Sadly Gay

A large new study has failed to find such a thing as a “gay gene.”

Given the rapid growth of our knowledge of the human genome over the past few years, a negative finding by now is pretty definitive. It turns out that homosexuals are not “born that way.”

This should not be surprising to anyone with common sense. Homosexuals do not reproduce. Were there a “gay gene,” it would eliminate itself from the gene pool over two generations.

But the current concept of homosexuality as a human right, against which one must not discriminate, is based on this false premise.

Yet we also cannot see homosexuality as something anyone is likely to choose as a lifestyle. Less than 3% of the population is homosexual. That means that, if you are, at least 97% of those to whom you are sexually attracted will be repelled by any approach. Not great odds for a happy sex life or a healthy self-image. Worse, you cannot easily tell by looking at them who is in the 3%.

So, if it is not genetic, and nobody would consciously choose it, how does anyone become homosexual?

The obvious alternative is that they are groomed into it. Given that homosexuals face almost certain rejection in most other circumstances, their obvious strategy is to approach adolescents not yet very aware of sex, or their own sexuality, and seduce them before they know what is going on. Or exploit some power relationship.

We are hard-wired to form an emotional attachment to whomever we first have sex with. This is easily explained in Darwinian terms. It is the basis for the oldest of pickup lines, “you remind me of someone.” If our first sexual experience is with a blonde, we will favour blondes from then on; if with a short woman, we will favour short women; and so on. See if it is not true for yourself.

A reason, not incidentally, why premarital sex is a bad idea. If you can marry your first sexual partner, the emotional bond will be far stronger.

But this also means that, if you are seduced by an older gay man when an adolescent, you may well become homosexual yourself.

Homosexuality, in other words, is contagious.

This is currently and often forcefully denied. Relevant authorities will insist that homosexuals are no more likely to be pedophiles than homosexuals.

But the numbers in the sex scandal in the North American Catholic Church say otherwise. Eighty percent of victims have been adolescent males. And common sense says otherwise: given the odds of rejection otherwise, homosexuals must face a stronger temptation here. Moreover, the idea of an older man “mentoring” a younger one is the understood norm of homosexuality in places, like Ancient Greece or English public schools, in which it has been acceptable.

This might then explain in large part why most societies and cultures oppose homosexuality. It is cruel and predatory to turn a young man gay. That forces him onto the same obstacles to sexual satisfaction that drew the partner to this strategy. Not to mention opening him to a much higher risk of sexually-transmitted diseases, the inability to have children, the less comfortable match between two male psyches, and so on.

Putting it all together, it really looks like a remarkably bad idea to celebrate homosexuality, hold “pride” parades, and assign the practice inalienable rights. This has nothing to do with compassion towards homosexuals.

The real reason we have gone so far down this treacherous cul-de-sac, I suspect, is that seeing homosexuality as a human right allowed and allows us to pillory conventional morality as discriminatory. Satan forbid there should be any restrictions on our own sexual license.

There is already hell to pay.

Wars and Rumours of War

Aunty Fascist.

I think it is indisputable that we, in Europe, America, and Oceania, “the West,” or “Western civilization,” are now in a state of cold civil war. Normal discourse is being shut down, and this must lead to violence. To an extent, violence has already started, with gangs like Antifa in the streets.

I also think there is no question who is the aggressor in this war: the “left.” It is the left that has been trying to shut down civil discourse; this is demonstrable. They are shouting down, censoring, passing “hate speech” laws, banning, boycotting, and unfriending.

Not all wars are contests of good against evil. But in the normal course of things, contrary to popular belief, most are. If both parties are of good heart, things can almost certainly be worked out without violence. A war that is simply a “misunderstanding” is improbable.

When this is the case, when it is good against evil, it is generally the party of evil who begins the war. It is not that starting a war is evil in itself, as is often claimed, but that it is the side with a losing argument who will want to shut down debate and resort to force. As a desperation measure, because otherwise they will lose the debate.

