57 Comments

1. Mike Silverman:

Derbyshire’s opinion of gay people is willfully ignorant and seems based on some kind of 1970s disco era Village People version of gay life. When people call Derbyshire a bigot (quite justifiably in my opinion) its not merely because he is against certain specific civil rights for gay people, it is because his opinion of gay people in general is based on inaccurate stereotypes and willful ignorance of reality.

Aug 28, 2006 - 12:48 pm 2. ForNow:

Derbyshire is a fuddy-duddy on a lot of issues. But I hold no brief for Andrew Sullivan. I don’t trust him for anything at all. I would distrust anything that he has to say on homosexual issues. I think that he’s lying about things about which he knows better.

What seems hypocritical about Andrew to me is that his homosexuality-norming agenda goes way beyond marriage. He’s an experienced male homosexual who wants openly homosexual male Scout Masters to be put in charge of males aged 11-18. For an experienced male homosexual to demand this on the sheer basis of anti-discrimination priniples rather than admitting some further motivation, is a proof of intellectual dishonesty profound and repugnant, indeed a dishonesty that’s not only intellectual.

For Andrew, even discussing with heterosexuals about homosexual marriage is, itself, a homosexual flirtation event, an “into the showers” event as he once entitled a special thread discussion of it which he held at his blog. A lot of sheltered people don’t grasp how much of this movement’s rhetoric is more or less f-talk in various guises. Only an idiot thinks you have to live in a convent or monastery in order to be sheltered.

Andrew Sullivan has said that the Boy Scouts ought to raise the bar and put openly homosexual Scout Masters in charge of the boys. He pretends ignorance and pretends that Boy Scouts aged 11-18 are, all of them, paedia, too young for most testosterone-charged gays. He always brought up a supposedly implied charge of pederasty against all homosexuals, when pederasty is not even the major issue (though even a bright instantanous line between pubescent and adolescent is not there).

Gee, if Sullivan doesn’t know what such talk is about, maybe he should read the novel Parents’ Day about a camp counselor’s homosexual affair with an adolescent boy, told from the counselor’s viewpoint by an approving Paul Goodman (poet, novelist, short-story writer, essayist, all-around man of letters, psychologist, co-founder of Gestalt Psychology.)

The Girl Scouts allow for testerone-charged heterosexual adult males to be put in charge of girls, but not unaccompanied by an adult woman, or so I’ve been told. This is the Girl Scouts’ choice, I don’t think it’s wise, but it’s their right and they don’t hide that they do it. Does anybody think that the Girl Scouts have a moral obligation, on account of job anti-discrimination principles, to put men in charge of adolescent women — on field trips etc.? Overnights in the woods? It’s amazing how few people have realized that this, which they would never demand, is a comparable situation.

But such is the very thing about which people get self-righteous in the case of homosexual males and boys aged 11-18.

I’ve known one leftist who in earlier years was seen by psychiatrists, three in a row tried to seduce her. She supports the Boy Scouts on this issue. She wasn’t sheltered.

Andrew Sullivan and other experienced homosexuals like him probably think that the Boy Scouts should be pressured into serving in effect as outreach to adolescent homosexuals. You think it’s just about job discrimination or even about “role models”?

What experienced homosexuals know is that there are a lot of adolescent homosexuals who go wild, as some of them themselves did, so they are well aware that adolescent homosexuals exist in significant numbers. But it is not Sullivan’s and others’ right to elbow their way into an established _in loco parentis_ situation which has been based on trust, elbow their way in especially under false pretenses; the whole effort is unethical.

Moreover, homosexual males are like heterosexual males in being given to wishful thinking about just who it is that is attracted to them. This effect should not be disregarded or minimized in any way. And does Sullivan really imagine that homosexuals don’t commonly embrace the recruiting of handsome young men? Why would they be against it, they feel it as going toward shared joy. Now put the homosexual Scoutmaster, especially the young adult one, with a bunch of healthy, athletic, exuberant boys who are turning out very well in the later adolescent years.

Wolfishness cries victim and is given the blessing of political correctness.

Aug 28, 2006 - 12:50 pm 3. David Thomson:

Andrew Sullivan talks out of both sides of his mouth. Marriage to him merely seems to be an agreement between two people to live together while both engage in recreational sex with other individuals. A secular society must be supportive towards couples who are raising children—and 99% of the time the couple ideally will be a man and a woman in a long term commitment. Gays raising children will most assuredly continue to be a statistical aberration. Nonetheless, we are obligated to cut as much slack as possible for the gay community.

Aug 28, 2006 - 1:32 pm 4. ForNow:

In this I neglected to mention what should be obvious but isn’t obvious, insofar as people neither hear of these things in normal situations nor use their imaginations logically.

“What experienced homosexuals know is that there are a lot of adolescent homosexuals who go wild….”

