Think More, Speak More

I just want to take a moment ahead of today’s post to honor veterans on this Veterans Day! In my family we honor my grandfather, who fought in WWI; my father, who fought in WWII; and our son, who was twice deployed to Korea just a few years ago.

The wall in the building where our son was
inducted into the US Army, featuring the seal of 
each branch of the military, February 2012

_____________________

Now, on to today’s topic: political correctness. I’ve been reading Michael Knowles’ book Speechless, and I’ve been marking more passages than I could ever quote. One thing that caught my eye was the grammatical part of political correctness. Knowles says,

cover image found on Amazon

Political correctness relies on euphemism, soft words used to sugarcoat harsh realities. We all use euphemisms some of the time as a matter of good manners. We refer to old women as “women of a certain age.” We mourn those who have “passed away” rather than those who have died. In prior ages, a lady went to “powder her nose,” and she still uses the “bathroom” or the “restroom” rather than the toilet. We use euphemisms—literally, “well-speaking” or auspicious words—to be polite.

I all those cases, the polite euphemism softens the reality it describes, but it doesn’t contradict that reality. The old woman is indeed a woman of a certain age. The poetical “passing away” describes the spiritual fact of death. Women may indeed powder their noses after they’ve done whatever else they do in rooms that often include a bath and in which anyone might rest. Polite euphemisms soften the truth, but they do not lie.

So, that’s our starting place—polite words to soften harsh realities but that do not lie: that’s euphemism.

Then we get to something else altogether: the manipulation of language that is political correctness. Knowles describes it this way:

Leftists tend to manipulate language by using vague terms and jargon not just to soften but to conceal and even contradict the realities to which they refer. Killing babies in the womb becomes “women’s healthcare” and “reproductive rights,” even though abortion results in precisely the opposite of health and reproduction. After a Muslim terror attack on a church in Sri Lanka, Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for “Easter worshippers,” a bizarre moniker designed to hide the victims’ Christian identity. In fact, the sole instance in which Hillary used clear language in 2016—when she referred to Americans who refused to support her as “deplorable” and “irredeemable”—proved to be the most disastrous moment of her campaign. Clinton had made a critical error for a radical politician: she told people what she really thought.

Political correctness, then, is not politeness: it is using inaccurate words intended to conceal. It’s lying.

Then Knowles takes a look at the structure of the phrase itself. You take the noun correctness, and you put a modifier in front of it, and it changes it entirely. He credits the late presidential speechwriter and conservative columnist William Safire with using the description “adverbially premodified adjectival lexical unit,” the description itself a play on PC jargon. It’s easy to mock: for example, “short” becomes “vertically challenged.” PC itself, you might want to call “truth challenged.” Knowles describes further:

In this formula, the adjective or adverb usually serves to negate the noun or adjective it modifies. The term “politically correct” itself follows this politically correct formula by using an adverb to negate the adjective it precedes. That is, “correct” means true. But “politically correct” means not true. “Justice” means getting what one deserves without favor. The politically correct “social justice” is a form of injustice because it means getting what one does not deserve because one is favored. “Marriage” in every culture throughout history has meant the union of husbands and wives. “Same-sex marriage,” however favorably one views the concept, is not marriage.

We could list a number of other PC terms that follow this structure:

·       Transgender woman = not a real woman.

·       Justice-involved youth = a juvenile involved in something that is not justice, but criminality.

·       Overseas contingency operation = Obama-speak for something other than an operation, something like fighting a war.

How about this one:

·       Compassionate conservative.

It means something other than conservative—leftist/liberal lite. But it also implies that conservatism—the God-given rights preserved in our Constitution—is not compassionate. If it were the other side being so maligned, they’d take offense.

There are also PC terms that obscure meaning even without this particular structure:

·       Handicapable = not capable in the normal sense.

·       Woke = not awake and aware of reality.

·       Diversity = absolute lock-step agreement in thought, preferably with non-white or non-male genetics.

·       Fetus (or clump of cells) = baby, but taking away the human and live meanings so the mother who wants to rid herself of it will not feel the tinge of guilt that baby killing causes.

You can’t win—or even debate—when you agree to the enemy’s definitions of terms. Not even if you’re trying to be agreeable to find common ground. They have a tendency to change the lexicon as soon as people agree to it. In my lifetime, we have been told to call blacks

·         Negroes

·         Colored persons

·         Afro-Americans

·         Blacks

·         African-Americans

·         Blacks (again)

·         Persons of Color

After trying to keep up, out of politeness, for some time, I got to a point where I now just use the simplest term, the one most likely to convey meaning, not offense: black. Usually I do not capitalize, just as I would not capitalize white in the description of someone’s skin. Neither white nor black is very accurate, because most blacks are some level of brown; most whites are some level of peach or tan. Many many people of most ethnic and racial backgrounds are in the middle (as I am). Negro is from the Latin, meaning “black.” I understand why the unutterable N-word is not to be used, since it pretty much always meant a derogatory version of Negro. But I don’t really understand why the actual term became no longer usable.

Biden, speaking November 11, 2021
screenshot from video tweet within this article

Incidentally, while I was writing today, Biden managed to talk about “Negroes,” as though he’d never stopped using the term, even though Obama had outlawed its use in government. But it is mainly conservatives calling him out—for the inconsistency and duplicity of the Biden supporters. He was referring to a baseball player, from the times there was a Negro league (as it was called at the time). He refers to that awkwardly, but I don’t think he actually forgot what to call blacks today. Still, his gaffe is amusing, as is the media’s covering for him.

