What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Daughter on Homosexuality and Gay Marriage

Marion Zimmer Bradley ("MZB") was an American science fiction author, editor, and anthologist. She was married to a child molester -- eventually convicted -- and, unbeknownst to almost anyone, serially molested and tortured her daughter, Moira Greyland.

Moira started speaking out just over the past year or so. WWWtW readers might find this interesting:

Naturally my perspective is very uncomfortable to the liberal people I was raised with: I am “allowed” to be a victim of molestation by both parents, and “allowed” to be a victim of rather hideous violence. I am, incredibly, NOT ALLOWED to blame their homosexuality for their absolute willingness to accept all sex at all times between all people.

But that is not going to slow me down one bit. I am going to keep right on speaking out. I have been silent for entirely too long. Gay “marriage” is nothing but a way to make children over in the image of their “parents” and in ten to thirty years, the survivors will speak out.

Read the whole thing.

Comments (31)

There really are no words.

That was an interesting post. I do think she's wrong here:

Now for all well-meaning people who believe I am extrapolating from my experience to the wider gay community, I would like to explain why I believe this is so: From my experience in the gay community, the values in that community are very different: the assumption is that EVERYONE is gay and closeted, and early sexual experience will prevent gay children from being closeted, and that will make everyone happy.

I'm one of those well-meaning people. Of course her "from my experience" is going to be biased, because lots of the people she knew were friends of her parents, who believed that stuff. She doesn't give any real idea of how prevalent that attitude is, or how representative her experience with the "gay community" as a whole really is. That's just a crucial problem with her reasoning, enough to invalidate the whole argument.

I don't have any evidence either, but my anecdotal experience is that the "everyone is really partly gay" attitude is fairly common among homosexuals; so is the tendency to say that given people (celebrities, acquaintances, whatever) are "really" gay, even if they themselves don't know it.

But I've never heard any gay people justify pedophilia like that. My guess is that there's a higher rate of that belief among gays, and there's definitely a vocal minority advocating for it, but that only a tiny minority of gays would justify this kind of molestation. Even if the rate of gays supporting that were much higher than of straights (which might be the case), that fact isn't important if both of those rates are very low.

One other thing: She ties this in with same-sex marriage, but I don't get the connection. Gay couples were allowed to adopt and to retain custody of their biological children long before SSM was an issue. It seems that gay adoption and custody are the real issues, not SSM.

Two points, Aaron:

1) Those who have these beliefs are almost certainly going to be over-represented among those who go to the trouble to obtain custody of children, for obvious reasons. Adoption and artificial reproduction are expensive, time-intensive activities, for which one has to be highly motivated. The only other way that homosexuals end up with children is if they marry someone who is divorced from a heterosexual marriage and has custody. But even that is to some degree self-selected. I have personally known of a heterosexual predator who apparently deliberately married a divorced woman with young children for the very purpose of getting access to her children.

2) From both a legal and social perspective, homosexual "marriage" and marriage-like arrangements make for more opportunities for gay male and lesbian parenting to be recognized in law. I don't have time to go into all of the reasons, but just one off the top of my head is that if one lesbian in a marriage-like legal union has a child by artificial insemination, the partner is automatically regarded as the co-parent, whereas otherwise the other partner has to go through the expense and trouble to formally adopt in order to be a legal parent of the child. This has all kinds of custody ramifications, esp. in the event of a breakup.

I would suggest adding some of Vox Day's blog posts on the subject to the reading list. They contain some additional info plus go into detail about how the same SciFi/Fantasy establishment that is now full on SJW more or less knew about these people (and others like them) and warmly embraced them anyway.

It reminds me of the British pedophile scandal involving Parliament and the BBC. When it's the "right people," not only can they get away with harming children, but the system and many Right Thinking People(tm) will come out with both fists swinging in their defense until the tide of public opinion turns like a tsunami on them.

But I've never heard any gay people justify pedophilia like that. My guess is that there's a higher rate of that belief among gays, and there's definitely a vocal minority advocating for it, but that only a tiny minority of gays would justify this kind of molestation.

You might be right. A much higher rate among gays could be still just a small percentage of gays.

A second question to ask, though, is this: how many gays know about the gays that actively support this abusive theory, and hide it, pretend it doesn't exist, or even actively connive at suppressing the public awareness of these people because "he's one of us" and because "we get enough grief as it is". That number, now, is that still a "tiny minority" or something no longer tiny?

