Thursday
(0)We who fancy women but renounce our desires must work to end the evil oppression by the actively straight people. They impose all sorts of costs on us, lobbying for government funding of research into impotence, test tube babies and groin problems. They force us to pay for family planning clinics and for their children's education. This permissive society we live in where a man and a woman are legally allowed to have sex must be stopped.
Is that a bad argument? Yes, you're right. But it's exactly the same as those used by John Derbyshire and other social authoritarians with regards to homosexuality:
More open attitudes to homosexuality were socially liberal...but led to lavishly funded programs to look after AIDS victims and pay for research into cures, and to state patrolling of our speech and thoughts via 'hate-crime' legislation.
Hang on a minute! Straight people get sexually transmitted diseases as well, and much government spending on AIDS programmes is actually directed at straight people in Africa where it is a real problem. AIDS-infected homosexuals, very much on the decline in Britain, generally die before they retire, thus cutting the amount of money they claim from the state. What the social authoritarians are forgetting is that straight people, as well as gay people, use political power to lobby to impose costs on the rest of society.
It is true that some gay people are statists who think the government should force everyone to give them acceptance. They are just like social authoritarians who also want to use the power of the state to impose their views. While it is true that on the question of speech, social authoritarians don't say that they want to ban gay speech, that is only because they know they wouldn't gain the political support for it. Instead, they complain about libraries having gay sections and about 'gay propaganda' on television. They usually favour censorship of sex and violence.
At stake here are two visions of a society. One is a bottom up society, where people can make their own choices about their lives, where people make mistakes, but where society grows and develops organically. The other is a top down society, where – even if your actions don’t hurt anyone – you can have your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness made illegal.
Most gay people are not particularly interested in 'gay politics' at all. They have never done anyone any harm. They just want to get on with their lives without the state telling them what to do or punishing them for their choices.
What the social authoritarians are forgetting is that straight people, as well as gay people, use political power to lobby to impose costs on the rest of society.
I'm hardly a social authoritarian - I don't care what consenting adult humans get up to as long as they don't do it in the street and scare the horses - but it's not much of an argument to say "you can't blame gays for doing bad thing X, when straights do bad thing X, too." Down with everyone who does bad thing X, I say.
Something is wrong when NIH funds research at the rate of $1,129 per heart disease death, $723 per stroke death, $4,995 per diabetes death, $4,525 per cancer death, but $31,381 per HIV/AIDS death.
Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.)
AIDS is a venereal disease and so, short of transfusions and other mishaps, is imminently preventable. If I were gay or African, I think I'd be troubled by the apparent underlying premise of the disproportional spending on AIDS research - "well, my goodness, you can't expect gay people and Africans to control themselves and not to have risky sex all over the place, can you?"
Posted by S. Weasel at August 7, 2003 01:57 PM
I like the weird assertion in the Conservative Commentary piece that the permissive society and small government are incompatible.
What with all those newfangled communications media, unholy freedom of movement, and proliferaton of private space, I don't see how they're going to get all those wicked hedonists under control without big expansion of government power. They need either a puritan social revolution that ain't much in evidence, or (a more likely horror) the completion of Blunkettopia.
Posted by Guy Herbert at August 7, 2003 02:05 PM
Clearly Peter Cuthbertson and John Derbyshire don't like the idea of living in a "bottom up" society.
Posted by Paul Coulam at August 7, 2003 02:30 PM
Guy,
What "big government" costs were ever associated with stable marriage and children loved by co-habiting parents?
Alex,
Two very disappointing lies in your post:-
1) Social conservatism is not social authoritarianism. Go to Iran or Saudi and see the difference. Social conservatism has as its first principle the aptness of our folkways and as its second the desireability of maintenance thereof.
2) The alternative to a bottom up society where people make their own choices about their lives is not, therefore, a top down society. It is a psychologically healthy society.
A top down society will flow precisely from destroying our traditional social institutions. Think who it is that will gain from destroying our traditional social institutions. Not libertarians like you, right?
Posted by Guessedworker at August 7, 2003 02:38 PM
Eminently. Not imminently. Why can't I get that word to stick in my head properly?
