Response to Sean Quigley’s Article in the Brown Spectator: A Defense of SexPowerGod
Note: Sean Quigley’s original article can be found here.
Mr. Quigley, I must commend you. Your article in regard to Sex Power God (hence referred to as SPG) represents nothing short of a tour de force of homophobia, hypocrisy, fallacy and hysteria. Throughout your screed you carelessly and gleefully compare consensual acts between adults to, among many other things, infanticide and Islamic fundamentalist fascism. The latter comparison is hilariously ironic for reasons that will be fleshed out later. While the ways in which SPG was publicized around Brown campus were disagreeable, your condemnation goes much further than that, and disgustingly so.
Central to your frothing rant is a vitriolic indictment against the presupposed immorality of homosexuality, glued together by a fallacious slippery slope argument that implies that the tolerance of homosexuality will cause Western civilization to be overrun by Islamic fascists. Your condemnation is all the more amusing given that an overwhelming body of research—that ultimate expression of the “logical reasoning” that you purport to defend—demonstrates that homosexuality is not a voluntary characteristic. However, since you bring up the topic of Islamic fundamentalist fascism so eagerly, it should be painfully obvious that what separates our society from those that give rise to mujahideen, and thus gives Western liberalism its strength, is the tolerance of “deviant” modes of behavior, so long as these behaviors occur in private and result in no outside harm. After all, SPG itself takes place in a closed building that one must make a conscious choice to enter, not outside on the Main Green as you would prefer to imply. Indeed, Salman Rushdie, a figure whom you must admit is well versed in opposing Islamic fascism, has called pornography a “standard-bearer for freedom, even civilization” due to its role as the only alternative to the strict moralistic orthodoxy that exists in many Islamic societies. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, another such figure, has repeatedly criticized the lack of sexual freedom for homosexuals in conservative Islamic societies and has produced a sequel to her famous short film “Submission” to this effect. Furthermore, your rhetoric in opposition to SPG mirrors that of Islamic fascist writers such as Sayyid Qutb, who wrote in 1949 that jazz music “is created… to satisfy their love of music and to whet their sexual desires,” and who constantly railed against the relatively loose sexual morals of American culture, such as allowing men and women to interact. Your use of the specter of Islamic fascism to justify your moralistic opposition to homosexuality and what you deem to be “deviant” is a stultifying exercise in hypocrisy.
In your article, you also cite a Rhode Island law that bans the advertisement of profit-oriented “lewd” material without acknowledging that the law you cite goes largely unenforced even by the proper authorities. The Providence Phoenix and its many advertisements for “escorts” and a strip club’s clearly profit-oriented Friday breakfast special entitled “Legs ‘n Eggs” can attest to this fact. This is the case because Providence law enforcement realizes that there are things far more harmful to society than a few revealing pictures. I agree that the SPG advertising campaign was over the line in terms of infringing on the rights of others, and also that most of the naked people in these advertisements really shouldn’t have been. Being introverted and somewhat religious, I would not take part in spectacles such as SPG myself. However, I refuse to use this opposition as a basis for the spewing of homophobia and the advocacy of rigid moralistic orthodoxy. After all, the presence of rigid moralistic orthodoxy precludes the existence of the American freedom that you vociferously claim to defend.
Sincerely,
Hunter Fast ‘12
