Monday, August 22, 2011

Monday morning

Abortion is a topic I generally avoid. I have had very few discussions about it which did not immediately degenerate into yelling. Mostly I am agin' it but absolutely? Not sure. Anyway, I ran across an article today about women pregnant with twins who decide, for reasons of lifestyle convenience or some other non-dire reason, to kill off one of the babies. The chosen one is injected with potassium and the body left to shrivel up next to its brother or sister til delivery...Creepy and queasy are the first words that come to mind. And I am tempted to say, "evil."

How would you feel knowing that mommy killed off your twin in the womb and that you grew into your body with its cadaver next to you for nine months? And wondered why it was that you were the one who got to survive? Gender? Luck of the draw?

Reminds me of a discussion about suicide that we used to have in AIDS work in the old days. Mostly everyone was OK with it as a last resort. But as a last resort. I remember one counselor being very upset with a PWA --person with AIDS-- because he wanted to take his life well before he got sick. I asked him if he thought a person had a right to end their life when they were suffering and if so, why could they not end it to avoid all that suffering? Turns out there were a set of unspoken assumptions in the "Yes." It was OK to kill yourself once you had suffered enough; but to take leave earlier was...what? Disloyal to the group? Cowardly?

Abortion is similar in some ways. "A woman has the right to control of her own body" is all well and good until feminists learn that Sikhs or Chinese or Hindus are aborting only female foetuses because they value sons so highly...Then somehow it's wrong because its sexist...

Moral philosophy and moral theology never appealed to me. These discussions depress me.

Over at PrayTell, they are huffing and puffing because a cathedral church in the West has banned female altar servers, in order to encourage boys to become priests.

It reminds me of how little I believe in "equality". Of almost any kind. It is one of the Great Illusions. Once the word enters a discussion, it casts its moral spell and people fall into an impenetrable cognitive and rhetorical trance. "But don't you believe that men and women are equal!?" Actually, no, I don't. And partly, but only partly, because in our liberal discourse, this really means that men and women are interchangeable... but for the fact that women are, of course, better and special, bringing unique and hitherto discarded virtues and gifts to the oppressive patriarchal wasteland...

When I speak of The Seven Pillars or Seven Spokes of Liberalism, --multiculturalism, feminism, redistributionism, then pacifism, secularism, transnationalism, and environmentalism --I don't mention LGBT ideology. That's because I see it as a subset of feminism.

Last week I chanced across an article in my family's local Catholic paper, where an earnest young priest explained how Catholic homosexuals basically need to live a celibate life. And later that day I stumbled onto yet another episode of The A-List. From the right and the left, two equally unappealing soul-destroying agendas.

I understand the Catholic position, intellectually. But the idea of accepting it as true of me is the equivalent of sucking all the air and light and joy out of life. If a man and women have sex outside marriage --assuming that it is friendly and consensual, etc.-- their big mistake, in Catholic terms, is bad timing. You take something meant for sacramental form and cheapen it by doing it outside its proper time. But for two men to have sex, even if there is love and friendship informing it, then it is an irredeemable mistake, something essentially counterfeit and empty, to be avoided in any form. There is no good timing involved.  Despite disclaimers of the difference between a person and a drive, I cannot see how this promotes anything less than self-loathing. And I don't mean "lack of self-esteem". I mean active loathing of oneself as fundamentally and deeply defective in a quite unique way.

Yet when I watch the degenerates paraded on LOGO TV, despite their out-and-proudness, it is precisely loathing that they seem to be acting out. Even given that this is soap opera TV and it is a fake "reality" show like Real Housewives, designed precisely to highlight the conflictual, etc. these are still almost universally contemptible "men". What makes them so revolting is not their sexual activity --which plays a very small part in the show-- but their dramatic yet heartless social relationships, their dignity-less minstrel show effeminacy and their empty interests, which embody every anti-gay stereotype you can think of. Despite their male bodies, they act like the worst kinds of females. There's hardly a man in sight.

Via media, anyone?

1 comment:

Tarquin said...

"How would you feel knowing that mommy killed off your twin in the womb and that you grew into your body with its cadaver next to you for nine months?"
This could be the starting point for a good horror movie.

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