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Remember "creeping Sharia Law" that far-right hysterics were warning about 10-15 years ago? Of course it was always ridiculous, but now something pretty amusing has happened.
‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags
What stood out to me was the support of right-wing activists from nearby towns. So this isn't just a moslem issue, even white Republicans are joined up. Here in Europe, populists like Geert Wilders were often warning about how too many moslem immigrants would threaten liberal values but they've been supplanted by a newer generation of populists that appear to increasingly take a page out of America's right-wing playbook by uniting with moslems against the LGBT crowd.
For liberals it also creates a bizarre spectacle. They've been obsessed with white Christian "fascists" and often turned a blind eye towards immigrants. Many of these immigrants rarely had much in common with them on social issues. They just voted left because of economic interests and the fact that the white left is more likely to let their entire family back home settle in the West.
Another ironic twist is that the supposed "Great Replacement myth" is largely what facilitated this change. Moslems are now a clear supermajority in the city and the change happened relatively quickly. Liberals were demographically replaced by the people they brought in and now feel like they've been hosed. Can't feel much sympathy for those who use immigration as a political weapon against their domestic political enemies.
They actually didn't "ban Pride flags"; they banned flags of any race, religion, sexual orientation or political affiliation being flown on government property. If anything, the conservative Muslims of Hamtramck are taking a stand for classical liberalism by only allowing the stars-and-stripes on government buildings (and presumably the flags of the city and state). I don't think this would have been controversial even 10 years, and certainly not 20 years ago. The only totalizing religion at work here is homosexuality - the old refrain of "but how does it affect you?" rings very hollow when the faithful are demanding public displays of obeisance.
If we went back to that everywhere, I'd accept it. No religion flags, no Pride flags, no "this is International Cat Grooming Day" flags, just the national flag on government buildings and you can fly whatever damn flag you like from your own house. Yeah, even the Confederate flag, go for it. Maybe the Nazi version of the swastika would be pushing it, keep that one indoors boys.
The 'not compulsory only it is' Rainbow Flags everywhere for June annoys me mainly because nobody else would get the same treatment. Though I am starting to laugh at the iterations of Progress Pride etc. because each new version is more crowded and uglier than the last one. I have no idea where they're going to shove the Furry Pride emblems on the design when we get to that point.
Good God, that's ugly. What happened to all that gloating that being gay/queer was so superior to boring old vanilla cishets, because queerness was fashion and glamour and creativity and art?
It's like taking drugs - sure, some drugs can inspire creative breakthroughs, if you also do a lot of creative work. But if all you do is taking drugs and looking for drugs and talk about which drugs to take - there would be no creativity coming out there. I think you need a solid foundation and maybe a little crazy to make it not boring. But if you have 100% crazy and none of the foundation - then it's just chaos.
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And Eugene Volokh seems to think it applies only to flags flown on city flagpoles rather than a ban on people carrying the flag on city streets, in parks, etc (such a ban would almost certainly be unconstitutional).
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Or they are just politically savvy enough to know that this is what they can get away with.
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See, I have to wonder about this kind of thing. What other flag could they possibly have in mind that they wanted banned? The Nazi flag? Unlikely to be flown there. The Gadsen flag? Probably not very salient politically to Muslims.
I won't deny the possibility that this really is some "Pride is not for the government to approve or disapprove via flags" principle, but I think this ban has a good chance of having been crafted specifically with the intention to ban the Pride flag from being flown. I legitimately cannot think of another flag which many Americans know the meaning of on sight.
It recontextualizes the event. "Muslims ban Pride flag from their city" is a tailor-made headline for those who are anti-LGBT and find it acceptable to support Muslims when, in many cases, they would have openly reviled the religion only few years ago. "Muslims ban all flags except US flag from being displayed on government buildings" gets far less traction.
Moreover, suppose other cities across the US start doing this - are we going to be talking about the wave of liberalism sweeping rural conservative towns, or are we going to talk about bigots emulating other bigots?
