Pride at the Paris Olympics

 

The online media have been lighting up about the blasphemous opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics, that featured what seemed to be a mockery of the Last Supper featuring a blue Dionysus as Christ, served up like the Eucharist, and a set of trans and obese apostles, one with his genitals dangling and visible.

Let us be clear about one thing: there is a war between LGBTQ ideology and the Catholic Church; and it is not the Catholic Church that started it. I first encountered it, to my shock, when I ran into a group of gay demonstrators dressed in mock nuns’ habits protesting near a Toronto community centre run by the Church. Until then, I, a practicing Catholic raised in catholic schools and educated at theological colleges, had thought we were all on the same side.

The Catholic catechism, it is true, says homosexual sex is sinful. It holds all sex not open to the conception of children disordered and sinful. This includes masturbation, sex outside marriage, and sex inside marriage if contraception is used. There is nothing special there about gay sex. To make an exception for gay sex and say it is okay would be allowing it some special privilege. Why?

Many prominent homosexuals in recent history have been Catholic, including converts. Oscar Wilde. Tennessee Williams. Milo Yiannopoulos. Andy Warhol. Pim Fortuyn. Evelyn Waugh. W.H. Auden (Anglo-Catholic). Nobody thought until recently this was somehow incompatible.

As for transvestitism: it has always been an accepted part of Filipino culture, and the Philippines is one of the most Catholic nations on Earth. The Catholic catechism has nothing to say about it. Why would that be a sin?

This is to be distinguished from the new doctrine of “transgenderism,” in which people go in for physical mutilation and insisting they are actually literally the opposite sex. Self-mutilation and denial of physical reality is of course sinful, in this as in any case.

So the supposed opposition of Catholicism to LGBTQetc. is an invention of the LGBTQ lobby, of the modern left. It is an invented premise, invented as an excuse to attack Catholicism. Not in the interests of gays either: in the interests of pride and lust.

Catholic morality sets a high bar, calling us to be “perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect.” Of course, none of us is. We cannot claim righteousness. To do so is the sin of pride, and an automatic ticket to the Other Place. 

It is just this that the rainbow brigade demands: a celebration of pride, and pride in lust.

Born This Way?

 

Scene from the Brooklyn Public Library

Friend Max asks, Are people born gay?

Unlikely. 

Back in the eighties and nineties, because the Human Genome Project was the big thing happening in science, genetics were imagined to be the cause of everything.

Just as, when electricity was discovered, it was postulated to be the cause of everything, of life and consciousness—so the novel “Frankenstein.”

Just as, when magnetism was first understood in a scientific sense, it was imagined to be the cause of everything; of consciousness itself. “Animal magnetism,” “mesmerism,” could cure “mental illness.” This evolved into modern psychiatry. Freud started with it.

Just as, when computers first appeared, saying something had been put through a computer established its unquestionable truth. I remember getting into structuralism back in the day, which argued that all human cultural artifacts could be analyzed into binaries and, theoretically, computerese. That claim gave the theory vast authority.

Just as, when the atom was first split, radiation was supposed to do all kinds of magical things, both good and, mostly, bad. The superheroes of the early sixties got their powers by being exposed to gamma radiation, being bitten by a radioactive spider, or the like. At the time, it all sounded plausible.

In a similar way, in the eighties and nineties, almost everything was supposed to be genetic: homosexuality, pedophilia, alcoholism, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, “antisocial behaviour,” whatever. A dangerous path to tread—it leads logically to racism and eugenics. But no plausible gene has yet been found for any of these. Since the white coats have been looking intently for over forty years now, with our understanding of the human genome growing exponentially, it seems unlikely they exist. There are no genes for thoughts, opinions, likes or dislikes. Apparently there’s this thing called free will. Who could have guessed?

But the gay lobby seized upon the moment back in the eighties to declare that homosexuality was an inborn characteristic, like skin colour, something over which they had no control, so it was unjust to criticize, let alone discriminate, on that basis. “Born this way.” Now that is frozen into law, even constitutional law, and we are not allowed to question or we are “homophobic.” 

But it was always illogical. If gayness were based on a gene, that gene would breed itself out within a generation—homosexual sex does not produce offspring.

There is one alternative possibility: that it is caused by some sort of intra-uterus brain damage. But what’s the mechanism?

Moreover, you may know, as I do, of “homosexuals” who have gone “straight” later in life. Kathy Shaidle used to claim that every “gay” friend she knew in high school later went straight. This used to be assumed to be the standard path in ancient Greece; young men dabbled in homosexuality before later settling down to have a family. It was also more or less expected in British residential schools back in the day. We often hear news of this or that prominent person, married with children, suddenly declaring in midlife that they are gay, and running off with a same-sex partner. If it can happen in one direction, surely also in the other. We might at most be dealing with an addiction, like alcohol, or tobacco, or any other sexual fetish.

How do people become gay? After all, you yourself probably have no desire whatsoever to have sex with another man; nor do I. The most likely explanation is some pleasurable early experience of gay sex; which then develops a habit, overriding the natural instinct for the opposite sex. Just as we reach for an olive because we remember how good an olive tasted once before. And prefer redheads because of some notably pleasurable early experience with some redheaded girl.

In other words, homosexuals are groomed into it by other homosexuals. This, and the need to maintain the population of the polis, is probably reason enough for most past societies taking a dim view of the practice. I note that in Saudi Arabia, while homosexuality is technically illegal, nobody will disturb you at it until and unless you approach a minor. Then the hammer falls quickly.

If you are gay, you face a fundamental problem: 97% of those people you want sex with will not want sex with you. There is no obvious way of telling who that remaining 3% are. Without facing eternal and possibly brutal rejection, what are your strategies?

Bath houses with a certain reputation are one. Being very publicly gay, acting effeminate, is another—so the classic image of a gay man lisping and mincing. Marching half-naked in a gay pride parade to advertise your availability is another.

Another obvious one, though, perhaps the most obvious one, is to groom someone too young to really understand sex. They will probably not reject you, because they don’t grasp what’s going on. You’ll initiate them into the habit, and perhaps have a reliable sex partner for a time. In any case, you have enlarged the pool.

Even if gayness is broadly socially accepted, this still may be the easiest path, and the one that needs the least courage. Why do all these transsexuals and transgenders and their advocates currently want so badly to introduce “drag queen story hours” in schools and libraries, and books referring to explicit gay sex to grade school children? We would never tolerate such sexual displays among heterosexual adults.

If it isn’t grooming, what else could it be?

To be fair, we cannot accuse all gays of going after children. Many gays understand that being gay is, at best a misfortune, and are as adamant as anyone about opposing sex with children.

Will the Last One Out Please Blow Out the Candles?

 

According to current projections, the last Anglican in England will die by about 2060.

Evangelical and Pentecostal groups, on the other hand, are growing.

The Anglican Church serves no purpose. They now simply tailor their teaching to whatever the public wants. They have just approved the blessing of gay marriages; despite the prohibition of homosexual sex in the Bible.

So why bother with church? 

Imagine if you went to a doctor, and the doctor simply asked “What do you think the problem is?”

Whatever you suggested, he agreed with. Then he asked,

“What do you think would help?”

And agreed with whatever you said.

Why would you bother going to the doctor?

Perhaps Evangelicals and Pentecostals only have snake oil to sell. Revivalist denominations seem to lose all energy within a generation or two. But at least they offer hope of something better.

The Catholic Church in Britain cannot be complacent. It is dying at about the same rate as the Anglicans.

But Catholicism really does have something to sell. Even without appealing to the truth of its doctrines, to religious faith, it has in its traditions the wisdom of the ages on the care and feeding of the human soul.

This demands strict adherence to the Bible, the ancient creeds, the ancient liturgies, the old traditions. They are valid and do their good whether or not the ordained cleric has any idea what he is about. 

Unfortunately, the Anglicans have thrown out all that dusty old ballast. Because the Anglican hierarchy decided they were smarter than their ancestors.

Under Pope Francis, that seems to be the Catholic program as well.

It is a fatal mistake.

The Church Taken in Heresy

 

A Summerside, PEI, community church is in hot water, at least with the CBC, for hosting a talk on “how to protect children from what is happening during Pride Month.” Major attention from our national broadcaster, for one church in a town of 15,000 people. Good that they have their priorities straight. 

Scott Alan, the “youth programme coordinator” of a local gay group, is quoted lamenting, “I grew up always believing that church was a place for people to experience love and community and acceptance. So to see the complete reverse from a church is a little bit upsetting."

Scott Alan.

"What do you think Jesus would do? Would He cast the first stone? Or would He love and accept our community for who we are in hopes that the Holy Spirit would work through us?”

The church is not casting stones. It is simply protecting children from them. 

The relevant Bible passage is probably Matthew 18:6:

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Even if it is debatable whether the Bible or Jesus indeed disapprove of gay sex, transgenderism, public displays of sexuality of any sort, and/or the sin of pride, it would still seem prudent to prevent children from being exposed to them. Even if they only might be against their faith.

And the passage from Matthew also explodes Alan’s claim that Jesus and Christianity is all about acceptance of sin. Jesus does not sound very accepting of bad parents in the quotation, does he?