I don’t understand why Afro-American fell out of favor, but African-American shortly thereafter (a decade or two) fell into favor, when they are nearly identical. Neither is very useful to describe skin color, because not all Africans are black (the very blonde Charlize Theron comes to mind, as well as a number of Middle-eastern-looking people along the Mediterranean in northern Africa). And certainly not all blacks are American. Are you supposed to learn their lineage before you can refer to their skin color? What do you call blacks in Britain? What about those from Jamaica, not Africa? Are they Jamaican-Americans when you refer to where they immigrated from, but African-Americans when you refer to their skin color? What if they’re still Jamaican nationals who happen to be residing here? African-Jamaicans-in-America?

I have a friend from Honduras. She is clearly black looking, as are all the members of her family. Spanish is the native language. She has been here for about 20 years, and her English is good, but she still has an accent that is challenging for our communication (as my Spanish probably is for her). I asked her, quite sincerely just curious, about the history where she is from, because it was something I did not know. She says everyone from her homeland looks like them, but she is unaware of any origin story of people coming from Africa. I imagine if you go back far enough, you might find a connection from Africa. But it’s so far back, these Honduran people aren’t even aware of it. So, under what circumstance would it make sense to call her and her family African-American, when they clearly are not?

I don’t understand why “colored person” became taboo, but “person of color” is considered polite. The only explanation is that it’s a trap: if you try to follow their speech code, they will change it—because the goal is to be able to shame you for being racist, and this is how they come up with evidence against you.

Knowles points out that “this constant flux is a feature, not a bug, of political correctness.”

There’s a quote Knowles uses to begin Chapter 1 of his book, from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

illustration by John Tenniel, circa late 1800s
found here

The one who controls the meaning of words has power over the one who is not controlling the meaning. That describes the mostly lost culture war. As Knowles says in reference to the debate over the definition of marriage,

The cultural revolutionaries found it far easier to redefine the terms according to the conclusions they hoped to reach. When conservatives acquiesced to the verbal trickery, the radicals won the debate before it had even begun.

And I like this line: “What begins with semantic quibbles ends with refashioning the entire political order.” One thing I have to say for Knowles, whose first published book was wordless: he has quite a way with words.

He points out that conservatives tend to agree, along with John Stuart Mill and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and others: The answer to bad speech is more speech. But those trying to take over the culture believe: The answer to bad speech is censorship.

In such a discussion, one could hardly leave out Orwell’s 1984. Knowles says this:

Big Brother’s government relies on the control of language to maintain power. “Newspeak,” the novel’s most direct prophesy of political correctness, controls its subjects’ minds by changing and limiting their lexicon. Through this curtailing of language, “thoughtcrime”—that is, dissent from party orthodoxy—becomes impossible.

When you control the words, you control the thoughts. Newspeak was designed to take away the ability to refer to certain ideas; it removed the words necessary to conceptualize them. Imagine if you were to take away a common idea, for instance, friendliness. For a while you could use multiple other words, like “goodwill among people who are well acquainted.” But how often would you be willing to refer to someone by saying, “He seems like a person of goodwill among people who are well acquainted, even though I am not well acquainted with him yet”? Before long, you’d simply let the concept go.

In real time we can see this kind of destruction of the words marriage and family. The PC dictators accuse us of disrespect if we do not acquiesce to redefine these words to mean something they are not. For marriage, that would be something that does not involve the sexual procreative act between people who are permanently committed to only each other, and who plan to remain together for the rest of their lives. It has—only in this century, which is only two decades old—come to mean “any two adult persons currently in a sexual relationship.” That’s a very different concept, leaving out creating offspring, exclusivity, and permanence. How can you wonder that the purpose was to destroy to institution of marriage by changing what is thought about it?

And family? We have all the social science data that shows children are most likely to have the best outcomes when they are raised by their own married mother and father. But now we are told it’s impolite—politically incorrect—to assume that two men with a random child, or two women who certainly no more than one of whom is genetically related to a child are “family.” Or single parents who never marry a string of live-in men. Or whatever other arrangement you might think of. Family changes from "parents raising their children" to "any combination of adults with any children or no children." When you change what it means, you erase the idea of its original purpose. If you look at China, where they long enforced a one-child policy, they have raised a generation or two who have no concept of sister, brother, aunt, uncle, or cousin. One hopeful sign is the culture ware is that, in Virginia, where the now-former governor accidentally said what he thought out loud, that parents shouldn't have the right to decide what their children are taught in schools, he got booted out of office.

I haven’t reached the end of the book yet. I don’t know whether Knowles provides us a solution. I suspect not. He ends his preface with,

Political correctness has left us speechless, but the right to speak means nothing to those who have nothing to say.

I suspect his book is a call to speak, to have courage, to keep a grasp on our words and their meanings, the way I keep an old dictionary to remind me of what words meant some 40 years ago. And we should keep using the words that mean what we want to convey. We should keep thinking the concepts of those words. The more words are forbidden for our use, the more we should explore the true meanings that are being snuffed out before our eyes.

We need to think more—and we need to speak more of what we think.

We're All Religious

Michael Knowles, of The Daily Wire, spoke at a YAF event at George Washington University Wednesday. During the Q&A, he answered a question about social degeneracy and religion. This was his answer:

Michael Knowles speaking at YAF event
at George Washington University, October 2, 2019
screenshot from here

Conservatives need to talk, not just about policies and economic issues, but about culture. And not just about culture, but about religion, because, there was a famous cardinal who said, “At bottom, all political disagreements are theological disagreements.” St. Andrew Breitbart, the patron saint of Hollywood conservatives said, “Politics is downstream from culture.” And cult and culture are related words. What the culture worships defines that culture.

Nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, says, “Aaahhh! We’ve got to lower the top marginal tax rate by 0.2%. We have to! And then we’ll have a country.” But no one cares about that. I like low taxes as much as the next guy, but that is not motivating to people.

Because, ultimately, we are religious beings. We long for religion. And everybody’s got to serve somebody. So, when the left abandons traditional religion, they don’t just become materialists; they become weird cultist materialists.

Just last week you had children taking off school for multiple days at a time to protest the weather or something. And it was being organized by the government, so I don’t even know what they were protesting. They were all on the same side.

Bernie Sanders came out and said that we need to sacrifice our children to the climate gods. We need to stop global warming by not having children anymore.

You hear this on— NBC News came out and created a climate confessional. Very Catholic; I kind of like that. But it’s like the opposite of Catholic, because they’re worshipping the creation, rather than the creator.

The rot begins at that level—at the religious level. You will not have an irreligious America that’s successful. John Adams put it very well. He said the country is built for a moral and religious people. It is not fit to the governance of anybody else. Moral and religious, because morality doesn’t just float in the air. It has a shape. It has form. It looks like something. And, if you are not going to enact that, if you are not going to deal in metaphysical reality, then you are going to find yourself very very confused. Not without religion, but with a very very strange looking religion, where you are clamoring and screaming at the sky for it to stop being so sunny everyday.

I’m considering that idea, near the beginning, about political disagreements being theological disagreements. This may be true, even when people who disagree aren’t aware of their religious premises.

Let’s take a look at a historical example: slavery. The anti-slavery movement took root among people who came to believe it was morally wrong. What kind of people think about the morality of something that had been legal and practiced in most societies for millennia? People who believed some basic things: human beings are divinely created by God. God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34, Galatians 3:28). God grants us certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, the right to property ownership, and the choice to choose how to pursue our life’s work. Such people can see that taking the liberty of another person and using it for your own enrichment is morally wrong.

It took a religious people to recognize the divinity of human life, to raise awareness in a society that had accepted it as just the way the world always was, and then root it out.

That was a big task. And it took a good long time, which included a civil war here in America. But that society-wide repentance did happen. While slavery still may exist in the world, civilized people the world over all agree that it is morally wrong, and we must work to root it out.

There’s another divide now: abortion. The more we learn medically and scientifically, the more obvious it becomes that abortion is the killing of a human life. Looking at it morally, it appears to be a sacrifice to the religious belief that sex is a good, and a right, and should not have a negative consequence such as pregnancy. That’s not a Christian view. But it is religious—as Knowles calls it some “weird cultist” type of religion. This view actually sees killing a baby up to (and sometimes including shortly after) birth as a holy right (rite?), so moral that they require support of it by all of society through taxpayer money. It’s also political in our day.

Look at the religion of our founders. Sex outside of marriage was considered immoral. Sinning in that way, resulting in a pregnancy, was to be compensated for through marriage, since the important thing was to correct for the sin, for the sake of the new life coming from it. Killing the baby to cover up the sin was seen as abominable. That view was so long-standing that it is part of the Hippocratic oath, dating to about 275 AD Greece—not a Christian land, but you don’t get civilization without living the laws of civilization.

As a reminder, what are the principles necessary for civilization? You need a particular type of religious people—for the reasons I’m talking about today—who recognize God the Creator as the arbiter of good, to whom we are accountable, and from whom we are given our human rights. Such religious people need at least these five things: they honor God, life, family, truth, and property rights. As we’ve said here before, that is a summary of the Ten Commandments. And we emphasize the need for strong families—ideally a married husband and wife raising their own children in love and righteousness—in order to pass along the principles of civilization from one generation to another.

People can’t progress to being beyond a need for sexual morality, or beyond property rights. But many societies have decayed, or regressed, into sexual immorality and theft. Putting a government imprimatur on those things—or even government mandate for them—does not magically make them moral, good, or righteous. They lead inevitably to poverty and savagery.

So what we need is a moral revival—away from the pagan, selfish, prideful, life-sacrificing, liberty-depriving religion, and back to honoring God our Creator and right-giver, and therefore also honoring life, family, truth, and property ownership.

The question then becomes, how? Slowly, incrementally? Or fast, cataclysmically?

David Barton
screenshot from here

David Barton, at Wallbuilders, did a Facebook live this week (October 1), laying out the case for incremental progress in the right direction. He used the analogy of a football team, making relatively small progress down the field. From time to time they might make a long pass, but if they attempted the long pass every play, they’d probably be denied the progress they really want. He pointed out how slavery might have ended sooner if an incremental approach had been accepted at a certain point, but abolitionists insisted on all or nothing, and so the small step wasn't taken, and it was decades and war later before slavery was abolished.

I waiver between accepting small steps and wanting large leaps. We can celebrate small wins for civilization. But when we’re still wading in the muck of southern hemisphere tyranny and savagery, it’s hard to be patient enough to work our way up out of the swamp.

But the hopeful point is, social evils as long-standing as slavery can be overcome by a repentant people seeking to live the principles of civilization.

In my son’s elementary school, many years ago, the teachers used to give out awards—small things, such as a pencil, bearing the message “caught doing good.” It was an opportunity to interact with the kids when they were behaving in a way the teachers wanted to reinforce, and give them the idea that authority wasn’t always just looking for their mistakes. So, I’m in favor of catching people doing good.

