THE NATURAL (EX)GAY

Check out this story in The Guardian about more ex-gay craziness.   Unlike ex-gay minisires, this group claims to base their claim that homosexuality is a disease not on the word of God but instead on on "natural facts."  In many of the quotations people refer to "nature" and "biological data" as the basis of their claims that homosexuality should be "cured" instead of accepted.  What I find interesting about such claims is that they ignore the fact that homosexual behavior has been observed in animals and, since the dawn of written history, has been an important part of human societies.  I agree that the identity of the "homosexual" is a  human construction which forces people to adopt a linguistic description that may not be totally accuate.  This does not mean, however, that same-sex desire is not "natural."

This is just another example of a group of people using nature to justify oppression.  Race science was based on a knowledge of nature.  The destruction of forests is justified on scientific knowledge of nature.  Nature, both the term and the physical reality, has become a commodity with which we can justify our actions.  We must reclaim the natural.  We cannot have any true, technical, reasoned knowledge of what nature "is" and instead we need to approach the natural differently.  We need to understand that nature includes flowers and thorns, trees and weeds.  It is contradictory.  It defies explaination.  Justifying our "rules" on some stable notion of "nature" is laughable.

11:25:10 AM    

LIVING LIFE DELIBERATELY

Henry David Thoreau wrote:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. "

I keep moving between thinking that I have little to no control over the events of my life and thinking that I have too much control.  I don't want to live a controlled life, one defined by a schedule, planning or meeting arbitrary goals.  At the same time a life in which I let random events or fate guide me seems to not be a worthwhile existence either.  This constant struggle of finding a mean between too much control and too little has come to define the way I think about life which is why I am fascinated with Thoreau's suggestion to live life deliberately.  What would a life lived deliberately entail?  I too want to suck the marrow out of life, to seize every opportunity I have but all to often that takes too much planning and often pushes to the margins other important parts of my life.  Perhaps, like Thoreau, I can learn by stepping back and stop trying in the hard sense and try/control in a softe sense.  When I try to explain the difference between living a controlled/hyper-rational life and a deliberate existence I show my friends a fist clenched and an open hand.  The one indicates the kind of control I exert in living life by focusing on particular goals and using reason and planning to achieve those goals.  The other kind of living involves trying as well, but does not involve goal setting.  Instead it is a much more creative process, focused on finding meaning in various paths.  I want to take advantage of what I have but I do not want to ignore other possible avenues of happiness.  Is the essense of living life deliberately involve creative explorations? 

12:41:47 AM