The Radical Right Should Fight For Me

Great Debates
1

Call it a debate, call it witnessing, call it a rant if you must, but I want to see if I have this right:

The radical right can’t stand us homos, not because we’re not all God’s children (of course - they’d never advocate violence, but a little discrimination here and there is acceptable), but on the grounds that, by being all uppity and not sitting in the back of the bus and having the gall to ask to be a part of their oh-so-sacred, Brittany Spears/Anna Nicole Smith/Pamela Anderson Lee/The Bachelorette-inspired, holier-than-thou institution of marriage (which I daresay queers, having to fight really hard and really long to get the right, likely take it a lot more seriously than it seems the radical right does), plus asking for little insignificant things like equal protection under the law, adopting children, and being able to visit our loved ones in the hospital, that means we’re shoving it down their throats. By trying to get these things, plus the sheer audacity of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy being a popular show, means we’re trying to dictate morality to them by saying, “Hey, guess what? We’re exactly like you!” They don’t like that. They hate that. They want to be able to hate us without fear of retribution.

Does that sound about right so far?

So how come when some radical right judge tries to put the Ten Commandments - THE governing document of Christianity - up in a public governmental courtroom, they argue forit? Separation of church and state aside, isn’t that precisely what they don’t want us to do - shove our “lifestyle” down their throats? And cries of “America was built on Christianity” just don’t cut it. The fact remains that this is not (or at least isn’t supposed to be) a Christian nation, and that there are quite a few - likely, combined, the majority of the population - who are not Christian, so by fighting to keep that monument, they are doing just that - shoving their lifestyle down our throats.

That said, I’d like to say this:

Sexual orientation is not a choice. Religion is.

By that argument alone, you’d think the radical right would actually be fighting for equal rights, right? I mean, they all say it’s a choice to be queer. Now regardless of whether or not that’s true, it’s irrelevant, because it’s even more true that religion is a choice. So doesn’t it make sense that they should argue in favor of the right to choose and the freedom of expression? 'Cause I might have been born this way, but if you fight to have our rights limited and our freedoms stifled, saying that our “choice” isn’t fit for public consumption, isn’t that really just tying the noose around your own neck?

Oh, the tyranny of the majority, how it wounds us all so.

Esprix

2

Well, yeah, they’re hypocrites. But I don’t see them caring much about principle anyway.

Social conservatives who push their views into politics: ×
Political conservatives who stick by their principles: /

3

A suggestion Esprix. I know you consider yourself “The Gay Guy” on the board, but not everybody equates you with homosexuality, expecially newer members. Perhaps you should ask a mod to change the title of the thread to better describe the subject being debated.

4

I’ll call it a rant. :slight_smile:

Call this a nit-pick if you want, but I can assure you that the majority of Americans are Christians.

PS: Welcome back.

5

Ah, but you see, God has told them that their lifestyle is the correct one, right there in the Bible, and that it’s their duty to see that everyone follows it. And God’s law is of course far more important than ANY secular law could be - so when they violate the separation of church and state, they’re actually doing the right thing. One is duty-bound to disobey an unjust, immoral law.

Sexual orientation may not be a choice, but sexual expression certainly is. You don’t HAVE to have sex. And who says you get to choose your religious beliefs? There’s only one Truth. And you MUST accept that Truth and follow God’s Holy Laws, or you’re going to burn in Hell forever.

Why, by prohibiting same-sex unions and criminalizing even consensual homosexual relationships, they’re actually acting in your best interests, Esprix. Better you fornicating sodomites should be denied Earthly pleasures, better you should rot in jail for the rest of your life if necessary, than burn forever in Hell because you’re too mislead and too sinful to keep from giving in to Satanic temptations. You should show more gratitude - the Radical Right is actually looking out for your welfare! You should pray more, and read the Bible, and eventually you’ll come to see that I am right.

(Needless to say, the above views are NOT my own. Gotta’ love the Radical Right - the 21st-century American version of God’s Hounds.)

6

One minor quibble:

I firmly believe that once homosexual marriage becomes generally available it will be treated just as shabbily by participants therein as it is by heterosexuals. (although I don’t think that abuse of that institution by openly homosexual celebrities will soon ramp up to the level of some of the nuptial all-stars you mentioned, if only for PR reasons).

7

I feel your pain.
Well, I can’t really know it but it does seem unfair.
The radical right.
Those are people I’ve mostly gone to church with.
I don’t think they can be reached or made to understand.

When the time for an idea has come though, a certain momentum or critical mass is reached and things change.
Keep the hope.

8

Can someone define what the “radical right” is?

9

Well, I really don’t equate religion with sexual preference, so I don’t think it’s hypocritical for the radical right to promote the one and discriminate the other.

It’s evil and wrong, but not hypocritical.

That’s my opinion anyway.
As for religion and sexual preference and choice, I’m not sure you’re right either.

I suppose I could decide not to be Catholic now, if I wanted. I suppose it’s even possible that I could have chosen to be say, Jewish, when I was a child, if I really wanted to.

Suffice it to say I was raised Catholic, and the degree of choice I had in the matter wasn’t exactly total. Deciding to be Jewish would have been pretty difficult for me.
As for your choice, I really can’t speak about it, and see no reasonable conclusion other than to accept you word that you didn’t have any.

This doesn’t mean that you speak for all gay people, or for all people in general when you say sexual preference isn’t a choice.

Certainly, you don’t speak for me.

I suspect that I naturally am heterosexual. I also suspect that had I been raised to be a homosexual with sufficient pressure, I would probably be homosexual. Probably, I’d be somewhat conflicted about it, and I’d find women secretly attractive and feel shame about it, but for all intents and purposes I would most likely function as a homosexual, and identify myself as such.

I submit to you that in such a circumstance, I would actually be a homosexual.

I also tend to think pretty highly of myself and my abilities and force of will. Just as I could decide to be stop being Catholic and become a Jew, if I put my mind to it, I’m pretty sure I could become a homosexual.

I think I have some choice in the matter, and I think I could be happy as a jew or a homosexual, or whatever.
So I think there’s a great deal of choice in the matter. At least for me.

Maybe I’m fooling myself but I do credit myself with flexibility and adaptablility and willpower and the ability to be happy in a variety of circumstances.

So, again, I think there’s choice. Maybe more than most people think.
YMMV. This is just the way I figure it.

10

Well, then what would you say to the people who’d tell you that if you were “pressured” into it, if you were “conflicted” and felt “shame” about it, that: a) it wasn’t really a “choice,” and b) you aren’t really homosexual, just doing homosexual things? I assume from what you say that you do not think genuine pleasure and genuine love of the same sex is necessary to be considered “gay.”

11

Scylla:

You say you are naturally heterosexual, but could be "forced’ into homosexuality if raised in a certain way. So how does that make you naturally hetero? Are you implying that gay people are raised to be homosexual? Are you saying they could choose to be heterosexual by an act of will? Your argument makes no sense to me.

12

I would say that they probably shouldn’t judge my identity. In what way I would have responded or capitulated (or resisted) that pressure also goes into my identity.

I feel somewhat conflicted and occasionally shameful about being Catholic, yet that is what I am. That is how I identify myself. After all the pressure, internal forces and external forces, and what have you, that is how I came out and that is how I choose to be.

If somebody tells me I’m not Catholic because of conflicts and pressure I have experienced to be so, I would think they were assholes for presuming to question my identity in such fashion.

I think I am strong enough that I could have chosen diffently. I think this applies to my sexuality as well.

Not at all. I just don’t think it has to happen completely and totally by accident to be “genuine.” Love and pleasure sometimes take work, you know?

13

Scylla, your suggestion might be more believable were it not for the fact that there are many gays who have tried, sincerely, devotedly, desperately, for years and years, with prayer and therapy and gods know what, to be straight. And failed utterly. Some, sad to say, are still trying and failing, because of the warped nature of some portions of our society.

This is not to say that there aren’t people between the extremes on the Kinsey scale, or that you aren’t one of them. But there’s a word for people who can choose to pursue romance with people of either gender, and it’s not gay or straight, but bisexual.

14

Am I the only one?

There are a lot of similarities in the way I practice them-

Both require a special “hat”

Both involve swaying and rocking

Both involve joyously shouting “Oh Lord!” at intervals

Both are marvellous things to do on a Friday night

Both place great importance on a certain scar I got when I was 8 days old

And most of all

Both make me crave a good kugel.

15

You addressed my (a) quite thoroughly? But what about my (b)?

16

I imagine that if I raised to be homosexual and everybody around me was homosexual, I would probably be homosexual though my natural tendencies are towards heterosexuality.

Without pressure either way, I would be heterosexual.

No. Though I guess some could. I don’t think it very likely. If I had to guess (and that’s all it is) I would imagine that most gay people tend towards homosexuality. As they mature they are under pressure to be heterosexual. Depending on how important their sexual preference is to them and their identity I, how important conformity is, and a whole bunch of other factors both innate and environmental, they may come to repress their homosexuality and be heterosexual with degrees of success varying from very good to pretty damn poor, or they may go with their natural tendencies and be homosexual.

That’s just my guess, though. If somebody tells me they have no choice in the matter, how can I doubt their description of their own identity? Would I know them better than they know themselves?

For me, at least, I don’t feel that it was a total imperative of nature that I be as I am. I think the outcome was predicated both on my upbringing./environment and my own choice.

