Sex and the Religious-Left

[Wizard22]

He still isn't going to give you yor reacharound.

Just as you defend "It Isn't Going To Lick Itself", you feel the need to throw in more of your Homo-erotica...

Typical of the Religious-Left, using Sex and Homosexuality as weapons...as Iwan alluded to at the OP of this thread.

It's about control. Only, straw-for-brains, you are clueless. Take a break, your double-digit IQ must be overclocked today?

[Wizard22]

Time for my weekly vacation, Buh Bye reprobates!

Keep up the good fight, Alexis! A Champion!

[Alexis Jacobi]

my argument is Platonic.

Is it though? What would a Platonic argument be?

In the sense I meant it, m’boy, this:

Uncontrolled, or misdirected, sexuality is destructive in a man’s body. And it carries over to the political body.

[Harbal]

Alexis, notice that Hairball, at this point, must play the Fool and pretend, to be stupid,

How dare you accuse me of pretending?

[FlashDangerpants]

my argument is Platonic.

Is it though? What would a Platonic argument be?

In the sense I meant it, m’boy, this:

Uncontrolled, or misdirected, sexuality is destructive in a man’s body. And it carries over to the political body.

Are you having a go at the tripartite mind? I mean fuck it, I guess that's Plato, so go for it.

[FlashDangerpants]

Time for my weekly vacation, Buh Bye reprobates!

Keep up the good fight, Alexis! A Champion!

Do you go for weekly electroshock therapy as a vacation?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Are you having a go at the tripartite mind? I mean fuck it, I guess that's Plato, so go for it.

I am having a go () at the following.

Uncontrolled, or misdirected, sexuality is destructive in a man’s body. And it carries over to the political body.

[Harbal]

If I have misinterpreted the spirit of your comments about homosexuals, I apologise. Is it the case that I have misunderstood your attitude and intentions towards them?

There was no “spirit” in my comments. I said exactly what I thought was of common sense.

My real concern — the ethical questions and possibly the moral questions — revolve around concerns about what happens in a person and a culture when sexuality and sexual passion are uprooted from their •true• functional importance in the context of a productive marriage and family. So, more than criticism of a homosexual couple or an attempt to harm them, ultimately the issue is a different one.

100% of homosexual sex is recreational, it has to be admitted, whereas probably only about 98% of heterosexual sex is not performed in the pursuit of reproduction, but I rather like the idea of recreational sex, so I see no problem, or issue. What, may I ask, is the issue for you?

I see •the perversion of sexual function• as a powerful tool used for political purposes. Again, and simply put, my argument is Platonic. Uncontrolled, or misdirected, sexuality is destructive in a man’s body. And it carries over to the political body.

I suggest you might be overthinking this. Although the biological function of sexual congress is for the purpose of procreation, that is certainly not usually the intention of those performing it; in fact, it is more often considered an unfortunate consequence that needs to be guarded against. Normal people have sex drive, and attempts to supress it for some supposed reasons of morality is just plain stupid, not to mention very unhealthy for those being suppressed.

Still, it would be wrong to dismiss your concerns without first trying to understand them. So, would you like to explain in what way is uncontrolled, or misdirected, sexuality destructive in a man’s body? And how does it "carry over into the political body", whatever that means?

[Harbal]

When you Demons come after our children...the Family, all that is Sacred in life, that's when these "cultural" battles turn over.

And with this, in its essence, I agree.

It is those possessive and captivating currents that alarm many people today. They notice it, they notice an infiltration, and they see the power it has over children, but they do not quite understand how to battle it. Nor are they sure what they are facing.

I suppose you think you are invincible now that Wizard is standing by your side.

[FlashDangerpants]

Are you having a go at the tripartite mind? I mean fuck it, I guess that's Plato, so go for it.

I am having a go () at the following.

Uncontrolled, or misdirected, sexuality is destructive in a man’s body. And it carries over to the political body.

Lol, ok, you have fun wiggling that little argument around until it means something.

But keep your mitts off the Devil's Doorbell.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I suggest you might be overthinking this. Although the biological function of sexual congress is for the purpose of procreation, that is certainly not usually the intention of those performing it; in fact, it is more often considered an unfortunate consequence that needs to be guarded against. Normal people have sex drive, and attempts to suppress it for some supposed reasons of morality is just plain stupid, not to mention very unhealthy for those being suppressed.