And they know, from personal experience about themselves or with others, that those adolescents don’t confine their affairs & trysts to those no older than themselves. Quite to the contrary, they join with men variously older, just as lusty heterosexual adolescent males would join oftener than they do with women in their 20s, some in their 30s, etc., if given the opportunity. So Sullivan and others like him perhaps think of those adolescent Boy Scouts as, some of them, having already “joined his community,” and others as “needing outreach & guidance” — on the sly, apparently, at the Scout Master’s discretion, based on the Scout Master’s judgment about who’s in the closet, etc., about whether all such are his special concern, etc. All at his discretion. Maybe he thinks, like Paul Goodman seemed to think, that sexual barriers and preferences are silly, suffocative, learned, etc. And do I really need to bring up the complexity of mixing sexuality with power issues? It’s already always difficult keeping predators out of an adults-in-charge-of-kids situation.

That’s it, I’m out of here for now, and will take a look back here tomorrow.

Aug 28, 2006 - 1:36 pm 5. Mgmax:

What bugs me about applying the term “bigot” to Derbyshire is that his views are, of course, entirely mainstream for people over a certain age (which isn’t even that old). It’s one thing to change minds over time, it’s another thing to change your own mind and then declare that ever having thought any other way is prejudice. Society is clearly on a path toward total tolerance of gays, and a good thing it is, but I am not convinced that we get there faster by getting on our high horses and announcing that everyone who is not right next to us is evil.

Aug 28, 2006 - 1:46 pm 6. rvail136:

Unfortunately, I do not agree, with many of the statements/comments made here…but neither am I a bigot either. I do not believe that homosexuals should EVER be permitted to marry. On the other hand I have no objection what so ever to laws being enacted permitting them to register in civil unions.

I do completely back Boy Scouts of America in thier refusal to permit homosexuals from leading Scout Troops. I saw first-hand what sort of wreckage they leave behind when as an adolescent, my scout troop in NW Fla was led by a “closet” homosexual. Several suicides resulted…all boys 11-14. That was more than 30 years ago. Placing an openly homosexual male in a scout troop is the moral equivalent of putting a small child in a candy store without supervision…

Aug 28, 2006 - 2:05 pm 7. mrbones:

rvail136, care to provide specifics?

[M]y scout troop in NW Fla was led by a “closet” homosexual. Several suicides resulted…all boys 11-14.

I think you’re full of shit.

Aug 28, 2006 - 2:21 pm 8. Terrye:

I do not agree with Derbyshire, but Andrew Sullivan is a flake.

Aug 28, 2006 - 2:32 pm 9. JohnAnnArbor:

Derbyshire may be a bigot, but he provided specific quotes to support his assertion that Sullivan focuses on the “here and now” instead of the future.

Aug 28, 2006 - 2:55 pm 10. Sissy Willis:

He needs to watch one or more of the various “La Cage aux Folles” iterations . . . One of the dearest, loveliest expressions of the best and worst of humanity ever was.

Aug 28, 2006 - 3:40 pm 11. ricpic:

I remember : I was an innocent twelve year old kid who liked to go walk around the reservoir near our home. One summer evening I was approached by a man who seemed nice. We talked. Then he suggested that we sit down on the grass. As we continued talking he put his hand on my thigh. It made me uncomfortable but being an innocent kid I kept on talking. Then, by slow degrees, he moved his hand into my groin. I froze. Then I jumped up and ran. I ran all the way home. I can still remember the hot confusion that drenched me. The shame. The guilt. And the fucking homosexual hadn’t even succeeded in seducing me! You liberals. You noble, tolerant liberals. Go fuck yourselves, forever!

Aug 28, 2006 - 3:44 pm 12. Captain Hate:

Randy Andy’s blog was one of the first I visited and enjoyed it for a while. Then he decided that gay marriage was the most important issue in the history of Western civilization and your attitude on it determined whether you are a good person or a bad one. Obviously I haven’t visited his site in years and won’t unless it becomes my job to find out what online lunatics that have jumped the shark are posting.

Aug 28, 2006 - 4:05 pm 13. JeremyR:

You are best just ignoring Derbyshire. He’s basically a Pat Bucannan conservative. Very socially conservative and isolationalist.

Aug 28, 2006 - 4:09 pm 14. shel:

Goodness, ricpic, get a grip. Sorry about all your guilt and shame and confusion…maybe a little therapy?? Stuff like this happens to girls all the time, from hetero men, and they’re lucky if the men stop there. I was felt up in public places by strange men, most girls have been. My 19-year-old son knows two different girls who have been raped. But should all women have the attitude toward hetero men that you evidently have toward homosexuals?

There are always going to be people of all sexes and orientations that don’t respect boundaries, and it’s terrible. But to base your attitude toward “fucking homosexuals” and “liberals” on the basis of one comparatively mild experience says a lot about you and not anything about homosexuals. Sounds like you’re just using that as an excuse to hate gays.

