According to a poll conducted by The Economist, over 80 percent of Republicans and over 30 percent of Democrats oppose gay marriage. According to the same poll, roughly 30 percent of Democrats and 15 percent of Republicans consider Gay Rights a “very important” political issue.
A somewhat mortified analyst of the poll results cited the following statistics: “A 52% majority of Americans thinks homosexuality is morally wrong. One man in five thinks it should be illegal.” *
These statistics depressed me a little bit, and reminded me of the same way I felt in 2004 when Ohio, along with 12 or 13 other states, passed anti-gay amendments to their state constitutions (proponents likely considered them “pro-sanctity-of-marriage” amendments). Anyway, back during the 2004 election, I was not a blogger, and had no venue for venting my frustrations. I realize relatively few people read this blog, so I might not change a lot of minds out there, but at least I will feel better having externalized my thoughts and feelings about the issue.
Anyway, as the title implies, this week’s Top 5 outlines reasons that people justify discriminating against homosexuals, and why I think they are bogus. And here they are:
Note: I am leaving out perhaps the biggest reason of all that people discriminate against gays, namely that homosexuality is against God’s will. I am leaving this out because of the nature of the “God” argument. I cannot honestly claim to know what God’s will is, and even if I did, I doubt I could convince anyone of it through rational argument. So, for purposes of this blog, I will stick to ideas that can be argued empirically, not from feelings, beliefs, or Bible passages.
5. Homosexuality is a perversion of sexual normalcy, akin to other perversions, like bestiality or necrophilia.
While homosexuality is clearly different from heterosexuality, there is an important distinction to be made here. Aside from being listed in the Bible as sins, there are other reasons that bestiality and necrophilia are deplorable from a moral standpoint. As a society, we place a high value on consent as a participant in the sexual experience — hence why we consider rape a heinous crime. In the case of bestiality, there is no way to obtain consent from the animals that people are having sex with. Even if this were possible, I doubt that most animals would consent, and in any case, I don’t think consent is a prominent concern in the minds of the people who commit acts of bestiality. Ditto for necrophilia. I think that homosexuality is more comparable to oral sex. Oral sex could obviously never be used for procreation, thus it is solely for pleasure, and differing from the sexual norm of intercourse, but nonetheless an act that lovers engage in voluntarily (under normal circumstances, anyway). Thus, people who want to legislate against sodomy or homosexuality on the grounds that it is a sexual perversion must also be willing to legislate against oral sex. I realize that some states like Georgia have upheld laws punishing oral sex in our lifetimes (there was a high school football player jailed in Georgia a few years ago for engaging in oral sex with another minor), but again, I think this is a mistake.
4. Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman.
Really, this argument boils down to, “the way we’ve always done things is the right way.” Again, God and Bible aside, there is no indisputable reason that marriage must be between a man and a woman. Traditionally yes, marriage is a bond between a man and a woman that creates new family bonds, typically when the man and the woman involved plan on having children to create a “nuclear” family. However, many of the traditions having to do with marriage are religion specific; e.g. a Greek Orthodox wedding is different from a Jewish wedding is different from a Roman Catholic wedding, etc. Also, traditions change over time. No one would hold it against a heterosexual married couple if they didn’t have children (in fact, sometimes they can’t). Also, divorce used to be socially abhorrent; now it is practically the norm. I’m not saying that any of these statements represent progress or steps backward, I’m just saying that the specifics of marriage as an institution need not be set in stone. If the state wants to sanction state marriages for Gay and Lesbian citizens who love each other and want to become family with one another, it wouldn’t have to step on the toes of any religious ceremonies. This is a logical extension of the policy of allowing different religious wedding ceremonies to exist and embrace their own respective traditions.
Why is it important that gays be allowed to marry? In the name of social tolerance and equality, we should allow all productive members of society equal opportunity to the same rights and privileges. We already let gays vote, we let them drive (an example of privilege), and they pay the same taxes that we do. If we hold something like marriage over their heads and say, “we can have this, but you can’t”, it implies that we are somehow special or superior. It is discriminatory, like “separate but equal” schools, or the infamous Jim Crow Laws. Giving a certain group of people inferior citizenship status should never be a goal of our government.
Note: for those who argue it’s just the word “marriage” that bothers them, and that we can have “civil unions”, I have no real problem with this, as long as all included rights, benefits, privileges, etc. are the same. Then again, this is a form of word discrimination. Couldn’t we just as easily make a distinction between civil and religious marriages? It’s not like “marriage” is a proper noun. You could say, “this song is a perfect marriage of rhythm and melody”, and no one would call you a heretic for sullying the sacred word of Marriage. They wouldn’t say, “Marriage can’t be between abstract ideas like music! It’s only between a man and a woman!” That’s why I find the “word” argument slightly silly.
