Not everyone gets married and or has children, but two things are true everyone has a mom and dad, and everyone should have friends.
Bert and Ernie Buddies in a Sexualized Culture By: Chuck ColsonNot only are we neutering marriage, but also we are distorting what it means to have friendship sadly. Nothing is off limits in this strange quest to turn everything upside down, not even puppets.“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship,” wrote the great thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas.
As Christian brothers and sisters we are called to deep friendships with one another. And while we may be more comfortable with the word “fellowship” than “friendship,” Christian relationships marked by love, honesty, selflessness, intensity, and a chaste brotherly or sisterly passion for one another are a powerful witness to the love of God in our largely friendless world.
Bert and Ernie, in spite of differences in personality and temperament — and without any sexual overtones — are the very best of friends. And our kids need that kind of example. They need it from television, parents, and especially the Church in order to see through the hyper-sexualized fog that’s all around them.
I have said it before and will say it again, the issue of the distortion of friendship is one of the bigger problems about not just neutered marriage but also the inundation of the culture with homosexuality in the media. The latter is a problem already but the former can only make it worse. I've already seen kids who don't want to have a really close friend because they fear it will be thought they are something other than friends.
ReplyDeleteR.K.,
ReplyDeleteI don't understand this, could you please explain further? Why would the "inundation of the culture with homosexuality in the media" discourage kids from close friendships? If being gay were accepted as normal, then people wouldn't have much problem with being mistaken as gay. But if being gay were something considered sinful or shameful, then naturally people would be afraid to be thought of as such.
If being gay were accepted as normal, then people wouldn't have much problem with being mistaken as gay.
ReplyDeleteAx, it's simply a utopian fantasy to hold that legally declaring homosexuality and heterosexuality to be the same will result in a world where being one or the other will no longer be important to the person, just as much a fantasy as the belief that feminism will result in a world where one's gender identity is no longer important to the person. (Which I recently went into quite a lot in a thread on Family Scholars). That is the assumption you are making in your statement.
From a straight, married man:
ReplyDeletehttp://dft.ba/-not_an_insult
Are you saying, Ax, that no one would object if the two sesame street muppets were Elmo and Zoe?
ReplyDeleteThe Sesame Street response to the online campaign to have Bert and Ernie married was very specific on the subject...
"They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets™ do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation."
This is a children's show.
One guy does not a culture make, ax.
ReplyDeleteI think we can sympathize we ax's concerns. Protection and acceptance that not everyone is straight, is something we can value. Using homosexuality as a bullying tool was/is common against anyone precieved as being 'gay'. Bully needs to stop, but we also have to stop the assumption that anything concerning heterosexual behavior is based on ignorance or hate. It's unfortunate, that gays may perceive someone in support of marriage as someone to avoid. This is the importance of Bert and Ernie, differences in people doesn't mean they can't get along.
ReplyDelete"One guy does not a culture make, ax."
ReplyDeleteBut he illustrates the point very well, R.K. A straight person who's accepting of gay individuals as full persons deserving of equal rights is a lot less likely to be offended by being called or mistaken as gay than a straight person who hates gays and thinks they deserve to go to hell. People who throw around words like "fag!" as insults are, almost by definition, the ones most likely to feel insulted if the word were used against them.
In any case you haven't clarified your original comment, which to my mind makes much less sense.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAx,
ReplyDeleteYour commentary is sounding like a person who sexually harassing someone, and then when the victim objects the harasser accuses the victim of thinking sex is wrong.
Even people who think homosexuality is normal think the attempt to sexualize Bert and Ernie was wrong.
Where sex is unwanted, it should not be forced on people. That is harassment.
So the question is, Ax, why do you think harassment is okay only when it is about homosexuality?
Renee: > Using homosexuality as a bullying tool was/is common against anyone precieved as being 'gay'.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read that sentence I think of how homosexuality is a bullying tool with gangs and prisons.
In the Philipines there is a gang who dresses up like women and actively harasses other gangs with their sexual aggressiveness. The stories of using homosexuality as harassment and establishing dominance in prison are all too common.
Just saying, when I read the statement "using homosexuality as a bullying tool", that is what I think of.
However, using sexual harassment as a bullying tool happens to heterosexual and homosexuals alike.
I've talked with women who are afraid to go to work, not because of fear of life or limb, but what to do about that one guy who flirts with them. They know that if they confront them about it they'll just be labeled, much like Ax is trying to label others, as sexually repressive. Which, in turn, is also sexual harassment.
There is something called privacy, and hetero and homosexuals like it to build discretion around their sexual lives. Not everything has to be sexualized. And that is the point.
This is all about protecting friendships, same-sex or not, from the harassment of presumed sexuality just for the fact that they are friends.
I don't care if people ultimately think homosexuality or heterosexuality is wrong, unwanted and aggressive reading of sexuality into things that are non-sexual in nature is sexual harassment.
Bert and Ernie are muppets so we can all laugh about it. But what if it was real people? Perhaps they have reasons to not want to be thought of as sexually active, even if such activity in general is not considered bad.
That Ax is so focussed only on homosexuality is, in my mind, is problematic. It can, in this case, entirely seek to excuse sexual harassment because homosexuals are the only ones allowed to be considered as victims.
R.K.,
ReplyDeleteI posted a link to an article from The Guardian which I felt illustrated my point quite nicely, but a blog administrator removed the comment. I'm not attempting to do so again, since I'm guessing that would be deleted too. But I thought you should know.
Rene,
Whatever else you have to say that I disagree with, I at least appreciate your willingness to show some sensitivity towards LGBT individuals.
I believe I equal rights, that even homosexuals have a natural right to his/her mother and father. Our public policy should represent scientific truths. Everyone has a mom and dad, we're just born that way. You are forgetting about equal obligations, mother and father to child. It's why marriage exist, it holds a real function.
ReplyDeleteDisagree with me all you want, but how does that help. One can pretend biology doesn't exist and be in denial and blame the messenger. The well being of an individual depends on the full participation of his/her mother and father. Please do not be blind to this.
Ax,
ReplyDeleteThis isn't twitter, we have no limit on characters and see ambiguous links as potentially harmful.
Feel free to post the full one.
I also see you wish not to discuss the sexual harassment angle, and instead are trying to hand out kudos.
I really have to say Ax, if it weren't that you seem to only care about one group of people I'd say you were simply blind. Instead you are acting just prejudiced.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jan/04/straight-men-kissing-homophobia
ReplyDeleteax: But he illustrates the point very well, R.K. A straight person who's accepting of gay individuals as full persons deserving of equal rights is a lot less likely to be offended by being called or mistaken as gay than a straight person who hates gays and thinks they deserve to go to hell.
ReplyDeleteActually, nowhere in the video does he even indicate that he would not care if he were seriously mistaken as being gay by someone (as opposed to merely having the word "gay" thrown at him as an insult). And my experience has been that heterosexuals who support neutering marriage are very adamant about letting everyone know that they are not gay themselves, sometimes even to excess.
In any case you haven't clarified your original comment, which to my mind makes much less sense.
Ax, are you arguing that one's sexual orientation is not important to the individual? Or are you arguing that while it's important to gays and should be, it should not be important to heterosexuals?
Is this what you hold the ideal future to be: one where everyone is proud of their sexual orientation but also everyone could care less what others think their orientation is? How do you think such an obvious contradiction could exist for an entire culture?
People who base their ideas on utopian fantasies are potentially prone to totalitarianism because that is what would be required for their utopias to become true.
Two other links that illustrate the point I'm trying to make:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ecollegetimes.com/student-life/why-more-men-are-engaging-in-bromance-1.2508100#.TnAqik-PEQB
http://closetprofessor.blogspot.com/2011/07/fine-bromance.html
"There is also less concern among men at the notion of being identified as gay and so men are more comfortable exploring deeper friendships with other men."
Ax,
ReplyDeleteThere you go again.
Thinking homosexuality is okay is no panacea in this issue. You've failed to address the concerns that people have about sexual overtones at all. You've consistently failed to address that.
As the article above states, "Bert and Ernie, in spite of differences in personality and temperament — and without any sexual overtones — are the very best of friends. And our kids need that kind of example."
Sesame Street, for all of the child psychologists that started the show as a means to help the most impoverished urban children, and for all the gays that have happily worked on that show, decided that was the best message for kids.
The emphasis on sexual harassment in the work place is due to the volume of effort and scholarship that have shown that people feel more safe when sexual overtones are not included in their relationships.
But we are to believe that for homosexuality, that is all different? That comfort comes when we should normalize sexual overtones?
It was a very sick thing that people wanted Bert and Ernie -- two characters on a children's show -- to be overtly gay. One wonders how a society of people could have become such perverts.
And perhaps now we have the answer. Its this kind of exceptionalism that you are championing that causes it.
Just to add...
ReplyDeleteThe point of "bromance" is that it is a metro fashionable way of saying it is not a romance. Its a way of saying it is not gay, rather than a way to say that gay is okay.
Your commentators, and others who have posited the same idea seem to always that entirely backwards, and it naturally lead them to a wrong conclusion.
I always assumed the Bert& Ernie were suppose to be a spoof of "The Odd Couple".
ReplyDelete