I haven't made a post since the 7th! So, to make up for it, here's a long one. (Ha! As if I'd even be capable of anything else.)
And because everyone likes reacting to things, and because the issue seems to be
coming up a
lot lately, I thought I'd react to
this. That is, that UN taking declarations about equality for all, regardless of sexual identity. Or more specifically, I thought I'd react to the pro-bigotry declaration, sponsored by the Vatican et al. Even more specifically, I want to talk about this one particular argument that is made, an argument that quite possibly shits me above and beyond any other argument I have ever heard, that rights & respect for gays can lead to “the social normalization, and possibly the legitimization, of... pedophilia.” And because I really have nothing new or insightful to say politically, or even on the logical merits of the argument itself (
this guy demolishes it pretty soundly near the end of that post), I'm instead just going to segue into this personal anecdote:
Back when I was new to the Internet, around year 9, I posted for a short while on a developer's forum dedicated to the computer game
Planescape: Torment. And that was fun. But then the game was released, and there wasn't anything in particular keeping me there, and so I found my virtual way to this other forum for a game in development, The
Arcanum Inn. And that was much more fun. Great friendly people, great times. Naturally there wasn't much to discuss about the actual game, and we could only talk so much about other RPGs, so the discussion was primarily completely off-topic. The forum was hosted by IGN, but there was absolutely no official moderation (until there was, and the entire forum picked up and left for another host), so there was the nice, natural feeling of a self-governed community. After a year or two that game also got released, but the place and the people were good enough that I hung around for a few years more. It was what I mainly did on the internet. I probably spent more time on that forum and its associated chatroom than I do now on Facebook, Google Reader, or even Team Fortress 2.
But anyway, to get back to the original point... As any internet location must have, the Arcanum Inn had its resident fundamentalist. And I really do mean resident. Checking out the original forum now, he had over 5,000 posts before we all left for the other host, to my mere 4,500. I say this to establish that he wasn't just a random troll, a total stranger, that inevitable person who just wants to take over a forum to argue about Young-Earth Creationism. He
did want to argue about Young-Earth Creationism, but he also wanted to talk about Arcanum and RPGs and whatever else we were rambling about that day. And if I ever found anything odd about a hardcore Christian also being a hardcore roleplayer, I got used it to. Even though the things that he said occasionally appalled or terrified me, I could like him well enough when the conversation was not about religion.
But, as you may've guessed, a certain argument he made eventually made me leave the entire community behind. He started a new thread, about DC's then recent decision to recreate
Batwoman as a lesbian. Naturally he disapproved, and was especially upset at the idea of essentially heroic characters, up to whom we are meant to look, having, as he saw it, sinful sexual perversions. I'll avoid the obvious comment about them being psychologically crazed vigilantes who take the law into their own hands and all that. But what he said which really got my goat was along the lines of "What next, Clark Kent is revealed to be a pedophile?" I suspect this was among a list of incestuous Green Lanterns and whathaveyou, but it's too long ago to recall.
As I've said, I don't feel the need to point out how bad this implicit argument is, nor do I feel the need to register my abhorrence and disgust at these kinds of self-propagating, and probably really damaging attempts to mentally link homosexuality with genuinely harmful, and therefore immoral, practices. Take that as given. But actually, on that last point, I think there's an interesting thought to be had here by trying to get behind a fundamentalist's thinking, as shoddily as I expect I would do so:
...
Actually, fuck it. I was going to try and make some kind of point about how the fundamentalist would see both acts as sins, having in both cases the same kind of effect on the God/Sinner relationships, and so essentially morally on par... And then I could go on to praise consequentialist approaches to morality for being able to principledly compare the actual relative levels of immorality of any two immoral acts... But actually, screw the
principle of charity, I'm not so generous as to believe that any fundamentalist actually DOES think that homosexuality and pedophilia are on par, rather they just know that society at large isn't going to buy their "homosexuality is a perversion" crap, at least in public discourse, and so they want to tie these together for purely rhetorical purposes.
Anyway, to return to my narrative... If it was just this one person making this kind of claim, I suspect I could've just ignored him, and continued posting at the Inn. And actually, it kinda was just the one person making the claim. But here's what really shat me: No one else, in a population of dozens, many of whom were posting on that thread, was willing to stand up and say "No, actually, what you're saying is disgusting, bigoted, and dangerous bullshit." And when I say no one else, I'm lying. There was one other person. But he too left in the fallout.
As to whether merely registering an objection then buggering off was a noble move, or whether it would've been better to hang around and argue at him, I don't know, or particularly care. I'd seen how the Evolution/Creationism threads went (namely, 'on forever'), and so I knew there would be no changing his mind. And everyone else just didn't seem to care (charitably, because they just figured "oh, another fundie on the internet, what's new," but to take this attitude with a member of a tight community of 'internet friends,' in the best possible sense of that worrying term, seems a little much). Besides, I had been posting less and less up to that point anyway, and I suspect this occurred around when uni work was starting to demand more of my attention than internet shenanigans.
Anyway, that's about the entire story. More recently I've revisited what little remains of that community. Many people have left, including the fundie... And surprisingly the other guy that left at the same time as me has recently returned. These days, though there are a very few people I have a strongish, purely online relationship with, there are none from overseas, let alone a whole community from all around the world (well, all around North America and Europe anyway). I still, looking back, really enjoy the dynamic that existed in that community for so long, and find it hard to imagine anything quite similar enough anywhere online. But, you know, that's probably a common enough feeling.
Anyway, I think this post is done, but I can't help but trying to end by coming back to something like the original point, and giving a link to
this piece by Jeremy Bentham. As the site claims, it is the first known argument for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England, written (though sadly, I think, unpublished) in 1785. Go Bentham! Of course, he's not going to stop calling it a perversion and an abomination, but hell, it was 1785. Also, it contains one of my favourites quotes:
"It is wonderful that nobody has ever yet fancied it to be sinful to scratch where it itches, and that it has never been determined that the only natural way of scratching is with such or such a finger and that it is unnatural to scratch with any other."