I say “mild experience” because I used to be married to someone who, when he was 14, was gang-raped by a bunch of older boys (who probably were not gay) in a drum corp he was in, as a sort of initiation. He felt he could never tell anyone, not even his parents, even though he was physically battered. Try that for awhile.

Aug 28, 2006 - 5:07 pm 15. Grumpy Old Man:

First, I didn’t find Derb’s comment all that bigoted, and I’m not certain his motivation is religious.

Chrisitanity and Judaism have disapproved of homosexual conduct for many centuries. The view that we should abandon that attitude is at best “not proven.”

Although, distriustful of government as I am, I don’t favor government regulation of non-coercive private sex between adults, I’m not cerain the culture, as distinct from the state, benefits from an attitude of casual tolerance for homosexual relations. It well may be part and parcel of a divorce of sex from reproduction and family life, that’s leading to population decline and a less hospitable atmosphere for healthy child-rearing.

We are also seeing the degeneration of concepts of manliness. I may be old enough that it’s my r√¥le to see the culture going to hell in a handbasket, but we can’t rule out the notion that our new-found tolerance will turn out to be a deleterious cultural mutation.

Aug 28, 2006 - 6:42 pm 16. ricpic:

“There are always going to be people of all sexes and orientations that don’t respect boundaries, and it’s terrible.”

Don’t respect boundaries? He was a grown man trying to seduce a child! You know what the horror of the modern world is? Not the fact that unspeakable acts go on. They always have gone on and they always will. The horror is that millions of nice, respectable, bien pensant shels have bought into the notion that the unspeakably perverse is just another orientation; thereby making it possible for the unspeakably perverse to get its hands on more and more innocents.

Aug 28, 2006 - 7:07 pm 17. Captain Hate:

“I say “mild experience” because I used to be married to someone who, when he was 14, was gang-raped by a bunch of older boys (who probably were not gay) in a drum corp he was in, as a sort of initiation. He felt he could never tell anyone, not even his parents, even though he was physically battered.”

Maybe he should’ve told his parents and not you since you’re dropping it here in a public forum where, I would imagine, some people will be able to ID you and him. All so you could aim some condescending comments at ricpic and act like you’re a better person than he is. Nice.

Aug 28, 2006 - 7:21 pm 18. shel:

Okay, ricpic, I’ll spell it out a little more clearly:

There are a whole lot of homosexuals out there that would not lay their hands on a child. They are looking for relationships with adult people of the same sex, and you’re right, I don’t find that unspeakably perverse. I do find any adult wanting to do something with a child to be perverse, because of the destruction of innocence involved. Adults are not supposed to want to destroy a child’s innocence–that’s perverse. But it’s not a definition of homosexuality any more than it is of heterosexuality, no matter how much you’d like to believe that. And I find hetero men who want to screw woman after woman, treating them like they are objects or servants or blow-up dolls, unspeakably perverse. But if you think two adult people who love each other are a horror, just because they are of the same sex, then you’re the one who’s perverse because, unlike normal people, you are incapable of empathy.

Side note: Jesus never said one word about homosexuals. He did talk a lot about adultery and divorce and the consequences, however, which male-dominated Christianity has gone wink-wink nudge-nudge about ever since. You’d be hard pressed to walk into any church in this country and not find someone who has done both. (I know that from experience, being a minister’s daughter.) I myself am divorced, so according to Jesus’ teaching I’m in a lot worse trouble than a gay person.

Aug 28, 2006 - 7:22 pm 19. shel:

And I wouldn’t worry about it, Captain Hate. Things like that happen to a lot more kids than most people are willing to admit, and it’s a big country. A lot of guys out there might be wondering if I’m talking about them.

Aug 28, 2006 - 7:24 pm 20. Captain Hate:

“And I wouldn’t worry about it, Captain Hate.”

You obviously don’t, but you must admit that it’s hilarious that you write that after admonishing ricpic for having no empathy.

“A lot of guys out there might be wondering if I’m talking about them.”

Only one poor guy has the worst ex-wife ever.

Aug 28, 2006 - 7:34 pm 21. mareseydoats:

Phbbbt.

Scratch a ‘realistic’ liberal and you find… a liberal. At any moment he’ll check his brain out in exchange for that warm, moist feeling: “I’m so ENLIGHTENED…”

One of those wonderful, fully human, misunderstood gay persons trapped me in a public bathroom when I was six.

May Mssr. Simon have a happier life. And more sense.

Aug 28, 2006 - 7:36 pm 22. shel:

LOL!

Actually I’m very empathetic toward my ex about this (and he knows it), which is why I mentioned it (and probably why he told me in the first place.) It’s terrible when things like that happen to young teens, and he knows it. The bad thing is that it happened in the first place, okay? not that people are talking about it. Public awareness is what makes stuff like that happen less, not pretending it never happened.

I feel like I’m talking to some really old, angry men…which I know from experience is basically a waste of time ‘Night guys.

