Note : We downloaded these posts directly from the board, and haven't had time to sort them yet so, no, they aren't in chronological order. Maybe that's for the best, though - what you get to see is more of the flow of discussion.
The discussion began when somebody came across a translation of the "Negative Confessions", and seemed to be dismayed that they didn't live up to contemporary ideas about Political Correctness, at least not in translation. The line that bothered him was "I have not committed homosexuality". This lead into a discussion of a boy scount troop in Iowa City that was being denied its right to use city facilities that were made available to local not-for-profit organizations in general, on the basis that the Boy Scouts of America would not let gay men become scoutmasters, violating a gay rights ordinance.
This decision, "Nonk" defended on the basis that Iowa City had a broadly written law that prohibited discrimination by any "entity" against "any person", insisting that the politics that lead to the adoption of that alleged law were part of Iowa City's identity, emphasizing that she had lived in Iowa City for all of her life (as if to say "so I would know"). When she found that the argument was going against her, she brought out the tired old line of "we aren't going to settle this here", and gloatingly stated that if the BSA didn't like Iowa City's policies, they could always take the matter to court. To the BSA's credit, it did not back down on its policies.
The revenge posting you've seen elsewhere on this site, with Nonk lying about what had already written when backing up John in the Geometry thread, would come in the months that followed.
While it figures little into our account of the actions of the House of Netjer, perhaps the most disturbing of the arguments offered in defense of Iowa City's attempt to strong arm the BSA into adopting more politically correct policies came from "Max". Incredibly we got to see him try to defend an attempt by the government to dictate membership policies to a private, faith based organization on libertarian grounds! An absurdity that beautifully illustrates one of the reasons why one has to read all of a philosophical argument and not just skip ahead to the conclusions, which one then recites a la the Baltimore Catechism. Until one has read the argument, one does not understand the conclusion and will be bound to misapply it.
Max wanted to know why he, as a future taxpayer, should be forced to use his taxes to subsidize an organization that would discriminate against anybody, doing something that he would find highly offensive. As I was to point out, he was setting up a straw man, because this was far from being the situation in the case of the BSA. But let us very seriously consider the implications of Max's theory of civics, which was not all original or unique, but a parroting of lines heard elsewhere. If even a single person declares himself to be "offended" by what a group is doing, that group should banned from doing it in any government owned place, ie. all public space?
This is a very convenient fallacy for those who would like to put an end to personal liberty and replace it with mob rule, what Political Correctness, as a social movement, has pushed for during the last decade or so, because on these terms freedom of assembly would become meaningless. There would be no public place in which people could gather without being subject to the whims of some smaller controlling circle of individuals, and those who had networked could shut down any meaningful dissent with their own positions merely by making sure that the would-be dissenters would never have a chance to gather, because they would never have a chance to find each other, never being in a place where they could realistically be found.
Thus one might even have a situation in which each of the many might find themselves confronted with the illusion that he was alone in his views, because the few had effectively kept the many scattered before they could discover the truth and each other. The results of accepting this are anything but democratic or liberating, as anybody who has lived in Chicago and witnessed the stifling effects of police abuse of the authority of "crowd control" (and the anti-loitering ordinances) can state from first hand experience. One need not speculate on the impact of such policies when history has already spoken, and been speaking for over a century in one place alone, to say nothing of many others, with an impact on personal freedom that has long since become notorious.
"Chicago ain't ready for reform". And apparently, neither are a number of non-Chicagoans.
But then, this has been the style of the Wiccan/ New Age elders from day one, hasn't it? So we suppose that we should not be surprised if we see more of the same from the rank and file in Neo-Pagandom, to whom such a bad example has been given. Not that this is unique to Pagans: prevailing by making sure that alternatives don't exist has been part of the corporate ethic for some time, now, Political Correctness itself arguably being one of those often spoken of "unintended consequences" (*) that arose when that "restraint of trade" ethic infected the one-time left wing opposition to that corporate world, in the persons of the liberal children who grew up in a corporate dominated society and took its mores as a given. But be that as it may, this is the death of real freedom if it is accepted or even tolerated. Those who grew up under a system can not be blamed for the background they come from, but they must be confronted if they try to spread the evil that comes out of it, and confontation can seldom be tactful or gentle when dealing with those who would deny legitimate freedoms to others.
My (Antistoicus') responses to the comments made in this discussion can be found below.
1. Posted on 5/27/01 at 01:13 PM :
Here's a second thought. In some traditions, a distinction is drawn between being divinely inspired, and speaking with the voice of God. I don't know if this distinction is drawn in a Kemetic setting. (Should Anu (?) have been writing the Book of Going Forth By Day, while doing neither, I would ask if it would be especially fair to judge him and his writing by present day standards.
Many will do this to past authors. I would remind them of Isaac Newton's quote - "If I have seen further than others, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants". Before we pat ourselves on the back for our "modern enlightenment" and look down on the ancients for their lack of it, as so many do, I think we should keep in mind that it is an inheritence that had to be won for us, through the efforts of those 'unenlightened' predecessors some will scorn. Such scorn, to me, seems to be a sign of great ingratitude and more than a little foolish. Who is to be more rightly esteemed - those who bring a blessing upon us, or those who receive it?
OK, off that soapbox. It's just, this topic put me in mind of that, and it's sort of a pet peeve).
The difference is that between a child writing something with the support and encouragement of his parents, with an occasional leading question or two sent his way (this would be akin to inspiration), and having his parents write the material for him. Anu, even under divine inspiration, is still Anu, a product of his time. Yes, it might be a time that we have a lot to learn from. Some of the turns history took might not have been good ones. But, would one seriously maintain that nothing of what has been written since then has added to that level of enlightenment which is part of our heritage? Would one deny that there are some thoughts that it would be anachronistic to expect Anu to automatically have?
I think that sometimes we forget that a lot of what we think of as being "common sense" had to be taught to us. (Talk for a while with a two or three year old, however, and you may quickly be reminded of how little of this is inborn). The point here is that which must be taught, had to be discovered in the first place. There had to be a first teacher, one might say, and if one is living before his time, one doesn't have the opportunity to be taught the point he will someday teach.
To avoid any misunderstanding : I am not saying that I took the post I was responding to as an attack on Anu. Quite the contrary! But, I might suggest that when we take pre-existing texts as unquestionable sources and expect infallibility from their authors, we do those authors a sort of loving injustice, in that we expect them to do what no man should be expected to even try - to escape the limitations of his own vantage point.
2. Posted on 5/27/01 at 12:30 PM :
Usual disclaimer : I am a non-Kemetic visitor to the House. I speak only for myself.
Two thoughts. One is that I can think of a possible, divinely inspired reason for Anu to insert that confession. I recall (though can't remember the cite) seeing a map of the distribution of a gene for HIV resistance. (Apparently, HIV or something akin to it did pass through, though I'm not sure when). In Russia, this gene was apparently present in 14% of the population. If a country loses all but 14% of its population, that obviously isn't too good, but in the case of a large country, that may be more than enough to rebuild with. Life goes on.
By the time one gets to the Mediterranean basin, those numbers start looking a lot worse. Get to North Africa and all of the countries present came in at 0.0%. Less than 1 in a thousand would survive. That translates into less than 9,000 people being left in Egypt in those days. Perhaps, were their numbers to swell rapidly through a massive baby boom, a fatal genetic bottleneck could be avoided. (At least, so a biologist of my acquaintance tells me). It's a moot point, though, because their neighbors wouldn't be leaving them in peace to do so. It would have been the end of Egypt.
The relevance of this? In part, that depends on whether or not HIV's earlier precursor hit this early. (I don't know). Or, if something equally virulent with a similar mode of transmission was around at the time, or would be soon. But heterosexual populations (usually) enjoy one protection from this disease that homosexual populations don't. Viruses, being basically nothing more than really large molecules encasing genetic material, can't swim upstream.
They travel in the direction of the fluid flow. This means that in the course of heterosexual intercourse, female-to-male transmission, while not impossible, is very, very rare. This limits the spread of the disease, especially when combined with a fashionable distaste for women who have had many sexual partners. Homosexual populations are not so fortunate in this regard, because the role of "giver" and "receiver", if you will, might change from encounter to encounter.
Even were each member of the gay community here to limit himself to two sexual partners per lifetime (low compared to the averages for the heterosexual community), AIDS would still be a menace to their population, as a whole. Now, factor in bisexuality, as a route by which an epidemic in the homosexual portion of the population may be transmitted to the rest, and an epidemic may become a pandemic. If such a situation existed back then, in times when nothing akin to modern medicine and diagnosis yet existed, an exercise of what, today, we would think of as being a legitimate personal choice, back then, might have endangered Egyptian society as a whole.
