I Read The Riot Act To Mr. John Hanby

John Hanby, you say:

I also believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. I didn’t simply make this up one day out of haste. I believe this is what God eternally ordained through his church, and by the way he made us biologically. I believe the proper context for sex is within a marriage covenant, between a man and a woman, in which both parties consent, in the fashion God designed. So any form of sex which does not meet one or more of those conditions, masturbation, contraception, oral sex, anal sex, sex out of [heterosexual] wedlock, etc. would constitute sin, on my view.

Unsolicited communication on Facebook from John Hanby

In other words, would be bad, very bad, immoral in fact. To be immoral is to be evil, wicked, dishonest, unethical. It is to be a liar, a cheat, a pedophile, a slaver who dumps excess human cargo overboard, meth dealer, a racist, a slanderer, a thief, an embezzler, a murderer. A person who poisons millions of people by putting lead in gasoline because the safe alternative was slightly more costly. That is what being immoral is. But that is not what this couple is:

Nor is it what Mayor Pete and his husband are.

You have absolutely no business placing these people in this category, and yes, I do call you out on it. Your slander of innocent people is immoral, and makes you a bigot. It makes your protestations of love completely phony. As John Holbo notes, https://crookedtimber.org/…/the-steelwool-scrub-a…/… your religion does not give you a ‘get out of jail free’ card for this.

And yes, I do have something precise in mind when I apply the term “bigot” to you.

You try to use Natural Law Theory and the clobber passages in Paul to justify your views. But Natural Law really does fall to the usual mirth-provoking counterexamples https://cliffengelwirt.wordpress.com/…/the-mirth…/ And just as decent people have learned to detoxify the antisemitism of the *GOSPEL OF JOHN*, they have learned to detoxify the antigay passages in *ROMANS*. (Are you even aware of the rhetorical moves Paul is making in that epistle? The abrupt turn-about he makes?)

And Paul could not have known the past 150 years or so of empirical study of LGBTQ+ people. As the Roman Catholic priest and Rene Girard scholar James Allison says:

From everything we have learned over the last 150 or so years, it seems much truer to say that we are bearers of a regularly occurring, non-pathological minority variant in the human condition.

https://outreach.faith/2023/07/james-alison-conscience-reveals-to-lgbtq-people-who-were-really-are/?fbclid=IwAR0ON7auQYWMyykbHelSVZz12uUyJCdr2XNs9tOliTUNg9oBfKI1HdT2RmE

As a non-pathological part of the human condition, same sex sexual attraction has given humanity a selective advantage in the course of evolution by fostering pro-sociality. Were it not for this selective advantage (actually, advantages), same-sex sexual attraction would have died out ages ago. We would remove this selective advantage at our own peril.

Those of us who follow Ruth Garrett Millikan’s program of naturalizing teleology will recognize that same-sex sexual attraction has a functional purpose by virtue of having a selective advantage for our species. Millikan’s naturalized account of teleology is a definite improvement over the traditional theistic account because it removes the need to have to appeal to what is going on in the mind of a supernatural entity when making claims about the telos of an organ, organ system, or activity. What is more, it removes the temptation to pull such claims out of one’s ass.

Yes, the truthful and accurate application of the term “bigot” tends to have a dampening effect on “exchanging views”. But this dampening is a feature, not a bug. Just as exchanging views with a racist SHOULD be dampened down, so should exchanging views with a homophobic slanderer. Both the racist and the homophobe are beyond the pale. Neither deserves respect. Your attempt to evade responsibility for your slander of millions of innocent people by using the words “in my view” or “in my opinion” will no more work for you than Trump’s attempt to escape responsibility for his lies by using the same words.

Should you, John Hanby, want to stop being regarded as a bigot and homophobic slanderer, I would suggest you start by becoming acquainted with the work of the authors just mentioned.

Amazon Review Of John Skalko’s *DISORDERED ACTIONS*

My review of John Skalko’s *DISORDERED ACTIONS: A Moral Analysis of Lying and Homosexual Activity* appeared on Amazon today (01/15/2022).

****************

A previous reviewer suggested Skalko would have been better off jettisoning the portion of the book in which he tries to enlist philosophers as “expert witnesses” to testify against the morality of gay sex. I have to agree, since this section adds nothing to Skalko’s argument and only raises a number of red flags regarding the quality of his Plato and Aristotle scholarship.

