Attorney Discerning

Just another poor dumb sinner; trying to do what he can for Christ & His Church

Friday, April 04, 2008

McHugh is here referring to “sexual identity” as it would be sensibly understood pre -gay activism: Male and female, not homosexual and heterosexuality. It is ironic that in the worldview of the modern left, significant differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals (which science shows to be extraordinarily difficult to characterize and wholly unstable) are argued to be innate, while significant differences between men and women (which are enormous, self-evident and permanent) are argued to be at once trivial and socially constructed.

This statement does not contradict the presence of “indirect genetic factors” influencing homosexuality. Most people mistakenly presume that an indirect genetic influence refers to a mere technical distinction. In fact, the distinction is crucial. Basketball playing shows a very strong, argu ably stronger than homosexuality, indirect genetic influence, but there are no genes for basketball playing —it is a wholly “environmentally” influenced behavior subject to a high degree of choice —much higher than same-sex attraction. The crucial point is that genes that indirectly influence a trait have nothing at all to do with the trait itself and therefore can’t possibly “cause” it. The genes that influence the likelihood someone will become a basketball player are self -evident: Those that code for height, athleticism, muscle refresh rate. There are, at present, even strong racial genetic associations to basketball playing. These associations are almost entirely socially-determined while the genes themselves are biological (and evolved in an era before basketball playing even existed), and the associational degree (i.e., with race) fluctuates over time as basketball spreads across the globe.


This phenomenon was actually first recognized not by sociologists, epidemiologists, psychiatrists, psychiatrists or any other kind of “ist,” but by savvy Smith College students who first called themselves SLUGs: Smith Lesbians Until Graduation. Elsewhere, the eponym mutated into Selectively Lesbian Until Graduation.

6 Comments:

At 2:18 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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At 12:26 PM, Blogger Fitz said...

http://shekidnappedmychildren.wordpress.com/2008/05/

http://www.misandryreview.com/wordpress/?p=1265

 
At 4:49 PM, Blogger Fitz said...

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lagay20-2008may20,0,5944107.story

 
At 10:50 AM, Blogger Fitz said...

In their landmark 1967 ruling striking down long-held prohibitions on inter-racial marriage, the Supreme Court said plainly, "Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival."

And in 1972, that very same Supreme Court said (essentially) that limiting marriage to one man and one woman did not violate any aspect of the U.S. Constitution.

Understand what these words say: "Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man (because it's) fundamental to our very existence and survival." What about marriage is "fundamental to our very existence and survival"? What did CJ Justice mean when he wrote those words. It seems obvious, and other courts have affirmed, that he was talking about procreation. Now, I don't agree with him because it's obvious, considering that about 40% of children born today in the U.S. are born out of wedlock, that marriage is not essential to the survival of the human race. But that's what he said and that's what the "72 Supreme Court reafirmed.

So, exactly what is the "basic civil right" declared by the '67 Court. It's the right of any unmarried consenting adult to marry any other unrelated unmarried consenting adult of the opposite sex. It's disingenous to cite Loving v. Virginia without also citing Baker v. Nelson.

Interestingly, the United States Supreme Court decided to dismiss the appeal in Baker just five years after its landmark ruling in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), suggesting that the Court did not see a link between the constitutional mandate to remove racial restrictions on marriage and a fundamental redefinition of marriage as the union of any two persons.

 
At 10:53 AM, Blogger Fitz said...

I agree with Professor Cassell. I opposed Proposition 8, including in comments at this very blog.

But Judge Vaughn Walker’s handling of this case has been a travesty. He has pandered to local public opinion (where Prop. 8 was unpopular, despite passing statewide) at every step.

In any event, lower court judges are bound to follow Supreme Court precedent until the Supreme Court overrules that precedent. The Supreme Court has upheld against a federal constitutional challenge a state’s refusal to allow gay people to marry. Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972). California has done far less than what the Supreme Court held was permissible in Baker, by allowing gay people to marry in all but name (civil unions).

As the Supreme Court observed in RODRIGUEZ DE QUIJAS v. SHEARSON/AM. EXP., 490 U.S. 477, 485 (1989), “If a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.” Moreover, the Supreme Court has not even rejected the rational-basis review that applied to sexual-orientation classifications at the time of Baker, meaning that there is even less reason for a lower court judge to ignore its decision in Baker. Baker v. Nelson controls, and the plaintiffs’ challenge should be dismissed.

 
At 7:24 AM, Blogger Fitz said...

In my article, I lay out new evidence strongly suggesting that, around the world, a cluster of marriage-weakening trends and attitudes (one of which is the embrace of gay marriage) hang together and appear to be mutually reinforcing. No, I cannot prove causation beyond any doubt (no one could); and no, scholars cannot measure with scientific precision the exact degrees and instrumentalities of causation. But to me, the evidence suggesting mutual reinforcement, a kind of syndrome of related attitudes and behaviors — i.e., evidence suggesting some form of causation — is quite persuasive. Carpenter is free to disagree, of course, but to be taken seriously, he needs to do more than simply repeat back to me that correlation does not prove causation

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/451noxve.asp

 

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