Why is this in any way good? I sincerely hope that people here, even if they are totally anti-LGBT, would correct the record if the more accurate interpretation is that this is an anti-Pride action. I expect I'll be disappointed, unfortunately.
I think that if people here were to set aside their partisan politics, they would agree with me that it is bigotry to hate someone for that which they cannot control. The defenses of anti-LGBT sentiment I see here fall into 2 categories of justification, though I'm sure I've missed at least one:
There is a controllable element to being LGBT i.e schools and media are encouraging kids to identify as gay.
Pride and progressive activism are so tightly wrapped together that when someone waves the latest Pride flag, they're signaling their support of many non-related beliefs as well (more cynically, each Pride flag is being virtually planted to demonstrate areas of control)
In other words, no one is out here saying that progressive orthodoxy on the inherent nature of being LGBT+ is correct, but it is still okay to hate those people.
There is a more interesting argument to be had about the etiology of being not-straight or not-gender-conforming, but only because the people interested in discussing it tend to be less interested in describing the left as a Cordyceps.
The latter, and I'm sorry for implying you thought it was good. It seemed to me that you were trying to defend it as okay. Like, yeah, I get that it's inevitable, but it should not be tolerated here.
I'm not certain that it is. The odds of another flag being flown on government buildings is slim. I suspect the Muslims of the city are not as upset if they see a flag for Ukraine. They might get more offended by a BLM flag, but I don't know.
Banning lots of things that won't happen anyways strikes me as irrelevant to any kind of redemption of the law itself.
What are you referring to?
I'm not certain the stance is exactly the same. My understanding of the religious conservative standpoint is that they think it's a test by God, whereas progressives are overwhelming secular in originating their arguments. But I grasp your point.
It was on the old subreddit once, brought up by naraburns, I believe.
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Confederate, Ukrainian, BLM.
I’d say also China, UK, Canada as far as national flags go. Possibly Mexico.
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Okay, that's fair. I think my overall point stands, however - they're not particularly worried about those flags.
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Not only is it public obedience, but it’s public obedience that is inherently interesting for children, as they have a natural interest in colorful things and unique identity marks that give social reinforcement. It is certainly making some percentage points of the children gay, the only question is what percent.
To what degree it is currently de rigueur to accept as self-evident that homosexuality is innate is unclear to me, but if we believe Lady Gaga (and why wouldn't we?) it is. On the other side we have voices suggesting gayness, like sexual paraphilia (and I sometimes wonder if this term is even used any more or is seen as 'intolerant,') is a product of formative experiences in childhood (I've read for example Camille Paglia making this claim.) I am so far not compelled by the arguments of either side, particularly as often neither side makes arguments beyond that that their conclusions are obvious and to question them is at best silly (see the wry cartoons of a person beibg asked "When did you realize you were straight?") and at worst evidence of some serious character flaw/maliciousness in the questioner.
In my thinking here both views are now hopelessly mired (at least in the US) in politics, and while I am not as dogmatic as some in insisiting that social science is all garbage, I also have eyes to see, and yes, much of it (and much of psychology) to me seems to intellectually bear rotten fruit.
Having thumbed all that out, I think personally that even if we are to passively accept that a fetish might indeed be born of and from childhood circumstances, one would have to assume such circumstances were at least in some may imaginatively sensual--insert any evocative image from your own childhood as illustration. Even then, though, we are assuming, playing with self-report and reconstruction of motive, without the kind of empirical verification one might demand in other circumstances. But let'w say we accept it anyway. It still seems a jump, as ＠Gdanning suggests, that pride flags and a general ethos of gayness will produce spontaneously in boys a desire to fellate members of their peeergroup. It might make these same boys less traditionally masculine, sure (though I have my doubts how much influence Miss Bardwell pinning Pride flags on bulletin boards or organizing Pride summits or whatever will have on the realities of the locker room). It might make them more accepting of gayness as a norm, which is arguably very much a good thing.
