"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...
...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...
...For a free subscription send the name and address of your campus publication to: The Alternative Educational News Service, R.R...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...I doubt that many of us will run out and buy one...
...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...
...It depresses me, deeply, to read it...
...It is costly to relearn things...
...As to law, I ask questions at the end, giving no answers...
...he should not be stigmatized as especially blackmail-prone or especially inclined to molest small children...
...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...
...They do not get calls for it, and they do not advertise it, so far as I have ever seen...
...Bureau of Standards announced that "there is little need to demonstrate further the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard in experimental tests...
...Good, old-fashioned, Burkean habit...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Well, maybe I'll get to Dvorak tomorrow...
...Peter Lombard, Sententiae, quoted in G.G...
...I have nothing profound to add to this topic...
...Qwerty is the primary system devised to get ideas onto the printed page...
...The consequence of this denial is ominous...
...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...
...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...
...he is charming, kindhearted, and the best of company...
...He conjures up an imaginary dragon, then neglects to slay even that poor creature...
...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...
...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...
...therefore, "Randolph" must rush to the rescue lest Brudnoy corrupt the young...
...Looking back to my childhood, I can recall a much more vivid fear of being carried off by Martians than of becoming a queer...
...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...
...Germany's defeat brought in its wake the communization of Eastern Europe...
...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...
...Dvorak's keyboard...
...After one month the women were turning out 74 percent more work and were 68 percent more accurate...
...Because homosexuality was so loathed, I believe, that to acknowledge one's homosexuality was to invite instant punishment, usually fiendish torture and/or death...
...It should be noted that the writer of the first article is an associate to a public official...
...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...
...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...
...Usually, they say yes...
...The closet queens, or the quaint inhabitants of the Fire Island colony, don't bother me, because they do not seek to proselytize...
...Thus does Professor Brudnoy fight prejudice with prejudice, bigotry with bigotry, injustice with injustice...
...176-177...
...But I endorse, perhaps more heartily than Mr...
...I won't bother you with the details...
...On the close of the "Randolph" letter: Catch the fallacy in this...
...It boggles the mind, truly, to witness such dullard's thinking in someone I am assured is a bright young conservative comer...
...3) There are other behavior patterns, apparently as involuntary as homosexuality and as mysterious in origin, which everyone regards as matters of the will...
...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...
...sorry...
...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...
...A near approach to such a W view occurs in the Sententiarum Summa, attributed to Hugo of St...
...If heterosexuality and heterosexuality alone is "natural," then homosexuality cannot entice any but those who are not "natural...
...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 the President of the last center of hope in the world, Truman could hardly confess helplessness...
...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...
...Frankly, I never thought much about homosexuality one way or another until Gay Liberationists and their admirers started calling it to my attention...
...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...
...Homosexuality is self-evidently incompatible with this axiom...
...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...
...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...
...Indeed, they are the results of various necessities and expediencies...
...Coulton, Medieval Panorama, p. 622...
...And so little was subjection the rule in practice that the vigor and influence of women are commonplaces of medieval history and literature...
...It denies in the strongest possible terms the bond between sex and human life...
...Because there weren't homosexuals...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...I say: the state should cease to interfere in any way with any eonsensual adult sexuality in private...
...Simple prudence dictates that what may be a considerable danger both to individuals and to society should not be freed from all restraint...
...For eight years, it seemed as if the crucial decisions could be put off...
...Undoubtedly, it needs clarification and refinement...
...tomorrow the world...
...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...
...Developed in 1872, the present typewriter keyboard remains firmly entrenched internationally...
...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...
...But I think that it has some merit as a proposal...
...Those of us who are in the armchair-blueprint-for-social-reconstruction business should be made more humble by Mr...
...the homosexual would not threaten or undermine the family structure--he would simply be outside it...
...No doubt a women's liberationist would disapprove of many aspects of medieval life, but "chattelslave" is ludicrous...