These red flags seriously detract from the one good point about his book: his critique of Feser’s distinction between a “contrary” use of an organ or faculty and a merely “other-than use.” Feser makes this distinction in an attempt to defang some of the usual mirth-provoking counter-examples to Natural Law Theory, which stands accused of rendering a number of innocent activities, such as gum chewing, immoral. Skalko’s critique of Feser’s distinction is worth exploring.

Unfortunately, this one good point does not make up for the terrible impression Skalko leaves in this “expert witness” section. Skalko’s readings of his “expert witnesses’ – Plato and Aristotle in particular – are simply not up to par. Skalko places Aristotle in the ‘same-sex-activity boo!’ camp on the basis of a corrupt text of Aristotle’s that is missing a critical word. See Martha Nussbaum’s analysis of that missing word and its import for the correct interpretation in her SEX AND SOCIAL JUSTICE. Professor Nussbaum is a classicist and philosopher of the very first rank. Skalko’s ignoring her cannot be excused.

Skalko attempts to place the Plato of the PHAEDRUS in the ‘same-sex-activity boo!’ camp on the basis of a wildly-off reading of lines 250e-251a. Even stripping that passage from its context, it is an odd passage on which to try to base the claim that Plato is somehow antigay. For the passage consigns eros of the child-bearing sort to the level of animals. The passage directly contradicts Skalko EVEN WITHIN THE SAME PARAGRAPH, as well as later, in 256c-256e. Read within its context, it is clear that what Plato objects to is not same-sex activity per se — and certainly not same-sex eros! — but unrestrained sexual activity of any kind. If lovers exercise restraint in their physical eros, they will later enjoy a blissful existence of the ‘we two boys together clinging, one the other never leaving’ sort. Look at the text and see for yourself. See also Nussbaum op. cit. on page 327, and Scully’s translator’s footnote on page 32.

In short, Skalko’s readings of Plato and Aristotle are tendentious to the extreme. This tendentiousness can be explained, I think, by a malice directed against the LGBTQ+ community and its supporters that Skalko does not always succeed in hiding. In a truly strange passage on page 322 of DISORDERED ACTIONS, Skalko accuses us of revealing our true colors as liars after the announcement of Obergefell v. Hodges. He seems to think that we promised him that we would not try to tax religious institutions once gay marriage was in place. But lo and behold, what does our co-conspirator (!) Time Magazine do after the decision? I yield the floor to Skalko: “After the announcement of Obergefell v. Hodges, however, those in the gay movement revealed their true colors. Two days after the announcement, Time Magazine published an article arguing the state ought to start taxing religious institutions.” I am sorry that you felt lied to, John Skalko, but I assure you I certainly never promised you that we would not try to tax religious institutions if you only gave us gay marriage.

This quickness to assume bad faith and bad morals on the part of his opponents does not do much to increase one’s confidence in the quality of Skalko’s work. DISORDERED ACTIONS has its moments of decent analysis, but these are overwhelmed by a frequent and shocking carelessness and lack of adherence to basic standards. Conservatives seeking to make their point should demand better.

Skalko is stunningly incompetent on Plato and Aristotle

Things That Natural Lawyers Say (2): Gum Wrapper Edition

Mr. John S., Young Right-Wing Natural Lawyer In Training, told me a few days ago that I would not be so pro-gay…

“…if you actually read the nutritional details [on gum wrappers] instead of naively parroting what the pro-gay crowd says.”

This statement becomes only slightly less bizarre when put in its original context. That context is a rather silly claim made in the context of Natural Law Theory by John Skalko about chewing sugarless gum. This was a claim to the effect of ‘sugarless gum has a few calories, so chewing it is moral in Natural Law Theory’.

So I will keep John S’s advice in mind. If I read the nutritional details on the packets of sugarless gum, I will be able to avoid naively parroting what the pro-gay crowd says. I never knew that reading gum wrappers offered such powerful protection against falling in with the wrong crowd. This will help a lot. Thank you for the advice, John S.

Really, seeing the Natural Lawyers twist themselves into pretzels like this is almost painful. I keep wanting to tell them: “It’s okay. No one cares where on the Kinsey Scale you fall whether you are a 1, a 2, a 3, a 4, a 5, or even a Gold Star 6. Really — no one cares. You really don’t have to work yourself into a frenzy over your same-sex desires, with the result that you frequently end up saying silly things.”

Silly Natural Lawyer — don’t you know that an angel in heaven does a face palm every time you say something silly like this?