I suspect that some do, and some could. Maybe all. I don’t doubt anybody that tells me they can’t.

More importantly, I don’t see any reason why they should. It is their identity after all.

What I’m taking issue with is the absolute “sexual identity is not a choice.”

I look at it this way. The potential that I could be, my nature, is like a negative on a piece of film. As I live my life, and environment and choices I make occur, that negative becomes developed. I can be developed in a number of ways, and in some ways the colors may come out differently and different aspects of the picture may be emphasized and others deemphasized thought internal and external forces. I think that one of those features or colors is sexual preference.

17

But I’m not bisexual. I only find women attractive. I simply think that if I was committed to being homosexual I could probably be homosexual. I could learn to find men genuinely attractive sexually, and be happy that way.

18

No. If you could find men genuine sexually attractive, you are bisexual. Not the perfectly balanced case for whom gender makes no difference at all, but that’s beside the point.

Anyways, it’s more or less meaningless for you or I to imagine what it might be like, growing up in a society with pressure to conform to a homosexual model, and whether we could operate in such an environment in a contended way. I have heard testimonials of gays who have spent entire lifetimes struggling to be heterosexual, and only succeed in wreaking havoc on their emotional health. Suggesting, without the benefit of anything more than a thought experiment, that it’s just a matter of the right social environment and you can fall in love with socially approved people, is insulting to such people, and trivializing the suffering they have endured.

I agree that it matters not, with regards to the issue of equal treatment, whether sexual orientations are chosen or innate. But some respect for the experience of those treated unequally is in order, and that includes not telling them they could be straight if only they’d try.

19

Leaper:

I would think they would also be jerks in B: Who would they be to tell me what I was? If I was doing homosexual and happy doing it, and identified myself that way… in what way would I not be homosexual?
I guess what I’m thinking is this:

We spend our whole lives mastering ourselves. When we are infants, we have to learn how to see for chrissakes. I’ve spent my whole life mastering myself, learning how to do and be all kinds of things. Some were difficult, some came quite easy. I learned how to read, how to overcome my dyslexia, run marathons, love, hide my feelings, show my feelings, interract, all kinds of stuff.

The most important thing I feel learned, and the thing I got better at as I learned and became more things was… self mastery.

I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

I think that within reasonable bounds, I could do what I want to do and be what I want to be.

I think it’s that way for most people.
Now, if I want to step outside myself and make a dangerous statement and speak for other people, I will say this:

Within reasonable bounds (and sexual preference is about as reasonable as you can get) I think people should be allowed to be what they want to be and feel what they want to feel and should be under no outside compulsion or pressure to be anything else.

An argument against homosexuality has been made saying that if a gay person really wants to be straight, they can, and therefore that anybody who is homosexual is that way by choice and therefore chooses to be something outside the norm, and therefore chooses to be a deviant, and that therefore it is their fault or they can change back or whatever.

This is a pretty shitty argument, and a pretty terrible one and a pretty prejudiced one. I think it is wrong because it violates somebody’s identity. A person’s identity is simply what environment, and tendency and choice have all combined together.

The easiest way to defeat this argument is to deny the component of choice. Since it is only one ingredient and variable, it’s not that hard to make the argument that it’s not all that important.

Do that, successfully and the bad people have to shut up and go away, and everybody is happy and free to be what they want to be, right?

So no problem in that perspective.
In other perspective it creates a problem. I think highly of myself, and I think pretty highly of humanity. I think we demonstrate adaptibility and flexibility as our strongest defining characteristics. I think our power of choice regardless of circumstance is our greates component.

I put a lot of faith in our determination and abilities to do things. I think on the grand scale of going to the moon, and climbing Everest, and learning to see (which most babies figure out,) and running four minute miles, etc etc.

I think it’s kind of silly to say that we as humans generally are powerless to master ourselves in such simple and easy ways as our sexual preferences. I think we’d be pretty damaged goods.

I think saying “we can’t” is a bad argument. It says “I’m damaged goods incapable of mastering my own destiny and self.” It says “I have no control over myself.”

I think the better argument is “What I am and why and how I came to be this way and what if anything I can do about it is who I am and it’s none of your damn business, and I don’t see any reason why I or anybody else should feel the need to answer to anybody else or change for anybody else unless I want to, so don’t even think about questioning it, because I personally don’t see why I should give a crap about you or anybody else thinks about it.”

20

I just think it’s a matter of self-mastery, not innate sexuality, for me.

But I wasn’t, up until my previous post I wasn’t talking about anybody but myself. I can’t tell them what they are or what they can do, or why they are unhappy, or why they failed. Nor, would I question their experience.

Taking a guess, I would think that most fail because they don’t do it for the right reason, because there is no right reason and they know this, and they are tortured and fail because they know they are doing something wrong… not because they can’t.

But that’s just my general guess.