The idea of “gentle Jesus” is from the Devil, not the Bible. In the Bible, Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. He calls Pharisees a “brood of vipers.” He separates mankind into sheep and goats, and the latter go to eternal punishment.

Alan refers to the story of the woman taken in adultery. But he misrepresents it. Perhaps he has not read it. Jesus refuses to cast the first stone—that is, literally, he refuses to put the woman to death. That does not mean he endorses the sin. He tells her to “go, and sin no more.”

If he said the same to gays or “Gay Pride” marchers and youth workers, would Alan really be satisfied with that? 

For it seems far more accusatory than the Summerside church.

The Pride Parade

 

June is “Pride Month.” It used to be “Gay Pride Month,” but now it’s for pride in general.

Why does every town and city, even smallish ones like Kingston Ontario, hold an annual pride parade? 

It is not, after all, that there’re are so many gays.

But that’s just it. 

Imagine the problem for gays. You are physically attracted to people who, at least ninety-nine times out of a hundred, are not going to be attracted to you. More often the reverse; they will be repulsed at the thought of sex with you.

Not great for the old morale. How on earth are you going to hook up?

For this, the Pride Parade is most useful. There you are, out in public, advertising your availability. Or, if you lack the nerve, in the crowd, seeing who might accept an approach.

This is why we are disproportionately inundated with gay culture. If you’re gay, you gotta advertise. 

In the modern age of Tinder and such dating apps, the need to parade in public semi-nude ought to abate. And perhaps we can all get back to our dignified inhibitions.

To Sir, With Love

 

We are at the point, in Canada, in America, in the UK, perhaps across the Western World, at which telling the truth is a dangerous, subversive, brave, even revolutionary act. 

But it is essential to keep telling the truth, whatever the consequences. Truth is of ultimate value. If we stop telling the truth, we have invalidated our very existence. Solzhenitsyn said, of the old Soviet Union, that if one day one man woke up determined to say nothing but the truth, the entire enterprise would have collapsed.

That’s where we are.

The obvious example is the one which brought Jordan Peterson to fame: that men are not women. We are now under tremendous pressure on this particular issue. We are not allowed to be neutral: we must endorse the view that men are women.

The second obvious example, in Canada, is the residential schools. We are not allowed to suggest that they were a good thing. Although we are obliged to agree that education is a good thing in all other cumstances.

But why these issue in particular? Of the infinite number of possible lies that can be told, why is all the electrical charge on these particular things?

If, after all, a real woman were addressed as “sir,” or “bro,” would she take great offense? Would this be considered a slur? That trans people do consider it so is a tacit admission that they are lying, and they know they are.

No—the issue is not “misgendering.” It is that one must explicitly endorse the premise that others have the right to lie, and further endorse the premise that those who lie have a right to silence those who seek truth.

A second clue is that this aggressive insistence on lying is focused on sex, and not, say, race, height, age, or weight. One is required to accept and vocally agree if a man says he is a woman; one is not required to accept and agree, at least not yet, if Rachel Dolezal says she is African, or if Elizabeth Warren says she is Indian, or if some sixteen-year-old insists she is eighteen.

That seems to suggest that the underlying truth people want to deny is sexual.

The second prominent aggressive lie is about Canada’s “First Nations.” It may not be so clear that this, too, is about sex; but it is. To our primitive minds, aboriginal culture is all about the absence of supposedly oppressive sexual mores. Accordingly, nothing bad must ever be spoken about aboriginal culture. To do so would be to criticize unrestricted sex.

We make much of missing and murdered aboriginal women. The cause is no mystery; but nobody is allowed to say it. These young girls were either abandoned, or forced to escape, by their birth families. A lack of sexual mores was the obvious problem. We are being forced to very publicly declare it was not. 

If aboriginal culture represents unrestricted sex, the residential schools represent the opposite. Because they were run by the churches, their primary intent, in the popular mind, has to have been to impose sexual morality. Or, using the standard euphemism, “erasing native culture.”

Our culture is going totalitarian and decadent, is actually prepared to destroy itself, in order to preserve sexual libertinage.

You, gentle reader, may be reacting badly to my bringing up sexual morality. Isn’t this “puritanism”? Isn’t it all nonsense and foolish inhibition? After all, who is harmed by a supposed sexual sin? Who’s the victim? 

The first and obvious answer is, the children. Sex is obviously designed, by God or by nature, for conceiving children. Engage in it randomly, and children are entirely liable to pop up. 

The initial premise behind the “sexual revolution” was that, with the new birth control pill, this connection had been broken, and we were now liberated to engage in recreational sex. 

That might have worked were birth control one hundred percent effective; but it is not. So free and unrestricted abortion became a thing: mass murder. And we are feeling deeply guilty, and in denial, about that.