Mr. Paul Manata Was Not Pleased

After an author of a Facebook page asserted that, although he regretted “…the exclusive use of words such as “man,” “him,” and “he,” [in a passage by a favorite writer of his]”, he found the passage to be beautiful; Paul Manata responded with the following egregiously coarse and ugly comment:

Pump the [male] exclusivity straight into my veins!

Paul Manata, commenting on a Facebook post, last accessed April 06, 2022

The reference of course is to mainlining meth, a procedure which Manata, who allegedly had been a meth dealer and meth user in the past, is presumably well familiar with. Mainlining misogyny would give him the same rush and sense of power as mainlining meth. Appalled, I linked to my blog post regarding Mr. Manata’s rather … er … colorful … past in order to place his comment in the proper context.

Paul Manata was not pleased. His response begins with an attempt to attack the credibility of my source. Manata bases his attack on the pseudonym my source chose on the site, Triablogue, where he posted the information about Mr. Manata’s past. Someone who calls himself “DingoDave” could not possibly be credible, Manata implies. I am a bit uncertain, however, why identifying oneself with a tough, wily, resourceful creature able to survive in the Australian desert would make one less reliable as a source of information.

…your source is a 14 year old comment written by someone who calls himself “Dingo Dave,” [sic]…

Paul Manata, comment on an Facebook Page, last accessed April 05, 2022

DingoDave had quote extensively from a lengthy confessional text written by Manata. Not only is DingoDave a weirdo, harrumphed Mr. Manata, but the passages quoted by DingoDave come from a non-existent blog post. A non-existent blog post! That sure does sound fishy. What is that character DingoDave trying to pull? The quote snippet below continues the one above:

…and who himself references a non-existent blog post as his source…

Paul Manata

But what Manata fails to mention is that the reason the blog post does not exist is because Mr. Paul Manata himself deleted the blog! DingoDave notes that Paul Manata deleted the link he used to pull Manata’s confession:

Update: Paul has deleted this link and all links I make reference to below. I suspect it’s because he is embarrassed about his behavior. See for yourself.

DingoDave, commenting at http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/07/level-of-argumentation-at-debunking.html, last accessed 04/06/2022

Manata notes:

I deleted every single link on that old blog because I deleted that old blog. 

Paul Manata, commenting as the user Error, at http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/07/level-of-argumentation-at-debunking.html, last accessed 04/06/2022

Manata’s level of deceptiveness astounds. Meth users are well known for their facility and smoothness at lying (see David Sheff’s A Beautiful Boy); perhaps this facility lingers for a while after one has stopped using. Manata is perfectly aware that DingoDave was quoting accurately, because Manata had written the material himself then deleted it himself. And those words come as no surprise to Manata’s associates at Triablogue:

I’m familiar with Paul Manata’s past. He’s mentioned it in some form many times, in many places.

Jason Engwer, commenting in response to DingoDave’s quotations from Paul Manata’s confession, at http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/07/level-of-argumentation-at-debunking.html, last accessed 04/06/2022

Were the quotes made up, Manata’s colleagues at Triablogue or Manata himself would have raised the alarm on that blog. And notice that neither at Triablogue nor on Facebook does Mr. Manata himself go so far as to actually deny anything DingoDave said. Instead, on Facebook, he merely attempts to deflect attention from his dodgy past by silly attacks on DingoDave’s pseudonym and by insinuations about no-longer-existing blog posts.

Meth users are prone to the extreme violence of the sort Manata recounts engaging in, so perhaps it is not entirely coincidental that Manata was allegedly both a meth user and a meth dealer.

In a recent blog piece Manata even compared Gordon Clark, one of the most respected and prolific Reformed theologians and philosophers in the twentieth-century, to a methamphetamine dealer who cuts his “Scripturalist drug” with “intellectual battery acid.” Of course, this is from a man who, by his own admission, is “a former drug user and dealer (meth, El Cajon, CA),” so perhaps his time as a user/dealer has had a lasting and deleterious effect on his mind that would explain him calling Dr. Clark a drug pusher and his work “sophomoric”

magma2, posting at https://godshammer.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/van-tils-barking-dogs/, last accessed 04/07/2022

I will never be able to unsee this picture of Mr. Manata mixing battery acid to the meth he sells to his customers. Certainly he talks as if he is familiar with the practice.

But why don’t you tell us, magma2, what you really think of Paul Manata?

