Some nations have excellent reasons to rejoice over the UDHR’s formulation while others would rather ignore it aside from using it as a hegemonic tool, As mentioned previously, the most important nation not to ratify the UDHR is the Outlaw US Empire because like the UN Charter it restricts it from acting unilaterally.
I have been spelling it as GBLTQ+, a sequence easier to remember.
Robert Christopher Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester. He sought to use history to demonstrate what he saw as the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. [Wikipedia, of all places]
These of his works I suggest highly, "The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy," "Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged" and "The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations." He was very perceptive and remains so.
Another topic that seems to 'pull lots of chains'.
It's interesting how far we've come since my teenage years in the 1970s. It seemed like me and my school mates were 'a free thinking bunch' and that attitude certainly continued at University. However, our easy going attitude to sexual orientation and individual opposition to the entrenched racism of post imperial Britain pales into insignificance when compared to what Karl correctly describes as the "... obsessive LGBT agenda, radical feminism, the cult of social political correctness to the point of absurdity, and “critical race theory” (based on the assumption that race is not a biological but a socially engineered characteristic to oppress non-whites)".
One can only assume that the 'Establishment' perspective that led to this point is, either intellectually and culturally perverse by intent, or the consequence of literal(ist) stupidity (as being incapable of subtle understanding).
IMO, only the levers were seen and they were deemed important, so they were grabbed and used without thinking--the without thinking being a trait that's now rather visible.
I find it really unfortunate the “International LGBT public movement” and "wokist" ideas, those that are radically pushing such agendas - (like the extremist men-hating Feminists of the past) are completely different to what people's real life experiences and hopes are for themselves as everyday LGBTQi people endeavoring to live their lives and find happiness - as we all do.
Raising this issue to the level of a Russia’s Supreme Court having to rely on value judgments of what equates to "extremist" and is therefore "illegal" is not going to work out well, for the country or for LGBTQi people who have nothing at all to do with pushy western wokist political agendas.
It's instead putting a target on people like a Yellow Star - hey these people are open game to bully and harass - it's ok to be intolerant of these people, to threaten them, because their different and a threat to us "normal" "decent" people. This has already been happening for years in Russia.
You cannot make a words illegal - a movement cant be illegal - only the kinds of actions that they do should be deemed illegal. This is a slippery slope. imo.
It's not rocket science! People in east Ukraine have a human right to be ethnic Russians and speak the language and be able to live in peace and not be murdered by raving Neonazis. The Ukrainians had deemed this "group" illegal and anathema for simply being who they are. Therefore it is OK not to pay their Pensions and to bomb them in their homes and schools.
LGBTQi people deserve the very same social legal protections and support in life to become the best they can be as Ethnic Russians in Ukraine deserved post-2014.
It is irrelevant how or why LGBTQi feelings and leanings develop. Totally irrelevant - especially to everyone else.
What matters is that these people are having REAL genuine and VALID human experiences, and they deserve respect and their rights to individual freedom to express who they are protected, so they can live as they choose no matter who hates it and can't tolerate it.
The same as heterosexuals, artists, the religious, and those who feel compelled to be married and raise a family also deserve respect, their human rights protected under law, and their liberty to live as they choose.
Yeah, I included this here because it's a hot button topic and because the Court verdict goes against Russia's human rights values as I tried to present. The much larger issue for Russia is immigration as the meeting detailed. I know Putin has talked about the issue on many occasions but didn't hunt any down to include as new words will be spoken soon. Overall, however, IMO Russia's approach to human rights is well above the West's.
I'm sure that homosexuality, far from being hardwired or formed in the womb, is very easily explicable as a matter of taste and opportunity. When it comes to sex as fun, as opposed to sex as a means to propagate the species, it is surely a matter of individual choice and imagination.
As to religion- it has used sex as a way of blighting the lives of millions over the centuries. Let the religious leaders hang their heads in shame. Along with the promoters of 'traditional values'- the detritia of cultures in which the worship of power and blind obedience has been cultivated by the privileged and greedy.
I found Crooke's piece appalling, a reminder of his origins in the ruling class and intelligence establishment of the UK- that doesn't mean that he should not have a pint of view or that, often those views, coloured by the benign mythology of imperialism for boys, will stand in stark contrast to the self serving bilge of the current intellectual elites.
But it does mean that we should ponder the implications of endorsing traditional values and familiar ways in the light of our, and Alistair's, cultural history.
Response to Karl Sanchez' "75th Anniversary Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Russia's Perspective"
This whole area of debate is so incredibly boring to me. It's a perfect example of chimpanzee social behavior, in which the albino chimp gets discriminated against. It's pure primate hierarchical social structure. You people might as well spend your time picking fleas out of each other's fur.
There are no "traditional values". There are no "human rights." The Marquis de Sade explained all that in great detail in his works, pointing out that what was once considered "moral" in many societies would have appalled present day (his day) society, let alone the idiotic society humans have subsequently built through the 21st Century.
For the record, lest anyone mistake my opinion, anyone can do bloody anything they want as long as it doesn't 1) disrespect me; 2) get in my way, i.e., prevent me from doing anything I want; 3) threaten me with actual harm in any way, shape or form, or 4) attempt actual harm to me in any way, shape or form - and no, "aggressive propaganda" doesn't count (unless it violates Rule 1).
With regard to sexuality, I couldn't care less who does what with or to whom, nor how many are engaged in that behavior. I do regard certain behaviors as pointless and thus stupid. But I don't care who does them or why. As a radical individualist anarchist, I pay attention to MY behavior and its consequences. I don't pretend to police others, neither on an individual or a social scale.
Russia is in the same pathetic position the US is - just on the opposite side of the coin. All Russia is doing with this nonsense is continuing the binary fracturing of human society that the West is promoting, just from the opposite perspective. Stupid binary thinking which is endemic in humans.
And for the record, homosexuality and bisexuality are common behavior patterns in many mammalian species, including primates. Your genes don't lie. If it didn't have some evolutionary value, it wouldn't exist.
It's not rocket science! People in east Ukraine have a human right to be ethnic Russians and speak the language and be able to live in peace and not be murdered by raving Neonazis.
LGBTQi people deserve the very same social legal protections and support in life to become the best they can be.
It is irrelevant how or why LGBTQi feelings and leanings develop. Totally irrelevant - especially to everyone else.
What matters is that these people are having REAL genuine and VALID human experiences, and they deserve respect and their rights to individual freedom to express who they are protected, so they can live as they choose no matter who hates it and can't tolerate it.
The same as heterosexuals, artists, the religious, and those who feel compelled to be married and raise a family also deserve respect, their human rights protected under law, and their liberty to live as they choose.
I just looked that up. It's a hypothesis, not a fact. And it still is transmitted across generations because of epigenetic changes. The article also cites the prevalence in animal and avian populations.
It also doesn't indicate whether these causes in gestation are influenced by the genes. In other words, homosexuality may be a second-order effect of genetics, not a direct effect. Which would still make it a genetic issue.
The article also claims that homosexuality is not useful for reproduction, so should be anti-evolution. This is a surprisingly short-sighted notion, especially since science can't come up with any explanation why sex even exists other than that it is useful to spread genes around. In reality, sex provides a massive social impact on human behavior, which IIRC has also been suggested to reduce intraspecies competition.
In other words, "make love not war" applies across sexual orientations. This obviously has evolutionary implications.
The bottom line: there is zero chance that alternative sexuality has any significant impact on the overall progress of the species or on societies in general. It only impacts societies that are particularly "strait-laced" - an appropriate term - which are very clearly represented by the US Puritan origins and Russia. Most of the rest of the world couldn't care less about this crap.
What part of every cell in the body is controlled by DNA don't you understand? This is basic biology. Of course, genetics are also influenced by environmental conditions both inside and outside the womb. But genetics controls a lot. Everything that happens in the brain is controlled by the neurochemistry and neurophysics and much of that is controlled by genetics. You get a deviation in replication and you get Down's Syndrome. You get another re-ordering of genes and you get someone predetermined to be a psychotic. The same applies to sexual orientation.
The difference is that a gene ordering that produces a Down's or a psychotic has a negative impact on society. Homosexuality or bisexuality (the latter I suspect would be most humans' normal state outside of social conditioning, at least in those cases where the genetic predisposition was not already heavily shifted to heterosexual) does not.
There is also the issue of sexual imprinting (look it up.) Sexual orientation is almost a random phenomena governed by life experience and stimulation at appropriate moments related to the body and brain chemistry which as everyone knows fluctuate wildly in adolescence. But genetics controls the level of predisposition through the mechanisms of body and brain chemistry.
I'm no geneticist or neuroscientist but I've read enough just in the popular press to understand that much. It's just conservatives who seem to be ignorant of basic science. Martyanov is another such and I just ignore him when he goes on a rant about these subjects.
Yes, yes, environmental chemicals are a problem. Homosexuality has been around for thousands of years before such chemicals became a problem. If you think that's a cause for the rise of acceptance of LBT, it's a ridiculous notion.
This has nothing whatever to do with what I'm talking about. I think we're done here.
I have been spelling it as GBLTQ+, a sequence easier to remember.