And it is usually the party of evil, or the party that begins the war, who loses it. That is, given that the parties are reasonably equally matched--this rule cannot apply if, for example, the British Empire invades Easter Island with a dozen ships of the line.

It sounds crazy, but it makes sense. First, there is the logic of the ordeal or duel: the assumption behind these practices was that the human conscience would strengthen the arm and aim of one who knew they were in the right. Second, the side that lacks justification is going to war as a desperation measure; because they know they will lose the argument. As they go to war in desperation, they may well go to war against the odds.

The obvious historical example is the Second World War. Granted that Stalin was as bad, overall, as Hitler, I think there is no room to dispute that right was on the side of the Western Allies against the Nazis. And I think the argument is compelling that Hitler, and Japan, went to war with little chance of winning from the outset. It is as though in a fit of suicidal rage they just wanted to take down as many people with them as possible.

I think, contrary to much opinion, that the same was true of the First World War. Germany was morally in the wrong, advancing an ideology of social Darwinism, Germany and Austria were the aggressors, first declaring war, and Germany and Austria lost.

American Civil War: begun by the South by firing on Fort Sumter. They were obviously morally in the wrong, to the extent that they were fighting to preserve slavery, they started a war that, in terms of relative economic and military strength, they had little chance to win, and they lost the war they had begun.

Franco-Prussian War: France declared war on Prussia for no good reason but grandeur and to check German power. France lost.

Punic Wars: who started them is unclear; but the Carthaginians practiced child sacrifice, and so were clearly in the moral wrong as a civilization. And they lost.

The left, I think on this basis, is doomed to lose this current civil war. And I believe, as I have said before, that the real underlying issue is abortion, and the supposed right to unrestricted sex. It is only a matter of how much blood they can spill in the effort.

Once they lose, I think we can expect the world to return to a healthy course and reconstruct.

Forget Greenland

I’m intrigued by Trump’s idea of buying Greenland. Buying land and inhabitants from another country sounds odd, but the US has done it before. They bought Alaska from Russia, the vast Louisiana Territory from France, the Gadsden Purchase of southern Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico. 

Gadsden Purchase

Reports are that Greenland and Denmark are not interested.

I have a better idea.

Let’s sell Trump Canada instead.

Gets him just about as close to the North Pole and the North Atlantic. Nice bundle of resources, too.

We could sell it all to the US at, say, $100,000 per Canadian; or, really, just about any sum. Then we pocket the money, nominally become Americans, and go on pretty much as we had. But with full access to American markets and opportunities. As American citizens, we continue to own what we sold anyway.

I can’t see a downside.

But here’s the deeper moral: this is more or less the deal Canada’s First Nations made when they signed their various treaties. Contrary to common claims and complaints, it was actually a sweetheart deal for them.

The Fire This Time

St. Dymphna

Luke’s gospel is uncompromising. This Sunday’s reading:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

So much for “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” As Andrew Klavan has observed, he is nowhere in the gospels.

I have heard this passage described repeatedly as “challenging.” Followed by a sermon that did not challenge, but avoided mentioning what the passage actually says: Jesus is against peace and family values.

We should not be surprised. Either is an idolatry, the more dangerous for being so apparently desirable, and so seductive. This is what evil always is: God created all things good. Evil consists of valuing a lesser good over a greater.

Sex is good; and so the temptation is to elevate sex beyond its procreative station. Material comfort is good. And so the love of money becomes the root of evil. In the same way, family and peace are desirable, and so especially likely to lead to sin. 

Peace in our time.

Neville Chamberlain serenely betrayed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the name of peace. Lincoln could have had peace and avoided the carnage of the Civil War by guaranteeing the right to slavery. The neighbours of Kitty Genovese opted for peace. As Edmund Burke put it, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

And “family” is at least as often as not in rivalry with spiritual values. Family values are pagan values: valuing family relationships beyond the point required by gratitude implies devaluing all those to whom you are not related. It is at base no more admirable than racism.

St. Dymphna’s father demanded that she marry him. That would be the ultimate expression of family values.

