Natural Purposes v. Inherent Preferences
Posted in The Family by Julie Ponzi
You can't miss this
powerful (and powerfully sad) account of one man's realization that though his homosexual yearnings were (and, probably, are) innate and, therefore, part of his particular "nature," they are not "natural" in the sense of serving his deeper, higher, and more compelling nature as a man. That is to say, he made a decision--at some point in his life--to nurture feelings, inclinations and preferences and, from that habit of mind and of body, he lived as a homosexual and became one. A realization concerning the nature of true love, however, shakes his very core and stirs long neglected and uncultivated longings in his heart. As he takes note of the love between a father and a son while in a barber shop one day, a painful absence overwhelms him. He realizes that however we artificially alter the inconveniences of the universe, this kind of love will elude him on his current trajectory. Without Utopian expectation of his own fortitude (though perhaps with some overestimation of connection between deserving reward and also getting it) he vows to change. I wish him well--though I am more grateful that he opened up his painful story to public view on the off chance that it might serve as a cautionary tale to those who imagine happiness can be achieved when Nature is ignored. No matter how stubborn your own "nature" . . . Nature is an even less retractable and stubborn mistress.
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Now he just has to find woman who will love him.
Today, on the NYC subway I watched a young family,parents and two lovely little boys, just being a family on the subway. I thought how we had enjoyed the comments of people about our children, so before my stop I ventured to the central pole the father hung on and said, "Your little boys are just as beautiful as you know they are." His smile and the mom's were another pure pleasure. "I did those five times and the effort is all worth it." Wows and smiles all around as I got off. I know I pleased them, but really, the pleasure was all mine.
I hope that man finds that good love. He reminds of me of when I took Women's Studies classes at my first college, thinking I needed to. The second year there was whole passel of young women who had been fierce lesbians in the first year who had "fallen in love" with men and that harder kind of love, the kind that requires real understanding. They were suddenly feminine and not feminized. "What happened?" the response was roughly, "Oh, I don't know. I guess HE happened."
Perfectly natural....
1. It is not powerful or powerfully sad and just might be facetious.
2. It is difficult to locate therein where he suggests his homosexuality is 'innate', nor any indication of why we should regard it so in his case or anyone else's.
3. Wishing him all the best, I cannot help but note he seems to have spent little time in his post-pubescent life in circumstances where he was much in command of himself in this respect, or where sex functioned as something other than a diversion.
Just when I think you couldn't show yourself to be an even more repugnant human being, Julie, you excel yourself. Again. And again.
Yup. A capital "N" on "nature." That'll show 'em.
Huh?
Say what?
Another one, did you read the article? I don't see how Julie's assessment and rephrasing of it was wrong.
A.D., did you read the article as being facetious? I just reread it more carefully and think Julie got it about right. No, Muirhead did not talk about his behavior or homosexuality as natural, but others do. She is speaking to others (maybe to Another one) and not to Muirhead.
Yes, there is no indication in the article that Muirhead has gotten beyond the idea of participation in sex as more than a sport or jst activity, and got to where it is about a person, and not desirable people in a general way. I know heterosexual men and even some women, for whom that is also true. I guess we could have an argument about what "natural" human sexuality is. It seems to have been a continuing argument and not just on NLT.
I said it just might be facetious. It can also be read as an amiable accout of a recent turn in his thinking.
The discussion of homosexuality is omnipresent these days, but one component - the dilemmas faced by people whose inclinations are ambivalent or ambiguous - seems to get almost no attention. The article might be considered a rather maladroit introduction to the issue.
It does also make an implicit allusion to the element of futility in continuing concessions to the clamoring agitators of the homosexual population (concessions now court-mandated). I am not sure it addresses that issue well either. The agitation is a diversion from an adjustment to what ails them, and its results serve merely to advance collective addlement and distort social relations.