Tolerance entails hearing views you may strongly disagree with, even from homophobes
Friday February 23rd 2007 .
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WHAT would the future of the human race be if we were all homosexual? Would it be just the same as if were all heterosexual? Probably not? We agree on that. Excellent.
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That's what's called a start. And what would our future be if most of us were homosexual? The same as if most of us were heterosexual? Ah. Beginning to wobble a bit, or even getting a little huffy, are you? I understand completely.
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Talking about homosexuality in terms other than those permitted by the politico-homosexual lobby is now just a little - or even very - unacceptable.
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I touch upon this issue because of the furore following the observation by the Polish President Lech Kaczynski that if there were widespread promotion of homosexuality, the human race would disappear. Replying in this newspaper, Senator David Norris spoke of anti-gay bigotry amongst immigrants, declaring that he and his partner had had insults and things thrown at them "by the Poles". (Substitute the words "the Africans" for "the Poles" and imagine what the response would have been).
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He also used the words "ignorant" or "ignorance" six times about both the Poles and their president, "unsophisticated" and "disgrace" twice each, and "very limited intelligence", "offensive" and "appalling" once each. Mr Norris even - rather enchantingly, I thought, and really quite innovatively - then condemned heterosexuals for their sexual incontinence, "which has bred us off the bloody planet. Gay people have been far more responsible".
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But hold on.
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That, surely, was the general point that the Polish president was making: that homosexuals do not make babies. Hysteria, outcry.
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But when Senator Norris in effect said the same thing (in what he imagined was opposition to the president), there was silence.
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Moreover, the senator's remarks get to the hypocrisy of the modern liberal agenda. For what heterosexual would dare condemn homosexuals for their sexual incontinence, without being instantly turned into a hate figure by the same people who lacerated President's Kaczynki for his "intolerance"? (His critics included Shinners; very enjoyable getting lectures on tolerance from that lot).
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YET these are usually the very people who are loudest in their demand for multicultural diversity, as if diversity comes only in the vanilla of the left-liberal consensus which dominates the media today. But diversity means hearing, and listening to, things you don't like.
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Of course, to be safe on this issue with the liberal mob, one merely has to say that homosexual love is identical to heterosexual love, and homosexual unions are as blessed in the eyes of the Lord as heterosexual unions, and all couples, hetero or homo, should enjoy the same rights before the law.
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That would put one safely on the side of the angels, where Irish people have always preferred to argue from, whether in the time of John Charles McQuaid or today, in the new secular orthodoxy of the right-on, ideological egalitarianism. Where once politicians kissed bishops' rings, today they worship at the altar of a doctrinaire liberal consensus that dominates our media generally.
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So the first real issue here is not whether there is a difference between homosexual and heterosexual love, but whether we are allowed to offer any sceptical opinions on the subject without being called "homophobes" (a word I thoroughly dislike because of its spectacularly oxymoronic etymology, but I accept it because there is no other).
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Freedom
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Is it simply impermissible to say that, by and large, homosexuals don't have babies and there are demographic consequences to having a large numbers of homosexuals in a population?
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Apparently, yes if you're a Polish heterosexual; no if you're an Irish homosexual.
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Moreover, is it wrong publicly to deplore the promotion of homosexuality?
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Why not, if you genuinely believe homosexual acts to be sinful, as most Christians always have?
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Like most Irish people today, I emphatically do not; but genuine freedom means we must allow the public expressions of consciences we disagree with.
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Acceptance of homosexual sexuality doesn't mean I think homosexual and heterosexual love are the same, or that homosexual couples should have the same right to adopt children as heterosexual couples. It's simple. Men and women have different brains, different sexual urges, different bodies, different emotional equipment.
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Women do not tour the streets looking for prostitutes of either sex, women do not cruise, women do not kill strangers.
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Across the entire range of human conduct, in love and war, in house fire and in motorcar, women behave differently from men, and vice versa. It stands to reason that a heterosexual couple are going to have the most extraordinarily different dynamics from same-sex couples.
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THIS doesn't mean that homosexuality is unnatural. It's not. It occurs throughout nature and in all human societies. I therefore strongly support same-sex legal unions and am largely in favour of lesbian couples being able to adopt, though only in limited circumstances.
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I am highly dubious about male homosexual couples being given the right to adopt, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely. But I wouldn't put same-sex unions on the same legal footing as the traditional marriage, because there's no way of knowing how the wizards of the bench will interpret that in a decade. By which time, of course, even to utter the foregoing might be a criminal offence.
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Kevin Myers
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I personally call upon you all to stop purchasing the following titles which are part of the Independent News and Media family:
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(Ireland)
(Ireland)
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Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Evening Herald, Sunday World and The Star
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(UK incl. Northern Ireland)
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The Independent and The Independent on Sunday.
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The Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life
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They have hit us where it hurts us, so now let us hit back where it hurts them most and that aint in the balls area because if they had any balls at all they would have fired Myers for his diatrabe a long time ago...the pockets are fine for now!!!
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No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce