Sarah Bear, Locked and Loaded for 2014

[caroljane]

You are a very bad "girl!"

And you love it.

[Selene]

You are a very bad "girl!"

And you love it.

You are a very bad "girl!"

And you love it.

You are a very bad "girl!"

And you love it.

Absolutely...

and you would love being possessed as that bad girl...I completely understand...

[caroljane]

Sir! The topic of Mrs Palin has obviously overheated you gentlemen -- perhaps we should turn the conversation to someone who appeals to old white ladies --

[caroljane]

-- still trying to come up with somebody--

[caroljane]

-- well, there is that cute Joe Biden, but I am no cradle robber.

[We Erred Rand]

Quote

Michael Stuart Kelly wrote:

>>>I'm interested in seeing this evidence as I mull over the fact that I don't know of any serial killers or bloody dictators or destructive cult leaders or suicide bombers who had homosexual parents (to mention one non-heterosexual alternative).

http://www.americanclarion.com/11930/2012/09/03/gay-activist-science-deniers/

"Woe to any scientist with an interest in objectively researching and reporting on “LGBT”-related issues.

If your findings fail the left’s socio-political “butterflies-and-rainbows” litmus test, the “progressive” establishment will try to destroy you – guaranteed. Thus, on these matters, honest scientific inquiry will require courage.

Kansas State University, July 2010: Family Studies professor Dr. Walter Schumm releases the most comprehensive study to date on the effects of homosexual “parenting.” Published in the Journal of Biosocial Science, the study determined, among other things:

Children raised in “gay” households are up to 12 times more likely to self-identify as “gay”;

Of those in their 20s – presumably after they’d been able to work out any adolescent confusion or experimentation – 58 percent of the children of lesbians called themselves “gay,” and 33 percent of the children of “gay” men called themselves “gay.” (Contrast these rates with current studies indicating that around 3 percent of the general population is homosexual.)

University of Texas-Austin, June 2012: Dr. Mark Regnerus leads a team of researchers on another peer-reviewed homosexual “parenting” study labeled: “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study.”

The study was published in the journal Social Science Research. Its website FAQ page summarizes the findings: “[T]he data show rather clearly that children raised by gay or lesbian parents on average are at a significant disadvantage when compared to children raised by the intact family of their married, biological mother and father.”

Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink distills the research: “According to [Regnerus'] findings, children raised by homosexual parents are more likely than those raised by married heterosexual parents to suffer from poor impulse control, depression and suicidal thoughts, require mental health therapy; identify themselves as homosexual; choose cohabitation; be unfaithful to partners; contract sexually transmitted diseases; be sexually molested; have lower income levels; drink to get drunk; and smoke tobacco and marijuana.”

Again, you could’ve set your watch to the liberal response. They went ballistic."

See, also:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57451777-10391704/kids-of-gay-parents-fare-worse-study-finds-but-draws-fire-from-experts/

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

I don't know about statistics regarding homosexual parents and serial killer children, but there is a link between homosexuality, per se, and serial killers:

http://www.adherents.com/misc/hsk.html

Gay/Homosexual Serial Killers

Jeffrey Dahmer

murders: 17

1978, 1988-91

homosexual cannibal. He was killed by another inmate while in prison.

Andrew Cunanan

murders: 5

1997

killed fashion designer Gianni Versace

Luis Alfredo Garavito

murders: 140+

Gay serial killer who murdered over 140 boys in Columbia.

Randy Steven Kraft

murders: 65 (est.)

"Score Card Killer"

Michael Swango

murders: 35 - 60

"Doctor of Death" -- killed hospital patients

Andrei Chikatilo

murders: 52

Russia

Fritz Haarmann

murders: 40 (est.)

"Butcher Of Hanover"

John Wayne Gacy

murders: 33

until 1978

bisexual; 27 of his victims (young boys he seduced) were found buried in crawlspace under his house. Executed in Joliet, IL.

Patrick Wayne Kearney

murders: 28+

gay cruising areas of Hollywood

Wayne Williams

murders: 27

1979-81

Gay serial killer who preyed mostly on young black male hustlers.

Elmer Wayne Henley

murders: 27

Bisexual. Victims were young boys who he kidnapped and tortured.

[see link for more, including list of lesbian serial killers.]

"Although homosexual murderers of single victims are too numerous to list here, a number of particularly famous ones include: Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb (the wealthy and academically bright gay Chicago couple who murdered a boy in 1924 just for fun; their story became one of the nation's most famous murder cases, and was the basis for many movies, including Hitchcock's film "Rope"); Armin Meiwes (the sexually deviant German cannibal known as "Der Metzgermeister" - The Master Butcher, who met a victim over the Internet who he ate and killed); John E. du Pont (the gay member of the wealthy du Pont famil who shot Olympic wrestler David Schultz to death); Gary Hirte(Waupaca, WI high school senior who admitted to killing 37-year-old substitute teacher Glenn Kopitske); Karla Homolka (Canadian lesbian who murdered her own sister). Other notable gay violent criminals include Kenneth Parnell(paid $500 to "purchase" a young black boy named Steven Stayner, who he then raped and kidnapped); John Wojtowicz (whose bank robbery inspired the movie Dog Day Afternoon)."

Also, see:

http://www.familyresearchinst.org/2012/01/are-homosexuality-and-violence-linked/

• - Yearly domestic violence reports are disproportionately homosexual
  
• - Married adults reporting domestic violence: men = 0.04%; women = 0.24%
  
• - Homosexually-partnered adults reporting domestic violence: gays = 4.6%; lesbians = 5.8%
  

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

http://crime.about.com/od/serial/a/dahmer.htm

"Jeffrey Dahmer was responsible for a series of gruesome murders of 17 young men from 1988 until he was caught on July 22, 1991, in Milwaukee.