Salve Regina

Hail, holy queen, mother of mercy; our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

We said the prayer daily. Father Joe always objected to it. This is not, he insisted, a valley of tears. To say so is rank ingratitude. He was of the hallelujah chorus:

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

I believe the Salve Regina is right, and the Hallelujah chorus has it wrong.

We are not, after all, in the Garden of Eden, and this present world we inhabit is not the Kingdom of Heaven.

Why not? Why couldn’t God, being all-powerful and all-good, do a better job of it?

Because, surely, a heaven that had bad people in it could not be a heaven. Their activities would subvert it. There was and is a need for a place of trial. Here the tares must be allowed to thrive with the wheat, here there must be sufferings and temptations to sin--so that a heaven is possible. And everyone cannot go there.

For those who experience this present world as a satisfactory world, there must be something wrong. It is not a good sign to have reconciled with an unjust world in which, whatever your own circumstances, others are manifestly suffering. Luke lays it out in the Sermon on the Plain: “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” But “woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.”

Bernier Comes Out Against Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism: Canada as a human zoo.

Max Bernier’s People’s Party has declared its intention to abolish the Multiculturalism Act. 

Barring unforeseen circumstances, that clinches it for me. If I can get on the rolls, I vote PPC. Multiculturalism is poisonous. I want Canadian culture. If I want Maltese culture, there is always Malta. Why should Canada be the only nation not allowed a culture? Add this to Bernier’s brave stand against the milk and egg cartels; he is owed my support. And, I think, yours too.

Sure, I worry about splitting the anti-Trudeau vote. But Scheer is not a leader. If he were elected, present policies would apparently barely change. They would only be managed more competently. I'm not even sure that's to our advantage, given the policies.

I am astounded that Bernier has not taken off in the polls. But that may be because most people do not pay much attention to such things between elections. He might catch fire in the campaign.

Tulsi Gabbard is a similar case to the south of us. Surely the only reason she has not taken off, after two historically good debate performances, is that nobody is paying much attention yet.

Or else a lot of people still take their lead from whatever they hear or read in the mainstream media.

Epstein's Eyes Shut

Jeffrey Epstein

I really don’t want to write this post. But I think it would be cowardice not to. I hate to speak of formal conspiracies, because they are intrinsically improbable, and the stuff of paranoia.

But the death of Jeffrey Epstein seems to require it. The level of incompetence required in prison officials in order to allow him to commit suicide in his cell is wildly improbable. At this point, that he was murdered by some group powerful enough to subvert prison management becomes the likeliest explanation.

It all makes me think of Stanley Kubrick’s final movie, Eyes Wide Shut, which involves the premise that there is a secret sex cult of the rich and famous—like the one Epstein is claimed to have run. The movie leaves it ambiguous whether this cult will go so far as to kill to preserve its secrecy; but this is a possibility clearly raised. 

The original story on which the movie was based was set in Vienna. Kubrick moved it to New York—the same place from which Epstein was operating.

Did Kubrick know something? Was he issuing a warning? Rather as he called out the madness of the elites in Dr. Strangelove? Veiled, perhaps, because he feared repercussions if he were too explicit?

This may also be why Eyes Wide Shut was his last movie. His wife has said he long wanted to make this film, but was not ready yet. He may have known he was ill when he decided to make it—he died just after filming, but before release—and figured now he could risk it, having less to lose. Or, worse, his sudden death just after finishing the movie might not have been natural, as Epstein’s seems not to have been. And just as the death of one of the characters in the film looks like murder masked as a drug overdose.

Makes a really good conspiracy theory, doesn’t it?

And here’s another faggot for the fire. I just saw a piece pointing out that Andrew Breitbart’s sudden death at 43 of a heart attack followed soon after a tweet that suggested he had some salacious information about such a sex ring:

“How prog-guru John Podesta isn’t household name as world class underage sex slave op cover-upperer defending unspeakable dregs escapes me.”

Less than a month later, he was dead.

There are other such suspicious deaths, if one looks; some keep a tally of what they call the “Clinton body count.”