Still, it would be wrong to dismiss your concerns without first trying to understand them. So, would you like to explain in what way is uncontrolled, or misdirected, sexuality destructive in a man’s body? And how does it "carry over into the political body", whatever that means?

Once again, reading your question, and noticing that you are a representative of a man who now exists entirely outside of those categories of concern, understanding and value that had been fundamental to our cultural understanding and social ethics, my first reaction is that of frustrated fatigue. Along with that is the realization that divisions in our culture have progressed to the point that people -- obviously I can refer to you and I -- do not any longer operate from the same cultural foundation. And because this is so, a *conversation* -- an exchange of ideas based on shared values -- is impossible. The function of the conversation is only to cement the fact that agreement is not possible and that there is no mutual understanding.

The position that you argue from is one in which you have concretized a set of values. Certainly sexual passion and sexual appetite have always been unruly, that can be understood to be given, but all cultures have established the need for sets of restrictions that have a positive and necessary social-cultural function. Walker mentioned the philosophy of bramacharya which is part-and-parcel of a larger interpretive philosophy or "dream of the world" if you wish. Similarly, and I made this reference previously, in our cultural matrix we could refer to the philosophy and metaphysics of Augustine:

Augustine’s reflections on the libido dominandi, or lust for power, or better “dominating lust” (both in the sense of the lust to dominate, and the lust that dominates the one lusting)...

However, mentioning this to you can have no influence and for a host of reasons. Simply as an initial point you totally reject the entire idea of *divinity*. It is a word not only without meaning and sense, but a symbol for you (I gather this from what you write) of the sinister. In order to understand you, Harbal, I have to try to understand the intellectual, existential and also interpretive base from which you operate. And that is why I continually mention that you seem to me not to have a foundation and why I speak about you-plural in a glossary fashion: you are people that have come about as result of postmodern destruction of an established hierarchy of intellectual understanding and also of *values*.

Since on the whole all that we refer to when we say *values* is bound up with ideas that originate in religious and philosophical schools, and these historically are deeply involved with concepts of divinity, ethics and proper conduct, and that divinity refers to an upper world of man's aspiration as well as to metaphysical beliefs, I cannot make a case for the logic and necessity of the sexual ethics that I am attempting to explain and defend to you, a man who no longer thinks or perceives in those terms. That *realm* of perception and of imagining, either by referring to rational theological definitions or to poetical ways of expressing a reverence for a *higher world* -- all of this (as Sculptor will always say and Flash certainly agrees) is understood to be *waffle* by all of you. That means that you have dismissed the entire realm right from the start. Not only are the terms non-intelligible to you they are also, in your view, based in serious errors.

In fact everything I have written here will only be seen, and can only be seen, as waffle.

In order to be able to speak of man in terms of levels -- higher levels and lower levels -- one necessarily must have a metaphysical interpretation. What does *higher* mean? And what then, in contrast, is *the lower*? If I am to speak of these things, and to define values, there is no way that I will not involve myself in categories of value that are rooted in philosophical and also religious schools of thought.

All you would have to do to verify this is to refer to how the notion of *love* is expressed and understood. If love represents a higher principle, and if into love we infuse so much about higher principles, then it is not hard to see that there is a sound reason why sexual love has been in our culture linked to marriage commitment and to the social purposes of having a family and raising children. I could mention a *matrix of values* that surround these notions but that too would be seen by you as just more waffle.

Let me amend your statement:

Although the biological function of preparing food and eating is for the purpose of nourishment and sustenance, that is certainly not usually the intention of those who eat.

In my view what you seem to have done, and what as a carrier of social or philosophical values you have done, is non-different from what has occurred in the Sexual Revolution. You illustrate it. In you it is recognized as an *outcome*. Sex is just a a function. Just like anything else. Eating a sandwich. Watching TV. Going for a walk. Defecating. I exaggerate to some degree but the point holds. And because sex and sexuality are completely separated not only from procreation but from ethics and a larger existential philosophy, the sexual act is non-different from any other act. It has no particular or special meaning.

And it goes further. All sex-acts are non-different. If I have sex in (let's say) a marriage that is understood to be sacramental (meaning in some way part of service to higher principles, to divinity, etc.), and if that sexual act has been assigned a special value, then I will as a result be able to define expressions that are perversions of that. But if I no longer assign any particular value or exclusivity to sexuality, then it doesn't matter who I engage sexually with.