FWIW Manata is just a vicious unthinking bully. He was a vicious bully before he became a Christian and he still is one today. While some of his methods have changed (although he’d probably want to “jump” me if he ever met me), it seems his M.O. has not. Thankfully we Christians are saved by grace. Perhaps someday the Lord will even change a mind like Manata’s — although outside of an occasional prayer for the man, I’m not holding my breath.

magma2, commenting at https://godshammer.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/van-tils-barking-dogs/, last accessed 04/07/2022

I have no stake in this particular pissing contest between Manata and these particular Calvinist theologians. I am sitting on the sidelines, eating popcorn as I watch. The whole atmosphere is that of meth dealers going after one another for territory. But what magma2 says seems pretty accurate.

But back to Manata’s misogynist remark quoted towards the beginning of this essay post. The remark reeks of misogynist rage and potential violence. If one seeks to make humankind exclusively male — at least in linguistic reference — and compares doing so to the rush of an intense feeling of power that meth users report when they “pump” the drug directly into their veins — one is also seeking to make women less than and subject to that power. This is a situation ripe for misogynistic violence, especially when some women refuse to be treated as less than. As I describe the logic here, the mere fact that a woman might get too uppity is sometimes enough to trigger the violence.

The same logic holds, of course, for homophobic violence. Meth of course acts as an accelerant for the rage and violence of the sort Mr. Manata engaged in, and the intensity of the rage and violence displayed in the murder of Matthew Shepard suggested to many people in Wyoming that meth may have been a factor in that senseless killing. (“Another meth murder” was the reaction of many people in Wyoming to Shepard’s death, meth being a scourge in the Mountain States.)

It is both the misogyny and the allusion to mainlining meth that makes Mr. Manata’s assertion so ugly:

Pump the [male] exclusivity straight into my veins!

Mainlining Methamphetamine; mainlining misogyny

This is the context of Manata’s remark that needed to be brought into the open in order to understand how horrifically ugly that remark is. It is important to call out bad behavior like Manata’s to ensure it is commonly understood how utterly unacceptable it is.

Things That Natural Lawyers Say (1)

Actually, just because something has a genetic component and exists in nature doesn’t mean that evolution selected for it, especially if that thing is relatively rare compared to the other traits that it is replacing. For example, blue eyes are relatively rare — you need to have two recessive genes as far as I can recall — but there is no selection benefit to having blue eyes (or a specific eye colour at all). Nearsightedness is also relatively rare and also genetic, but surely evolution did not select for it as it seems to only have a detrimental impact on people. [In spite of that “surely” the Verbose Stoic in fact does not know this. Article.] So that there is a genetic pattern that can produce or make homosexuality more likely doesn’t mean that it was selected for by evolution. It could simply be a neutral by-product like blue eyes or even a detrimental one like nearsightedness. This, them would make your analysis of what benefit it might have pointless, since we’d need to establish that it even has one in the first place.

The Verbose Stoic, at https://verbosestoic.wordpress.com/2021/01/18/the-unnecessary-science-part-3/, last accessed 08/04/2021

This passage, written by “The Verbose Stoic”, whom I am naming after their blog, is simply embarrassing.

The Verbose Stoic seems to have missed the past 60 years or so of debate among geneticists regarding the selective advantage that homosexuality must have, given how its prevalence in the face of the obvious inhibiting effect on reproduction “… is certainly too high for the trait to be maintained by recurrent random mutation”. (Article.) Actually, I am not sure the Verbose Stoic is even aware of the phenomenon of a (some) random mutation(s) reintroducing a gene or set of genes into a population after it has disappeared because of a selective disadvantage. I am also confident that the disadvantageous genes would, given enough time, eventually disappear even if they managed to hide out for a while by virtue of being recessive. The biologists and geneticists would have to have the last word on this point, of course.

Frankly, my jaw dropped when I encountered the passage quoted above. No one has any business discussing homosexuality and genetics while completely ignorant of the past 60 years of debate and research on this topic. Especially not with this breezily confident tone. This is a major blunder on the part of the Verbose Stoic, bad enough to make one wonder how many other blunders equally gross lurk in their (his?) work. On these, I will keep you posted, Dear Reader.

Having said all this, I would like to point out that the Verbose Stoic does have a facility with dialectic that makes their blog worth reading even when grossly wrong far more often than not. Plus, every now and then, they do raise a good and useful point, as when they discuss why one should avoid the dictionary when attempting to uncover the nature of a thing.

