Impuritanism
Posted on 30 August 2011
I came across this tidbit of news:
http://www.gamebandits.com/news/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-same-sex-marriage-allowed-in-game-13557/
[...] With The Elder Scrolls 5 – Skyrim, this forward march to awarding recognition for same sex marriage has now reached the video game world.While same sex relationships is not new in RPG video games, this year’s Dragon Age 2 featured a same sex relationship between former Grey Warden Anders and Karl. However, The Elder Scrolls 5 – Skyrim will actually allow same sex marriage not just same sex relationships. The news broke through Bethesda community/ PR point man, Pete Hines through his Twitter feed.[...]
At the same time I read this from Mark Shea:
Stacy Trasancos mentioned that she’d like to be able to take her little girl someplace without subjecting her to gays making out in public.
I suppose it is important for the propaganda of so self-evidently a false-to-facts proposition that perversion is non-perverse and sex is non-sex to be wedged into every crack of society. Even your games must conform. Even your blogs. Even your thoughts. Christ is bigotry; Ganymede is the new Christ.
The old Puritans did not want anyone, anywhere, to be outside the reach of their command, for fear anyone would have abnormal or unchaste sexual passions.
The new Puritans do not want anyone, anywhere, to be outside of the reach of their command for fear anyone would have the normal and chaste sexual passions, or, worse, a healthy dislike of the abnormal, perverse and unhealthy, or to teach their children likewise. Let us call them the Impuritans.
Since I was the butt of one of these craven Two-Minute-Hate intimidation sessions not long ago, I would urge any reader of mine of good will to go to the defense of Miss Trasancos.
Hey funny you should bring this up now John! Did you get the email I sent you about this, or is this just a coincidence?
This is a real shame, even the video game world won’t be untouched by the YOU. MUST. APPROVE. hordes (sorry Mark Shea, I borrowed your line
).
Weird thing about this (well more than the obvious weirdness already present) is that this game is set in a MEDIEVAL FANTASY world, not the present. I should also mention that homosexuality was never present or even hinted at in any of the previous incarnations, this is a recent addition. Sad too, because this is a GREAT game series, and one of the biggest rpgs out there!
As mentioned above, this is not the first game that was gayed up. Both the “Fable” and “Dragon Age” series were like that to begin with (oddly enough, they were both games set in medieval fantasy worlds too). Other games like the “Mass effect” series, and “The Sims” should be added to that list. Oh and did I mention there was talk of allowing queer relationships in the new Star Wars mmorpg, “The Old Republic”. Yes I said that right, Star wars. Who knows maybe even the hobbits will get into it someday…
For the record much of what I just said was me paraphrasing from a email I sent John.
“Did you get the email I sent you about this, or is this just a coincidence?”
Email. Because you sent it to me privily, I assumed you wanted your name kept out of it.
So you did recieve it then. I only asked because you seem to have a habit of posting the emails you get (while withholding their authors names), so I just assumed you would do the same with mine. When I did not see it posted, but still the subject being dicussed, I wondered if you had actually recieved the email, or if this was just a coincidence. Does not matter to me whether you posted it or kept it private, as long as you both 1) recieved it and 2) responded to it. But yes, as a general rule, if you do post emails you recieve, you should leave the name of the author off (which I think you always do).
So, thanks for the response!
My website was attacked 227 times after I posted a non-homosubmissive article. Since you did not say whether or not you wanted your name used, I left it aside, lest the Toleration Tyrants come to vex you.
Wow.
Well thank you, thank you very much!
Impuritanism…
“The old Puritans did not want anyone, anywhere, to be outside the reach of their command, for fear anyone would have abnormal or unchaste sexual passions. The new Puritans do not want anyone, anywhere, to be outside of the reach……
Reading over through some of this ordeal, I can’t help but think that a deal should be made. If some groups don’t want to have their kids see overt religious displays (particularly gays, no?), then it should be only fair for other groups to not have to see over displays of the aforementioned groups. That should be fair, right?
(disclosure: I would be quite happy with being able to go into public without having to see ANY PDAs – gay or straight or other)
Oh, I also meant to add: I wonder how the first Christian parents dealt with any of this. While we might have passed them in some ways, I still think the ancient Roman culture was a lot worse (sin-wise) than the world Stacy Trasancos lives in now.
It’s a long, slow, hard fight to improve the world (one we’re even told will never end) – but now and then I think it’s important for us to be thankful for small favors.
“I still think the ancient Roman culture was a lot worse (sin-wise) than the world Stacy Trasancos lives in now.”
