The Accepting Schools Act: Biological Confusion and the Chop-Logic of Liberalism

Vincent J. Curtis


24 Jan 12

The Accepting Schools Act is presently in Bill form before the legislature of Ontario, and consists of amendments to the Education Act that concern bullying and other matters.  Among the list of provisions is the mandating of the creation of so-called Gay-Straight alliances in schools.

In respect of bullying, the Act contains a definition of bullying.  It also requires Boards to have policies that promote certain goals, to include promoting a positive climate that is inclusive and accepting and promoting the prevention of bullying.  The Boards will be required to use surveys to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of Board policies related to these goals.  It mandates the creation of a “Bullying Awareness and Prevention Week.”

Most controversial is the requirement that Boards support pupils who want to establish and lead activities or organizations “that promote gender equity, anti-racism, the awareness and understanding of, and respect for, people with disabilities or the awareness and understanding of, and respect for, people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.”

Therein is the crux of this legislation, the creation of the gay-straight alliance clubs.

The curious aspect of this legislation is that it was created in response to what was said to be the bullying of allegedly gay youths by other youths, and the response amounts to a bullying of Boards and the public in general by the government to promote and in effect to normalize homosexuality and similar instances of what I called ‘biological confusion.”

The legislation sets out the target group that is to benefit from this effort at making communities and schools more equitable and inclusive: LGBTTIQ.  This acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, two-spirited, intersexed, queer, and questioning.  In a previous posting I explained what all of these terms meant and observed that the common element among them is what I called biological confusion.  By biological confusion is meant that the animal instinct for reproduction in these individuals is misdirected by an unnatural sexual appetite, or that they suffer crippling psychological problems that render reproduction for them nearly impossible.

Let’s begin with a pertinent analysis of the general issue: bullying.  Bullying is not new.  Bullying is a learned human behavior.  Bullying behavior is expressed in an individual only sometimes and usually only against particular persons or simply another person.  A person may be known as a bully because he exhibits bullying behavior to an unusual degree, but no one is a bully to everyone else.  Bullying has been an act of human behavior since man descended from the trees, and I suspect dominance behavior in the lower animals can be categorized as a kind of bullying.  In the sociological behavior of a group, the dominant members of a group may collectively act in a bullying fashion against a member of the group who does not meet group expectations.  Bullying is a kind of behavior so varied that you cannot isolate what bullying really is with a precise, legal definition.

The legislation sets out a definition of bullying, limiting it to the conduct of a pupil, that merely names certain acts that occur with a particular intent and in a particular context.  Thus it is that the government of Ontario can enact legislation that bullies school boards into accepting its prescriptions without violating the Act’s definition of bullying.

Because bullying behavior seems to arise spontaneously and seems to correspond with dominance behavior exhibited by the lower animals, the belief that with enough attention and disapprobation an act of law can banish bullying behavior among school children seems as absurd as trying to banish laughter, joking, and playing among children with similar means – and that too has been tried throughout the ages without permanent success!

The anti-bullying cause is the latest secular fashion du jour. In the chop-logic of secular liberal moralizing, anti-bullying has been fastened upon as the moral imperfection that can be fixed with the application of enough social and legal ministrations.  Perhaps the cause will disappear as a fashion once the legislation is passed.  The problem of bullying will persist, however, as the bill seems to understand, even as a moral cause anti-bullying disappears from the secular radar.

How much law has been passed and social pressure been applied in the 1960s to overcome the problem of gender inequality and to eradicate racism?  At least two generations have come into being since the revolution of the 1960s, and yet there in the legislation is the provision to combat gender inequality and promote anti-racism.  Either these provisions are present as the expression of an old legislative reflex, or that gender inequality and racism are still problems in Ontario schools.  Since the bill is directed at adolescents of 2012, after all this time the existence of gender inequality and racism in them must reflect some deep-seated condition of the human psyche, as bullying is.

Nevertheless, the gem, buried deep in the bill, that won’t disappear, is the mandate to create gay-straight alliance clubs.

