Does A Rise in Gays Precede Civilizational Collapse, Historically Speaking?
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Summary
Do gays lead to the collapse of civilization? is a question that has been debated for centuries. Is it possible that same-sex relationships lead to moral decay? Is there a link between homosexuality and the decline of civilizations?
Transcript
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hello simone today is going to be a very spicy episode because i am going to be asking the
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question do gays lead to the collapse of civilization the fall of rome joe rogan had
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this to say on his podcast fascinating that the end of empires they get really concerned with
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gender and hermaphrodites the roman femboy fully grown and willing to take on the role of a common
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roman woman even the emperor himself donned girly outfits mascara and held many chamber parties the
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roman senate began having debates to determine if quote being with a femboy was a totally gay thing
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after all so this is one of those things that i thought was really good for like us to do because
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i think our audience knows that we would be honest with them about what we found on either side of
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this issue like there is no answer i could come to on this question that's not going to piss off some
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large part of our audience so you know you're getting an honest answer from me and i and you
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know a lot of people what made me think about this is i heard if you look at christians today i was
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reading a a piece about how different the modern christian and conservative movement is from the
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historic christian and conservative movement and they pointed out that if you look at christians today
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who argue to ban things like same-sex marriage they base their arguments on the bible but if you look
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at historic conservatives you know you go back to a ronald reagan or something like that they base their
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arguments on loosening sexual mores specifically around gay sex will lead to the collapse of civilization
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and they don't really mention the bible that much in in why they they argue for this stuff anyway
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and it makes a lot more sense like i i argue that like okay if it was true that gays or loosening
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sexual boundaries around gayness could lead to the collapse of a of a civilization like if that was a
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trend that kept happening over and over again in history like i can understand like the morality of
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putting a law around gay marriage i never understood why you'd want to police somebody else's marriage
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but i was like oh the collapse of civilization that makes sense but the the christian argument makes no sense to me
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because like obviously these people don't believe what you believe about god or christ so you're not
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really helping them like right how does it help a a a non what you would think of as is your type of
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christian person for you to enforce them to follow a few christian rules yeah that's not the core point
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of that's like broadly against everything christian when when when it's supposed to be that you know if
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you're a traditional christian on a techno puritan you would say well christ died for your sins and
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it is through him that you you you get to god like it and and and even what christ said you know he's
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not a sharia law guy you know he's he's he's uh you know render unto caesar right like christian
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is actually distinct among the major religions and that it does not talk a lot about how you should
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govern a country and explicitly has built within it a separation of church and state which i argue is
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one of the reasons it has been such a successful religion it's much better to build religion that
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way i mean that when you get a merger of church and state as you have seen within some christian
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churches the churches get watered down super super quickly and which is funny a lot of people think
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the reason you shouldn't have a merger of church and state is because the church will impose all sorts
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of theocratic rules on people when in reality no it's that the state and the bureaucrats are very good
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at watering down churches and that you really only get strong churches in regions where you don't have
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a melding of church and state right but it happens every time so the melding happened recently you
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might still get some theocratic stuff but it's 100 years ago 200 years ago no it's typically wishy-washy
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but a lot of this comes down from jd unwin's work which is where the theory was initially posed so
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i'll go into his arguments for this concept jd unwin's work frequently cited in support of the claim
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provides a theoretical framework his 1934 book sex and culture studied 86 societies and concluded that
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strict sexual restraint prenuptial chastity absolute monogamy correlates with cultural flourishing
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while sexual liberalism leads to decay within three generations however unwin's focus is on
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general sexual norms not specifically same-sex relationships and his methodology has been
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critiqued for lacking direct causation the for the claim i'm gonna i told it to steal man both