...Enough has been said, I trust, to show that Professor Brudnoy's first contact with the rational case against homosexuality is mishandled...
...But he has accomplished something...
...Randolph...
...Nor can I prove the superiority of the lifestyle I espouse over the one Brudnoy seems to endorse...
...Habit...
...Pleasure, however, was not one of those evils...
...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...
...It is costly to reform educational institutions that train young typists...
...But they existed, always, for sure...
...This is an area where the state has no business proscribing, regulating, licensing, or subsidizing...
...S. Runciman, The Medieval Manichee, pp...
...It also provides an indication of the proper way to look at homosexuality in our current state of ignorance...
...As a grab bag of historical errors, this little excursus is marvelous...
...If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest...
...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...
...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...
...Western society has, as Professor Brudnoy laments, judged the morality of homosexual practices...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...I say, perhaps a close examination would come to such conclusions...
...Like "Randolph," I cannot "prove" the superiority of any theological idea, in the rigorous scientific method which I favor for "proof...
...Is there not something sad about such a statement from a bright young conservative like " Randolph...
...Gay Liberation is justification...
...Dwarfism, I take it, is not "normal," but dwarfism cannot be induced in tall people by Dwarf Pride...
...Only this unhonored group, it is suggested through omission and silence, presents a superficially rational basis for criticizing homosexuality...
...Veal's steps in the right direction, as outlined in his penultimate paragraph...
...To endorsing a c~nstant verbal and journalistic war agair~st our neighbors who diverge from our way of life...
...11, Box 360, Blooming...
...Szasz is right, Professor Brudnoy is also right...
...The Alternative October 1973 19...
...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...
...Thomas Szasz, he lambastes the inclusion of homosexuality in the mythical category of "mental illness...
...Qwerty...
...13, end...
...Unfortunately, Professor Brudnoy conducts no examination at all...
...Plenty of well-documented evidence exists...
...Through long habit, for example, persons may become persistently obstinate or peevish or charitable or affectionate...
...So much for the data concerning efficiency...
...in Unpopular Opinions...
...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...
...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...
...Rational blueprints have been a glut on the market for a long time...
...Capacities beyond these the people have not to give . . . . Old establishments are tried by their effects...
...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...
...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...
...and shortly before the crusade to auction off the highways...
...Beyond this, however, the homosexual should be subject to no legal, social, or occupational penalties...
...he should not be subjected to compulsory psychiatric treatment...
...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...
...If sex is unimportant and undignified, some persons will repudiate it, and others will grow callous in their use of it...
...Why are men so irrational as to ignore, for four decades, an utterly rational improvement...
...The current climate of opinion, not persuasive scientific data, encourages us to think that the conscious will has nothing to do with homosexuality...
...Veal's remarks are extensive, heavily laden with scholarly tidbits, and more interesting than those of Mr...
...I applaud Mr...
...Just a few simple changes in our habits, and we can have a far more efficient skill at our disposal...
...Yet somehow, I know my position on this is more important, more obviously right than my preference for blue over yellow...
...We may, today, talk freely of this famous contemporary being homosexual, or that one, or that one over there...
...These two replies are followed in turn by an answer from David Brudnoy himself...
...The opinions which Professor Brudnoy ascribes to the Middle Ages were not orthodox Christian ones...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...So long as Mr...
...McLuban's age of hot messages stays in the future (and his book royalties keep rolling in), we will have to deal with qwerty...
...It is an old error, not a new one, and has been frequent in history...
...Veal wishes to enjoin '%omosexual proselytization, direct and indirect," through "stringent" bans...
...I clearly urge my libertarian conservative brothers to reconsider their attitudes...
...Then I go on: is the absence of laws or sermons an indication that a particular "evil" did not exist...
...Again, I think they are in error...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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's a pretty unappealing idea, and unfettered by it we could all live more liberated lives...
...Period...
...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...
...They, like "Randolph," are possessed of an overdose of ungenerosity, bigotry, and sheer meanness...
...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...
...but these are things I know...
...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...
...The Alternative October 1973 17 Of course the issue is "peripheral," to the survival of the West, say...
...Randolph" might take time out from calling homosexuals "queers" long enough to read my piece carefully...
...The major problems Truman has been grappling with are mainly inherited...
...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...
...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...
...He is one of those who sings the praises of booze, who will defend it on every aesthetic and intellectual ground...
...Poor children...
...We have now sketched what are, admittedly, two hyperbolieal possibilities...
...I have heard much the same from Weatherpeople...
...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...
...Because I know he's wrong...
...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...
...Only when they enter into my orbit, when they threaten the tendency of my society to cohere, will I retaliate...
...Now, i f homosexuality is volitional, the moral arguments against adopting it as one's way of life seem to me very strong...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...John Randolph: "Say It Ain't So, Dave" I have a friend who is an alcoholic...
...His private life should be as free from interference as the heterosexual's...
...Enough on the medievals...
...Jeanne d'Arc's inquisitors wanted the details of her religious visions, where a seventeenth century prosecutor would have demanded tales of diabolic copulation...
...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...
...Hence, there would be no call to confine, "cure," punish, or blame homosexuals...
...Whether I choose to exercise my right to harass homosexuals depends largely on whether I feel they are threatening my own way of life...
...All the orthodox Christian writers of this period are agreed that the sexual act, in its proper sphere, is not only innocent, but meritorious...
...Some "evils" are so secretive that they never become discussed publicly...
...Such was not even the theoretical position of women...
...Like my friend the crusading alcoholic, Brudnoy makes an internally consistent case...
...Gary North 16 The Alternative October 1973 tors whose effects cannot be clearly and unambiguously traced into adolescence...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...He devised a truly efficient keyboard, and during World War II, fourteen Navy women were retrained to use it...
...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...
...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...
...he should be allowed to work, live, and travel as he pleases...
...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...
...All this is psychological speculation, not a logical exposure of medieval fallacies...
...VEAL (continued from page 13) deviation...
...it is proselytization...
...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...
...We yet endure the legacy of that hideous institution, in the excessive crime, broken family life, and emotional disturbances prevalent among Negroes...
...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...
...Government ought not to prevent homosexual acts by force, insofar as they do not violate the rights which government is bound to protect...
...I have, admittedly, made some guesses...
...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...
...Men resist change...
...Hardly...
...Let us speed, then, to the letters by Messrs...
...Nor will it be acceptable to those pseudo-libertarians who regard freedom as a suicide pact...
...Society depends too much on a life-affirming attitude toward an activity of such first importance...
...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...
...Want an answer, Mr...
...Their grain of truth is smothered by chaff...
...The long hatred for them would be exposed as no better reasoned than the ancient hostility toward lepers and epileptics...
...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...
...They are not often constructed after any theory...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...He has one of the best minds I have encountered...
...i BRUDNOY (continued from page 13) How many of us gave a damn about Negro rights until Negroes started making a fuss...
...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...
...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...
...I doubt that even the Esperanto people would want to make the necessary changes...
...Little wonder that only in certain exceptional eras throughout world history have homosexuals "surfaced" (that's contemporary Gay Lib jargon...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...In his last pages, Veal opens some worthwhile areas of discussion...
...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...
...And to abandon that belief, as I said before, is to affirm moral anarchy...
...And qwerty, it now appears, is not very efficient...
...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...
...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...
...Our European and colonial ancestors didn't talk that way...
...Such an arrangement would please none of those on either side of this question whose minds are closed to the need for evidence...
...Today Dvorak...
...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...
...All a matter of aesthetics...
...This is no ultra-sophisticated example, but it serves...
...or, if from his feet, then to be subject to him in slavery...
...It would also be hard to prove that homosexuality is detrimental to society...
...And people like me would continue to be disgusted...
...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...
...His choice cannot be approved, nor can it be allowed the social tolerance and acceptability implied by full legal equality...
...and since there are young people reading Brudnoy's "Queer-Baiting . ." piece...
...theories are rather drawn from them...
...he also misreads the article he is so laboriously, flippantly deriding...
...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...
...All are fearfully difficult, perhaps impossible of harmonious solution...
...These policies, however, came under sharp attack from a vocal segment of the so-called Old Guard of the Republican Party...
...ton, Indiana 47401...
...tte also has the will to dispute this matter under his own name, and not to hide his views behind a pseudonym...
...And simple justice deprecates harsh measures against individuals who may well be both harmless and innocent of moral guilt...
...We may, I think, assume that the more the preachment, and the stiffer the laws, the more extensive the "evil," not the reverse...
...They are very expensive to implement...
...Most likely, the truth, to use the hackneyed phrase, "lies somewhere in between...
...I think there is...
...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...
...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...
...Why are intellectuals--those peculiar people who buy typewriters and hire secretaries who use them-as immune to reason as the unwashed masses...
...Randolph...
...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...
...We needn't speculate on the effects of such a view of sex...
...Yet Mr...
...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...
...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...
...Our exercise is useful for this reason: it makes clear the factors to be considered once the scientific nature of homosexuality is better known...
...If it is not true, Professor Brudnoy's discussion recedes even further from the realm of rational argument...
...If someone wishes to drum me out of the conservative movement for despising oppression, he is free to try...
...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...
...First, as to the position of medieval theologians, C.S...
...Let us not give our descendants a century hence yet another reason to shake their heads in wonderment as to our ignorance...
...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...
...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...
...His statement that "By the tenth century, woman's subjection as a chattelslave was virtually complete" will serve as an example...
...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...
...But qwerty will continue to tyrannize us, one and all, and our children and grandchi|dren, too...
...Allow me an historical lesson that I often use in teaching early American history...
...Randolph" begins anecdotally, the better to let fly with the ad hominem...
...But I did run across something quite striking recently...
...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...
...If a combination of genes or of experiences that we can't isolate gives rise to homosexual tendencies, then our discussion may be brief...
...Both result~s were logical...
...Where the principle of quidquid nefas, prohibeat lex has prevailed, the life of the homosexual has often been harassed and desperate...
...Anyhow, I am most definitely NOT interested in trvmg to convince anybody to be hom~,sexual...
...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 choice of the willing homosexual has a further implication...
...See her essay "Are Women Human...
...One may legitimately ask: is fairness toward one group furthered by unfairness toward everybody else...
...But it is true that they were espoused--by the loathed Manichee sects that were the objects of the Albigensian Crusade...
...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...
...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...
...What happens if we divorce an activity from everything that has, throughout history, made it important in human eyes...
...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...
...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...
...I never "required" libertarian conservatives to endorse the legalization of homosexual relationships between consenting adults...
...How can "normal" (or "natural") heterosexuals catch...
...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...
...Evidently arguments based on the character of homosexuals will get us little further than arguments based on the character of antihomosexuals...
...At the same time, he strengthens the recurring innuendo: antihomosexuals are birds of a feather with every manner of despicable being...
...The burden of Parmet's book is t h a t the Eisenhower Administration saw the storm die down...
...It is costly to advertise, especially now that the patent has run out...
...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...
...This assumption lies behind a great many of our commonplace moral judgments...
...This possibility requires more extended consideration...
...David Bruclnoy in "Queer-Baiting for Faith, Fun, and Profit" presented the case against age-old social and legal proscription of homosexuality...
...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...
...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...
...Over the following months we noticed an unusually impassioned response to Brudnoy's side of PERSPECTIVES--some readers reacting favorably, some unfavorably...
...Come now, Mr...
...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...
...What I will do is note how this sudden turn complements Professor Brudnoy's earlier tactics...
...Cf...
...Randolph," is there no significant difference between a tendency to prefer sex with your own gender and the urge to kill someone else...
...I myself know next to nothing about psychology and won't presume to evaluate the arguments...
...Randolph" asserts the former, but denies the latter by saying that this "unnatural" evil can gain "new memberships" via proselytizing...
...We are not that changeoriented, even for the sake of rationalism...
...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...
...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...
...With respect to Asia, Truman's situation was even worse...
...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...
...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...
...that winds up as an exhortation to the "American homosexual revolution" to observe the correct strategy and tactics...
...On a free market of ideas, the concept of Hell would be sold short...
...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...
...The reader receives neither a clear account of the bases of the position that Professor Brudnoy is denouncing, nor his reasons for denouncing it...
...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...
...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...
...In 1965, the U.S...
...For example: were it not for the influence of church and family, few of us would believe in Hell...
...In particular, the heavy emphasis upon the sexual elements of witchcraft is absent in the earlier period...
...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...
...This pair of examples will, I trust, demonstrate that Professor Brudnoy's broad historical statements are not to be trusted...
...second, that the weakness of human nature, resulting from the Fall, had disordered sexual life and involved it in certain evils...
...If his addiction makes it difficult for him to function well in society, there is something wrong with society...
...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...
...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...
...The trouble with the history lesson is that Brudnoy lacks perspective...
...in more libertarian climes, the law may be less harsh, though public opinion can be as coercive as legal sanctions...
...Lewis provides a convenient summary in The Allegory of Love, pp...
...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...
...Because I have seen what alcohol does to people...
...Randolph" is somewhat wanting in a developed sense of brotherhood with those he disdains...
...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...
...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...
...In short, rational solutions are very expensive...
...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...
...Government is the proper instrument for the repression of murder, because a murderer directly deprives his victim of a fundamental right...
...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...
...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...
...Let us, instead, t r y to understand, t r y to improve our own attitudes, try to speak sense and not nonsense...
...On the positive side, as on the negative, Professor Brudnoy contributes nothing toward a better understanding of his topic...
...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...
...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...
...Again, let me refer to Negro history as a parallel...
...Is that where we conservatives should be headed...
...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...
...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...
...Randolph" and Veal...
...Insofar as Dr...
...It cannot combine its measures with secret T or await their consequences with patience " (Democracy in America, I, ch...
...Professor Brudnoy has every right to oppose his judgment of the moral question to western society's...
...He is one of the most dangerous people I know...
...Most of the other typewriter companies offer it...
...The importance of Yalta probably stems from the fact t h a t it symbolizes the unsatisfactory result of the war in Europe...
...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...
...that is, alas, deadly dull throughout...
...Brudnoy, his afterthought to the effect t h a t this is a "peripheral" issue...
...In old establishments various correctives have been found for their aberrations from theory...
...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...
...But I probably won't.} Yet for the man who faces the typewriter keyboard daily, what could be more rational...
...They (my students~ usually say yes...
...I think (perhaps I am foolish) that certain human tendencies --like the heterosexual urge, and the homosexual--are fairly constant throughout human history...
...As argument--well, it isn't argument...
...Still, even this evil aspect of sex is, according to Albertus Magnus and Saint Thomas, not a moral evil...
...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...
...Here, then, is a classic BenthamBurke conflict, although morality is not directly involved...
...We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...We need them, but we should not overestimate them...
...Yet this is what Brudnoy is angling for: "not only equality under law, but in attitudes as well...
...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...
...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...
...therefore, by all means, the alcoholic friend must be kept from the company of the teen-ager...
...I admire that...
...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 was, after all, being somewhat ironic...
...Analogy: Since Brudnoy is "lucid, creative" (etc...
...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...
...As a simple instrument of hedonism, sex has no more dignity than scratching an itch...
...it is a misfortune, like pain or disease, not a sin...
...Now let us consider the question initially proposed...
...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...
...He writes under the name "John Randolph" to avoid confusing his views with those of his employer...
Vol. 7 • October 1973 • No. 1