Nothing is controversial about creating groups to advocate against gender inequality and racism.  Today, it is an exercise in tedium to so advocate.  The incongruity of creating a gay-straight alliance club as if it were no different from an anti-racism group is what causes alarm in the Catholic Church, Separate School Boards, and other Boards founded on Christian principles.  It is one thing to advocate that women are equal to men, and blacks are equal to whites; but it is another to advocate that homosexuality is equal to heterosexuality.

Society and humanity do not benefit from homosexuality as they do from heterosexuality.  Without heterosexuality society and humanity would cease to exist after one generation.  In general, society and humanity do not benefit from biological confusion.  Therefore society and humanity need to distinguish between the protection of those who suffer biological confusion and the outright advocacy or normalization of biological confusion as such.  In Christian churches this difference is observed in the distinction between the sin and the sinner.  The Christian abhorrence against acts of biological confusion serves the cause of the preservation of society and humanity.

One weakness of the legislation concerning the bullying of members of the LGBTTIQ group is that it assumes that the formation of gay-straight alliance clubs is the only solution possible to prevent bullying of that group.  There is no proof of that, and there is no provision in the legislation to allow the attempt of other means of achieving that aim. 

Another weakness is that it seems to ignore the potential for the use of those clubs by sexual predators, or conveniently as a meeting place to arrange for sexual liaison.

The most obvious weakness is that it serves as a basis for advocating the normalization of biological confusion.  Gay-straight alliance clubs are equated with clubs that advocate the normalization of beliefs in gender equality and racial equality, but the causes of gender and racial equality are different in kind from the cause of equating biological confusion with heterosexuality.  (Since we’re discussing inclusion here and named groups, to limit the clubs to gays and straights, the LBTTIQ portion of the biologically confused is seemingly left to shift for itself in these clubs.)

It is one thing to accept in the sense of tolerating biological confusion; another to normalize it.  The contemplation of the problem of biological confusion led in this case to moral confusion.

In Canada, there are such things as the Constitution Act and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  The attempt by the government of Ontario to enforce a provision that is squarely against the religious beliefs of some Christian Churches may fall afoul of the Charter Rights of those Christians, and of Section 93 of the Constitution Act which establishes the right of Separate Schools for members of the Catholic community of Ontario.

The Catholic Church has decided views about acts of biological confusion, which it regards as morally abhorrent.  The Catholic community sees the legislation as morally confused because it fails to distinguish between sin and sinner.  It is quite proper in the Catholic Church to advocate for love of the sinner while abhorring the sin; it is another matter to conflate sin with sinner, as the legislation seems to.  With two thousand years of experience in matters of love of God and love of neighbour, and with some of the finest minds humanity ever produced writing Catholic doctrine, the wisdom of the Catholic Church in this matter is not to be gainsaid or tritely ignored or dismissed.  The Catholic wisdom on the matter deserves a rational response from those who disagree.

Ontario may see the spectacle of a Roman Catholic premier, Dalton McGuinty, bullying the Separate School system into accepting gay-straight alliances.

-          XXX –

On the “Right” to Gay Marriage

Vincent J. Curtis


19 Jan 2012

The object of this posting is to review the case against gay marriage, and in particular to deny the proposition that limiting marriage strictly to between one man and one woman is unfair.

Since this is my first stab that the project, my reasoning and arrangement of the argument may not be as sound as it could be.  However, putting one’s thoughts on paper is a good way to start refining them.

Let us begin by identifying the group that feels aggrieved.  It is known by the acronym: LGBTTIQ, which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, two-spirited, intersexed, queer, and questioning.  A lesbian is homosexual woman.  A gay is a homosexual man.  A bisexual is a person, either a man or woman, who will engage in sexual activity indifferently with another person of either gender, though a decided preference to either homosexuality or heterosexuality may be exhibited.  The terms transgendered, transsexual, and two-spirited mean roughly the same thing: a person of one gender who wishes to be the other gender, and in some cases this person may have undergone sexual reconstructive surgery and taken hormonal therapy in order to physically resemble the opposite gender.  The term two-spirited refers to a native of North America who is transgendered or transsexual.  (A hermaphrodite is a person who at birth possessed the sexual characteristics of both male and female, and is therefore a true transsexual.  However, transsexuals in this posting refer to those who employ surgery and hormonal therapy to change from one sex to another.  Hermaphrodites are not a part of the aggrieved group.)  Queer used to be an epithet, but now is taken to be a cover term for homosexual or transsexual.  Questioning is a person who wonders about their sexuality, and the act of questioning may be a sign of incipient bisexuality or homosexuality.

