Patterico's Pontifications

6/12/2014

Rick Perry In San Francisco

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:55 pm

[guest post by Dana]

In San Francisco yesterday, Rick Perry spoke to the Commonwealth Club of California.

He discussed states rights, economic and social policies, as well as climate change and fracking.

Perry argued the federal government should give up much of its policy-making power, letting states chart their own courses on issues ranging from business subsidies to abortion. He joked about his frequent habit of luring California companies to Texas and called the competition between the two states healthy for both, as well as the nation.

However, what made the news was the subject of homosexuality and his comparison of it to alcoholism. As the Texas Republican Party now endorses a platform that supports access to “reparative therapy” for gays and lesbians, a widely discredited process intended to change sexual orientation, Perry, when asked about it, stated that he did not know if the therapy worked. The event host then asked Perry whether he believed homosexuality was a disorder.

“Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that,” Perry said. “I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.”

And although there were Perry supporters in the audience, audible murmurings and gasps were heard.

Reading a number of responses to Perry’s comments from various sites, it would appear there are two basic responses: There are those who give him kudos for honesty and courage to speak frankly (and in San Francisco, no less), and there is concern that if he plans to run in 2016, he might want to re-think, or at least refine his comments regarding such a hot button issue.

–Dana

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: I am confident nobody could put me in therapy and have me come out believing I wanted to have sex with a man. So how could therapy convince a gay man that he wants to have sex with a woman?

Comments (119)

119 Responses to “Rick Perry In San Francisco”

people tend to cut him some slack cause they know he got a case of the simples
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/12/2014 @ 7:56 pm
Texas is very anti-alcohol. Half the state is dry. California, on the other hand, is wine country. I’m not surprised his remarks elicited gasps, there.
nk (dbc370) — 6/12/2014 @ 8:09 pm
The words of one of the few out-of-the-closet, self-described gays in no less than the very liberal world of show business speak for themselves:

telegraph.co.uk, September 2012: The star of the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love blazed a trail for gay actors when he came out as homosexual 20 years ago. However, he has been criticised by gay rights groups after giving an interview in which he decried same-sex couples who have children.

The 53-year-old told the Sunday Times Magazine that his mother Sara had met his boyfriend but “still wishes I had a wife and kids.”

“She thinks children need a father and a mother and I agree with her,” he said. “I can’t think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads.”

His comments were part of a feature in which his mother was interviewed as well.

“I’d like him to have children. He’s so good with children. He’d make a wonderful father. But I also think a child needs a mummy and a daddy. I’ve told him that and he takes it very well. He doesn’t get angry with me. He just smiles.”

dailymail.co.uk, September 2006: And while the convention for film actors is to be ostentatiously keen on women while hiding gay relationships, Everett does the reverse. He talks elaborately about his boyfriends and then discreetly mentions the fact that he has had affairs with a series of high-profile women, including the actresses Beatrice Dalle who he briefly thought was pregnant with his child, Susan Sarandon and the late Paula Yates.

‘I am mystified by my heterosexual affairs, but then I am mystified by most of my relationships,’ he says.

Everett vividly describes in his book the cocky vulnerability of Paula Yates and how her life tumbled into chaos and death. He had an affair with her, on and off, for about six years during her marriage to Bob Geldof.

Mark (c58c23) — 6/12/2014 @ 8:35 pm
The star of the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love blazed a trail for gay actors

he wasn’t even credited for his role in Shakespeare
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/12/2014 @ 8:42 pm
. . . there is concern that if he plans to run in 2016, he might want to re-think, or at least refine his comments regarding such a hot button issue.

I don’t know, Dana. The rule is pretty much that only liberals can refine or re-think their earlier positions. They can be opposed to gay marriage today then all for it tomorrow, for one of the more notorious examples. Once a conservative stakes out a fairly controversial position, he or she has to be saddled with it for ever. I think it is taught at Columbia J-School or something.
JVW (feb406) — 6/12/2014 @ 9:04 pm
widely discredited process intended to change sexual orientation [Italics yours.]

I do not know what “reparative therapy” is officially defined as, but I know multiple people who entered adulthood as gay or lesbian who have been happily married for years, usually after going through some process of examining their psyche and choosing to do things that helped them change their orientation and action.

I imagine some, like aphrael, would say that such people were never gay, but bisexual.
Even if that was the case, why should a bi who has been living a gay lifestyle who wants to change not be allowed to seek help doing so?

From a political point of view, a candidate needs to be able to frame it as an issue of freedom to choose rather than have the government force a view onto people. If one “wants” to be gay, let them; if they want to establish a marriage-like contract with a SS partner, let them;
just don’t make everyone else jump up and cheer, nor tell people who have “gender identity and orientation issues” that they must choose one path rather than have a choice.

I have heard that Penn Jillette has no animosity towards Christians wanting to convert him, and says that he would be more offended if they didn’t. He reasons that if someone really thought he was going to hell unless he changed his ways, it would be reasonable for a caring person to try to persuade him so, and someone who didn’t bother to tell him must really not be very loving at all, even hateful. I do not have a specific quote, but having heard him talk with Glenn beck numerous times, it seems to fit.
I assume he does require some degree of politeness about how it would be presented to him, but the subject itself is not offensive.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/12/2014 @ 9:04 pm
I think Mr. Gov. Perry does not have much of a future as a politician on the national stage.
elissa (b69310) — 6/12/2014 @ 9:49 pm
There is a lot of study of the role of adolescence in sexual orientation. For example, you can get into a lot of trouble with the left talking about Transgender types. What do you consider them if not wavering between homosexuality and hetero. ? One school of thought believes that some adolescent boys are undecided and are then sucked in, so to speak, as teenagers. The classical Greeks traditionally had homosexual relationship as boys with older men in the military, then married and had families later. Greek families had a tradition of harem-like sequestration of women and all those societies, like the Arabs, have a lot of homosexual activity between young males.
Mike K (cd7278) — 6/12/2014 @ 10:13 pm
A dyed-in-the-wook gay person won;t change inclinations with therapy. However, gender confused who identify as “gay” have changed. It is proven.

What pisses me off are gay activists I have met who attack “confused” for even daring examining their true natures.

I don’t give a freaking damn what you are. I care mightily about what you DO.
Ed from SFV (3400a5) — 6/12/2014 @ 10:24 pm
7. Heh. Indeed.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 6/12/2014 @ 10:25 pm
I have heard that Penn Jillette has no animosity towards Christians wanting to convert him, and says that he would be more offended if they didn’t. He reasons that if someone really thought he was going to hell unless he changed his ways, it would be reasonable for a caring person to try to persuade him so, and someone who didn’t bother to tell him must really not be very loving at all, even hateful.

I’ve never heard Penn say this, but I have said it many times. It’s commonplace among Jews to equate any desire on the part of Christians to convert us with antisemitism. When the Pope slightly rehabilitated the prayer for the conversion of the Jews, one could have thought from the reaction that he had praised the crusaders. I’ve never understood this attitude. Yes, from our point of view missionaries are objectively seeking to harm us, and we must beware of them, but they don’t see it that way. From their point of view, trying to convert us is an act of love; the true antisemites are those Christians who are quite happy to see us go to Hell.
Milhouse (2c3555) — 6/12/2014 @ 10:43 pm
“Reparative therapy” doesn’t work. At least, if the goal is to turn a gay person straight, to make him desire the opposite sex and not desire the same sex, it can’t do that. Which is not to say that no form of therapy could ever possibly achieve such a thing. I see no reason in principle why such a technique should not exist; but if it exists it hasn’t been discovered yet. Should a reliable method of turning gay people straight ever be discovered, I expect it would work just as well in the other direction; Patterico may be confident that nothing could ever change his sexual orientation, but I don’t see how he can be so sure. The brain is a strange organ, and in principle all kinds of things can be done to it.

