I’m not sure why I didn’t see this one in my feed, but rather I saw it first on Right Wing Watch: “Bringing About the Collapse of ‘Gay’ Power.”
The sub-title is: “Exclusive: Philip Irvin offers tactics for helping inoculate kids against homosexuality.”
Wow. There’s so much offensive and just plain wrong in those two lines that I could do a whole post just about that. But, I’ll summarize it for you anyway – after all, that’s one of the purposes of this blog: I read WND so you don’t have to. Okay, let’s hunker down and pull out the whiskey ice cream to make it through this one …
Philip’s entire argument can be found in his first paragraph:
Although gay power appears to be a powerful monolith, it is strikingly fragile because it is built on a lie. The lie is: “There’s an organic basis for homosexuality. I was born this way. My sexual orientation is fixed.” If the lie can be countered effectively, gay power will crash.
He has several sections to his diatribe, including, “What if ‘born gay’ was not believed?” “Show that ‘born gay’ doesn’t make any sense,” “Homosexuality is self-proclaimed,” “The gulf between ‘gay’ and ‘same-sex attraction,'” “Sexual desires and activities,” “Showing that ‘born gay’ studies are false,” “further discussions on the absurdity,” “How to deploy this tool,” and “Spreading the death of gay power.” Whew. By the way, his bio says that he’s been in a “30-year fight with the gay agenda.”
Philip’s first section is founded on a false major premise fallacy: That people who are gay want equal rights under the law because they are born that way (Rather than viewing homosexuals as victims of their circumstances needing as much protection and support as other oppressed minority groups, society would do a complete about-face and ponder, “Why are we passing laws that encourage homosexuality?”). Um, no. We want equal rights because we want equal rights and protections under the law, not because we were born a certain way. Let’s say I “choose” to be gay the same way I choose to get a tattoo. Should I suddenly be discriminated against because I choose to get a tattoo? Because I choose to live my life as a skinhead? Because I choose to live my life as a scum-sucking bigot? No, I should have equal protections under the law.
His second and sixth sections simply defy the science. He can think whatever the h— he wants, that doesn’t make it right. It may not make sense to him in his own little bigoted mind that people can be born to be homosexual, and he may not like the science that shows he’s wrong, but he’s wrong. I was recently exposed to this quote by Philip K. Dick, and I plan to use it much more in the future: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Philip’s third section is also non-sensical and exists just in word games. He makes a point of trying to claim that because someone has to make the conscious decision to “admit” their own homosexuality, therefore homosexuality is self-proclaimed, therefore it doesn’t have to be proclaimed. In other words, Philip wants every gay (and yes, he uses the word “gay” as a noun, not adjective) to be back in the closet, because if they never come out, they’re not gay!
Skipping over the fourth section to go straight (ha!) to the fifth, he makes yet another nonsensical argument that because all homosexual men are not attracted to every man, and all homosexual women are not attracted to all women, you can’t be 100% homosexual and it can’t be completely biological (“organic”). If you think I’m making this up, read the paragraph for yourself (emphasis his):
The gay/straight distinction is specifically about sexual desires and activities. As a lesbian, Jill is sexually attracted to women – but is she sexually attracted to all women or all women equally? If her sexual attraction for women is caused by some organic reasons, shouldn’t these same reasons be employed to explain why she is sexually attracted to some women and not to others? Then, are these factors violated when Jill’s primary sexual attraction shifts from Marge to Sarah?
So, I guess if a straight guy isn’t attracted to every woman, then he’s not straight?
His seventh section is aptly named: “Further discussions on the absurdity.” Because it is yet another absurd argument. He apparently simply does not understand sexuality. That it is not only fluid, but there are almost never extremes. His argument is against bisexuality, claiming that bisexuality means you’re 50% gay and 50% straight: “But can’t they instead be 60/40 or any other ratio? And if a bisexual has a good relationship with one gender and a bad one with the other, can’t he go from being 50/50 to 70/30 or any other ratio? Or are you saying that a person is born at precisely 73.2 percent gay and must be stuck there for the rest of his life even though you can’t definitively tell who fits into the “basic gay” criteria to begin with?”
