Stereotype against gay people. What stereotype?

The article I posted here on Monday generated quite some heat when I shared it with a WhatsApp group, the collective identity of whose members I cannot divulge for reasons of privacy. The article was a response to opinion pieces by Maina Kiai and Audrey Mbugua recently published by Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper to the effect that LGBTI+ people are born that way. Of course this is not the case, at least according to the scientific evidence we have up to now. That was the point of the article.

The first response I got when I shared the article was:

“No offense, but this article is mediocre. Science is not read like religion where you quote one source.”

An attentive reading of the article will reveal that this comment is unjustified. But it set off a train of criticisms. A number were not quite coherent and others went downright ad hominem. But a number were also well-expressed. It is unfortunate I cannot post all of them here without coming off as too petty. But the whole point — this is a conclusion based on the more civil comments — was that: gays do not have a choice concerning their sexual orientation; that it is OK to be gay; and that stating anything contrary to this constitutes the propagation of an unfair stereotype about gay people.

To back this, I was referred to two articles written by a George Githinji. The second is a press adaptation of the first. Given that it was a WhatsApp group where these sentiments were shared and that the conversation was getting heated beyond sanity, I rescinded my right of response after a several attempts and proposed a ceasefire. This article is my distilled rejoinder. Since the first article by Githinji contains all the ideas of the second, it will be the target of my responses.

First off, I ought to point out the obvious grammatical errors and dearth of literary style in the article, but I will leave that to more charitable critics. These features hint at the haste and lack of consideration with which these articles were penned down. They also make picking out specific arguments from the general thrust little more than delicate. But I will do my best.

To begin with, there are two general deficiencies which bear pointing out. The first is that, throughout the article the writer quotes figures and statements but links to none except those previously made by him. Anyone who has been through a decent educational system knows that proper citation goes a long way to grant credibility to one’s writing. The second is that he constantly castigates the views of others based on convictions other than those shared by him. This is not only unfair, but defeats the purpose of the article since his own convictions also are not shared by others.

Be that as it may, the first obvious point the writer makes is that the view of sexual intercourse as the natural preserve of heterosexual couples is common, but not normal. He says:

“The stereotype common among people that oppose homosexuality is on the issue of sexual behaviour. They say a man shouldn’t have sex with another man. The male organ, they say, is not meant for sexual purposes (sic). They claim it is against the law of nature. They cite their religious and cultural beliefs to enhance this stereotype. They use the common (not normal) aspect of sex being between a man and a woman. However, we all know that the need for companionship is not only about sex. It is also about the need to love and become loved in return.”

This argument is disjointed. The last two sentences are correct, but have no bearing on their predecessors. That companionship and love are not only about sex does not in any way prove that intercourse is OK between people with homosexual attractions. By that argument, the need for companionship and love — which thrive in normal families — would justify incest. But it does not, and I am sure the writer would be as horrified by the prospect as I am.

The second discernible point is that the recognition of “gay rights” is a mark of developed democracies. The writer waxes lyrical about the results of last year’s marriage equality referendum in Ireland and Obergefell (the US Supreme Court decision which legalised gay marriage). He further praises the financial and political pressures Western countries have brought to bear on African countries in their quest to push the LGBT agenda (as he puts it) in Africa. He tries to justify this as necessary to counteract the rule of despots in Africa.

This, aside from being a careless and deplorable proposition for the capitulation of African values — difficult as they already are to define amid the noise of his heckling peers — and sovereignty, is a mark of intellectual servitude. The writer conveniently ignores the fact that the corners of Africa still ruled by despots are disappearing, falling right into the Western narrative of an Africa in shambles.

Of the two (seriously) African countries he gives as examples — Nigeria and Uganda — only one can be said to be ruled by a despot. But even this argument is weaker than it seems on the surface, given the approval ratings Museveni enjoys in Uganda. Nigeria has had at least four cycles of democratic and widely accepted elections. On the other hand, it is true that some developed countries have legalised gay marriage, but the propensity to mutilate the laws of nature to satisfy a well-oiled and well-funded vocal minority never marked any country out as truly democratic.

Furthermore, he backs his argument with the cases of Ireland and the US. In this note he gallantly praises President Obama’s clumsy defence of gay rights during his visit to Kenya last year. He fails to note that, of the ten largest countries in the world, only one has legalised gay marriage. And for the 21 countries in total that have, 175 have not. Many of those that have not are very developed democracies. It is only by respecting the sovereignty of nations, on which account the US (the writer’s success story) has the worst track record of modern times, that any progress in this issue of human rights will be made.

Towards the end of the article, the writer sprinkles a smattering of science to back his views. He says that the 1973 redefinition of homosexuality by the American Psychiatric Association (which heretofore considered it a mental illness) as a normal variant of human sexuality, is a hallmark of progress. However, he forgets to mention, or does not know, that the redefinition was the result more of ideology than of scientific evidence.

It came after years of campaigns by the same-sex lobby and did not give a rat’s ass about the causes of homosexuality. The redefinition also provided the basis for explaining away the high prevalence of mental illness among LGBTI individuals as being caused by stigma and victimisation. This has been refuted by science over and over since then. But the view persists, as the argument of Australia’s leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, showed when he recently presented a marriage equality bill before the lower house of the Australian Federal Parliament (yes, even Australia has not legalised gay “marriage”). Mr Shorten says:

“LGBTI Australians will be subjected to a well-organised, well-funded campaign of vitriol and prejudice, denigrating their relationships and attacking their identity.”