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positions unwin's findings are interpreted by some like rory f mcpaul's blog to suggest that western
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sexual revolution late 1960s could lead to a collapse by the 2070s with modern factors like antibiotics
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and pornography accelerating the decay comments in various articles also link homosexuality to moral
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decay citing studies on intimate partner violence ipv from the university of torino these are disputed
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well i mean i know that ipv is super high in lesbian communities or in gay communities i'm gonna ask
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claude because that's yeah that's somewhat huh yeah it says even claude says higher or equal to
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heterosexual men was it happening in 25 to 33 percent of gay relationships so okay that's that's like not
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bad argument there right like if you're like well it's associated with societal ills found within these
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relationships and i think few people would argue that it intimate partner violence isn't a societal
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ill that you know there it might make sense to have regulations against it against the claim
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critics including historians on reddits are ask historians oh such such veracity there argue unwin's
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work is too broad with no direct evidence linking same-sex relationships to collapse the guardian article
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2015 satirizes the claims calling the slippery slope arguments eg leading to polygyny animal marriages
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fevered ramblings but a lot of the slippery slope stuff has turned out right like i remember i was in
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gsa's as a kid and it would have been considered homophobic like i remember because somebody mentioned
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this and they got like chewed out and like yelled at and and they shut out of a room to suggest that
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trans people would ever attempt to compete in the sport of their gender specifically that trans women
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would try to compete in women's sports they were like that's just homophobic slippery slope you know
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insane ramblings and now they're doing that like the normalization of maps these are minor
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attracted persons is is a movement that has been growing i'd say for that like the past 10 years or so
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in terms of of normalization the yeah so i don't know if i agree with that right like so i then said
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okay i can do research myself mr unwin because i also hate the progressive argument against this
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yeah it's like well just that you keep getting cases of gays being accepted and then civilizations
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collapsing doesn't mean it's causal right i'm like if it happens like every time counter hypothesis here
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it could be the sign of cultural flourishing so what we need to do is is is look at broadly agreed
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civilizational collapses okay look at when homosexuality was was accepted and see if it
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was accepted more in the period before the collapse or in the period earlier like early in that
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civilization's history before i don't like where this is going because i'm pretty sure it was mostly
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broadly well actually i'm not sure you might be surprised you might be surprised yeah no i'm
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thinking about it actually no oh the first one i ran was didn't didn't turn out well for for the
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gays so this was on the islamic empire because i often feel that people under was there ever support
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for gays oh a lot a lot yeah okay so in the medieval islamic world same-sex relations were documented
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across several distinct periods with certain eras showing more visible evidence than others
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the early period 8th to 9th century ce it's particularly notable for its relatively open
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discussions of same-sex desire in literature this was the era of the poet abba nuez who wrote
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explicit homoerotic poetry while serving in the court of haran al-rashid in baghdad literary
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anthologies from this period collected numerous poems and anecdotes that referenced same-sex desires
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and relationships the high medieval period 10th to 13th centuries across various regions of the
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islamic world including in al-dinus muslim spain baghdad cairo and other urban centers produce
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significant literary and scholarly works that acknowledge same-sex practices this includes
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works by scholars like ibn hums corvo who wrote the ring of the dove and discussed various forms of
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love including same-sex attraction the ottoman period particularly 16th and 18th centuries has
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documented evidence of institutionalized same-sex practices especially in certain contexts like the
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korek dancers young male dancers who performed in feminine attire and relationships with certain
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sufi orders so this is like even in like the priesthood apparently was normal like in sufi orders
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and and the the you had like dancers who would dance as like males but it was during specific periods so
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then i ask okay when were the major collapses of muslim civilization and so i'll just remind you here
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okay so the first period when gays were normalized within muslim culture was the early abbasid period 8th to 9th
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century ce okay first collapse 9th to 10th century ce fragmentation of the abbasid caliphate the
