Ted Winslow wrote:
>
>
> Thanks. I'd stupidly thought I was pointing to a contradiction i.e.
> the first passage claims that there is "choice" while the second
> claims, in accordance with the kind of "materialism" assumed, that
> there is "no choice."
>
I'm not very clear on where the alleged contradiction lies. The first passage is primarily (and so describes itself) a tactical proposition. In that context, "choice" carries a very light metaphysical load, being merely in contrast to "genetically determined." It says nothing about how those choices are arrived at in practice. If I were to say "I choose to respond to your post," I would be asserting a tautology, not either claiming or disclaiming that (in general) There Is Choice. In fact, the proposition, as a tactical propositon, would still hold even if gayness _were_ genetically determined.
As to the second passage, how does it bear one way or the other on the topic of "Choice"?
Also, I'm not clear on the distinction involved when you refer to "the kind of 'materialism' assumed."
Carrol
Carrol Cox wrote:
> For gay/lesbian liberation (as a practical political matter) to
> triumph,
> it _must_ be based on the claim that gayness is a choice, and a choice
> all humans have a right to.
> "Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two
> parts, of which one is superior to society (in Robert Owen, for
> example)." Thesis on Feuerbach III
>
> A major form of bourgeois art is devoted (how self-consciously I do not
> know) to dramatizing the ease with which the "superior part" of society
> can rise above the rest by transcending capitalism in their private
> life. That is the essential thrust, for example, of _Lost in
> Translation_, in which the central protagonists float easily above the
> "alienated" world about them, engendering similar illusions (or
> delusions) in the audience.
>
> Perhaps the strained efforts to moralize without moralizing on kinky
> sex, etc. are just another manifestation of this desire to separate
> oneself from history, to have an "identity" untouched by surrounding
> corruption. The old comic line, "Stop the world, I want to get off," is
> not really very funny: it's bourgeois ideology at its worst.
Ted
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