Memorial Service for Sandeep Dhaliwal
screenshot from here

The outpouring of love in our local community for an officer, shot in the line of duty, was heartwarming. The incident happened just a few miles from our house. And the funeral yesterday was just a few miles further west. The love for this man, Sandeep Dhaliwal—and for his police brothers and sisters, and for the people of his religion (he was Sikh)—seemed unanimous.

Another heartwarming moment followed the upsetting trial of an officer who killed an innocent civilian when she entered the wrong apartment and thought she was facing an intruder. In the sentencing phase, the brother of the victim showed a sincere example of forgiveness, and asked if he could hug the convicted officer. She was found guilty and was sentenced to ten years, which is perhaps what society needed to do. But the brother—he was able to let go of the hurt and anger and see a contrite woman who had ruined her own life as well as his brother’s, and his compassion for her will be the most memorable part of that trial.

While both of these stories had people of various races and religions, these differences weren’t part of the story. Politics wasn’t part of the stories. Human love and decency were the important details.

If we keep finding the good, and refusing to accept the evil, maybe we can make incremental yardage toward the interrelated goals of freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

Confounding, Rather than Contending

I informally study how to say things. I collect good examples, good rhetorical methods. Maybe that influences how I explain things. I hope it does.

This week I’m looking at ways to confound, rather than to contend.

In my religion, we have a thing against contention (see 3 Nephi 11:29). We’re encouraged to avoid Bible bashing, or trying to persuade by contentious arguing. That doesn’t mean we can’t debate ideas, discuss differences of belief, or defend attacks against our beliefs or our character.

It’s about the way this is done. With respect. Without rage. Keep undue emotion out of the way. Persuade with truth and human caring.

Studio C used Captain Literally to restore balance.
Image from here

Keeping this in mind, I rather like the feeling of “balance restored” when a wrong accusation or disrespectful argument is met with a confounding response—so full of truth that there’s no comeback.

I came across a couple of examples this week. Plus, I think I’ll add in some examples from recent weeks.

Let’s start with one that is just fun—from someone you don’t usually seek out for humor, but he is good for confounding clarity: Senator Mike Lee. This is during the Senate discussion of the Green New Deal. Not only are Velociraptors and Tauntauns involved, but also giant sea horses—all of which are more realistic than the so-called Green New Deal. Your life will be more complete after viewing this.


  

This next one isn’t as obviously fun, but it’s a pretty confounding response. Jordan Peterson had been invited to join with Cambridge Divinity School in an upcoming lecture series in which he talks about the psychological meaning of Bible stories, continuing a series he has done already, garnering great interest. He announced this joint undertaking on a monthly Q&A on March 18. On March 20 the divinity school rescinded the invitation. They did this through tweet, rather than a respectful phonecall, or even an explanatory letter or email.

The Cambridge University Student Union tweeted about how excited they were that the offer was withdrawn—three minutes before the divinity school made its public announcement. Peterson found out about it from friends who contacted him asking about it, followed by his searching social media more clues.

Jordan Peterson responds to Cambridge
image from here

That is not how civilized, educated people conduct business. But it is, apparently, how the uncivilized "social justice” types do it. Their claim is that it’s a political stance inappropriate for the university to have someone associate with them who holds the “transphobic” view that governments shouldn’t enforce speech requirements on individuals—views Peterson has openly held since he gained notoriety for speaking against the Canadian law in 2017, long before his lectures and interviews at Cambridge last year, which were popular and had led to the discussions about working together on the Biblical lecture series.

If it’s hard to follow their logic—well, that’s the point here.

What is great is that Peterson doesn’t let them get away with it. He responds. And what a response! 

First, he makes clear that he didn’t go “hat in hand,” seeking the collaboration; they had a number of friendly discussions, which led him to formally apply at their suggestion, and following which they had formally offered the invitation.

Second, they need him far more than he needs them, which he details quite deftly. I'm glad to know the lecture series will go on regardless.

The entirety is here, but I’ll point out a few gems.

In this quote, he rejects their claim to his not having academic legitimacy adequate to these elitists:

I also have to say, as a university professor concerned with literacy, that the CUSU statement offered to The Guardian borders on the unintelligible, perhaps even crossing the line (as so much ideological-puppet-babble tends to): what in the world does it mean that “it is a political act to associate the University with an academic’s work through offers which legitimise figures such as Peterson”? And who could write or say something of that rhetorical nature without a deep sense of betraying their personal conscience?

In this next one he makes it clear that he had thought he’d made a mutually beneficial agreement when he accepted the invitation. He made it with goodwill; the Divinity school apparently has a different set of values:

In the fall, I am planning to produce a series of lectures on the Exodus stories. I presume they will have equal drawing power. I thought that I could extend my knowledge of the relevant stories by spending time in Cambridge, and that doing so would be useful for me, for faculty members who might be interested in speaking with me, and to the students. I also regarded it as a privilege and an opportunity. I believed (and still believe) that collaborating with the Faculty of Divinity on such a project would constitute an opportunity of clear mutual benefit. Finally, I thought that making myself more knowledgeable about relevant Biblical matters by working with the experts there would be of substantive benefit to the public audience who would eventually receive the resultant lectures.

Now the Divinity school has decided that signaling their solidarity with the diversity-inclusivity-equity mob trumps that opportunity–or so I presume. You see, I don’t yet know, because (and this is particularly appalling) I was not formally notified of this decision by any representative of the Divinity school. I heard about the rescinded offer through the grapevine, via a colleague and friend, and gathered what I could about the reasons from social media and press coverage (assuming that CUSU has at least something to do with it).