Still, it is disturbing that The Verbose Stoic would mouth off on a topic like this without having the faintest idea what they are talking about.

I am counting The Verbose Stoic as a Natural Lawyer of the non-Absolutist persuasion (see my discussion of Natural Law [at link to come] and its various versions.

Lumber Room

For a teleofunctionalist such as Ruth Garrett Millikan, for sex or anything else biological (the color of the bark moths, the shape and density of the bones in the human ankle, feathers — henceforth I will call a “biological phenomenon” anything — an organ, say, or any structure, system, or activity — that can be said to have a purpose, regardless of whether “what can be said” here reflects a telos existing in reality or not) to be for something, is for it to have a natural history, a particular place in evolution. This history goes backwards from the latest twist evolution has given to a biological phenomenon (say, the famous English moths acquire an improved pigmentation that makes their camouflage even more effective) to the beginning of that particular phenomenon (their pigmentation first becomes useful for camouflage). The pigmentation of the moths are for camouflage, because at some point in the evolution of these moths their color started giving them a selective advantage by virtue of the camouflage they afford. The feathers for birds, of course, are for flight, aiding as they do in that function. Flight gives birds a selective advantage. But in the dinosaur ancestors of birds, the feathers were for cooling the body. That was the selective advantage feathers gave to this particular group of dinosaurs. Since the cooling effect of feathers continues to give the avian descendants of these dinosaurs a selective advantage, we can say that bird feathers are for cooling as well as for flight. Feathers are for at least two different things at the same time.

Clearly a biological phenomenon can be for more than one purpose, as evolution stacks one purpose onto another like plates going into a restaurant washing machine. And this (these) purpose(s) can easily get lost in the depths of natural-historical time. It is not “just obvious” that feathers are also for cooling. One cannot just gape at a bird and be able to say this. One has to do some empirical digging — finding dinosaur fossils with feather imprints, coming up with a time interval within which the ancestor genes for feathers first mutated into genes for feathers, articulating a physical theory of how feathers might have a cooling effect.

At least in the case of bird feathers, it makes no sense to say that one purpose is “subordinate” to the other, or “more important” than the other, or that one is “ideal” and the other not. To put the matter starkly, if feathers suddenly ceased to help enable a bird’s flight, the bird would die. The bird would also die if its feathers ceased to cool its body. The two teloi are, as professor Heidegger would put it, “equiprimordial”.

For the Thomist, a biological phenomenon’s being for something consists in its having been designed for that thing by a mind whose intention that this be so prevails through eternity. That a toaster is for toasting bread is the result of human intentions occurring in time that resulted in the invention and design of the toaster; that sex is for making babies who have one half one one’s genes has been God’s intention and design throughout all eternity. This divine intention did not start at some point in time.

On any plausible account, God would be working through evolution to achieve their design. Supposition they have the ability to have the line of evolutionary descent go one way rather than another. So what we have is presumably God’s intention. Can’t remove the presumably to have direct knowledge of God’s intention. But I will take it that once a teleofunctionalist interpretation of the science establishes that y creates a selective advantage of x by means of z (darker pigmentation creates a selective advantage for the English moths by means of camouflage), we have a case for y’s being for z that should also satisfy the design theorist.

So everything should be hunky-dory between the a proponent of a reasonable (not necessarily the only reasonable one — maybe the orthodox view is still correct) view of evolution and a proponent of a reasonable design view. But unfortunately things are not hunky dory. For if one mixes the intentionality of a designer into the picture, which the teleofunctionalist refuses to do (the teleofunctionalist will try to interpret intentionality as based this purely naturalistic teleology — the “design” comes first, then the “designers”) certain metaphors and pictures creep in. If I start out for Salt Lake City from St. George I have just that one goal — Salt Lake City. Going to Cedar City is subordinate to that goal. And if a bit later I decide to add the Bonneville Salt Flats to my itinerary, that is the new over-arching goal and Salt Lake City is a goal subordinate to it.

Things That Natural Lawyers Say (0)

theoriginalmrx is giving this angel a sad

It also makes no sense to say that evolution [sic!] gets a reproductive advantage by means of a reproductive disadvantage.

Theoriginalmrx, commenting at https://verbosestoic.wordpress.com/2021/01/18/the-unnecessary-science-part-3/, last accessed 03/13/2022

declaims theoriginalmrx in a comment on the blog The Verbose Stoic.