But even aside from that, it is callous to suppose there is no victim. Recreational sex necessarily involves viewing another human being as a mere means for physical pleasure. Like we view a steak or a beer. On the unhappy chance that a given sex partner does not see themselves the same way, as a mere slab of meat, and does not see you the same way, as a slab of meat, you are hurting them emotionally, possibly gravely. Emotional blows are at least as cruel as physical blows, and can leave scars at least as deep.

It is time to sober up, gang.

He or She?

 

Filipino transvestite beauty queen.

Jordan Peterson rose to prominence over which pronouns to use to refer to transvestites. This has become a dominating issue: if someone looks like a woman, but is in fact biologically male, do we say “he” or “she”? Or “zhe,” or “they.” Or seventy or a hundred other possibilities now being floated.

This is a relatively new problem in North America, but it occurs to me it is not elsewhere. In Thailand or the Philippines, transvestitism has been open and socially accepted for generations, perhaps centuries. So I thought to ask my Filipina wife, in Visayan, do you refer to a male-to-female transvestite as “he” or “she.” 

She reports that, as indeed seems most sensible, biological sex is definitive. He may look like a woman, but he is still, in fact, “he.”

Problem solved.

If I'd Known You Were Coming--I Wouldn't Have Baked a Cake

 

There has been much in the media about the Vatican announcing that priests cannot bless same-sex unions. There should not have been. This is not news. In principle, the Vatican cannot change the Church’s stance on either faith or morals. The Church is supposed to be infallible on faith and morals.

There is much malarkey in the media about “bringing Christianity into the 21st century.” Right and wrong do not change by the calendar date.

Most world religions consider homosexual sex sinful: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Bahai, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism—in effect, all religions that consider ethics essential to faith. Those that do not consider homosexuality sinful do not pronounce on sin in general.

The wider society sees no crime, because it is consensual. Nobody’s rights have been violated. “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.”

One might argue that this is not entirely so—that there are hidden victims. For example, one might claim that homosexuality spreads disease, or threatens to reduce population. However, so long as things like adultery are legal, it is hard to make a case that homosexuality should not be.

But the religious concept of sin is not based on the doctrine of human rights, but on obedience to God’s plan. Moreover, while the state has no business considering anything other than physical harm, religion takes spiritual harm into account. There is no physical harm to another in any of the Seven Deadly Sins. There is no physical harm to another in seven or eight of the Ten Commandments, depending on whether you count adultery.

 It is a dangerous error to confuse crime with sin. If you make every sin a crime, you have totalitarian government. If you make every crime a sin, you have totalitarian government.

It is vital to maintain the distinction between homosexuality as a sin, and homosexuality as a crime.  

A wise Christian, and a wise liberal, can support the Vatican pronouncement, while supporting state recognition of homosexual unions. If only for the value of maintaining this distinction.

Not-Gay Milo

 

Milo Yiannopoulos has come out as straight.

Of course this is heresy. We are supposed to believe that homosexuality is a permanent part of a person. Gender may be fluid, but for some reason, not sexual preference.

I know at least one former gay personally who has gone straight. Kathy Shaidle claimed that every homosexual she knew back in high school later went straight. Perhaps your experience is similar. But, as in so many things these days, we must remain silent and deny our doubts. Public people keep telling us that, after living most of their lives as “straight,” they have decided they are really gay. It is absurd to think the transformation can only work one way.

No previous generation supposed there was such a thing as a “homosexual.” There were only urges for homosexual sex, perhaps indulgence, and perhaps addiction to it. Some prefer redheads. 

Were our ancestors, who did not suppose homosexuality was an inborn thing, all fools and idiots? What is the statistical probability of that? 

How does innate homosexuality survive the mechanism of Darwinian evolution? Wouldn’t a genetic condition that prevents reproduction be promptly bred out?

The ancient Greeks assumed that men would practice homosexual sex, at least until marriage. So were all Greeks “born that way”?

Yiannopoulis speaks of it now as an addiction: like alcohol. I think this is exactly right. 

I had always presumed it comes from some early sexual experience with an older homosexual. Yiannopoulis has suggested this was true for him in the past. But in a recent interview with LifeSite News, he gives a possible second factor:

“When I used to kid that I only became gay to torment my mother, I wasn’t entirely joking.”

Perhaps some young men are attracted to homosexual sex because they are repulsed by heterosexual sex. And they may be repulsed because they have suffered sexual abuse.

Allen Ginsberg rather hints as much in his case, remembering his mother in his poem “Kaddish”:

Serving me meanwhile, a plate of cold fish—chopped raw cabbage dript with tapwater—smelly tomatoes—week-old health food—grated beets & carrots with leaky juice, warm—more and more disconsolate food—I can’t eat it for nausea sometimes—the Charity of her hands stinking with Manhattan, madness, desire to please me, cold undercooked fish—pale red near the bones. Her smells—and oft naked in the room, so that I stare ahead, or turn a book ignoring her.

