Dogs and Cats Living Together
You just know that you are in for a wonderful piece of journalism when the first two paragraphs contain the witty little bon mot:
London is so tolerant it could be twinned with Sodom – or alternatively with our neighbourhood French villages called Orgy and Anus (I’m not joking, they are both next door to us).
So begins this article for the Daily Mail by Alexander Boot.
You won’t find it on the Daily Mail website though. It was taken down earlier today, apparently after a campaign against it.
The backstory is this. The charity Stonewall recently had some adverts on London buses saying “Some people are gay. Get over it!”. A Christian group claiming they could cure homosexuals then tried to put up adverts saying: “”Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!”. This was blocked by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.*
Anyway, Mr Boot continues:
True to his word, the good mayor found nothing wrong with the blatant propaganda of homosexuality launched earlier by Stonewall, the charity devoted to promoting homosexual agendas, such as same-sex marriage. The thrust of their campaign was the probably correct message that homosexuality is innate and therefore irreversible.
It’s hard to see how he could have put a worse spin on the Stonewall campaign. It is especially strange as Mr Boot accepts the factual basis of the campaign. Some people are gay, and Stonewall would like others to accept this, and stop making such a big deal - apparently a deeply suspicious message.
On the other hand, the advert claiming to be able to help you “get over” gayness is filled with good intentions and helpful information. I’m sure the Royal College of Psychiatrists have no idea what they are talking about when they say:
There is no sound scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Furthermore, so-called treatments of homosexuality create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish.
Boris Johnson said: “It is clearly offensive to suggest that being gay is an illness that someone recovers from and I am not prepared to have that suggestion driven around London on our buses”
Mr Boot does not agree with this: “[A]nyone who actually read the ad would know it says nothing of the sort. Any reasonably educated person will be aware that homosexuality isn’t a disease. It is, however, an aberration.”
I would argue, to start with, that having an ad saying “Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!” can certainly be read as saying that homosexuality is some kind of disease, or is at least comparable with one.
More importantly though, there is the suggestion that homosexuality is an aberration. But wait! Boot attempts to explain himself: ” I hasten to add that I use the word ‘aberration’ strictly in its dictionary definition: ‘a departure from what is normal or desirable’”. So homosexuality isn’t normal and/or desirable.
Same-sex behaviour has been around for millennia. I don’t think I even need to provide sources. Given that we can expect people to be homosexual or bisexual, I think we can say that non-heterosexuality is perfectly normal human behaviour.
As for whether it is desirable…them’s fightin’ words.
Boot says: “Since only about one percent of us are that way inclined, homosexuality is obviously a departure from the norm”
One percent? Where on Earth did that statistic come from? Results in 2010 said that about 1% of the population were gay, though there may have been some issues with it. A government estimate in 2005 suggested it was more like 6%. I think it is safe to say that no-one knows for sure how many homosexual/bisexual people there are. However, 1% certainly seems to be a low estimate.
Then Boot writes an old argument to prove undesirability. If everyone was gay, the human race would die out. This, as usual, means absolutely nothing. If every straight person decided not to have children the human race would die out. Is not having children aberrant?
Next we have this problematic paragraph:
It may well be true that a propensity for homosexual, which is to say aberrant, behaviour is innate. And it’s indisputable that people ought not to be reproached, much less punished, for the way they are born. They can however be legitimately asked not to act on their aberrant tendencies. A kleptomaniac only becomes reproachable when he actually steals. A man who’s violent by nature is on safe grounds until he commits a violent act. We aren’t responsible for where we begin in life. But we are responsible for where we finish.
This certainly seems to suggest that Boot considers homosexuality to be morally wrong. Which is not what aberrant means. It is, of course, legal for Boot to consider homosexuality to be wrong; I would merely ask that he consult a dictionary and his own definitions before doing so.
The campaign that offended the Mayor enunciates the traditional Christian attitude to homosexuality. Rather than regarding homosexuality as a disease from which one could be cured, Christianity regards it as a sin from which one should abstain. It’s only in this sense that a homosexual can ‘get over it’.
