Do not read this

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All readers are warned: if, in spite of my clear statement that what is behind the cut is offensive and contains a thoroughly unpopular attitude, you still go and read it, do not dare, afterward, write angry or offended comments or e-mails. They will be not only deleted, but replaced with appropriate comments on the absurdity of such attitudes. I

Comments

Can you do no better?

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Half your response has no real argument at all; and what there is of argument is quite remarkably inept for such an intelligent person, and a scientist to boot. To begin with, a scientist of all people ought to feel the significance of Mr.Lee's description of the sneak-strategy of the homosexual movement - not present an argument for debate, but make it so much a part of the landscape that it comes to be accepted independently of any real value it may have. This was exactly the kind of strategy that the scientific community in the United States had to fight in the all too recent bad old days of Creationism, when a considerable amount of extreme Protestants tried to convince the court that the mere existence of a Creationist body of opinion was reason enough to grant it "equal time" in schools and colleges. The similarity of the strategies, as well as Lee's clear and convincing exposure of the leading advocate's bad faith, should have rung all sorts of alarm bells in your mind. Instead of which, you indulge in unscientific and snotty sneers about "fandom arguments", as if fandom were not a social group like any other, and as if the mechanics of argument, good faith, bad faith, social assertion and debate, were not the same.

That you are no sociologist, and that you have only the crudest understanding of the mechanics of social change, was all too clear at the time of the debate about Hollywood and Kate Moss, when you not only failed to understand my argument, but failed to understand that there was an argument at all. Here you prove yourself similarly incapable of understanding Mr.Lee. You "suppose that his point is that why bother want homosexual marriage if you don't believe in fidelity anyway?," which is reductive and wrong. What he is saying, clearly, at length, and without any chance of error, is that the whole homosexual "lifestyle" is tainted, that its acceptance implies the denial of the very idea of sexual morality, and that it is for this reason that it is promoted. "Gay marriage" only comes in little and late, and the fact that you reduce the whole argument to something about that only shows that you are incapable of stepping outside your own set of concerns, which is frankly narrow and modish.

I have no doubt that you have never, before this, had to consider any serious argument against the majority view of sexuality and sex. Lee's language, and mine, is completely foreign to you, and, in trying even to sneer at it, you make the most astonishing mistakes. You ignore the fact that McNeill posed as a scholar and wrote a book that was intended to be scholarly, and talk as though a priest writing a book on moral theology should automatically be treated as a politician. By the same token, a biologist publishing about biology ought to be evaluated on his/her secret political motives and not on whether his/her argument makes sense as an argument? Don't be silly. McNeill was not obviously a politician; he was a priest in orders, doing the work of a priest, and it was as a priest that he spoke. It is only in retrospect that the abuse of position and role becomes clear.