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centralized authority of the abbasid caliphate based in baghdad gradually weakened with various regions
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breaking away under local diocese okay that supports it okay then the next period was a high medieval
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during the 10th and 13th centuries mongol invasion 13th century perhaps the most devastating
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shock to the central islamic lands the mongol quest of baghdad in 1258 ended the abbasid caliphate
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and caused innumerous destruction of infrastructure including libraries and irrigation systems
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many historians consider this a significant turning point and then the post-mongol period
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of 13th 15th centuries also directly after this period of acceptance 10th to 13th century
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while not a dark age this saw political fragmentation and some decline in certain
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scientific fields in the central islamic lands though there was still significant cultural and
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intellectual achievements okay well there was the other period the ottoman empire period
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particularly the 16th and 18th century okay the late ottoman periods the 18th and 19th century
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was the next collapse the ottoman period experienced relative decline compared to rapidly advancing
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european powers though it was more about comparative advancement rather than absolute regression
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so batting pretty much zero here with muslims it would look like if we're looking at muslim empires
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there was a direct correlation to normalization of set we've seen a sexual restrictions around gays
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and an imperial collapse so well i would try to justify this saying okay there are some cultural
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traditions that just don't support same-sex attraction but others do and clearly islam
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and same-sex attraction like these are just two cultural technologies or like this is a cultural
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technology with a lifestyle that is not compatible so let's go to the next one this one is is more
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interesting rome so what do you what do you you have some knowledge my guess with rome is that
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gay relationships especially like the man-boy lover gay relationships that were so normalized
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were not something that was late stage roman empire i think that was earlier stage and the late stage
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stuff i think maybe that was less common even or maybe even considered not okay intuition was is
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correct okay all right early roman republic period 509 to 20c bce same-sex relations were common
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and accepted within certain uh parameters governed by social status and roles rather than gender
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the key distinction in roman sexual morality was between being in active or a passive partner rather than the
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gender of one's partner for roman men maintaining the active penetrative role was socially acceptable
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regardless of their partner's gender the passive role was considered appropriate for only of those
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of lower status typically slaves prostitute and young men who had not yet reached full citizen status
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the system was firmly established by the mid-republic during the late republican early empire first
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century bce to first century ce we see abundant literary and artistic evidence of same-sex relations
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particularly in the work of poets like cactica catalyst tibolas and marshall emperor hadrian's
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relationship with antonius 11 7 to 138 ce is perhaps the most famous historical example it's worth noting
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that while same-sex practices were accepted others were stigmatized adult male citizens who preferred the
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passive role could face social ridicule and even legal penalties during certain periods as they violated
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expected gender norms the attitudes began to shift with the rise of christianity in the later empire
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4th century ce onwards which generally condemned same-sex relationships by the time of emperor
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justinian 6th century ce laws explicitly prohibiting same-sex relations were established there you go so
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we have the opposite case here the exact opposite case in in rome a normalization of some types now
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they still had rules around the types of gay sex you could have but normalization of some types of gay sex
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were normal yeah in the roman empire and actually sex became more restrictive with the roman empire's
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conversion to christianity particularly around gayness but i'd make a note here something you might not be
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thinking is what is reflected in this is the idea that the periods that proceed or are during the rise of a
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culture and cultural flourishing come with strict sexual norms and restrictions
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it's just male male sex needed still heavily regulated yes male male sex need it be among the
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restrictions but you need cultural restrictions and so what we might be seeing in something like you
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know islam or something like that is these periods represent a degradation of restrictions and rule
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following was in the religious system and that gayness specifically has nothing to do with it
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let's go the next one i'm thinking well greeks they were pretty gay well actually this was interesting