The common element of all these forms of sexuality is biological confusion.

Aristotle, in his work De Anima, concluded that each species has a desire for immortality, and since individual members of the species were not themselves immortal, each species possessed a powerful instinct to reproduce.  Hence reproduction is a natural act of the species, and acts of reproduction by members of the species are natural and, indeed, necessary for the preservation, the continuance, the immortalization if you will of the species.

But nature is not perfect, and examples exist of deviations in individual members of a species from what is natural.  Nevertheless, what is natural is good and what deviates from nature is not good.  Thus acts which are not consistent with the potential for reproduction of the species, not being natural, are not good.  Biological confusion may be said to be the inclination or desire in an individual that is not consistent with the potential for reproduction.

Sexuality in human beings is the most highly evolved of all the animals.  It serves not only the instinct to reproduce but also the capacity in humans of enjoyment for its own sake.  Thus unnatural acts of sex are engaged in for the sake of enjoyment, though a misdirected sense of the desire to reproduce may also underlie the biological urge for unnatural sex.

A species does not benefit from biological confusion.  A species benefits from reproduction, and acts of biological confusion cannot lead to reproduction.

The handling of sexuality and reproduction in human beings is also the most highly evolved among the animals.  Human beings invented marriage, and organize themselves naturally into complex societies that protect and support the individual generally in all phases of life.  Societies allow a fuller development of the human being’s potential than would happen if human beings were solitary.  The purpose of marriage was to establish stability in the mating pair for the mutual benefit of both, of their offspring, of the community, and ultimately of the species.  In marriage, the mating pair pledge, or vow, to each other their faithfulness (that is, the exclusivity of sexual engagement) and the willingness to care for each other – in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, so long as ye both shall live.  Having a caregiver in time of need to an extent relieves the society of a burden, which is an additional benefit of marriage to the community.  Having a stable mating pair in which offspring are raised relieves society as a whole of the entire burden of raising the next generation.

Marriage also provides a superior environment for the raising of off-spring.  Both parents are emotionally involved in the raising of children, which is of benefit to the children and seems highly useful to the development of a happy adult.  Strangers are not usually so involved, and there is no question that being raised in the bosom of a happy family is superior to being raised in an orphanage, for example.  Since the period of development of human beings from newborn into adulthood is so long, marriage is also naturally a long-term proposition, and familiarity and companionship between the married pair add to the benefits of marriage after the capacity for reproduction ends later in life.

Hence, marriage is naturally a relationship between a man and a woman that is founded upon providing an advantageous environment for reproduction of the human species.

But marriage is not an unlimited proposition.  Marriage cannot take place between any man and any woman.  There are the laws of consanguinity: a brother cannot marry a sister, a father a daughter, a mother a son, and so on.  There often are laws against bigamy: a person cannot marry another person who is already married.  A person cannot marry another person who does not wish to be married to them.  There are minimum ages for marriage, and so forth.  Thus restrictions, for good reason, exist in society concerning marriage.  Marriage is not an unlimited right in society.

In the Catholic Church, for example, in addition to the above the marriage must be open to the having of children. So, a couple which has no potential for reproduction or frankly admit that they desire to have no children will not be married in the Catholic Church.

All that said, there is nothing in law which prevents a gay man from marrying a gay woman.

Indeed, at one time marriage between a gay man and a gay woman used to occur in order to disguise the homosexuality of both from society.

Thus marriage can have accidental uses; indeed, it has many accidental properties and advantages, but the essential aspect of marriage - why it exists at all - is reproduction.

