If love and sexual desire are distinct experiences with distinct and separate biological underpinnings, then what does that mean for the ethics and politics of same-sex love and same-sex genital behavior? What relationship, if any, should exist between the two?
Jason Kuznicki of Positive Liberty explores that question for both “liberals” and “conservatives,” after reading a recent article in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.
Ah what is the surprise? From personal experince being in love does not always equal wanting to rip the other person’s underwear off. Any gay man who was ever in love with a woman could tell you that.
Ah what is the surprise? From personal experince being in love does not always equal wanting to rip the other person’s underwear off. Any gay man who was ever in love with a woman could tell you that.
You know, I could have told you that as well. But there’s more to what I wrote than your observation above. Give it a look, if you will.
Actually, I found the article was a little non-sensical and slightly hyperbolic. From the mild conjectures and evdience in the paper he cites he seems to make huge leaps of conjecture to dystopian New World Order scenarios, for example. Was it that the author just didn’t like the evidence as presented to him? I find that the more unpalatable the evidence, the more likely it is to actualy be true.
And now for the politics: The asteroid camp was liberal; the dissenters were conservative. Liberals viewed the extinction of the dinosaurs as a foretaste of man’s future in the nuclear age. A nuclear winter, they argued, could do exactly the same thing, killing off anyone who happened to survive World War III.
I’m unsure about the above assertion. I don’t know about America, but here in the UK I never recall the dinosaur exctinction argument was particularly controversial. On the contrary, the asteroid explanation was always held as the most convicinging and recent evidence, I believe, bears this out.
I would imagine that the argument was, perhaps, hi-jacked by politicians and perhaps there were even ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ elements in either camp, but I think that events millions of years ago are, by their nature, difficult to talk about within any certainty. The scientists involved were probably just trying to get to the truth of the matter based on the scant evidence available. I have no idea why the author seems obsessed with polticising scientfic disputes. Perhaps it betrays the author’s own partisanship.
I had to chuckle at the portion of the article quoted by Ricardo. I agree with him that events millions of years ago are difficult to talk about with any degree of certainty–that’s one of the things that makes science interesting. But we don’t have to go to Alvarez’s theory regarding the extinction of the dinosaur for evidence that massive polution of the atmosphere, especially by particulate matter, can affect significant climate change: we only need to note the correlation between volcanic eruptions and climate change–in particular depression of global temperature. That correlation has been well-known for some time. See, for example, https://wchs.csc.noaa.gov/1816.htm
This doesn’t necessarily suggest that climate change due to volcanic eruptions is sufficient to cause mass extinction, but it does more than suggest that climate change does occur.
In the US the asteroid impact theory was controversial but not a political controversy like gay rights. It was more along the lines of this theory is too wild to be true, prove it. The theory slowly gained approval here as more and more evidence pointed at it. It was not like the theory of evolution or the Big Bang in that sense and articles from the time used to list other possible causes of the extinction. That theory didn’t quite step into the grounds that had traditionally been the property of religion in the say way as theories on sexuality or the creation of the man/universe do.
The nuclear winter theory was used for political purposes by people who favored arms control and they did point out the asteroid impact theory as proof. Likewise it was not as politically controversial since both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had more than enough nuclear bombs. After a certain point having more nuclear bombs just does not make sense. After you have enough bombs to hit every major city and the ability to deliver them without much interference building and maintaining more is just a waste of money. The cold war had grown past the point of winning through nuclear dominance by the time of the theory.
There was for a time a very definite connection between nuclear winter theories and that of the extinction of the dinosaurs. Mostly this debate has disappeared now, as more evidence emerged in favor of the asteroid extinction theory.
As to my speculations about Dr. Diamond’s research, they are indeed speculations, and admittedly worst-case ones at that. If you will read to the last paragraphs, though, you will see that I do not subscribe to the speculations that I raise. I am proposing the worst cases, then explaining why I don’t think that they are valid.
I understand why you made the worst case scenarios. The reason I dissent is that I don’t think what you say necesarily follows from your assumptions and therefore, I think your ‘proof by contradiction’ doesn’t hold.
And I think your assertion that the ‘Brave New World’ of free love is worse than a world controlled by Exodus and their ilk is somewhat incredulous: given the choice between repression and freedom of sexual expression, I know which I would choose everytime.