Aug 28, 2006 - 7:47 pm 23. Charlie (Colorado):

It’s one thing to change minds over time, it’s another thing to change your own mind and then declare that ever having thought any other way is prejudice.

Umn, say what?

Sorry, but this doesn’t make a damn lick of sense. If you talk to an 80 year old man who says black people are irresponsible and by nature less intelligent that white people, does it stop being prejudice? Of course not. It may be understandable, even forgivable — and in this case, John Derbyshire is a friend of mine, and I certainly try to understand his attitude, even though I certainly don’t share it — but it is without question prejudice.

Aug 28, 2006 - 7:54 pm 24. Charlie (Colorado):

And the fucking homosexual hadn’t even succeeded in seducing me! You liberals. You noble, tolerant liberals. Go fuck yourselves, forever!

Ricpic: seek treatment. It wasn’t your fault, and you don’t have to continue to live with your obvious trauma. If you don’t know how to find treatment, email Roger; he has my permission to put you in touch with me, and I can help you find people.

Aug 28, 2006 - 7:57 pm 25. Charlie (Colorado):

Chrisitanity and Judaism have disapproved of homosexual conduct for many centuries. The view that we should abandon that attitude is at best “not proven.”

Christianity and Judaism have also claimed that the universe was constructed in six working days (with a day off), and that God would send bears to tear apart children for calling His prophet “Baldy”.

Lots of other cultures don’t find homosexuality all that troubling or even surprising.

Aug 28, 2006 - 8:00 pm 26. Captain Hate:

“Actually I’m very empathetic toward my ex about this (and he knows it), which is why I mentioned it (and probably why he told me in the first place.) It’s terrible when things like that happen to young teens, and he knows it.”

I hereby rescind the worst ex-wife ever accusation.

And goodnight to you, shel.

Aug 28, 2006 - 8:09 pm 27. Roger:

Marseydoats, your comment above directed toward me was one of the most appalling I have ever read on here. Yourimplication that all child rape is committed by homosexuals or that all homosexuals are potential child rapists is idiotic, bigoted and reprehensible. I invite you to apologize or leave this site.

Aug 28, 2006 - 8:59 pm 28. ex-democrat:

is there any reliable evidence linking male homosexuality with pederasty?

Aug 28, 2006 - 10:05 pm 29. Peg Kaplan:

Amazing that in this day and age, so many people think that all homosexuals are pedophiles – or that pedophiles cannot be heterosexual.

I’m all for keeping pedophiles of any flavor away from kids – period.

But the notion that any and all gay folk wish to abuse kids … or that if you “tolerate” gays you must be liberal, etc. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I’m sure a few posted comments are not going to change the minds of those who have such prejudicial and incorrect viewpoints. Still – I’d second the call to get a bit of counseling for a childhood memory that still haunts … and then I’d recommend doing a bit of study and opening your mind some. Loads of wonderful gay people are out there – and they aren’t child abusers.

Aug 28, 2006 - 10:19 pm 30. Lem:

After being raised as a Hispanic evangelical Christian and thereby associating accordingly I thought I didn’t know any gay person let alone be a friend of any gay person.

Until one of my best friends told me he was gay.

I’m convinced that the only way for me to have confronted my prejudices the way I did was realizing that above all Bob was my friend.

Sometime ago he related to me that at gay rallies incognito NAMBLA people show up trying to equate themselves to a civil rights cause. He has had to confront them with the facts concerning consent.

In the zeal to curb the gay agenda, the specter of rampant child molestation along with the ignorance card is often used as a rouse (triangulation) to keep gays in the proverbial parade.

Aug 28, 2006 - 10:43 pm 31. Syl:

For the sake of the children the hatred for homosexuals expressed in many of these comments should be criticized, mocked, and shown for the bigotry it is.

I find much of this discussion absolutely appalling and filled with ignorance and stereotyping.

I hope you do not expose your own children to such hateful attitudes.

Aug 29, 2006 - 6:59 am 32. JohnAnnArbor:

Shel’s story about what happened to her husband is appalling. What I don’t get is why people don’t fight back in these situations. If people had tried that on me, there would have been blood, and perhaps someone would have lost an eye if they didn’t get the picture quickly enough.

Aug 29, 2006 - 7:13 am 33. Charlie (Colorado):

If people had tried that on me, there would have been blood, and perhaps someone would have lost an eye if they didn’t get the picture quickly enough.

Yeah, and after that you would have seen the Batsignal and swung away into the night.

Aug 29, 2006 - 8:01 am 34. cathyf:

There’s a certain bitter irony about the “conservative” “defenders of family values and morality” who couldn’t seem to find anything wrong with child rape as long as none of the children who got raped were male.