First Kill

Unknown to anyone, Jeffery Dahmer was mentally disintergrating. In June of 1988, he was struggling with his own homosexual desires, mixed with his need to act out his sadistic fantasies. Perhaps this struggle is what pushed him to pick up a hitchhiker, 19-year-old Steven Hicks. He invited Hicks to his father's home and the two drank and engaged in sex, but when Hicks was ready to leave Dahmer bashed him in the head with a barbell and killed him.

He then cut up the body, placing the parts in garbage bags, which he buried in the woods surrounding his father's property. Years later he returned and dug up the bags and crushed the bones and disbursed the remains around the woods. As insane as he had become, he had not lost site of the need to cover his murderous tracks. Later his explanation for killing Hicks was simply, he didn't want him to leave."

In September 1986, he was arrested and charged with public exposure after masturbating in public. He served 10 months in jail, but was arrested soon after his release after sexually fondling a 13-year-old boy in Milwaukee. He was given five-years probation after convincing the judge that he needed therapy.

His father, unable to understand what was happening to his son, continued to stand by him, making certain he had good legal councel. He also began to accept that there was little he could do to help the demons which seemed to rule Dahmer's behavior. He realized that his son was missing a most basic human element - a conscience.

Murder Spree

In September 1987, while on probation on the molestation charges, Dahmer met 26-year-old Steven Toumi and the two spent the night drinking heavily and cruising gay bars, then went to a hotel room. When Dahmer awoke from his drunken stupor he found Toumi dead.

Dahmer put Toumi's body into a suitcase which he took to his grandmother's basement. There he discarded the body in the garbage after dismembering it, but not before gratifying his sexual necrophilia desires."

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

Below is an interesting — and infamous — "underground" history of homosexuality and Naziism, "The Pink Swastika."

http://www.thepinkswastika.com/5201.html

Excerpt from Tab: "HMX Roots of NP":

It was a quiet night in Munich. The people moving along the streets in the heart of the city were grim. They walked heads down, hands deep in the pockets of their frayed coats. All around, the spirit of defeat hung like a pall in the evening air; it was etched on the faces of the out-of-work soldiers on every street corner and in every café. Germany had been defeated in the war, but it had been crushed by the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Everywhere the people were still mired in depression and despair, several years after the humiliating surrender of Kaiser Wilhelm.

In this atmosphere the purposeful stride of Captain Ernst Roehm (pictured above) seemed out of place. But Roehm was accustomed to being different. A homosexual with a taste for boys, Roehm was part of a growing subculture in Germany which fancied itself a superior form of German manhood. A large, heavy man, Roehm had been a professional soldier since 1906, and, after the war, had temporarily lent his talents to a socialist terror organization called the Iron Fist. On this night Roehm was on his way to meet some associates who had formed a much more powerful socialist organization.

At the door of the Bratwurstgloeckl, a tavern frequented by homosexual roughnecks and bully-boys, Roehm turned in and joined the handful of sexual deviants and occultists who were celebrating the success of a new campaign of terror. Their organization, once known as the German Worker’s Party, was now called the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, The National Socialist German Worker’s Party — the Nazis.

Yes, the Nazis met in a “gay” bar.

It was no coincidence that homosexuals were among those who founded the Nazi Party. In fact, the party grew out of a number of groups in Germany which were centers of homosexual activity and activism. Many of the characteristic rituals, symbols, activities and philosophies we associate with Nazism came from these organizations or from contemporary homosexuals. The extended-arm “Sieg Heil” salute, for example, was a ritual of the Wandervoegel (“Wandering Birds” or “Rovers”), a male youth society which became the German equivalent of the Boy Scouts. The Wandervoegel was started in the late 1800s by a group of homosexual teenagers. Its first adult leader, Karl Fischer, called himself “der Fuehrer” (“the Leader”) (Koch:25f). Hans Blueher, a homosexual Nazi philosopher and important early member of the Wandervoegel, incited a sensation in 1912 with publication of The German Wandervoegel Movement as an Erotic Phenomenon, which told how the movement had become one in which young boys could be introduced into the homosexual lifestyle (Rector:39f). The Wandervoegel and other youth organizations were later merged into the Hitler Youth (which itself became known among the populace as the “Homo Youth” because of rampant homosexuality. - Rector:52).

[BaalChatzaf]

Butterfly and Rainbows litmus test. That is a zinger!

May I use it the next time I denigrate pinko, stinko, commie loving Progressives and Liberals?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[caroljane]

Yeah, a proportion of the population is homosexual, and a proportion of the population is psychotic, and a proportion likes to kill people.

The world should watch out.. Rosie O'Donnell's son goes to a military school !

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I ask for evidence and I get propaganda?

Dayaamm!

Let's look (my bold):

So far as raising children is concerned, there is evidence that anything outside of traditional heterosexual couple marriages is psychologically harmful to children (including, of course, single parent families). Naturally, the left doesn't want to hear this, and neither do gays.

. . .

I'm interested in seeing this evidence as I mull over the fact that I don't know of any serial killers or bloody dictators or destructive cult leaders or suicide bombers who had homosexual parents (to mention one non-heterosexual alternative).

Point 1: The evidence presented by Weird Rand doesn't deal with psychological health at all. It deals with propensity toward becoming gay (Schumm called his topic in his narrative studies "intergenerational transfer of sexual orientation.") Psychological health was not mentioned.

Point 2: We can look it up, but it is a pretty good speculation that the list of serial killers presented who are reported as homosexual or bisexual were raised in heterosexual households.

By using the fuzzy dot-connecting of Weird Rand, we can conclude that heterosexual households are unhealthy environments for raising children because they produce homosexual serial killers.

