"Queer-Baiting..." Reconsidered
Brudnoy, David & Randolph, John & Veal, E.T.
In February of 1973 The Alternative featured two essays in its "PERSPECTIVES" forum on homosexuality and the significance of the family. Each was independently written. David Bruclnoy in...
...Most likely, the truth, to use the hackneyed phrase, "lies somewhere in between...
...Qwerty is that famous top row of letters that confronts us on typewriters, on-line computer outlets, teletype terminals, and tape- and card-punching machines...
...We are not that changeoriented, even for the sake of rationalism...
...But qwerty will continue to tyrannize us, one and all, and our children and grandchi|dren, too...
...Now let us consider the question initially proposed...
...Simple prudence dictates that what may be a considerable danger both to individuals and to society should not be freed from all restraint...
...In a science issue of the now defunct Saturday Review (October, 1972), Charles Lekberg presented a peculiar bit of sociological data in an essay, "The Tyranny of Qwerty...
...It should be noted that the writer of the first article is an associate to a public official...
...He has insinuated to his readers (of whose youth, remember, he is fully aware) that to oppose homosexuality is to associate oneself with a nefarious intellectual milieu, in which innocent pleasures are thought evil, women are reduced to chattel-slavery, witches are pursued by prurient inquisitors, and sexual eccentrics are unfairly branded with accusations of heresy...
...As for Brudnoy's picture of a "viable, cohesive society" in which homosexuals with "honest, non-aggressive pride" live side-by-side with their straight brethren, I am skeptical...
...For eight years, it seemed as if the crucial decisions could be put off...
...We may safely assert that one who chooses homosexuality is consenting both to a violation of fundamental moral axioms and to the corruption of his own sexual nature...
...If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest...
...And to abandon that belief, as I said before, is to affirm moral anarchy...
...I have nothing profound to add to this topic...
...In short, rational solutions are very expensive...
...His choice cannot be approved, nor can it be allowed the social tolerance and acceptability implied by full legal equality...
...IAke those liberals who fancy that the way to end racial prejudice is to create guilt feelings in whites, Professor Brudnoy seems to think that the mistreatment of sexual deviates will end as soon as enough of The Alternative's "particular readership of largely younger people" comes to associate critics of homosexuality with witch hunters, antiSemites, the Inquisition, Joe McCarthy, the Communist Party, "unresolved sexual cravings," the God of the Old Testament, and Queen Victoria...
...In particular, the heavy emphasis upon the sexual elements of witchcraft is absent in the earlier period...
...He has one of the best minds I have encountered...
...The communist victory in China had closed the "Open Door" and the war in Korea was achieving only "containment," but a t a far greater cost...
...Plenty of well-documented evidence exists...
...The burden of Parmet's book is t h a t the Eisenhower Administration saw the storm die down...
...Men resist change...
...The Manichees of the Middle Ages were determined to separate sex from life and alternated between an extreme puritanism on the one hand and orgiastic exploitation on the other...
...In 1965, the U.S...
...I mean, think about i t Ponder also this sentence: "Insofar as I construe homosexuality in those around me as detracting from my enjoyment of life, it is my right to discourage homosexuality by every means, save onlv f,~rce, at my disposal...
...Undoubtedly, it needs clarification and refinement...
...To combine both prudence and justice as satisfactorily as possible, I would suggest that homosexual proselytization, direct and indirect, be banned at least as stringently as at present...
...Of the three reasons suggested for medieval The Alternative October 1973 Christian opposition to homosexuality, two--"it was abnormal or unnatural"--are not referred to again...
...First, as to the position of medieval theologians, C.S...
...Homosexuality is self-evidently incompatible with this axiom...
...well-earned also by years of lobbying for a system of therapeutic incarceration that expands the power of both the state and the practitioners of psychiatry...
...The Alternative October 1973 19...
...Where he might have applied reason to a highly emotional subject by demonstrating, if he could, the irrationality of antihomosexual attitudes, he has chosen instead to instill new prejudices by hurling abuse at opponents of his own position...
...The opinions which Professor Brudnoy ascribes to the Middle Ages were not orthodox Christian ones...
...I never "required" libertarian conservatives to endorse the legalization of homosexual relationships between consenting adults...
...It boggles the mind, truly, to witness such dullard's thinking in someone I am assured is a bright young conservative comer...
...Enough has been said, I trust, to show that Professor Brudnoy's first contact with the rational case against homosexuality is mishandled...
...This assumption lies behind a great many of our commonplace moral judgments...
...I have, admittedly, made some guesses...
...The third is enlarged upon at some length, but only with a view to discovering its historical cause--"the ascetic ideal derived from Platonism, which had crept into Christianity via Saint Paul"--and subconscious motivation--"unresolved sexual cravings...
...We are not used to regarding sexual deviation as stemming from volition rather than physiology, because we hear it discussed chiefly by psychiatrists, almost all of whom are behaviorists of one species or another...
...Only this unhonored group, it is suggested through omission and silence, presents a superficially rational basis for criticizing homosexuality...
...No doubt a women's liberationist would disapprove of many aspects of medieval life, but "chattelslave" is ludicrous...
...Still, even this evil aspect of sex is, according to Albertus Magnus and Saint Thomas, not a moral evil...
...Yet this is what Brudnoy is angling for: "not only equality under law, but in attitudes as well...
...Building a universal ethical or juridical system on the basis of a philosophic calculus would have seemed like the ultimate in human folly to Burke: "The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori...
...I utterly reject, however, the notion that because we defend a man's right to do as he pleases, we have any obligation to conceal our disapproval of his actions...