Realistic surveys with good sampling techniques have shown that gays make up on the order of 2-4% of the male population. So the total population of all homsexual men in the US — whose behavior ranges from celibacy to boring serious monogomy to hedonistic promiscuity to pedophilia — is roughly the same size as the population of heterosexual men who molest their daughters and/or stepdaughters. When a girl who is 13-or-under is pregnant, the probability that the father of the fetus is over 21 is something like 80 or 90 percent. But hey, as long as the perverts stay away from little boys they can rape as many little girls as they want and the “defenders of family values and morality” won’t get upset.

I have a friend who was raped by her stepfather for 3 years starting when she was 12. When she told her high school guidance counselor what was happening, her stepfather was taken to jail for one night. Her mother stood by the rapist, so my friend was taken away by social services and put in a group home until she “aged out” of the system at 18. She lost her home, and her family, and married way too young (at 19) just to avoid being a homeless orphan. She doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for the guy who’s getting tens of thousands of dollars because some drunken priest grabbed at him once…

Aug 29, 2006 - 8:18 am 35. ForNow:

I come back and what do I see? The same thing that always happens. Maybe the issue is some sort of ambiguity about the word “pederasty.” I myself had the notion that it referred to sex between an adult and a minor who wasn’t past puberty. So I said that it wasn’t even the biggest part of the issue.

I find from looking around the Internet now that it simply means sex between an adult and an adolescent (or more generally, between adult and non-adult). It doesn’t change my point, but it certainly makes me think that Andrew Sullivan is a worse liar than I had realized, since he keeps talking about how homosexuality has nothing to do with that which in fact falls under the definition of pederasty.

I’ll try putting it in boldface and repeating it three times.

Boy Scouts range in age from 11 to 18 (eleven to eighteen).

Boy Scouts range in age from 11 to 18 (eleven to eighteen).

Boy Scouts range in age from 11 to 18 (eleven to eighteen).

Now Andrew can pretend all he likes about how gay men have no interest in trysts and affairs with male teenagers. He can exploit the sound of the word “pederasty” all he wants in order to make it sound like a cruel and unfair accusation. But Andrew is an experienced male homosexual and he knows better. Andrew also knows very well that there are already enough problems with protecting young ones from predators who gravitate toward them.

Aug 29, 2006 - 8:32 am 36. ForNow:

Then I see that there’s somebody who believes that gay predators should have easier access to teenaged boys until we’ve solved the problem of men raping their daughters or step-daughters. How anybody could put forth such a depraved viewpoint is a mystery. It comes, perhaps, from somebody’s trying to be a handbill.

I already addressed the actually corresponding issue in regard to the Girl Scouts and the putting of testosterone-charged males in charge of female teenagers. See above.

Aug 29, 2006 - 8:45 am 37. JohnAnnArbor:

Yeah, and after that you would have seen the Batsignal and swung away into the night.

Whatever. Maybe you would stop struggling and cooperate, but that’s your conformity problem, not mine.

Aug 29, 2006 - 8:49 am 38. ForNow:

The ambiguity of the word “pederasty” appears to arise from differences among definitions of adulthood. In a culture where one becomes an “adult” at age 14, pederasty means sex between somebody that 14+, and somebody younger than 14, perhaps not even past puberty. Thus the stuff in some dialogue by Plato about getting the boy before he developed stubble on his chin.

Again, there is something sick and demented about demanding that the Boy Scouts relax barriers alreay in place, until the problem of parental and step-parental rape has been solved. It’s sick to think that there’s a moral obligation of that kind on the Boy Scouts, and sick to think that there’s a moral obligation on the Girl Scouts to let heterosexual males be in charge of teenaged girls on field trips, overnights in the woods, etc., even though the Girl Scouts choose to allow adult male involvement as long as certain safeguards are supposedly in place.

Aug 29, 2006 - 8:56 am 39. Syl:

I’ve got a better idea. No adults at ALL.

Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts are on their own.

Problem solved.

Aug 29, 2006 - 9:56 am 40. Charlie (Colorado):

Whatever. Maybe you would stop struggling and cooperate, but that’s your conformity problem, not mine.

Because, after all, multiple adults cannot possibly restrain a thirteen year old who wants to resist, no matter how large the group, how frightened the child, or whatever weapons the adults might have.

Can you say “blame the victim”?

Moron.

Aug 29, 2006 - 11:35 am 41. jonkendall:

derbyshire is to Christian conservatives as sullivan is to Gay conservatives. both are a detriment to the conservative cause [BGoldwater-ish]. I’m a Christian conservative with several gay friends with kids i adore and who i gladly welcome into my home on a regular basis. i was raised in Texas and probably more redneck than most,but that mindframe is old – even among the deeply bigoted people i grew up with. i guess my point is that some personalities and their writings [sullivan and derb] tend to under-represent any real group of people. derb’s readership at NRO likely value some part of his commentary, but most probably tolerate him. and Sullivan has a readership that are not at all aligned with his past. he is a novelty. a supposed conservative who has ’seen the light’. but not in a true conversion kinda way, like Christopher Hitchens or…RSimon. sullivan simply hates bush. i believe the latter two have realized the importance of national security, whereas sullivan is only right that bush is not gay and that derb is only right that we are all not Bible thumping prudes. their use is limited.

