Saturday, August 25, 2012

Hugh Hefner On Same-Sex Marriage

Hugh Hefner (who you younger folks may not know who he is, since he hasn't been relevant to American culture for a couple of decades, at least) complains:
The fight for gay marriage is, in reality, a fight for all of our rights. Without it, we will turn back the sexual revolution and return to an earlier, puritanical time. Today, in every instance of sexual rights falling under attack, you’ll find legislation forced into place by people who practice discrimination disguised as religious freedom. Their goal is to dehumanize everyone’s sexuality and reduce us to using sex for the sole purpose of perpetuating our species. 
As a commenter over at Ann Althouse's blog points out:
Hugh Hefner railing against the dehumanization of sexuality? Isn't that like the Soviets complaining about treaty violations, or Todd Akin lecturing folks on interview preparation?
There is a lot that feminists got wrong, but when they described pornography as "objectifying women," there was no better example than Playboy--until Penthouse and Hustler came along.

I am also a bit amazed that Hefner thinks that there is some danger of "return to an earlier, puritanical time."  I am old enough to remember a time when an elementary school child with detailed knowledge of the mechanics of sexual intercourse was assumed to have been sexually abused.  Today, it just means there is no filtering on the home Internet connection.

What is especially annoying is that Hefner argues that religious freedom is simply a disguise for discrimination--with no awareness that antidiscrimination laws are now being used (as in the case about to go to the New Mexico Supreme Court) as a method for punishing religious dissent.

5 comments:

  1. "I am old enough to remember a time when an elementary school child with detailed knowledge of the mechanics of sexual intercourse was assumed to have been sexually abused."

    Clearly, you did not grow up in a community that included farm kids.

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  2. No, I didn't. Most Americans didn't. But also, animals don't have sex face to face (except porcupines, for obvious reasons).

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  3. "Today, it just means there is no filtering on the home Internet connection."
    That may yet turn out to be sexual abuse.

    Hefner is yet another leftist who believes that "free speech is for me and not for thee."

    I recall from about 12 years ago before Ol' Hef downsized his stable of official girlfriends, that one of them said for some publication, that the 8 of them would go somewhere and then return to the mansion where the Gf's would go at it, and Hefner would be watching gay porn on tv.

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  4. The crux of Hefner's illogic is his trotting out the right-thinks-sex-is-dirty strawman. (Pausing to add "strawman" and "illogic" to spell-checker dictionary.) The cultural right is not the Matthew Harrison Brady caricature from Inherit the Wind. Its message is that sex has purposes both fun and serious, and that much of what the cultural left calls "fun" is actually harmful to both purposes.

    The dehumanization of women is one of those ills. Feminists who champion the Sexual Revolution and demonize Hefner are idiots. They want women to be sexually easy, and at the same time they loathe male sexism.

    The phrase "objectifying women" doesn't communicate to most regular folks what trivializing sexuality really does. I think Toy Story is an excellent metaphor. Note the film's chief taboo: toys must not talk to humans. Why? Because toys' sole purpose is to serve the imaginations of their owners. There cannot be a relationship. The mind of the toy's owner is everything.

    The Sexual Revolution means that, more than ever before, women are marketed as toys. The most eager consumers of this product are teenage guys, who are just discovering hormones for the first time. Part of growing up is developing the values that foster peer friendships with the opposite sex. (One of the top reasons I will never be hired by a madrassa.) Entertainment that constantly yanks the hormones is a HUGE deterrent to this discipline. I'm confident that no small number of teenage girls will agree with me. (Even the ones reading "Twilight." That's another problem...)

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  5. In case Hefner fails to nauseate you sufficiently, here's the transcript to his opening monologue in his 10/15/77 appearance on "Saturday Night Live." Read the whole thing.

    http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/77cmono.phtml

    I don't know if he could get away with that in this day and age or not.

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