MichaelAnissimov comments on Neo-reactionaries, why are you neo-reactionary? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Apology accepted. Your second-hand sources were wrong, tell them that. It's so difficult to have legitimate discussions about NRx when 90% of the opinion the Less Wrong community has about us is based on stuff that is completely made up.
So, just to be clear... are you claiming that this quote isn't encouraging readers to reject and condemn transsexuals?
Or that the quote isn't yours?
Or that encouraging readers to reject and condemn transsexuals is meaningfully distinct in this context from calling for them not to associate with transsexuals?
Or something else?
It is my quote. It is meaningfully distinct, in the sense that we can participate in a progressive society where it's normalized, but recognize how it emphatically does not fit into a conservative framework.
In general, this position is similar to that of many conservative Republicans. It may be shocking to many of the people on this site to be exposed to view held by a majority of Americans, but that's just too bad. In any progressive "struggle session", I will fail. This is because I reject the entire progressive worldview.
OK. Thanks for clarifying. (I'm not really interested in discussing what about it may or may not be shocking and why it might be if it is, I just wanted to get your perspective on what seemed from mine to simply be two contradictory statements.)
To clarify further, I'm not a universalist, so I don't think everyone "should" condemn or approve of any particular individual or group. I said that for groups that care about strong families, they will need to denormalize alternative lifestyles. If groups don't care about strong families, they can do whatever they like. The "strong families" bit is essential to the meaning of the paragraph.
Further clarification accepted. FWIW, this is consistent with my previous understanding of your position, with standard error bars around "strong" and "family."
Reading that quote, what you said is stronger than that. You said "if communities are going to reap the benefits of strong families". Regardless of how this can be literally parsed, what it connotes is that you think that strong families are beneficial and that transsexuals, by preventing such benefits, are harmful and worthy of condemnation. Furthermore, your quote is full of loaded language which implies that you personally view transsexuals negatively.
I personally think that many of them are confused. Given that it's a liberal society, I respect people's decisions to do what they want. Yes, strong families are beneficial. Various alternative lifestyles get in the way of that. Eventually societies need to choose between maximizing personal freedom and having strong families. This is a tradeoff that most liberals have yet to really consider seriously.
Is there any reason Strong Families are incompatible with alternative lifestyles? The modern conception of the nuclear family as the main unit is itself something barely 50-100 years of vintage. What's the in practice difference between say, a polyamorous group raising children together in a stable situation and a large, extended family with various cousins and so on?
Or to make it even simpler, I see no strong reason to say "you shouldn't be gay" when you could be saying "Hey gay guys, you should form a monogamous pairbond and raise children together for 18 years".
Well, what's the difference in practice between polyamorous relationships and family ties?
The fact that their internal dynamics are completely different.
Because:
1) The child is deprived of a mother (or father). And yes the two play different roles in bringing up children.
2) Gays aren't monogamous. One obvious way to see this is to note how much gay culture is based around gay bathhouses. Another way is to image search pictures of gay pride parades.
bathhouses and pride parades are a shitty example, but I'll admit that gay guys don't seem to be monogamous after I looked around for studies.
What are the internal dynamics you think are optimal for child-rearing?
This user seems to to spreading an agenda of ignorant bigotry against homosexuality and polyamory. It doesn't even temper the hostile stereotyping with much pretense of just referring to trends in the evidence.
Are the upvotes this account is receiving here done by actual lesswrong users (who, frankly, ought to be ashamed of themselves) or has Azathoth123 created sockpuppets to vote itself up?
So are children raised in orphanages. Where do you think children adopted by gay couples come from?
And yet empirically children raised by gay couples don't end up much worse adjusted than those raised by straight couples, and more generally parenting seems to have very little effect on children when controlling for genetics and nonshared environment.
Different doesn't mean worse.
You seriously don't know what you're talking about.
I think the stereotype is that male gays are promiscuous while lesbians are the opposite. Given this, would you be in favour of letting lesbians adopt?