Aug 29, 2006 - 12:11 pm 42. JK Ribera:

I am perplexed by the strange comments on here by ForNow. The subject of this post had nothing whatseover to do with the Boy Scouts and everything to do with bigoted comments by John Derybshire. ForNow’s response is revealing to do with him/her personally and has nothing to do with the topic of this post that I can see. I admire Roger Simon for his forebearance in allowing poeple like this to use his bandwidth. I doubt I would.

Aug 29, 2006 - 12:33 pm 43. Old Dad:

Roger,

I think you’re slightly misreading Derbyshire, who is far from Christian orthodoxy. No doubt, he has strong personal views about homosexuality, and we can speculate about where those came from, but in the post you cite, he’s arguing correctly that Sullivan’s view can never be reconciled to the Vatican’s.

Derb’s problem with Sullivan is a common one. Sullivan is clearly brilliant, and he writes well. As a conservative there is much that I can agree with him about, including much of what he has to say about homosexuality, but he allows his gay rights agenda to intrude into too many arguments, much to their detriment. It get’s old.

Aug 29, 2006 - 1:44 pm 44. ForNow:

Ribera makes a vague and sober-sounding ad hominem — mistargeted by the way, since I’ve never undergone abuse, but have known people who have — an ad hominem that allows him to call my comments “strange” and sidestep their content without explaining how they’re strange in any respect other than their not being about John Derbyshire. Such an explanation would be well beyond Ribera’s power, as he well knows. Now, if Ribera believes that testosterone-charged homosexuals should be put in charge of Boy Scouts aged 11-18, that would help explain Ribera’s tactic. But Ribera says nothing on that, but instead says that an opposition to such a belief should not be allowed here because (he thinks) it’s off topic. Ribera thinks we shouldn’t criticize Sullivan here, since Roger posted to critize Derbyshire’s way of critizing Sullivan rather than to criticize Sullivan himself. I’d say, using Ribera’s words, that Ribera’s “response is revealing to do with him/her personally and has…” everything “…to do with the topic of this post” and the content of my comments on it.

Now my comments are not strange in their not being about Derbyshire, because they are about the other person whom Robert mentioned, Andrew Sullivan. And they’re about why Sullivan is not to be trusted on any subject involving homosexuality, apart from whether it’s Derbyshire or anybody else criticizing them. And they’re intransigent and “moralistic” in just that way that leftists love to wield but hate to undergo.

Aug 29, 2006 - 2:10 pm 45. JohnAnnArbor:

Can you say “blame the victim”?

I didn’t. How about “refusing to be one”?

An eye gouge takes few muscles, especially if unexpected. Grab a finger and break it. Stomp on a toe as hard as you can.

They have to let you go eventually, or relax, then hit again.

Many times, we hear about hazing where the victims don’t resist; remember the videotapped high school stuff a few years back, where they got excement dumped on them, etc.? They just sat there and took it.

I say, why?

Aug 29, 2006 - 2:58 pm 46. Coisty:

cathyf – There’s a certain bitter irony about the “conservative” “defenders of family values and morality” who couldn’t seem to find anything wrong with child rape as long as none of the children who got raped were male.

That’s one of the most ignorant comments I’ve ever read. Women and girls were better protected under patriarchy than in our feminazi hell. Cathy is offering warmed up shrill sixties victimology.

Old Dad – Sullivan is clearly brilliant

The only thing that is clear about Sullivan is that he thinks with his penis. (Does the HIV-positive Sullivan still advertise for “barebacking” partners on the internet?)

Derbyshire’s view of homosexuals is liberal by historical and non-Western standards. It is those “progressives” who argue for the homosexual agenda who are out of step with the bulk of humanity – and they always will be.

Incidentally life has really gone down hill for homosexuals since Saddam was removed.

Iraqi liberation brings misery to gays

Aug 29, 2006 - 4:48 pm 47. mareseydoats:

I will do both.

I apologize and leave at the same time. It is your blog, after all.

You believe in the goodness of man, per se. It is the humanist tradition which you uphold. My experience is other. Homosexual males tend to abuse at disproportionate and, to my thinking, horrific rates… but I do not find liberals disposed to hold the gay community in any way accountable for any behaviors of their subset. It does not take long to find the data but the data is unpleasant, is it not?

This took me 15 seconds on Google:

The Los Angeles Times conducted a survey in 1985 of 2,628 adults across the U.S. Of those, 27% of the women and 16% of the men had been sexually molested. Seven percent of the girls and 93% of the men had been molested by adults of the same sex. This means that 40% of child molestations were by homosexuals. (Los Angeles Times, August 25-6, 1985)

Aug 29, 2006 - 5:11 pm 48. Charlie (Colorado):

They have to let you go eventually, or relax, then hit again.