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because leather apron club argues that gayness was not widely practiced in ancient greece and he his
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arguments are pretty he's like a smart guy like i think he's got like an agenda but like he's a smart
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guy like his arguments are fairly compelling yeah um we go over his argument about jews in one of our
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episodes are jews actually not smarter and i argue that he's he's actually probably right but he's
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wrong in his second part where he goes and this is proof that they are cheating and that they have
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gotten all these powers through ill gay and i'm like well actually it's here's all the evidence that
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it's cultural and that's why they do better on on you know iq tests and everything like that is that
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they have cultural practices and dominance hierarchies tied to academic accomplishments that lead to them
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overperforming in these areas but his his episode on you know gays and ancient assets i'm like it was
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weird because it's almost like an anti-classic republican episode because you know if if gays
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weren't in ancient assets and they didn't contribute to the collapse of the greek city-states right
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so what like okay so you don't get the jd unwin argument there but okay so i decided to dig into this
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all right classical ascens 5th to 4th century bce is perhaps known for institutionalized pedestry
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relationships between adult men orestes and adolescent boys or nomes these relationships
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were often educational and mentoring in nature alongside their sexual component and were
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relatively formalized within aristocratic circles sparta had institutionalized same-sex
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relationships as well although for different purposes some scholars suggested that intimate bonds
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between warriors were encouraged at the weight of strength and military cohesion seeds had the
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famous sacred band an elite military unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers based on the belief
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that men would fight more valiantly to protect or impress their partners archaic period 8th to
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6th centuries bce evidence suggests that same-sex relationships were already well-established
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cultural practices seen in the poetry of sappho from lesbos whose name gives us the term lesbian and
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others actually we don't know if those poems were even written you know in a lesbian way there's
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actually a pretty strong argument they're not no but that is the mainstream position the one i just
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gave you but what's important is i ask the ai to go through every period of greek history and then
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tell me were gays accepted during that period or were they not accepted during that period so even if
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it's making a mistake here like overstating how accepted it was it then understating how unaccepted
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it was in later periods then they go to the symposium drinking party culture among elite men
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interactions were common as depicted in works like plato symposium as with rome greek attitudes were
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structured around status and roles rather than gender adult citizens were expected to take the
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active role while younger males or inferiors took the passive role these relationships typically
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followed age-based patterns the younger partner was expected to grow up and become the active partner
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in relationships with others the hellenistic period so this is a later period 323 to 31 bce after
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alexander the great so this is you know when when greece expanded and took over like most of the
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known world and was in its period of cultural height not cultural height but like this was like the the
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i guess the result of the success of greek culture now of course alexander the great came from a
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different cultural background he was seen as sort of barbarous by the greek people and you could argue
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that his ability to conquer them could be seen as a failing of greek culture which could to the
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argument that the earlier acceptance led to this collapse i don't really buy that i see his
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culture as contiguous with greek culture and so i would argue that if his culture had a success if
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the the hellenistic period had a success that was partially as a result of the whatever was being
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done before that in the hellenistic period several factors contributed to changing attitudes specifically
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they became significantly more anti-gay the mixing of greek and non-greek cultures led to more diverse
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perspectives on sexuality the rise of philosophical schools like stoicism emphasized sexual restraint more
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generally the decline of the polis the city state weakened some of the institutional context where
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same-sex relationships flourished and shifting political structures moved away from the citizen
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focused culture that had supported certain forms of same-sex relationships all right this trend is
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clear there's just a consistent loss of discipline that leads to civilizational decline it doesn't matter
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who is having sex with whom yeah i then asked another ai and it gave me the same results about ancient