The Trasancos of the ancient world did not have to bring their children to the gladiatorial games. The various orgies and decadences of the aristocrats were done in a spirit of shame, privately, and publically were cause of scandal, not self-righteous boasting. Comb through the works of Cicero and Seneca, and you will not find a single phrase extolling sexual perversion as a right, or the toleration of wrongness as a duty — the Romans were not worse than us at all, and certainly not “much worse.”
Ah, I had been misinformed. Thank you for the correction, John, and for giving me a point where I can start in correcting my ignorance (assuming I ever get through much more of my to read list).
The Satires of Juvenal are quite unkind to homosexuals, so do not expect them to be read in humanist education any more.
It is worth elaborating that, even if Constantine was a vile, power-hungry opportunist that milked christianity for all it was worth, one of the pragmatic reasons for his endorsement of christianity was that christians not only espoused the same virtues lauded by romans, but actually tried to live them. Allowing christians to come out of hiding allowed them to be an example to the rest of the empire.
Good point!
All though I do feel Constanitine has been unfairly vilified.
Check this book out in your interested:
http://www.amazon.com/Defending-Constantine-Twilight-Empire-Christendom/dp/0830827226/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314827196&sr=1-1
“If some groups don’t want to have their kids see overt religious displays. . . then it should be only fair for other groups to not have to see overt displays of the aforementioned groups. That should be fair, right?”
Ah, but you’re forgetting that “fair” is always subject to the adjustment of perceived power dynamics. If one group is defined as “privileged” and the other as “disadvantaged”, then what is “fair” is not necessarily the same for both groups.
To be fair — pardon my pun — this is not necessarily totally unmoored from reality. Theft is theft and it is always wrong, but we are more likely to forgive a poor, starving man stealing food from a rich man than we are to forgive a rich fat man stealing money from a poor one.
Whether people of non-het orientations can justly call themselves “disadvantaged” because others don’t like or approve of their PDAs and dare to say so is a shakier claim, and usually shores itself up by claiming that mere public expression of disapproval is an inexorable and undeniable aggravator and reinforcer of hate, ultimately leading with equal inexorability to violence. Their putative belief in this argument, however, tends to be undermined by the fact they never seem to fear this outcome as a result of their own discourse.
Ah yes, how soon I forget.
However, it seems – I think – you prove my point even more. Only in this case, instead of “taking” something, one group or another is instead “sacrificing” (or giving up) something.
Thus, it would seem that a “privilege” group (or at least, a majority one) would have far more to sacrifice or give up than a less privileged one. Ergo, as a majority sacrifices to accommodate a minority, a minority must also sacrifice to accommodate the majority – even if it’s less.
“Theft is theft and it is always wrong, but we are more likely to forgive a poor, starving man stealing food from a rich man than we are to forgive a rich fat man stealing money from a poor one.”
I would say, with Thomas Aquinas, that it is not a sin at all, and thus no forgiveness is needed, for the poor man stealing food if it is out of necessity:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3066.htm#article7
The true sin is that the poor man has no food.
I agree with your point in principle; yet even there it is possible to imagine very real possibilities that cloud the issue.
Suppose the rich man would have happily given the poor man food if he had only asked, and the poor man stole it instead because he could not bear the humiliation of having to ask? Or alternately, suppose the rich man ostensibly offered food upon request, but demanded the request be made in such a humiliating and self-degrading fashion that it was incompatible with (non-prideful) basic human dignity, or put other conditions upon it that were incompatible with the poor man’s morality? Suppose the rich man was the poor man’s brother, and stole his paycheque because he knew the poor man was about to drink it away rather than spend it on paying bills? And a hundred other “Just So” possibilities.
The inconsistency I find annoying in progressivist power-dynamic politics is their habit of pretending issues like this don’t matter or are irrelevant when acknowledging them works to their disadvantage, then acting as if they’re critical distinctions when doing so works to their advantage. (Not that there’s a group that doesn’t do this sometimes. But power-dynamic/identity group politics seem particularly prone to it.)
That all sounds fine (and I wasn’t assuming you disagreed, necessarily, I just wanted to get the Summa point out there, as it’s a common topic).
After all, I quoted Thomas Aquinas; I have no problem with complexity or nuance in moral situations.
Nor do I; I don’t even have a problem with black-and-white positions, necessarily, as long as they are consistently maintained. It’s the veering back and forth that bugs me.
I will listen to, and may even find plausible on first hearing, arguments that publicly-expressed disapproval or condemnation of Group/Action X increases the probability of violence against those who are part of/do X, and thus such public speech might justly be restricted on the grounds of protecting said individuals. (I do not say I will agree, or deem the restrictions worth the cost and side-effects, but I’ll listen.)
What I can’t stand is the “logic” that says this principle (publicly hostile speech increases the probability of criminally violent acts) is or is not true depending on exactly whose ox is gored — that complaining about PDAs in a park is a surefire precursor to pogrom, but complaining about opposing voters in a public referendum cannot possibly be connected to vandalism or intimidation campaigns. Nail the goalposts down, guys.
Thomas is quite clear that each person has stewardship of his own property in order to give of his surplus to those in need. So it would be unlawful to take from a man willing to give. But if the man is unwilling to give and the need is pressing, Thomas says the needs of the poor outweigh the greeds of the rich. But the need must be genuine and it must be pressing.
‘Impuritans’, eh? I will have to remember that one!
I like that too “Impuritans”: “une trouvaille”, a good find as we say in French.
I love the word “Impuritan,” I think I will be one of the many to adopt it!
In a previous essay you said, “It is a small step to go from saying a disordered sexual appetite is something civilized men can tolerate among them, to saying any opposition is intolerable. The alleged middle ground of tolerating homosexuality and tolerating homophobia does not exist.”
And that hits the nail right on the head. Before my reconversion, I used to think that “live and let live” was the way to go. In many ways, I still do. But what I did not understand was that many of the people who I wanted to “let live,” as it were, wanted something very different. They didn’t want to be tolerated, they wanted to be affirmed and celebrated. So, for instance, while I had no religious views at the time and didn’t want any, I thought that homosexuality was probably a natural variant from the norm that people couldn’t help having, and that what we needed to do was let this small group of people “do their thing.” I never in a million years envisioned schools teaching that homosexuality is no different from normal sexual function, or parade floats of near-naked men in bondage gear simulating disordered sex acts in a display of “pride.” I was after being kind to people, but sticking with common sense. Just as, I suppose, the people at the Lambeth Council in the 1930s could not imagine that saying married people in extraordinary circumstances (such as critical illness and abject poverty) could use artificial birth control would lead to rampant promiscuity and incredible rates of both abortions and illegitimate births.
These things, you would think, do not follow from the premises. But they DO, given human nature. Atheists laugh at the idea of original sin, but it’s the most obvious constant in history: Human beings tend toward selfishness and sin. It is innate in even the best of us and must be fought all the time with discipline and clear discernment of what is right and wrong. The middle ground is very, very different from what many people mean when they talk about tolerance. The middle ground is teaching people to discipline their wrong desires — whatever those are, expecting them to discipline those wrong desires, and forgiving them when they lapse so that they can try again. Our culture today takes the same attitude toward things it values (such as dieting, exercise, work and hobbies, etc.).
The Impuritans don’t want to be tolerated, because tolerance means to acknowledge that something is wrong but agree to live with it. It does not mean “anything goes.”
[...] sci-fi writer John C. Wright at his Journal, Tuesday: …. The old Puritans did not want anyone, anywhere, to be outside the [...]
” I was after being kind to people, but sticking with common sense. Just as, I suppose, the people at the Lambeth Council in the 1930s could not imagine that saying married people in extraordinary circumstances (such as critical illness and abject poverty) could use artificial birth control would lead to rampant promiscuity and incredible rates of both abortions and illegitimate births.”
There’s nothing new under the sun. Chesterton discovered the very same thing, even before the Birth Control question, when England liberalized its divorce laws. The same reasonable allowances made for exceptional cases, which were soon overwhelmed and swept away by a tide that completely changed the landscape:
“Already we must think ourselves back into a different world of thought, in order to understand how anybody ever thought [divorce] was compatible with Victorian virtue; and many very virtuous Victorians did. But they only tolerated this social solution as an exception; and many other modern social solutions they would not have tolerated at all. My own parents were not even orthodox Puritans or High Church people; they were Universalists more akin to Unitarians… They thought the normal necessity and duty of all married people was to remain faithful to their marriage; that this could be demanded of them, like common honesty or any other virtue. But they thought that in some very extreme and extraordinary cases a divorce was allowable. Now, putting aside our own mystical and sacramental doctrine, this was not, on the face of it, an unreasonable position. It certainly was not meant to be an anarchical position. But the Catholic Church, standing almost alone, declared that it would in fact lead to an anarchical position; and the Catholic Church was right… The Church was right to refuse even the exception. The world has admitted the exception; and the exception has become the rule.”