It is easy to picture the Netjeru sacrificing a little individual freedom for the greater good of the whole society, under such circumstances. (Again, assuming that some hypothetical past pathogens were somewhat akin to HIV, and would have the same disturbingly low survival rate as HIV would there, today).
3. Posted on 6/3/01 at 12:27 PM :
Max asks why, if he is paying taxes, as he will be in a few years, why those tax dollars should go to accomodating a group that discriminates against homosexuals, or anybody else in America. Here is the answer, Max: because that's not the situation. What you just did is known as "setting up a straw man argument".
The implication of your statement is that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) were being given some kind of special access to these facilities that other groups weren't. Such is not the case. The parents of these children payed taxes, like anybody else in Iowa City. Some of that tax money collected from them went to the fund used to run those facilities, in the same proportion as anybody else's tax payments in Iowa City. Thus, the parents of that troop have already payed for the use of those facilities as much as anybody else in Iowa City, and as this payment was compulsory under law, they are entitled to access to those facilities at the same price, with the same availability, as anybody else. It's just that simple.
As for the "contract" you refer to: the school district is a governmental body, and thus bound by the constitution. It can not legitimately sidestep its constitutional obligations merely by declaring an unconstitutional demand to be a "policy", or by writing it into a contract as a condition for providing access to tax subsidizied, public facilities. What's next? Will the city start charging a "sidewalk and road access fee" for members of those groups whose membership policies it doesn't like?
This is the worst sort of cheat. One is trying to disguise an unjustifiable and clearly unconstitutional penalty for a constitutionally protected action by writing it into the fine print. Sorry, but that doesn't fly. If it was allowed to, constitutional rights (and their attending freedoms) would mean precisely nothing, because governmental bodies could just enact "policies" prohibiting the exercise of those freedoms. Or, one might add, by writing the requirement that one forfeit those basic freedoms in order to have the freedom to do much of anything. In this case, what we are seeing is an end run around the free association clause and the first amendment guarantee of freedom of religion.
Even private businesses face limits in what they may or may not write into their contracts or set as policy. There is such a thing as an "unconscionable clause", which any attorney (like two of my brothers) will tell you that a court will not uphold. This is with good reason.
Let us never forget the horrors of feudalism, and of the robber baron era, both of which arose out of allegedly "free" negotiation of contractual obligations. Without some limitation of what may be put into a contract, history tells us, other freedoms eventually come to mean nothing. But, like another poster, you've glossed over the distinction between the actions of a governmental body and that of a private one. It is a matter of free choice to do business with the latter. One does not, however, on an individual level, get to choose whether or not one will do "business" with the government. Hence, the government is not allowed the same level of discretion in writing contracts and policies as a private group would have.
4. Posted on 5/30/01 at 06:32 PM :
I don't know how Kea would respond to this, but I would deny that it is a violation of civil rights, because if the law is written as broadly as you have suggested it has been, then it is unconstitutional and hence not a law. The Roman Catholic church certainly "discriminates" against female applicants to the priesthood, and Orthodox Jewry does likewise to female applicants to the Rabbinate. Both of these forms of "discrimination" are constitutionally protected. Yet, the local diocese and the local synagogues are certainly "entities".
Even federal civil rights law can't overrule the constitution. Nothing can, except the amendment process. Are the Knights of Columbus now obliged to accept Presbyterian members in Iowa City? Come on, now. That's a denial of both freedom of religion and freedom of assembly, and you know it. On a national scale, it would also be a guaranteed coup d'etat. Revolutions have started here over a lot less than that.
5 and 6. Posted on 5/30/01 at 03:57 PM; continued in a subsequent post made on 5/30/01 at 4:42 PM :
"When two groups are at odds, he who owns the property wins. It is a harsh reality ..."
Um, no. Were that the case, the fair housing ordinances and other civil rights laws would not exist. As a society, some time ago, we came to the realization that conditioning hiring, renting, and other voluntary exchanges of considerations on compliance with certain demands can have a highly coercive effect. For example, it means nothing to say that one has the freedom to be a Muslim, if publicly being so means that one is denied the opportunity to purchase food and shelter and ends up dying of starvation and/or exposure as a result.
The distinction between that outcome and overt religious persecution would not be a difference. Thus, it is a matter of respecting personal freedom, not a matter of denying it, to say, "sorry, folks, but there are limits to the amount of discretion you have in making use of your own property, and force will be brought to bear if you don't respect those limits. You can not refuse to hire or rent to somebody, because he is Muslim/Jewish/Hindu/Wiccan/...". And, rightly so.