Thus so-called “gay marriage” –  of two homosexual men to each other or two homosexual women to each other - is a straightforward deviation from the essential purpose of marriage, since there is no potential whatsoever for reproduction in such an arrangement.  “Gay marriage” amounts to a mockery, a sham, of the real thing.

Marriage is not founded upon sexual desire, but reproduction; and so to argue that marriage ought to be sanctioned on the basis of an unnatural sexual desire is nothing but to engage in moral confusion.  Since society gains no benefit from “gay marriage,” and stands suffer from the loss the esteem that its sanction confers upon real marriage by a mockery, a sham, society ought to reject the proposition of “gay marriage.”

It is no denial of natural human rights to deny gays the ‘right’ to be “married” to each other.  Since reproduction is what is natural, and there being no potential whatsoever for reproduction occurring as a result of acts of homosexuality, such acts are unnatural; and there is no natural human right to the unnatural.  Thus to sanction or formalize a relationship on the basis of homosexuality is to lose sight of the essential purpose of marriage.

But what of marriage between an older couple, so old that reproduction is out of the question?  Is this not also a mockery of marriage?  And what of the marriage that has lasted beyond the years of reproduction?  These seem to violate the essentiality of reproduction as the basis of marriage.

All this is granted, and we fall back to the accidental benefits of marriage to society.  There is a certain prestige and sanction to marriage, which is one reason why gay people seek it for themselves.

The continuance of marriage between a couple too old to reproduce and a new marriage between a man and a woman too old to reproduce exemplify and to a certain extent add to the prestige which marriage has in society.  Since reproduction is good, marriage is good; and maintaining and elevating the prestige of marriage in society contribute to human reproduction occurring in an advantageous setting.  Insofar as “gay marriage” detracts from the prestige of marriage, society ought to resist it since widespread reproduction outside of marriage is harmful to society.

Thus, there is no natural right to “gay marriage;” “gay marriage” is positively harmful to society to the extent that it detracts from the prestige of marriage, and lastly there is no real obstacle in law from a gay couple getting married to each other so long as the couple consists of a man and a woman.  The demand for “gay marriage” is an example of biological confusion giving rise to moral confusion.

It was asked recently by a journalist of a Republican presidential candidate in respect of gay marriage, “what do you say to a gay couple who wish to live in a committed, loving relationship?”  The proper answer to that question is: what is stopping you?  A couple do not need marriage to be in love, nor to be committed to each another.  Friendship can be a committed, long term relationship, just as marriage can be.  Thus there is no requirement for a gay pair to be “married” to each other to maintain a committed, loving, long-term relationship.  They can even pledge to be faithful to each other.  However, the fact that marriage is associated with a committed, long-term, loving relationship even by a gay pair shows the power in real marriage.  Marriage has such power partly by the prestige which society confers upon it, and partly from the human need for security and for the companionship of others.

It is possible for a gay pair to designate each other as the next of kin in law, and given the prevalence today for an equivalent-to-spouse provision in contracts almost nothing stands in the way of the legal advantages of marriage being gained by a gay pair who wish to formalize a relationship.

Thus there seems to be no reason for society to bow before the demands for an institution of “gay marriage,” and some good reasons have been found to resist them.

-          XXX –

Andrew Leslie Meets Parkinson’s Law

Report on Transformation 2011

Vincent J. Curtis


3 October 2011

LGen Andrew Leslie’s last battle was with Parkinson’s Law.  Leslie retired from the Canadian Forces Sept. 5^th, 2011, his last assignment being Chief of Transformation. His final report and recommendations, that would reduce DND administrative overhead in order to strengthen the fighting forces, are meeting strong opposition within the Department.  Leslie is now retired, but the forces of Parkinson’s Law are girding for battle.

C. Northcote Parkinson was a British naval historian and scholar of public administration.  In 1957, based upon his observations of the British Civil Service, Parkinson formulated and published a number of sociological “laws,” which were said to accurately project the growth of a bureaucracy.   Among his “laws” were: ‘an official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals,’ ‘officials make work for each other,’ and ‘work expands to fill time available for its completion.’