Robert Christopher Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester. He sought to use history to demonstrate what he saw as the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. [Wikipedia, of all places]
These of his works I suggest highly, "The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy," "Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged" and "The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations." He was very perceptive and remains so.
I have read the latter two and own or used to own 'Haven in a Heartless World.'
Thanks, Karl.
Too bad many don't know of him at all.
that would be me!!
Another topic that seems to 'pull lots of chains'.
It's interesting how far we've come since my teenage years in the 1970s. It seemed like me and my school mates were 'a free thinking bunch' and that attitude certainly continued at University. However, our easy going attitude to sexual orientation and individual opposition to the entrenched racism of post imperial Britain pales into insignificance when compared to what Karl correctly describes as the "... obsessive LGBT agenda, radical feminism, the cult of social political correctness to the point of absurdity, and “critical race theory” (based on the assumption that race is not a biological but a socially engineered characteristic to oppress non-whites)".
One can only assume that the 'Establishment' perspective that led to this point is, either intellectually and culturally perverse by intent, or the consequence of literal(ist) stupidity (as being incapable of subtle understanding).
IMO, only the levers were seen and they were deemed important, so they were grabbed and used without thinking--the without thinking being a trait that's now rather visible.
I find it really unfortunate the “International LGBT public movement” and "wokist" ideas, those that are radically pushing such agendas - (like the extremist men-hating Feminists of the past) are completely different to what people's real life experiences and hopes are for themselves as everyday LGBTQi people endeavoring to live their lives and find happiness - as we all do.
Raising this issue to the level of a Russia’s Supreme Court having to rely on value judgments of what equates to "extremist" and is therefore "illegal" is not going to work out well, for the country or for LGBTQi people who have nothing at all to do with pushy western wokist political agendas.
It's instead putting a target on people like a Yellow Star - hey these people are open game to bully and harass - it's ok to be intolerant of these people, to threaten them, because their different and a threat to us "normal" "decent" people. This has already been happening for years in Russia.
You cannot make a words illegal - a movement cant be illegal - only the kinds of actions that they do should be deemed illegal. This is a slippery slope. imo.
It's not rocket science! People in east Ukraine have a human right to be ethnic Russians and speak the language and be able to live in peace and not be murdered by raving Neonazis. The Ukrainians had deemed this "group" illegal and anathema for simply being who they are. Therefore it is OK not to pay their Pensions and to bomb them in their homes and schools.
LGBTQi people deserve the very same social legal protections and support in life to become the best they can be as Ethnic Russians in Ukraine deserved post-2014.
It is irrelevant how or why LGBTQi feelings and leanings develop. Totally irrelevant - especially to everyone else.
What matters is that these people are having REAL genuine and VALID human experiences, and they deserve respect and their rights to individual freedom to express who they are protected, so they can live as they choose no matter who hates it and can't tolerate it.
The same as heterosexuals, artists, the religious, and those who feel compelled to be married and raise a family also deserve respect, their human rights protected under law, and their liberty to live as they choose.
Yeah, I included this here because it's a hot button topic and because the Court verdict goes against Russia's human rights values as I tried to present. The much larger issue for Russia is immigration as the meeting detailed. I know Putin has talked about the issue on many occasions but didn't hunt any down to include as new words will be spoken soon. Overall, however, IMO Russia's approach to human rights is well above the West's.
I'm sure that homosexuality, far from being hardwired or formed in the womb, is very easily explicable as a matter of taste and opportunity. When it comes to sex as fun, as opposed to sex as a means to propagate the species, it is surely a matter of individual choice and imagination.
As to religion- it has used sex as a way of blighting the lives of millions over the centuries. Let the religious leaders hang their heads in shame. Along with the promoters of 'traditional values'- the detritia of cultures in which the worship of power and blind obedience has been cultivated by the privileged and greedy.
I found Crooke's piece appalling, a reminder of his origins in the ruling class and intelligence establishment of the UK- that doesn't mean that he should not have a pint of view or that, often those views, coloured by the benign mythology of imperialism for boys, will stand in stark contrast to the self serving bilge of the current intellectual elites.
But it does mean that we should ponder the implications of endorsing traditional values and familiar ways in the light of our, and Alistair's, cultural history.
Response to Karl Sanchez' "75th Anniversary Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Russia's Perspective"
This whole area of debate is so incredibly boring to me. It's a perfect example of chimpanzee social behavior, in which the albino chimp gets discriminated against. It's pure primate hierarchical social structure. You people might as well spend your time picking fleas out of each other's fur.
There are no "traditional values". There are no "human rights." The Marquis de Sade explained all that in great detail in his works, pointing out that what was once considered "moral" in many societies would have appalled present day (his day) society, let alone the idiotic society humans have subsequently built through the 21st Century.