One clue that such a technique probably does exist, is that there exist so many people whose orientation has changed over time. I’ve known some, and read reliable-seeming reports of others. What strikes me as the common factor among all the cases that seem credible to me, is that none of them offer an explanation for how the change happened. Few of them were looking to change, it just happened, seemingly spontaneously. Certainly none of them attribute the change to any kind of therapy. But something must have caused it, and it stands to reason that some day someone will figure out how to do it on purpose.
Milhouse (2c3555) — 6/12/2014 @ 10:54 pm
The thing about “reparative therapy” is that it makes promises it can’t deliver on, and some of its techniques can really mess a person up. So I understand the desire to ban it as consumer protection. But if someone were to offer it with a much more limited goal, if it were to be promoted merely as a way to enable gay people to act straight, to function with the opposite sex and be able to fake it well enough to sustain a marriage for the long term, then I see no reason why it shouldn’t be available.
Milhouse (2c3555) — 6/12/2014 @ 11:00 pm
The star of the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love blazed a trail for gay actors

he wasn’t even credited for his role in Shakespeare

Indeed, he played Christopher Marlowe, hardly the “star” of the film. That would be some guy named… what was it?… oh, yeah: Shakespeare.

I’d be rather surprised if Marlowe/Everett had more than five minutes of screen time. Sorry, Telegraph, the generic sense of “starring in” and “being the star of” are not synonymous…
Smock Puppet, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d) — 6/12/2014 @ 11:03 pm
So how could therapy convince a gay man that he wants to have sex with a woman?

I would suggest this argument MIGHT be specious for the simple reason that being gay may not be as wired into the species as being heterosexual would be. One is contra-survival for the genes, the other is not.

I have no idea about the effectiveness of such therapies, nor do I really care all that much about it… I’m just saying that arguing that going one direction is certainly far more likely to connect to inner wiring that all animals necessarily have, the other is likely to run directly counter to that wiring.
Smock Puppet, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d) — 6/12/2014 @ 11:08 pm
I would suggest this argument MIGHT be specious for the simple reason that being gay may not be as wired into the species as being heterosexual would be. One is contra-survival for the genes, the other is not.

Not so fast. There are good explanations for why homosexuality may be a survival trait for a gene pool. Such as the “gay uncle” hypothesis.

I have no idea about the effectiveness of such therapies, nor do I really care all that much about it… I’m just saying that arguing that going one direction is certainly far more likely to connect to inner wiring that all animals necessarily have, the other is likely to run directly counter to that wiring.

Except that what evidence there is about how sexual orientation works seems to indicate that homosexuals have the same wiring as heterosexuals, but backwards, much as left-handed people have the same wiring as right-handed people but backwards. So for them it would be just as difficult to reverse.
Milhouse (2c3555) — 6/12/2014 @ 11:15 pm
re: Patterico’s update.
It appears that you have constructed a tautology in which therapy can never work, for any issue.
Ken in Camarillo (2c0dee) — 6/12/2014 @ 11:48 pm
“Reparative therapy” doesn’t work.

The self-labeled gay British actor, Rupert Everett, whose affairs with women are described above, apparently didn’t need any therapy at all to initiate social-sexual relationships with the opposite sex. It presumably came naturally to him. But that’s hardly surprising.

Based on the life stories/histories of plenty of, again, self-described homosexuals (but particularly males, since they can’t claim and also fake arousal the way a woman is able to), they are technically and even socially bisexual. Or the “B” in GLBT.

Since the left has no trouble accommodating every form of non-conventional sexual behavior in the book, they can’t — natch — push the meme that gays have no choice in the way they behave, and then turn around and say that in the case of people who exhibit bisexual behavior, yes, it’s a matter of choice, but, hey, either way, it’s all okay, and who cares, and anyway it’s none of our business, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Simply put, the left should be perfectly fine with the idea that homosexuality is a matter of free choice, free will.
Mark (c58c23) — 6/12/2014 @ 11:58 pm
Why is Perry even there? He’s unlikely to change any minds, so why even bother?

Convincing current CA-based businesses to take up residence in TX would be way more likely to produce results.
Blacque Jacques Shellacque (9940a5) — 6/13/2014 @ 12:03 am
It appears that you have constructed a tautology in which therapy can never work, for any issue.

Ken in Camarillo (2c0dee) — 6/12/2014 @ 11:48 pm

It reads more to me that this particular form of therapy seems unrealistic. Imagine therapy making your sexual orientation change. Sure, therapy could reduce my fear of heights, but there are limits to how deeply it could change someone.
Dustin (0431a0) — 6/13/2014 @ 1:35 am
Say Goodnight, Rick.
mg (31009b) — 6/13/2014 @ 2:10 am
Hetro- and homo-sexuality aren’t the only sexualities. I fully support LGB2SVP5MRST3Z2 liberation.

I wish people would be sensible about the ability of the state (or others) to change people’s nature. The USSR with the full weight of its psychiatry and gulags still couldn’t make people socialists.
ErisGuy (76f8a7) — 6/13/2014 @ 2:39 am
So how could therapy convince a gay man that he wants to have sex with a woman?

It comes from the idea that it is easier to set things right than put things wrong.

But really, from the idea that if it is a disease ir can be cured. And if it is a sin,. you can repent and stop doing it.
Sammy Finkelman (2d4607) — 6/13/2014 @ 3:06 am
UPDATE BY PATTERICO: I am confident nobody could put me in therapy and have me come out believing I wanted to have sex with a man. So how could therapy convince a gay man that he wants to have sex with a woman?

By the same token nobody could put you in AA against your will and convince you not to drink, if drinking is really what you want to do. But then Perry didn’t say anything along those lines.

“Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that,” Perry said.

We have a very perverse society. On the one hand if you decide you were born the wrong gender, well dammit! Everybody else should pay so a surgeon could carve you up.

I have never understood why if I self-identify as Napoleon or a pony I could be considered insane, but if I self-identify as the opposite gender then the whole world needs to change in order to accommodate me.

On the other hand, if you were to decide you were born with the wrong desires, i.e. you’re gay but don’t want to be, it should be illegal for you to seek counseling for that.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/08/chris-christie-signs-bill-banning-gay-conversion-therapy/

Then there’s the sliding scale as applied to evidence. A high rate of suicide among post-operative transgenders isn’t proof that the surgical therapy didn’t work. No, no, no, that can’t be. There are all sorts of alternative excuses.

But if people commit suicide following “restorative therapy,” that’s iron clad proof that it was the psychological therapy that drove them to it. No, no, no, that must be. There are no other excuses.

Think you are born the wrong gender? You are right, and society must accept you as you think you are. Remedies are available.