...Eisenhower and the American Crusades by Herbert S. Parmet Macmillan $12.95 Writing in 1951, Samuel Lubell appraised Truman's term in office as follows: "There is much to be said, after all, for the mariner who, knowing t h a t he cannot quiet the storm, contrives somehow to stay afloat until the storm has died down of itself...
...Anyone who swallows this pack of libels is likely in the future to approach the question of homosexuality with less, rather than more, reason and detachment...
...I may In twenty years of typing papers, I've never learned to use more than one finger, so my costs of retraining are lower...
...Poor children...
...All are fearfully difficult, perhaps impossible of harmonious solution...
...It is hardly peripheral to the lives of the twenty or thirty million homosexuals in America, nor should it be of little moment to those nonhomosexuals who are interested in bettering our society...
...One of the axioms that virtually all men seem to agree on for judging conduct is that our faculties have proper uses and ought not to be employed for other ends...
...But he has accomplished something...
...I myself know next to nothing about psychology and won't presume to evaluate the arguments...
...Since Professor Brudnoy so studiously avoids his nominal subject, I don't know what he would say on behalf of the moral validity of homosexuality...
...Randolph" begins anecdotally, the better to let fly with the ad hominem...
...As the President of the last center of hope in the world, Truman could hardly confess helplessness...
...We needn't speculate on the effects of such a view of sex...
...he also misreads the article he is so laboriously, flippantly deriding...
...Although as a l i b e r t a r i a n I do accept the theoretical wisdom of legalizing homosexual acts, as a practical mattar I think we should divert our resources to it only after we have succeeded in de-controlling gold, guns, grass, and gambling...
...Professor Brudnoy is not a specialist in medieval European history (medieval Japan is more his place, I believe), and his wildly inaccurate generalizations suggest that he is not even a moderately well-informed amateur...
...As far back as we have evidence, that judgement has been unfavorable to homosexuality, although the treatment meted out to homosexual individuals has varied widely...
...This possibility requires more extended consideration...
...That students of medieval history have not usually been treated to information about the mediew~] barbarism in re homosexuality, is no reason to assert, as Veal does, that I am "wildly inaccurate" in my remarks Apt~eals to Informed Sources make little ~mpression on me, especially ins~ta~ as many informed specialists in tiff, field and that are quite unconcerned witl~ some aspect of their specialty and so tend to slight it in their research...
...On the one hand, the isolationist sentiment of the prewar years bridled at the collective security aspects of NATO, and fiscal conservatives warned against the high costs of foreign military and economic aid...
...All a matter of aesthetics...
...but these are things I know...
...Lewis provides a convenient summary in The Allegory of Love, pp...
...While physiology may prompt them in one direction or another, still we never doubt that they can change their dispositions or that, at some point in their lives (albeit very early, when their will was not, perhaps, strongly controlled by reason) they consciously took the first steps toward becoming what they are today...
...Nor will it be acceptable to those pseudo-libertarians who regard freedom as a suicide pact...
...They, like "Randolph," are possessed of an overdose of ungenerosity, bigotry, and sheer meanness...
...I know that most American homosexuals today are unhappy about having to lead double lives, and I believe (based on voluminous reading and extensive discussion) that most homosexuals in America lead incomplete lives owing largely to that im18 The Alternative October 1973 perative...
...Yet Mr...
...David Bruclnoy in "Queer-Baiting for Faith, Fun, and Profit" presented the case against age-old social and legal proscription of homosexuality...
...Why are men so irrational as to ignore, for four decades, an utterly rational improvement...
...Again, let me refer to Negro history as a parallel...
...Randolph" and Veal...
...the homosexual would not threaten or undermine the family structure--he would simply be outside it...
...Government ought not to prevent homosexual acts by force, insofar as they do not violate the rights which government is bound to protect...
...Bureau of Standards announced that "there is little need to demonstrate further the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard in experimental tests...
...that is, alas, deadly dull throughout...
...Allow me an historical lesson that I often use in teaching early American history...
...Nor would I wish to disparage "Randolph's" life style, or any other, so long as it did not inflict itself on others against their will...
...Until recently, few historians knew much about Negro life in America, or the extent of Negro rebellion, or the dislocations arising from the institution of slavery--beyond those, of course, most readily perceived...
...14-17, which I shall follow here: "It will be seen that the medieval theory finds room for innocent sexuality: what it does not find room for is passion . . . . " Two propositions were universally agreed upon-first, that the sexual impulse, being created by God, was intrinsically good...
...Suppose, however, that empirical research establishes the opposite extreme position, that homosexuals voluntarily and consciously assume their role and that any inner compulsion toward homosexuality is simply the compulsion of engrained habit...
...Then I go on: is the absence of laws or sermons an indication that a particular "evil" did not exist...
...Lekberg writes: "Using the Dvorak simplified keyboard, or DSK, as it came to be called, the women's fingertips were moving little more than one mile on an average day, compared with twelve to twenty miles a day for typists using the standard keyboard...
...It denies in the strongest possible terms the bond between sex and human life...
...Pleasure, however, was not one of those evils...
...Within their own closed system, the arguments for alcohol addiction are irrefutable: the true Bacchist believer would rather have full life than long life, would rather die from a distant cirrhosis than a nine-to-five nervous breakdown...
...It is, I fear, a failed attempt to be witty ("Randolph," that is, essays the wit) and neatly sets the whole argument off on a most unpleasant footing...
...Is that where we conservatives should be headed...
...Similarly, Professor Brudnoy lumps the Middle Ages with "the centuries of witch-hunting," suggesting that the widespread and hysteria-tinged witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have a great deal in common with the infrequent medieval prosecutions (which were often political in character...
