Alexiev wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2024 2:12 amYou are entitled to your opinion, but It is not a charitable one. Does valuing the heterosexual union and the family necessarily involve devaluing homosexual families? My own son was born out of wedlock. Thank goodness that no longer resulted in him being stigmatized or disrespected. What do you propose gay people do? Abstain from sex? Slink back into the closet? Whatever you may think about the value of nuclear families, you should also consider the well-being of individuals who don't fit the mode. Don't you think gay people are happier when they're proud of who they are? Why do they trouble you?
Starting from an
intellectual point (in the sense of the Latin
intellectus) -- my orientation is Platonic and Aristotelean and as I say I reject, overall, the so-called *Christian ethic* as such -- I am not moved by feelings of *charity*. Since I do not have any power at all, in the present dispensation, to influence how the larger social body relates to homosexuality, sexual deviation, perversion, pornography, and a practical social ethics whereby the notion of *sexual ethics* is a meaningless term, I am simply talking about what I think is both right and best in a somewhat abstract sense.
Does valuing the heterosexual union and the family necessarily involve devaluing homosexual families?
Yes, certainly. Beyond all doubt. Ethically, and also morally, the primary social unit, and the primary union that must be valued above all others is that of the productive male-female union. This is intuitively obvious. The family is the source of progeny. If one, and if a culture, loses track of this fundamental fact -- a truth if ever a truth has been defined -- it begins to lose the core motor that generates society. So if you take what I suggest here at face value, and subtract out of it any desire to *hate* or to condemn any other people, it is really the
idea here that I emphasize.
What I am saying is that homosexual unions must be recognized, even or
especially among homosexuals but certainly among the majority, as having less value and less importance than that of productive male-female unions that produce abundant families.
My own son was born out of wedlock. Thank goodness that no longer resulted in him being stigmatized or disrespected.
If my argument was essentially Christian or Catholic I would naturally place emphasis on the *sacrament* of marriage. In Catholicism (for example) marriage
is a sacrament. It is an interesting idea when examined. The marriage union is given a sort of divine or sacred status. It needs to be validated and
authoritated (and turned into an indissolvable bond) through ritualized ceremony. At this point I am far less interested in Catholic-Christian definitions and as I say much more interested in Platonic concepts. So, there is a logic, a reasoning, behind elevating a marriage union. You could use the term sacralizing but that has all sort of religious baggage associated with it, no? I prefer to strip from the religious baggage what I believe is the *core meaning*. And it resolves into a recognition that the male/female union, in this world, is the very core of society and civilization. Mess with it and you do so (in my opinion) at your peril.
It hardly matters to me that your son was born outside of a solemnized marriage. But it would interest me (philosophically and culturally) to understand the degree to which you took your union with your wife, and hers with you,
seriously. One thing that a religious orientation does provide is a strong moral sense that a sacralized marriage must be preserved no matter what. Thus it calls out of people all that is associated with *sense of responsibility* and *seriousness*.
But I recognize (and have had) unions that were simply matters of convenience and were understood to be temporary.
The Philosophical-existential issue is how seriously do we take these unions? The view I am trying to articulate is that they should be taken far more seriously. (But you must understand that I married later than most and that all my ideas were undergoing transformation at that time. As I said I come from (extremely) progressive social circumstances but have taken an intellectual and philosophical stand against what I now term
hyper-liberalism).
What do you propose gay people do? Abstain from sex?
There are two aspects. One is that
sexual ethics must be defined. You could look into Catholic and Christian family and sexual ethics to gain a sense of the philosophy standing behind it. It is, in my view, entirely coherent and very practical. But too you could (I mean
one could) strip away the religiousness and focus on the Platonic and Aristotelean backgrounding of these definitions. That is what I choose in any case.
So once you have entered, philosophically, into the question of sexual ethics, you are going to have to set down value-sets and parameters to sexual expression. You are going to have to make some statements as to whether you regard it as ethically practicable to fuck your dog or to fuck your neighbors teenage daughter when you are involved in a committed relationship with your own wife. The fucking of your dog is one thing to consider but we tend not to be concerned about the psychological implications for that dog. But it is a different matter when it concerns that teenage daughter next door. One could use her as a really fun sexual partner without much concern for the question *What is this doing for her?* and is the activity good for her in any sense, either conventional or special. Sexuality is possibly the most powerful, and the most potentially untresstained, appetite that we deal with, wouldn't you say? Let us, for the sake of conversation, imagine a culture with
no sexual ethics. What would that look like?
So the issue is not that I condemn homosexuals for their sexual appetites, and more that it is a bona fide and important topic to ask questions in relation to sexual ethics. And again, and for example, sexual ethics is certainly emphasized in traditional Catholicism. These are ethics that were developed over many centuries. But as I say, behind these religiously defined ethics is a sound philosophical base for the admonitions.
The second aspect is that even, or especially, in a traditional male-female union sexual ethics *must* be observed. That *must* is an idealistic imperative. Even St Paul said "better to marry than to burn". But how one burns, within the marriage, is obviously of some importance (even when divorced from specific Christian rules and regulations).
I don't make statements about what gays should do or not do. What I do say is that what they do should be repressed and suppressed by common, general culture, and that gays themselves should do this voluntarily and out of a sense of respect.
Why do they trouble you?
There is not a great deal that *troubles* me. I am an observer of cultural currents; where things are, where they are going. And primarily what interests me is
causation: What has brought about the notable
transvaluation of values in relation to sexuality? In that sense my orientation is actually Nietzschean.
