Sodomy, Disgust and Twitter

In the light of the events of the past seventy-two hours in Macquarie Street, one might be minded to ask, is it acceptable in our times for a heterosexual, religious or not, to believe that the male homosexual act is morally or physically repugnant, and, if so believing, to say as much?  And to say so publicly?

The answer that many would give now would be, you must be joking.  The march of the rainbow activists has been so successful that nowadays people in public life not only have to tolerate having homosexuals everywhere you look, but also to love them, to affirm them.  And to affirm their “lifestyle”.  What some term heteronormativity is strictly verboten at the better dinner parties in Newtown and Fitzroy, and just about everywhere else.

I am at a loss as to why the latter has to be the case.  Christians have long been required to “love the sinner” and “hate the sin”.  Never, ever to judge others, but, equally, never to pretend that sin doesn’t exist, or that we get to pick and choose what are and what are not sins.  It is damned convenient to be able simply to cancel certain sins.  Not that “sin” is even a category for most rainbow coalitionists.  All the feigned offence experienced when Christians call homosexual acts sins relate to a God they don’t believe in, a book the offended are never likely to read (the Bible) and a place (hell) they don’t think exists.

As is always the case in these situations, relevant questions get sidelined by the white noise of the mob on social media, a place where people of sense should never go.  Twitter is a cesspit, and definitely not the medium for resolving complex moral questions.  But it is the way that most people communicate these days.  So be it.

First, they came for George Pell.  Then they came for Donald Trump.  Then they came for Israel Folau.  Now they are coming for Mark Latham, the perennial bad boy of NSW politics with the right enemies and simply brilliant and much needed policies.  The man who has never been forgiven for joining One Nation. 

By “they”, I mean the PGGWC (progressive, green, globalist, woke, Covid) class.  They simply live for moments like this, where they can try and out-do one another in self-righteous indignation and sheer horror and DISGUST at the words or actions of someone they deem beyond the pale. 

So, we have had “not fit to be in parliament”, thundered by the Sydney Morning Herald in an editorial.  The Silly (Moaning Hilmer) has never seen a woke cause it didn’t like, nor an enemy of Mark Latham’s it didn’t embrace reflexively.  (Err, perhaps John Howard circa 2004 might be an exception). 

We have had “disgusting” many times over.  Ironically, it was the assumed recipient of Latham’s abuse, Alex Greenwich, who opened the batting the other week in the disgust-wars, when he erroneously implicated Latham when a bunch of irate Lebanese Christians took exception to imported queer activists invading their space, specifically, St Michael’s at Belfield, where Latham was speaking about parental rights.  The queer activists may or may not have been on church property and acting blasphemously. 

We have had “homophobic” (of course).  We have had hateful.  ALP Minister and “out lesbian” Penny Sharpe said she felt “physically sick”.  Poor dear.  We had Latham called a “toxic man”.  Calls not to work with him.  “Outrageous hate-filled bile”.

We had the Prime Minister even going to a dark, accusatory place where he suggested that Latham’s (deleted) words on Twitter might so upset some that they might self-harm.  (Ironically, it is Alex Greenwich that we have to thank for allowing lethal self-harm to be legal in the Rum Corps State).  We have had the inference, from the massively clever member for Sydney, that Latham might even be suffering mental health problems.

It has been a veritable orgy of disgust!  Another real question is whether those who found Latham’s comments “disgusting” were disgusted by the colourful – yes, vulgar – description of male homosexual sex, or by the mere fact of Latham having the views he does.  I suspect it is the latter.  Heteronormativity is wrong-think.  Thought crime.  Just about the worst, as it happens.

Clearly, the Catechism of the Catholic Church hasn’t yet employed sensitivity readers:

Chastity and homosexuality:

2357  Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. It psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity (Cf. Genesis 19:1-29; Romans 1:24-27; 1 Corinthians 6:10; 1 Timothy 1:10), tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona humana, 8). They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358  The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359  Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them their inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

https://www.catholichawaii.org/media/224236/homosexuality_-_from_catechism_of_the_catholic_church.pdf

“Under no circumstances can they be approved”.  2357 is especially clear.  Catholics are specifically called to oppose homosexual acts.  It might be said that Mark Latham is being abused because he conforms to the official position of the Catholic Catechism.  Admittedly, using fairly un-catechismy language.

Austin Ruse is an American writer at Crisis magazine, “orthodox and Catholic” as they self-describe.  He makes Mark Latham look like a rampant heterophobe.  He has caused many a stir in the USA, and his Wikipedia entry has the usual epithets. 

Aptly, he has stated:

Nobody wants to talk about buggery. And why would they?

https://www.crisismagazine.com/opinion/douglas-murray-has-some-queer-ideas-about-sex

In New South Wales, we have a variation on Ruse’s rule.  No one wants Mark Latham to talk about buggery! 

Ruse has said this about the homosexual, conservative defender of (parts of) the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, Douglas Murray:

In his otherwise masterful book The Madness of Crowds, Murray waxed downright poetically and indeed pornily about the homosexual sex act, arguing for the benefits of sodomy.

https://www.crisismagazine.com/opinion/are-gays-replacing-christians-in-the-conservative-movement

The benefits of sodomy?  So, it is all right to argue the case for homosexual acts but not to critique them.  There has been an aggressive campaign over many decades to mainstream homosexuality.  There have been many victories and no defeats.  They decidedly do not welcome pushback.