Heh.

I thought this was going to be a serious discussion. Judging by the propaganda-like approach, I'm not going to debate this issue too much with Weird Rand. It's too much like watching MSNBC.

Note to Weird Rand: Your arguments are skating very near bigotry right now. Keep it objective or take it elsewhere. I don't mind should you want to be a bigot. It's your life should you go that way. I just don't want you preaching bigoted hatred here on this site. There is no censorship on OL for discussing ideas, but there is for preaching bigotry (as both anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic bigots have learned, and a few others in other areas).

And before the smart-ass response kneejerk gets you to hit the publish button, know that this is non-negotiable. I have no intention of discussing this policy with you. But I will act on it.

Michael

[studiodekadent]

I ask for evidence and I get propaganda?

Are you really surprised?

We Erred Rand thinks that a Focus On The Family website counts as an unbiased source.

We Erred Rand has a conservative ideological axe to grind. Given WER's response to me (which I shall be addressing), I find it very hard to resist coming to the conclusion that WER is an absolute bigot.

[caroljane]

Seems like that missile in the silo is ready for launch!

And there is no such thing as a free launch!

lol. A current rerun on the reality-show channel here is poor Bristol Palin's stupefyingly dull short-lived series, in which Bristol mainly talks about Sarah and her awesomeness. Tonight's episode: "Bristol attends her book launch and her mother makes a surprise appearance."

Wonder what the fee was?

No, I don't think Bristol is very widely read either.

Yes, "nice pair of" Bristols also "wrote" a book. And her mother has had two bestsellers. I do not deny that either of them is capable of writing a book. However I seriously doubt that either of them actually did. Most celebrity books are ghostwritten,with or without acknowledgement to the writers, as anyone familiar with mainstream publishing knows.

Think about it. How long does it take to write a book? At least a few months, with the writing being a primary activity. Say a year. How many celebrities or politicians have a year to write for four or five hours a day? I am talking about now, not the past when writing was a regular activity for most educated people.

It is much more reasonable for the celebrity to provide the material to a good interviewer, which takes a few weeks, and then revise and approve the final ms.

There are exceptions naturally. Joan Collins for example does her own writing. (Honest, she does... don't sue me, Miss Collins!)

[Selene]

However I seriously doubt that either of them actually did.

And of course you are submitting this high quality of evidenciary support for your argument with some objective source?

[caroljane]

However I seriously doubt that either of them actually did.

And of course you are submitting this high quality of evidenciary support for your argument with some objective source?

Nary a one. I can't prove a negative. just entertain doubts.

[caroljane]

Again, I am not saying that these ladies, or anyone literate, is incapable of writing a book. Most of us could if we had to - locked in a room and not let out until we produced the page quota. But not every Colette finds her Willy and most do not go looking.

[studiodekadent]

>>>When I use "liberal" I mean classically liberal. Throughout this entire discussion I've reiterated this.

I've specified "classically liberal", too. However, the term at issue is not "liberal" but "conservative." You claimed that conservative values have gone on about the evils of greed; I corrected you, because you distorted the historical record.

Again, look at historical Christianity. Calvin and Luther etc. were all against "excess" and "luxury" i.e. acquiring personal stuff. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. Christianity is a Platonistic, Ascetic religion preaching self-denial and self-sacrifice.

You are arguing an extreme paradox - that the capital formation which was an unintended consequence of a belief that excess/luxury/consumption somehow validates an entire code of morality which damns the profit motive.

You are also ignoring a basic truth of economics that Mises pointed out; human action is teleological - the only reason that people produce is because people need to consume to live. A morality which damns the Ends (consumption) but praises the Means (for different reasons) is going to collapse under the weight of its own stupidity.

Ayn Rand didn't endorse greed, either. Specifically "the grasping" kind of greed. She also didn't approve of it throughout Atlas Shrugged when presenting businessmen who acquired their fortunes through the extortionary method of rent-seeking rather than production.

Actually, Rand disapproved of DISHONEST and CORPORATIST greed (i.e. rent-seeking and consumer fraud). She also disapproved of greed-for-the-purposes-of-showing-off (clear case of Second-Handing (see The Fountainhead)). But she did NOT disapprove of consumption, or consumerist greed, one bit - look at the part in Atlas where Ragnar hands Rearden an ingot of gold and tells him to spend the gold exclusively on his own consumption.

You may be tended to rebuke me by pointing to the fact that in the novel, Rearden holds playboy Francisco d'Anconia in contempt for being an hedonistic big-spending playboy. But, again, please note that all of Rearden's expressions of contempt happen early in the novel, BEFORE Ragnar gives him the gold and tells him to spend it on personal consumption. The point Rand is making is that Rearden's protestant-like attitudes are errors - remember that Rearden, like Dagny, is one of the characters that needs to learn over the course of the novel.

The profit-making "greed" was approved by Calvin, as it was by Protestantism in general.

Calvin approved of consistent unending labor because he believed it was a sign of being granted grace. He believed that if this labor was 'fruitful' it was a sign of "assurance" that one was a member of the Elect.

This is hardly an endorsement of the Profit Motive.

Read "The Protestant Work Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism" by Max Weber.

I'm familiar with the Weber Thesis and I strongly disagree with it (indeed my life's intellectual project is to destroy it). Weber was using the Marxist understanding of capitalism, i.e. private ownership of capital with capital-owners paying wages to workers to operate the capital in the process of production.

This is a different concept to that of free markets. By the Marxist definition, which Weber was using, Fascism is capitalism. The regulatory, Keynesian, Welfare State is Capitalism.

My concern is with laissez-faire. Not capitalism-as-defined-by-Marx.