It does seem plausible, given our lax sexual morals in the last several generations, that such a high-level sex ring is a real thing. Consider the recent #metoo revelations; consider the recent scandal in the US Catholic hierarchy over a homosexual sex ring.

Consider now that we are speaking of people with immense power and a great deal to lose if this all came out in public.

We kidded ourselves in the fifties and sixties that sexual morality had nothing to do with morality in general. But when we dropped our sexual ethics, especially when the upper class and elites did, we implicitly dropped morality in general. This is now perhaps at last dawning in the public consciousness.

The strongest argument against such a conspiracy is that it is improbable that so many people could keep an important secret for a long time.

But then, maybe it was not being kept a secret. Maybe Kubrick was telling us.

Eyes Wide Shut indeed.

The Culture of Death

Just a quick, common example of how environmentalism has become an anti-human creed implicitly  justifying mass shootings. Friend Xerxes writes, in his latest column:

"At the planetary level, I wonder if we’re becoming a cancer. I don’t like the idea of encouraging deaths. But maybe we should re-think our incessant urge to prolong life indefinitely."

The Growing Toll of Environmentalism

Save our people?

It occurs to me that the entire structure of Pharisaism—in modern times, the education system, the press, the legal system, and the government bureaucracy—is there to inculcate and sustain the shared delusions of the matrix.

A current and critical example is the rash of mass shooters in the US. To read the press and watch the mainstream media, you would think they are all white supremacists and Trump supporters. The manifesto of the Christchurch killer was even aggressively suppressed in order, it seems, to further this idea.

And this is a particularly pernicious example. It is sacrificing innocents to Moloch in order to preserve the power of the powerful. Unless we examine the true causes of these killings, they will no doubt continue and get worse.

None of these killers have been Trump supporters, and none of them have been white supremacists.

Looking at the most recent shootings, in Dayton, El Paso, and Gilroy, and also at Christchurch, what is the real common thread?

It is environmentalism.

All of these killers were animated primarily, it seems, by the idea that human beings are destroying the sacred earth. This gives implicit warrant to kill people.

And, of course, if overpopulation is strangling the planet, it is transparent madness to let all kinds of people into the country. We will then ultimately need to fight them over the last water hole. It is simple urgent survival to keep their numbers down by any means necessary. While it is still possible…

The second consistent thread of thought among these killers seems to be multiculturalism/cultural relativism. This links culture with race, as the Nazis did. If new immigrants flood in, there is no question under multiculturalism and the banning of “cultural appropriation” of their assimilating and becoming like the rest of us. Instead, any large migration is an invasion by a permanently alien entity. Allow enough of them in, then, and necessarily, by this logic, it will end the existing American culture. If you suppose America is even a little better than the average among nations, or have some sentimental attachment to things like Mom, democracy, equality before the law, and apple pie, this would seem to demand action in defense of the country. Sheer self-reservation again demands action before it is too late.

But this idea comes entirely from the left, not the right; at least in North America. The traditional doctrine on the North American right has always been that neither Canada nor America is an ethnic nation, but are founded on certain shared ideas or values—on common culture. This multiculturalism and cultural relativism rejects.

Next to this, a common thread for many of these cases—I do not know if this is true in these present cases—seems to be the effective absence of a father in the home of the killer.

And again, it is the left that is promoting the idea that fathers are unnecessary.

Contra Relativism

My politically southpawed pal Xerxes has declared of late that he knows nothing for certain. “I am absolutely sure that I can’t be absolutely sure of anything anymore. Life evolves. Knowledge changes. Sooner or later, everything I’m sure of will require reconsideration.”

To the contrary, as Aquinas would say, I maintain there are a series of truths that are self-evident and undeniable:

The truths of mathematics. Two and two will always equal four. The Pythagorean theorem will hold in all relevant cases.

Logical truths. Both A and not-A cannot simultaneously be true. If B follows from A, and C from B, then C follows from A. And so on.