That is not the traditional Christian attitude to homosexuality. I’m pretty sure the traditional attitude involved a lot more fire and brimstone.
I do not want to get sidetracked into a religious argument, but even if Christianity regards homosexuality as morally wrong, I would like to see some secular arguments as to why having gay sex is bad. I would also like to see some scientific evidence that homosexuals can “get over it”.
Abstaining from sex for moral reasons is tantamount to heroism, and most people can’t be expected to be heroes. That’s why I don’t think homosexuality should be banned, or homosexuals in any way abused.
This apparently does not extend to innocent remarks like:
London is so tolerant it could be twinned with Sodom – or alternatively with our neighbourhood French villages called Orgy and Anus (I’m not joking, they are both next door to us).
Boot’s argument would be a lot more convincing if he seemed to believe it himself.
He continues:
But Christianity would be remiss in its mission if it didn’t call on them to adhere to the absolute moral standards stipulated by the founding religion of our civilisation.
Yes, I agree. Christianity only needs to prove the existence of its absolute moral standards and it can make as many homophobic attacks as it wants.
And now for something completely different:
Perhaps I shouldn’t mock, but even in the context of the article this is a complete non-sequitur.
That propaganda of homosexuality can be used in this capacity is beyond question. Witness the fact that the first European country that liberalised homosexuality was Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1934 – neither the time nor the place known for an all-consuming love of Western civilisation. In parallel, the Bolsheviks, who were almost as tolerant as Mayor Johnson, abolished marriage, and Lenin’s mistress Inessa Armand likened sex to drinking a glass of water. The Bolsheviks were aware of the destructive potential of sexual licentiousness in all its forms, and they were out to destroy.
But Stalin then criminalised homosexuality. Does that make him the good guy? Also, I’m pretty sure that Ancient Greece, in Europe, was relatively liberal when it came to gay sex.
This is just pure alarmism. If anything it is an adaptation of Reductio ad Hitlerum. For example, “Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore vegetarianism is wrong”.
Boris Johnson doesn’t want to destroy. He just wants to be re-elected – as a Conservative (!) candidate. To establish his conservative credentials, he is flaunting his moral relativism, what he calls intolerance of intolerance. In doing so he denies the right of free speech to a constructive campaign asking homosexuals to reform and suggesting it’s possible – while affording this freedom to a campaign that’s utterly deterministic and destructive, in effect if not in intent.
This is just silly. I must admit that I am unsure over whether the advert itself was actually offensive, at the the very least there is no evidence for the claims they are making. I do not think it is constructive. Also, I’m not sure if intolerance of intolerance is moral relativism.
For freedom of speech to mean anything at all, it ought to cover the freedom to say things we don’t like. After all, allowing only those statements that please us involves no hardship at all.
I agree with this. I do think people should have the right to say things that others may not want to hear.
However, the Christian charity, CORE, was trying to advertise a service. There is no evidence that said service actually works. I’m pretty sure they are not allowed to do that. And in advertising this service they certainly seem to suggest that there is something wrong, either in morals or health, with a large number of people. They do not have evidence for this either. I am fairly satisfied that these adverts should not have been allowed to run.
Judging by his action, Boris Johnson is rather vague on our constitutional liberties, Western moral and intellectual tradition, and the boundaries of his remit as a politician.
Judging by this article, Alexander Boot is rather vague on reality.
His response to what the ads actually say also betokens a need for a remedial reading class. An ideal future candidate for Prime Minister, I dare say.
Oh meow.
I would not mind so much if Boot made a clear and sober argument about why he thinks homosexuality is wrong, but instead he has filled his article with alarmist hysteria and snide homophobia. It is a terrible article, seeming to betray a hateful mind. I think the Daily Mail was right to take it down. If only it wasn’t fairly representative of the rest of that newspaper.
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*I will not be commenting on the upcoming London elections. As I do not live in or near London I find myself utterly indifferent to them. Apart from when the media conspire to tell me about them at every opportunity. Rant over.