George Githinji’s article is just one more evidence of this. He makes the same claim, albeit less elegantly, in his article:

“Discrimination against homosexuals by heterosexuals leads them to become stressed and depressed. Hence they become alcoholics, reserved or to acquire suicidal tendencies (sic). Some do commit suicide due to the prejudice, discrimination or failure by the society to accommodate them. These negative psychological factors are also common in heterosexuals, although triggered by different factors.”

But this is the closest to scientific truth he gets. The other things he mentions are just quintessential LGBTI claptrap. Evidence of homosexual animals (which is a misnomer since the word homo refers to men), despite being rare and desperately clutched on by the LGBTI lobby, does not lend credence to its naturalness in human beings, as he claims (not to mention that animals are not governed by moral law but rather by pure instinct). Neither does an anomalous exposure to testosterone in the womb, evidence of which is minimal, nor deviant hormones. The logical leaps between the facts and the conclusions are not only impressive for their incoherence, but also for the denigrating fact that they assume the reader will not take notice.

The writer also states that the children of gay couples turn out better than the children of heterosexual couples. This is the narrative many progressives would have us believe, but it is downright erroneous. Aside from the fact that it lacks scientific or even rational backing — its only backing is ideological — it is also hostile to any science that even just appears to challenge it. This can be borne out by the experience of Mark Regnerus, an American scholar from the University of Texas who, in 2012, conducted the largest study, ever and since, of young-adult outcomes on children with homosexual parents.

His findings were that, as Matthew J. Frank writes in a summary in First Things:

“these young adults have more difficult life experiences across a host of variables involving their employment, education, dependence on public assistance, mental health, relationship success and sexuality, trouble with the law, and experience of abuse.”

The following is a longer summary gleaned off a review of the study by Ana Samuel, published in The Public Discourse:

“(The study) surveyed 2,988 young adults for the specific purpose of collecting more reliable, nationally representative data about children from various family origins. Already, the NFSS (name of the study. In full “New Family Structures Study”) has been acknowledged by critics to be “better situated than virtually all previous studies to detect differences between these groups in the population.

On criminal outcomes, the children of GFs [gay fathers] showed the greatest propensity to be involved in crime. They were, on average, more frequently arrested and pled guilty to more non-minor offenses than the young-adult children in any other category. The children of LMs [lesbian mothers] reported the second highest frequency of involvement in crimes and arrests, and in both categories the young-adult children of intact biological families reported the lowest frequency of involvement in crimes or arrests.

In percentages, 31% of LMs said they had been forced to have sex, compared with 25% of GFs and 8% of IBFs [intact biological families]. These results are generally consistent with research on heterosexual families. For instance, a recent federal report showed that children in heterosexual families are least likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused in an intact, biological, married family.

In 25 out of 40 outcomes evaluated by Regnerus, there were statistically significant differences between children from IBFs and those of LMs in many areas that are unambiguously suboptimal. On 11 out of 40 outcomes, there were statistically significant differences between children from IBFs and those who reported having a GF in many areas that are suboptimal.”

Predictably, the simple act of being honest with his findings almost spelled the death of Regnerus’ academic career. To this day, he is reviled by progressive scientists who, nevertheless, have not managed to scientifically disprove him except by data-laundering (doctoring the data he used), modifying his methodology to suit their needs, or dismissing his study by bundling it together with fake ones based on non-existent data.

The final straw-man in George’s article is the claim that homosexual unions last longer than heterosexual marriages. This is ridiculous gobbledygook. One of the problems Mark Regnerus ran into in his vast study was finding children from lasting homosexual unions. The limitation of his data to only such unions is one of the more popular data-laundering methods that have been used against him, since the numbers just are not statistically sufficient. George Githinji’s claim is based off studies of an extremely rare breed of animal: stable, faithful, long-term same-sex couples heading households with children in them and rearing them from early childhood to adulthood.

As if that were not enough, the sheer prevalence of “open secrets” — casual sexual relations with other men/women— in homosexual unions need not be proven by a study, although many have shown it, and probably bequeathed to the world its most shameful recent epidemic, HIV/AIDS. One article which recently attempted to highlight the unfortunate aftermath of one such casual tryst, written by Paddy Manning, himself a gay man, almost got our partner site MercatorNet shut down after they received threatening emails from the lawyers of gay (and very rich) British singer Elton John and his partner David Furnish, the subjects of the article. MercatorNet had to pull down the article, but not before we could republish it (thank you CC licencing). So much for Mr Shorten’s “well-organised, well-funded campaign(s) of vitriol.” The offenders are always hiding behind a victim status.

There are many more errors I could have highlighted in George’s article. But for the sake of sanity, I will not. The purpose of this long article was to address two things. The first is that I usually write short articles so as not to overwhelm my readers. The second, and perhaps most important, is that: gay people are not born that way; it is not OK to be gay; the children of gay parents turn our considerably worse than the others; gay unions are overwhelmingly unfaithful, dishonourable and ephemeral; and the promotion of the LGBTI+ agenda has been the platform for numerous violations of human rights, the crushing of free speech and scientific neutrality, and the wholesome colonisation of otherwise innocent African minds.

Just to ward off prejudiced and unnecessary comments, let it be known that I have not quoted the Bible or Qur’an here, and I have not made my argument off any religious, cultural or experiential convictions, although these would provide perhaps the best premise.

The contents of this article may make me unpopular with the LGBTI+ lobby, but until a rational argument can be made against them, I will not rescind my views. I leave the conclusion to good old G.K. Chesterton:

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

Over to you, George Githinji.

Feature image: huucsj.org.

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