Think you are born with the wrong sexual orientation? You are wrong, and you must accept yourself as society insists you are. Remedies are unavailable.
Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 4:46 am
7. I think Mr. Gov. Perry does not have much of a future as a politician on the national stage.

elissa (b69310) — 6/12/2014 @ 9:49 pm

Nobody who isn’t willing to blow with the breeze has a future as a politician in this country.
Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:01 am
13. The thing about “reparative therapy” is that it makes promises it can’t deliver on…

Milhouse (2c3555) — 6/12/2014 @ 11:00 pm

Such is life.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/379826/texass-sex-crime-castration-program-unfair-kevin-d-williamson

Fast on the heels of the Trans community in the social political realm of surgical gender body modification is the MTE (Male To Eunuch) community. Formerly isolated MTEs (non-transgender males who have their testicles removed electively), “Nullo” and “Smoothies” (non-trans males who have both testicles and penis removed for a smooth completely genital-less appearance*) have formed strong communities since the advent of the internet and are becoming increasingly activist in lobbying for medical/surgical services that are currently offered only to those males who have a conflicted “internal gender identity”. MTE’s say the fact that they retain their male identity should not limit their access to the same medical and surgical services offered to transgender males with genital dysphoria.

So, let’s say you travel to India or Thailand and have your wedding tackle cut off. And you come back to the US and find life still isn’t perfect, just like before the surgery. Might that not suggest you have issues, and not me?

Not in this Obamanation. Somebody will invent a new phobia and apply it to me.

And no one will suggest that the surgery ever made promises it couldn’t deliver. It is I who didn’t deliver on the post-op promise, which I didn’t even know I was a party to until demand was made.

But restorative therapy? That’s dangerous.
Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:14 am
Curse him. CURSE him for stating an honest view he holds, how dare he!!!
EPWJ (68f58f) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:23 am
To people who know their Bible and know their Governor Perry, it’s hardly surprising that he compared homosexuality to alcoholism.

As Perry is someone whose religious views guides his public policy, it is instructive to know the exactly what the source of those views are before going off half-cocked with reactionary rhetoric. From Paul’s initial epistle to the Corinthian congregation (New International Version, bold mine):

“…[D]o you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Perry has gone on record as recently as July 2012 saying that regardless of what other people think about same-sex marriage, God hasn’t changed his mind about it.

“The issue of traditional marriage is one that continues to bubble forward and I happen to believe that, if you’re going to have a society that is successful economically or otherwise, you’re going to have to have values that you attach that society to. For 2,000 years we have had marriage between a man and a woman,” said Mr. Perry. “I suspect that issue’s not going to go away, but just because you share a different view or you are flexible on the issue does not mean that God has changed his mind about it.”

Mr. Perry acknowledged that his views on gay marriage and abortion might earn him some detractors, but he refuses to “back away” from his position on those issues.

“If you’re going to base your public service upon your values, then you’re going to get criticized by those who don’t agree with those values. I don’t back away from my positions on traditional marriage, on abortion,” Mr. Perry said. “They’re values that, from my perspective, they can’t be equivocated. You’re either for traditional marriage or you’re not. You’re either for protecting innocent life or you’re not.”

We’ve witnessed in California how deceptive legal maneuvers were employed by liberal judges, politicians and activist groups to overturn two votes by citizens on same-sex marriage; now that they’ve pulled off that trick, they and their media allies are trying to punish everyone who refuses to shut the bleep up about how they were screwed on that issue and tangential ones that emerge almost monthly.

For example: weeks ago, this site righteously upbraided Orange County newspaper Daily Breeze (published by the Los Angeles News Group) for its silly endorsement of Sandra Fluke for the State Senate seat vacated by Ted Lieu. Lieu is the whoozat Democrat who is now running for Congress on the strength of the national headlines he made after his drive to ban reparative therapy for minors in California. It is Lieu’s bill that became law when Governor Brown signed it, and started a chain reaction in other state legislatures (such as New Jersey) and apparently was the impetus for a statement by Texas Republicans defending the practice. Here’s what the LANG said in its endorsement of Neel Kashkari to challenge Governor Brown:

Brown’s best-known opponent is second-term Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia. Donnelly would be an entertaining rival, for reasons good and bad. He is a Tea Party favorite, a onetime anti-illegal-immigration Minuteman, who worries too much about social issues like transgender students’ access to school restrooms and who cast the only vote against banning the sale of Confederate flags on state property.

So, to review: According to the Los Angeles News Group, Tim Donnelly — who pulled one of his children from public school after Brown signed the bill allowing young trannies to pick whichever restroom they like — “worries too much about social issues.” It’s not a problem for LANG that San Francisco Assemblyman Tom “Kiss my gay ass” Ammiano — founding member of S.F.’s Gay Teachers Association in the ’70s — worried enough to write the bill, it’s just a problem that Donnelly didn’t bend over and say “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”

The late Robert Bork wrote about how this nation was “Slouching Toward Gomorrah.” I think a more accurate way to say it is “Creeping Toward Canada.” Slowly but surely, the leftists who call the shots in too much of the country are putting us on a path to speech codes that will result in actions like Canada’s Whatcott Supreme Court decision, which concluded that truthful statements not intended to incur hate could nonetheless be found to be hate crimes, incurring fines for the speaker.

If you say “That can’t happen here!” then you haven’t been paying attention to what already has happened.
L.N. Smithee (7d4e89) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:37 am
Watch the space above for a long, multi-linked comment currently in moderation.
L.N. Smithee (7d4e89) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:40 am
I’m NOT saying that therapy can convince a gay man that he wants to have sex with a woman. But it is a fact that, just as straight people sometimes become gay, gay people sometimes become straight.

Why this is some kind of radical (heretical?) idea I’ll never know. It was once generally understood that desires are fickle, even malleable, things.
Amphipolis (d3e04f) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:50 am
Amphipolis, you may find this interesting.

http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth

In the study the vast majority of sixteen year olds who reported only same sex attractions, as seventeen year olds reported only opposite sex attractions.
Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:00 am
Perry didn’t need this moment to show that he is not a viable national candidate.
JD (950bc6) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:05 am
Restorative therapy? Bad for children! Destructive! We must denounce.

Gay leather wear for children?

http://www.zazzle.com/gay+leather+kids+clothing

Kids & Baby Gay Leather Clothing

Great for children! Constructive! We must celebrate.
Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:09 am
UPDATE BY PATTERICO: I am confident nobody could put me in therapy and have me come out believing I wanted to have sex with a man. So how could therapy convince a gay man that he wants to have sex with a woman?

As mentioned by others above, there are at least two aspects to this.

One is the issue whether same sex orientation is “just as normal” as heterosexual. The claim that it is seems to be more of an a priori statement of faith/belief than anything else, a claim that once was not seriously entertained by the majority of society, but has become much more acceptable, and even if not accepted, not argued against.
With that being the argument, it seems that the only difference between socially acceptable sexual behavior and unacceptable is the ability of some group to have adequate influence, including by coercion as we have seen recently (“Bake my cake!”, “You’re fired for donating to Prop 8!”, etc.)
For some, that is exactly what ethics/(right and wrong) is, the prevailing preference of society. Some of us believe otherwise. As one person once asked me, “Do you think Hitler and Nazism is wrong, even if they had won the war?” Yes, I do.
People often like to disparage “slippery slope” arguments, so pointing out that SS marriage was unthinkable 20 years ago and projecting the same possibility on other societal changes, such as lowering the age of consent and polygamy are responded to as a joke. Well, once upon a time many leading politicians treated the idea of SS marriage as a joke.
If one does not assume SS attraction is “as natural” as heterosexual attraction, but something that is a developmental problem, then the concept of helping “what is wrong get fixed” is very understandable, and the question is can it be done, and how.
In the analogy to alcoholism, to the degree one wants to follow where that goes, the idea of telling an alcoholic to “just stop drinking” seems perhaps both trivially oversimplified but at the same time fundamentally true. I think most people who successfully stop drinking when it had been a problem do more than “just stop drinking” while the rest of their life is unchanged. Things such as learning new coping strategies for stress, treatment of depression, choices of social settings, etc. are often involved.