Oh, and Weber's thesis fails to grasp that there are plenty of 'trader peoples' in the world. The Chinese, for example! And the Confucian code of morality strongly emphasized family and prosperity and investment and industriousness... so why on earth did Europe, which was for a long time less advanced than China, manage to industrialize beforehand?

Please discard your unintelligibility. What a careful thinker and writer would have said is, "And Progressivism has a long history of desiring the State to administer and enforce social and behavioral reform in the individual, as opposed to social conservatives' preferred method of achieving individual reform, which was generally to keep the state out of it altogether, and, rather, to strengthen ties that were natural to the individual i.e., family, church, etc. in order to foster a voluntary change in the individual BY the individual."

If Progressives' method was to ban alcohol, and Conservatives' method was to seek "counsel" of family, minister, etc., that they both had the similar of goal of decreasing the number of drunks on the streets scarcely means they two ideological camps overlapped in their long histories.

Oh yes, social conservatives have never attempted to use the State to force their values on other people, ever! (note the sarcasm)

Yes, the old progressive left (i.e. FDR and the like) has a long history of social engineering via coercion. Interestingly enough, the old progressive left embraced conservative social values. The religious right of today has hardly been against social engineering either. And the New Left progressives (who advocate a different ideology to the progressives of the 20s/30s) are also in favor of coercive social engineering, albiet they don't share conservative social values.

A minority of people who are personally socially conservative in terms of their own lifestyle preferences and ethical beliefs oppose the use of the State to force their values on others. And good for them - I support their right to live without having other people's values forced upon them, as well.

But if you think that, say, a parent beating their child generates "voluntary" moral change in the child, or that the church threatening young kids with eternal torture creates "voluntary" moral change (it counts as a credible threat, in my view, to someone that has swallowed the kool-aid), then you are frankly delusional.

What you *asserted arbitrarily with no supporting examples or evidence." was that the values of social conservativism are anti-tech and anti-science. Um, prove it. Provide some concrete examples.

Horrors over new reproductive technology. And not just cloning... in-vitro fertilization was opposed too.

The myth of the Tower of Babylon.

The Fall of Man being caused by man's desire to eat from the tree of knowledge. Yes, how dare we desire to learn, think and know.

Greek Myths of Icarus and Prometheus (Christianity was Hellenized so the Hellenic sense of life got incorporated into the religion, like it or not, and the lessons of both myths are a strong part of our moral 'received wisdom').

Galileo.

Transplantation was originally opposed by the Vatican IMO.

It is much easier to cite examples from the Catholics since they have a centralized heirarchy, but Protestantism is hardly immune. The campaign against the theory of Evolution, for example.

The Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of the 80's didn't oppose any new scientific discoveries but the idea of Satan being alive and active in our world clearly counts as a religious superstition that sabotages a scientific worldview.

No he isn't. Good grief, you have no sense of proportion. Kass (and many social conservatives) object specifically to 1) cloning of human beings, and 2) the killing of human embryos in order to farm "pluripotent" stem cells from them. You apparently take those two things and make the blanket claim that he expresses revulsion at "biotech" in general, which is utter nonsense.

And his objections are based exclusively on feelings of disgust. He openly admits no rational arguments beyond "ewww, icky! My feels!" And I think he's opposed 'designer babies' as well but if you have a citation where he approves of that I'd like to see it.

>>>The point I am making is that the capital formation necessary to commence industrialization was an unintentended consequence of an incidental component of values promoted by historical Christianity

The "incidental" component being industriousness, future-orientedness, and that institutions that support it: family, children, etc. Read Max Weber's work on the Protestant Work Ethic. He didn't think it these things were incidental. I agree with him. Apparently, so did Ludwig von Mises, a secular Jew. And I agree with him, too.

Again, I don't see how family, children etc. necessitate your absurdly narrow frozen abstraction of what 'family' and 'children' entail.

But the question Mises was addressing was the conditions which enabled industrialization, and industrialization is not the same thing as a free market. Mises was a secular Jew - therefore he wasn't someone that accepted the values he believed functioned as a sufficient condition for enabling Europe's industrialization.

The only intelligibility I can see to your use of the term "incidental" is "yes, I agree it happened to have worked historically, but I personally don't like these aspects of Christianity . . . . because it interferes with fun stuff I like to do, such as have lots of promiscuous sex with lots of people of both genders because, hey, sex is enjoyable!" Aside from that, I see no meaning in your use of incidental.

This quote of yours absolutely, completely, betrayed your rampant and filthy prejudice.

You characterize my attitude as follows: I agree it happened to have worked historically, but I personally don't like these aspects of Christianity . . . . because it interferes with fun stuff I like to do, such as have lots of promiscuous sex with lots of people of both genders because, hey, sex is enjoyable!

In other words, in this quote, you are accusing me of being a promiscuous bisexual.

At no time in this discussion, or in any single post anywhere else on OL, have I ever stated anything at all about what my sexual preference may or may not be. Nor have I ever implied anything at all about my level of sexual activity in real life.

I don't believe that the gender/s of people one prefers to sleep with is a moral factor. Nor do I believe promiscuity is inherently wrong, and I don't see why polyamory is a bad thing.

But none of this leads to the conclusion that I am a promiscuous bisexual. I support the legalization of heroin too, but I have no desire whatsoever to consume heroin.

The leap from "doesn't morally condemn nonheterosexual persons and doesn't consider monogamy morally imperative" to "is personally nonheterosexual and non-monogamous" was made entirely by you. So, why did you make that? Because of literal prejudice, i.e. you judged me without any relevant evidence. And since you obviously consider non-monogamy and non-heterosexuality to be morally wrong (on the basis of your previous posts), you are morally condemning me without having any evidence that your assumptions about me are correct in the first place (and this is to say nothing about the validity of your moral evaluations of nonheterosexuality and non-monogamy).

