Gerald Plessner - Gays, Gaza and a Brave New World

Last week (Aug 10), Gerald Plessner advises his mother would approve of gay marriage. No one has more right than a son to speak for his departed mother. Actually he says she 'says' “homosexuals were some of the nicest people I knew.” I agree and straights can be more mean-spirited - as well as spiritually “mean” (in the old sense). In fact the religious right is instructed to believe that we are ALL sinners. So what’s the problem? As his mother 'said': "Haven't they been pushed around enough?" Wouldn’t his mother have known marriage as a bond both spiritual and physical resulting in Gerald. By careful omission, he doesn’t tell his “blessed mother” that family is being redefined to suit a diversity of rights.

Now (Aug 17) he gets sillier about a concern also close to his heart. But I don’t know Plessner, a former intelligence analyst, can be so naïve. He expresses not only pleasant platitudes but once again blaming religion as a cause for social disruption. Yes, Ariel Sharon has done the practical thing but it is clear it was also unilateral and not part of any negotiations. There is no Sharon and Abbas as there was Begin and Sadat. There will be no peace prize for razing a few thousand homes unless the Palestinians freely want peace. Yes, they must be "tired of war and poverty" brought on by their oppressors (corrupt and cruel) - Arafat and Hamas! I think it is Plessner’s understanding that if passions of faith and ancient traditions of kinship and ethnicity disappeared that peace would reign, needing only a few UN blue helmets to dispatch any remaining discontents with happy words and happy gas. Such was the hope of utopia found in Huxley’s Brave New World. No family, no faith but tolerance and openness. Yet this is not reality and I would rather live in a world where faith and commitments to family and nation cause discontent than one without what gives purpose to life.