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greek as in rome but then it also went into japan which wasn't another one so let's look at this
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okay japan the edo period 1603 to 1868 but no moral stigma historical homosexuality accepted especially
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among samurai outlawed in 1873 to 1880 to emulate the west now legal with protections post-world war ii
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recovery quick economic cultural powerhouse no correlation with disintegration acceptance linked to
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prosperity not decline challenging the claim so in only one of the instances in the islamic empire
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could i find now you know jd unwin said he went through 83 empires i'm gonna bet in his 83 empires
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he listed greeks and romans as having debauchery and then having civilizational collapse except now
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we're learning that that's hundreds of years apart so rome is such an obvious counter example i actually
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wanted to check this did he mark rome as you know a rare canceler example to his theory or did he mark
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it as one of the cases that supported his theory because if he marked it as one of the cases that
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supported his theory i think it's pretty clear that he was acting in bad faith in the other examples he
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was using um and he marked it one as a instance that supported his theory but he also seemed to be aware
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that the sexual morality of the later empire was much stricter than the sexual morality of the early
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empire and so here's how he argued against that because apparently he went into it in detail
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he focused on the uh specific aspects of roman sexuality that did follow his pattern for example
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he emphasized the supposed sexual discipline of the early republic in rome in contrast that it was
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the perceived excesses of the later republic and early empire now here i know that the sexual
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discipline of the early republic rome was written about in the later empire it was people looking back
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to the old days and being like oh things used to be so good in the old days it wasn't written about
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in the early empire that way then he tended to interpret later rome empire's increased sexual
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restrictiveness which came with christianization not as a genuine return to sexual restraint but as a
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reaction to previous excesses essentially arguing that the damage had already been done but that
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doesn't work with his three generation theories because that was a period of hundreds of years
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he sometimes conflated different periods of roman history in ways that made the timeline fit his
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theory better not always clearly distinguishing between republic and empire or between uh early
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and late empire in his analysis he emphasized other factors beyond just homosexuality looking at
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marriage practices divorce rates and other aspects of sexual behavior so it appears that and i hate to
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say this because you know it would be based and interesting if his theory was right but jd unwin appears to
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have been arguing in bad faith um and and not really looking at the data yeah i i get the mechanism of
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action right like it it it actually makes sense if you think through it you're like okay well if you
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loosen some cultural norms right there's likely other cultural norms that are being loosened and you see
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sort of a degradation across also historically speaking same-sex relationships were really dangerous
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uh there was a like like from a disease risk there's a reason like the aids phenomenon was such a danger to
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people like there there is a in a historic context a degree of selfishness to risk exposing your
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society the diseases that could come from this so you could argue it's a sign of moral degradation
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within a society maybe this is also why i would argue that that same-sex relationships between women are
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banned so rarely historically speaking they're they're not even banned in the bible which is interesting
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so like yeah what are your thoughts more broadly like i understand the mechanism of action but it
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doesn't appear to be being picked up by history yeah and i wonder why well because that's it's probably
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not a real phenomenon like my my guess is is that what you're actually seeing is that if gayness if
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you build a culture where gayness works and you're strict on other rules like other forms of stoicism
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being gayness is not deleterious to a culture yeah i think so here's here's my take in general
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is that because people have sometimes you know just based on your framework for sexuality people have
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very strong arousal or disgust responses to sexually related stimuli and the average man
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is going to have a strong disgust reaction to male male sex and as a result a lot of men are going to get
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really hung up on man to man sex and i think that makes them hyper focused on it as like a problem
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that arises in history i also really love your framework of cultures like from hard to soft to
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super soft cultures and i think that basically because people have such strong instinctual disgust