 Then comes this final blessing/curse:

I think the Faculty of Divinity made a serious error of judgement in rescinding their offer to me (and I’m speaking about those unnamed persons who made that specific decision). I think they handled publicizing the rescindment in a manner that could hardly have been more narcissistic, self-congratulatory and devious.

I believe that the parties in question don’t give a damn about the perilous decline of Christianity, and I presume in any case that they regard that faith, in their propaganda-addled souls, as the ultimate manifestation of the oppressive Western patriarchy, despite their hypothetical allegiance to their own discipline.

I think that it is no bloody wonder that the faith is declining (and with it, the values of the West, as it fragments) with cowards and mountebanks of the sort who manifested themselves today at the helm.

I wish them the continued decline in relevance over the next few decades that they deeply and profoundly and diligently work toward and deserve.

What was supposed to be a public shaming of Peterson has become an even more public revelation about those doing the shaming. Instead of apologizing or dropping down into a silent hole, as they might have expected, he has simply spoken the truth, without embellishment, but with devastating clarity.

Tom Woods spoke about Peterson’s response on his podcast last week, with admiration. (I recommend listening to the full half hour on this subject.) In the email linking to the podcast, he offers this summary:

Now what is supposed to happen in situations like this is that the aggrieved party accepts being put in his place by the right-thinking elite, and quietly slinks away.

Not Peterson.

And that's part of what makes this dissident voice so important. Not only does his success confound them, but he's also a great fighter. He doesn't sheepishly fold. He calls attention to their shenanigans and rallies his supporters.

We're not supposed to do that, you see. We are supposed to accept the verdict of our alleged betters, like good and obedient losers.

Peterson's vigorous response—not just to the rescission but also to the profoundly juvenile way in which it was announced—guarantees Cambridge internal strife, angry calls from alumni, and a nonstop flurry of attacks.

Good.

Balance restored!

Another confounding encounter I enjoyed was an exchange between Michael Knowles and an audience member in the Q&A following a lecture in which he had honored Christopher Columbus. It’s only three minutes, so I've included the whole thing. The social justice warrior believes he has an ironclad attack, and is stunned to find that he doesn’t. This final takedown, after answering the question, is balance restoring:

I think that you’re standing on the shoulders of giants, and you think that you’re flying. But you’re not. We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of that great man, and we spit down on him in our ingratitude. How pathetic!

In this next one, Ben Shapiro answers a question about abortion—specifically on the value of human life. This complete coverage of the issue only takes two minutes. Notice how fully aware he is of the opposition’s arguments.

What is the pattern? How is confounding different from contending?

There’s no hatred toward a person for having an opposing view. In fact, there’s a certain respect built in to the response: if they are given the clear truth, they’ll understand and maybe even reconsider their position.

There’s no coercion—no forcing someone to change their view. There’s no name calling—no claim that anyone with that view is evil simply for holding a different view.

That doesn’t mean the confounding answer won’t offend, or cause anger. Getting offended or angry is up to the other person. But offending is not the purpose; presenting the point of view as clearly and powerfully as possible is the purpose.

There’s an understanding of the opposing view—an ability to express it accurately—showing that full consideration was given before forming this differing opinion.

We’re not talking about defensive strategy. The purpose is not to just bat away the various hits from the opposition; it is to take away the weapon. When you disarm a foe, then there’s a chance for peace.

In our out-of-balance world, we need to give up contending, even when the opposition is contentious, and we must get better at confounding. To disarm, To restore balance. To bring about peace.

Change Is Possible

I was listening to/semi-watching the Michael Knowles show last Friday, when he announced a guest that caught my attention: Dr. Nicolosi. I knew that name from research on same-sex attraction. When I saw Dr. Nicolosi, I was surprised how young he looked, since I’ve been citing studies for close to twenty years. It turns out the interview was with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Jr., the son of the Dr. Joseph Nicolosi I’ve cited.[i] But they are in the same field—researching and helping people with same-sex attraction.

Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Jr. (left) and Michael Knowles
screen shot from the Michael Knowles Show, September 21, 2018
See video below.

The interview was about reintegrative therapy. That’s a new word to me. It isn’t reparative therapy, or conversion therapy. But the eventual outcomes sometimes have an effect of change in sexual orientation, when that is the desire of the client.

Michael Knowles introduced the segment by pointing out that the left, including Hollywood, portrays gay conversion therapy in very negative ways. There’s a new movie called Boy Erased, with Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, that shows it as horrifyingly abusive. And Vice-President Mike Pence, who is a religious person who favors traditional marriage, as I do, is accused of promoting electroshock therapy, which he has not. And that negative side would include reintegrative therapy as if it were those abusive horrors. So Knowles gives Dr. Nicolosi the opportunity to explain and clarify what it really is:

We need to differentiate between two things. One term is conversion therapy. Now, conversion therapy is a term that’s broad. It’s ill-defined. There’s no ethics code, no governing body. And it’s practiced by unlicensed individuals. This is the stuff that we’re seeing from Hollywood. Right.

In the work that we do, in reintegrative therapy, the client is in the driver’s seat. The licensed psychotherapist uses evidence-based mainstream treatment approaches, the same treatment approaches used in other clinics throughout the world to treat trauma and sexual addiction. And as those underlying dynamics are resolved, the sexuality changes as a byproduct. Our clients notice significant and lasting decreases in their same-sex attractions and increases in their heterosexual attractions.