Ethical truths. Kant’s categorical imperative, the golden rule. Although there can be argument over specific cases, we all know in our conscience that all are created equal, and that murder or lying, for example, are morally wrong.

The intrinsic value of truth, good, and beauty. The transcendentals.

Aside from the many other formal proofs of the existence of God, I think it is close to self-evident to the light of reason that there is a complex pattern and organization to the natural world, which forces the conclusion that there is an intelligence that designed it. Therefore, the existence of God seems like certain knowledge, even though some claim to dispute it.

Even were this not so as a logical proposition, the existence of God can be directly experienced, in such a way that it is known with certainty, whether or not one can convey this experience and this certainty to anyone else. Being able to convey this truth is a separate matter from the knowledge itself: I can be certain that I love my wife, without necessarily being able to convince her of this.

From this set of propositions—perhaps there are more self-evident truths that I overlook here, but from these alone—a great deal more can be reliable deduced to be true.

Counter to this, Xerxes cites Heisenberg’s “uncertainly principle” as proving that nothing is certain.

Heisenberg’s principle refers to a specific problem in observing subatomic structures. To apply it outside this context is not legitimate. That is like saying, for a random analogy, that because jaywalking is illegal, all possible human actions are illegal. At most, it tends to throw into doubt the scientistic notion that science is capable of discovering all truth: an unscientific and philosophically false idea in any case.

The same is so for the observer paradox, which Xerxes goes on to cite. This is a problem for science, in its claim of objectivity, not for ontology or for epistemology.

It can indeed be argued that science has little necessary relation to truth in the first place. As Popper, for example, has argued recently, or as did Copernicus at its origin.

Xerxes goes on to endorse what he calls “both/and” reasoning over “either/or.” He seems to here be directly rejecting Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction: that both A and not A cannot simultaneously be true. This is a non-starter. Some choices, of course, are not binary; but even such more complex choices, as we can see from computer architecture, are built on prior binary choices. Consider for analogy a Xerxian computer in which each bit was not either 1 or 0, but both 1 and 0 at the same time. It is intrinsically nonsensical, of course, when so graphically illustrated. And of course, no such computer would function. So too with human judgement.

Which I suspect is the underlying point, here and so often with leftward thought: the motive is a desire to escape all moral judgements. Xerxes goes on, not for the first time, to speak against conventional morality, conventional ideas of good and evil, on the premise that things like water, science, or fossil fuels, are in themselves neither good or bad. Rather, what matters is that they be in the right proportion. Too little water kills; so does too much. And so forth.

This idea of “everything in moderation,” however, cannot work. Because it is immediately self-contradictory: too much moderation is itself immoderate. Moreover, why is moderation preferable? Because it produces good? But then aren’t you being immoderate if you always choose the good?

Xerxes is misrepresenting conventional morality in the first place in implying that it holds anything to be intrinsically evil. God created all things; it follows that all things are intrinsically good. However, you must integrate this with the idea of hierarchy; not all things are equally good. Otherwise there is no way of settling on the "right" proportion of anything. What is right depends on what the goal is—and the goal must itself therefore be seen as having an intrinsic value greater than other possible goals.

Moral judgements are therefore not properly applied to things as things, but to human thoughts or actions. Here it is essential to make moral judgements. Murder is evil; even a little bit of it is evil. Hate is evil; even a little bit of it is evil. Conversely, there is no such thing as too much love of God. Self-evidently, too much good (or virtue) does not become evil. One can argue otherwise, but only by falsifying the proper meaning of “virtue” or “good.” More broadly, evil consists in preferring a lesser to a greater good.

One more typical left-wing thought from Xerxes: he writes that “Individuals are in some way the sum of their relationships.”

That is dangerously misleading without an explicit reference to one’s relationship with God. It is ultimately only this relationship that counts, as any mystic will tell you, and other relationships are of value only to the extent that they conform to this one. Otherwise Xerxes’s ethic here is to “go along to get along,” which is the broad and level road to Hell. It is the ethic that sustained Nazi Germany, or that sustains the Mafia.