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and arousal reactions to various forms of sex and because most people haven't really thought about
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religions in terms of hard to soft but rather christianity and islam and buddhism that they're
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not really seeing this very clear pattern of no this is about how much discipline you have this is about
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how much fitness you're imparting to your adherence and that's what they're missing yeah yeah and that is
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not in in congruent with even i'd argue modern gay culture like there's been a branch of modern gay
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culture that you could call like wholesome gays or the gay dad phenomenon where they obviously if you
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like know them are actually pretty strict around a lot of the moral laws that they follow and they're
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they're also like high performing professionals who work really hard this is why so much of the data
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demonstrates that children of for example gay couples have better outcomes than your average kid
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because they are born to very conscientious hard-working parents but then you've got to ask
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okay well then what is causing the higher rates of abuse within gay culture and here i'd say it's
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cultural bifurcation that you get within gay culture i actually think a part of the gay the
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wholesome gay phenomenon is caused by the debauched gay phenomenon which is to say gays are sort of in a
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position that you as a straight man will never get to be in if you want to hedonism max you're like
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always better off being a gay man because like you can go to a party like i was just thinking like
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there is nothing as a straight man i can go to that's like the functional equivalent of like fire
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island or something like that 100 100 everyone's down f at any time like and you are the thing they
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desire like that is going to lead to a level of debauchery really quickly and because they're
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already breaking one sexual norm the normalization of breaking other sexual norms happened much faster
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was in the wider gay community so sort of like debauchery maxing became a part of the gay community
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and i think that the reactive wholesome gay community is in a big way like their wholesomeness is a is a
00:25:42.400
mirror because they have seen the lack of satisfaction that comes out of the debauched pathway that these
00:25:50.620
people often end up you know not satisfied with the choices they made when they hit their late 30s
00:25:59.580
and that they're like hey it actually made sense to follow a lot of those other christian people
00:26:03.500
right so or why or yeah yeah they could just be you know gay people who matured after having a lot of
00:26:08.940
fun and then decided that there was more more to life than just hedonic pleasure so i don't think
00:26:14.720
matured is fair i mean i think you can mature and learn more and still choose hedonism you know but
00:26:21.440
i i it's not the choice that i would make i i think that saying matured over over centralizes our
00:26:27.800
perspective but yeah what was the most surprising part of this for you because this was actually
00:26:31.880
surprising to me i had no idea that there was any gayness in islam ever oh really yes you don't see
00:26:38.280
the muslim guys like walking around holding hands all the time well i don't know like and the kissing
00:26:44.660
yeah the kissing the guys i was just like yeah i don't know like i i just i just saw that as a
00:26:50.900
cultural difference i don't see that as gay and i mean clearly it's not because it's super not allowed
00:26:55.480
by the way i mean you super get killed for being gay in a muslim country now yeah so like when i when i
00:27:00.860
see men in a super islamic country holding hands i'm like well they're definitely not like no homo
00:27:05.800
because actually that's a really good point if you look at muslim culture now like the culture in
00:27:10.740
like gaza or something like that yeah they are uniquely restrictive and have been for a long time
00:27:15.600
around things like gayness and yet are having the opposite of cultural flourishing they're in a state
00:27:20.160
of cultural like like drain degradation and you see that across the muslim world right now
00:27:26.920
yeah i'd actually argue generally speaking like i'm thinking modern times like let's say
00:27:33.500
post-industrial revolution or like around the period of the industrial revolution of modern
00:27:38.520
times i can't think of anywhere where it has been heavily suppressed that produced a flourishing of
00:27:44.740
art or culture well but let's look at this from a more practical standpoint right so like mainstream
00:27:50.380
culture permits gayness is way too loose what would a modern version of more a more hard culture
00:27:57.620
that nevertheless supports lgbtqia plus lifestyles like what would that look like would it force
00:28:08.220
strict monogamy would it force like with ancient rome more of a hierarchy what would it look like in a
00:28:15.320
way that imparts fitness and and corrects for some of the damaging elements of i mean gay and street
00:28:24.060
lifestyles well i mean i think the the the commandments that you sort of have within the
00:28:28.520
techno puritan tradition of severe austerity anti-idolatry you know these sorts of traits
00:28:35.720
not severe austerity but but austerity for the sake of austerity you know giving up things that that that
00:28:40.500
make your life marginally harder but are non-distractive to you like just not indulgent austerity
00:28:46.360
is a powerful one i think you know structuring relationships the way you would with you know
00:28:54.120
traditional straight relationships get married have kids etc so in other words a good gay relationship
00:28:59.660
would be just like a good straight relationship a business partnership first and foremost not focused
00:29:04.820
on pleasure or fun or things like that yeah not focused on pleasure focus on like a mutual goal for
00:29:12.480
your life i think that that would likely lead to more positive outcomes when i was noting like oh
00:29:17.160
where did people be like oh you're forgetting 1950s america like gays were not accepted there
00:29:22.100
and i'm like yeah but if i'm talking in like the grand scheme of human history i.e like acceptance of
00:29:28.100
gays they were actually pretty accepted they weren't like as extremely as accepted as they are today
00:29:33.160