A second issue is the degree of self-control that is expected of desires that are “natural”. There is a reason why “Soft porn” such as Playboy is lucrative, as well as linking advertising of just about anything to scantily clad attractive women. Surprise, men are hard-wired to be aroused by visual cues and to pursue. Even so, likely all societies have ideas of how that should be limited. I think even in societies like the West where marriage is increasingly something that couples think they can do without, there is still the concept, I think typically, of being faithful and not cheating.

The thing about liberalism is that it gets you into logical inconsistencies. On one hand some people think they should be allowed to do anything they want, regardless of the impact on others, but want to limit the behavior of others. So you get absurdities like coed dorms and signed pre-date contracts of what behavior one is agreeing to. That is almost like saying every restaurant must have complimentary wine or beer with every order along with a signed statement that one will not take more than one drink, not only at the restaurant, but for the rest of the day as well. It is illogical and selfish, demanding people around me to acquiesce to my demands, including my demands on their own behavior.

A last point. The perspective of Scripture is that people really do know somewhere in their conscience that heterosexuality with one partner is the normal design, and to not believe that is because of a willful denial (at some level) of it. Hence, there is no argument that will satisfy many, if not most, who already believe and are committed to the gay (and everything else) view. That also could contribute to the need not to simply have the freedom to believe and do what they please, but to demand that the rest of society fall in line as well.

Now, there is a very valid point that far too often the reaction to gay people has been one of hostility, not just to the behavior but to the person as well. I do not agree with that type of reaction. I believe that there are ample parts of my life that left to themselves are not only wrong but are worthy of my going to hell when I die, so at a fundamental level there is no significant difference between my issues and the issues of a (wildly promiscuous) gay man when all is said and done. The only significant difference is whether or not one is willing to acknowledge God’s just demands and to seek mercy as He has offered it.
Believing that makes me an enemy “seeking to harm” in the view of some, but at least some realize that it is out of true concern.
Now, it can be said that the worst things are done to people by people who think they know better than you, but Christian faith does not impose itself (not true Christian faith, and there is such a thing) on others, but informs and beseeches.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:13 am
JD,

Some say politicians need to be more honest, Perry is blunt and decisive and perhaps was addressing the hypocrisy that some see that the LGBT is about money, power, as another set of entitlements is already being generated at great financial costs to business’s to the taxpayers and to society in general. And not about being accepted into society –

back to banlandia
EPWJ (68f58f) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:26 am
Most humans are “wired” to enjoy sexual behaviors (there are some who appear not to have sexual desires at all.) Our culture praises (some) heterosexual behavior and condemns homosexual and bisexual behaviors, even though some engage in those practices. It is not surprising to me that most find happiness in heterosexual behavior and find other behaviors to be something they do not experience (at least in adulthood.)

I suspect that most humans are actually bi-sexual, and go through life having repressed their same-sex desires; some invert this, repressing (and denying) their other-sex desires. Some manage to repress both desires (those being the people who appear to have no such desire), and some do without repressing either (the bisexuals.) Repression (and denial) can be good for you, protecting you from behaviors you should not express in the circumstances they form. So I can see how someone might be “re-programmed” but I am not sure this would be a good thing to do to someone. If they wanted such it should probably be allowed if it’s a safe and effective process (and if we could do this, would we allow that people be programmed to be bisexual?)

We don’t seem to be able to reprogram even extreme pedophiles, though, to more age-appropriate targets of desire, which would seem to be a simpler task.

So I don’t think you’re in any danger of such a change, Patterico, even if you wanted it.
htom (412a17) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:26 am
The human nature on display in no less than the famous ancient Greek philosopher Plato is a fascinating reminder that the controversy of GLBT (or at least GLB) dates back centuries and that the divide between left and right (or squish-squish conservatism, or “centrism”) in 2014 apparently existed 400 hundred years before Christ (or when Plato was writing his observations).

Plato started out sounding like a typical do-your-own-thang modern-day liberal — dismissing anti-homosexual Greeks for being — to paraphrase — cranky country bumpkins, and then eventually came around to condemning homosexuality in fairly strong terms.

What goes around comes around.

And there ain’t nothing new under the sun.

So Plato illustrates the way that ideology does alter people’s perceptions as they move through life. The fact a high percentage of the GLBT are also of the socio-political left is not purely coincidental. It’s therefore quite possible that one reason why various self-described gays switch over to a straight lifestyle as they grow older is due to that very same phenomenon. Or that combined with changes in human physiology, primarily the way hormonal influences make people frisky (or promiscuous) in their youth and then less so as they grow older.
Mark (c58c23) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:37 am
So how could therapy convince a gay man that he wants to have sex with a woman?

By the same token it’s damn difficult for various heavy cigarette smokers to quit the nicotine habit. So I guess we should stop encouraging them to do so.

But, you say, smoking is bad for one’s health!

Okay.

Well, since a high percentage of certainly the gay community (ie, male homosexuals) is notorious for contracting sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS, then at least the “G” in GLBT should be actively discouraged if only for health reasons, if only for human safety. Even more so, since health!-health!-health! has become sort of a new religion (hey, how are things going, Michelle Obama?!).
Mark (c58c23) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:47 am
Governor Perry should have answered the question: The event host then asked Perry whether he believed homosexuality was a disorder. Here’s one possible response:

Disorder? Well, I’ll have to leave that up to the medical professionals. However, I can tell you that while it seems to be increasingly viewed as acceptable in many quarters of the US, especially here in the City by the Bay, it can be a life and death issue in many other places. Whether it’s a disorder or a preference might generate a lot of inflamed debate down in the Castro, or the question can be dragged out to put politicians on the spot here in the Commonwealth Club. However, the simple truth is we ought to recognize homosexuality can get you killed, especially in a great many Islamic countries, and too many others as well. Rather than using homosexuality to score cheap political points we should treat the matter with the concern and respect it deserves.

I can tell you this, if we don’t get our house in order, our economy, our energy policies, our foreign policies, secure our borders, restrain federal spending, lower taxes, and get federal regulators out of the way, we could lose the freedom and independence necessary to even address the issue of homosexuality openly and forthrightly. Most of us don’t want to suffer under the sort of tyrannous regime that doesn’t concern itself with serious questions like disorder vs deviance, but that’s the direction the current administration is taking the nation. Now, I’ll end by cautioning that we should all be careful what we wish for, and be mindful of unintended consequences, and above all respect our diversity, celebrate our unity, and be grateful we inherited a country and a Constitution that allows public expression of differences of opinion and provides pathways to reach national consensus. It isn’t the easiest way or the most expedient way of resolving contentious issues, but it’s the American way.
ropelight (d955e5) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:59 am
Perry didn’t need this moment to show that he is not a viable national candidate.
JD (950bc6) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:05 am

Not to say that he is, but why does this remark show such a thing? Because he wasn’t creative enough in saying something that is true (in his mind) regarding an issue that is NOT — I repeat, NOT — one of the big problems facing America?