For the record, lest anyone mistake my opinion, anyone can do bloody anything they want as long as it doesn't 1) disrespect me; 2) get in my way, i.e., prevent me from doing anything I want; 3) threaten me with actual harm in any way, shape or form, or 4) attempt actual harm to me in any way, shape or form - and no, "aggressive propaganda" doesn't count (unless it violates Rule 1).
With regard to sexuality, I couldn't care less who does what with or to whom, nor how many are engaged in that behavior. I do regard certain behaviors as pointless and thus stupid. But I don't care who does them or why. As a radical individualist anarchist, I pay attention to MY behavior and its consequences. I don't pretend to police others, neither on an individual or a social scale.
Russia is in the same pathetic position the US is - just on the opposite side of the coin. All Russia is doing with this nonsense is continuing the binary fracturing of human society that the West is promoting, just from the opposite perspective. Stupid binary thinking which is endemic in humans.
And for the record, homosexuality and bisexuality are common behavior patterns in many mammalian species, including primates. Your genes don't lie. If it didn't have some evolutionary value, it wouldn't exist.
It's not "in the genes." Homosexuality develops during gestation.
It's not rocket science! People in east Ukraine have a human right to be ethnic Russians and speak the language and be able to live in peace and not be murdered by raving Neonazis.
LGBTQi people deserve the very same social legal protections and support in life to become the best they can be.
It is irrelevant how or why LGBTQi feelings and leanings develop. Totally irrelevant - especially to everyone else.
What matters is that these people are having REAL genuine and VALID human experiences, and they deserve respect and their rights to individual freedom to express who they are protected, so they can live as they choose no matter who hates it and can't tolerate it.
The same as heterosexuals, artists, the religious, and those who feel compelled to be married and raise a family also deserve respect, their human rights protected under law, and their liberty to live as they choose.
I just looked that up. It's a hypothesis, not a fact. And it still is transmitted across generations because of epigenetic changes. The article also cites the prevalence in animal and avian populations.
Homosexuality May Start in the Womb
https://www.science.org/content/article/homosexuality-may-start-womb
It also doesn't indicate whether these causes in gestation are influenced by the genes. In other words, homosexuality may be a second-order effect of genetics, not a direct effect. Which would still make it a genetic issue.
The article also claims that homosexuality is not useful for reproduction, so should be anti-evolution. This is a surprisingly short-sighted notion, especially since science can't come up with any explanation why sex even exists other than that it is useful to spread genes around. In reality, sex provides a massive social impact on human behavior, which IIRC has also been suggested to reduce intraspecies competition.
In other words, "make love not war" applies across sexual orientations. This obviously has evolutionary implications.
The bottom line: there is zero chance that alternative sexuality has any significant impact on the overall progress of the species or on societies in general. It only impacts societies that are particularly "strait-laced" - an appropriate term - which are very clearly represented by the US Puritan origins and Russia. Most of the rest of the world couldn't care less about this crap.
It has nothing to do with DNA and everything to do with Estrogen and other hormones, as was well known before AIDS.
What part of every cell in the body is controlled by DNA don't you understand? This is basic biology. Of course, genetics are also influenced by environmental conditions both inside and outside the womb. But genetics controls a lot. Everything that happens in the brain is controlled by the neurochemistry and neurophysics and much of that is controlled by genetics. You get a deviation in replication and you get Down's Syndrome. You get another re-ordering of genes and you get someone predetermined to be a psychotic. The same applies to sexual orientation.
The difference is that a gene ordering that produces a Down's or a psychotic has a negative impact on society. Homosexuality or bisexuality (the latter I suspect would be most humans' normal state outside of social conditioning, at least in those cases where the genetic predisposition was not already heavily shifted to heterosexual) does not.
There is also the issue of sexual imprinting (look it up.) Sexual orientation is almost a random phenomena governed by life experience and stimulation at appropriate moments related to the body and brain chemistry which as everyone knows fluctuate wildly in adolescence. But genetics controls the level of predisposition through the mechanisms of body and brain chemistry.
I'm no geneticist or neuroscientist but I've read enough just in the popular press to understand that much. It's just conservatives who seem to be ignorant of basic science. Martyanov is another such and I just ignore him when he goes on a rant about these subjects.
I'm citing basic biology. "Our Stolen Future" laid it all out very well. Read it.
Yes, yes, environmental chemicals are a problem. Homosexuality has been around for thousands of years before such chemicals became a problem. If you think that's a cause for the rise of acceptance of LBT, it's a ridiculous notion.
This has nothing whatever to do with what I'm talking about. I think we're done here.