I read a troubling commentary piece in Singapore’s Straits Times today on a topic that has become quite hot recently, with the government’s announcement that it was scrapping its long-standing ban on hiring gays.

The commentator reflects:

Choosing whom to like and love, whom to feel close to – surely something emotional and psychological – seems less likely to arise from the biological traits of one’s object of affections, and more likely her emotional and psychological characteristics.

In short, gays choose to be gays given their individual life histories within their cultures because they prefer it to heterosexuality.

I think there is a fundamental error in this equation, if not a gross misunderstanding. I believe that that there is no conscious choice. There is no discussion along the lines of, “Do I want to be heterosexual or homosexual? Hmmmm.”

If, at the time most gays realized their sexuality, they were free to make a choice, I believe most would opt for heterosexuality. But it isn’t like that. Most gays at some point resist their fate, even take drastic steps to fight it, to “overcome” what they see as a terrible problem. (And in many ways, it is; in terms of shame, in living in a society that you know does not accept you, in knowing you will disappoint your parents, etc., etc., etc.) But it’s not something you can choose, like a Rolex over a Patek Phillipe.

Reading this sort of article makes me infinitely frustrated and saddened. Even though the writer tries to show sympathy and understanding, his conclusions are entirely wrong. There is no choice. There is no deciding. There is no comparing, no writing up checklists of pluses and minuses. Did any of you one day decide to be heterosexual? Was there any choosing involved? “That which we are, we are,” as Tennyson tells us.

I remember reading an interview in which the Grande Dame of intolerance herself, Phyllis Schlafly, said matter-of-factly that gays always need to swell their ranks so they go out and recruit. Recruit. Can you imagine someone approaching you and trying to convince you to adopt for the rest of your life this sexuality or that sexuality, as if they were trying to convince you to join the navy? And yet people still believe nonsense like this.

I reflected the other day on my decision in January to discuss this topic in my blog. All in all, I am glad I did. To my true sorrow, I must admit that at least two of my friends in America have stopped communicating with me since that day. But then again, maybe this is just the sort of thing you need to do to discover who your true friends really are….

Just got this email from the US Embassy; a little more intense than usual:

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT – WORLDWIDE CAUTION

This supersedes the Worldwide Caution dated April 21, 2003.
It is being issued to remind U.S. citizens of the
continuing threat of terrorist actions that may target U.S.
citizens, and to update these potential threats. The U.S.
Government remains deeply concerned about the security of
U.S. citizens overseas. U.S. citizens are cautioned to
maintain a high level of vigilance, to remain alert and to
take appropriate steps to increase their security
awareness. This Worldwide Caution expires on
January 26, 2004.

Tensions remaining from the recent events in Iraq may
increase the potential threat to U.S. citizens and
interests abroad, by terrorist and other groups. Terrorist
actions may include, but are not limited to, suicide
operations, hijackings, bombings or kidnappings. These may
also involve commercial aircraft. Other potential threats
include conventional weapons, such as explosive devices, or
non-conventional weapons, such as chemical or biological
agents. Terrorists do not distinguish between official and
civilian targets. These may include facilities where
American citizens and other foreigners congregate or visit,
including residential areas, clubs, restaurants, places of
worship, schools, hotels, outdoor recreation events or
resorts and beaches. U.S. citizens should remain in a
heightened state of personal security awareness when
attendance at such locations is unavoidable.

U.S. Government facilities worldwide remain at a heightened
state of alert. These facilities may temporarily close or
suspend public services from time to time to assess their
security posture. In those instances, U.S. embassies and
consulates will make every effort to provide emergency
services to U.S. citizens. Americans are urged to monitor
the local news and maintain contact with the nearest
American embassy or consulate.

You really have to see this to believe it. There really is a whole body of ignoramuses out there who have willingly surrendered their critical faculties to embrace idiocy, xenophobia and a cult-like devotion to their very own Dear Leader (GWB). Shocking.

Here’s just a small sample; it gets worse:

Erickson was followed by Jack Abramoff, a powerful right-wing lobbyist and former College Republican chairman, who exhorted the next generation to fight hard, lest “the ascension of evil, the bad guys, the Bolsheviks, the Democrats return.”

That equation — evil = communist = Democrats — was nearly axiomatic at the convention. Ann Coulter’s latest book, “Treason,” which tarred virtually all Democrats as traitors, may have been denounced by conservative intellectuals, but its message has pervaded the party. Gene McDonald, who sold “No Muslims = No Terrorists” bumper stickers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in January, was doing a brisk trade in “Bring Back the Blacklist” T-shirts, mugs and mouse pads. Coulter herself remains wildly popular — Parker Stephenson, chairman of Ohio College Republicans, calls her “one of my favorite conservative thinkers.”

I’ve been away for a couple of years; is this mentality shared only by a tiny, contained fringe group or has it seeped into the mainstream?

Literally seconds after finishing that last post on Coulter, I came across yet another masterful review of her latest screed, this one from the WaPo. It’s by Anne Applebaum, author of a new book on the Gulag that is high on my must-read list.