3. Homosexuality is unnatural.
This is an argument that I cannot scientifically prove or disprove. I have heard people claim that there are biological studies out there reporting homosexual behavior in animals. I know male dogs hump each other, which dog owners will tell you is a dominance thing (I don’t know if this really proves anything though, because male some dogs will hump almost anything — leg, pillows, whatever). While I cannot disprove this argument, I don’t really need to. This is because the question of whether homosexuality is natural or not bears no relevance to whether we should legislate or discriminate against it. There are lots of things that are “unnatural” that we aren’t averse to — in fact, we benefit from many of them. Was industrialization natural? Is Western medicine natural? Are cell phones and computers natural? Not that I am trying to claim that Homosexuality is some kind of step of evolutionary progress (although tolerance of it might be). I am simply saying that “Natural” doesn’t always mean better, and “Unnatural” doesn’t always mean bad. Again, you can use oral sex as an analogy. Do you see animals engaging in oral sex? No. Is the “natural” purpose of sex reproduction and not pleasure? Arguably, yes. Should oral sex for pleasure then be a crime? Hells no. Again, if you disagree with me on this point, and you think oral sex should be a crime, then I probably won’t convince you, but I hope you can see my reasoning.
2. Homosexuality is a choice.
Again, while this statement has yet to be empirically or scientifically proven or disproven, it is not relevant to the issue of Gay Rights. True, scientists has yet to find a “Gay Gene”, but something doesn’t have to be genetic to be involuntary. There are many factors in the environment that can lead to involuntary changes in a person’s body and mind, including hormone imbalances, nutrition, etc. I have read theories that homosexuality may result from exposure to different hormone levels in the womb, but that is beside the point. Regardless of whether homosexuality is a choice, we do not necessarily have the right to legislate or discriminate against it. Do you know what is indisputably a choice? Religion. You know what else is a choice? Owning a gun. These two choices are defended as “rights” in our great country’s Constitution. So clearly, choice is not the issue here. You might come back and say, “Well, murder is a choice, and we have laws against that”. The key difference is, we make laws against choices that hurt people, or society as a whole. Which leads me two my final reason…
1. Homosexuality is somehow harmful to the fabric of society.
This is sort of a synthesis of the other arguments, I know, but I figure this must be the root of the anti-gay argument, because most other things that we legislate against are harmful to the fabric of society, such as murder, theft, rape, fraud, slander, jaywalking…okay, maybe jaywalking is a stretch. But jaywalking makes the road more dangerous for drivers, right? Homosexuality doesn’t even harm society that much. Honestly, who is harmed by other people being gay? Who is even placed in danger by others being gay? I suppose, if you absolutely had to find a danger posed by homosexuals, you could say that by harboring gays in our country we are incurring further threats from radical foreigners who hate them, such as Mamoud Ahmadinejad, but then you’re implying that people who want to discriminate against gays have something in common with Mamoud Ahmadinejad, which I don’t think they would appreciate. But really, if my neighbor decides to be gay, am I harmed in any way? My property is not damaged in any way, my neighborhood becomes no less safe, no one in the neighborhood is more likely to be oppressed, chastised, or alienated (besides perhaps the gay man himself), and I endure no physical or mental suffering (aside from mental suffering caused by my own intolerance). Where then is the damage done to society? I realize that in Biblical times, population growth was a paramount goal, so things that prevented procreation — such as homosexuality, masturbation, and contraception — were disadvantageous to society as a whole. But now that the world is pretty overrun with people, procreation is not as high of a priority as it used to be. As a society we’re pretty much okay with contraception and masturbation now, so why does homosexuality still draw so much fear and loathing? The primary threat of homosexuality is that it takes potential baby-makers off the market, and aside from the looming collapse of our Social Security (not entirely the fault of gay people, by the way), I don’t think that really poses a serious risk to society anymore. And with the aide of surrogate mothers, gay and lesbian couples can even produce children if they really want. So why, then, do Gays pose such a serious threat that we need to legislate against them and subjugate them to a less-than-equal status?
In terms of immediate, tangible urgency, this issue is perhaps not as pressing as say, the War in Iraq, where thousands of lives may depend on the decisions we make in the immediate future. But from an ideological standpoint, this issue is of grave importance to the future direction to our country. Will we continue to be a country who, as a majority, discriminates against a peaceful, productive group of our own citizens? Are we going to continue to codify our own fear and prejudice into state law? Or will we wake up to the reality that most of the Western World already has, that Gay and Lesbian citizens can be valued, equal members of society? I hope, for our sake, that the forces of love and tolerance will prevail. Vote Kucinich. I’m just kidding; vote for whoever you want. Just don’t be a hater. Tootles.