...I clearly urge my libertarian conservative brothers to reconsider their attitudes...
...This pair of examples will, I trust, demonstrate that Professor Brudnoy's broad historical statements are not to be trusted...
...Yet it seems safe to conclude that not one person in ten thousand had ewtr heard of the Dvorak keyboard prior to Lekberg's essay...
...Qwerty...
...Good, old-fashioned, Burkean habit...
...Qwerty is the primary system devised to get ideas onto the printed page...
...3) There are other behavior patterns, apparently as involuntary as homosexuality and as mysterious in origin, which everyone regards as matters of the will...
...It is neither a cardinal precept of conservative philosophy, nor an issue which I would care to highlight in efforts to recruit new blood into the movement...
...Until the practice has been judged, it is fatuous to judge the practitioners...
...Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science . . . . " Robert Nisbet, throughout his writings, but especially in Quest for Community, points to this aspect of nineteenth-century conservative thought: the distrust of rational schemes of political or social reconstruction...
...And he paints such an attractive picture that if I had a fourteen-year-old son, I would do what I could to prevent him from ever meeting my witty, wonderful friend the drunk...
...I gather that "l~,nd,dph" would be willing to grant t h, same right to homosexuals whose ~,njoyment of life is "detracted from" by his practice of, one supposes, heterosexuality...
...These policies, however, came under sharp attack from a vocal segment of the so-called Old Guard of the Republican Party...
...An adult homosexual, in such circumstances, can no more be blamed for his deviation than for his physical stature, nor will anything that he does "transmit" homosexuality to those who are not already innately homosexual...
...Nor does pure reason yield the answers: I cannot prove t h a t Tahiti is more beautiful than Jersey City, or Bach more talented than the Monkees...
...Evidently arguments based on the character of homosexuals will get us little further than arguments based on the character of antihomosexuals...
...But they existed, always, for sure...
...What happens if we divorce an activity from everything that has, throughout history, made it important in human eyes...
...Veal wishes to enjoin '%omosexual proselytization, direct and indirect," through "stringent" bans...
...Looking back to my childhood, I can recall a much more vivid fear of being carried off by Martians than of becoming a queer...
...But I probably won't.} Yet for the man who faces the typewriter keyboard daily, what could be more rational...
...This is no ultra-sophisticated example, but it serves...
...he is charming, kindhearted, and the best of company...
...He is one of those who sings the praises of booze, who will defend it on every aesthetic and intellectual ground...
...therefore, "Randolph" must rush to the rescue lest Brudnoy corrupt the young...
...On the other, Truman's policy, bearing the impolitic title of "containment" offered no promise that action could be taken to remove Eastern Europe from Soviet influence and control...
...Almost entirely avoided is the first question that needs to be asked about any human practice, sexual or otherwise--can this practice or conduct or custom be morally justified...
...Well, maybe I'll get to Dvorak tomorrow...
...It is costly to relearn things...
...They are not often constructed after any theory...
...To choose such a state hardly seems possible, unless one has first abandoned any belief in a connection between human nature and the world of phenomena, such that some responses to phenomena are appropriate and some inappropriate...
...and shortly before the crusade to auction off the highways...
...It would be useful, to begin with, to know what science has not yet determined: to what extent is homosexuality an innate disposition resulting from heredity or from early environmental facBentham, Burke, and QWERTY But no name, no power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever can make the men of whom any system of authority is composed any other than God, and nature, and education, and their habits of life have made them...
...tomorrow the world...
...Rational blueprints have been a glut on the market for a long time...
...The formal error is aggravated by a material one: Professor Brudnoy's "Middle Ages" are an imaginary epoch, and his version of Christian theology is equally imaginary...
...He conjures up an imaginary dragon, then neglects to slay even that poor creature...
...Randolph," is there no significant difference between a tendency to prefer sex with your own gender and the urge to kill someone else...
...It depresses me, deeply, to read it...
...Unable either to reconcile or to ignore the forces in conflict, he has tried to stall them off hoping t h a t time would make decision unnecessary" (Future of American Politics, first ed., p. 22...
...Because I have seen what alcohol does to people...
...Because there weren't homosexuals...
...Over the following months we noticed an unusually impassioned response to Brudnoy's side of PERSPECTIVES--some readers reacting favorably, some unfavorably...
...Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Had Edmund Burke lived long enough to see the ~piritual sons of Enlightenment rationalism--yes, even the "reasonable" expermmr~tal rationalism chronicled by Peter Gay's The Enlightenment--he would hardly have been surprised...
...But the moment he tries to convince a son or a dear friend of mine of the Pride t h a t goes with being Gay--the moment he threatens the cohesion of the world t h a t matters to m e - - I shall be forced to conclude that, while I deplore the methods the Inquisitors used to purge the homosexuals who threatened their way of life, at least their hearts were in the right place...
...Our European and colonial ancestors didn't talk that way...
...Indeed, they are the results of various necessities and expediencies...
...Veal's steps in the right direction, as outlined in his penultimate paragraph...
...i BRUDNOY (continued from page 13) How many of us gave a damn about Negro rights until Negroes started making a fuss...
...So much for the data concerning efficiency...
...Yet somehow, I know my position on this is more important, more obviously right than my preference for blue over yellow...
...They (my students~ usually say yes...
...The consensus omnium gentium is hardly infallible, and it may well be wrong about sexual (continued on page 14) David Brudnoy: In Response It is a testament to the continued antihomosexuality abroad in the land, that these letters by "John Randolph" and E.T...
...S. Runciman, The Medieval Manichee, pp...