Posted by S. Weasel at August 7, 2003 03:27 PM
I'm not suggesting that traditional families are a bad idea or require fostering by the state; merely that the promotion of virtue and suppression of vice are costly. And more difficult to enforce than ever before.
We have a permissive society (if not perhaps permissive enough for some of us), in which lots of actions you or I may not like or approve of are permitted. Our tastes no doubt differ.
What's objectionable isn't the permissiveness, but the milksop assumption that one shouldn't have to bear the consequences of one's choices, and the bully assumption that one has a right to impose on others in pursuit of them.
Posted by Guy Herbert at August 7, 2003 03:42 PM
Sorry, Alex, but, although straight people catch HIV now it's become an epidemic, it was gay men who made it an epidemic in the first place (at least outside Africa). It is well documented that, at the start of the epidemic, when no-one knew what the disease was, it was young gay men, not heterosexuals, who were dying of the mystery illness. There is a strain of HIV which is better adapted to transmission through straight sex, but the strains which proved so successful in the 80s were better adapted for transmission through anal sex. This is hardly surprising, as there was a huge amount of unprotected anal sex going on in large gay communities such as San Francisco's, and successful microbes exploit their hosts' behaviour. It is no more homophobic to say that the behaviour of promiscuous condomless gay men was exploited by the AIDS virus than it is racist to say that the rural Chinese habit of keeping pigs, ducks, & humans in close proximity to each other is exploited by the flu virus.
Now, obviously, gay men didn't have sex in order to start a lethal epidemic. It's the law of unintended consequences again, and I don't blame anyone for it. But then neither does John Derbyshire.
Posted by Squander Two at August 7, 2003 03:43 PM
The main problem with AIDS in the West is the bleating that came out Gay activists in the late 80s'. I was told at university that in ten years time there was a good chance one of the people around me would die of AIDS. This was, of course, total bullshit. In the West, straight cases of AIDS are very rare indeed.
Saying that does not make me a "homophobe", its just the case. The reason AIDS is an epidemic in Africa is because religious and government institutions have pushed (and failed miserably) abstinense (sic) instead of encouraging the use of condoms. On Newsnight, some idiot from SA claimed that AIDS was not a problem in Africa and that it was a white disease.
It is ludicrous how much is spent on AIDS/HIV research as compared to other more deadly diseases. Its just that their lobby screams louder and has the ear of Hollywood.
Posted by Andrew Ian Dodge at August 7, 2003 04:25 PM
As usual, gay people have to be perfect if they don't want to be picked on for special attack for wanting and doing exactly the same things that nobody ever complains about straight people doing.
And as usual, this reality is falsely claimed to equate to: "you can't blame gays for doing bad thing X, when straights do bad thing X, too."
The boringly familiar age-old tactics of bigots of all tastes and colours everywhere...
Posted by Alice Bachini at August 7, 2003 04:36 PM
Clearly Peter Cuthbertson and John Derbyshire don't like the idea of living in a "bottom up" society.
Nicely done.
Posted by Jonathan Wilde at August 7, 2003 04:41 PM
Alice: If you think nobody here complains when straight people "use political power to lobby to impose costs on the rest of society," I wonder what Samizdata you're reading.
Posted by S. Weasel at August 7, 2003 04:41 PM
Alex, you're right that it is possible for heterosexuals to get AIDS, but I don't see how that contradicts what Derbyshire wrote. Maybe he should have added "relaxed attitudes to promiscuity" generally - or immigration, for that matter, which recently overtook homosexual sex as the number one cause of AIDS.
The general point is the same, though. Social conservatism - which Guessedworker distinguishes perfectly from authoritarianism - means people behaving in a responsible way. Social liberalism means irresponsible behaviour and others picking up the tab. Perhaps you should take a look at the post of mine I linked to at the start: http://www.ukconservatism.com/weblog/archives/003875.html#003875
Posted by Peter Cuthbertson at August 7, 2003 07:11 PM
There is a libertarian counterargument to the problem posed by massive AIDS research spending, and it's consistent with the small government imperative. Moreover, it's been used for years in Africa as a means of population control. Heck, even Murray Rothbard might approve of it.