One other thing: She ties this in with same-sex marriage, but I don't get the connection. Gay couples were allowed to adopt and to retain custody of their biological children long before SSM was an issue. It seems that gay adoption and custody are the real issues, not SSM.

Even while most states and most adoption agencies no longer screened out gays even before SSM was legally approved, not all persons and entities did. And even where gays did adopt, there remained a sufficiently strong feeling in other circles (like schools, boy scout troops, etc) that gays raising a kid was inappropriate, that they must have felt under closer scrutiny than regular parents. SSM was part of a general campaign to get rid of social stigma, not just to get a specific legal right (after all, a great many gays and lesbians simply don't want to get married), and there is no question that getting rid of the social stigma and getting out from under closer scrutiny helps pedophile gay parents bent on abuse, even if SSM wasn't pushed mainly by people wanting to help those abusers.

The underlying moral reality is that homosexuality is a deformity of the appetites, and the human faculty for the appetite can be deformed any number of different ways - but one deformity tends to make another sort of deformity more possible. One illness of the soul is, effectively, the source of opportunistic infections from other species of deformed appetite.

In reading up a bit on this story I came upon a statement in a different post that indicated that various people in the sci-fi world knew of the "proclivities" of Greyland's father but that they "believed that he had not acted on his proclivities."

I want to relate that to a budding movement, a cloud at the moment no larger than a man's hand, that says that we should de-stigmatize pedophilia "so that pedophiles can step forward and get help." I've seen statements in this vein both in secular and in Christian outlets, though I have not saved links.

I see this as a huge potential problem, because what it amounts to in essence is suggesting that pedophiles should "come out of the closet" and that we should not be disgusted by their "proclivities" because that prevents them from "getting help."

As anyone who has followed the trajectory vis a vis homosexuality in numerous Christian churches and organizations knows, this never ends well. What begins as being "accepting" of people so that they can "get help" leads, as the next step, to encouraging what is delicately called "oversharing" or "too much information"--in essence, encouraging people to make their perversions widely known to their community at large so that the community can "help them," and telling the community at large not to express disgust or treat them any differently once the perversion is shared, because that is unloving and discourages people from "seeking help." All of this, at first, while insisting that to _act_ on the proclivities is wrong. The next step is usually to develop clubs or organizations for "support" for people with these proclivities. Eventually, as more and more people "come out" and tell the whole world that they have perverted proclivities, and as people are continually chided for being disgusted or treating those who make such confessions any differently, the community at large becomes desensitized. After all, how bad can it really be if we have a club for it? How bad can it really be if people are telling all of us about these proclivities? Thus the insistence that people not act disgusted or put off becomes, in essence, a kind of unspoken social argument that the perversion is not objectively a perversion, is not actually disgusting, is not actually all that bad. And that, in turn, leads ultimately to acceptance of the activity.

There's a lot more to the steps, of course. In a Christian context they are usually interspersed with many sermons on how all sins are equal, no sin is worse than any other, all of us have "fallen sexuality," and after all Jesus ate with prostitutes and we shouldn't be judgemental.

And yet it all _started_ with the claim that actually we _do_ think this is wrong, but we just want to encourage people to "get help."

I fear that I foresee the possibility of a similar trajectory being followed with regard to pedophlia, though I do think it will take a lot longer than it did with homosexuality because there are countervailing social forces.

What all of this teaches is that disgust is actually a good thing and that people with perverted "proclivities," if they really recognize their own problem, have to be willing to accept the fact that other people will be disgusted by their problem and that it is actually misguided to demand social acceptance without the slightest distancing.

A second question to ask, though, is this: how many gays know about the gays that actively support this abusive theory, and hide it, pretend it doesn't exist, or even actively connive at suppressing the public awareness of these people because "he's one of us" and because "we get enough grief as it is". That number, now, is that still a "tiny minority" or something no longer tiny?

My understanding is that the early gay rights movement had a severe problem with being tolerant of this sort of gay activist out of necessity as a way to build up their ranks. I've seen references that they allowed such people to latch onto the movement and then had to have a sort of Buckley moment where they began to drive them out of at least the mainstream of the movement because they realized that these people would utterly damn them by association.

Mike, I have the same sense, but I cannot recall any of the specific stories or articles since it was quite a while ago.

