Recently there was a debate on topix.com in our local community forum about gay marriage. I present to you here Someguy’s various arguments for the rights of gays to marry and against the detractors of those rights. I didn’t include his opponents’ viewpoints, but they’re not very appealing anyway. You can probably figure out to what he’s responding each time. I think he was feeling pretty angry when he wrote some of this, so I hope you’ll bear with him when he occasionally lapses into attacks directly against some of his opponents. I’ve edited very slightly for clarity in places.
Part I
What's great about time is that it keeps moving forward. No matter who is right you can bet that in fifty years ideas about being gay being a sin will be seen as antiquated, and this debate will be over. Just as your grandparents views on miscegenation have thankfully become socially unacceptable, so too will your views on homosexuality. Eventually you'll have to take comfort in your own opinion that you're right and stop harassing the innocent victims of your "funny looks," laughter, name-calling, and unfair treatment under the law. You can call our society a godless one if you like, but hopefully we'll all enjoy the same freedoms that make our society great, including the freedom to leave if you so wish. More likely, you'll leave the same way your racist grandparents did. You'll finally just die off.
Part II
Where are you from? When you make a statement that something is not accepted, what does that mean? Does it mean that it's illegal? Does it mean people will be harassed or even assaulted? I think you just mean that the bigots are still shouting louder than the rest of us, at least in your own social circle.
Part III
While you guys are arguing back and forth, you're missing the larger point. As long as people feel free to be prejudiced against gays, gays will be persecuted. This is not about your opinion. I have no problem with whatever your opinion is at all. I personally think that people who like to eat pickled pigs' feet are gross, but the difference is that I don't try to get involved in their lives. I don't try to treat them differently under the law because they do something that I think is gross. This thread is about gay marriage. It is not about whether you should be allowed not to agree with homosexuality, whether you think homosexual behavior is a sin, or whether you disown your kids if they happen to be gay. It's about the persecution of a group of people by denying them the legal right to marry their chosen life-partners. As long as you support that persecution, it goes beyond matters of opinion. Your gay friends have every right to be ANGRY with you for that, and they should be angry. Has it occurred to you that the topic doesn't come up because they hate you a little for it? This is not a difference of opinion. It's a difference of treatment under the law. Equal treatment under the law is a cornerstone of the American way of life. The founders of our country held it to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Let me put it this way, and I'm being completely serious here, if you work against the right of gay couples to marry that straight couples enjoy, then you are un-American. If you want a country run by the Bible, then I invite you to find your own piece of dirt and start one. We practice religious freedom here, and that means that religion, be it Leviticus, Genesis, or what-have-you, should have no bearing on how you are treated under the law. No one is trying to make you march in the gay pride parade, or wear a rainbow pin, or attend the wedding of your gay friends should they fall in love with each other. Just get out of the damned way.
Part IV
If [omitted] is in the medical field I hope she doesn't get the opportunity to treat me or mine. Thanks a lot, now I'll be looking askance at every native-American looking healthcare worker I see. She is not a credit to any group to which she belongs, be it healthcare workers, women, or the Cherokee. I had some hope that she was a self-righteous teenager whose eventual time spent with smarter people would cause a change in her heinous views, but apparently she is already an adult, and one at least partly responsible for the well-being of others. That scares me. To see what she's written I'd have thought her incapable of earning a degree, or perhaps even a high school diploma. How does a person reach adulthood and hold a real job and still be such a bigot?
Part V
Empathy for a group does not demand that you be part of that group. Just as there were some whites who felt empathy for [omitted]'s persecuted ancestors, there are many straight people like me who feel empathy for our homosexual friends and family members.
Hating is fun, isn't it? Hate allows you to trivialize your own problems and focus on poorly defined arguments with people you barely or even do not know. It's easy to forget your own depression when you're filled with outrage. It's easy not to worry about an overdue loan payment or whether your electricity might be cut off this month or how you're going to keep your husband from finding another woman when you start to get old when you can worry instead about what the gay people or the black people or the Mexicans are busy doing to undermine your "way of life." It also helps you to feel like part of a group. The solidarity of hatred is comforting and insulating. I can understand why you hate. Hatred is as old as the human race, but that doesn't make it okay. Eventually it will poison you and it will poison your relationships and it will seep into the good parts of your character and turn them bad. Focus on your own life, instead of blaming others for problems you don't even really understand. Every moment spent solving your own problems will make you a better person. You will feel better. You will be better.
Part VI
Two things, then I'm going to let this go. First of all, being gay isn't a lifestyle, any more than being straight is a lifestyle. I don't know you, so I don't know if you consider being straight a lifestyle, but I don't think that most heterosexuals do. I know that I don't. I believe it's hardwired into me to be attracted to the opposite sex, not because I choose to be, but just because that's the way it is. I don't call that a lifestyle - a lifestate, if anything. I admit that sometimes people experiment with homosexuality because they think that it's interesting or because they think that it makes them interesting, and certainly if you still believe it's a sin then you make a valid point that as society normalizes homosexuality, this experimentation will increase. True homosexuals, however, are not experimenting. They feel as strongly about their attraction to their own sex as you do about the opposite sex. You speak of how disgusting their sex acts are, but to them, sex acts between heterosexual couples seem just as disgusting, at least if they contemplate engaging in those acts themselves. Because their attractions and aversions are not a choice, many of them find it offensive when you say that being gay is a "lifestyle," and I think when you look at the flip side of the coin, you'll admit at least to yourself that you'd find it offensive if someone said your married life to your husband is a "lifestyle."
Second, and more important, gays are not trying to get extra benefits and rights from the government. This argument may come from the fact that gays have fought for the right to be among the protected classes to protect which there are enhanced penalties for "hate crimes." It's hard to fault their argument. There's no doubt that gay people are sometimes the victims of violent crime for no other reason than that they are gay. That's the very situation that hate crimes legislation was created to address. While I'm inclined to agree that a crime is a crime no matter whom it's committed against, it's more about the reason behind the crime than it is about the crime itself. The legislation is designed to punish bigotry that promotes violence, and so to reduce the promotion of violence among bigots.
As for rights that gay people are fighting for, they're rights that you and I already enjoy. Even without a will in place, I can rest assured that my property, if I should die before my wife, will pass to her so that she can continue to raise our children in the home that we've provided. Should I be comatose in the hospital before my death, she will be allowed to visit me, no questions asked, and if it should come time to pull the plug and let me go, then she will make that decision, not my parents, not my children, my spouse. Furthermore, to prevent my death, I might choose to sign on to my wife's health insurance coverage, or to spend money on my medicine from her flexible spending account. As long as gay people are denied the right to marry, then these rights that you and I take for granted are beyond them without thousands of dollars of legal advice and contract writing, and some of them, like health insurance, are a complete impossibility. They're not fighting for extra rights and benefits, just the same rights and benefits.
I know that the two of you, [omitted] and [omitted], will not agree with what I have written here. You may even shout it down from the highest mountain, or the longest thread as the case may be, but I do hope that some part of it has made an impact. It isn't because I want to change your mind, because I think that for now at least you're much too entrenched to change your mind about gay people or gay marriage, but so that maybe next time you won't be quite as negative toward the homosexuals you encounter in your lives, and that when the day comes when gays are granted equal rights under the law, perhaps you can learn to live with them as equal members in society.
Thank you for reading.
