Gay newborn poster sparks row in Italy

[hedgehog]

http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20071025&t=2&i=2035623&w=450&r=2007-10-25T135410Z_01_L2533767_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0

The poster of a baby wearing a wristband labelled "homosexual" in an advertising campaign against homophobia has sparked a row in Italy.



http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL253376720071025

[MADem]

1. Madonna mia--some truths are self evident. It's most certainly not una scelta!!

Who the hell would "choose" to get crapped on by ignorant idiots?

I'm going to look at this as "glass half full," though. Why? Because a decade or two ago, this topic would never have been discussed or seen the light of day in Italy. The message is a truthful one--orientation isn't a choice. After the "rowing" is over, then hopefully there will be real discussion and ultimately progress.

[hedgehog]

2. I'd like to see that poster campaign here in America. I'm an optimist

and believe that if people are faced with real people and not labels, they change their minds.


On edit: years ago, I said that I could understand why parents wouldn't want a homosexual teacher in their children's schools. Than one of my kids said, " Mr. X is gay." That settled it for me. Turning an abstract question into one that involved people I knew changed my mind.



BTW - I know that it's either Mr. X or Mr. Y that is gay, but I can never remember whether Mr. X is gay and Mr. Y is straight or vice versa!

[Bucky]

3. If it were a scelta, it certainly would be a valid scelta and one worthy of protection

We protect people who ride motorcycles--first with helmet laws and then with emergency head trauma care when they ignore those helmet laws. Certainly no one could argue that who you bump uglies with is a heck of a lot less consequential to the public sphere than the choices motorcyclists make.

A huge part of being a community means protecting people from the bad choices they make. But for entirely random religious reasons, fundies want to stop people from making harmless personal choices. No wonder they're losing the argument--they don't have one.

[ismnotwasm]

4. Sigh

What is it about the Gay community simply trying to obtain and enjoy basic human rights that sparks things like a "row" or a "debate" or "controversy"--what have you? Why are so many religious people absolutely obsessed with someone's sexual orientation?

Of COURSE there are babies being born today that are born homosexual, do these people, what ever country they're from, actually believe otherwise? Then again, what people believe, or don't believe-- such as the actual bizarre type of thinking that pits 6 literal days of creation (and a day of rest for an omnipotent and omniscient Deity, why the hell did it need rest?) vs. Evolution --should have ceased to amaze me years ago

[MADem]

6. Believe me, the fact that Italy, which is still Catholic though they wear it

lightly in many quarters, is discussing this matter openly is progress. Real progress. After they "row" for awhile, they'll get over it and the subject will be out in the open, and minds will be changed.

Ten years ago, twenty years ago? Fuggedaboutit. You didn't talk about such things! Never! Ever!

It's a small step forward, but at least the trajectory is good.

[ismnotwasm]

10. That is a good point

I actually have an answer to my own questions, in feminist philosophy.

What I have a hard time understanding is this--I don't know, maybe it's the press--obsession over sexual orientation. I do hope it *is* a sign of the beginning of the end to homophobia/hatred

[MADem]

12. It's still getting ratings. That's why they cover it.

Many people are too young to remember this sort of stuff, but way, way back when, "integration" was the topic du jour. Really. There were TV shows and movies about it, with broad characters, crudely portrayed, and stereotypes galore. The subject was BEATEN to death, and it was the central theme of many productions. Now certainly, we're not in Happy Land yet when it comes to race relations, but we're not having to endure those ghastly but well-intentioned "integration" productions anymore--because "integration" is no longer an issue.

I think that if the world is saturated with "the gay discussion" than eventually everyone will get the talking points down, and then we can move forward. The most important talking point is the one this ad portrays--it's not like it's a choice, after all. As I said, who would willingly make a choice to be treated like shit? It seems logical, but there are too many people who don't "get" it, and who think all you have to do is just "stop."

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. It's a stupid ad...people aren't "born" gay or straight

Neither, of course, do people CHOOSE their sexuality. The whole debate between genetic determination and subjective freedom is asinine on this point.

Sexuality is the result of many complex factors. Some are genetic, to be sure. Most are environmentally and culturally driven. The level of subjective choice is only at the particular ACT, and even there, it is a meager choice indeed, given the multiple factors pushing sexuality and desire.

Now, of course I'll get numerous responses saying "How can you say that? I don't remember choosing my sexuality!" Of course you don't. I never said you chose your sexuality. I said you weren't born with it. These are two different things. At most, your genetic make-up established a set of virtual tendencies which can be actualized in numerous ways based on your development, culture, and environment. Next, you'll get the standard trope: "When I was five years old even, I remember feeling this way." Yes, so what? Who said five year olds weren't already swimming in cultural and environmental determinants of sexuality? Three year olds are swimming in it. Three week old children are already deeply gendered through cultural processes.