One cannot find the right words to use when discussing just how detestable this new privileged class is. The woman is correct that one day there will be justice, but rest-assured it will not be in the form of unheeded accusations from the small voices ignored for so long. When the time is at hand, every one of these people will pay in flesh. Our ancestors and our God will not settle for anything less. The next crusade will be unimaginable for the enemy.

The next crusade will be unimaginable for the enemy.

When the left finally pushes too far, I think the backlash against them in the US will make the suppression of the left in Latin America by past right wing regimes look like UN peacekeeping operations.

"And yet it all _started_ with the claim that actually we _do_ think this is wrong, but we just want to encourage people to "get help.""

Lydia,

I'd like to think that at least with pedophiles, because there is another person involved with their perversion that is by definition innocent and not yet able to consent to these pervert acts, this sin will always remain in a class by itself. I can imagine an effort to push the age of consent down and for pedophiles and their sympathizers to argue that children at age X are really able to consent to sexually perverse acts, but I'd like to think most parents will always recoil from such an argument and therefore there will always be a common-sense backlash against such an effort to 'normalize' this perversion.

I know that when it comes to the left, one doesn't want to under-estimate the power of the sexual revolution and the efforts of the perverts to use propaganda to change people's minds -- I just think parents and their kids will be a bride too far this time.

Jeff, your last sentence is either a typo or a brilliant if appalling pun.

Reading the Greyland post connected some dots for me.

It has long been obvious that an end result of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, and of normalizing same-sex parenting, would be to put children’s books celebrating these relationships into public school libraries across the country. The argument being approximately that not-born-gay children should be raised to be tolerant of the born-gay children in their midst. But it seemed crazy to have a kindergarten teacher read out to her whole class a book celebrating gay parents when only one of the twenty children sitting there might grow up to be a gay parent himself, because he was "born that way". Not to mention the fact that two men can't reproduce, etc.

So it makes more sense that the underlying goal was to teach us we are all gay. To get inside the heads of all little kids, to suggest to them they are gay, to prime them for experimentation in pursuing orgasm as a great and necessary good, heedless of the means or mess. Contrary to Christian teaching that our sexual conduct is voluntary, and lust is a deadly sin.

Paul,

Ha! Meant to say "bridge" -- just a typo.

Jeff, I don't have a full crystal ball on this, but I have been rather appalled at even the suggestion that pedophiles in the church need to be encouraged to "come out" so that they can "get help." I wish I had the link to the article stating this. And when it was discussed on social media, there was defense for the idea in the comments. We are such a tell-all, share-all society (partly because of social media) that nobody seems to realize that to "come out" and ask people to have a hug-fest to "support" and applaud someone for his "courage," even if he is admitting to something still regarded as wrong, is to just that extent, by the very public nature of what one is encouraging, to de-stigmatize it. If something is rightly regarded with horror and disgust, then we rightly tell people to shut the heck up about it and to seek help in private, not to blab to the whole church about their disgusting proclivities. So it seems to me that if this suggestion is adopted, it is psychologically inevitable, in fact almost definitional, that doing so will to some degree make pedophilia seem "less bad."

And I'll go so far as to predict at least that much: That churches, secular groups, colleges, etc., will be urged and many will succumb to the urging to encourage pedophiles to "come out" so that love can be expressed to them and they can "get help."

Where it will go from there, I don't know. Already we have something of a schizophrenic society on this very issue of sexualizing children, so it could get more schizophrenic yet.

I don't share Jeff's confidence because of examples like Sparta. America is increasingly a pagan culture with Christian trappings. If one looks around the world, one also finds that many cultures are shockingly more at ease with the issue than we'd care to admit. Well, that the multiculturalists might like to admit.

I would be careful with that Lydia because if someone overcame such an issue it would be a good testimony. Especially since received wisdom in mainstream society is that it is something that cannot be fixed. I've even heard some Christians come dangerously close to saying that it's something that even God won't fix.

I know what you mean, Mike, but I don't think the history of people who have overcome homosexuality (and the very meaning of that is ambiguous) and giving their testimony in the case of homosexuality is a history of an unmixed blessing. It's been a very checkered history. Some have relapsed spectacularly. Some have been set up as gurus to tell everybody how to be "more sensitive" to the issue. Virtually all of them (I'm speaking of celibate homosexuals here), even the allegedly most conservative, lack the imaginative sense that their proclivities are unnatural, and that colors and confuses their teaching. (I heard recently of an otherwise fairly sound celibate homosexual, not even what I would call a CHI, who nonetheless told a group of young people that "all sin is unnatural," which is totally confused.) Yet there is a huge reluctance to criticize them or give them push-back. It's also a pretty high-pressure situation to be going around sharing your testimony like that. This is true of recovered alcoholics and drug addicts as well, by the way. It really sets the person up when it's unclear that it is best for him to be set up that way.

So it's a dicey thing, and then one has to weigh that with what I've already said--the fact that we really, really don't want to be starting to constantly talk-talk about people with these proclivities and asking everybody to think of them as wonderful, normal, courageous, etc., to be accepting, etc. Inevitably there will be bullying of those who are put off or who feel funny around such an "overcomer" or who question what associations he should be having with children in the future.

There is just inevitably something lost to the extent that the fact that this seemingly nice person has (or has had) this horrible perversion, horrible past, etc., is put in our faces. Is it really worth that loss of clear atmosphere and all the other concerns about destigmatization for the testimony? Maybe sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it's definitely not something to rush into.

Also, what I was talking about was a lot broader than having a "recovered pedophile" tell his testimony. I was talking about the suggestion that non-recovered pedophiles tell everybody about their problem and that stigma be dialed back so that they would feel loved and feel that they could get help. It's silly anyway, because people have this ridiculous view that you can't get help unless you have a large support group and everybody knows about you. In other words, that discretion and even keeping a problem a secret is literally incompatible with getting help. Why anyone thinks this I don't know. You can talk to your pastor or priest or a psychological counselor without being "accepted by the church" as a person who desires to do some horrible thing. Again, the whole concept is part of our tell-all society. The idea of being in the closet (aka exercising discretion) is seen as inherently bad and as inimical to healthy living and getting help. But such a notion really is a universal solvent of all taboos, all strong social condemnation (disgust, etc.) towards any behavior whatsoever.

I think Lydia's points about the public nature of these folks "coming out" w/r/t their sins is very wise. There is a reason (I would argue the Holy Spirit guided him) that Bill W. developed Alcoholics ANONYMOUS -- the idea is hammered home via the "Twelve Traditions of A.A." (e.g. 11 and 12: "Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films." AND "Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.") In A.A., the minute someone starts running around in public talking about their recovery is the minute that person is considered a prime candidate for relapse. A recovering alcoholic should be private in their recovery and this goes even more so for someone recovering for a very private sexual problem.

My own sense is that given the state of our culture today, everyone needs to be trained to talk much less about their problems in public -- we all seem to want to share too much. Let's bring back modesty and decorum!

I know what you mean, Mike, but I don't think the history of people who have overcome homosexuality (and the very meaning of that is ambiguous) and giving their testimony in the case of homosexuality is a history of an unmixed blessing.

The rate of people overcoming pedophilia is much, much lower than that of people overcoming homosexuality generically. As such, (and as Jeff says), probably nobody who was a pedophile can confidently proclaim "I used to be a pedophile, but I am not anymore" in any other sense than that "I haven't given in to the temptation for a while...yet. Aaaaand, with God's grace, I may never give in to that temptation again." That's not a place from which to stand making a public persona of having beat the problem.

Aside from that, frankly, people ought to recover a sense of reticence about their sex lives altogether. If you are a recovered pedophile who makes a living giving speeches about overcoming it, what the heck to you tell your nephews that you do for a living? (Same applies to being a recovered prostitute, a recovered homosexual, a recovered rapist, even a recovered heterosexual man given to one-night-stands for 10 years.) Enough already! Prurience in the pursuit of idle curiosity is no virtue. Give silence a chance.

"It's silly anyway, because people have this ridiculous view that you can't get help unless you have a large support group and everybody knows about you. In other words, that discretion and even keeping a problem a secret is literally incompatible with getting help. Why anyone thinks this I don't know."

In part, it is because the nebulous practice of psychotherapy has given a medical sheen to formerly moral failings, such that things in the past which would have been discussed in the dark are seen as being nothing more serious than something like tonsillitis.

In part, it is because information used to flow from the top downward, so that such moral failings were the purview of the mysterious "Wise Ones," to deal with, so that there was a certain reticent to discuss such things, but with the rise of (mostly) audio-video media (not so much print) and the instant mass communication of information, information flow has become more of a bottom-up phenomenon and while it gives more raw data, it gives data which is largely unscientific and anecdotal. As the bottom-up accessibility has gained momentum, strangely enough and partially because of the supposed anonymity of the Internet, people are revealing their disorders and fantasies as if they were alone in a dark room before adoring crowds.

