register, but ‘give each other a hand thereupon’, i.e. the marriage is sealed with a handshake. My bet is, that generally, the unions entered into with no one presiding or officiating are every bit as solid as a church or registrar marriage.

I remember writing to Kurtz when Canada approved gay marriage - saying there were few signs of incipient social decline here in its aftermath.

He replied, which I suppose earns him some credit – the neocons seldom bother, that it was only a matter of time before the hydra-headed terrors of polyandry and polyamory and a few other kinds of ‘love’ I won’t bother to mention started to rip huge holes in the social fabric.

Several years later I see no evident signs - perhaps it's time to remind him.

Officially sanctioned heterosexual marriage, on the other hand, is still on the skids.

>>Officially sanctioned heterosexual marriage, on the other hand, is still on the skids.<<

Well, just as long as they keep having sex, the species should be okay. Virtually everything else is self-correcting, in the long run.

Even that's tenuous sometimes nightbloom. I met an articled student today. Young lady, mother of 3 kids, only one in school, trying her desperate best to make ends meet, look after the kids, snap to attention at a private law firm and keep herself together - all on her own. Her husband having gone walkabout.

Enough to make one cry. I'm not so sure I agree about the self-correcting bit!

Oh I know what you mean and I suppose in the long run.....but there is so much pain in the way we live today. So much unnecessary pain. And that’s just for the people who still have their feet, tenaciously, on the ladder.

Sex may not be the solution to everything.

Oh, hey, that fits right in with the neo-liberal concept of cross-cultural osmosis. Just listen to all those stories on World Vision, about fathers 'abandoning the family' when the flock becomes unmanageable; it had to come to a corner near us sooner or later...