The Cause of Homosexuality

There is often a question in the minds of Americans about the causes of homosexuality. In this blog post, I will attempt to give two theories about this abnormal sexual orientation. I am particularly interested in this matter because of the recent change of policy in the Boy Scouts of America. That organization previously would not admit homosexuals into the organization as members or as leaders. Lately, the BSA has decided to allow openly homosexual boys to become members.

I believe that homosexuality is a moral mistake. Of course, homosexuals have long strived to establish their life style as a normal variant, caused by a genetic difference between them and heterosexual individuals. Intense study of the human genome has failed to find any correlation between homosexuality and any particular pattern of human genes or chromosomes. In other words, there has been found no genetic correlate for homosexuality. That leaves only environmental and social causes as viable explanations for homosexuality.

So…what does cause homosexuality? This is a question that probably has several answers in different cases. But whatever the causes may be, you can be pretty sure that they are complex. Sigmund Freud in the late 19^th Century pointed out that establishing sexual identity is a major and sometimes difficult task for the human being. He thought the task of sexual identification in males is more difficult than that of females. Of course, I think that Freud was a bit too ready to ascribe every psychiatric malady to something sexual—but nevertheless, his observation has some credence.

It is my opinion and that of many others that homosexuality has two common origins. The first is that in very early childhood, certainly before the age of 5, a conflictual relationship develops between the child and the parent of the same sex. We will discuss the pathway to homosexuality in boys because homosexuality is more common in the male; but the principle can be reflexly applied to girls, also. Both little boys and little girls are very attached to their mothers during infancy.  As a boy grows up, however, he becomes more and more interested in his father. He sees his father as a model for his life; and he seeks to identify with the father. He notices that his father is sexually attracted to females, and he, thus, identifies that as a model for his life, too. He then normally becomes a heterosexual person, attracted to the female.

However, when a conflictual relationship becomes obvious to a little boy, he becomes afraid of his father. Or…he may disengage emotionally from his father who is authoritarian, hostile, distant, or otherwise offensive. This conflict drives the little boy to develop a pathological (abnormal) relationship with his mother. The boy notices that the mother is sexually attracted to males; and the boy, then develops an attraction to males. Thus…you have a homosexual male as he grows up. This early conflict with the father causes very early onset homosexual affinities; and I have heard these early age homosexuals tell me on several occasions that their earliest memories are of their attraction to males as sexual goals. This early attraction to males is the thing that makes homosexuals believe that there is something genetic about their homosexuality; they cannot imagine how their sexual affinity can come from any other source.

The second kind of sexual development into homosexuality occurs in teen-age years; and this is what I think is particularly hazardous in the Boy Scouts. There is a well-known tendency for teenagers to rebel against their parents and other authorities in their lives—they are trying to find their own identities. The teenager seeks venues in which he can rebel. In the course of this rebellion, some of them decide to “walk on the wild side,” so to speak, and find the most blatant issue against which he can rebel. He soon sees that one of the most powerful recommendations that is put upon him is that he become heterosexual. This provides the teenager with the opportunity to rebel in grand fashion. He may decide to experiment with the gay lifestyle. Sometimes this results in a lifetime commitment to homosexuality. Sometimes, however, it is only a temporary situation that is nothing more than a brief experimentation in an otherwise normal developmental model. There are many teenagers who have had brief encounters with homosexuality; and their subsequent development does not seem to be harmed.

 My concern with the Boy Scout matter centers on this second developmental pathway. I worry that exposing developing boys to homosexual influences may tempt them to adopt that lifestyle for themselves as a result of their normal rebellious tendencies. For that reason, I do not think the Boy Scouts is a proper venue for homosexual boys. I think that normal boys might possibly become homosexuals as a result of interaction with homosexuals during teenage years.

Homosexuality is a harmful lifestyle practiced by about 5% of human populations. The more it is tolerated and accepted as normal, the more prevalent it will become. It brings no happiness into the life of a boy and as time goes on his focus is on how attractive he can be to other males; he does not move on in life as a happily married  man. I do not believe that our government and our social institutions are doing anybody any favors by aiding and abetting this aberration of behavior.

 

An ObamaCare Board Answerable to No One

(This blog post was partly redacted from the Wall Street Journal 6/20/13 page A21.)

A huge objection to The Affordable Care Act has been raised by those who view that law’s inclusion of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, the IPAB. That board has been called the “death panel.” (That name is not warranted, in my opinion.)

Nevertheless, I think there is great danger in the function of the IPAB, as it is specified in the ACA (ObamaCare). As described in the Act, the IPAB will be a separate governmental organization with extreme power to specify where huge sums of money are to be spent. The Board will also  prescribe monstrous changes to our health care system. The ObamaCare law stipulates that there “shall be no administrative or judicial review” of the board’s decisions. Its members will be nearly untouchable, too. They will be presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed, but after that, they can only be fired for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” The crafters of the ACA designed the IPAB so that it would be immune to political pressure; but that effort is a futile one. The original appointees would be put there by an elected (and, therefore, political) president. It is impossible for the Board to be independent of politics.