There seems, in your post, to be a kind of knee-jerk reaction happening--I mean my knee jerks as much as the next person and it's true I am not really exposed to this kind of Pridemania where I am. But suggesting that it all is going to cause an uptick in gayness I believe requires a bit more rigor than you seem to be applying.
Ancient Greek and Rome had perhaps 90% of men engaging in sex with young men. This seems high to me, but I must accept that there have been substantial genetic changes in humanity since that time or 90% of men would engage in homosexual acts if society told them it was normal.
There were extensive incursions of Germanic tribes that did not routinely engage in homosexual sodomy, but gene analysis does not support enough of a change to suggest that the behavioral difference is genetic. At least, that is my understanding.
Ovid was out of step with Roman society, and Juvenal, Martial, Stabo, and Lucian, in suggesting that sex with women was superior. It seems that most Roman men, perhaps almost all, preferred to have sex with teen boys rather than women.
It seems that Roman homosexuality came from Greek influence in the second century BC. I think this strongly suggests that homosexuality can be culturally nurtured. I wonder what the upper limit it. In Ancient Rome and Greece it seemed remarkably high. I wonder if there is a more modern society where more than 50% of men engage in gay sex? Perhaps Arab societies?
I find this weird, but I suppose it is just as strange as realizing that I would be a pious Muslim or enjoy eating fermented herring should I have been born in different circumstances.
X
More specifically, keeping an adolescent femboy slave was a high status aristocratic thing, but the Roman elite seemed to think it a little strange to actually prefer screwing him over women. The emperor Hadrian, among others, faced mockery for actually preferring his young male lover.
Now in Greece things are more complicated, but the broader picture is still one where this was an elite pursuit- specifically a standard elite induction ritual was to enter into a relationship with an older man as a teen. This is documented from both Athens and Sparta, and the elite male practitioners generally deny that the purpose was sexual gratification and claim that penetrative sex with them was taboo- although they engage in a suspiciously large amount of aesthetic appreciation for nude adolescent males. Athens is better documented than Sparta(which in turn is better documented than other city states), and denial of having engaged in sexual acts with one’s mentor as a youth happens with a frequency there that suggests it happened but wasn’t universal.
Additionally, the gender ratios of infanticide victims outside of ancient brothels skews very male(whereas infanticide in the ancient world more generally skewed female due to preference for sons), indicating that the brothel visiting public(which would have been a very large percentage of the population; visiting brothels was the standard unmarried male sexual behavior and not stigmatized) preferred women, not adolescent boys.
In conclusion, the ancient femboy thing looks and probably was an elite signaling game and not rooted in widespread homosexual inclinations. Instead the Greek and Roman elite mostly had sex with women while showing their urbanity and sophistication by talking about wanting to sleep with teenaged boys, who in turn mostly had sex with female prostitutes and not adult men.
It seems that it was common in the top 10% of society. That is a lot of people. If the top 10% of society can be convinced to engage in gay sex then I think we are all rather malleable in this regard.
This is not the case, according to Wikipedia. In fact, the opposite is true, and it was weird to prefer women.
Perhaps poets were more gay than other people?
If most people in the elite are willing to have sex with boys, then that is surprising and suggests that modern-day signaling could achieve as much.
How do we have accurate records of infanticide? That seems a rather weird place to start when we have lots of literature on the practice of concubines. Sources agree that female prostitution was more common. Perhaps this was because there were fewer other jobs for women. Perhaps the common man was less easily swayed. Who knows.
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What’s the argument here? That prostitutes disproportionately killed their male children because they knew that at least the girls could grow up to become prostitutes? Seems spurious to me.
That the owners of prostitutes disproportionately killed the male children of their enslaved workers because they expected to put the female children to work in just over a decade, but anticipated lower demand for males
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This brings up the question of whether the homosexual acts of any given man make that man 'gay' or are just men sticking it in holes, in particular if he is having sexy times with his wife/wives/concubines in addition to his catamite or whoever. One of Paglia's points is that the decadence signalled by a societal preoccupation with non-heterosexual sex (in particular transgenderism) heralds that same society's imminent collapse. All very interesting but Paglia, brilliant as she is in my mind, is still outside her wheelhouse on such matters. Still this speaks to your point about an upper limit.