This is prejudice, and as MSK said it is extremely close to outright bigotry. It is not only offensive but it is completely unsupported by the facts - you have no factual basis to make these allegations. Withdraw them immediately.

No it isn't. I can tell that you're not even superficially acquainted with Sowell's book. Like Ayn Rand's trashing of Rawls's book on ethics without having read it, you give a thumbnail sketch of Sowell's book either based on some other review you've read or on word of mouth.

I'm going by the Wikipedia summary here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Conflict_of_Visions

If the summary is wrong, please fix Wikipedia (and reference your copy) and inform me of the changes.

Sowell himself makes no claim about mankind being inherently good, or evil, or fallen, or not fallen, or smart, or stupid.

Okay, then please make sure you alter the Wikipedia summary, which describes the Unconstrained Vision as premised on the idea of innate human goodness which can be perfected through social institutions.

And this little bit about "the self-anointed" which clearly links the Unconstrained Vision with Elitism... how do you explain the elitism/heirarchialism in institutions which reject the Unconstrained Vision like most Christian churches? Calvinist theology believes in a natural elite chosen by God (the Elect)... oh wait, as you said Sowell grants his system is flawed which really brings us to the question... what use does his system have when he concedes it has a very large number of faults and falsifying instances?

Yes, so the polyamorous and homosexuals tell us, but there's little evidence for it, and it remains an arbitrary assertion.

An arbitrary assertion backed up by my experiences. I know gay people, I know bisexual people, I know polyamorous people, and in my experience there is zero meaningful difference. Big deal, they like dudes/chicks/both, so f**king what?

And this idea that gay men have a lower Marginal Propensity To Save? Gay men especially are disproportionately wealthy creative professionals (both savers/investors AND part of the Creative Class). If anything they'd have more money in the bank, to be lent out as business loans and thus to permit capital investment.

So far as raising children is concerned, there is evidence that anything outside of traditional heterosexual couple marriages is psychologically harmful to children (including, of course, single parent families). Naturally, the left doesn't want to hear this, and neither do gays.

And your evidence for this comes from Focus On The Family. A totally unbaised source. Eyeroll.

Additionally, one could also marry one's mother, father, sister, brother, or household pet.

Marriage is a contract and contracts can only be entered into between consenting adults, so there is a built-in limiting principle which prevents one from marrying one's household pet.

As for incestuous marriage, I find it gross and disturbing, but if it is between CONSENTING ADULTS I find it difficult to say it should be illegal. I would consider it disgusting for sure, and likely immoral. But immoral and illegal are different matters.

The question is: do most people want to live in a society with social units consisting of mothers and sons (or mothers and daughters) married to one another; or a polyamorous father with his own daughter and his own niece; not to mention a unit comprising a boy and his dog; or would most normal heterosexual married couples find it simply disgusting (as Ayn Rand averred about homosexuality), and just plain unacceptable?

Do I want to live in a society where other people's feelings of disgust control what is legal or illegal? Hell no. That's just the Tyranny of the Majority.

And what Rand 'felt' about homosexuality is irrelevant. That said, I'd be willing to wager money that if she grew up with modern sexual mores, she'd be a raving slash fangirl... I submit Chris Sciabarra's Ayn Rand, Homosexuality and Human Liberation and its chapter "Male Bonding In The Randian Novel" as my evidence.

Moreover, one can forge a society that is tolerant of deviant behavior (up to a point, of course) without declaring such deviancy to be "just another choice, as good as any other choice" and then try to mainstream it by teaching courses on it to children.

I agree in abstract, but that says nothing about whether or not homosexuality is 'deviant' (it is statistically deviant, i.e. atypical, but that isn't the same as morally deviant), nor does it say anything at all about what set of norms are desirable.

[Peter]

Adam wrote about Sarah Palin:

I am willing to gamble that a person who has the integrity to act on their beliefs in the personal sphere and refuse to impose those beliefs on the citizens at large, "the people" in the Constitutional sense are worthy of electing to office.

And Michael responded to Adam:

Make it about integrity instead of abortion.

end quote

Those last two letters are each worthy of bumper stickers. Reminds me of when Forrest Gump was running from coast to coast, and on two occasions two entrepreneurs run up to ask him what would be a good bumper sticker. Once Forrest draws a smiley face and says, Have a nice day. The next time after stepping in dog crap Forrest says, Shit happens. Lets tweek our Forrests (just kidding guys.)

How about this Adam: A Libertarians tolerance is defined as acting on personal integrity without imposing those beliefs on others.

Make it about integrity instead of abortion, reminds me of James Carvells Its the economy, Stupid! But how could Sarah frame it? Its about integrity. We are infallible so always err on the side of life.

Michael also wrote:

After her campaign, the bars could stay open all night. Her convictions about freedom while in office were far stronger than her convictions about booze.

end quote

Thats an excellent point but should only be expressed by a supporter.

Groucho said, Id sure like to nail that babe and Andrew also tried to nail Miss Palin:

Rural, religionist, romanticist, nationalist / jingoist, pining for small town wholesomeness and - Pleasantville, Moral Guardian Soccer - Mom, vote- for me because - I'm just like - you Populist, etc.

end quote

Thats quite creative Andrew and there is some truth to calling her small town. 2016 will be interesting an interesting primary year. I think Sarah has thought more intellectually since she lost. Back in 2008 I suggested and recommended she read several books and articles. And from her subsequent appearances I think she did listen to me or someone else.

She will only get better with age.

Peter

[studiodekadent]

I see no meaning in your use of incidental.

I'm going to expand on my earlier reply by pointing out what I mean here by "incidental."

