Ben, Ben, Ben

I know Ben is s.z. 's territory, over at World O' Crap

http://blogs.salon.com/0002874/

but he’s being so pathetic here, I can’t resist.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/bs20050309.shtml

He’s attempting to explain why it matters that gay people are gay – why it’s right for him to hate gay folk: why Jesus wants him to be mean to the homosexuals:

And he’s using big words while he does it, to show you that he’s at Harvard Law now, in case you might have forgotten:

The rise of the homosexual movement is a textbook example of societal amorality devolving into societal immorality. The rationale behind societal amorality is the myopic question: "How does my immoral behavior hurt you?" The answer is: It may not, in the short term. But when society sanctions your immoral behavior, that does hurt me. If millions of people accept the deviant as normal, that reshapes society in vastly destructive ways. Your moral self-destruction may have no consequences for me, but destruction of societal standards always has consequences.

When the stigma left single motherhood, society felt the sting in rising rates of single motherhood and juvenile crime. When the stigma left sexual licentiousness, society felt the sting in rising rates of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, emotional emptiness and nihilism. Your immoral personal behavior may not affect me, but exempting your immoral behavior from societal scrutiny certainly does. A society without standards is an unhappy, unhealthy society -- a society with no future. And all of us have to live in that society.

The problem with Ben’s little analysis, above and beyond the fact that

(a) single mothers and teen pregnancy are two different things and

(b) homosexuality and teen pregnancy are a wholly other and third thing,

is that – bing bing bing – teen pregnancy rates did not rise after the stigma left single motherhood; teen pregnancy rates fell.

(See this chart, for example:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0193727.html)

And, of course, juvenile crime rates have been plummeting for years.

(Have a look at Mike Males’ website for lots of data on this one:
http://home.earthlink.net/~mmales/
but this is just more of conservatives hating/fearing kids, frankly.)

The rate of transmission of sexually transmitted diseases may indeed be rising, but I’m not seeing how that’s the fault of teen mothers – is Ben going to claim that’s not connected to adult males having adulterous relationships?

And may I just ask, while I’m on the subject, who Ben imagines these teen girls are having all this sex with? Imaginary bunnies?

Not to mention, any emotional emptiness and nihilism Ben might be feeling is his own problem, not something he can stick on the hook of teen mothers. The teen mothers I know don’t report any emotional emptiness or nihilism.

(Yes, I know plenty. This is Arkansas. We have no sex ed in the schools. Half my students are teen mothers.) They report that having their kids is the best thing they ever did, and being mothers is the best part of their lives.

I might not agree with that – I’d want them to think that getting an education, maybe, is the best thing they could do – but that’s what they say.

And anyway, Ben? You were supposed to be talking about destructive things being gay could do to society. How, exactly, is some guy being gay going to hurt you?

He’s not going to dump a bunch of nihilistic babies into your culture to run wild and commit crimes and mess up your streets, now is he?

So your lame analogy doesn’t hold, Ben, does it?

I mean, even if it had been a good analogy?

Which it wasn’t?

What are they teaching Ben up there at Harvard, anyway?

Besides big words?