A scholar on the USSR, Applebaum is nothing if not direct:

I should reveal here that I have spent a great deal of time — perhaps the better part of the last 10 years — writing about communism, Stalinism and the West’s relationship to both. Yet about halfway through Treason, an extended rant on these subjects, I felt a strong urge to get up, throw the book across the room, and join up with whatever Leninist-Trotskyite-Marxist political parties still exist in America. Even the company of Maoist insurgents would be more intellectually invigorating than that of Ann Coulter. More to the point, whatever side this woman is on, I don’t want to be on it.

After chronicling the book’s abundance of errors, misleading generalizations, distortions and outright lies, Applebaum concludes:

All of this, of course, might be funny if it were meant to be funny, but it doesn’t seem to be. Coulter hasn’t got an ironic or witty bone in her body. Her insults are crass and dull-witted, and her jokes fall flat. She has no sense of history and skips back and forth from the Truman administration to the Reagan administration, as if 40 years made no difference. She quotes liberally from newspaper cuttings, television interviews and other conservative diatribes, apparently having done no actual research at all.

She wonders, with some bewilderment, why — how — this trash made its way to the top of the Times best-seller list. That Coulter apparently has so many fans who are willing to shell out money for this shit should make us all very afraid.

According to Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter’s just signed a new book contract for nearly $3 million.

The Coulter bonanza is expected to be finalized this week at CROWN FORUM. The deal comes after more than 600,000 copies of her SLANDER and TREASON have been sold at market.

If you haven’t been living in a cave the past few weeks, you’ll know that Coulter’s latest book Treason is unique in receiving near universal condemnation from liberals and conservatives alike. David Horowitz, Andrew Sullivan and Dorothy Rabinowitz have slammed it, and Spinsanity brilliantly ripped it to shreds in a much-cited article.

A few months ago, a perceptive critic remarked (paraphrased but pretty accurate), “Ann Coulter lies through every orifice of her body, including her pores.”

Her reward for unabashed, outrageous lies? Mountains of money. And I thought things were irrational in China.

It just bugs me because I am at a time of my life when I need to save more money and make some serious decisions (which are all based, unfortunately, on money), and this shit-spewing harpie shrieks inane accusations damning all liberals for the high crime of treason — treason! — and instead of locking her up or washing her mouth out with soap, what do they do? They pay her! No, the don’t just pay her; they pay her millions and millions and millions of dollars.

I want to scream, Ms. Coulter, have you no shame? Have you no sense of decency? But no, those are stupid and naive questions. She’s obviously way, way, way smarter than I am or ever will be. After all, she’s walking away with wheelbarrows of cash and I’m struggling to pay for my house in the US while also keeping my head above water here in Asia. So who’s the fool?

Did you know that in 2000, more than 300,000 women in China committed suicide, making it the only country in which relatively more women than men take their own lives? This article will help you understand why that is.

And I miss China?

It seems while I was gone America’s taken some quantum leaps toward liberalizing prime-time TV. I really had no idea just how far this revolution had proceeded until I read this eye-opening article by Frank Rich.

The article gives plenty of specifics as to how once-taboo topics have become typical prime-time fodder. Anything goes.

I would have thought that during the Age of Bush the media might have become more conservative, but it seems just the opposite is true. In fact, the administration has changed its tune when it comes to the “morality” issues they were whining about during the 2000 campaign.

It’s all about money, of course, as Rich tells us:

A classic example of the political turnaround is the current attorney general, John Ashcroft. In his 2000 senatorial campaign, he attacked his Democratic opponent for “standing with the producers of pornography and Hollywood’s worst trash” by accepting a $2,000 contribution from Christie Hefner, the chief executive of Playboy. You no longer hear Mr. Ashcroft, or anyone in the Bush administration, complaining about far larger political contributions from News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch, AOL Time Warner, Viacom or Marriott, to name just some of those who stand with the producers of pornography by either making their own soft-core variants or taking a cut when porn-industry videos are beamed through cable and satellite into hotels and homes.

There are only a handful of posts at this new blog by a student trying to cope with the miseries of learning Chinese, but for someone like me, also trying to deal with this migraine-inducing language, it’s quite interesting. I really like the online Chinese dictionary he pointed me too.

I’m not going to go on about Bush’s over-analyzed 16 words.

But I do want to point out an interesting example of what is either monumental self-deception or an intentional obfuscation of what lies at the heart of the issue. I refer to a post by Andrew Sullivan today:

The problem with the critics is that they ignore the context and the impossibility of complete certainty in intelligence.

This is the kind of punditry that gets me upset because it is so misleading, and I simply cannot believe that someone as smart as Sullivan doesn’t know how misleading it is.

The intelligence was exactly right. The CIA’s concerns were spot-on. It is not at all about any expectation of flawless intelligence. It is about a conscious and persistent effort to distort, alter, falsify or ignore that intelligence by the president of the United States and his highest minions and, along the way, smearing and/or scapegoating anyone who shows the temerity to challenge the administration’s perfidy.

I just re-read this post from some months ago, and I have to say, every word is utterly perfect. I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Update: My wording apparently caused some confusion. It’s a post about a great blogger, written by a fan, not by me.