thoughts in and out of season
Here’s a Harvey Mansfield piece about the Larry Summers situation that’s worth reading. Since the issues are controversial, I suppose I should say that I think it perfectly obvious that men and women differ naturally in talents and inclinations, and that current views on the topic are evidence that something’s gone radically wrong with intellectual … More ...
Boldly venturing into the belly of the beast, I went to Canada last week and gave a talk on “sexism” at a conference on Breaking the Shackles: The Global Burden of Oppression at Upper Canada College in Toronto (“college” means “high school” in this case). In the event the visit turned out perfectly pleasant. The … More ...
I’m back from a couple of weeks away, and mostly recovered from a mild but annoying virus, so I’ll be posting once again. To get things started, here are some comments I posted on Dawn Eden’s weblog on why I think there’s a problem with contraception.
As I see it now (my view hasn’t always … More ...
Over at MarriageDebate.com Maggie Gallagher has been dealing with one of the standard arguments for “gay marriage,” that there can’t be an essential connection between marriage and procreation because after all 70-year-old women are allowed to marry even though they can’t have babies. Miss Gallagher handles the question very well, but there’s a lurking point … More ...
Here are some of the fruits of the movement for full inclusiveness in religion, and more generally of the search for this-worldly transcendence: a mini-conference on homosexual sado-masochistic religion at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, a leading scholarly organization (search for the word “gay” on the linked page), and a respectful … More ...
I’ve noted the Amnesty International view that violence against women is the greatest human rights scandal of our times. Their campaign against that scandal continues, with their submission of a report to the UN that complains, on human rights grounds, about the failure of the Spanish Government to do away with violence against women… More ...
Too much inclusiveness is a bad thing, British homosexualists have discovered. The Lords have voted to open up “civil partnerships,” designed by the Blair government as an exact replica of marriage for same-sex couples, to caregivers and others who live together in stable domestic arrangements. The move has transformed “gay rights” rhetoric in a radically … More ...
From the standpoint of the liberal public philosophy now generally accepted, the question of homosexuality has an obvious answer—treat it on a par with any configuration of sexual habit and impulse, as something people say they find rewarding and in any case are very reluctant to give up.
The opinion to the contrary that has … More ...
When assigning responsibility for the misconduct at Abu Ghraib prison it’s odd to have to choose between Lynndie England and Donald Rumsfeld. I thought the normal thing when something goes very wrong in a military unit was to hold the officer in charge responsible. In this case that would be Janis Karpinski, who was in … More ...
No big surprise: sexist homophobic fundies who leave the household chores for the little lady make better husbands and fathers. It’s an interesting result, because it contradicts any number of current views: