The level of not even wrong here is magnificent

My honey pointed this blog out to me. It is such a virulent piece of anti-gay propaganda that it cried out for a full-throated response.

http://infrequentatheist.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/the-homosexual-conspiracy-and-black-atheism/

Listen, homosexual friends, everything’s not okay. Don’t do that in the name of black atheism. If you are of African descent, then you accept the values, customs, and traditions of traditional African people, and homosexuality is not a traditional African custom. It is a European Graeco-Roman social custom. [That's how Europeans greet each other.] This is a historical fact. I’m not a bigot. This is not prejudice. Traditional African society prioritizes reproduction and protection of children.

No, IA, you are a bigot. What is more, you are a--wait for it--fascist. You are a fascist in the sense that you have a ‘blood and soil’ mentality. You essentials a genetic fact--that one has recent African ancestry--and make it into something that compels you to, as you put it, accept the values, customs and traditions of traditional African people. Now, you do not explain why it should be so that a particular pattern of genetics, based upon parentage, should compel you to accept the values, customs and traditions of people living in a completely different culture. What is more, you merge all sub-Saharan African people into a single cultural group when, in fact, they are not a monoculture. The cultures represented on the African continent are as varied as those spanning from Paris in the West and Beijing in the East. Could you talk about a single, monolithic culture running along the entire length of the Eurasian continent? Not hardly. In the same way you cannot speak of a monolithic culture in Africa, even if you confine yourself to the sub-Saharan part of the continent. When I call you a fascist, I am saying that because you believe that blood and the soil it is from, make an inescapable bond and that one *must* (you have no qualifiers in the statement above) obey the dictates of that blood and soil.

What is more, the argument you are making about Europeans does much the same thing. Yes, there is a civilization one could call Western European and yet, that civilization still manages to encompass places as diverse as Poland, Brazil, England, France, and Mexico, Chile and the United States. Again, not a monoculture by any stretch of the imagination. Yet you try to collapse all of that cultural diversity into one thing “European Graeco-Roman” entity that you can then dismiss as the source of homosexuality.


Homosexuality is a by-product of western individualism [like Broke Back Mountain?]. It’s me, me, me, me, me [unlike heterosexual relations, where we are selflessly thinking only of our partner's enjoyment]. I don’t believe in God because of scientific reasons. When the topic of homosexuality comes up, I always bring up the Law of Reproduction. [This is one of those inviolable Laws taught in every biology class.] You’re not born that way. To say you’re born that way violates the scientific Law of Reproduction. It has nothing to do with religion. We’re not anti-homosexual. If you’re European, if you’re white, that’s their thing. If you go to their history books, they’ll tell you, we’ve been doing it for years; for centuries; this is our custom. They’ll let you know they have sex with animals. [Actually, I had been trying to hide that. These guys are just too perceptive.]

There is no “Law of Reproduction”, sir. None. I am willing to bet my academic background in molecular genetics over what you think you’ve understood by reading Dawkins et. al. Yes, sexual reproduction happens but that does not make it a ‘law’ in the strict scientific sense--and you are claiming thins ‘law’ is taught in every biology class. However, sexual reproduction is not the *only* way living organisms propagate themselves. What is more, in the ape brain--humans are apes whether you like it or not--sex and reproduction are not *necessarily* connected. We don’t have sex to reproduce, we have sex for pleasure. That is nature’s way of encouraging us TO reproduce. However, that is our species. There is no ‘law of reproduction’ that applies to our species. In fact, this idea you appear to have--and your argument assumes this--is that all living things reproduce themselves. That is not the case nor is it something that would be workable if it were. The vast majority of all things that have ever lived will leave around no descendants--none. For humans, non-trivial numbers of males have left behind *no* descendants. That does not mean that these men did not have sex, but it does mean that they did not leave around any descendants. In fact, one of the axiomatic statements of evolution is that there is competition for mates and that some individuals lose that competition. Your ‘Law of Reproduction’ is repealed by Nature and Nature *always* has the last vote.

What’s more, you are as much a product of Western civilization as any homosexual. You are not ‘traditionally African’ unless you were born in Africa and grew up in that culture. If that is the case, you’re not in exactly the best position to tell black Americans who or what we are. Chances are, though, is that you did not grow up in Africa you grew up in the United States. You are a Westerner and any things you’ve picked up that you believe are ’traditionally African’ are no more authentic than the blonde haired, blue-eyed second or third generation Americans, whose grandparents came over from Norway at the end of WW II, and suddenly discover that they are 1/16th Cherokee and start styling themselves Running Wolfwater or some other such rot. Your argument is a Western-style anti-gay argument. Your attempt to back up your anti-gay bigotry--and you are, after all, a bigot--with a patina of scientific respectability is very much a Western rhetorical tactic. You are no more ‘traditionally African’ than I am and I have maintained, since I first started hearing this Afrocentrist tripe 30 years ago, that any meaningful cultural connection between blacks in America and blacks in Africa died when the last person, born in Africa and transplanted to America, died. After that, we were on our own.

What’s more, the giants--the real and true demigods of our intellectual tradition in the West--almost to a person through the 19th and most of the 20th centuries recognized that to look to Africa was folly. You are not an African, you are an American. If you are British or Canadian or Australian you are STILL not an African. If we drop you off with some tribe of !Kung you will enjoy the first week. Then you’ll start to miss your laptop, just like anyone else.

Fascism is a very ugly human ideology. One of the most ugly and deeply disturbing ideas ever conceived by the mind of humans and we have come up with some truly diabolical ideas! it reduces people to cardboard cutouts, not even extras just background scenery in our own personal movies. When you are talking about gay people, you aren’t talking about the tech support person you spoke to, or the phlebotomist who drew your blood, or the pilot who just landed your airplane. No, you were talking about this amorphous mass called ‘homosexuals’ and in just a few paragraphs try to tie homosexuals to both bestiality and child abuse--neither of which has any meaningful or causal connection and, in fact, do not even correlate with homosexuality! Yet, as you proclaimed yourself to not be a bigot, you made statements that if some Rush Limbaugh were to make those same statements about blacks you would be up in arms, calling for his firing and banning from the airwaves. You do the very same thing with Europeans. I won’t even speculate how many other groups you fool yourself into thinking you feel superior to.

As I said at the head of my response to you, you are a fascist. Since I’m reasonably certain that you will try to deny that you have anything in common, ideologically, with fascists you’ll forgive me if invoke a European, Umberto Eco, who has the benefit of knowing fascism when he sees it since he grew up in Mussolini’s Italy.

        1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
        7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism.
        12.        Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.
        14.        Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

Of the fourteen points, these are the seven I think most germane to this discussion. The whole thing can be found at http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

It is from Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco.