Made it, finally. There will be more to come.
If You Can't Beat 'Em, Censor 'Em
This story wound up oscillating between this department and a regular post, but once I had written the whole thing,I decided it belonged here. It's also relevant to my link dump on Andrew Sullivan's fundamentalism posts, later on in today's posts.
John Corvino was scheduled to give a program at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI, which was first postponed then cancelled by the school's administration.
Aquinas President Ed Balog canceled the event Thursday, saying the Catholic school cannot endorse a program that directly opposes church teachings.
"I'm not trying to keep people from seeing him. I'm trying to prevent the college from sponsoring an event that displays an attack on Catholic teaching values," Balog said.
That's the new excuse, from an institution that did, once upon a time, tolerate free inquiry and spirited debate. Balog's comment is rather disingenuous: of course he's trying to keep people from seeing Corvino. Given his wording, one has to question just what "Catholic teaching values" are at this point? Andrew Sullivan has a rather plaintive reaction:
When will the church realize that allowing the truth to emerge from reason is not a threat to God or the church? Why are we so afraid of the truth?
It's not "truth" that the Church is afraid of -- it's already defined that, albeit in purely self-referential terms. Dialogue and free examination of ideas, however, are no longer values espoused by Christianity, at least not its public face. This pope in particular is certainly not one to tolerate open discussion, and that may be one reason the talk was cancelled:
The cancellation came a week before Pope Benedict XVI's scheduled meeting with more than 200 Catholic school officials from across the country. The gathering Thursday, at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., is being called a lecture, but Vatican watchers predict it will be an admonishment that teaching and activities at U.S. Catholic colleges and universities more closely adhere to church orthodoxy.
Church officials won't give details about the content of the speech, but conservative Catholics are predicting -- and hoping for -- shock waves from Benedict, who before becoming pope was associated with public reprimands of Catholic theologians and blocked appointments of university faculty members he thought were too liberal.
"One thing the pope will emphasize is the importance for all (Catholic) schools to realize that they aren't independent contractors, they are part of the church," said the Rev. David O'Connell, Catholic University's president.
It seems almost a truism at this point that one falls back on this kind of authoritarianism when one's arguments are lacking in substance and consequently, in force. American Catholics are notoriously independent, and Benedict seems to have a need to enforce strict discipline, which is bound to backfire. Eventually it will register, I think, that the hierarchy is sadly out of step with the majority of Catholics, and a serious shuffle is going to happen.
I also suspect that Benedict and the rest of the Dobson Gang are going to realize that picking gays as the target of their hate campaigns is going to backfire badly: it's a stance that is terribly vulnerable for them simply because it can't stand up to the growing realization among most people that in all important respects, gays are just like they are. That's why the continuing attempts at dehumanization are going to fail: they're obviously and blatantly untrue.
So I guess it is about gays after all.
From Andrew Sullivan.
Update:
I can't find the link now, but a local church donated its space for Corvino's talk.
Masculine/Feminine
Some interesting insights on one of the central issues in gay life:
Recently I asked my introductory psychology students, “Do you think that gay men, on average, have different personality traits than heterosexual men? And do you think that lesbian women, on average, have different personality traits than heterosexual women?” Many of my students nodded emphatically, so I probed further and asked, “How do you think gay men differ from heterosexual men in personality? And how do you think lesbians differ from heterosexual women in personality?” Hands flew up and my students told me, in essence, that gay men are more feminine than heterosexual men and that lesbians are more masculine than heterosexual women. My students are not alone in their beliefs. Stereotypes that gay men are more feminine and lesbians more masculine than same-sex heterosexuals are common, according to many studies.
It really is an interesting summary of a couple of studies. My reservations come from the fact that masculine and feminine are social/cultural constructs, and while the broad outlines may be biologically determined (women are more inclined to be nurturing because they are the ones stuck with tending to children, while men are more likely to be aggressive because they are a) defending the children and b) providing for the children), a lot of what we regard as "masculine" and "feminine" traits are pure cultural determinism. (My own feeling is that men are highly emotional and hormone-driven, while women are pre-eminently practical and results-oriented, but our culture says the opposite. . Think about it.)
Consequently, some of the basic definitions are going to be skewed, and the results can't necessarily be held true across cultures. There's no real reason to assume anyone would try, except of course that some fundamentalist whack-job is going to start spouting "always" and "everywheres."
Of course, something like this can't really deal with causes, even though speculation is fascinating:
Furthermore, why do these differences tend to mirror gender differences in personality? One possibility is that there are biological factors (e.g., prenatal exposure to sex hormones) that cause both gender differences and sexual orientation differences in personality. This “essentialist” position holds that there are some innate personality differences between men and women and also between heterosexual and homosexual individuals, and the underlying factors that cause these two kinds of differences overlap. Other possibilities include various social-environmental explanations for homosexual-heterosexual differences in personality. For example, perhaps powerful gender and sexual orientation stereotypes mold individuals’ self-concepts and their gender-related traits and behaviors. In addition, subcultural norms, roles, and pressures may lead to different traits in heterosexual men, heterosexual women, gay men, and lesbian women. For example, macho peer norms often lead many teenage boys in our society to behave in very masculine ways, whereas gay and lesbian subcultures sometimes push their members to experiment with gender-bending roles that depart from normative masculinity and femininity (e.g., the campy gay man, the “bull dyke”).
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