His entire point here is to again argue against a genetic component because he thinks that a genetic component is like computer hardware: If you get a CPU, it will always run at the speed it was designed to run at — so if you’re “born gay,” you will always be that exact sexuality with that exact attraction and cannot vary from it. But there is pretty much no psychologist today who thinks that is the case with human sexuality.
Alright, I’ve made it through most of his article, and the rest is just self-pleasuring drivel that continues along the same vein as the previous parts.
I suppose the only good thing about this particular article is that it has gotten only 25 comments, making me think it was not widely read, since usually columns will get a hundred or more, except in the case of some of their really extreme people like Pamela Geller.
What is also nice is that most of the comments – and the highest-rated ones – are anti-Philip Irvin. And Irvin took the time to respond. For example, here’s the highest-rated comment (by “vorpal” at 19 up-votes) and the response:
This is honestly one of the most stupid articles I have ever read in my entire life. Congratulations on attaining a new low, Philip Irvin.
The consensus of virtually all gay people is that their homosexuality was NEVER a choice. This is supported by the complete and utter failure of sexual orientation change efforts to produce any long term results. Furthermore, most gay people report knowing that they were gay as far back as they can remember, even if they didn’t know the word “gay” and didn’t quite understand fully the concepts. Invalidating these experiences as lies does you no favours: why should we then, by extension, grant ANY validity to experiences that one claims led them to be a Christian, or continue to affirm their Christian faith? Come on. You just CAN’T be this stupid and have these double-standards unless it’s to support a silly anti-gay agenda.
EVEN IF homosexuality was fully a choice and was entirely changeable (both false), there would be no reason to discriminate against gay people.
The points highlighted in this article are so absurd and easily turned on their head with simple word substitutions as to be laughable. For example:
Christianity is self-proclaimed:
Ask any Christian, “If there were a test for deeply held religious beliefs and it showed that you were really Muslim or even atheist, would you accept the test results?” The invariable answer would be, “Of course not! I’m a Christian!” A person proclaims himself to be “Christian” much the same way a person proclaims himself to be gay or a liberal.
When you ask two Christians, “What were the specific criteria that you used to determine that you were Christian?” you will probably get two differing sets of criteria. Now apply these differing criteria to a population, and one set of criteria will conclude that seven people are Christian, and the other set will conclude that 11 are Christian. What, then, about the four who meet one set of criteria but not the other; what are they? [According to both sides, probably “not real Christians.”]
We are even told by Christians that just because an atheist once prayed in his past, doesn’t make him a real Christian in his heart. By the same reasoning, just because a Christian was once an atheist, doesn’t make him an atheist [dumb dumb dumb]. Therefore we can’t even tell whether a person is Christian or atheist just by his professed beliefs. Are people really only Christian because they say they are Christian?
I can’t even. The stupid, it burns.
I find it fascinating that you consider this such a stupid article but yet you invest so much time reading it and commenting on it. Your last three paragraphs are reiterating what I have already said; that a person proclaims himself to be gay much the same way as a person proclaims himself to hold a religious belief.
It is an almost universal experience that people, at least part of the time in their life, think of themselves as “different.” Just because people try to explain this feeling with the assertion that homosexuality is the reason for that feeling does not mean that “gay” is the reason they feel that way.
“Patrick” has the second-highest-rated comment, at 15 up-votes. Philip responded, and there was a long line of back-and-forth, so I’ll just post his initial comment:
What load of pseudo-intellectual drivel. This is just a series of straw men followed by feeble arguments that barely manage to knock them down.
Take that tripe in his “Sexual Desires and Activities” section, where he blathers on about whether or not being a lesbian means being attracted to all women equally. Last I checked, straight men aren’t attracted to all women equally, nor are straight women attracted to all men equally. Why does he think he can disprove homosexuality by “proving” the same is true in gays and lesbians? All that proves is that we’re human.
His discussion of studies on homosexuality is almost comical, as he’s clearly never actually read one of them, just as he’s similarly never heard of the Kinsey scale. Then he tops it off with a pyramid scheme of ignorance. What a joke.
The most fatal flaw in his argument (or lack thereof) is that even if it were correct (which it obviously isn’t), it still would not help the anti-gay marriage crowd, as there is definitely no “Christian gene”. If Christians think it’s OK to be anti-gay because there’s no “gay gene”, then logically it follows that it’s OK to be anti-Christian.
I do like it when people show intelligence.
WND Watch 