Perhaps I am guilty of having a missing mood, or other people are, but my understanding is that most men in Western society would not enjoy having anal sex with a teen boy. I think gay men are sometimes confused by this, and presume that every one would actually enjoy that, but just have hangups that make them feel guilty about doing it.
I think (some) gay men could better understand this if they compared it to having sex with mature women. I know lots of gay men who would shudder at the thought of that, but might be able to screw a sufficiently thin young girl. Some straight men are not lying about not being turned on, and actually being turned off, by male bodies. That said, the Roman numbers might suggest that this group of straight men is a very small sexual minority.
If you can afford a sex slave, and choose a male one, you might just be a little gay.
Oh I agree. But recall that scene in Portnoy's Complaint about thr kid so horny (for lack of a better term) that he gratified himself with the raw liver he had been sent to collect for the dinner. And I would suggest innumerable couch cushions, discarded socks, and, to use the vulgar term, pocket pussies (I will spare you the oddly mainstream acceptance these have in Japan...and you are free to not click that link) to say nothing of unsuspecting sheep and calves in more farming cultures could all, had they but a voice to cry out with, attest to the lack of self-discipline when it comes to the male sex drive. We won't even discuss smaller, more delicate-looking incarcerated males.
Don't get me wrong. I have never, in memory, had a gay inclination. But it's a crazy world.
I suspect part of homosexual behaviour among men are simply power plays - speaking to your oblique prison rape reference. Is that necessarily an urge born of lust for someone's body... or the desire to degrade them in a show of social domination? The same argument could conceivably be made in terms of the "mentor-youth" relationships in the ancient world. Perhaps it was a way for older men to assert dominance over younger and unruly pupils, or for eager pupils to submit in totality to their masters. Disentangling sex from psychology isn't always straightforward.
Nevertheless, we have more permissive attitudes than ever towards homosexuals in the West and it doesn't appear that most men find it gratifying, given how the overwhelming majority still pursue and bed women. This makes me question claims that homosexuality was widespread in ancient Greece and Rome. Perhaps homosexuals have a tendency to wildly inflate the amount of men who have such inclinations, whether in the past or in the contemporary age.
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So, you think displaying a rainbow flag causes some pct of boys to grow up to get an erection when seeing a naked guy, and to fail to get an erection when seeing a naked woman?
If that’s what it’s going to take in order to finally introduce the Vote Of No Confidence into the American political tradition, then by God, the young hetero men of this country are just going to have to grin and bear it. Show me as many naked guys as you must if it means we can get this new election started early.
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I’m positive that in the formative years where their sexualities and preferences and philias develop (remember it’s not unusual for people to have fetishes they trace to childhood), that these things are causing some percentage of boys to become gay:
Having special days where you show only the positive role models of gays, no evil members, and no positive straight members, which artificially increases gay positive valence
Having a colorful flag for gays and no colors and no flag for straight people. For children, color = objectively better. Color is an objective “attractive marker”
Giving special esteem, attention, and “interesting points” to gays
I note that this is very different from your original claim, which was specifically about the rainbow flag. But regardless, the things you list are going to change what causes them to become sexually aroused, and what doesn't? That seems quite unlikely.
I’m expanding on my comment because you asked a question, and in any case the rainbow flag is a symbol of the whole LGBT enterprise. The question is whether childhood experiences and culture can influence sexuality. There’s evidence that it does:
gays are more likely to have been molested in childhood
boys like the bachi bazi culture in Afghanistan, who are picked regardless of orientation in childhood, grow up to be gay: According to Khan et al. (2009, p. 24), bacha bereesh appear to predominately “grow up to follow a sexually active pattern as receptive males, self-identifying with their femininity and receptive role” as a “third gender” within a trinary gender system of man/woman/non-man
it’s common knowledge that childhood experiences can result in lifelong philias, whether this be the appearance of a mate or a sexual activity
So, IMO, it is established that childhood sexual experiences mold adult orientation. The remaining question is whether reinforcement of sexuality in childhood molds adult orientation. This needs to be studied, but I am positive that it does to some degree, because that makes sense based on what we know about reinforcement.
