The pit thread here discusses what I like to call “gay anti-gay activists.” These are people that you suspect are using an anti-homosexual platform to hide or deny their own gay urges. Another way of putting it is “he doth protest too much.”
Anyway, a looooong time ago my friend brought me to his Southern Baptist church. It was a hateful place, just perfect for a rebellious teenager who wanted to piss his parents off. I started attending regularly (It was almost 20 years ago, and I was a kid! Leave me alone). The church didn’t have a pastor to deliver the sermons, but rather a rotation among some of the male members. It was a this week Steve would deliver the sermon, and next week Joe will kind of arrangement.
There was one particular member, who always made sermons reminding us how evil homosexuality is. There was also a particular youngish member (in my age group) who had recently been discovered as struggling with homosexual urges, so I think these sermons were directed at him. The adult man described homosexuality as “selfish” quite frequently. One of the arguments this man made was, word for word (I’ll never forget it!) “homosexuality, taken to it’s logical conclusion, means the complete destruction of the human race in a single generation.”
I remember thinking to myself, “dude, not everyone’s gay…” But now with the wisdom of age I’m wondering whether that guy just assumed that everyone has gay urges. If everyone WAS gay, his argument would have been a little less wrong. So was this man just projecting his own gayness on to the rest of the world? At 14 years old, I would have said he’s just an angry old dude fighting against what he thinks is evil. Now, I’m pretty sure he had some serious identity issues, and was almost certainly in the closet.
I think that he thought gays were also dumb, if he thought that an entire homosexual population of males would result in the end of society. Sure, we might have to have a lottery to determine who has to do the deed, but I feel confident that when the fate of the race is at hand someone would step up to the plate.
Sounds as if you really want to believe he was gay, tho. That seems to be the go-to argument directed toward anyone who utters anything remotely disapproving of homosexuality.
I strongly suspect he felt a sexual attraction to men, and assumed that most or all people do.
I, personally, wouldn’t refer to him as gay, as I have no reason to think he was mostly or exclusively attracted to men, and because he clearly didn’t identify as such.
When I hear people say things like homosexuality is a lifestyle choice it makes me think that said person has chosen to be straight. If someone has to make a conscious decision to be heterosexual than they are not heterosexual.
I don’t think people who hate gays are necessarily closeted gays themselves. I think this particular person might have been gay, because he made arguments that suggest he thinks resisting gay urges is normal. People like Phelps, who just spew pure hatred without the “don’t fall for the temptations!” sermon don’t strike me as closet gays.
Off the topic here, but are you just making a joke with this? I don’t see how it follows Church —> piss off parents. Most parents would be thrilled if their kid went to church, assuming they view it as a wholesome place that keeps kids “off the streets.”
I love this argument. Yep, we’re on the brink of extinction, what with seven BILLION of us on the planet. At least we’re up from our previous near-extinction level of six BILLION.
I get it that all people are not the same, yo. I’m just saying that it doesn’t follow that a “rebellious teenager” would choose church as something to piss off his parents. Drinking, cigs, tattoos, that sort of thing, is the more usual choice, as you might be aware.
Well, each of those seven BILLION has a life span of roughly 80 years.
It’s not a refutation of his “argument” to say how many humans there are on the planet.
I put the word in quotation marks because I feel his claim does not quite deserve the dignity of “argument.” It’s not clear to me, for example, how the “logical conclusion” of homosexuality is that everyone would become gay. No one should become a lawyer, by the same “logical conclusion;” if everyone were a lawyer, we would starve because no one would be growing or distributing food.
And even if everyone were gay, while I think we’d see a drop in population growth, the obvious desire of gay couples to become parents would undoubtedly result in births, with arrangements made as to the adoption of the child by one of the contributing parents. I think accidental, unplanned pregnancies would become a thing of the past, but the race would not be likely to die off.
Just take my word for it, when I say that joining this particular church was a calculated decision meant to do as much damage as possible to my family. I wasn’t a particularly well adjusted or far seeing teenager, even compared to other teenagers.