Once the board acts, its decisions can be overruled only by Congress and only through unprecedented and constitutionally dubious legislative procedures—featuring restricted debate, short deadlines for actions by congressional committees and other steps of the process and supermajoritarian voting requirements. The law allows Congress to kill the otherwise inextirpable board only by a three-fifths supermajority, and only by a vote that takes place in 2017 between January 1 and August 15 If the board fails to implement cuts in expenses, all of its powers are to be exercised by the HHS Secretary Sebelius or her successor.

This new board is an invention of government that seeks to replace the system of checks and balances inherent in our form of government. It is dangerous; and Congress should act immediately to change the specifics of the board’s creation so that it will respond, at least to some degree, to the will of the people through our elected representatives.  

 

 

The Case for Rationing Medical/Surgical Care

I believe in medical care rationing, especially in end-of-life treatments. I believe in it for the following reason: I have seen doctors perform triple coronary artery by-pass operations on people over 90 years of age. I estimate that that operation at that age might increase life expectance by as much as 2 months. As you might expect, the operation probably costs more than $100,000 when all hospital costs are included in the calculation. The two months gained by surgery would probably be dominated by pain and disability, not to mention the hospital complications which might very well take the patient’s life by the onset of pneumonia or some other post-surgical complication. I have seen patients with terminal cancer or advanced dementia started on chronic hemodialysis (artificial kidney) with almost no hope of extending life or ameliorating suffering. The only benefit of these two kinds of treatment accrue to the doctor who makes a lot of money by doing them.

Medical and surgical treatments with negligible hope of extending life and decreasing suffering should not be entertained. It must be stated that decisions for the above kinds of extensive medical and surgical treatments are very often not recommended by the doctors involved. Frequently, these decisions are forced by strong-minded family members who do not understand the implications and complication rates of  such treatments.

It seems to me that the only way to eliminate these irrational and clinically bad decisions for treatment is to ration them out of consideration by categorically denying payment for them through Medicare rules.

The problem is that one often hears stories about patients who benefited significantly by the above type of interventions, and these stories are not insignificant. Our moral obligations are to preserve life and comfort and to do no harm. Anecdotes about aged and diseased patients who were benefited by heroic medical and surgical care are definitely exceptions to the rules. The large majority of the time, however, when old age and concurrent diseases are present, outcomes are not beneficial. Policies should not be made on the basis of anecdotal information such as these stories. Medical and surgical decisions should be made on the basis of realizing the most good for the most patients with the least amount of suffering and disability.

In these days of rising medical costs and limited money one must also consider the efficiency of money spending in an attempt to get the most “bang for the buck.” We should give consideration to the idea that for the cost of one triple coronary artery bypass procedure, one can buy thousands of doses of immunizations against shingles, measles, and other common diseases. This will prevent death and disability far more efficiently than heroic surgical and medical treatments on aged patients.

Readers should know that I speak for myself when I make the above points. I am 76 years old. I have lived a good life; I know my Savior and where I am eventually going; and I do not want anyone to apply the heroic measures so common today to my care. No thanks!

Governmental Deterioration Rises To New Levels

We, Americans, are learning each day to trust the government less and less. Many among us are unsettled by abuses that have become obvious in the IRS, the Justice Department, the Benghazi affair, and government surveillance programs run by the National Security Administration. We wonder—what is to be done about the mess in Washington!

Now, we are losing our ability to maintain our own privacy because of unheard of governmental surveillance programs. Many think that this loss flies in the face of the Fourth Amendment, which reads, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated….” I greatly fear that this loss of privacy will someday backfire on us and produce effects even worse and more ubiquitous than the terrorist actions our NSA is attempting to avoid by all this surveillance of phone and e-mail records.

There was a day when we, Americans could trust our government to consist of honest and moral men and women. We could trust them to uphold the principles of our Constitution and adhere to biblical standards. But…no more!

We have seen in our time a President elected to office who saw fit to hire burglars to raid the offices of the Democrat Party in the Watergate building in order to get the plans of his political opponents. We have seen a man elected to the Presidency who was caught seducing one of the office girls on the floor of the oval office. Now, we see a President who rejects the idea that truth can be realized or understood. President Obama has written in The Audacity of Hope, “Implicit…in the very idea of ordered liberty is a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or ‘ism,’ any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single unalterable course….”

Unless America returns to its former state of proper moral consensus, we will never, again, realize a government we can trust. Electing presidents, senators, and congressional representatives who are womanizers, unfaithful husbands, tax cheaters, and draft dodgers will never recover for us a faithful and trustworthy government. The moral condition of our government leaders IS VERY IMPORTANT. Many have said that the personal morals of a president make no difference—the only thing that counts is his performance in his official position. That is simply wrong. We, Americans, need to examine carefully the morals of our leaders before we blindly elect them to office.

 

 

Organizations Follow the Leader

My wife, Nancy, has pointed out to me that people in about any organization adopt the attitudes and policies of the leader. This is especially true about the government where prominent people in executive positions are in those positions by political appointment—they are appointed because the absolutely agree with the views of the leader; and they frequently are where they are because they are “yes men.” They can be trusted not to make waves.

