I find it interesting that so many self-proclaimed devotees of science readily resort to sophistry in defense of imaginary homosexual rights:
Three months before Russia’s parliament unanimously passed a federal law banning the propaganda of “non-traditional relationships” — that is, same-sex ones — the bill’s sponsor went on the country’s most respected interview show to explain her reasoning.
“Analyzing all the circumstances, and the particularity of territorial Russia and her survival…I came to the conclusion that if today we want to resolve the demographic crisis, we need to, excuse me, tighten the belt on certain moral values and information, so that giving birth and raising children become fully valued,” lawmaker Yelena Mizulina told Vladimir Posner, Russia’s Charlie Rose.
Mizulina heads the Duma’s committee for family, women, and children and has become the stern face of Russia’s campaign against gays. But she would never call it that. Russia’s new laws — banning same-sex foreign couples from adopting Russian children in addition to banning LGBT advocacy — are part of the country’s very search for survival, according to her.
On the one hand, there’s its physical survival — Russia’s birthrate plummeted in the wake of the Soviet collapse and encouraging baby-making (through government grants as well as rhetoric) has been one of Vladimir Putin’s hallmarks. And then there’s its moral survival; if Russia is to survive as Russia it needs to reject the corrupting influences of the West.
The author claims that the first reason is “populist bluster” without bothering to offer any support for that position. But, as anyone who has read Juvenal will recall, there is at least a partial correlation between societies that permit legal and open homosexuality and societies that are in a steep demographic decline. This correlation doesn’t mean the relationship is causal, of course; I tend to believe that Ms Mizulina is correct in seeing homosexuality as a symptom of the larger problem, which is the abandonment of traditional values and moralities.
So, here is the interesting question. Can anyone think of a historical society which openly endorsed legal homosexuality, which permitted men to marry men and women to marry women, which was not in steep demographic decline? The history of homosexuality has never been an interest of mine, so I don’t actually know, but perhaps some of those who advocate homosexual rights have based their opinions on actual facts rather than feelings and can present some evidence in favor of their position.
Because, as it stands, most of the evidence of which I am aware is clearly in favor of the new Russian laws. Note that the bans were unanimously adopted and are much more democratically popular than homogamy is in the United States. Regardless, the pendulum is clearly in the process of beginning to swing back, and if Russia’s nationalists manage to reverse the nation’s demographic decline, it will be a powerful argument against the sexual equalitarians, especially if the West whose corrupting influences it has rejected continues to decline.
The West won the Cold War because its economic values were in line with reality and the Soviet Union’s were not. Perhaps having learned from past mistakes, Russia appears to be more likely to win the Cold Peace because its moral values are in line with reality and the West’s are not.