"Let 'em die if they can't afford treatment," however, is not much of a campaign slogan.
Posted by Omnibus Bill at August 7, 2003 08:51 PM
The AIDS epidemic in America was dramatically accelerated by the change in gay sex practices starting in the late '60s. The end of legal prohibitions on homosexuality and the rise of "bath houses" made it much easier for a promiscuous gay man to have multiple sex partners in one night and huge numbers per year. That this was the perfect condition for the spread of deadly diseases is, in retrospect, obvious. Of course, it also took place in an age when everyone (gay or straight) believed that STD's could all be cured by a shot of penicillin. It was also just after the "sexual revolution" which preached that everyone should "do their thing" and sexual mores should be ignored. All in all, it was a "perfect storm" condition.
The political and propaganda campaigns waged by gay activists significantly hampered the efforts of public health officials to contain the epidemic. They also led to scare campaigns (as alluded to by a previous commenter) which tried to prevent AIDS from being labelled a "gay disease" - and this continues to this day, even though there are still only a small number of HIV infections (in Pattern I countries like the US) spread through heterosexual vaginal sex. Even in Africa where most AIDS is among heterosexuals, it appears to be largely spread through anal intercourse - which is used by heterosexual couples for several reasons in sub-saharan cultures.
Gay activists (which certainly did not include all gays) were responsible for many tens of thousands of deaths because of their efforts, including misguided privacy laws that make HIV infection a privileged status!
Today, the rate of HIV infection is again rising in a subgroup of young gays who seem to believe that the 'cocktail' will protect them. They are misguided in most cases.
In general, male humans tend to be promiscuous. Cultural conventions (especially marriage) and the attitudes of females tend to limit this promiscuity among heterosexuals. These same limits do not exist or are very attenuated in gay culture. Thus it should not be a surprise that STD rates, including deadly incurable infections like HIV and viral Hepatitis strains are high among gays.
In the case of AIDS, we needed a bit more public health authoritarianism (like we have with MDR TB).
From a logical point of view, it pays to consider that often "old fashioned" "morals" (such as limiting promiscuity) may have evolved (whether expressed in religion or culture) because they served a genuine protective purpose. I remember the 60's and 70's, and I certainly was one who thought that my generation knew better than the past and the rules were silly and didn't apply to us. Fortunately I did not, as did a good friend of mine, get involved in the promiscuous gay scene. My good friend is long dead.
Social conservatives recognize instinctively and logically that radical social change in a functional society is dangerous and that society may exist in a particular form for good reasons. They also recognize that individualism must be tempered with personal responsibility.
NOTE: Read "And The Band Played On" for a frank and incisive history of the early times of the AIDS pandemic by a gay San Francisco reporter who later died of the disease.
Posted by John Moore (Useful Fools) at August 8, 2003 06:55 AM
Andrew,
The reason AIDS is an epidemic in Africa is because religious and government institutions have pushed (and failed miserably) abstinense (sic) instead of encouraging the use of condoms.
The only African country which has had any success in fighting AIDS is Uganda, and they've done it by promoting abstinence and fidelity. Regardless of what African governments and religions may be doing, the big players in the AIDS fight are the WHO and Western NGOs, and they promote condom use and drug therapy, both of which have failed miserably.
Posted by Squander Two at August 8, 2003 11:24 AM
A number of points:
1. It is not surprising that publicly funded research expenditure on HIV is greater (per capita) than (e.g.) research into strokes. It's simply a consequence of how pressure group politics works. Potential and actual stroke victims comprise a huge and diffuse group. Potential and actual HIV victims are a much smaller and more focused group. On a per capita basis they are therefore much more able to exert pressure to procure State spending in their favour. It is exactly the same reason why expenditure to prevent deaths on railways is far higher per capita than expenditure to prevent deaths on roads - railway safety lobbies are smaller and focused. Road safety lobbies are huge and diffuse. It may be economically objectionable but it has no moral significance either way.
2. The preferred libertarian state of affairs is plainly that neither gays nor straights use the State to obtain coerced expenditure in their own interests. In such a world, there would be no justification for restrictions on gay (or straight) sex - you want to risk getting HIV? Fine. As long as you pay for the consequences, that's your affair. Ditto any sexually transmitted disease (whether affecting gays or straights).
3. However, if a lobby group wants to use the State to extract money from others (viz tax payers), then it shouldn't be surprised if the bargain turns out to be a faustian one. The taxpayer who is forced to fund HIV research is bound to say - "If you are forcing me to pay for your research and your treatment, you had better damm well cut down on your risk of getting HIV, and if you don't, I'll do it for you." The moral of the story is that if you force other people to give you free money, then you can't complain if the money comes at a price to your liberty.
Cydonia
Posted by Cydonia at August 8, 2003 02:15 PM
Most gay people are not particularly interested in 'gay politics' at all. They have never done anyone any harm. They just want to get on with their lives without the state telling them what to do or punishing them for their choices.
REALLY?? why then are most gays, a minority in this country, complicit when certain activist groups speak in their name to enforce the State on heterosexuals...A MAJORITY?
Why then does it allow gays to run like weenie little babies to the ACLU and file a suit against the Boy Scouts for use of a public park because they were offended by the Scouts religiosity and firm denial of gays to their ranks? That article was just printed recently... I believe it is occuring in California.
But the most basic question I have, and is one that is NEVER answered, is why do gays feel the compulsion to own the word 'marriage'?
Its all well and good for Mr. Singleton to pooh-pooh MY opinion by saying 'its all just bogus and you just hate gays, that's all'...*NICE SAVE* from actually having to look at things from a heterosexual point of view, much less allow us the freedom to defend what we feel is our right!!!
I think Mr. Singleton wants to distract the debate from the real issue at hand...all this business about 'letting them do their thing' is all falderal for the real issue and that is to control the conversation and moral debate wherein SOME people might have a different opinion.
From an article by Maggie Gallagher:
Privately, I hear more and more mainstream people worry about where this is all going to lead: Will the soft power of the state be aimed directly at oppressing faith communities who hold fast to traditional sexual morality? Will radio licenses be yanked, charitable tax deductions pulled, individuals or ministers who try to share traditional Christian (and Jewish) sexual values be threatened with prosecution here?
Are THOSE the terms that "mainstream average harmless little fuzzball" gays advocate for those who disagree with them?
If so, then your terms offer nothing but theiving tyranny.
Posted by Sharon Ferguson at August 8, 2003 03:55 PM
Re: gays, Boy Scouts, public parks, ACLU, etc. You say there was an article about this. Can you link to it? I'd like to read it.
I'm a gay man, but I side with the Boy Scouts only in that I agree they are a private organization with the right to make this decision as they please. I may not like the decision, but I support their right to make it according to their principles. However, if a company or city, according to their principles, decides that they will not countenance discrimination against gays and will give no special breaks to those who practice it, too bad. Doesn't matter that the local troop has been using City Park free of charge for fifty years. Now they're going to have to pay the fees like everyone else.
I can see why the scouts don't like it, but this was all foreseeable when they took their case to the US Supreme Court. They're just going to have to suck it up. It's called accepting responsibility for the consequences of your decisions and actions, and it's supposed to be one of the things the Boy Scouts teaches.
Posted by Steve Teeter at August 9, 2003 10:41 PM
Cydonia,
Though I generally agree with your analysis I would make a point on your point 3. The motivation behind 'taxpayers' complaints regarding HIV treatment expenditure are based more on a simple hatred of gay people and the desire to find any stick handy with which to beat them rather than a desire to see their money efficiently used. No one kicks up a fuss when some round the world yachtsman is rescued from the middle of the ocean at vast public expense. On the whole gay people are fleeced by the taxman in order to subsidise the lifestyles of heterosexuals and their children, yet a bit of disproportionate spending on HIV treatment has everyone twitching and taking an interest in the efficiency of health expenditure.
Posted by Paul Coulam at August 11, 2003 03:04 PM
The reason for such research on HIV/AIDS is because THERE IS NOT A CURE! Cancer can be cured, heart disease can be cured, but Aids can only be delayed. No matter the origin, it DOES affect everyone, and aren't gays part of our society?
Posted by Jc Kyle at October 6, 2003 05:24 PM
