Tales from conservative hobnobs
Click to viewSorba's hilarious rant about 'natural rights' here is based upon what I think is an incredibly dangerous and disgusting position that takes human beings for just an especially advanced type of animal--which, of course, we are. Biologically speaking. This position comes from one of two positions: a pernicious overextension of the modern synthesis of Wallace-Darwinian evolution into social and moral theory, or a certain type of religious, especially Christian, fervour that puts an entirely undue amount of emphasis on the Fall of Man and not nearly enough on the hope for transformative grace. This 'natural rights' thing was cutting-edge in the times of Thomas Hobbes. To-day, while good and sane people still occasionally bring up 'natural rights' for legitimate or semi-legitimate reasons, it is usually indicative of the unholy and utterly nonsensical alliance of fundamentalist Christian pessimism and mechanical metaphysical naturalism to justify hatred and fear of people guilty of EWFQ*.
It is perfectly understandable that some people. especially elderly or sheltered people, are a little leery of gay rights and feminism due to a natural human fear of the unfamiliar and different. It is unacceptable, however--unacceptable and outright dangerous--to say or do things like this in an attempt to justify that fear, or even worse, outright hatred. The 'reproductive act' (sex) is more obviously divorced from actual reproduction to-day than it has ever been, but this schism started as soon as the human race evolved into a moral and rational creature (as usual, Sorba gets the social-philosophy concept of 'rational being' only half right, if even that) with some degree of control over its own destiny. At this point humanity began to be subject to moral forces higher than mere survival and reproduction. This being the case, the purpose of the 'reproductive act' is, depending on your beliefs, either love, self-interest, physical pleasure, or some combination of the three. Because humans have contraception and do not have oestrus, the majority of sex engaged in by humans does not result in pregnancy, and it is possible to become pregnant without having sex.
You make like this divide or you may not. You may hold, with the Catholic Church, that there is a philosophical/psychological link between the old 'reproduction' and the new 'love', and that they should inform each other. You may hold, with the Anglican Church, that the 'love' is the most important thing and that separating the 'reproduction' from it is problematic**. In any case you may not hold that the nature of the human race and the nature of love are such that this ancient, brutalist idea of 'sowing oats' is the only legitimate social or philosophical point of human sexuality.. It demeans love, it demeans human nature, and quite frankly it demeans childbearing by associating the importance that many people attach to it with this sort of babbling bullshit.
GOProud (which Sorba misnamed as GOPride) is a newish gay Republican group that was invited to CPAC for the first time this year. I don't believe in or stand for the same things that GOProud believes in and stands for, but I do believe powerfully in such a group's right to attend a political conference of people who share its political positions without having their love devalued and impugned. Sorba was disrespectful, acted like a self-superior douchebag 'bro', and what he was saying was both evil and stupid to boot. The fact that he was booed is one of the few rays of light to have ever come out of CPAC and I hope the people of GOProud otherwise had an enjoyable and edifying conservative day.
Also of note is that this year's CPAC was funded in part by the John Birch Society, which is an American right-wing think tank that is so extreme that William F. Buckley, no friend of liberals or even moderates himself, ran them out of the conservative movement in the 1960s. The 'Birchers' are those people who think that fluoridation is a 'gateway' to putting abortion drugs in the water supply and Dwight D. Eisenhower was a Communist sleeper agent. Eisenhower for God's sake.
One last thing: OF COURSE the lesbians of Smith College protest better than people at CPAC. Nobody protests like the lesbians of Smith College. <333 Smith College.
*Existing While Female and/or Queer.
**I would take this position in most circumstances were it not for the fact that gay people deserve to be able to have children and (at this point) simply CAN'T reproduce through the quote-unquote 'normal' sex act--the fact that the AC, one of the more gay-friendly of the 'traditional' Christian denominations (which is one of the major reasons why I'm Anglican and not RC or Eastern Orthodox), overlooks this is something that I find highly questionable. The same goes for people who have infertility problems.