Dr. Nicolosi goes on to talk about neuroplasticity of the brain, something that I have long thought should be important in dealing with unwanted LGBT issues:

There’s no so-called “gay gene.” But that’s science fiction. Here’s the science. We know that the brain is capable of something that we call neuroplasticity. It’s like, there’s a new study released basically every week demonstrating that the brain has this neuroplastic capability. Neuroplasticity is the idea that the brain can wire and re-wire itself based on our life experience. And with neuroplasticity in mind, why would everybody’s sexuality be set in stone? So, we see that there’s further and further evidence for this, and we also know that the regions of the brain that are responsible for sexual preference are the same regions of the brain that we know change over time.

The brain is changeable, but it requires creating new neural pathways with enough frequency, intensity, and duration that they become strong enough to be the chosen pathways. The difficulty has been with identifying the exercises that would create the new pathways. But identifying where the pathways began going wrong seems like a good starting point.

Dr. Nicolosi has observed a pattern:

I can tell you this. The hundreds of men that I’ve worked with, in our clinic, they tell me very remarkably similar patterns in their childhood experiences that they believe relate to their same-sex attraction.

He later talks a little more about those similar childhood experiences:

You know, so many of my clients who have never met one another, they describe remarkably similar backgrounds in their childhoods—things that are not being addressed by Hollywood. My clients consistently report having distant, detached, critical fathers; higher anxiety, sometimes intrusive mothers; and they themselves who were temperamentally sensitive. If you put these factors together, it seems to increase the probability that the boy will have difficulty making that gender identity shift away from the mother and toward the father that’s typical in young childhood. Oftentimes my clients had a bullying older brother. If you put these factors together, it makes it harder.

These individuals, my clients, when they were growing up, girls were their closest friends. They knew girls like the back of their hands. But boys, and roughhousing—my clients felt scared. They felt intimidated by these kinds of behaviors. They didn’t know how to connect with other guys. And their childhoods were filled with getting female attention, affection, approval, but no male attention, affection, approval. Eventually, in puberty, those underlying desires became sexual. This story is happening again, and again, and again.

I read a study offering this family dynamic causal suggestion almost twenty years ago. It seemed plausible, but it covered only a certain percentage—though pretty high—of those with same-sex attraction. What about the others? Another large percentage—and there was overlap—were boys who were sexually abused by older males[ii]. Some don’t claim this as abuse, because they saw themselves as willing, but if we were looking at adult males having sex with young females, we would call that statutory rape, at the very least. There are reasons young people are considered incapable of giving consent in such situations.

It appears that same-sex attraction, then, is a wiring problem. Sometimes the mis-wiring happens so early in life that the person doesn’t remember a time before thinking that way—hence the claim that they were born that way. Sometimes we can see that having an experience wires the brain in a certain way, deepening pathways that were only possibilities if the person remained celibate.

Any way you look at it, we’ve been right for a long time when we say it’s a mental issue, not a physiological fact, and it is changeable.

The term reintegrative refers to the idea that, when the young person is developing thought patterns, he (or she) separates out parts of the self, can’t see their own gender in a healthy way, and in a way dissociates from their wholeness. The therapy helps them reintegrate, or bring back together those hidden or buried parts of themselves, making it safe for them to be wholly who they are.

Some don’t want to change. Fine. This therapy—as most psychotherapy—is intended for clients who perceive a problem that they want to work on and change.

For those that want that change, there are good reasons. Dr. Nicolosi sees three categories:

One: Individuals that were sexually abused by someone of the same sex when they were young, resulting in conflict and confusion, and lingering effects of the abuse. And these are individuals who, as adults, say they want to resolve this. And we see that with standard trauma therapy, when we focus on treating the sexual abuse memories, these adults often describe their sexuality changing on its own.

The second is individuals, because of their closely held beliefs—maybe they’re Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists. These are all people who say, “I believe I was designed heterosexual.”

And the last is individuals who, they’re not religious—they’re not dealing with a deeply held belief. They’re not traumatized. But they’re here for pragmatic reasons. They say, “Look, I tried homosexuality. I came out ten years ago. I find homosexuality, homosexual relationships compelling, but at the end, not really fulfilling.” And they wish to explore heterosexuality. And I believe no one should interfere with that. That’s their right to pursue if they choose.

Ironically, the movement that says everyone ought to be able to choose the lifestyle they want to live is very hostile to anyone who chooses to leave.

Dr. Nicolosi was one of many who testified against a bill in California, AB 2943, designed to prohibit any and all treatments that could possibly lead to changes in sexual orientation. As it turned out AB 2943 was pulled by the assemblyman who sponsored it, on the very last day. Dr. Nicolosi said we might never know exactly why:

But it probably had a lot to do with a lot of individuals saying, “Look, I was sexually abused when I was young. Don’t take my right away to walk away from homosexuality. I don’t want to be kept in homosexuality against my will.” Or other individuals who say, “Well, wait a second, the client should be in the driver’s seat of their own psychotherapy, not the government.” And this is not the kind of legislation that would pass, I think, in court. I think it would get torn to shreds.

So, despite activism against options, there’s hope for change, for those who want to. In my religion that isn’t uncommon for young people with same-sex attraction. They sincerely pray for release from it. They don’t know where to turn. Not sure whether their parents or peers will understand their struggle—at a time when almost all the media says they can’t change, and shouldn’t.

Screen shot from the documentary Free to Love,
available at FreeToLoveMovie.com/documentary

There have always been ways. But I’m glad to see this particular approach—the same used for healing trauma or sexual addiction, which is a pretty good description of what same-sex attraction is, explaining why those in that lifestyle have manifold more sexual partners than healthy heterosexuals. And also it explains the co-morbidity, the existence of additional mental problems. Dealing with the underlying problems means healing, and then there’s an opportunity to choose.