Turning back to the idea that man is a being who has *levels* -- as you know the crude imagery is that of the higher mind and higher aspirations as being divine or angelical, and the lower impulses being worldly, mundane, and also comparatively as on a lower (inferior) plane -- I think you can conceptually understand what is meant by reference to libido dominandi. No, you will not and cannot agree with the terms, that I well understand, and you indicate that you will not be influenced by what I might say (*waffle*), but at least you can understand how other people see it, and certainly why it is that an elaborately defined sexual ethics has been highly relevant in our culture.

If a man is given over to lower functions (lust, appetite, addiction) the higher functions suffer. This is something that even Freud understood. That sexual energy is transmuted and given a higher type of expression. If an entire culture (and here I will speak in generalisms) is given over to lust, appetite and addiction, and if these run rampant in culture, it is not hard to see that the "social body" will show signs of being sick, but also that there are many sorts of consequence that result from this.

Normal people have sex drive, and attempts to suppress it for some supposed reasons of morality is just plain stupid, not to mention very unhealthy for those being suppressed.

You have encapsulated here an attitude that was established in the post-Sixties I think. It is a philosophical position, in its way. You have reduced the values and concepts I have defined here (only by allusion), and which had been extremely important to our culture (and civilization) to *some supposed reasons of morality*. That is, in fact, where you are located. Your value-system has become an active non-value system. It has more to do with the attempt to undermine values than it does to establish them.

[Alexis Jacobi]

100% of homosexual sex is recreational, it has to be admitted, whereas probably only about 98% of heterosexual sex is not performed in the pursuit of reproduction, but I rather like the idea of recreational sex, so I see no problem, or issue. What, may I ask, is the issue for you?

It is a mistake to define my concerns as *having an issue*. Years back, when I reexamined the issue of homosexuality, I read up on it but from a progressive standpoint. The Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement by Margaret Cruickshank. At that time I was inclined to regard this movement as another frontier of general liberalization. And that was because that was pretty much where I *located* myself. I have also made it very clear that I am a *product of California radicalism*. That means that my parents were involved in radicalism and of a sort that was very much centered in ultra-progressive ideology.

Over a number of years now, I could explain some of the reasons why, I have had to review and think more deeply about both my upbringing, my parent's choices, the choices made in that epoch, and a great deal else. It would be a mistake to say I reject all of that, or regard it as *bad* or *evil*, but at the same time I cannot either see it all as absolutely good or, perhaps the better word is beneficial.

Since it became clear to me that homosexuals and homosexuality exist, has existed and will continue to exist, it was never a possibility for me to imagine it as something that could be ended through some sort of social activism. So it is something that can only be accepted. And of course we live in liberal societies where our laws indicate that people can live as they choose.

And perhaps as a sort of compromise between two opposed views -- absolute liberation in contrast with a philosophy or world-view absolutely restrictive -- I defined a position just as I have stated it: Homosexuality and other sexual deviancies should be generally suppressed or repressed insofar as it pertains to their presentation. For example in pride parades. But more importantly as *state positions* (as for example lighting up the White House in rainbow colors). The issue does go much further however when it comes to our educational system. You may be aware that many parents are highly concerned that sexuality is presented to the young in state institutions so as to appear to *teach* it or to condone lots of things that they do not want their children exposed to (or regard as bad).

I am aware that even within more strict Evangelicalism in America there is a sort of *liberation movement* to confront the sorts of repressions of sexual desire that result in unhealthy suppression. Yet they still try to liberate sexual expression within the marriage-bond and not outside of it.

To define sexuality and the abuse of it as 'demonic' (Flash's recent contribution) is not an idea that is unintelligible to me. I could refer to many people who have had to confront sexual addiction to pornography (and pornography is a dangerous and destructive influence on a world-scale). Some, who perhaps have a Christian background, refer to their addiction as having taken over their lives, ruined their relationships, and caused them misery, pain and loss. They assign that influence or outcome to the work of Satan. I've read numerous accounts of a man's porn addiction ruining his marriage.

I am aware that what is understood to be divine is opposed by what is demonic -- this is a foundational metaphysics to our societies -- but just as I am not so clear as to how I would myself define *the divine* or God, similarly I do not know how to define whatever is meant by the term demoniac. I admit to not having a clear understanding of what is meant any longer.

so I see no problem, or issue

I do see problems and issues, and very may of them! and I must point out again that in our cultures and at this time there are idea-wars and value-wars on-going that revolve around these issues. Yes, you can say *I have no issues* and propose ethics such as you do, but that does not mean that you can defend all the ramifications and consequences of the nonchalant position you hold in a wide set of areas.