A moral system is composed of plenty of different propositions. Some of these propositions are essential to the moral system, and some of these propositions are incidental to the moral system.

The basic test is - if someone can disagree with a specific proposition advanced by the moral system, can they still be said to be in agreement with the overall moral system itself? If the answer is yes, we're dealing with an incidental proposition. If the answer is no, we're dealing with an essential proposition.

For example, an essential proposition in Objectivist morality is that individuals should think for themselves and rely on their own rational judgment. An incidental proposition is that a woman would be psychologically defeminized by the Presidency and thus it would never be in the rational self-interest of any woman to hold such an office. Someone can reject Rand's argument about female Presidents and still be an Objectivist, but someone cannot argue against the virtue of independent thought and confidence in one's capability to make such decisions and still be an Objectivist.

Now, my argument is simple - the fact that some forms of historical Christianity have encouraged thinking long-term is incidental to the moral theories of these form/s of Christianity.

The early Christians typically thought that the apocalypse was imminent and so did NOT think long-term. And of course the Lillies Of The Field parable seems to encourage a lack of concern with material affairs. But lets look exclusively at Calvin and Luther - both of them held to the position of Total Depravity; the idea that Original Sin had corrupted humanity so greatly that only God's Grace could make an individual perform a virtuous action (this position is derived from St Augustine).

In other words, the meta-anthropology of Reformed Christianity leads to the proposition that all virtue is the work of God, not man. It fundamentally denies individual responsibility. Obama's "you didn't build that!" line is strangely appropriate here, for if the Calvinist position is true then you didn't work hard to build your business - it was God who did it by granting you the necessary Grace.

In a Reformed Christian world, virtue is just an epiphenomenon, or a sign, of being chosen by God.

Indeed, given the complete denial of individual responsibility that this code of morality leads to, one might ask how on earth this could lead to a moral culture that prizes thinking long-term (which again seems irrelevant if human agency is futile and all good and evil is just the result of God's giant metaphysical coin flip... Calvinism embraces the idea that God is sovereign over everything after all).

Oh wait: they sneak in this list of moral "signs" which is used to tell whether or not you've been saved!

And since Calvinism is completely fucking wrong, and humans DO have agency, then if they're threatened with eternal torture and hellfire and are told that only the Super Special Elect will be Saved and that the Elect will act in X way, then yes, humans WILL endeavour to act in X way!

Reformed Christianity is a marvellously-designed social control mechanism that certainly gets results, I'm not doubting this. But the accidental results of a completely lunatic meta-anthropology hardly count as justifications of that meta-anthropology, unless you're willing to argue that Lies Are Okay If They Make People Good.

That is to say nothing at all about the psychological damage Calvinism and the like inflicts on its adherents... especially when you have theories of "Assurance" which argue that any doubt in your mind is proof you're Damned. All those kids brought to tears by the preachings of Hellfire sermons like "Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God" are the tip of the iceberg.

The list of "signs" used to pick who is damned or saved is irrelevant to this moral system. Any will work - sure, only a few might encourage the right long-term orientation to sustain capital formation but again, a theology is still "Calvinist" whether it embraces hard work or not.

The five essential points of Calvinism (as defined by actual theological Calvinists) are -

Total Depravity

Unearned Election

Limited Attonement

Irrestable Grace

Perservearance of the Saints

Nowhere is "hard work" or "saving and investment" even mentioned. At best these were unintended consequences of a Calvinist cultural focus on modesty and labor as "signs" of being saved, and since people lived modestly they saved a lot of money.

Lutheran theology differs somewhat from Calvinism but if there is a cultural focus on modesty/labor/etc then the results would be the same. But again, this proceeded from incidental features rather than from the actual core doctrines of the belief system.

Your argument boils down to "the unintended consequences of some incidental components of a thoroughly demented belief system were at one historical point sufficient to generate larger-scale savings and investment than we had ever seen before. This justifies, in the present day, adherence to every single incidental component of the belief system as well as swallowing its ideological kool-aid."

[We Erred Rand]

decadent student:

>>Again, look at historical Christianity. Calvin and Luther etc. were all against "excess" and "luxury" i.e. acquiring personal stuff.

To be against excess is different from being against the acquisition of personal stuff.

To be against gluttony is different from being against eating.

You're as "acquainted" with Calvin and Luther as you are with Sowell.

>>>You are also ignoring a basic truth of economics that Mises pointed out; human action is teleological - the only reason that people produce is because people need to consume to live.

"Teleological" means "directed toward a goal; purposeful." It doesn't specify what the purpose is, or what it ought to be. Consumption is one purpose; glorification of God to prove one is a member of the "Elect" is another. Both are perfectly consistent with the truth about teleology. Both are perfectly consistent with economics. Neither economics nor teleology has anything to say on the matter in terms of judging which one is preferable.

>>>Ragnar gives him the gold and tells him to spend it on personal consumption

.

And does he?

>>>Calvin approved of consistent unending labor because he believed it was a sign of being granted grace. He believed that if this labor was 'fruitful' it was a sign of "assurance" that one was a member of the Elect.

>>>This is hardly an endorsement of the Profit Motive.

Calvin urged the idea of a "calling", not merely labor: i.e., a unique kind of work suited to each individual, and to which the individual feels strongly compelled to contribute. Sounds like Howard Roark.

>>>My concern is with laissez-faire.

I know. That's why you're a fantasist. From the standpoint of the non-existent Utopia you mentally inhabit (I'll bet it's called "Galch's Gulch"), a mythical place called "middle America" is populated by mythical beings called "the rural poor." You have a lot to learn about a lot of things that actually exist.

>>>And your evidence for this comes from Focus On The Family. A totally unbaised source. Eyeroll.