I’m thinking this might be a better approach for gender dysphoria as well, because those underlying issues are still there after reassignment hormonal treatments and surgeries. In a sensible society, the obvious answer would always have been, “Let’s help you heal, and then we’ll see what you want to do,” rather than, “Let’s indulge your delusion and change the world and its reactions to you.”

If you’d like to know more about reintegrative therapy, I suggest skipping any and all Hollywood versions. There’s a documentary, available online, called Free to Love, that Dr. Nicolosi helped produce. You can find it at freetolovemovie.com/documentary. 

Here is the video of the Michael Knowles Show. The 15-minute interview with Dr. Nicolosi begins at about 17 minutes.

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[i] Here are some of the Nicolosi references I have used:

·         Lack of long-term fidelity in same-sex males: Joseph Nicolosi, Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality, (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1991), p. 111.

·         Pro-homosexual writers claim fidelity is a heterosexual norm and should not be expected of homosexuals: Ibid., p. 140.

·         The level of promiscuity amongst the gay population is also very different from mainstream society.  The Kinsey Institute published a study showing that 28 percent of male homosexuals have had sexual encounters with one thousand or more partners with over half having more than 500 different sexual partners in a lifetime: Ibid. p. 124.

·         Successful homosexual partnerships have embraced infidelity: Ibid., p. 125.

·         Evidence concerning change from homosexual lifestyle is abundant. Study concludes that “20% to 30% of the participants [in voluntary conversion therapy] said they shifted from a homosexual orientation to an exclusively or almost exclusively heterosexual orientation,” belying any assertion that homosexual orientation is “immutable”: Joseph Nicolosi, A. Dean Byrd, Richard W. Potts, “Retrospective Self-Reports of Changes in Homosexual Orientation:  A Consumer Survey of Conversion Therapy Clients,” 86 Psychological Reports 1071, 1083 (June 2000). 

·         Change therapy: Joseph. Nicolosi, “Belief and Practices of Therapists Who Practice Sexual Reorientation Psychotherapy,” 86 Psychological Reports 689-702 (2000).

[ii] Bill Watkins and Arnon Bentovim, "The Sexual Abuse of Male Children and Adolescents: A Review of Current Research," Journal of Child Psychiatry 33 (1992); in Byrgen Finkelman, Sexual Abuse (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995), p. 316. Also, a Child Abuse and Neglect study found that 59 percent of male child sex offenders had been victims of contact sexual abuse as a child." Michele Elliott, "Child Sexual Abuse Prevention: What Offenders Tell Us," Child Abuse and Neglect 19 (1995): 582.

The Long Bending Arc

Remember that quote Martin Luther King used: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” We may be watching that arc.

This past week marked 45 years since the badly botched Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. And there was another March for Life on Friday at the nation’s capital.

President Trump spoke at the rally. I remember when he casually leaned toward pro-abortion, back when he was a Democrat and not a politician, so even less inclined than today to think through issues. So it’s a little surprising to hear pro-life language from him now, but I’ll take it. Repentance is a good thing.

Pres. Trump speaks at March for Life 2018
Image from here

Here’s some of what he said:

The March for Life is a movement born out of love. You love your families, you love your neighbors, you love our nation and you love every child—born and unborn—because you believe every life is sacred, that every child is a precious gift from God.

He added, "Americans are more and more pro-life, you see that all the time,” which I’ll talk about more today. He also said,

Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life.

Well done.

So about that bend in the right direction. I think he’s right. Science is with the right to life; the more we know about the baby in the womb, the more we verify each one is a human baby, growing, with a heartbeat, feeling pain, and experiencing other senses. That is so clearly not simply a clump of cells, like a tumor. Truth leads in the direction of life.

I came across a story at The Daily Signal, verifying that young, teenage pro-life activists are pretty formidable. Three reasons: 1) They’re surprisingly upbeat and joyful—not angry. 2) They’ve already “learned to deal with incessant opposition.” Because “Pro-life people of any demographic live in a world where everyone from their boss to their favorite Hollywood star blatantly abhors them and their beliefs.” And 3) Opposition makes them stronger. “Those displays of mean-spirited opposition only knit them closer together, harden their conviction that they are fighting against true evil, and give them a sense of heroism. (A little secret: Teenagers love to feel like heroes.)”

Another story, from last week, was good news out of Tennessee. Back in 2014, Tennessee voters, a 53% to 47% majority, added this amendment to their state constitution: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion.” It has been making its way through court challenges—since Planned Parenthood filed a challenge just days after the vote. The vote was upheld April 2016 in a Circuit Court, and went from there to federal appeals court. Then, on January 9, 2018, the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Planned Parenthood’s efforts to overturn the will of Tennessee voters.

Image from here

Senior Judge David McKeague (appointed in 2005 by George W. Bush) wrote,

Although the subject of abortion rights will continue to be controversial in Tennessee and across our nation, it is time for uncertainty surrounding the people’s 2014 approval and ratification of Amendment 1 to be put to rest.

I don’t know the full ramifications of the amendment, but it does mean one state has successfully defied the SCOTUS decision claiming the right to kill a baby in the womb is a fundamental right. Hurray!

Now, back to the evidence that public will is changing.

