Posted on 12/29/2010 11:03:28 AM PST by Kaslin
So now openly gay soldiers get to fight and die in neocon-imperialist wars too?
David Brooks saw such ironic progressive victories coming. In his book "Bobos in Paradise," he wrote that everything "transgressive" gets "digested by the mainstream bourgeois order, and all the cultural weapons that once were used to undermine middle-class morality ... are drained of their subversive content."
Two decades ago, the gay left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian "free love" and avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents' generation along with their gray flannel suits.
As a sexual lifestyle experiment, they failed pretty miserably, the greatest proof being that the affluent and educated children (and grandchildren) of the baby boomers have re-embraced the bourgeois notion of marriage as an essential part of a successful life. Sadly, it's the lower middle class that increasingly sees marriage as an out-of-reach luxury. The irony is that such bourgeois values -- monogamy, hard work, etc. -- are the best guarantors of success and happiness.
Of course, the lunacy of the bohemian free-love shtick should have been obvious from the get-go. For instance, when Michael Lerner, a member of the anti-Vietnam War "Seattle Seven," did marry, in 1971, the couple exchanged rings made from the fuselage of a U.S. aircraft downed over Vietnam and cut into a cake inscribed in icing with a Weatherman catchphrase, "Smash Monogamy."
Today Lerner is a (divorced and remarried) somewhat preposterous, prosperous progressive rabbi who officiates at all kinds of marriages -- gay and straight -- and, like pretty much the entire left, loves the idea of open gays becoming cogs in the military-industrial complex.
The gay experiment with open bohemianism was arguably shorter. Of course, AIDS played an obvious and tragic role in focusing attention on the downside of promiscuity. But even so, the sweeping embrace of bourgeois lifestyles by the gay community has been stunning.
Nowhere is this more evident -- and perhaps exaggerated -- than in popular culture. Watch ABC's "Modern Family." The sitcom is supposed to be "subversive" in part because it features a gay couple with an adopted daughter from Asia. And you can see why both liberal proponents and conservative opponents of gay marriage see it that way. But imagine you hate the institution of marriage and then watch "Modern Family's" hardworking bourgeois gay couple through those eyes. What's being subverted? Traditional marriage, or some bohemian identity politics fantasy of homosexuality?
By the way, according to a recent study, "Modern Family" is the No. 1 sitcom among Republicans (and the third show overall behind Glenn Beck and "The Amazing Race") but not even in the top 15 among Democrats, who prefer darker shows like Showtime's "Dexter," about a serial killer trying to balance work and family between murders.
Or look at the decision to let gays openly serve in the military through the eyes of a principled hater of all things military. From that perspective, gays have just been co-opted by The Man. Meanwhile, the folks who used "don't ask, don't tell" as an excuse to keep the military from recruiting on campuses just saw their argument go up in flames.
Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill (most likely both). I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive. But I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same time telling them that their committed relationships are illegitimate too.
Many of my conservative friends -- who oppose both civil unions and gay marriage and object to rampant promiscuity --often act as if there's some grand alternative lifestyle for gays. But there isn't. And given that open homosexuality is simply a fact of life, the rise of the HoBos -- the homosexual bourgeoisie -- strikes me as good news.
> I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living
> the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same
> time telling them that their committed relationships are
> illegitimate too.
Jonah, does your finding apply also to polygamy, polyamory, pedophilia, incest, and bestiality?
If not, why not?
If it’s treated as an addiction with a 12 step plan, who are you gonna call at 2 am for moral support?............
“Frantic efforts have been made over the past 30 years to accommodate women and gays in the military. If the draft was ever re-instituted, think of the mad rush by many to suddenly be ‘unaccommodated.’”
In 1966 if you recieved an induction notice and told the Selective Service that you were homosexual you were excused from military service with no questions asked.
Goldberg makes an interesting point.
I think he is right that government-recognized gay relationships are an inevitability. In some respects, I don’t care — tax benefits, health insurance, hospital visitation, blah, blah. I’m fine with all of that. In other respects, it may be a good thing for society that homosexuals are embracing homosexual monogamy as opposed to homosexual promiscuity.
But — however it may be structured, whatever benefits it may entail, and whatever it may be called ... a gay union will never be a “marriage”. The one thing gay couples truly want is the one thing they can never recieve — moral equivalence ... no matter what legal and linguistic hoops you try to jump through a gay “marriage” will never be morally equivalent to a true marriage.
SnakeDoc
I fear that's the ultimate goal of queer activists.
How long has NAMBLA been in existence. They admit that's their goal.
Listen up NAMBLA types, mess with my grand children and given the opportunity, I will kill you, plain and simple. I'm old enough (65) that the prospect of the rest of my life in prison does not scare me in the least.
And that's why 38 states passed one man, one woman marriage laws? I don't think so.
Pushing the homosexual agenda are you?
but it would require first changing back the opinion of most Americans.
Most Americans are against the agenda.
Yup. And you can bet there'd be a massive effort to have that policy restored if the draft was ever re-instituted.
I don't presume to *deal with* homosexuals in any fashion other than Constitutionally authorized, do you?
No special *rights* and certainly no incorporation of the homosexual agenda into American society; public schools teaching "Heather Has Two Mommies", "Homosexual Sex/Sodomy"; Homosexual Marriage; Homosexual Adoption; Homosexuals in the Military (ooops too late).
I really don't care if homosexuals are born, made, recruited, choose the life or a combination of the above, - many modern day homosexuals have elected to be defined by their sexual behavior in an *in your face* manner, and they are the ones demanding special rights like hate crimes and the redefining of marriage. Why homosexuals and not polygamists?.
Sodomy used to be a crime, and homosexual sex with minor children is pedophilia and should be punished to the maximum; life imprison on the first offense. The same should apply to hetrosexual rape of minor children.
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I am not. Homosexuality is a deviancy the same as pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia. They are all sexual dysfunctions. NO conservative is FOR legitimizing any sexual dysfunction.
WRONG. It isn't cruel...as amazing as it might seem, Jonah, telling gays they are wrong is love. To enable gays to live in the perverse addiction of homosexuality is evil.
Goldberg's cracked.
Absolutely!
Pretty good point.........
Jonah Goldberg is entitled to his opinion, as you are to yours
It’s deviant, sinful and abnormal.
It's even more direct to just refer to them as sodomites.
KICK THEM OUT OF THE MILITARY DUE TO THE PROVABLE FACT THEY ARE MENTALLY UNSTABLE.
As proven by their poster boy PFC “Swiller” from the Wikipeeks fiasco.
Ah, genetics. As it happens, my husband is a medical doctor and he practiced psychiatry for 35 years. He is pretty much convinced that homosexual males are born, some are made, early in life through rape and unfortunate circumstances. The sexual drive in a person is so strong that it's unfathomable to us straight people to even imagine sexual relations with a person of our same gender, so there has to be something inherent (genes) to not only overcome the repulsion, but to make the same gender the appealing one.
Leave it to the shrinks and doctors of genetics. Studies of twins etc.
When I was in high school last century, 1959-1963, I didn't know any openly queers. There was one guy in our class who had effeminate mannerisms but he went to the dances, proms etc with a girl.
He's living in Indianapolis now with his "husband" but at least he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut about it in high school. By the way, he was an all around likable guy and probably still is, except for that perversion thing he's got going, I haven't seen him since high school, his sister told me all this "news" a few years back.
He also managed to keep this information from his religious and elderly mother, who is now deceased. Kudos to him for that much.
See? I agree with you. It never ends. Pedophilia cannot be cured. It’s another deviancy.
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