The context of this particular gem is a discussion of the genetics of phenomena such as sickle cell anemia and homosexuality, which are puzzling because one would have expected, on the basis of evolutionary theory, both to have become exceedingly rare a long time ago. Theoriginalmrx’s remark struck me as so amazingly obtuse that I left the discussion, having decided there was zero chance it would become productive.

My discussion took into account the standard High School Biology account of sickle cell anemia, which notes that one falls victim to the disease when they inherit both copies of the responsible gene (henceforth the “sickle cell gene”) in the allele. I don’t think I would be going out on too much of a limb by saying that a trait (two sickle cell genes in the allele) that causes one to die before one can pass one’s genes along is, I daresay, a bit on the selectively disadvantageous side.

But if one inherits just a single sickle cell gene in the allele, one’s hemoglobin gets modified in such a way as to make one more resistant to the disease. This resistance is a definite selective advantage in those environments in which malaria is prevalent. Those who carry just the one copy of the gene will be more likely to live and pass their genes along to the next generation. The sickle cell gene will proliferate.

Obviously, the sickle cell gene is not going to proliferate until it becomes universal in the population, because the gene’s strong selective advantage occurs along with the strong selective disadvantage. Saying this is similar to saying ‘the proliferation of deer in this particular environment that is favorable to them in terms of food is balanced by the existence of predators which keeps the deer population in check.’ To claim that this statement somehow contains a logical contradiction would be just silly.

Likewise it would be just silly were one to fancy themselves a hyper-logical theorist, and try to turn “The sickle cell gene carries a reproductive advantage in one set of circumstances (a malarial environment, just one sickle cell gene in the allele) and in another set of circumstances (two copies of the gene in the allele) carries a selective disadvantage” into a logical contradiction because “selective advantage” means the opposite of “selective disadvantage”. This is what theoriginalmrx is doing and it is just embarrassing.

Likewise, there is no logical contradiction in saying that, in a much more complex way, the strong selective advantage of the “gay genes” balances the selective disadvantage so that, while the genes are far from vanishingly rare, they are not universal in the human population ether.

None of this is terribly difficult to understand. So it came as a bit of a surprise to me that I could not take for granted an understanding of this kind of material among the natural lawyers. As Andrew Sullivan remarks someplace, it is curious how little nature there is in natural law theory.

Bigots, Teddy Bears, And Objective Evil

Bigots, Teddy Bears, And Objective Evil: Not TOO long ago, I was having my hair cut by the local barber in the town in Southern Utah where my parents’ house (now my brother’s house) is located. The barber was a really sweet, avuncular guy, maybe in his 60s. We had a pleasant conversation.

Several townspeople walked into the barber shop. My barber started talking with them amiably. He continued to be amiable as the townspeople and he started telling among one another vicious, nasty, despicable jokes about the Navajos.

That he should do so is not totally incongruous. He is, after all, a member in good standing of that community. Because his fellow townspeople see themselves as members of the in group (White Christians) defining themselves against an outgroup whom they despise, he is likely to do so as well, his personal qualities notwithstanding. That is the das Man that he — unconsciously in all probability — participates in. Members of this community want to maintain ascendency over the outgroups — Native Americans, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people — and keep them in their place. They want to continue feeling superior to them. And any demands made by members of the outgroup for equality are likely to be met with violence. My avuncular barber might not engage in this violence outright, but he surely would be complicit in it one way or the other. In other words, he was a bigot in spite of being avuncular in manner and tone.

So it is perfectly possible to be avuncular (towards members of one’s own group) and a bigot (against those in the scapegoated group) at the same time. Likewise, it is perfectly possible to be an absolute teddy bear to one’s friends and girlfriend, but a bigot towards one’s outgroup, demeaning and degrading that group in vicious ways all the while claiming to love them (‘I just want you guys not to burn in hell for eternity’). One does not have to look like and act like Joseph Goebbels in order to be a bigot.

The Nazi comparison comes to mind because of the nature of some of the people who frequent the Facebook page of a certain Gil Sanders. One such person had on his page what could easily be taken for affirmations of White Supremacy. One step lower down this into this sewage pit, some of his friends, in turn, left absolutely no doubt. I challenge anyone not to look at Mr. Ken Zerkowski’s cover picture and profile picture on Facebook and not be sickened. His blatant, vile propaganda there, and pictures of Pepe the Frog elsewhere on his site unambiguously declare him to be a White Supremacist who regards LGBTQ+ people as subhuman creatures. Joseph Goebbels would have felt right at home on that page. These pictures were so bad that Facebook even banned me for a day when I placed them in a post CRITICAL of that bigotry.