       One time I thought she was trying to make me come lay her—flirting to herself at sink—lay back on huge bed that filled most of the room, dress up round her hips, big slash of hair, scars of operations, pancreas, belly wounds, abortions, appendix, stitching of incisions pulling down in the fat like hideous thick zippers—ragged long lips between her legs—What, even, smell of asshole? I was cold—later revolted a little, not much—seemed perhaps a good idea to try—know the Monster of the Beginning Womb—Perhaps—that way. Would she care? She needs a lover.

I have another acquaintance who became a lesbian seemingly because she was sexually abused by her father.

Yiannopoulis now plans to advocate for “conversion therapy”—officially now illegal in Canada.

It works, he maintains, so long as it has a religious basis.

“Secular attempts at recovery from sin are either temporary or completely ineffective. Salvation can only be achieved through devotion to Christ and the works of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”

He surely goes too far in saying this is possible only through Catholicism; but Alcoholics Anonymous too maintains that overcoming addiction is only possible through appealing to a “higher power.”

This is why psychiatry and psychology cannot cure mental illness. All they can do is drug down the symptoms. In former days, mental illnesses were regularly cured. They still are in less developed countries, where they still resort to religious methods.

This is not to say that mental illness is caused by personal sin, or by anything justly referred to as addiction—in most cases. But, like addictions, it involves settled habits of thought.

A Smattering of Leftist Delusions

 

 I cannot be accused of being prejudiced against the left; after all, I am left-handed. Still, my gauchist chum Xerxes let me down this week by writing nothing controversial. 

On the other hand, some of his correspondents made some typically silly port-side comments.

JM suggested that evangelical Christians worshipped Trump as sent from God, because he promised to fight abortion and pursue and anti-LGBT agenda.

Trump is not anti-LGBT. He appointed the first-ever openly gay cabinet member. His use of “YMCA,” redubbed “MAGA,” as his re-election campaign song illustrates an outreach to the LBTQ community; although the song itself, with the new lyrics, seems to have been a spontaneous campaign contribution from the gay community.  Many prominent members of which seem to have supported him. 

It is a persistent leftist myth, or delusion, or item of disinformation, that the religious in general care much of a flip about homosexuality. Abortion matters. The left seems to want to change the subject.

Our correspondent JM also says some odd things about QAnon. I am far from an expert on that group—it seems to get more attention from the left than the right, and I only hear about it from the left. Nor am I curious; life is too short. But she claims that QAnon is directed against the Jews, and accuses them generally of killing and eating babies. That’s a little too improbable for my tastes. It sounds like a conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theory. 

After all, QAnon is passionately supportive of Trump, aren’t they? And Trump has been the most pro-Israel president since Truman. Trump has a Jewish daughter, a Jewish son-in-law, Jewish grandchildren. 

So I checked the Wikipedia entry. I gather the charge of antisemitism against QAnon is based on no more than the fact that they accuse George Soros of being in part behind most of the things they do not like which include pedophilia. And, as it happens, Soros is Jewish.

By that logic, anyone who did not vote for Bernie Sanders in the primaries might also be called antisemitic.

On the left side of the political spectrum, antisemitism seems to be a growing problem. It seems rare on the right. Indeed, the left is its natural home: resentment of “rich capitalists” easily segues, as in the Nazi case, into resentment of the generally successful Jews.

TW, another commentator, mischaracterizes the philosophy Josh Hawley, and of Pelagius. He writes that, in an article for Christianity Today, “Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.”

Pelagius--17th century Calvinist print, with the original caption, "Accurst Pelagius, with what false pretence Durst thou excuse Man's foul Concupiscence, Or cry down Sin Originall, or that The Love of GOD did Man predestinate."

To begin with, Hawley denounced Pelagianism, not Pelagius. The ad hominem fallacy is entirely TW’s, not Hawley’s. And Pelagius did not teach what TW claims. The idea that salvation came or did not come from believing the right doctrines was, arguably, Martin Luther’s position, but not Pelagius’s. The Pelagian heresy, against which Hawley argues, was the denial of original sin: that humans were innately good, could achieve salvation and an ideal world on their own merits, and did not need divine assistance.

An entirely unrelated issue. And a position that is widespread in the modern USA. 

Especially on the left.

Third Person Singular

 

While languages find it natural to assimilate new words for things—content words—the grammar is pretty fixed. It is the grammar, for example, that identifies English as a Germanic language, although most of the actual vocabulary is Latinate. When the French-speaking Normans poured in, the vocabulary changed, but the grammar was more resistant to political control.