(Likewise, it would be unjust to brutalize somebody based on race, sexual orientation, or anything else over which he has no control (and which harms nobody else), so the civil rights laws do, or at least should, protect those who would be mistreated on those grounds. The same principle applies - that which one may not legitimately do directly, one may not legitimately do indirectly. Or, to put it another way, in Ethics, there is no such thing as "getting off on a technicality". If it should be the case that something should be the case, then it should be the case).
The application of this principle, here? The Boy Scouts are not, properly speaking, a strictly secular group. The bit about doing one's duty to "God and country" should make this clear. As goofy as we might find their religious take on this, many of them do feel that homosexuality is contrary to God's law and thus to the stated mission of the Scouts. They are entitled, under the first amendment to the constitution, and general agreed upon and established principle, to the free exercise of those beliefs, however goofy, so long as in doing so, they do not violate a law of general applicability that was not established for valid, non-religious reasons. (Eg. human sacrifice is not protected under the first amendment). The question is, what are the burdens posed?
I think that we forget, in this discussion, that "scoutmaster" is a volunteer position carrying no salary. Banning homosexuals from the scouts, then, does not pose a barrier to making a living. And unless those are some really clever 12 year old boys, it's not like the would-be scoutmaster was going to be making business connections through his volunteer position. So, the real question here is, what is the burden placed on the alleged victim that justifies setting aside first amendment protections? And being set aside, they are, whether the court is honest enough to acknowledge this, or not.
Churches are not generally rich in empty floor space. Usually, the pews, fixed in place, fill them up, rendering them unusable for most of the activities that the boy scouts would engage in. Thus, if we are to be serious here, we all know that the intention here is to twist the arms of the local chapters by forcing them to choose between employing gay scoutmasters or not being able to meet at all.
Somebody said, in response to the complaint that this would be a denial of the right of the Boy Scout's identity, that renting to a group that discriminated would strike at the heart of Iowa City's identity. And here is something that really kind of bothers me. Iowa City, constitutionally speaking, isn't supposed to have an identity of this sort. No government within the bounds of the United States is, either. What bothers me is that I even have to say this, because it is basic civics and when it proves frequently necessary to repeat such things in an adult setting, I am faced with the unpleasant realization that the values underlying our republic are not being successfully transmitted. That does not suggest a long and happy future for the republic.
What is the difference? Membership in the Boy Scouts of America is purely voluntary, no matter where one lives. It is not a state subsidized organization, nor does it enjoy preferential treatment from the local government in Iowa City. Quite the contrary, it would seem. If somebody is unhappy with the way the Scouts are doing things, there is absolutely nothing to keep him from leaving the scouts, taking his dues payments with him, and starting his own organization. This kind of solution, in pre-political correctness days, used to be pursued so often, that people came up with a word for it. They called it "competition" and it is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of a free society.
"Membership" in the body of taxpayers in Iowa City is not quite so voluntary, and city facilities are, one would presume, payed for with tax money. (I would be very skeptical of any claims to the contrary). This means that those parents whose chapter has been denied the right to meet in public facilities, did indeed contribute to the cost of maintaining those facilities, because the government forced them to, more or less at gunpoint. (Paying one's taxes is not voluntary). Thus, one can't apply the same standards to local government behavior that one applies to private organizations, because the relationship with one is not as voluntary as is the relationship with another.
It is OK for the Boy Scouts to have any identity they wish, religious or otherwise, because one is free to opt out. It is not OK for Iowa City to adopt any sort of religious identity, even by way of negation (as in, including a rejection of a religious position as part of their identity). Why? Because whatever Iowa City adopts as being part of its identity will end up getting rammed down the throats of all who live there, at their expense, without their consent.
Did the courts see it otherwise? * Shrug * A political appointee, making a politically motivated decision. What a surprise. Especially in a period when chucking one's principles out the window the moment they prove inconvenient is all the rage. Complaints about "political correctness" and "special interest groups" are appropriate, and on-target, when political pressure is brought to bear to set aside another's rights in so lawless a fashion.
Some, wishing to enjoy the protections of the society they live in, apparently do not wish to honor their obligations under the system that brought them those protections. Kea has it right, as far as I'm concerned. There is nothing to be admired in this decision. Nor is there anything to be admired in the spirit of those who call on the rest of us to help them shut down those who would live or deal with each other on any terms, but those which our self-appointed protesters would approve of.
7. Posted on 5/30/01 at 05:12 PM :
Em hotep, Nonk.