[Harbal]

I suggest you might be overthinking this. Although the biological function of sexual congress is for the purpose of procreation, that is certainly not usually the intention of those performing it; in fact, it is more often considered an unfortunate consequence that needs to be guarded against. Normal people have sex drive, and attempts to suppress it for some supposed reasons of morality is just plain stupid, not to mention very unhealthy for those being suppressed.

Still, it would be wrong to dismiss your concerns without first trying to understand them. So, would you like to explain in what way is uncontrolled, or misdirected, sexuality destructive in a man’s body? And how does it "carry over into the political body", whatever that means?

Once again, reading your question, and noticing that you are a representative of a man who now exists entirely outside of those categories of concern, understanding and value that had been fundamental to our cultural understanding and social ethics, my first reaction is that of frustrated fatigue. Along with that is the realization that divisions in our culture have progressed to the point that people -- obviously I can refer to you and I -- do not any longer operate from the same cultural foundation. And because this is so, a *conversation* -- an exchange of ideas based on shared values -- is impossible. The function of the conversation is only to cement the fact that agreement is not possible and that there is no mutual understanding.

It is only because of our lack of shared values that we are having this exchange of ideas; there would be no point to it if we shared the same values. I'm not really interested in exchanging ideas about values; what concerns me is the question of why you cannot hold your values -which I in no way begrudge you- without trying to demolish mine?

What entitles you to react to my questions with "frustrated fatigue"? You seem to have taken on the role of one who is responsible for the education of some wayward child who simply refuses to be taught. Well that is most certainly not the situation here, so please pack it in.

In order to be able to speak of man in terms of levels -- higher levels and lower levels -- one necessarily must have a metaphysical interpretation. What does *higher* mean? And what then, in contrast, is *the lower*? If I am to speak of these things, and to define values, there is no way that I will not involve myself in categories of value that are rooted in philosophical and also religious schools of thought.

Fine, so live your life in accordance with that, and allow others to choose their own "schools of thought".

All you would have to do to verify this is to refer to how the notion of *love* is expressed and understood. If love represents a higher principle, and if into love we infuse so much about higher principles, then it is not hard to see that there is a sound reason why sexual love has been in our culture linked to marriage commitment and to the social purposes of having a family and raising children. I could mention a *matrix of values* that surround these notions but that too would be seen by you as just more waffle.

Yes, this is waffle. Your comments on love are meaningless.

Let me amend your statement:
Although the biological function of preparing food and eating is for the purpose of nourishment and sustenance, that is certainly not usually the intention of those who eat.
In my view what you seem to have done, and what as a carrier of social or philosophical values you have done, is non-different from what has occurred in the Sexual Revolution. You illustrate it. In you it is recognized as an *outcome*. Sex is just a a function. Just like anything else. Eating a sandwich. Watching TV. Going for a walk. Defecating. I exaggerate to some degree but the point holds. And because sex and sexuality are completely separated not only from procreation but from ethics and a larger existential philosophy, the sexual act is non-different from any other act. It has no particular or special meaning.

I haven't really said much about sex at all, but from what little I have said, you are able to accurately infer all that? Had you asked me to explain my views on any particular aspect of sexuality, and sexual conduct within a social context, I would have tried to do so with complete honesty, but it obviously suits your purpose better to just make something up.

If I have sex in (let's say) a marriage that is understood to be sacramental (meaning in some way part of service to higher principles, to divinity, etc.),

Forgive me, Alexis, but that is utter claptrap. Yes, sex between two people with a strong emotional bond is a world apart from a casual one-night-stand. It can be a very intense emotional experience, but it is an experience solely shared by the participants, and the significance of the act lies within their relationship to one another. If you can only justify your sexual activity to yourself by thinking in terms of its being sacramental, serving a higher principle, and directed towards divinity, you are quite psychologically screwed up.

and if that sexual act has been assigned a special value, then I will as a result be able to define expressions that are perversions of that.

But why would you do that; why would you look at it in that way?

Sex with someone you love deeply is a different experience to sex without much emotional connection, but to consider one divine and the other a perversion seems arbitrary and pointless to me.