And yet when it comes to defending homosexuality, polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, bestiality, incest, and sex with children, the only evidence you offer is that you claim to personally know some people who practice one, some, or all of these things. Sounds biased to me.

(In fact, as the original Regnerus study points out, that's what was precisely wrong with many earlier studies of gay parenting. Not only were the samples small, but many of them were "convenience samples," i.e., samples personally known by the researchers.)

Unfortunately for you. I'm not your personal research assistant, so I'm not going to post emendations to Wikipedia. Obviously, you've never gone past reading "Cliff Notes" and Wikipedia summaries of books that you should have read, and which you now lie about — to yourself and to others — by arbitrarily asserting that you're "acquainted" with the book, when in fact, you're only "acquainted" with the titles and some brief summaries compiled by anonymous others and stitched together at Wikipedia. Hey, nothing wrong with that . . . so long as you're content to remain a second-hander in scholarship.

Judging by the length of your posts and the silliness of your statements, you have lots of time on your hands. Why not make good productive use of it by actually reading Sowell and Weber instead of skimming predigested summaries by others and spitting them back on your posts mixed with heaping amounts of arbitrary opinion? (Or does that whole approach sound too laboriously Calvinist to you?)

>>>"I'm familiar with the Weber Thesis and I strongly disagree with it (indeed my life's intellectual project is to destroy it)."

Your life's "intellectual project" is to destroy a thesis that you barely grasp, by an author you barely know, in a book you've never read, but whose summary by others on Wikipedia you're "acquainted" with??? Congratulations! You are this year's winner of the coveted Peter Keating Award. (Please don't make a long "thank-you" speech, OK? Just bow, thank a few people, and get off the stage.)

Instead of holding onto your preconceived, subjective, arbitrary opinions about these issues, and cherry-picking supportive statements from Rand, the Bible, Atlas Shrugged, Calvin, Rand, and Rand — a procedure known as "Confirmation Bias", and justly rebuked in another thread by that great intellect, Michael Stewed Kelly — wouldn't a more profitable approach be to ask yourself, "I wonder what all the fuss over Max Weber and is about? I think I'll read his book over the summer and try to find out for myself!"

But then, why bother reading it when you already know that you disagree with it.

Here are links to Regnerus's original study and his reply to critics; Schumm's study; and a reader-friendly article on gay-parenting which appeared in that conservative propaganda magazine of right-wing pro-family bigotry, National Review (eye roll), which I provide for your convenience, in case you're too busy surfing Wikipedia summaries. Enjoy!

Regnerus Study 1:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610

Regnerus Study 2:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12001731

Schumm Study:

http://tinyurl.com/chpsrmk

National Review:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302319/gay-parenting-bad-kids-charles-c-w-cooke

[studiodekadent]

I'm going to ignore the irrelevant insult-throwing and focus on a matter of substantiative fact:

>>>Ragnar gives him the gold and tells him to spend it on personal consumption

.

And does he?

Yes. On Dagny. That's why he at one point describes Dagny as a "luxury object." The pear-cut ruby? That's about spending money on his own pleasure.

The point behind Rearden's character development is that he rejects the protestant work ethic, the idea that he's morally OBLIGED to keep working full stop.

On another note, I notice you still haven't apologized for your blatant prejudice about my character.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

. . .and justly rebuked in another thread by that great intellect, Michael Stewed Kelly

Weird Rand,

Last warning.

You come with implied insults, then move on to actual ones, then start preaching bigotry.

I have no idea what value you get from being here, but I just don't have the time to babysit you.

There's a big Internet out there to display this stuff. You don't need to be here.

Michael

EDIT: btw - The links to the Regnerus studies, etc., seem to be better quality than the previous information. I only say that from skimming the first, so it's an assumption. I'll read the stuff and make comments later.

[Selene]

Michael:

The studies are solid. I want to look further into their statistical methodology.

Additionally, I have not checked how, and from where, their funding stream flowed from.

As "intelligent" as it/he/she appears, the personal crap is just so distasteful and unnecessary as to make it's posts almost unreadable.

I still would like to know what it does for a living, what it's education is and what it's age and citizenship are.

A...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

I'm not so sure about the solidity. Like all social studies, there are most likely a lot of factors left out in the controls that could explain the results.

This is off the top of my head from the skim concerning the first link, so take it with a grain of salt until I can go deeper into it.

I not only skimmed the study in the first link, but I looked up the title on the Internet to see the general reaction. As expected, there were strong words against it from the Progressive media. One of those I skimmed just to get a feel objected to the study being used for general statements about homosexual home environments because (1) Regnerus is quoted as saying so himself, and (2) the sample couples included many who did not have long-term relationships.

I can't speak to this (even to say whether it is true or not) without reading further, but I only mention it because it seems reasonable on the surface and that is precisely the difficulty in studying something like this.

And that leads me to one of my own thoughts right now. I have been studying a lot about how repetition shapes core neural pathways (and even successfully planting some in Kat and my kid's, Sean's, mind as a mini-treatment of his autistic spectrum disorder--with great results, by the way).

It is obvious to me that, in other lifestyles, if the parents are one thing, the children will lean toward it. This is because of the core neural pathways reinforced day after day by repetition. As the Sufis say, we become what we gaze upon. The child of a Muslim family will most likely be Muslim, ditto for Christian, etc. I'm speaking of the culture, not just the religion.

But there is another element. It's not just the family the child gazes on, but also how the issue is viewed in society as the child grows up.

I don't have any studies on this, but you can look at strong Christian or Muslim or Buddhist etc., communities and countries and see that they continue to be the same culture generation after generation. I believe this is because the child gets the same message at home as when he leaves home to go to school or play, or when he turns the TV on, or when he gets involved in local sports or performing arts, and so on.

