The view from (not-so) afar

Some incisive trans-cultural political commentary from a pro-Russian demonstrator in Donetsk (via Luke Harding's reporting in today's Observer):

"There's no democracy in Europe," he told the Observer. "I've been to Germany. They give porno lessons in schools. It's homosexual fascism. They impose their values on others." 

It's amazing that I've been able to get by here in Germany for 15 years without becoming aware that I was living under 'homosexual fascism'.

So it's good to get an outsider's view.

Certainly, one never finds values being imposed in Russia. Never. Ever.

Glad we could clear that up.

Nature and nurturing tolerance

David George Haskell considers the sex lives of various living things within a short walk near the Supreme Court, and concludes:

A wide, living rainbow arcs across the natural world. Diversity rules in sexuality, just as it does in the rest of biology. This natural variety does not provide ready-made moral guidance. But to claim that the only natural forms of sex and pair bonding occur between unambiguous males and females is to ignore the facts of human biology. Let those who wish for marriage to be “founded in nature” take note: the view outside the Supreme Court is full of life’s beautiful sexual variegation.

Quite.

The pinnacle of pointlessness

In idle moments, I sometimes contemplate what might be the ultimate symbol of uselessness.

Up to this point, my leading contender was an empty ice-tray in the freezer.

But I think this tops that: a headline from Spiegel Online that reads (my translation) "Catholic Doctors Want to Cure Homosexuals with Homeopathy".

Amazing: doctors trying to cure something that is not a disease with something that is not medicine.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new champion in the world of meaninglessness.

If you don't hug your son, some other man will

You want to know why I believe in an evolved human nature? Because of the "low-flying behaviourist" (Stuart Hall) nonsense spluttered by people like gay conversion God Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, co-author of The Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality:

"Homosexual behaviour is always prompted by loneliness [....] It's a pathology, a struggle to connect with the male identity [....] We advise fathers, "If you don't hug your sons, some other man will." We train the mothers to back off.

I'm in despair, as so often these days, not only because of the head-banging painfulness of statements like this, but also because even sane people will continue to harp on about the totalitarian dangers of biology and genetics, while quietly ignoring the irrational nether worlds of social/psychological constructionism as illustrated by the above. Because biology is deterministic and cultural determinism is good, right?

Achilles and Patroclus in Austria

Geoff Coupe has asked "Mrs Wood" to comment on the Jörg Haider saga. Why he deems her of all people qualified to do so, is beyond me. She's a real girl, after all, and unfamiliar with the antics of those still in, or half out of their various closets.

Having said that, Mrs Wood doesn't believe for a second that anything serious was going on between Haider and his blonde lapdog Stefan Petzner. The "special relationship" that has become the latter's nauseating mantra (see Dale's comment here) seems to have been more akin to the drooling kind of total adoration that Nazi- and Neo-Nazi leaders have always expected from their abject underlings.

What the whole affair has affirmed once again, too, is the wise old adage that there really is nothing new under the sun. Remember the Iliad, more specifically the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus depicted there? Another purportedly homosexual couple - though scholars beg to differ on the quality of their relationship, most of them claiming that the two mythical men were really "just" martial buddies.

Now here's Mrs Wood's mythopoeic interpretation of the Austrian situation: Stefan Petzner is the pitiful Achilles - all heel and no knickers - weeping his eyes out over the body of Haider-Patroclus, not only during the latter's funeral, but also in an interview with Krone-TV (the excrescent appendix of Neue Kronen Zeitung - the Austrian equivalent of Bild or The Sun).

Go on, watch it! It's about as slurry as Kerry Katona's recent embarrassment.

And just as in Homer's epic, a conflict has emerged over the body of the hero killed in action, as Frau Haider plans to drag her husband's corpse off to Italy for yet another post mortem. To prove that Haider's sudden death was a case of foul play. As if the man wasn't already martyr enough!

For an aptly dismissive depiction of the Achilles-Patroclus relationship, see Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, I.iii., where we find the image of a "large Achilles, on his pressed bed lolling" and of Patroclus, similarly lounging "Upon a lazy bed, the livelong day/Break [ing] scurril jests." You can just see Haider and Petzner enacting the scene, can't you?