Or merely beat you to death.

There are lots of reasons, one might not resist; I remember being beaten up by a girl in second grade because I’d been told a little too effectively that one doesn’t hit girls.

If you think it’s actually invariably possible to resist a rape, no matter how violent the rapist or how large the number of rapists, you’re a complete fool.

Aug 29, 2006 - 5:59 pm 49. Charlie (Colorado):

I apologize and leave at the same time. It is your blog, after all.

Do try to let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Aug 29, 2006 - 6:04 pm 50. Luther McLeod:

Charlie, I am always respectful of your opinions, you are a smart and clever person. I do think you are being unduly harsh in this instance.

Aug 29, 2006 - 8:01 pm 51. ForNow:

Hmm…maybe there wouldn’t be so much talk about child molestation in connection with the gay agenda if there weren’t a nation-wide campaign to force the Boy Scouts to accept openly homosexual Scout Masters.

Gee, ya think?

And who is pushing that campaign?

And who keeps casting opposition to it as an accusation that male homosexuals typically want to go for children — i.e., 11-year-olds, etc.? Since there are such child molestors, of course some then speak out furiously against child molestation, and those framing the argument achieve their purpose — to derail it.

But Boy Scouts range in age through 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. It mystifies me that people are unable to retain that peice of information and its significance, just as they can’t remember the comparability with the idea of forcing people to put young heterosexual men in charge of groups of adolescent women (I discussed Girl Scouts in previous post).

People with “nice homosexual friends” — and I am certainly one of those people — need to stop being so naive, ill-informed, and indeed recklessly self-righteous in their effort to be “fair-minded.” The Bovaryesque corruption of sheltered innocence by trite ideas from popular books may be YOURS.

Aug 29, 2006 - 8:34 pm 52. Winter:

Disturbingly, despite their shrill contributions, ForNow and mareseydoats have no idea what a pedophile is. Nor do they know what a heterosexual or homosexual is. This should preclude them being taken seriously by anyone. The opinions of these two people are “not to be trusted on any subject involving homosexuality”.

In his first garbled and hysterical post ForKnow makes the telling error in exactly misstating Andrew Sullivan’s position regarding Boy Scouts. Sullivan has consistently and quite rightly defended the Boy Scouts Of America’s right to discriminate (or rather, be discriminating) on the basis of sexual orientation. Further to this he cites a work of tawdry fiction to prop up his absurd theories regarding rampant pederasty being the natural concomitant of gay scout leaders. His histrionics are so badly expressed, and no doubt feverishly typed, that one can only guess what he is trying to say most of the time. He seems to have an unhealthy and strangely disproportionate fixation on the sexual vulnerability of scout-age boys (”healthy, athletic, exuberant boys who are turning out very well in the later adolescent years”). At least I think he does. The English language is not his friend. And what exactly is an ‘experienced’ homosexual? And what exactly are the ‘false pretences’ under which these ‘openly’ homosexual people operate?

For the enlightenment of these two posters, a pedophile is an adult (almost always male) who is exclusively attracted to children. Any descriptive prefix such a homosexual or heterosexual describes only the gender configuration between the victim and the molester. Any attempt to quantify instances of pedophilia as either ‘homosexual’ or ‘heterosexual’ (almost always for base political advantage) is misleading. Heterosexuals and homosexual adults have no sexual interest in children. To describe the molestation of children in these terms is to give grossly undeserved legitimacy to what is quite clearly an appalling aberration; a pathology utterly distinctive from consensual sex between adults. There is no continuum of sexuality leading from normal consensual adult relations to pedophilia. The key issue is that of consent – child molestation is about violation and moral depravity. Some people are heterosexual; some people are homosexual; and some people are pedophiles. These are three distinct groups. To place pedophilia alongside the first two groups is preposterous.

Contrary to mareseydoats obscene claim that homosexuals are responsible for 40% of all child molestations, most reliable studies demonstrate that molestations committed by an identifiably gay or lesbian person are extremly rare. For example the psychologist Nicholas Groth’s study from the late seventies in which 175 child sex offenders were studied showed that in fact none of the randomly selected offenders were homosexual. Further a Denver Colorado study from the late Eighties showed that the incidence of child molestation by homosexuals was about 0% to 3.1% of all offences committed. The only place one finds contrary data is on ultra-right wing Christian websites or from adherents of the totally discredited Paul Cameron.

No one is forcing ForKnow or marseydoats to be “fair-minded” but I think you have a responsibility when posting on a distinguished site such as this that you be rational and demonstrate proper respect for established facts rather than throwing around ill-informed and malignant libel.

Aug 30, 2006 - 4:06 am 53. Shadow32:

As far as sex and kids go, isn’t Derbyshire the one who said the only time females are sexy is between 15 and 20?