It is because it violates grammar that a term like “ain’t” has never been accepted as correct, even though it has been common for centuries. Or “youse.”

A standard current text on teaching English vocabulary notes:

“Content words are an open set: that is, there is no limit to the number of content words that can be added to the language. Here are a few that have been added recently — airbag, emoticon; carjacking, cybersex, quark. Grammatical words, on the other hand, are a closed set. The last time a pronoun was added to the language was in the early sixteenth century. (It was them.)”

This throws into stark relief the extremism, indeed the absurdity, of the current demand, by Canadian governments, for everyone to use an unlimited number of new pronouns.

It would be hard to come up with a more extreme intrusion on the culture.

Shepherds, Hands off Those Sheep

Giotto: Jesus clears the moneylenders from the temple.

It has come to this: two priests arrested for indecent exposure.

To be clear, the current crisis in the US church is not about any new revelations of child sexual abuse. That problem was never worse inside than outside the Catholic clergy, and by all accounts it has been drastically reduced by policies in place for decades. The charges of child abuse in the recent Pennsylvania report are almost all quite old. Consistently, abusers have been in the generation born in the 1930s and ordained in the 1960s—not since.

The problem is hypocritical clergy. The very problem the New Testament cared most about: Pharisaism. There were cynical coverups, and those responsible for the coverups are still in place, protecting and promoting one another. The generation born in the 1930s, after all, have now reached the top of the hierarchy. 

There is also now, thanks to their influence and example, a large body of priests who are priests not because they have a vocation, but because it is a convenient cover and platform to practice an actively homosexual lifestyle. Because, hey, nobody here really takes this religion thing seriously, do they? And the cynical here drive out the good.

There is also a likelihood that such actively homosexual priests will prey sexually on teenagers, destroying their faith.

Time to clean house.

Help! I'm Being Oppressed!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: --
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

I just watched video of a rally at Wilfrid Laurier University in which a few dozen students and faculty condemned the school administration for its failure to support “or even recognize the existence of” transgender students. This, weirdly, while the rest of us have been condemning the school administration for trying to deprive Lindsay Shepherd of her right of free speech in the name of transgender rights.

It is, for me, a bit of an epiphany. I begin to see what is going on here.

To understand things clearly, one must understand that “The left,” broadly, is the party and the program of the bureaucrats and the professions. And they think like bureaucrats. They have no fixed principles. They do not really give a damn about transgender rights, or women's rights, or immigrants, or anything else. Their prime concern is to keep the system in place which gives them their privileges and their power: the bureaucracy.

If this or that group complains, and sounds upset, the automatic response of the bureaucracy is to appease. Dramatic or decisive action is never in the best interests of a bureaucrat. It makes you a target. The natural strategy is, whenever anyone threatens to get disruptive, to try to buy them off. Not their money; no principles involved.

People who often engage with the bureaucracy learn how the game works. Threaten to make a loud noise, to go to the papers or to the streets, sound angry, and you get stuff.

This makes the left look strident and upset. But it is not really the left; it is their various client groups. Nor are the client groups really upset. This is just how the system works. They have, over time, been trained to act this way. Make a big noise, and you get what you want. And the bureaucracy is, at the same time, provided with cover: they are helping the “disadvantaged” and “oppressed.”

Recently, we have seen that there is no real ideology, no particular rhyme or reason, to what groups come under the leftist client umbrella. It is just whoever sounds really upset.

And so you see, for example, the strange current coalition between Islam and feminists. As recently as a year ago, the feminists and the Muslims were the opposite ends of the spectrum. Feminists were demanding international action on female genital mutilation; Saudi Arabia was the real enemy; women who wore burkhas were oppressed; and so forth. But once the Muslims, or some Muslims, conveyed clearly the impression that they were very upset over something, the bureaucracy responded promptly by giving them stuff. They quickly came under the umbrella as one more client group.

Now, however, we may have come to a crisis point. Until perhaps two weeks ago, it was always the safest course to give in to the demands of the LGBT lobby, or Black Lives Matter, or feminists, no matter how bizarre; and so they threw Lindsay Shepherd to the wolves. But now they are increasingly caught between a rock and a hard place. Too many different groups have learned how the system works; and their various non-negotiable demands are increasingly irreconcilable.

The insistence of the gay lobby, that they are “born this way,” for example, has never been reconcilable with the feminist system that “gender is a construct.” Nor is it reconcilable with the new idea that you can change your gender. If you can change your gender, can you also change your race? Logically, yes. So then what happens to the idea that certain races are oppressed? No need any more for affirmative action: just declare yourself a member of the preferred race. Both feminism and the gay lobby are irreconcilable with Islam. Support for immigration and illegal immigration is not compatible with support for the working poor as a grievance group, leading notably to the rise of Trumpism. Support for large-scale immigration is not compatible with the interests of African Americans. The contradictions of this appeasement approach are becoming obvious and insupportable.

