I would like to (somewhat belatedly) nod vigorously in Siege’s direction. (With a bit of odd irony, as the example she chose to illustrate the point is one that’s currently preoccupying some parts of my family . . . .)
Yes, there exist people who engage in actions that I consider blatantly immoral, even, to pick a bit of rhetoric that floats around a bit, destructive to the family and disruptive to the fabric of civil society. I don’t tell them so. I don’t tell them so because, well, it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good. (And is, in fact, quite likely to be disruptive to the fabric of civil society.) Raising moral justifications is almost never actually useful.
When I can argue with those people on the basis of fact, on the basis of things that they can observe, on the basis of logic, I often do so – because on that basis, I have some hope of making a valid point. So, for example, when someone argues that homosexuality is unnatural, I can point out the huge number of species in which homosexual behaviours are observed (including, I believe, one species of woodpecker for which the only evidence we have that they ever engage in heterosexual pairings is that they appear to occasionally produce baby woodpeckers).
I don’t have as easy a response to people who would argue that homosexuality is immoral. “I don’t subscribe to your religion” doesn’t matter to most of this sort; “How can you simultaneously claim to serve a god whose essence is love and say that love is wrong” doesn’t work even on the people for whom it’s an accurate theological claim. The fact that under my moral system such a belief is disgusting and contrary to divine will doesn’t have any more validity to them than a citation of their holy books does for me.
I do happen to think that the passive belief contributes to harm – without that context, that community of perceived fellow-feeling, the people who want to take action on the basis of that belief would be seen as a lunatic fringe, dangerous radicals, and extremists. They would have to convince people not only of the rightness of their actions but the rightness of their axioms, and would be marginalised and insignificant. If there were not those who held that passive belief in great quantity, then it would not be so readily possible for homophobia to ooze into the larger culture. It would not have been so necessary for the friend who came out to me in high school to ask me, after he did so, “Is that okay?”, to worry that I might be one of the ones for whom it was not, in fact, okay.
I don’t have the standing to ask the people of the passive beliefs to change on my account, let alone demand it; I don’t have the standing to get the undecided to take a stand. I just have a heartfelt, fervent desire that some day, nobody will have to give voice to the doubt and fear enshrined in “Is that okay?” when they admit to an ability to love. So long as “some day” is not “today”, I am mournful, and so long as “some day” is not “today”, I will number myself among those who actively choose to stand up and say that it is okay, so that the people with that awful question engraved on their hearts might hear.