When something is not so socially pervasive, like Objectivism or the Rosicrucians or something like that, I notice some very vocal children who have left the respective folds as they grow up. I don't know what the percentages are, but I imagine they are higher for children leaving the culture as they grow up than for the cases where the culture is pervasive in society. My speculation is based on them getting one message at home, and several others when they look at things outside the family environment. It would be interesting to see a study on this, but I bet I'm right.

I didn't see any kind of control in my skim to suggest a concern with this factor. If something like this does not appear as I read the material, then (in the first link at least) we will have a study of homosexual couples, some of whom probably live in social environments that are hostile to homosexuality or treat it as an outsider lifestyle. I believe that factor would be just as much a component in the results as family life and if it is left out, the study simply cannot be very solid.

So I'm going to read this stuff with attention, but I believe it is not more than it is--a beginning compilation of statistics according to some rather broad parameters. In fact, I am pretty sure the folks who did the studies will say the same, but I will wait and see.

I find this kind of study valuable since the human animal fascinates me, but it's hard to keep objectivity once all the yelling starts by polarized people with agendas to propagandize. It's hard, but if we want to be responsible at intellectual inquiry, we have to make an effort to shut the noise out.

We have to correctly identify before we can correctly evaluate. And this is the opposite of the system used by propagandists, who seek identification evidence for a pre-adopted evaluation (which is why they selectively omit so much relevant stuff, too.).

Michael

[Selene]

Michael

Understood.

This was on of the conclusions:

But the NFSS also clearly reveals that children appear most apt to succeed well as adults—on multiple counts and across a variety of domains—when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father, and especially when the parents remain married to the present day.

I may have mentioned this when we here on OL were discussing various studies and their methodologies. I start from the "conclusion" of these studies and then work my way back up to the opening Introduction and the methodology/statistical analysis.

2.6. Analytic approach

My analytic strategy is to highlight distinctions between the eight family structure/experience groups on the 40 outcome variables, both in a bivariate manner (using a simple T-test) and in a multivariate manner using appropriate variable-specific regression techniques—logistic, OLS, Poisson, or negative binomial—and employing controls for respondent’s age, race/ethnicity, gender, mother’s education, and perceived family-of-origin income, an approach comparable to Rosenfeld’s (2010) analysis of differences in children making normal progress through school and the overview article highlighting the findings of the first wave of the Add Health study (Resnick et al., 1997). Additionally, I controlled for having been bullied*, the measure for which was asked as follows: “While growing up, children and teenagers typically experience negative interactions with others. We say that someone is bullied when someone else, or a group, says or does nasty and unpleasant things to him or her. We do not consider it bullying when two people quarrel or fight, however. Do you recall ever being bullied by someone else, or by a group, such that you still have vivid, negative memories of it?”

Finally, survey respondents’ current state of residence was coded on a scale (1–5) according to how expansive or restrictive its laws are concerning gay marriage and the legal rights of same-sex couples (as of November 2011). Emerging research suggests state-level political realities about gay rights may discernibly shape the lives of GLB residents (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2009 and Rostosky et al., 2009).

*Out of curiosity, how does on control for having been "bullied?"

As far as "solid," it appears that the study meets the basic parameters of design.

A...

[We Erred Rand]

studiodekadent wrote:

>>>>Yes. On Dagny. That's why he at one point describes Dagny as a "luxury object." The pear-cut ruby? That's about spending money on his own pleasure.

I see.

You broached the episode in AS about Ragnar's handing a bar of gold to Rearden, claiming that it was done with the exhortation, or at least the implied intention, that Rearden spend the bar of gold "on consumption", i.e., on his own pleasure. I then asked, "And did he?", meaning, "And did Rearden in fact spend this bar of gold on his own pleasure?"

You answered above, "Yes. On Dagny . . . The pear-cut ruby…"

As if to claim that the episode with the pear-cut ruby occurred after the episode with Ragnar and the bar of gold, as well as an effect of that meeting.

But according to my edition of Atlas Shrugged — hardcover version, Random House, 17th Printing, and autographed by Miss Rand to me personally ("To We Erred Rand — Cordially, Ayn Rand") — the bit about the pear-shaped ruby occurs on page 367, and the long bit about the gold bar from Ragnar ends on page 584, more than 200 pages later; obviously, my TechnoGoth friend, the latter event could not have been the cause of the former. Additionally, the long episode with Ragnar ends with this:

"He bent, picked it up and walked on"

"He" is Rearden; "it" is the bar of gold wrapped in burlap.

Nowhere in the novel does Miss Rand tell us what Rearden did or did not do with that bar of gold. That's why I asked originally above, "And did he?", i.e., and did Rearden, in fact, spend that bar of gold on nothing but consumption and his own pleasure?

You answered confidently, "Yes." In fact, the only intellectually honest answer consistent with what's in the novel (as opposed to what you're projecting in your head) is, "We don't know. Miss Rand doesn't say."

>>>>On another note, I notice you still haven't apologized for your blatant prejudice about my character.

You noticed that? You're sharp! The fact is, I don't think you have any character whatsoever.

[We Erred Rand]

Selene wrote:

*Out of curiosity, how does on control for having been "bullied?"

The author explains how he controls for it. By "control" he means, a question that can be answered by a respondent, and then quantified as part of the pool of raw data. He explains it immediately after the sentence you put in red bold and underlined.

Additionally, I controlled for having been bullied*, ...

the measure for which was asked as follows: “While growing up, children and teenagers typically experience negative interactions with others. We say that someone is bullied when someone else, or a group, says or does nasty and unpleasant things to him or her. We do not consider it bullying when two people quarrel or fight, however. Do you recall ever being bullied by someone else, or by a group, such that you still have vivid, negative memories of it?”