Of gay activist and opponent of conversion therapy, Eve Tushnet, Ruse states:

She says “homophobia” is rampant, and by “homophobia” she means things like “not listening.” Have you ever noticed how it is impossible not to listen to “gays” and their issues? What she really means is not “not listening,” but rather, not agreeing. Not agreeing with her is “homophobia.” 

https://www.crisismagazine.com/opinion/the-supposed-evils-of-conversion-therapy

This resonates closely with what has been occurring in Australia, where heteronormativity is being eased out of the public square.  It is great being able both to define “homophobia” then to use the term as a weapon against anyone who dares to differ.  And we all thought they liked diversity!

Finally, from Ruse, on the Floridian pushback against the gay tide and, in particular, the grooming of children in schools:

God bless Ron DeSantis. He has smoked out the groomers. What we have learned from the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill is that the gays want to say and say and say and say and say.

The love that dares not speak its name simply cannot shut up. And what we have known all along is that they are eager to groom the little ones. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus actually sang that they are coming for our children. And now they are having hissy fits that their grooming must stop, at least in Florida and at least among the littlest ones.

https://www.crisismagazine.com/opinion/smoking-out-the-groomers

Yes, they do, indeed, want to say and say and say.  Talk about having a voice.  They must be hoarse from all the shouting since 1970.

I guess we will have to wait and see if Mark Latham is a fan of Ian Sinclair’s political dictum, “never apologise”.  Sinclair infamously compared Bob Hawke in the 1987 election to Charles Manson.  I don’t remember an apology from Sinkers.  These days, people in any form of public life simply have to say sorry for any number of offences they might have committed.  Normally, these offences relate to something they said about a favoured “identity group”.  If you said something offensive about a slave owner, or a colonialist, or a political opponent – like “Mark Latham is a disgusting human being” – you will probably get away with it. 

In an article Mr Greenwich called Mr Latham a "disgusting human being" who risks causing a "great deal of damage to our state". 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-30/mark-latham-under-fire-alex-greenwich-offensive-tweet/102166530

Nice.

So, I don’t expect Latham to apologise.  Nor do I expect the queer “comedian”, Reuben Kaye, to apologise for his recent, screamingly unfunny sexual joke about the Son of God.  Nor do I expect Alex Greenwich MP to apologise for stopping people experiencing unwanted same sex attraction to get help to overcome it, nor for driving legislation making infanticide-on-demand legal in New South Wales, nor making mercy killing a legal and reasonable choice.  Nor for engaging in acts that Christians for two thousand years have believed to be repugnant and disordered, right from the time of the Apostles’ Didache.

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm

Apologies can be funny things.

As for fitness to be in parliament, that, too, can be a funny thing.  Personally, I would place making an unseemly tweet, deleted in short order, a fair way down the list of things to get you thrown out of parliament.  Certainly far lower than wilful promise-breaking, doing things for which you never obtained a mandate, wasting taxpayer funds on vanity projects (like the voice or the Sydney city light rail), destroying the fossil fuel economy, crushing parental rights in the education system, giving the tick to queer storytelling to little children, and other kindred acts of grooming, destroying the environment with windfarms, making poor people pay (through their taxes) for raising the children of the rich in child care factories, sacking people who decline the offer of a poisonous jab to cure a scarcely-there virus, and locking up populations.  That list is very, very long, and the items on it are truly “disgusting”.

Thoughts, Mr Greenwich?

They say that Satan’s greatest trick was to convince the world that he didn’t exist.  The rainbow activists’ greatest trick, surely, was to get everyone in public life to use the word “homophobia” as if it weren’t a deeply controversial and contested concept.  This example of casual attribution syndrome has helped the cause no end.  A little like “love is love”.

Worryingly and perhaps deliberately (for Greenwich has been baiting Mark Latham strategically for weeks now), the Kiwi rainbow blow-in is now determined to use the Parliament to advance the homosexualist “reform” agenda, whatever that means.  He hasn’t said, other than referring to his already stated intention to make so-called conversion therapy illegal. 

My focus in the parliament will be working with the majority of members who support the LGBTQ community to progress important reforms." 

And this:

"When you're in public office as an openly proud gay man you're going to get targeted but I'm more focused on the majority of people across the state who love, support and celebrate the LGBTQI community."

Most of us celebrate gaydom?  News to me.  We don’t generally get to have much of a say in the matter.  The rainbow pedestrian crossings just simply appear.  I didn’t authorise Optus to become a WorldPride sponsor.  Or agree with the then NSW Government’s financial support for it.  As for the LGBTQI “community”, it is said that the male gays and the lesbians have very little to do with one another, and hold one another in scant affection.  The poor old “Bs” are simply ignored by all the other letters.  I guess their mere existence blows the “orientation not preference” theory out of the water, so the less we notice them the better.

As I say, Greenwich is no fool.  They say that you should never waste a crisis.  It is better still when you yourself create the “crisis” from which you plan to prosper. 

Greenwich’s claim that he did not intend “to engage with the matter further” didn’t last long.  He hasn’t shut up about it since Thursday last.  And now it is the driver of yet more rainbow-obsession, in the seemingly endless, shouty march to universal gaydom. 

As far as I know, it is still legal not to like it.  And yet, attacking Mark Latham is bound to become the newest form of political correct-think, and refusing to do so the mark of a deplorable.  No doubt, not to attack Latham will be seen as DISGUSTING.  The anti-Latham pile-on all looks and feels a bit like hate speech to me, and we can’t have that.

Paul Collits

2 April 2023