Michael Knowles, in today’s podcast, which he titled “Lying, Shrieking Harpies: Women’s March 2018,” discussed the second annual Women’s March, in various cities this weekend. I wrote about this confusing event last year. It’s those people with knitted vagina caps on their heads again. Knowles had gone to the official website, WomensMarch.com, to get their purpose—because women actually at the march were pretty unclear on what they were doing there: you know, women’s rights, and equality, and, and, you know, stuff.

marchers on a New York subway,
wearing those things on their heads,
image from here

So, I’ve transcribed the whole 5-minute segment (I think it’s about 17 minutes into the full podcast—he pulled out this segment on Facebook), which I’ve divided up by issue. The section on Reproductive Rights is what ties in directly with our topic today. But I’ve included the rest for your interest. The part on Equal Pay ties in with last Thursday’s topic. Anyway, here’s Michael Knowles sharing WomensMarch.com’s stated mission, and then comparing it to real life facts:

Here is the mission statement from Women’s March.com: “The mission of Women’s March is to harness the political power of diverse women in their communities to create transformative social change. Women’s March is a women-led movement providing intersectional education on a diverse range of issues and creating entry points for new grassroots activists and organizers to engage in their local communities through trainings, outreach programs and events. Women’s March is committed to dismantling systems of oppression through nonviolent resistance and building inclusive structures guided by self-determination, dignity, and respect.”

What? What? What does any of that mean? They get a bit more specific later on, but this shows you just how out of touch they are.

VIOLENCE

The first principle that they list is ending violence. They write: “Women deserve to live full and healthy lives free of all forms of violence against our bodies.” Just to correct the record here, women live significantly longer than men on average. By the end of the 20^th Century, male life expectancy was 73.4 years, compared to 80.1 years for women.

Unlike men, when women register to vote, they don’t simultaneously have to register for the military draft. Men are far more likely to be the victims of violent crime than women. 76.8% of murder victims are male. Boys and men are more likely than women to be victims of assault, and robbery as well. Additionally, according to the Gallup World Poll, women report being happier with their lives than their male counterparts.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Women’sMarch.com goes on to the euphemistically titled “reproductive rights.” They say, “We believe in reproductive freedom. We do not accept any federal, state, or local rollback cuts or restrictions on our ability to access quality reproductive health care services—birth control, HIV/AIDS prevention, or medically accurate sexuality education. This means open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people.” So it’s just about abortion. They put all that other stuff there, but it’s really about abortion.

And yet, according to a 2016 Marist poll, despite constant Democrat euphemisms, renaming abortion as “women’s issues” or “reproductive health,” nationally the vast majority of women—77%—support restricting abortion to at most the first trimester. Far fewer, just 71% of men, support restrictions on abortion. The women are clearer. The majority of women—59%—say abortion is morally wrong. 52% of women believe that abortion should at most—at MOST—be permitted in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. But, nevertheless, according to the Women’s March, women want abortion on demand, anytime, anyplace, and it just isn’t backed up by reality.

EQUAL PAY

On workers’ rights, Women’sMarch.com declares, “We believe in an economy powered by transparency, accountability, security, and equity. All women should be paid equitably.” And you hear this constantly, this popular disinformation that there’s a gender pay gap: women make 77 cents on the dollar; no equal pay for equal work. But that gender pay gap disappears once you control for factors like education, time in the industry, and hours worked.

Actually, single childless women in metropolitan areas—they don’t earn less than their male counterparts; they earn more than their male counterparts by 8% on average. Nationally, women also graduate from college at significantly higher rates than men. In 2015 39% of women 25-29 had earned a bachelor’s degree, compared to just 32% of men.

VOTING RIGHTS

On Civil Rights, Women’sMarch.com explains, “We believe civil rights are our birthright, including voting rights.” This is odd to pick a fight on voting rights, as, according to the Center for American Women and Politics, since 1980 women have voted at higher rates in every single presidential election than men. So, by 2016, that gap widened to 63.3% of women voting compared to just 59.3% of men. Additionally, the number of female voters has exceeded the number of male voters in every presidential election since 1964. Despite constituting a majority of the US population—50.2% to 49.8%—women also benefit from affirmative action policies on campus and in the workplace, that give them a competitive advantage over men.

DISABILITY RIGHTS

There’s a section on disability rights. Women’sMarch.com proclaims, “We believe that all women’s issues are issues faced by women with disabilities and deaf women.” I guess that one’s right. Deaf women are still women. I don’t know what the point of that is, but sure. That’s the one thing that the Women’s March got right: deaf women are women.

IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

On immigrant rights, Women’sMarch.com insists, “Rooted in the promise of America’s call for huddled masses yearning to breathe free, we believe in immigrant and refugee rights regardless of status or country of origin. We believe migration is a human right, and that no human being is illegal.”

So, putting aside for a moment the illogic of a national policy to do away with national borders, even on the numbers the Women’s March doesn’t seem to represent women. Even among illegal aliens brought to the United States as children and teenagers—even the Dreamers, the most sympathetic and relentlessly demagogued group of illegal aliens—a November survey from Morning Consult and Politico shows that fewer than 30% of Americans support amnesty. Even among Democrats, support for granting amnesty to the most sympathetic group of illegal aliens is just 44%.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Finally, last segment, on environmental justice, Women’sMarch.com observes, “We believe that every person and every community in our nation has the right to clean water, clean air, and access to and enjoyment of public lands.” Lucky for them, federal law has protected all of those things, to say nothing of state and local management, for at least the past five decades.

The Women’s March is the most frivolous protest in the history of the world.

Usually, people whose heads are filled with vapidity masquerading as thought either figure it out and change, or they get found out and ignored.

Anyway, there was one march last weekend that affirmed women and life, and the connection between sexuality and women and new life. There was a lot of love there, which clearly relates to and supports women.

I really think that long arc will keep bending toward justice, because love is more persuasive than hate, and truth is more persuasive than demagoguery.