...For example: were it not for the influence of church and family, few of us would believe in Hell...
...Period...
...On the other hand, the real costs of an all-out war with China made complete victory an inadvisable goal and led to the firing of the popular General MacArthur...
...My main concern now in regard to this matter, as evidenced by my willingness to respond to these two basically ignorant letters (ignorant of the central problems of sexuality, of the contemporary struggle by despised homosexuals to gain their full measure of equality and understanding, albeit superficially erudite in spots as to some details of some past eras), is in opening the discussion...
...It is an old error, not a new one, and has been frequent in history...
...Little wonder that only in certain exceptional eras throughout world history have homosexuals "surfaced" (that's contemporary Gay Lib jargon...
...Some "evils" are so secretive that they never become discussed publicly...
...Victor, which contends that sexual pleasure is "evil, but not morally evil: it is . . . not a sin but the punishment of sin, and thus [the work] arrives at the baffling conception of a punishment which consists in a morally innocent pleasure...
...I am not so easily pushed about, however, and will continue to assert to my conservative brethren, as to liberals and leftists, that the most worthy thing a writer can do is stand up for civility and attack cruelty...
...The choice of the willing homosexual has a further implication...
...For a free subscription send the name and address of your campus publication to: The Alternative Educational News Service, R.R...
...John Randolph: "Say It Ain't So, Dave" I have a friend who is an alcoholic...
...Let us, instead, t r y to understand, t r y to improve our own attitudes, try to speak sense and not nonsense...
...I note here, at the start, my continued allegiance t~ the conservative movement, especially to its libertarian strand, while asserting, once more, that the "conservative" attitude toward the matter at hand is, and will likely remain for some time yet, unconscionable...
...That I accept the editor's invitation to respond to their rejoinders does not indicate that either this magazine or the conservative movement in general is about to seriously reconsider their accustomed attitude...
...The closet queens, or the quaint inhabitants of the Fire Island colony, don't bother me, because they do not seek to proselytize...
...One may legitimately ask: is fairness toward one group furthered by unfairness toward everybody else...
...Such an arrangement would please none of those on either side of this question whose minds are closed to the need for evidence...
...I say: the state should cease to interfere in any way with any eonsensual adult sexuality in private...
...If someone wishes to drum me out of the conservative movement for despising oppression, he is free to try...
...The trouble with the history lesson is that Brudnoy lacks perspective...
...And so little was subjection the rule in practice that the vigor and influence of women are commonplaces of medieval history and literature...
...Anyhow, I am most definitely NOT interested in trvmg to convince anybody to be hom~,sexual...
...How can "normal" (or "natural") heterosexuals catch...
...If a combination of genes or of experiences that we can't isolate gives rise to homosexual tendencies, then our discussion may be brief...
...2) It also appears that preference for one's own sex is very much rarer among the lower animals than among humans, suggesting (though not proving) that its roots lie in the faculty that man does not share with the beasts, namely, his superior capacity for reason and conscious choice...
...Enough on the medievals...
...Those who endorse a l i b e r t a r i a n theory of government must be prepared to answer some very tough questions about the feasibility of applying freemarket policies to real, dynamic societies...
...2) Later on, Professor Brudnoy appraises the views of "American psychiatric opinion, which is the brainchild of the liberal mentality," and following the views of Dr...
...To endorsing a c~nstant verbal and journalistic war agair~st our neighbors who diverge from our way of life...
...in more libertarian climes, the law may be less harsh, though public opinion can be as coercive as legal sanctions...
...Coulton, Medieval Panorama, p. 622...
...Here, then, is a classic BenthamBurke conflict, although morality is not directly involved...
...And qwerty, it now appears, is not very efficient...
...Well, I have disliked that fuss (as I dislike the gay lib fuss), but, surely, we can by now see the large measure of justice in their accusations of whites...
...The Alternative October 1973 17 Of course the issue is "peripheral," to the survival of the West, say...
...Only when they enter into my orbit, when they threaten the tendency of my society to cohere, will I retaliate...
...and since there are young people reading Brudnoy's "Queer-Baiting . ." piece...
...Certainly "indirect" proselytization would include merely being---and letting one's friends and acquaintances and associates know the fact of b e i n g - - a happy homosexual, would it not...
...Veal's remarks are extensive, heavily laden with scholarly tidbits, and more interesting than those of Mr...
...Peter Lombard, Sententiae, quoted in G.G...
...As argument--well, it isn't argument...
...he should be allowed to work, live, and travel as he pleases...
...and since he's one o f the quickest, sharpest people I've met, I would probably enjoy a long, friendly theoretical argument with him...
...Unfortunately, Professor Brudnoy conducts no examination at all...
...He rejects the idea t h a t homosexuality is a mental or physiological disorder, and ridicules those who take this position, carting out the old saw about Salem witch-hunters...
...Frankly, I never thought much about homosexuality one way or another until Gay Liberationists and their admirers started calling it to my attention...
...After one month the women were turning out 74 percent more work and were 68 percent more accurate...
...It also provides an indication of the proper way to look at homosexuality in our current state of ignorance...
...Enthusiasm for a victory over corm'nunism had made it impossible to stop the northward advance of the UN troops at the thirty-eighth parallel in what would have been an impressive display of the ability of the United States to stop the armed advance of communism...
...I am interested in showing people the horrid record of persecution meted out to homosexuals over the centuries, and then in inviting them to act like decent human beings and start acting decently toward homosexuals now...
...We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived...
...tte also has the will to dispute this matter under his own name, and not to hide his views behind a pseudonym...