In “Born in the U.S.A.,” Bruce Springsteen sang about a man who felt he had “end[ed] up like a dog that’s been beat too much ’til you spend half your life just covering up.” That’s the GOP nowadays. “OMG, don’t say that! Stay away from the social issues! The national media and the activist groups will hit us with the rolled-up newspaper!”
L.N. Smithee (7d4e89) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:08 am
Ropelight–the difference is that you have taken the time to think this matter through and to craft a political (yet sincere) message in a way that connects the dots and also in a manner with which almost anyone would find it hard to disagree.
elissa (b69310) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:10 am
Ropelight
I’m a bit confused with your post as you put the response in block quotes. Did someone say that elsewhere (even Perry, but it was edited out?) or is it your offering as a (good) example?

L.N. Smithee
Are we still awaiting your post in moderation, as I’m not seeing it.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:15 am
MD in Philly: When it’s been moderated, it will show up underneath EPWJ’s comment at 5:23 am.
L.N. Smithee (7d4e89) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:29 am
Well, since a high percentage of certainly the gay community (ie, male homosexuals) is notorious for contracting sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS, then at least the “G” in GLBT should be actively discouraged if only for health reasons, if only for human safety. Even more so, since health!-health!-health! has become sort of a new religion (hey, how are things going, Michelle Obama?!).

All they need to do is to stop engaging in vile, filthy, disease-spreading sex acts. Why is that so hard for them?
Michael Ejercito (becea5) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:30 am
#41, MD, it’s me putting my words in Perry’s mouth. Sorry I didn’t make it unmistakably clear.
ropelight (d955e5) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:30 am
There’s a good post up at NRO “The Corner” that relates to the issue of restorative therapy.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/380316/another-beastly-hatemonger-heard-kevin-d-williamson

I’d never thought much about the issue of sex-reassignment surgery until I read Paul McHugh’s essay on the subject back in 1992. Dr. McHugh has a column on the topic in the Wall Street Journal, which is well worth the time.

With this argument, advocates for the transgendered have persuaded several states—including California, New Jersey and Massachusetts—to pass laws barring psychiatrists, even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor.

…How to respond? Psychiatrists obviously must challenge the solipsistic concept that what is in the mind cannot be questioned. Disorders of consciousness, after all, represent psychiatry’s domain; declaring them off-limits would eliminate the field.

I go back to my earlier assertion. If I self-identify as Julius Ceasar, how dare you not address me as Julius Ceasar?

Just as when Bradley Manning self-identifies as “Chelsea” we are all required to refer to him as a her. Or, so we are told. I refuse to do it. I’d feel ridiculous if I was assigned to medical section of the Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks, and following some tests had to tell “Chelsea” that she had testicular cancer.
Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:33 am
No probs, ropelight, just wanted to not be confuzzled (more than I have to be…)

Thanks, L.N. Smithee
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:33 am
The gay movement of the last forty years is an affirmation of the “broken windows as a positive good” theory. Male gay sex tourists brought AIDS from Haiti and transmitted it to other gays and to IV addicts who sold their bodies for drugs. The male IV addicts transmitted it to female IV addicts by sharing needles, and to other women through normal sex, who transmitted to heterosexual men looking for a little on the side. So far, so good, they’re small loss, we can contain it — just watch what gets stuck into you. Then “they” infected the blood supply. Wiped out a generation of hemophiliacs, infected surgery patients and health care workers, and made it everybody’s problem. Money and organization for the purpose of fighting AIDS, and sympathy for AIDS sufferers, was enlisted to the cause of the gay agenda too, and the rest is history.
nk (dbc370) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:41 am
Released from moderation, LN

I didn’t mean this comment showed he wasn’t ready for the national stage, LN. I meant he had proven that prior to this.
JD (950bc6) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:44 am
A woman walks into a bar. She says to the bartender “Give me an entedre… better make it a double.”

So the bartender gives it to her.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:46 am
A drunk walks into a bar. He didn’t see the cell door was closed.
nk (dbc370) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:48 am
What do cosmic neutrinos and I have in common?
We’re both constantly penetrating your mother.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:54 am
The ethos of “do your own thang” popularized by the left for over 50 years has not just impacted the issue of GLBT but also the issue of mental health, particularly as it involves self-destructive behaviors associated with chronically homeless people—who, in turn, have made areas like LA’s infamous Skid Row modern-day versions of Dante’s Inferno. (And made it tougher to deal with people like the guy who shot up Santa Barbara a few weeks ago, etc)

Similar to blatant public displays in the US of social dysfunction involving mentally-ill, destitute people, there is what’s on display at the typical Gay Pride parades and festivals throughout urban America. They too demonstrate the way that excessively loony social-cultural liberalism go hand-in-hand with Controversy A, B, or C. So it’s hard to know where one begins and one leaves off.
Mark (c58c23) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:01 am
I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad, I take something for it.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:01 am
I asked an acquaintance from Texas about this, and the reply was:
“You never know what he will say. Aggies are wonderful.”

Still trying to get my arms around ‘wonderful’.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:41 am
For all those who state that Rick has reached his “sell date” in national politics, I just have Samuel Clemmons’ comment on his obituary keep rolling around in my feeble brain.
Somehow, after our experience with Bubba (I did not have sex with that woman, Ms.Lewisnki!), his ‘better half’ (…the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy…yadda-yadda-yadda…), GWB – who famously failed to – or couldn’t – explain to the People most of what he was doing, or wanted to do, and now Teh Won and his serial deceptions, misdirections, etc., I think the People may be in the mood for someone who does say what he means and means what he says (or at least to some degree better that what we’ve had offered to us the past 20-some years).
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:58 am
a lot of texans weren’t happy with how badly he embarrassed them last time around

especially the ones what donated monies to his feckless and mean-spirited campaign
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 9:12 am
but you can say the same for willard
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 9:13 am
The best study I’ve seen done on the origins of male homosexuality is the one where they show definitively that the male homosexual percentage is 3% in first male children, 4% in second male children (a male child who has one and only one older brother, sisters don’t matter), 5% in third male children, and 6% in fourth male children.

Why? Unknown, that’s the next study. The two primary hypothesis are 1. something in the family psychology where having an older brother makes the child more likely to be homosexual or 2. biologically, the womb environment reacts to the male antibodies it encounters at birth and so is altered for the next pregnancy, being less hospitable, and moreso for each following male child.

Doesn’t explain female homosexuality at all. Mechanism unknown. Repeatable in other studies.

‘Epigenetics’ aka the study of how genes express themselves differently in different environments, is big stuff for the future.

(I’m the second male child in my family, and my husband is the fourth in his.)
luagha (5cbe06) — 6/13/2014 @ 10:48 am
When I first read this, I’d thought that Perry must’ve removed his glasses and lost 40 IQ points, but was disheartened to see that wasn’t the case.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/13/2014 @ 11:49 am
Better stick with your recipes, feets…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/13/2014 @ 11:50 am
luagha–that’s interesting. There are so many many studies on sexuality with so many agendas that it’s hard to know what to believe. I’d also read somewhere that some studies suggest there is slightly greater likelihood of a male child being homosexual if the natural mother is considerably older. I think there’s also more than one study that suggests that a later birth order in large multiple child families (regardless of whether the earlier kids are boys or girls) carries a greater likelihood of a later boy being gay. I suppose that could possibly be related to either the birth order or the mom being older.