Right. You made a comment specifically about the flag, and I asked a comment about the flag, but you chose to respond about something else.
There is a huge difference between having sexual experiences during childhood, or even having sexuality being reinforced, and seeing displays of gay pride flags.
Five years ago, before this topic was as heavily discussed in the culture, I took my then-14yo daughter to a concert. Each of the two opening acts and the main act did a "gay" song that involved the waving of rainbow flags, and the 25,000 14 year olds in the arena went apeshit each time. The energy in that place during the rainbow parades was off the chart.
Kids are very susceptible to fads (I myself wore a "Frankie Say Relax" t-shirt in junior high having no idea of its connotations...) and peer pressure. Whether or not the Rainbow flag actually turns kids gay is separate from the idea that this kind of mass celebration reinforces ideas of what is "good," and there probably isn't a wide distance between a kid feeling encouraged to try gay over their innate disgust tendencies, and then forming intimate bonds following experimental gay contact, especially if it's a first sexual experience. If you close your eyes and try real hard to think about how rainbow flags make you special, a mouth is just a mouth, as David Rabe wrote. And maybe there's no looking back after that point.
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No, see:
Re:
But therein lies the rub. It’s not a huge difference at all. It’s a little difference. The difference between being molested by a gay man physically, and being put through a gauntlet of pro-homosexuality propaganda, is not actually different from the standpoint of “how reinforcement works psychologically”. If I watch Alizee’s performance of J’en ai marre as a boy I may become hopelessly infatuated with dancing French brunettes, for no other reason than an association was placed in my mind. This happens all the time: associations predicated on reinforcement.
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It's pretty obviously true, there's a marginal bisexual boy who if market forces make being gay difficult might just marry a woman and never really think about men that hard; who finds out it's an opportunity be can take and sexual market forces lead him to be mainly gay.
The utilitarian question being, is that percentage more or less than the marginal really really gay guy who marries a woman and they're both miserable due to lack of awareness of alternatives.
Aren’t there something like 2x as many self reported bisexuals as exclusive homosexuals even among those who engage in same sex behavior?
I have no idea, and our general understanding of bisexuality strikes me as primarily misunderstanding sexual market forces.
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But that is a claim about behavior. The original claim was about sexual arousal. in your hypothetical, the bisexual boy is bisexual before being exposed to the flag.
I don't think they can entirely be separated. The brain is the largest sex organ. Disgust reactions to many things are taught, as are arousal reactions, and can vary completely based on culture.
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I don't think it's the flags, small kids aren't going to know what that is all about. It's the teachers pushing it in school and yes I do mean pushing it. Like this loser.
That seems like a very odd example of anyone pushing anything. It is 15 seconds long, and in it's entirety the guy says, "In school I was bullied for being gay, even by my teachers. So I became a teacher. Guess who my favorite students are [rainbow flag]." I am pretty good at steelmanning, but I am struggling to understand how someone would consider that pushing homosexuality, nor why anyone would describe him as a "loser."
"Once upon a time, I was discriminated against. I now practice that discrimination against others and am proud to be doing so."
Rejoicing in intentionally being part of the problem rather than part of the solution leads me to believe that person is a substandard human being. It's not much more complex than that.
Where does he say he is discriminating against others?
I don't discriminate against black students, it's just that the white ones are my favorite!
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To steelman his point, I'd say it would be a lot more like identifying as 'queer', or some other nebulous label that doesn't actually equate to a change in sexuality.
I think perhaps that is stretching steelmanning a bit far. That is not usually what people mean by "becoming gay." Especially those who worry about kids "becoming gay."
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