The growth of administrative tail at the expense of teeth is nothing new to the Canadian Forces.  In the 1950s and early 1960s, the cost of administration was consuming so much of the Canadian defense budget that Parliament, led by Minister of National Defense Paul Hellyer, passed the Canadian Forces Reorganization Act in order to free up money that would purchase new capital equipment for the fighting forces.

The problem confronting LGen Leslie was therefore a particular example in 2011 of the sociological law that, left to itself, a bureaucracy will grow spontaneously and indefinitely, absorbing more and more resources until some crisis is reached.

The growth of the defense budget in the 2002 – 2010 era due to the war in Afghanistan provided abundant forage on which the DND bureaucracy could flourish.  Leslie’s mission was to propose a means of removing the cancer without killing the patient.

Not all administration is bad.  Good administration is one of the ten principles of war.  The purpose of administration in national defense is to provide for the needs of the fighting forces.  But, when the size of administration becomes excessive that relationship inverts into one in which the fighting forces exist to provide for the needs of the administration.

When that inversion happens, Administration sucks the energy and even the life out of the fighting forces.  Regulations multiply.  Reports and returns are demanded.  Movement slows.  Eventually, the fighting forces are sacrificed in order to preserve the Administration.  Accounts of all of these malpractices abound in Leslie’s report.

Although the official reception of Leslie’s report was cheery, reports out of Ottawa indicate a strong movement within DND to bury the report, as Leslie himself forecasted and observed as the fate of similar previous endeavours.  Retired Chief of Defense Staff, General Rick Hillier, for one thundered that the enactment of Leslie’s recommendations would mean the end of the CF, or words to that effect.

A weakness counting against the adoption of many of Leslie’s recommendations is the quality of writing in the report.  The content of the report is protected by thick armoured plating of cliché, making it impossible to read for any length of time. There is practically no sentence in it that is free of cliché or of some hackneyed phrase.  Certainly no paragraph.  Never mind the arcane and technical aspects of the subject matter.

How can one embrace a report which contains statements like these:

“Not only are we going to have to continue to live within our means and balance our books, we are going to have to carefully reallocate from within to meet the new and emerging defence demands of tomorrow (some amongst many that include the Arctic, more part time reservists, cyber, special forces, and sailors going to sea) that will drive us to be even more agile, more deployable, more ready to respond.”?

That single statement, selected from the first page, contains five clichés - italicized for ease of identification - and two hackneyed expressions.  A demand may compel us to be more agile, but too many demands drive us to distraction.  The Arctic, more part-time reservists, cyber, special forces, and sailors going to sea do not at first blush appear to be defense demands.  ‘Cyber’, absent a terminating hyphen, is not even a word recognized in The Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

Leslie’s treasure chest is full of gems like this, taken from Chapter 4: Design and Theory: Options Development:

The theory and practice of organizational architecture sees public and private enterprises as a manifestation of their various environments. These environments can be physical and literal (such as the geographic, financial, and human resource environments), as well as conceptual (including process, structural and even cultural environments); they influence and in some cases determine the behaviours and outcomes of the organization. In recognition of this, it was decided to pursue an initial design approach that reflected prevailing organizational architecture theory by attempting to address the complexity that characterizes the DND/CF.

Pick any page, sentence after sentence and paragraph after paragraph are replete with execrable terms and quasi-academic phraseology.  Trying to read this report from start to finish is like trying to navigate a mental minefield without getting exhausted, or blown up.

The trouble with reliance on cliché and hackneyed phrases is that they express hackneyed thought.  Nobody cares about hackneyed thinking.  Why should a believer in “combing the tail to magnify the teeth” get behind Leslie’s particular formulation of that process?  Absent a rallying cry to battle, Leslie’s potential supporters are left confused and scattered against an Administration sure of its value and intent on survival.