...That's a l i t t l e like saying t h a t the second-greatest problem in America today is bigotry against Filipinos...
...Hence, there would be no call to confine, "cure," punish, or blame homosexuals...
...13, end...
...Want an answer, Mr...
...Some years back, beginning particularly in the 1930s with the Marxist Herbert Aptheker, and in later decades with other historians, research into Negro life and history "caught on," as it were, and students (like me) were privileged to learn things my father and grandfather and greatgrandfather never learned in school...
...Through long habit, for example, persons may become persistently obstinate or peevish or charitable or affectionate...
...And simple justice deprecates harsh measures against individuals who may well be both harmless and innocent of moral guilt...
...It cannot combine its measures with secret T or await their consequences with patience " (Democracy in America, I, ch...
...He talks in passing of the character of homosexuals, how many "have risen high in science, government, the arts, live good lives, and so forth" and how "the homosexual population is by and large decent, even beneficial to America...
...Dorothy Sayers, whose credentials as a medievalist are better than either Professor Brudnoy's or mine, went so far as to declare that the role of women in the Middle Ages was greater than in modern society...
...Where the principle of quidquid nefas, prohibeat lex has prevailed, the life of the homosexual has often been harassed and desperate...
...We have now sketched what are, admittedly, two hyperbolieal possibilities...
...and, indeed, for most of the eight years, it seemed as if, both in foreign affairs and in the economy, the situation was righting itself without the need for major governmental breatkthroughs...
...But the existence or nonexistence of Hell (or of a communist conspiracy, or of the atom) has nothing to do with how many people believe in it...
...Due to such interest, we have decided to publish in this issue two reasonably erudite refutations of Brudnoy's essay, one written by John Randolph, the other by E.T Veal...
...These two replies are followed in turn by an answer from David Brudnoy himself...
...Like "Randolph," I cannot "prove" the superiority of any theological idea, in the rigorous scientific method which I favor for "proof...
...I have heard much the same from Weatherpeople...
...I won't be able to prove them wrong, but the first time one of them writes an article in The Alternative demanding an end to our condescending attitude toward Funny People, I will cancel my subscription...
...I won't bother you with the details...
...I applaud Mr...
...In remarking the increase in hortatory sermons denouncing evils of one sort or another as the sixteenth century wore on, I ask my students to tell me whether they think the sermons (and the laws) served the purpose of stopping the evils...
...Brudnoy, his afterthought to the effect t h a t this is a "peripheral" issue...
...Not having enjoyed a "normal" childhood in this respect, I worried for a week or so about someday succumbing to this glandular tyranny, until distracted by more imminent concerns...
...I ~ t us consider as examples two areas where he approaches the arguments against homosexuality and both times s k i r t s them...
...This is not to say that men regarded women as fully their equals (hierarchy, not equality, was the governing idea of the age), nor to deny that some aspects of medieval belief offered a certain encouragement to misogyny...
...The reader receives neither a clear account of the bases of the position that Professor Brudnoy is denouncing, nor his reasons for denouncing it...
...Like my friend the crusading alcoholic, Brudnoy makes an internally consistent case...
...Beyond this, however, the homosexual should be subject to no legal, social, or occupational penalties...
...Habit...
...Usually, they say yes...
...Nor can I prove the superiority of the lifestyle I espouse over the one Brudnoy seems to endorse...
...But I wonder: how can a homosexual both be encouraged to come to accept himself without guilt, without shame, without self-loathing, and simultaneously not appear to be "proselytizing" just by virtue of his manifest self-confidence once he has succeeded in breaking out of his closet...
...Their grain of truth is smothered by chaff...
...In foreign policy, Truman had managed to take some major steps (the Marshall Plan and NATO among them) to reestablish the strength and prosperity of the Western European democracies, and to stabilize the positions of communist and non-communist influence roughly along the line reached by Russian troops a t the end of World War II...
...The only time I seriously considered the possibility was when I read somewhere, a couple of years ago, t h a t it is normal to experience a homosexual "phase" in childhood, and t h a t adult homosexuality may occur when one somehow skips this earlier stage...
...I know no conclusive rebuttal to those who maintain t h a t homosexuality is ~'natural" because it seems to come nat~trally to them: but I view homosexual tendencies in the same light as the urge to murder: something which recurs in men on occasion, for reasons unknown, which they ought to repress in themselves...
...Most of the other typewriter companies offer it...
...The popular connection between heresy and homosexuality, which bulks so large in Professor Brudnoy's mind, arose precisely because the most notorious medieval heretics themselves preached that the means of procreation were evil and that for them, to use Professor Brudnoy's words, "homosexuality [was] a convenient, if unworthy, alternative...
...We get hints about earlier attitudes toward the subject, but, please note, we have no western medieval literature written by homosexuals explaining what their lives were like...
...As a grab bag of historical errors, this little excursus is marvelous...
...176-177...
...There is no reason a priori why homosexuality should not be a phenomenon of the same kind (nor, of course, any reason why it should be...
...Randolph" might take time out from calling homosexuals "queers" long enough to read my piece carefully...
...that winds up as an exhortation to the "American homosexual revolution" to observe the correct strategy and tactics...
...As a simple instrument of hedonism, sex has no more dignity than scratching an itch...
...Randolph...
...He devised a truly efficient keyboard, and during World War II, fourteen Navy women were retrained to use it...
...in Unpopular Opinions...
...Randolph" is somewhat wanting in a developed sense of brotherhood with those he disdains...
...Randolph...
...He writes under the name "John Randolph" to avoid confusing his views with those of his employer...
...I wonder why "Randolph" fails to understand the comic aspect of his assertion that "I view homosexual tendencies in the same light as the urge to murder...
...Professor Brudnoy has every right to oppose his judgment of the moral question to western society's...
...Hardly...
...therefore, by all means, the alcoholic friend must be kept from the company of the teen-ager...
...I say, perhaps a close examination would come to such conclusions...
...The most telling argument I have encountered against libertarian polity is frequently raised by traditionalists: while there may indeed be a "free market of ideas" those qualities which make 14 an idea popular are not necessarily the qualities inherent in truthful, beautiful, or even useful ideas...
...In the conservative and libertarian hierarchies of villains, liberal psychiatrists rank near the apex, an infamy well-earned by such incidents as the Fact magazine poll referred to by Professor Brudnoy, in which 1189 psychiatrists were willing to brand Senator Barry Goldwater, sight unseen, as a psychopath...
...His statement that "By the tenth century, woman's subjection as a chattelslave was virtually complete" will serve as an example...
...it is a misfortune, like pain or disease, not a sin...
...Indeed, drink seems to bring out the best in him, the sort of stream-of-consciousness, slap-on-the-back good fellowship which is perhaps most appealing to those of us to whom it doesn't come naturally...
...We may, I think, assume that the more the preachment, and the stiffer the laws, the more extensive the "evil," not the reverse...
...As to his arguments, again I must assert that I have read history closely on this matter and do not re~ract a word of my historical overview m the February Alternative article...
...Veal are granted such a largish chunk of space in this magazine, in response to my article last February discussing the historical treatment of homosexuals and calling for an enlightened view...
...Family life, the interrelation of love and sex and childbearing, the joyful mysteries of masculinity and feminini t y - t h e s e seem so natural and beautiful to me t h a t I can't believe they are the result of mere social conditioning...
...it is proselytization...
...he should not be stigmatized as especially blackmail-prone or especially inclined to molest small children...
...for example, our disgust with those old Roman debauchees who would eat and drink only for the taste of their food, regurgitating it before it could provide nourishment, or our horror at cannibalism, necrophilia, graverobbing, or such practices...
...Society depends too much on a life-affirming attitude toward an activity of such first importance...
...theories are rather drawn from them...
...I doubt that many of us will run out and buy one...
...or, if from his feet, then to be subject to him in slavery...
...It's a pretty unappealing idea, and unfettered by it we could all live more liberated lives...
...But I think that it has some merit as a proposal...
...The evil that the medieval theologians did find in sex was the sort of overmastering desire that led to ligamentum rationis, the cutting off of rational activity, and to the elevation of what is good above what is the First Good...
...I do not believe t h a t men are perfect, and I have no doubt that there are those who can learn the a r t of digging out and exploiting the perversities which are l a t e n t in human nature...
...Again, I think they are in error...
...The importance of Yalta probably stems from the fact t h a t it symbolizes the unsatisfactory result of the war in Europe...
...Analogy: Since Brudnoy is "lucid, creative" (etc...
...Cheekby-jowl with sweeping truisms CThe European Middle Ages were in many ways far less grim than the designation 'Dark Ages' would have us believe . . ."), (continued on page 14) The Alternative October 1973 E. T. Veal: "Let's Be Reasonable" In his zeal to dispel prejudices against homosexuality, David Brudnoy has adopted an unfortunate tactic...
...sorry...
...Is it true, as Professor Brudnoy asserts repeatedly, that traditional Christianity in general and the medieval Church in particular have condemned sexual activity on the ground that sex is pleasurable...
...I shall continue to assume, until educated to the contrary, t h a t medieval homosexuals lived lives of unspeakable terror (if they practiced t h e i r homosexuality) or of pathetic loneliness (if they didn't...
...His private life should be as free from interference as the heterosexual's...
...Is there not something sad about such a statement from a bright young conservative like " Randolph...
...If heterosexuality and heterosexuality alone is "natural," then homosexuality cannot entice any but those who are not "natural...
...But the weightier voice of Albertus Magnus repudiates such curiosities: "He sweeps away the idea that the pleasure is evil or a result of the Fall: on the contrary, pleasure would have been greater if we had remained in Paradise...
...I think (perhaps I am foolish) that certain human tendencies --like the heterosexual urge, and the homosexual--are fairly constant throughout human history...
...But I was, after all, being somewhat ironic...
...In his last pages, Veal opens some worthwhile areas of discussion...
...he should not be subjected to compulsory psychiatric treatment...
...Because homosexuality was so loathed, I believe, that to acknowledge one's homosexuality was to invite instant punishment, usually fiendish torture and/or death...
...Our exercise is useful for this reason: it makes clear the factors to be considered once the scientific nature of homosexuality is better known...
...It was consequently no defense to say t h a t the Yalta agreement in fact provided for more autonomy for Poland than the Russians subsequently allowed...
...I think there is...
...In old establishments various correctives have been found for their aberrations from theory...
...It is in this light that one must approach David Brudnoy's article against "Queer-Baiting" Here is one of the most lucid, creative writers we have seen-and one of ours--writing a piece that starts off as a hasty prospectus for Special Seminar 101a, Gaiety and its Oppressors in Medieval Spain...
...Developed in 1872, the present typewriter keyboard remains firmly entrenched internationally...
...They are very expensive to implement...
...Western society has, as Professor Brudnoy laments, judged the morality of homosexual practices...
...Government is the proper instrument for the repression of murder, because a murderer directly deprives his victim of a fundamental right...
...Such was not even the theoretical position of women...
...And people like me would continue to be disgusted...
...But I did run across something quite striking recently...
...Because I know he's wrong...