I don’t know. But I do know that I am very sure that we still do not know as much as there is to know about this. My mother was an experienced second grade school teacher. In the mid-late 1980’s when she heard that a few of her former students had contracted AIDS and died, she was terribly sad, but she was not surprised that they were gay. She had seen something subtle in them even as little seven year olds that she could not really explain but that was a tip-off. Her own observations and my trust in Mom’s instincts both as a teacher and as a person, are a big reason I do not think people choose to have a same sex attraction. For some reason or other, it’s inherently there.
elissa (b69310) — 6/13/2014 @ 12:31 pm
luagha (5cbe06) — 6/13/2014 @ 10:48 am

Given the disagreement among many as to how can you tell when someone is bi or gay, on what basis the information is obtained (self-reported questionnaires?), the numbers needed for statistical significance, do you really think they can define something like this to +/- 0.5%?
I don’t care how much one is sold on GLBTetc. being normal and OK, I find it hard to believe anyone could claim such results as being “definitive”.

Claims like this make it to easy to be a skeptic.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/13/2014 @ 12:39 pm
Two ideas about the interaction with politics.
1) I am sure if one could communicate,
“Gays can do whatever they want in their own privacy, and states can give legal legitimacy to them however they want,
just don’t tell me that it doesn’t make a difference if a person is a boy or a girl and that they can use the same bathroom because they want to,
because everybody knows that in general boys and girls are different
and I would have been horrified to be in a bathroom in 3rd grade with a person of the opposite sex next to me, and I don’t see why I should ask my child to do that”,
that person could win in a landslide.
but I’m not sure how easily a person could communicate it with the environment being what it is.
2) In one way it really doesn’t make much difference. For America to work we need a virtuous people, defined minimally as preferring honesty to dishonesty.
And that we don’t have anymore. But as long as we still have the right to vote, we should exercise it.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/13/2014 @ 12:40 pm
Elissa,
Being present by age 7 does not necessarily mean at birth, as I think it is generally believed a lot of personality development is during the first 3 years of life.
Not having recollection of having made a conscious choice does not mean genetically or otherwise predetermined.
Doesn’t prove anything one way or another, just thoughts in the discussion.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/13/2014 @ 12:44 pm
Mister Colonel I been learning on making kibes now I need to nail down a tasty tahini sauce to go with them

My feeling is that Governor Perry may have the inclination to be a bigot but i would hope as a fellow Texan that he would have the desire not to do that. At least going forward. I wonder though if it’s even remotely possible that his bigotry wins him more votes in a hypothetical national election than it loses him. I would conjecture that the people he offends feel rather more strongly about these matters than the people with whom Governor Perry’s sentiments resonate positively.

Dad used to always say it’s a whole lot easier to give people a reason not to vote for you than to get em out to vote for you.

Dad would’ve liked these kibes I bet.
happyfeet (c5ec6b) — 6/13/2014 @ 1:05 pm
I hear ya Doc. And I truly do understand that as an MD you see first-hand that many adult gay sexual practices are not safe or healthy–in fact dangerous.

But I also don’t think we know yet as much as we need to know about what goes on during development. And I think that we should keep searching (looking at genetics, womb environment, and psychological angles) for more answers. I don’t think the “science is settled” any more on this issue of what makes gays gay, than it is about, well, that other hot button issue! 🙂
elissa (b69310) — 6/13/2014 @ 1:05 pm
When will Republican politicians finally realize that just because someone asks them a potentially loaded question, they’re not obligated to expound on it.
During the 2016 cycle, our team is going to get bombarded with questions about homosexuality, women’s uteruses, et al, ad nauseum.
Elephant Stone (5c2aa0) — 6/13/2014 @ 1:13 pm
The learning curve is much steeper for some than it is for others Mr. Stone
happyfeet (c5ec6b) — 6/13/2014 @ 1:16 pm
mister happy,

it’s like there’s a percentage of people who’ve been living under a rock and didn’t get the memo that todd akin and richard mourdoch got their butts kicked in states that voted for romney.
Elephant Stone (5c2aa0) — 6/13/2014 @ 1:21 pm
That said Mr. Stone the dimbulb bigoty Rs make it a lot easier to contemplate voting for a Rand Paul or maybe even a Cruz. At least til they succumb to the same penchant for implosion.
happyfeet (c5ec6b) — 6/13/2014 @ 1:30 pm
MD, in the primary study homosexuality was determined by self-selection in questionnaires, with those past a certain cutoff in their responses being considered homosexual. In follow-ups, might have been done differently.

While I myself didn’t know I was gay until I was 19-20, looking back I have memories from three years old that point now to my preferences.

I totally agree that all kinds of stuff happens between ages 0-3 and 0-7. I’m having a big agreement party with you on the ‘there’s so much we don’t know yet’ idea. 🙂
luagha (5cbe06) — 6/13/2014 @ 2:04 pm
#26 Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:14 am

What I think you may not be getting is that “reparative therapy” is not just a generic term, it’s a specific regime that is offered by certain “therapists”, for a fee, and that claims to be able to turn a gay person straight. And the fact is that it can’t. It’s been tried, for decades, and it has failed. These practitioners have no long-term success stories to show for their efforts. The best they have come up with are gay people who are managing to fake it well enough to function in straight marriages for several years, until they reach a point where they can’t do it any more. Meanwhile, their methods have done serious damage to some (not all) of their patients. The plaintiffs in the NJ case are such casualties, who had to undergo extensive therapy with real psychologists to cure the damage these quacks did. That is the background you seem to be missing.

As I wrote earlier, none of this means that a safe and effective method of reorienting someone’s sexuality can’t exist, and won’t one day be discovered. And if such a method should be discovered, there is no reason why it should be banned. But the specific method under attack isn’t it. It’s neither safe nor effective, and is being marketed under the pretense that it’s both.
Milhouse (b8bb95) — 6/13/2014 @ 4:28 pm
What some people seem to be missing about Perry’s ocmparison of homosexuality to alcoholism is that it implies that sexuality can’t be changed, and we shouldn’t expect it to change. The basic premise of AA is that alcoholism can’t be changed. No amount of therapy, AA says, can change an alcoholic into a person who can handle alcohol responsibly. It may be that the same is true of sexual orientation; that it can’t be changed. But just as with alcoholism, that doesn’t mean a person is compelled to act on his orientation. When it comes to any specific sexual encounter, a person is always able to make the choice to decline. The prospect of life-long chastity is daunting, but so is that of life-long abstinence from alcohol.