Turning back to the idea that man is a being who has *levels* -- as you know the crude imagery is that of the higher mind and higher aspirations as being divine or angelical, and the lower impulses being worldly, mundane, and also comparatively as on a lower (inferior) plane --

I can't but help see man as occupying various levels, but I think of those levels as earth bound, with not an angel anywhere to be seen.

I think you can conceptually understand what is meant by reference to libido dominandi.

I did look the term up, and I have no idea why you mentioned it, or what it has to do with any of this. I think you are more interested in demonstrating how well read you are than in actually communicating with people.

If a man is given over to lower functions (lust, appetite, addiction) the higher functions suffer. This is something that even Freud understood. That sexual energy is transmuted and given a higher type of expression. If an entire culture (and here I will speak in generalisms) is given over to lust, appetite and addiction, and if these run rampant in culture, it is not hard to see that the "social body" will show signs of being sick, but also that there are many sorts of consequence that result from this.

People are no different now to how they always were, except we are no longer as secretive about our sexual activities.

If an entire culture (and here I will speak in generalisms) is given over to lust, appetite and addiction, and if these run rampant in culture, it is not hard to see that the "social body" will show signs of being sick, but also that there are many sorts of consequence that result from this.

That seems designed to be emotive, but meaningless. As usual, the words spill out of you, but don't actually say anything.

Normal people have sex drive, and attempts to suppress it for some supposed reasons of morality is just plain stupid, not to mention very unhealthy for those being suppressed.

You have encapsulated here an attitude that was established in the post-Sixties I think. It is a philosophical position, in its way. You have reduced the values and concepts I have defined here (only by allusion), and which had been extremely important to our culture (and civilization) to *some supposed reasons of morality*. That is, in fact, where you are located. Your value-system has become an active non-value system. It has more to do with the attempt to undermine values than it does to establish them.

No, it has more to do with choosing my own values, rather than letting the likes of you impose theirs on me.

[promethean75]

"I've read numerous accounts of a man's porn addiction ruining his marriage."

Any marriage that is ruined becuz hubby's watching porn is already ruined. If such a superficial thing as watching two people fuckin on tape is able to destroy a marriage, that marriage wasn't any good anyway.

Really people got some serious problems with pornography becuz they're over-analysing it. It's all so simple. Viewing a dramatic enactment of sexual behavior in a video provides sensory stimulation which is analogous to real sexual contact. U watch the chick getting f*cked and pretend you're the dude.

U can trick your brain by using your hand in a way that mimics a vagina while you're watching homegirl in the video. This we call male masturbation.

As u can see, there's some pretty sinister shit going on here. The kinda shit that should ruin marriages even.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm not really interested in exchanging ideas about values; what concerns me is the question of why you cannot hold your values -- which I in no way begrudge you -- without trying to demolish mine?

Here I think you are getting to the core of the issue. I will offer a scenario for you to examine. Perhaps the illustration will make sense.

Today, in America in any case, there is a great deal of parental concern about the public education system offering materials to children on topic that these parents consider morally wrong. They might be of the opinion that out there, in society, people can do what they wish, but they adamantly and stridently object to teachers, educators or anyone at all with a position of influence to be able to (in their view) contaminate their children's minds.

Let us suppose, for the sake of this argument, that you Harbal hold to the value that all sexual expression is licit. That there is nothing wrong, and also notable *good*, in allowing children to be exposed by state education systems to, say, pornography, bestiality, homosexuality, gender fluidity, cross-dressing, transvestitism and gender re-assignment.

Now, another parent comes along and says *I absolutely forbid you to present these things as normalized possibilities to my child*.

According to you, were that parent to do so and make it clear to you where they stand, and if they advocated for the imposition of their values, they would be *demolishing your values*. You assert that your value-structure is equal and the same as any other. And they respond -- much as I respond because I share their values and far less yours (insofar as I understand yours) -- by saying that no, your values are not on the same plane. That your values are (choose the wording) bad, wrong, destructive, unethical, immoral, and also sinful. They will naturally, as I do, try to flesh out for you in rational terms why they have this view, but you (I gather( will simply say "No, my values are equal to yours. You can make no case that yours are superior to mine".

To say "I'm not really interested in exchanging ideas about values" is to my ears absurd. Because the entire conversation revolves around the issue of values and how these are defined. The way to understand these issues is to understand them within a context of cultural war (the so-called Culture Wars).