Such is the condition of the executive branch of our government. It seems perfectly obvious to anyone that the President’s attitudes toward conservative groups have filtered down to the lower level bureaucrats in the IRS, the EPA, the DHS, the Defense Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

President Obama has made precious little effort to take into consideration the views of his political adversaries; and he seems bent on castigating them at every opportunity. His henchmen in all the other government agencies are following suit. This policy began during the administration of Andrew Jackson; it took a brief respite in the administration of Abraham Lincoln; and it is now in full flower during the reign of Barack Obama. The policy of ignoring and disparaging political adversaries makes no room for constructive functioning of a loyal opposition.

The failure to listen to ideas from the right is bearing fruit in the widespread opposition to Obamacare. It now seems obvious that 27 states are not going to buy into the Medicaid bribe by the Federal Government offered by the “Affordable Care Act.”  In fact, House Republicans voted to repeal The Affordable Care Act two weeks ago.

In other areas such as gun control or immigration he either carries no weight or has a negative influence. Obama’s other forays into leadership, such as minimum wage and the common core curriculum are not popular either.  This is a president who has been unable to compromise, see other perspectives, and bring a cooperative group together to accomplish the needs of the nation. Hopefully, our next president will be able to lead our country into a bigger and better future.

 

 

Common Core Curriculum—Dumbing Down Education

I have written on this page my aversion to the widely accepted Common Core Educational standards.  Common Core is being instituted all over the United States—at least in 45 of the states.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers have written this national curriculum; and it is strongly supported by the Obama Administration. There is nothing new about the Curriculum; it is a decades old idea fostered in the Clinton era by Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Mr. Tucker proposed a system of labor-market boards at the local, state, and federal levels where curriculum and job matching will be handled by government functionaries.

Since the early 1990’s the state of Massachusetts has found a way to beef up the educational prowess of their high school graduates by instituting rigorous academic standards, teacher testing, and high-quality tests that students must pass to graduate from high school. These three measures have caused Massachusetts graduates to move from mediocre performance on the SAT tests in the early 1990’s to first place in the nation in 2005. In that year, Massachusetts students scored best in the United States in all categories on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests.

Why do states adopt the Common Core? It is simply because of money paid to them by the Federal Government for buying into the system. Of course, they understand that the Feds have LOTS of money. The Feds get it from China and give it to local school boards.

One home-schooling mother in our family has told us that if she were to use the Common Core in her teaching she would have to tone down her teaching so that it complies with lower academic standards than the standards she is using now. That’s dumbing down education in order to comply with government standards.

This post was resourced from the Wall Street Journal of 5/28/13 page A15.

The Case For Abiding the Law

Most laws are meant to stop people from doing something, and to penalize those who disregard those laws. More generally, laws are meant to protect the society from the lawbreakers.

But our immigration laws are different. Here the whole focus is on the "plight" of those who have broken the laws, and on what can be done to lift the stigma and ease the pressures they feel, so that they can "come out of the shadows" and "normalize" their lives.

Merely using the word "illegal" to describe their breaking the law is considered to be a sign of mean-spiritedness, if not racism.

On the other hand, if an ordinary American citizen breaks a law, no one cares if he has to live in fear for years -- "in the shadows," as it were -- worrying that his illegal act will be discovered and punished.

No cities announce that they will provide "sanctuary," so that American law-breakers will be protected from the law. But, in some places, illegal immigrants are treated almost as if they were in a law-breaker protection program. What is even more remarkable about this special treatment is that you are not supposed to think about special treatment of illegal immigrants as special treatment. Somehow, they are awarded a special place in our concept of justice—a special brand of compliance with the law is applied to them.

It seems in the American mind that illegal immigrants may "earn" their citizenship. But an ordinary American citizen cannot “earn” his way out of complying with the law. Ordinarily, penalties apply to those who break the law.

Some have argued that all illegal immigrants should be found and deported. We are told that there is no way that the government can find all the people who are in the country illegally and deport them. Does anyone imagine that the government can find all the embezzlers, drunk drivers or bank robbers in the country? And does anyone think that this is a reason why the government should stop trying to enforce laws against embezzlement, drunk driving or bank robbery? Or…let embezzlers, drunk drivers and bank robbers "come out of the shadows" and "normalize" their lives?

Why are there immigration laws in the first place? For the benefit of the American people -- not for the benefit of people in other countries who want to come here.

Political and media elites treat the American people as if they are the problem -- a problem to be circumvented with pious promises about border security that have not been kept for decades.

All this argument ignores the fact that we, Americans, are faced with a serious humanitarian problem. Those of us who have dealt with illegal immigrants face to face for years, realize that these poor people just cannot be humanely dealt with by kicking them out. Christian ethics, also, indicate a kinder approach to the problem of illegal immigrants.  These unfortunate immigrants need our help; but circumventing our laws does not seem the right route to me.

I sincerely hope that any new immigration laws are not undertaken without securing the border first and then making a guest worker program that can be enforced to the benefit of both Americans and immigrant Mexicans. Living with chaos at the border is no way to run an immigration policy.