We basically have a deeply childish discourse about these things. The "born this way" argument is really a version of "fate" - it's a childish philosophy. The "chose this way" argument is really a version of subject-centered Cartesian rationalism - another childish philosophy. Needless to say, none of these produce anything in the way of empirical verification, largely because they're both false.

Now, this is well and good as a philosophical matter, but how does it play politically. There is, of course, a great deal of value in arguing this "born this way" position against the idiots who set up sexuality as a choice. First, it hooks into actual genetic determinations (like skin color) and allows an articulation with those movements as a political strategy. That's great, and useful. Something doesn't have to be true to be politically useful. Moreover, the way sexuality is formed much more resembles genetic predetermination than it does subjective choice, so it's also useful as shorthand. Since most people cannot take the time to understand complex determining factors, we might as well say "born that way," which is something people CAN understand. But it also opens you up to significant counterarguments, largely because it is false. There is no gay or straight gene, and never will be. There are no straight "brain structures," and never will be. It's useful political shorthand, but that's all it is.

[ismnotwasm]

8. Dunno

You have to start somewhere. One of the problems is getting people to understand that homosexuality is a natural and necessary part of healthy human sexuality. Our discussion over heterosexuality hasn't evolved much past the "childish" stage. We have barely coined the terms heterosexism, or heteronormativity, and those concepts still aren't defined for the general population, being the topic of other, no doubt non-childish, philosophers.

We are all "female" at one stage of gestation as well, until estrogen triggers testosterone in a complex development of secondary sex characteristics. At this point, I don't think it's necessary, productive or even correct to define human sexuality in a nature vs nurture or both debate

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. These are all points that I already made

I do take your point on "productive or necessary," and tried to make that in the last paragraph. I do think it's time we start asking what the very feeble dichotomies we currently use are costing us in terms of argument. Maybe nothing. Maybe they are most productive. Certainly, the turn toward acceptance over the last 20 years would suggest that it is a very good political argument indeed. So, yes, maybe it should just be held on to for now. But I think the question remains relevant. And maybe the margin of resistance is still stuck on a nature-nurture things in ways that are counter-productive. Maybe we're getting less mileage out of the "born this way" thesis than we suppose.

[MADem]

14. Well, the ad doesn't say that people are born gay or straight.

It simply says it's not a choice. Scelta=choice.

The use of the baby with the hospital tag is more about the whole issue of labels, not a scientific discussion on the genetic/environmental/developmental aspects.

[TahitiNut]

7. Irrelevant, really.

:shrug: While I understand, there's something particularly distasteful about the "where it went wrong" implication.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. There's no doubt these things enter into dangerous political waters

It's easy enough for me to say "There is no where it went wrong implication since the development of sexuality applies equally to so-called straight sexuality (supposing such a thing exists, which is unlikely)." In other words, nothing went wrong. Of course, that's a fatuous sort of operation when we all agree that non-straight desire is pathologized fairly consistently and violently in most cultural and political systems even today. So, anything but a "born that way" argument opens one up to the risk of "where it went wrong." That's a political question, and shows that any philosophy or science of sexuality is already deeply implicated in political and cultural power. (Of course, the "born that way" argument will increasingly open one up to the same danger as cultural understandings of pathology become more firmly identified with a changeable genetic system - that is, genetics that can be worked on as surely as the environment can be worked on).

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

13. Frankly, the 'row' is only among the churchy fundy

not-so-intelligentsia... people in Italy are a lot less fundy than many stereotypes make us out to be. Even I, growing up in the mid to late 70s, knew about homosexuality and it was openly discussed and ... gasp! taught in my sex ed classes. We talked about Caesar as the husband of all wives and the wife of all husbands and King James (yes, the Bible dude), as well as Oscar Wilde and others.

And again, like in the U.S., you have a wide disparity in acceptance of homosexuality and homosexuals between the northern cities and the southern ones, just as you would in New York vis-a-vis Mobile, Alabama (as an example).

[hedgehog]

15. A good point. As long as people in small communities believe that

*****HOMOSEXUALS***** are those strange people in San Franciso out to seducve their children, there will be fear and laothing. When they realize that the neighbor's polite son who mows lawn and takes care of the storm windows for that widow down the street or those two nice ladies down the road are ****THE GAYS****, I think attitudes will change.

[lame54]

16. Maybe that's his name