As I have already pointed out, there is no such thing as "free space" in a school district facility or any other place subsidized with government funds, for one basic reason. Government funds are nothing more than recycled taxes and paying your taxes is not voluntary. As taxpayers in that district, the parents in the affected BSA chapters have already payed for the facilities.
As for your observation that we are not going to settle this here - weren't we, in theory, at least, supposed to be living in a democratic republic? Public discourse, in the society at large, is what is supposed to be setting the principles such decisions are based on. This forum is part of that larger society, so in general terms, I would have to disagree with your statement, taken as an absolute. In part, it is being settled here and anywhere else it is being discussed.
8. Posted on 5/30/01 at 08:43 PM :
Nonk,
Let us not insult each other's intelligences by offering friendly greetings which we know we don't mean. To do so is to poison and cheapen what is really a very lovely greeting.
Given that the federal constitution takes precedence over all other law in the US (which Iowa was part of, the last time I checked), I am unclear on what the relevance would be of your alleged lifelong familiarity with Iowa City and its municipal policies. But, given that you've just admitted that you entered this thread without a willingness to listen to contrary arguments with an open mind and don't even care what the truth is, perhaps this is a line of discussion that is unlikely to go anywhere.
Your idea of encouraging the BSA to sue is a good one. I've got a better one. Encourage the BSA to kick up a fuss about this and raise consciousness about your old hometown's willingness to drag this through the courts. Cast Iowa City in a bad enough light and outsiders may end up most reluctant to invest money in a community that holds the law in so little regard. A few foreclosures later, better attitudes may prevail.
And you thought that outside discussions of local abuses served no purpose. Quite the contrary.
9. Posted on 6/2/01 at 00:40 AM :
Em hotep, Ladeia. Yes, you made sense, somewhat. 
On reflection, I said something that maybe I could have put a lot better. I left the reader with the impression that I was saying that the conservative Christian feeling that homosexuality was against God's law was "goofy", without coming out and saying so, directly. "God's Law" can mean a variety of things, and under at least one interpretation, my implied remark would be a most inappropriate one.
"God's Law", might be taken to refer to the cultic requirements that attach to the worship of a particular divinity. One can go to Torah, and find Yahweh saying some pretty harsh things about how homosexuality is to be responded to. So, if one is a member of a sect that worships that particular divinity, then there is nothing goofy at all about the position that homosexuality is forbidden to one. Or pork, either, for that matter - as a cultic requirement.
That's an important distinction. It is one thing to say that something is forbidden to "us" (whoever "we" may happen to be), because a respect for that prohibition is part of what defines a covenant relationship between one's divinity and one's people. It is quite another to say that a thing is to be thought of as being forbidden, because of some universal moral law.
A deity, as it pleases him, may establish one covenant with one people, and quite another with another people. If a group of conservative Christians are isolating themselves, their children, and a group (like the BSA) which they collectively hold a controlling interest in, because they feel that doing so is a requirement imposed upon them by a covenant relationship, then this is something that we should respect, because it's a private matter between them and their divinity and really none of our business.
What made me think that the position of the BSA a little "goofy" was that my perception has been that Christians do not maintain a covenant relationship with their god, in a Jewish sense. "God's Law", in their view, seems to be nothing more than the universal, moral "natural law", revealed by God, as opposed to something that has been offered and accepted to the worshippers as law, and thus is viewed as a sort of contractual obligation. View, for example, the discarding of the dietary law in the book of Acts. The entire relationship between God and worshipper seems to have been redefined.
You raise the issue of the rightness and wrongness of the exclusion of gays by the Boy Scouts of America. Before we judge them, I think that we should try to understand them, and their reasons, a little better. If their position is that homosexuality is some sort of absolute, universal moral law, then I would agree, they are in the wrong. But, freedom means little if we only respect the right of people to make their own choices, only when others approve of the choices they make. (The BSA would still be entitled to make its own choice in this matter, without hindrance or penalty). If they see this in terms of a covenant relationship, however, criticising them for this decision would be no more appropriate than criticising a muslim community for holding a fast during Ramadan. The Mosaic Law does very much concern itself with the presence of certain behaviors in the community, so the exclusion of those who do not abide by some of the aspects of it could very easily be viewed in such terms.
Choices ...
- Return to Groupthink in Action.
- Return to Meeting the Pharoah.
(*) as in the so-called "law of intended consequences", sometimes summed up with the words "irony happens".