Whether a gay person should accept a life of “just saying no”, one day at a time, and never find the fulfilment that most people expect as a matter of course, is another matter. Aside from religion, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason why anyone should do so. It’s not like alcohol for an alcoholic, which has bad consequences that are immediately visible and measurable. But it’s ridiculous to claim, as so many gay activists do, that this choice doesn’t exist, that a gay person is compelled to have gay sex. It just ain’t so.
Milhouse (b8bb95) — 6/13/2014 @ 4:35 pm
in Rick Perry’s world gay people are in fact compelled not to have sex Mr. Milhouse

which is more weirder to you?
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:05 pm
In a country in which the proletariat rules courageously and successfully, homosexuality, which depraves the youth, is recognized and punished as the antisocial crime that it is, while in the so-called cultivated countries, it occurs freely and unchecked. Eradicate homosexuality and you will eliminate fascism.
nk (dbc370) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:16 pm
ok we’ll put that on the ttd list
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:20 pm
Engels writing to Marx was prescient:

“That is really a very odd ‘Urning’ you just sent me. Those are just unveilings being extremely against nature. The pederasts begin counting themselves and find that they are forming a power within the state. Only an organisation was missing, but according to this it seems to be already existing in the secret. And as they are counting so important men within all the old parties and even in the new ones, from Rösing to Schweitzer, their victory is inevitable. ‘Guerre aux cons, paix aux trous de cul’ it will go now. It is only a luck that we personally are too old to have to fear, this party gaining victory, to have to pay bodily tribute to the victors. But the young generation! By the way, only possible in Germany that a guy like that appears, translates the dirt into a theory and invites: introite, and so on.” (emphasis added)
nk (dbc370) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:30 pm
There is precedent for a compassionate middle ground:

“Soviet legislation does not recognize so-called crimes against morality. Our laws proceed from the principle of protection of society and therefore countenance punishment only in those instances when juveniles and minors are the objects of homosexual interest … while recognizing the incorrectness of homosexual development … our society combines prophylactic and other therapeutic measures with all the necessary conditions for making the conflicts that afflict homosexuals as painless as possible and for resolving their typical estrangement from society within the collective.”
nk (dbc370) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:34 pm
i just don’t see it Mr. nk

if homosexuality is pernicious it’s not even measurable on the scale of what you americans have done to yourselves with your food stamps and your ass-raped economy and the institutionalized child abuse that weak-minded ameriwhores call “public education”

it’s 2014

it’s long long past time for Team R to accept the proposition that we as Americans hold certain truths to be self-evident – that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

chop chop
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 6:58 pm
the family is the foundation of society, and as such bulwark to state domination, in every totalitarian regime, Nazi, Stalinist, Maoist, the tactic is to undermine the former to prevent
the latter,
narciso (3fec35) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:04 pm
the state of the american family is sick sad and tawdry and that’s not cause of gay people
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:05 pm
Mr. feets @80, it’s sort of perverse to bring the creator into this and then turn around and say religious objections to homosexual behavior is invalid.
Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:18 pm
of course it’s invalid

the momos what thought of the rather thinly-argued religious edicts concerning homosexuality were filthy dark age savages whose life expectancy was on par with camels and reindeers and pickled cabbage
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:24 pm
82. the state of the american family is sick sad and tawdry and that’s not cause of gay people

happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:05 pm

No, it’s the fault of the cultural Marxists who have been tearing down the American family since LBJ’s Great Society. Precisely because, as narciso points out, the family is the foundation of society and consequently a bulwark against state domination.

You know, Mr. feets, what you call fascism.

Their next gift, and yours Mr. feets, to America to continue the process of assualting the American family is SSM.
Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:24 pm
i’m too hungry to argue right now

we’re going for mofongo in a lil bit so I can’t snack

i see you back here later
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:27 pm
Ultimately, the goal seems to be the one from the Forever War

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2014/06/denmark-requires-all-churches-to-do-gay-weddings/
narciso (3fec35) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:30 pm
…the rather thinly-argued religious edicts concerning homosexuality were filthy dark age savages…

Thinly argued? Then you’ve never heard of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was no dark age savage.

http://www.archive.org/stream/summatheologicao211thom/summatheologicao211thom_djvu.txt
Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 7:38 pm
thomas had some serious issues with sexuality

he had a very very narrow lil view of the world

but there’s no accounting for saints, just that they have f**k all to with america, which is the land of the saints kinda like how walmart is the land of the vanderbilts
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:00 pm
f**k all to *do* with america I mean
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:01 pm
i know this for a certain fact, having watched two seasons of Deadwood on the HBO
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:02 pm
Marxists have never favored homosexuality as my quotes from Gorki (my comment 76, I forgot to credit him) and Engels show — they simply did not realize all the consequences of eschewing legislation based on morality. They changed their tune about that too, when they realized that soldiers and workers needed to be replaced, and one-night stands were not the best way. And that ties in with narciso’s comment about the totalitarian state. It’s not that the elimination of the nuclear family is a goal — it is the consequence of young men being used up in war, or in the pursuit of corporate profits, or in purges of nonconformists. The state has to be already in a position to raise fatherless children.
nk (dbc370) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:05 pm
i’d prefer to live me in a country what was hardened against the innate and integral whorishness of its citizenry by its allowance of maximal liberty to each and every man woman and child irrespective of race, creed, sexuality, or fashion sense

and i would maintain that gay people are NOT a significant contributor to the innate and integral whorishness of the slutty and slovenly food stamp-slurping american populace

not by no yardstick extant they’re not
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:10 pm
Askeptic reported:

I asked an acquaintance from Texas about this, and the reply was:
“You never know what he will say. Aggies are wonderful.”

Still trying to get my arms around ‘wonderful’.

Yes we are. Just ask us.

However, sometimes Aggies say things they probably should not say. I have never been a big Perry fan, despite our common education. Regardless, I also can’t argue with his success as Governor, although the real political power in Texas rests with the Lieutenant Governor. Perry’s work as an advocate of the state has never been equaled.

Perry would really like to be President, but that is not in his stars.
Ag80 (eb6ffa) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:16 pm
Like the atheists say about God, happyfeet, gays are not necessary to anything. Now, I happen to believe (maybe you do too) that the very bestest things in all of Creation are human beings, and that the best thing that’s promised me is that I will live together with them for all eternity, and sometimes that fills me with great hopelessness and bitterness like cold instant coffee made with tap water in a motel room. Lately, more than usual.
nk (dbc370) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:35 pm
i love this lil dealio

i bought two for my road trip in case the first one gave out

it didn’t
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:46 pm
My clients had them in their cells. They call them “stingers”.
nk (dbc370) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:52 pm
I’m the first male child, firstborn, in my family, bro is the second male and fourth of five siblings.

He has 12 or 13 kids. Everyone has lost count and usually another is on the way when you do tally the total.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 6/13/2014 @ 8:53 pm
87. I hear the prices on ammo are dropping. Despite the Feds’ best efforts, demand has goosed supply.

Ima going to get me more.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 6/13/2014 @ 9:00 pm
The best study I’ve seen done on the origins of male homosexuality is the one where they show definitively that the male homosexual percentage is 3% in first male children, 4% in second male children (a male child who has one and only one older brother, sisters don’t matter), 5% in third male children, and 6% in fourth male children.

If over 70 to 80% of the gay populace were not philosophically liberal to leftwing, but instead were “centrist” to conservative, I wouldn’t consider innate socio-political biases as much a part of the biology, if you will, of homosexuality as much as anything else. In fact, is there any other basic trait that applies to such a large percentage of the GLBT community as their embrace of liberalism?

For instance, do over 70% of gays have mainly brothers instead of sisters? Are over 70% of male homosexuals stereotypically effeminate, or into Broadway musicals, or left handed, or are over 70% of female homosexuals into masculine pursuits and interests?

The socio-political liberalism of the gay community seems to be a more overwhelming aspect of that crowd than perhaps any other feature they’re identified with.
Mark (75db68) — 6/13/2014 @ 9:02 pm
Perry would really like to be President, but that is not in his stars.

Ag80

Yep. Though I agree Perry has been a great advocate for the state (and was an effective Lt Governor and Governor).