...The current climate of opinion, not persuasive scientific data, encourages us to think that the conscious will has nothing to do with homosexuality...
...I needn't mention the Negro civil rights movement, need I? (continued on page 17) 13 RANDOLPH (continued from page 13) he will t r e a t us to statistics on homosexuals burned, scourged, or sent to the galleys by various kings and queens...
...Both result~s were logical...
...McLuban's age of hot messages stays in the future (and his book royalties keep rolling in), we will have to deal with qwerty...
...Gary North in "The Perseverence of the Family" outlined the importance of the family in western tradition, and mentioned toleration of homosexuality as an attendant danger to familial ties...
...We yet endure the legacy of that hideous institution, in the excessive crime, broken family life, and emotional disturbances prevalent among Negroes...
...On the positive side, as on the negative, Professor Brudnoy contributes nothing toward a better understanding of his topic...
...The reason, I suspect, for the loathing so often felt for homosexuality is its disregard of natural duality in favor of the union of one sex with itself...
...Lot me then conclude with a few preliminary and tentative considerations of the sort that Professor Brudnoy should have raised, either to affirm or to confute...
...Dwarfism, I take it, is not "normal," but dwarfism cannot be induced in tall people by Dwarf Pride...
...Eisenhower and Dulles in large measure continued the Truman policy, but were careful to deflect the anger and The Alternative Educational News Service is a hi-weekly publication which offers feature stories, book reviews, research and background material for student publications...
...We need them, but we should not overestimate them...
...and certainly Truman's experience did not disprove the general rule t h a t "a democracy can only with great difficulty regulate the details of an important undertaking, persevere in a fixed design, and work out its execution in spite of serious obstacles...
...If sex is unimportant and undignified, some persons will repudiate it, and others will grow callous in their use of it...
...On a free market of ideas, the concept of Hell would be sold short...
...But insofar as I construe homosexuality in those around me as detracting from my enjoyment of life, it is my right to discourage homosexual i t y by every means, save only force, at my disposal...
...Why are intellectuals--those peculiar people who buy typewriters and hire secretaries who use them-as immune to reason as the unwashed masses...
...Gary North 16 The Alternative October 1973 tors whose effects cannot be clearly and unambiguously traced into adolescence...
...I do insist t h a t we know what the historical record is, know what goes on now, and act like concerned, decent human beings and cease our continual, vicious maltreatment of homosexuals and other unfashionable minorities...
...J u s t as red-blooded boys were trying to persuade young ladies of the wisdom of Sexual Freedom long before it was formalized into a Movement, so the Gay and Proud set, even if they could shed their obnoxious political affectations, would continue to solicit for new memberships...
...by skillfully exploiting his public image as a man "abeve politics," Eisenbower was able to preside over the calming down of the storm so as to help the process along...
...Whether I choose to exercise my right to harass homosexuals depends largely on whether I feel they are threatening my own way of life...
...There are, however, facts which make the contrary position plausible, so that we ought not to be surprised if science someday confirms it: (1) Homosexuality apparently occurs much more frequently in some communities than in others, a fact which is strange (though not inexplicable) if only physiological factors are involved...
...Certainly my local IBM typewriter sales department had never heard of it, in spite of the fact that one IBM model--Model I)---is available with a Dvorak keyboard for a $15 surcharge...
...The long hatred for them would be exposed as no better reasoned than the ancient hostility toward lepers and epileptics...
...Gay Liberation is justification...
...So long as Mr...
...Those of us who are in the armchair-blueprint-for-social-reconstruction business should be made more humble by Mr...
...If asked to produce reasons for our opposition to any of these actions, can we really do more than appeal to the axiom just stated and argue that the removal of that axiom would throw our system of moral judgments into chaos...
...One of the great medieval text writers states: "She was formed from the man's side, to show that she was created for his consort, lest perchance, if she had been made from his head, she should seem to be preferred above him in domination...
...But it is true that they were espoused--by the loathed Manichee sects that were the objects of the Albigensian Crusade...
...Today Dvorak...
...and even in the most "open" and "tolerant" societies, a known homosexual is likely to be about as popular and sought-after as a known cardsharp or a known alcoholic...
...The theoretical portion of Brudnoy's article suffers from the same myopia: his thesis is that we repress homosexuality because we suffer from a gnawing, pervasive fear of it...
...Whereupon follows a torrent of misinformation about medieval Christian views of sex, finished off (after a digression on the ancient Greeks and Romans) with Professor Brudnoy's "guess" t h a t "Judeo-Christian sex-suppression may result from unresolved sexual cravings...
...The major problems Truman has been grappling with are mainly inherited...
...This is an area where the state has no business proscribing, regulating, licensing, or subsidizing...
...All the orthodox Christian writers of this period are agreed that the sexual act, in its proper sphere, is not only innocent, but meritorious...
...It is costly to advertise, especially now that the patent has run out...
...To assert, from the paucity of written materim on homosexuality in the Middle Ages, that it was not a widely practiced form of behavior, is to assume that the unmentioned is the nonexistent...
...Compounding these frustrations was the American penchant for refighting old b a t t l e s - - i n this case, the attempt by the prewar isolationists to vindicate their opposition to American entry into the war against Nazi Germany...
...In his Social Change and History, Nisbet reminds us that it is structure and permanence that provide the setting for change, and that the former categories, rather than the latter, are basic to human society...
...I am not surprised that "Randolph" never "thought much about homosexuality" until "Gay Liberationists and their admirers [,~f whom, incidentally, I am not one, except insofar as I share their desire for equality for homosexuals under the law and civilized attitudes among the citizenry.] ~tarted calling it to my attention...
...Capacities beyond these the people have not to give . . . . Old establishments are tried by their effects...
...Now, i f homosexuality is volitional, the moral arguments against adopting it as one's way of life seem to me very strong...
...the real point was t h a t the war, and the "defeat Germany first" policy, resulted in the Russians being able to t r e a t Poland as they wished, Yalta or no Yalta...
...What I will do is note how this sudden turn complements Professor Brudnoy's earlier tactics...
...At the same time, he strengthens the recurring innuendo: antihomosexuals are birds of a feather with every manner of despicable being...
...As to law, I ask questions at the end, giving no answers...
...See her essay "Are Women Human...
...Just a few simple changes in our habits, and we can have a far more efficient skill at our disposal...
...At the same time, he concedes that the columns of a leading homosexual publication, the Los Angeles Advocate, "confirm much of what antihomosexual thinkers say...
...My principal quarrel with Brudnoy's article is not t h a t he requires libertarian conservatives to endorse the legalization of homosexual relationships between consenting adults...
...Let us speed, then, to the letters by Messrs...
...They do not get calls for it, and they do not advertise it, so far as I have ever seen...
...We may, today, talk freely of this famous contemporary being homosexual, or that one, or that one over there...
...11, Box 360, Blooming...
...By refuting them, Professor Brudnoy can give the appearance of having more to say on behalf of homosexuality than ad hoThe Alternative October 1973 15 minem assertions based on the character of its opponents...
...I admire that...
...It would also be hard to prove that homosexuality is detrimental to society...
...The only "case for heterosexuality" that he either refutes or states accurately is that of a group with whom his readers are probably predisposed to disagree...
...He compares homosexuality with heresy in such a way as to imply t h a t the two phenomena were about equally important to the antecedent cultures of modern civilization...
...But I endorse, perhaps more heartily than Mr...
...ton, Indiana 47401...
...Szasz is right, Professor Brudnoy is also right...
...Cf...
...With respect to Asia, Truman's situation was even worse...
...Jeanne d'Arc's inquisitors wanted the details of her religious visions, where a seventeenth century prosecutor would have demanded tales of diabolic copulation...
...A near approach to such a W view occurs in the Sententiarum Summa, attributed to Hugo of St...
...Germany's defeat brought in its wake the communization of Eastern Europe...
...Truman's policy, which demanded continual exertion without, however, promising or even pursuing an early total victory, was precisely the sort which, more than one hundred years earlier, Tocqueville had written t h a t a democracy could not follow...
...If it is not true, Professor Brudnoy's discussion recedes even further from the realm of rational argument...
...But someone who asserted that women in the Middle Ages were fully "equal" and "liberated" would come far nearer the truth than does Professor Brudnoy...
...Come now, Mr...
...VEAL (continued from page 13) deviation...
...August Dvorak, the originator of the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (patent lapsed), concluded forty years ago that we could have a superior keyboard simply by arranging the keys at random...
...Dvorak's keyboard...
...Thomas Szasz, he lambastes the inclusion of homosexuality in the mythical category of "mental illness...
...Note the implied syllogism: Since "Randolph's" friend the alcoholic is charming, and since he might charm "Randolph's" hypothetical teen-age son and lead him down the primrose path...
...In conclusion, or rather, in termination (for no conclusion is possible), I should reiterate t h a t I do not urge anybody to '%e" homosexual, which would be as stupid an exercise as urging anybody to "be" heterosexual, given the likelihood t h a t children become "heterosexual" or "homosexual" as a direct result, and during the time span, of their early childhood, which time of life is (or should be, let us hope) the affair of the parents and not of the state or other interlopers...
...I doubt that even the Esperanto people would want to make the necessary changes...
...If his addiction makes it difficult for him to function well in society, there is something wrong with society...
...It is costly to reform educational institutions that train young typists...
...second, that the weakness of human nature, resulting from the Fall, had disordered sexual life and involved it in certain evils...
...Let us not give our descendants a century hence yet another reason to shake their heads in wonderment as to our ignorance...
...All this is psychological speculation, not a logical exposure of medieval fallacies...
...He is one of the most dangerous people I know...
...No doubt we will soon witness the advent of Bestial Lib, whose leaders will demand their own exotic lounges a t Columbia, whose spokesmen will proclaim t h a t you can have a "natural" relationship with a billygoat, whose armbands will declare them '~Funny and Proud...
...Perhaps Professor Brudnoy and those of like mind would now be willing to muffle their tirades contra mundum and to deal seriously with the question of how to base society's treatment of homosexuality on reason rather than bigoted rhetoric...
...Before examining the evidence on this specific question, I should like to devote a moment to undermining the faith of any readers who may think that, because Professor Brudnoy teaches history, he must know what he is talking about when he discusses the Middle Ages...
...On the close of the "Randolph" letter: Catch the fallacy in this...
...Insofar as Dr...
...Thus does Professor Brudnoy fight prejudice with prejudice, bigotry with bigotry, injustice with injustice...
...The consequence of this denial is ominous...
...Randolph" asserts the former, but denies the latter by saying that this "unnatural" evil can gain "new memberships" via proselytizing...
...1) "The Roman Catholic Church until the late Middle Ages opposed homosexuality not only (or even primarily) because it was abnormal or unnatural, but also because it satisfied carnal lust and yielded bodily pleasure...
...Perhaps a close examination of this subject would show that the condemnation of homosexuality is inconsistent with more basic moral premises, and t h a t prejudices based on sexual preferences are no more rational than prejudices based on skin color...
Vol. 7 • October 1973 • No. 1