Aug 30, 2006 - 8:49 am 54. Ben:

The post is not about the Boy Scouts, but since the comments seem to be going that way, permit me to make an observation. I fully support the Boy Scouts’ refusal to permit gay men to be Scoutmasters. In fact, I think that allowing gay men to be in a position where they have unsupervised access to adolescent males is nothing short of madness. It is certainly likely that most gay men would never even think of molesting a child; however, what many well-meaning people don’t seem to consider is that gay men who want to molest children are attracted to positions where it is possible to do so. When the FBI asked Willie Sutton, the noted bank robber, why he robbed banks, Willie replied, “because that’s where the money is.” The same applies to pedophiles. Not all gay Scoutmasters are pedophiles, but a gay man who is as Scoutmaster is a lot more likely to be a pedophile than a gay man who is a plumber. It’s just common sense. Gay men have no business being alone on overnight campouts with young boys for the same reason that heterosexual men have no business being alone on overnight campouts with young girls.

Aug 30, 2006 - 10:30 pm 55. Qwinn:

“The only place one finds contrary data is on ultra-right wing Christian websites or from adherents of the totally discredited Paul Cameron.”

Right. And the source mareseydoats provided – the Los Angeles Times – fits -precisely- within that context.

*rolls eyes*

Qwinn

Sep 1, 2006 - 10:48 pm 56. Winter:

In response to our eye-rolling correspondent Qwinn, mareseydoats’s error is in interpretation. (I apologise for not being familiar with the editorial line of the Los Angeles Times being, as I am, non-American. According to mareseydoats:

“The Los Angeles Times conducted a survey in 1985 of 2,628 adults across the U.S. Of those, 27% of the women and 16% of the men had been sexually molested. Seven percent of the girls and 93% of the men had been molested by adults of the same sex. This means that 40% of child molestations were by homosexuals. (Los Angeles Times, August 25-6, 1985)”

It means no such thing.

It means, as my previous post explained, that 100%, or at least the vast majority, of the molestations were perpetrated by pedophiles. Whether or not these depraved individuals were heterosexual or homosexual (ie primarily sexually attracted to other adults of the same sex) is not stated. As the studies I mentioned above indicate, the likelihood is that they were heterosexual males.

The nature of the pedophile pathology is that these are very often crimes of opportunity and that pedophiles often choose victims of either gender. The ratio of male and female victims, and even the extent of molestations, is highly contentious given the reluctance of many victims to come forward, either through shame or the vicious threats employed by their abusers. However the preponderance of data internationally indicates that disproportionately it is female children who are most at risk, and usually from a family member or close friend.

It is tragic that this horrible crime is being used by the likes or mareseydoats and ForNow to foment hatred against homosexuals. This is cynical and depraved. Children deserve better from those of us who should be vigilantly safeguarding their wellbeing.

Sep 3, 2006 - 6:20 am 57. ForNow:

In the course of googling I came upon this thread again and took another look. I wish I had come back the day after my last post.

I see one “winter” has actually misrepresented the things that I said, and has fixated on the concept of “pedophilia” and said much about it and its relevance/irrelevance to homosexuality — all without defining “pedophilia” in regard to the age of sex object — though the popular confusion over its precise meaning (or that of “pederasty”) was a subject of my previous posts — he just says, “children.” He seems to mean pre-teens — in which case he returns to the very game, which I had criticized, of shifting the subject away from the question of teenagers, along with some obtuse sniveling that there’s something obsessive about sticking with that subject though Boy Scouts range in age from 11 to 18. He directs the reader’s attention to words away from things and facts.

Well, I’ve since learned that the word in place of “pedophilia” when the object is a teenager, is “ephebophilia.” So I guess that one could invent a word “epheberasty” to use in place of “pederasty” when the object is a teenager.

As for the novel Parents’ Day which “winter” calls “tawdry,” actually it’s a work of serious literature. “Winter” could have found out by googling a bit about its author Paul Goodman whom I mentioned along with some of Goodman’s claims to fame, with keywords enough for an Internet search. I am not one to confuse the sickness of Goodman’s attitudes with some lack of literary merit. In fact, some very bad folks (certainly worse than Goodman) have written exceedingly well — Jean Genet, for instance. The things which I said about Goodman and his novel were directed at people who have some claim to literary education, people like Sullivan, certainly not pocket dictionary people like “winter.”

“Winter”’s difficulty in understanding “exactly” what is meant by the phrase “experienced homosexual” shows that reality is not his friend or his basis, at least when writing.

“Winter”’s one possibly constructive remark is that Sullivan in fact supports the Boy Scouts’ right to discriminate. This is news to me. I’ve read Sullivan saying that the Boy Scouts should allow openly homosexual Scoutmasters. Perhaps Sullivan doesn’t think that the law should compel the Boy Scouts to accept them, but still thinks that they should freely accept them.

Oct 25, 2006 - 6:23 pm

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