It always had within it the seeds of its destruction. It is Danegeld. It inevitably leads to more of the very thing it seeks to avoid, social strife and hostility to the establishment and the system.

Perhaps, then, it is deserved. Poetic justice.

Of Lust, Pride, and Other Deadly Sins

The subtle dignity of a Gay Pride parade.

A piece by Graham Thompson in the National Post and in the Edmonton Journal (and Calgary Herald) condemns some Wildrose Party members as “intolerant,” “homophobic,” and “bigoted”--Thompson’s words—for objecting to a party functionary marching in Edmonton’s “Gay Pride” parade. To be more precise, the Wildrose Legislative and Outreach Assistant, Cody Johnston, had sent out a post on Facebook asking party members to support him in a “Pride Run” for the “Institute for Sexual Minority Studies.”

Members objected that this gave the public impression that the Wildrose Party supports such things. I do not know if they used intemperate language. If so, no examples seem to have been publicly offered. The worst Johnston has offered to the public as examples are “What kind of crap is this that you’re mailing out in the name of the Wildrose party?” and “Do not give the viewers the impression that this is Wildrose approved.”

Party leader Brian Jean has since spoken out: “There is no place for hate and that kind of speech within our party. There just isn’t.”

Hate speech?

Problem. This demonstrates that the average person cannot tell the difference between tolerance and active support. If you are not prepared to openly support a position, you are now intolerant.

As the Catholic Register put it recently:

Most people today equate tolerance with approval. Therefore, when many demand or ask for “tolerance” what they really demand is approval.

Bad news for Canadian Christians still reticent about converting to Islam.

Amsterdam does itself proud.

Or anyone concerned about freedom of thought in Canada.

Both homosexual sex and pride, both promoted by such parades, are sins—not only to Christians, but to just about anybody, of any religion. So, leaving aside homosexuality, is lust. Some people currently may be of the opinion that there is nothing sinful about either lust, homosexual sex or pride, that traditional morality is in error here, but they have no business demanding that everyone else think the same. They are free to make those arguments, so long as they do so in their own name. And so long as they respect the absolute right of others to disagree.

This has nothing to do with whether homosexuals should be discriminated against by the state because of their preference for homosexual sex. A moral person would have no difficulty in accepting that this is a private matter, and the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. But that is not the issue here. The very point of the “pride” parade is to refuse to keep such things private, and to demand public endorsement.

For a party leader, public official, or party functionary to march in such a parade really ought to be offensive to most Canadians, including “homosexual” Canadians. If our instincts are now the opposite, so much the worse for our cities of the plain.

The Truth That Dare Not Speak Its Name

It was pretty routine to the Greeks. Pederastic "courtship."

The problem with "pedophilia" in the Catholic priesthood, such as it is, has nothing to do with celibacy.

What nobody dares say is that it has a lot to do with homosexuality.

It is mostly a matter of gay priests "grooming" younger sexual partners.

It is quite natural for homosexuals, despite all the denials, to latch on like a limpet to young teenage boys. Since their sexuality has not yet been fully fixed and confirmed by experience, they are more lilekly to be open to homoesxual acts. Moreover, in case of any resistance, they are weaker. And less credible to the authorities.

It must, after all, be difficult for homosexuals to find sexual partners. Ninety-eight percent of those they are attracted to, and might approach, are going to be repelled by the idea, and may even react violently. Not good for your ego, at best.

Younger boys are the perfect solution.

Oscar Wilde with young Lord Alfred Douglas.

It also seems quite likely, given this dynamic, that nobody is born homosexual. They are turned homosexual by older homosexuals if they are gotten to at this early, impressionable age.

Early sexual experiences are likely to leave a deep impression.

Sadly, this means that a lot of gays have probably become priests out of no religious feeling, but as a useful way to meet and gain the confidence of such young men.

As many become teachers, or coaches.

Exit question: have you ever noticed that homosexual men are generally unusually good looking? Conversely, that unusually good looking men are more likely to be homosexual?

It makes sense: an older homosexual is going to approach the pretty boys first. The girls who come later get the leftovers.

A Tour by Handcart of Babel, Bedlam, and the Land of Nod Beyond

The City of Tomorrow

U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson is under fire. A campus rally last Wednesday called for his firing. His offense was to publicly insist on the right to continue to use the English third person singular subject pronouns: he, she, it. A lesson I happen to be teaching to a Chinese student today. What I am still teaching as simply correct grammar, is now a risky political position in Canada.