Just to test the alertness of his readers, Leslie could have tossed in a statement like:

-           “A madman could rampage through NDHQ, swinging a broadaxe at random, and hit no bone, cut no sinew, and sever no vital artery...”

-          referred to superfluous administration as “a fattened herd whose slaughter would feed the fighting forces, in whose capacity the martial reputation of the CDS lies…”

-          For sheer entertainment, have measured progress in terms of a bodycount, or in gallons of blood spilt - anything to enliven the subject.

Leslie’s report, another in a continuing series against the forces of Parkinson’s Law, takes altogether too careful an aim at what should be cut, is far too cautious in expression, and drains the worthy enterprise of the necessary emotional edge required to carry it out.

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Free Thought Society and Christmas

Relaxing in the presence of God

Vincent J. Curtis


2 February 2009

"God probably doesn't exist, so relax and enjoy life."

The Free Thought Society of Toronto, Ontario, went to court to have this effort at syllogism placed as advertizing on city buses, to "invite discussion," they said.  Upon analysis, it appears that 'free thought' is an empty boast and seems to confirm, regarding 'free', the saying that you get what you pay for.

The syllogism above is a non-sequitor.  The conclusion does not follow logically and ineluctably from the premise.  In the first place, an unqualified conclusion cannot follow from a probable premise, for if it is only probable that God does not exist, it is possible that he may exist, and if He does exist the recommendation to "relax and enjoy life" is the wrong thing to do.  To correct that flaw in the syllogism, the Free Thinkers have to say that "Since God probably does not exist, possibly you can relax and enjoy life."

But even this change does not repair the argument, for there is no immediate connection between God and relaxation, or between God and a lack of enjoyment.  Many Christians, for example, believe that the existence of God is a reason to relax, for to them the existence of God means that life has meaning, that an individual's life has value regardless of what the world thinks, and that the universe is not going to spin out of control and end in a cataclysm tomorrow: because God is there to make sure it won't happen.  The existence of God is comforting for some Christians, and that alone means there is no necessary connection between the existence of God and a state of tension.

But even this does not exhaust the reasons why the argument is a non-sequitor.  There is a missing premise to the syllogism.  Based on the conclusion, the implied premise to the syllogism is that the existence of God requires that one ought not to enjoy life.  Here again, many Christians would find the proposition that God requires man not to enjoy life to be absurd and contrary to reason; and from this alone one can say that there is no necessary connection between the non-existence of God and the chance to enjoy life.

The injunction to "enjoy life" in the context of the absence of God, and therefore of and sin and final judgment, is usually associated with a belief in epicurianism.  This is the belief that all pleasure is good, and the more pleasure the more good.  There is no limit to the amount of pleasure there ought to be in one's life, and therefore a life of self-indulgence is the best life there is.  This seems to be the direction the Free Thinkers are taking the argument.  If that is so, then the Free Thinkers, according to Aristotle, enjoin people to live the life of cattle.

One does not have to be a Christian to believe that there is more to life than simple pleasure.  If there is a divine injunction against pleasure, it is against its excess and that pleasure must be of the right kind and enjoyed in the right way.  These injunctions against bodily pleasures are no more than those reached by the philosophers of ancient Greece.

The ancient Greeks believed that man ought to seek happiness; and happiness was achieved over a lifetime through the accumulation of goods, of which pleasure was one of many.  The supreme good was the most distinctively human activity of all: contemplation.  It is the ability to contemplate that sets man apart from all other animals.  It is this ability to contemplate that enables man to conceive of God in the first place, and for that reason Aristotle (for one) regarded contemplation as an exercise of the most divine part of man.  Christian doctrine concerning sin and prayerful reflection parallels that of Greek philosophy concerning human happiness.

It seems then that God and reason are on the same side of the argument so far as relaxation and the enjoyment of life is concerned.  The injunction to relax and enjoy life because God probably does not exist is a ridiculous caricature of Christian beliefs.  That such a poorly constructed caricature should be offered as a serious representation by a group calling itself “thinkers” goes far to explain why Christians feel slighted by them. What is enraging is not the proffered sham of reason, but the shamelessness of it.

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