Perry could do a lot of good by meeting with Palin and a few other prominent conservatives and deciding who they will support for president, for the good of the primary. If they all came out and endorsed Scott Walker and urged conservatives to hang together on this through the primary, it would be a game changer. We badly need the conservatives to not fracture, which is a tall order given that conservatives are wary of being stabbed in the back by phonies.
Dustin (0431a0) — 6/13/2014 @ 9:19 pm
Doesn’t have to be Scott Walker, btw. But y’all take my point.
Dustin (0431a0) — 6/13/2014 @ 9:20 pm
My father sired four boys and four girls. All of us straight. I would like to see what percentage of families are all straight.
felipe (960c75) — 6/13/2014 @ 9:39 pm
That’s a big family felipe! How you doing, man!
Dustin (0431a0) — 6/13/2014 @ 9:58 pm
@ Dustin,

Perry could do a lot of good by meeting with Palin and a few other prominent conservatives and deciding who they will support for president, for the good of the primary. If they all came out and endorsed Scott Walker and urged conservatives to hang together on this through the primary, it would be a game changer.

The idea is a good one, however, the problem from the get-go would be that Perry, Palin and other prominent conservatives (Rubio, Cruz, Rand, etc) have given no indication that they are not considering a run themselves. I think they are all reluctant to as they would like to run, especially if they felt the support was there. Why shut the door so soon, if at all?
Dana (9a8f57) — 6/13/2014 @ 10:00 pm
Here is a campaign checklist for Perry in 2016. As noted, 2014 is a year of auditioning, positioning, networking and just plain hard work for people who might run for president in 2016.
Dana (9a8f57) — 6/13/2014 @ 10:02 pm
Indeed… we probably won’t be able to prevail as conservatives if our leaders cannot restrain their personal ambition. I don’t see a lot of cooperation between even the conservatives I really like.

But I believe that is what it will take.
Dustin (0431a0) — 6/13/2014 @ 10:04 pm
“Self” is as hard a thing to give up as the belief of every politician: “They need me.”
Dana (9a8f57) — 6/13/2014 @ 10:09 pm
People in politics today have personal ambition on steroids. They like having the perception of power, love hearing themselves talk, covet face time on TV, and enjoy the special privileges and perks of office holders. That is what makes most of them enter the political arena in the first place and why they seek to stay there at all costs. There are not a lot of John Adamses and George Washingtons wandering around these days.
elissa (b8c655) — 6/13/2014 @ 10:20 pm
I’m doing better than I deserve, Thanks be to God. BTW, I like your idea about Perry and Palin getting together and behind the scenes to support Conservative candidates – they could do some much needed good.
felipe (960c75) — 6/13/2014 @ 10:20 pm
Surely Elissa has a point. Who would put their closest loved ones through the media grinder, especially the one that hits the GOP? Somebody’s got to do it… but it is interesting to consider that.
Dustin (0431a0) — 6/13/2014 @ 11:00 pm
101, 105. Under the GOP umbrella nothing will happen.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 6/15/2014 @ 8:00 am
in Rick Perry’s world gay people are in fact compelled not to have sex Mr. Milhouse

Is that so? How would they be compelled? I’m not aware that he’s advocated the establishment of bedroom police, or even of overturning Lawrence and reinstating the ban on sodomy.

In any case, the argument I was addressing was the one made by and on behalf of the gay political agenda, which is that if someone is gay he is compelled to have gay sex. He is not capable of not having it. It’s not a choice, it’s a biological necessity. And that is obvious bilge. Having sex is always a choice (except in the case of rape, which is irrelevant here). Choosing not to can be very difficult, but it’s always possible. The question is merely whether one should so choose, and apart from religion there doesn’t seem to be any rational reason to do so.
Milhouse (4da080) — 6/15/2014 @ 10:55 am
Perry could do a lot of good by meeting with Palin and a few other prominent conservatives and deciding who they will support for president, for the good of the primary. If they all came out and endorsed Scott Walker

Yes, please.
Milhouse (4da080) — 6/15/2014 @ 10:56 am
It’s not a choice, it’s a biological necessity.

It’s also pigeonholes gays. Everyone is obviously the same, no one can differently motivated or compelled. No individual thought and decision. How unfortunate, because everyone is insultingly reduced to being nothing more than a slave to their lusts.
Dana (9a8f57) — 6/15/2014 @ 11:48 am
#26 Steve57 (5f0260) — 6/13/2014 @ 5:14 am

What I think you may not be getting is that “reparative therapy” is not just a generic term, it’s a specific regime that is offered by certain “therapists”, for a fee, and that claims to be able to turn a gay person straight. And the fact is that it can’t. It’s been tried, for decades, and it has failed. These practitioners have no long-term success stories to show for their efforts. The best they have come up with are gay people who are managing to fake it well enough to function in straight marriages for several years, until they reach a point where they can’t do it any more. Meanwhile, their methods have done serious damage to some (not all) of their patients. The plaintiffs in the NJ case are such casualties, who had to undergo extensive therapy with real psychologists to cure the damage these quacks did. That is the background you seem to be missing.

As I wrote earlier, none of this means that a safe and effective method of reorienting someone’s sexuality can’t exist, and won’t one day be discovered. And if such a method should be discovered, there is no reason why it should be banned. But the specific method under attack isn’t it. It’s neither safe nor effective, and is being marketed under the pretense that it’s both.

Milhouse (b8bb95) — 6/13/2014 @ 4:28 pm

I looked up reparative therapy and there seems to be different types of treatments, some involving electro shock, which seems excessive to me. I do know people that have had counseling that doesn’t involve aversion therapy who are successfully living their lives as heterosexuals.

Mr. Feets, is calling someone a bigot, bigoted?

big·ot·ed
ˈbigətid/
adjective
having or revealing an obstinate belief in the superiority of one’s own opinions and a prejudiced intolerance of the opinions of others.
“a bigoted group of reactionaries”
synonyms: prejudiced, biased, partial, one-sided, sectarian, discriminatory
Tanny O'Haley (c0a74e) — 6/15/2014 @ 3:19 pm
no not in this instance cause of you have people openly advocating the unequal treatment of minorities and way how i was taught that’s bigotry
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/15/2014 @ 3:27 pm
Perry backs off on remarks about gays, questions Cruz’s legacy

“I got asked about an issue, and instead of saying, ‘You know what, we need to be a really respectful and tolerant country to everybody, and get back to talking about, whether you’re gay or straight, you need to be having a job.’ ” he said.
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/19/2014 @ 10:24 pm
The recent decision by the Republican Party of Texas to throw their support behind voluntary ‘reparative therapy’ for gays and lesbians has not been met with approval with all Texas Republicans, including Texas GOP Chairman Steve Munisteri.

Speaking with Texas Public Radio, Munisteri said he doesn’t believe LGBT individuals can be converted to heterosexuality simply by talking to them.

[…]

According to Munisteri, he has received numerous calls from Texans unhappy with the endorsement of the dubious therapy in the state’s 2014 platform.

“My emails and phone calls to the office are running overwhelmingly opposed to that plank in the platform,” Munisteri said.

[…]

Munisteri blamed the inclusion of the controversial plank on his predecessor, Cathie Adams, who worked in concert with others to insert it into the platform using a parliamentary trick.
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/21/2014 @ 11:04 pm

6/12/2014

Rick Perry In San Francisco

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