but they were probably about as accepted as they were in ancient greece and you're like what you
00:29:37.580
could have also i don't see you could have been killed for being gay in ancient greece like even
00:29:41.540
i don't see the greatest generation as having a good culture and the reason why is they created
00:29:46.640
the boomers yeah like really you think that i mean those were the ones who really stopped having kids
00:29:53.860
and you know we we to a great extent judge the success of a culture by the number of grandchildren
00:29:59.720
they have yeah boomers just don't have a lot of kids and so the greatest generation at least in the
00:30:06.960
united states doesn't have a lot of grandchildren and i just don't really see that as a sign of
00:30:11.900
successful parenting yeah yeah i i thought this was an interesting dive and a lot of people have
00:30:19.680
expected us to flip on the gay thing and i'm just like it's oh to be like what happened i see that
00:30:24.020
this terrible because they know that we flipped on the trans thing right like at first we were just
00:30:30.060
like you know transitioning kids is wrong trans people in sports is wrong but like trans adults this is a
00:30:34.820
a real phenomenon that is not socially deleterious whereas now we're like it actually appears to be
00:30:42.520
a culture-bound illness that leads to really high rates of unaliving ideation yeah and so like
00:30:47.940
it doesn't even seem to create ideal outcomes for those who yeah like it doesn't it doesn't seem to
00:30:55.340
help anyone it seems closer to if somebody has anorexia which we argue in another video is also
00:31:01.880
a culture-bound illness you know overly represented in autistic populations focused on body dysmorphia
00:31:07.840
doesn't appear in most cultures just when they contact a culture that has anorexia all of a sudden
00:31:12.320
it appears is if you like removed trans women's uteruses to make them lighter and you're like look
00:31:17.140
they're happy with the surgery so clearly it's a good thing that we did this then everyone else would
00:31:21.360
be like what or and then you like removed one of their you mean if you removed anorexic women's
00:31:27.700
uteruses oh yeah you removed like one of anorexic women's kidney and a uterus you're like look they
00:31:32.980
can live without these organs right like but and they're happy with the surgery and you having been
00:31:37.880
an anorexic woman would be like yeah i'm lighter now like fewer organs yay like but but the mere fact
00:31:44.280
that they're okay with the surgery doesn't mean it's the best way we should focus on making them not
00:31:48.840
anorexic and i point out here that like like especially in doing this research again you see
00:31:54.140
gayness appear everywhere every culture has you know either prohibitions against it or whatever
00:31:59.580
you you you typically didn't even need prohibitions against trans because it's just not a thing that
00:32:05.120
existed historically or in any other culture you have different gender presentations but an
00:32:09.580
obsession was being seen as a specific gender is not seen anywhere in human history or in any other
00:32:15.080
culture and everywhere the gay trans people point to it they're just lying like it's clearly just
00:32:20.520
twinkie gay guys if you if you research that culture or just cross-dressers or just men who
00:32:25.700
present differently it's it's never an obsession was being seen as a specific gender to the point
00:32:30.560
that you will kill yourself if people don't see you as that gender which is the thing that makes it so
00:32:35.240
destructive it's the it's the gender dysphoria that's making it so destructive so that's why i changed
00:32:40.300
on that i changed on that because the evidence like as i gained access to more of it uh with this
00:32:45.020
unfortunately as i gain access to more evidence i'm just not seeing evidence that there is a broad
00:32:50.300
civilizational reason to ban this yeah but there is a broad necessity to for everyone to consider
00:33:02.780
what what is the hard culture version of your values yeah you should not be living a soft a soft
00:33:10.160
culture life whatever your values may be and maybe don't accelerate debauchery for the sake of debauchery
00:33:16.580
like i i would definitely say that there are some parts of gay culture that are likely socially
00:33:20.620
deleterious yeah and there are parts of street culture that are socially deleterious yeah so i am
00:33:27.080
agnostic as to the configuration of it so yeah change your mind about anything from this conversation or not
00:33:34.560
you know i hadn't if someone had been like if someone had made the blanket claim
00:33:41.000
that every time a culture starts to accept same-sex relationships it starts to fall i wouldn't
00:33:49.340
immediately have a rebuttal i'd be a little concerned like oh what really i'm not sure about that i don't
00:33:54.400
know i'm gonna have to look this up and i'm glad that my intuition about ancient room was correct i am
00:34:00.180
glad that basically this your findings broadly demonstrate that it's that the big correlatory factor
00:34:07.060
is not acceptance of same-sex relationships it is acceptance of looser social norms yeah and just
00:34:14.000
you know the way that somebody would argue out of this just so i can provide the comment i would
00:34:18.300
is well rome functionally socially collapsed long before the empire fell and that this social collapse
00:34:27.120
happened before the christians took power before the restrictions on sexuality happened and then they'd
00:34:32.260
say of ancient greece well you know alexander the greek alexander did represent a collapse of the
00:34:39.820
greek city-state empire so couldn't you say that it led to collapse in that way and we know sparta had
00:34:45.540
basically collapsed at the powerhouse from before before you know alexander mopped up so can't we say
00:34:50.660
that it did lead to a collapse but i'd be like i guess but then you just get to choose where the
00:34:58.520
collapse happened to fit your timeline right yeah it's it's just very convenient i'm using ai without
00:35:04.480
biasing it i'm i am saying okay when was gayness accepted in one chat and then when did empires
00:35:10.480
collapse in a different chat you know right yeah so so i'm basing it on what the ai has to say about
00:35:15.620
this yeah which i feel more comfortable with so yeah i'm glad you put that out there though i guess
00:35:23.120
a lot of people are going to be so disappointed so mad oh malcolm oh malcolm just how how dare you
00:35:32.340
say it's okay to be to be gay i love how mad leftists get when when pronatalism gets attention
00:35:39.560
publicly or happy if the attention is seen as negative possibly put us on the front page you were the top
00:35:48.720
post which i thought was really fun they're like oh look cnn's making fun of pronatalism and it's
00:35:55.100
like i'm sure they would like jump to our side if they realized you guys existed as a significant
00:36:00.560
movement 17 by the way was that of americans or who was in the samples americans it was census
00:36:05.880
representative wanted it's not that the world would be better without people yeah all right
00:36:22.760
okay let's put it up on the table take a look wow wow what's up is it okay