The only ways I can see to overcome this is to cut off the access of communication (take away the microphones of the grass roots, which has pluses and minuses), which probably violates the First Amendment (however, it does not violate morality, because there are certain things which should NOT be spoken of - see Ephesians 5:3) or to start calling sin sin, such that it is unambiguous where sin starts and stops. Let's face it, the only reason this subject is gaining any traction is because of the disorder to power, be it sexual, or otherwise. Until either the sword is removed or the disorder named and rebuked, nothing will change.

The Chicken

Give silence a chance.
Amen.
The only ways I can see to overcome this is to cut off the access of communication (take away the microphones of the grass roots, which has pluses and minuses), which probably violates the First Amendment (however, it does not violate morality, because there are certain things which should NOT be spoken of - see Ephesians 5:3)

The authorities will never take away the microphone because they've finally grasped what TCP/IP mean for government surveillance programs. Furthermore, it's the very "wise ones" in society who are leading the perversion you blame on the public. That would be your peers, MC, not the hoi polloi.

Yes, Mike is right there. The wrong "Wise Ones" (not really wise, of course) are definitely in power. Grass roots is the only place where sanity is left.

But I'm all on board with calling a disorder a disorder and rebuking. That is why I think Christians need to resist the entire approach of passive aggression and guilt-tripping, and should have resisted it w.r.t. homosexuality in the first place. The minute someone says to you, "I have an innate desire to do [fill in the blank with disgusting perversion here], and how dare you make me feel bad about myself? I need to be loved and accepted or I will not be able to get help" we should completely disagree. We should be willing to tell people that, yes, in a very real sense they _should_ feel bad about themselves, that such feeling bad is a recognition of the moral law and of the unnaturalness of their impulses, that it's part of their cross to bear that they are attracted to perversions, that being a pervert is by definition a lonely place to be, and that if they are not healed in this life they can look forward to being healed in heaven if they cleave to Jesus. Sorry, life stinks. Take up your cross.

But very few people in the Christian community are willing to say it out straight (pun intended) like that.

It is as though society now only has two modes of conduct: vicious judgmentalism and strident non-judgmentalism. I have wondered if the former is not a sort of mental defense mechanism in the face of the latter.

^ No. The two are really the same thing -- stick a pin in a "strident non-judgmentalist" and out comes "vicious judgmentalism"

"Furthermore, it's the very "wise ones" in society who are leading the perversion you blame on the public."

No, I did not blame the perversions on the public and it is hasty to generalize that most of those who command respect are the perpetrators of the perversions to the public.

What I said was that in former days, people used to have respect for authority, which is a top-down affair and most people in authority, be they parents, teachers, doctors, clergy, etc., were, usually, considered wise (otherwise, why were they in authority). One did not want to appear bad before the authorities, so, one hid one's sins or at least were embarrassed by them.

Today, there is little respect for authority and some people in authority have lost any sense of what it means to be in authority (to serve the authentic good of those under them). Especially because of the internet and Jerry Springer-like shows, more people have become their own little authorities, so the flow of information and "authoritative" opinions had moved from experts to non-experts, from the top-down to the bottom-up. People love to jump on bandwagons. Has there been a greater degeneracy among those in real authority today than in the past? That seems likely, but only due to the coarsening of society, in general. It is natural and right, however, to be embarrassed for ones sins in the face of authority which is properly grounded:


Rom 13:1-3
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,

People don't keep their sins secret, today, because society is going out of its ways to remove any stigmas, but to remove stigma, they have had to remove legitimate types of authority (such as those within families and religious groups). The only sin is intolerance.

The Chicken

Did anyone check the comment section? That went down the drain rather quickly.

Yes, actually, we read our comments sections pretty carefully. Just occasionally we judge that responding to a bizarre comment is only going to encourage it, which may have been tacitly what everyone was thinking about Mark Citadel's comment, above. Silence does not give consent. If you have something else in mind, I don't know what it is. For the most part this thread has been characterized by interesting, substantive discussion and has not "gone down the drain."

Yes, actually, we read our comments sections pretty carefully. Just occasionally we judge that responding to a bizarre comment is only going to encourage it, which may have been tacitly what everyone was thinking about Mark Citadel's comment, above. Silence does not give consent. If you have something else in mind, I don't know what it is. For the most part this thread has been characterized by interesting, substantive discussion and has not "gone down the drain."

Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.