One step up that pit, the vile propaganda Mr. Sanders placed on his FB page was, in the last analysis, much the same — just a tiny bit more outwardly respectable. But this trace of outward respectability did not prevent Mr. Sanders from taking his cue from Nazi propaganda pictures showing wholesome blond German youths juxtaposed with pictures of Jews depicted as evil degenerates. In Mr. Sanders’ version, a black and white wholesome girl from the 50’s playing with her dog in the suburbs is juxtaposed to a color picture depicting a white girl approaching with a mixture of curiosity and bafflement some some rather colorful LGBTQ+ people whom the mainstream would quickly apply the label “perverted deviants” to. The presence of the young girl of course readily brings to mind the blood libel ‘pedophile’ so often brought against LGBTQ+ people, even though here she is of the wrong sex. Clearly the pictures carried the message ‘wholesome little girl in the 50’s good; gay degenerates bad. See how Western Civilization has declined!’ Some audiences, including me, would have looked at the colored picture with humor; clearly the audience this propaganda was directed to would not.

Any mention of the word “Nazi”, of course, will trigger among those right-wingers who have not yet embraced their inner Nazi an automatic dismissal. But here, at least, such a dismissal would be nothing more than a wilful refusal to look at the evidence. It simply cannot be denied that both the German anti-semitic propagandists of the 30s and Mr. Sanders, anti-gay propagandist of 2021, employed the technique of juxtaposing wholesome-looking young white people against pictures of “degenerate” Jewish people or LGBTQ+ people. To deny that the propaganda techniques are the same mutatis mutandis is simply to deny that this juxtaposition was done. This cannot honestly be denied.

In a move that prompted from me a face-palm and the ‘oh the stupid — it burns!’ response, some frequenters of Mr. Sanders’ propaganda site tried to defend the anti-gay picture on the grounds that it didn’t say that ALL LGBTQ+ people were degenerates. Among these frequenters was a certain Mr. John Hanby, an advocate of “Side B” Christianity trying to pass himself off, not as a bigot, but as a reasonable moderate.

But Mr. Hanby’s response was clearly disingenuous. Were I to juxtapose a picture of wholesome white middle class people next to a picture of people in the Pampanga province in the Philippines observing Lent in a way that was literally colorful, and showed this to an audience bigoted against Filipinos, the natural response of that audience would naturally be ‘Look at those savage deviant Filipinos!’. The thought that not all Filipinos engage in those practices would not be terribly ready-to-hand within their cramped tiny minds. (By the way, I do not look down on these practices — I see them as just an attempt to imitate Christ; and I view with neutrality the fact that most Pinoy, especially outside Pampanga, do not engage in them.)

And indeed, when I posted some of the Lent pictures on Mr. Sanders’ page in order to make fun of him, one Pinoy woman frequenting his site DID take me to be implying that to be Filipino is to be a savage degenerate. She accepted my assertion that this was not my intention at all; but the point is that what the picture communicates does not depend on that intention. I of course should have known that even by itself, even without getting juxtaposed to the white middle class people, the picture would have been vulnerable to getting seen as carrying the message ‘savage Pinoy doing all these weird things’; and this was my mistake. As Nelson Goodman points out in his LANGUAGES OF ART, a picture communicates emotively, not logically or linguistically; its expression is not readily translated into language except through single words: “serene”, “bloody”, “quiet”, “terrifying”, “sad”, “joyful”, “calm”, “vital”, “violent” … and so on indefinitely. It is not capable of anything as structured as “But keep in mind that not all LGBTQ+ people/Jewish people/Pinoy people are like this; please do bear that in mind.” Contrary to the title of his book, art is not literally a language; pictures communicate at the pre-logical, pre-verbal level. The emotional response ‘LGBTQ+ people/Jewish people/Filipino people bad is prior to an understanding which includes quantified logic with its “all” vs “some”.

So when the Nazi propagandist juxtaposes the wholesome white youths against the Jewish deviants and perverts, there is absolutely no room for doubting that there is nothing to the picture other than the simple, pre-logical ‘Germans good; Jewish people bad’; not ‘well, maybe SOME Jewish people aren’t bad.’ I think Mr. Sanders is being disingenuous in claiming something different is happening with his ‘wholesome white youths from the 50’s good; gay degenerates bad’ picture. — Or perhaps he is not being disingenous. I do not see him as being very bright, even with his superficial and rather clunky command of a Thomistic philosophical vocabulary. The human capacity for self-deception is almost infinite. Just as the Neo-Confederates try to deceive themselves into thinking all those Confederate statues are not emblems of White Supremacy, Gil Sanders may be deceiving himself into thinking his picture is not an emblem of White Christianist Supremacy. To accomplish this self-deception, it helps to be dumber than a rock.

Now when I see that someone is clearly a homophobic bigot, I do not hesitate to say so and to name names. The interesting things is that just as the racists (one variety of bigot) are always very sensitive to getting called out as racists, the homophobic bigots are likewise very sensitive to the charge that they are what in fact they obviously are. At one point, a woman (maybe Mr. Sanders’ girlfriend) started yelling “How can you call him a homophobe and bigot! You don’t know him! He is in fact a total sweet teddy bear! In fact, he loves you and your kind! He is just trying to keep you from burning in hell for all eternity, you ingrate!”

It is of course true that I do not personally know Mr. Gil Sanders. Maybe he has a Teddy Bear side to him, though I have also seen him described as a “prick”. But what I do know is that someone who directs propaganda of the vile sort that he did does not love me or my kind. There is something else at work, namely, an animosity stemming from the need to have a scapegoated group relative to which one is allowed to feel virtuous and superior. It is not love that is getting expressed, but bigotry, evil. Just as it is possible to be an avuncular bigot hiding an animosity against Navajos, it is possible to be a sweet-to-some teddy bear bigot hiding an animosity and status-driven hatred against LGBTQ+ people. In both cases, the evil is as objectively real. One does not have to look or act like Joseph Goebbels to accomplish objective evil.

I view the Observance of Lent depicted below as a legitimate attempt to imitate Christ. It is a valid form of spirituality, akin to that practiced by John Paul II. But regardless of how you view it, do keep in mind that not all Pinoy observe Lent this way. The practice is limited, I believe, to Angeles City in the Pampanga province.

What It Is To Be A Bigot

To be a bigot is to assert oneself as part of an in group by casting another group (defined by some characteristic such as religion, race, gender, or sexual orientation) as an out group the status of whose members is inferior to one’s own status and deserving of contempt. The out groups are regarded this way partly in order to fill a need for status (to have some place in the hierarchy other than the very bottom), partly for other reasons, such as the desire to obtain cheap or even free labor (race) or to have someone serve as a scapegoat to draw away one’s own sins (sexual orientation). Sometimes the reason is simple fear of otherness (religion, culture) which serves as fertile ground for the imagination to come up with all sorts of horrors. Typically members of the out groups are faced with a constant threat of violence in order to keep them in their place. Obstacles are placed in the way of their attempts to thrive as human beings (employers can refuse to hire them on the basis of the characteristic that defines their membership in the out group; they are always at risk of getting fired, getting evicted, getting red-lined, getting refused service at a lunch counter or cake shop, getting socially quarantined through Jim Crow laws, prevented from entering into (an inter-racial or same-sex) marriage). Often the bigot expresses a violent, obstinate hatred of members of the out group, especially when bigot feels their status slipping away, or feels even the slightest theoretical possibility of such a threat.

The point of all of the above is to articulate a rejoinder to the assertion that when Mr. Cathy, the CEO of Chick-fil-A says the following:

“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say ‘we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage’ and I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.”

… he is being called a bigot only because one disagrees with what he is saying. But of course the idea that God has to exercise mercy on our generation because it has allowed people to marry people of the same sex (what is God restraining Themselves ((epicene singular pronoun)) from doing? Sending a plague? Killing all our first-born? Bringing forth frogs? Casting darkness on the land?) is difficult to disentangle from the fact that LGBT people serve as scapegoats onto whom members of the in-group project all their sins and whom God (so the in group thinks) wants to destroy like vermin. Maybe some theorist can try to come up with a ‘separate-but-equal’ type scenario in which God doesn’t hate f*gs but loathes same-sex marriage so much that they have to restrain themselves from bringing forth frogs upon the land; maybe Mr. Cathy happened not to experience any occurrent feeling of hatred against LGBT people when he uttered those words. Nonetheless, that scapegoating, that hatred forms the background from which those words are most likely to spring in the real world.

This — and not just the fact that one disagrees with his utterance — is why Mr. Cathy deserves the label ‘bigot.’