Doesn’t that strike anyone as a bit odd?

Chris Selley rushes to Dr. Peterson’s defense in the National Post. Sort of. He accepts the professor’s insistence on using standard grammar as a legitimate exercise of freedom of speech. But he does call Peterson a “total jerk” for it. He asks “what kind of jerk refuses to refer to someone as he, she or they would like? They’re human beings, not issues.”

The point is, of course, that some people who are objectively male now demand the right to be referred to as “she,” some who are objectively female now insist on “he,” and some who insist they are neither the one nor the other, or both at once, demand to be referred to now as “ze,” or “xe,”or something else.

While the matter might in itself seem trivial, forcing everyone to acquiesce to this right to choose one’s own personal pronouns forces two other people, each time, to accept and consent to two dubious and dangerous assertions: that the rules of language and grammar are a personal possession, and that one’s sex is a matter of free choice. The problem with the first contention is that, if each of us may impose our own vocabulary and grammar on anyone speaking about us, communication is no longer possible. Language ceases to be as soon as it is not shared. It cannot by its nature be a personal possession.

The problem with the second contention is greater: by it not only words, but things, are subjective and infinitely fungible. Physical sex is not a matter of opinion or preference, in any sense that height, age, or eye colour are not. It is encoded as ROM in every cell. Can I declare myself twenty-five? Many would like to. How about making myself aboriginal, and so qualifying for various federal subsidies? Can I say I’m seven feet tall, and angle for a basketball scholarship? Can my new IQ be 200?

It all sounds lovely on its face. To begin with, I could be invisible and fly. It’s almost like a dream come true. One can see the attraction. But a lot else follows once we decide that a firm personal belief determines reality, even against the evince of the senses. It is all the stuff conventionally called insanity.

And I am not talking here of slippery slopes. It is not that accepting that sex is up for grabs might one day lead to all the rest. All the rest is already here, in some circles, and has been for some time. You already read it in Marcuse in the drug-soaked sixties; you read it in the seventies in the Teachings of Don Juan. It was the self-actualization movement. It is postmodernism. There is no objective truth. “Reality is a function of belief.”

First person and second person discuss third person, holding the oar, in the fifth circle of hell.

We are instantly at the bottom of this slope; or rather, as soon as we plant our mental handcart on it, it dissolves beneath us, and we find ourselves in the nether regions. Where is the logical difference, the possible distinction, between a man who feels in his deepest heart that he is really a woman, and a man who feels in his deepest heart that he is Napoleon Bonaparte?

If there is to be no objective check on our beliefs, anything is possible. And anything possible is real.

The defenders of this new postmodern theory of reality will no doubt point out that it is possible to make a distinction between personal fantasies that harm no one else, and those that do. The former ought fairly to be indulged, while the latter can be opposed.

But they have already violated that principle, in demanding that everyone else accept each individuals inner conviction of their own sex. Why does the third person in every conversation have the right to his, her, or its own reality, but not the first person or the second person? If C gets to tell A and B what to do, is the rule not already violated?

There is no way to square this circle. Postmodernism is founded on the notion that two mutually contradictory truths can happily coexist. They cannot; and the a priori truth that they cannot is, as Aristotle pointed out, the basis of all logic. Accept this idea of the malleability of reality based on belief, and all possibility of logic or reasoned discernment is lost. That is no small matter.

Among so many other things, this means that no classic distinction between my rights and yours can any longer be maintained. We can no longer say that what you believe is only your business so long as it does not harm me. What, for example, if my heart tells me that I am actually you, and you are me? What if it tells me, with a deep Buddhist profundity, that we are all one? Where is the possible distinction between my beliefs and yours then? And what if it tells me you are working with the CIA, or with sinister alien beings, and are secretly trying to control me with your radioactive brainwaves? Surely, the right of self-defense allows me to act accordingly. What if my heart tells me that what you consider harm is actually to your benefit. What if I believe you would be better off without a head?

Bethlehem Royal Hospital, 1735. Yonge and Bloor, 2016.

But why even bother with these relatively strenuous mental contortions? What is left to save any distinction anyway between the moral good and evil, between right and wrong? If there is no truth, why prefer the one over the other? Isn’t it all just another matter of personal choice?

That is just what postmodernism, constructivism, and “cultural relativism” argues already. Welcome to the bottom.

Given this path we have apparently already civilizationally chosen, no laws, no social contracts, no contracts of any kind, and no social institutions, will have any predictable or reliable results. It must, in the end, be total civilizational collapse. And not in the long run. In the very short run.

The only question then is whether another civilization has the moral strength to take over.

Or is there perhaps a chance to preserve something in remote monasteries?