With isocrat.org I've been pouring over all my old files and looking at a lot of anti-gay material. It's exhausting stuff. Much of it should be taken seriously, but I keep coming across some arguments that by now, instead of looking like a real argument against rights in need of serious reply, just put a smile on my face. They've become the arguments I actually enjoy encountering. I thought I'd collect my top three:1. "Extension cords have a male and female end. That's why being gay is bad". This argument also comes in the pipe fitting variety. Ah, how to counter the impenetrable argument by hardware? This argument of geometry is similar in fun to the "homosexuality is unnatural; you'll never see it in nature" argument, with creation being as ripe as it is with homosexuality. I guess the men using this one think they fell in love with their wives after doing some sort of morphology calculation about what fits where? It's not about a purposeful attachment, love, dedication... Eh, it's just plain fun when people want to look to their electrical outlets for moral guidance, isn't it?
2. "I know all about gays; I am one." Take the gay guy with the disapproving family who sneaked around with his orientation, did things he thought were wrong, or failed miserably in all his relationships and then "escaped the gay lifestyle"; he'll be the guy the other side will use for testimonials about how the gays live. It's the only area I can think of where the worse you are at something the more likely you'll be taken as an expert on it (liberal readers may insert Bush joke here). These men hardly knew their orientation as anything apart from the superstitions they were taught about it; they treated it as an addiction to the physical, to sex, and sometimes even took their alienation as an excuse for promiscuity and substance abuse. Yeah, that guy knows what it means to be gay for me :-)...
Sure, okay, I do feel bad for these guys; I've known some of them to come back and renounce their renouncements and they seem like okay men. They have problems put there by people they should've been able to trust, which weren't there for other gay men with more supportive family, clergy and community, and it's rightly tough to judge. But my sympathy ends at the point where they use their orientation as a platform from which to harm others. It's such gay men, though, that I sincerely hope could become straight, and stop spreading mischief in the gay community, first from the inside as a lowly sinner addict, and then from the outside as a righteous expert.
3. "God gives us all the knowledge of the difference between good and evil, and I know same-sex relationships are wrong." They may as well tell you "You're right and I don't know what I'm talking about." Simply, talk about evidence and data all you want, but you've shot yourself in the foot, at sentence one, using any argument that tells the other side a lie about what they experience directly. What's even funnier is that, if both sides were to agree on the premise of this argument, that every person comes with an innate knowledge of right and wrong, that then proves same-sex relationships are 100% kosher for many gay men (That reminds me... I want to look at that moral orientation idea again).
Anyway, have you encountered any anti-gay arguments that are more fun than serious?
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I remember my seminary teacher saying something like "If being gay is not a choice, why would it be a sin?"
Of course she meant that homosexuality really is a choice, and people really "change."
I remember not really coming out to myself, but being fully aware of my attractions at the time. It didn't really bother me then. It just gave me the false sense of hope that I could indeed have attractions to the opposite sex.
Wow. I'm blown away by the hardware example. It breaks down on SO MANY levels! Not the least of which is that male/male sex can indeed have that prong-in-the-socket arrangement.
I have hope here that if these arguments sound so incredibly stupid now, maybe in years to come the arguments that people buy now will seem as foolish.
So I was totally a believer in the hardware argument until yesterday, when it occurred to me that sometimes you have a bolt and a nut and a washer. Kinky fantasies of straight men around the world aside, I don't think that's physically possible.
there's the pseudo-darwinian, "if everyone were gay there would be no reproduction and the species would disappear." which misses the key evolutionary principle of variability. if everyone were risk takers (which has a genetic component), we'd have lots of explorers but no settlements. if everyone were creative we'd have lots of inventions but no factories to produce them. etc. etc.
MoHoinTX "Of course she meant that homosexuality really is a choice, and people really "change.""
Hey, yeah, that has to be another favorite in there: when opponents assume being gay and putting up with their shenanigans is so much fun that anyone chooses to have such orientation.
One can only hope, Java.
Mr. Fob "you have a bolt and a nut and a washer. "
Eeeww. Now I'm looking at all these inanimate objects with suspicion.
That's it, I'm getting rid of every Lego in the home.
Santorio, that's a really good one too. Thanks.
one more:
homosexuality, so they say, must be some physiologic or genetic dysfunction--a mutation--and therefore morally suspect.
well, consider my oh so white skin. as a branch of homo sapiens ventured north out of africa, its dark skin no longer provided the advantage it did along the sun-drenched equator. The mutant white skin, on the other hand offered a distinct survival edge, allowing the continued production of vitamin D even with europe's diminished sunlight. your mutation is my key to survival
My most favorite argument against not necessarily gay's but gay marriage is, if gays are allowed to marry each other, what is to stop people from marrying their pets or a random animal.
That really does call for a WTF. But it just seems so likely because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract. *rolling of eyes*
I always laugh rather then argue this argument and sadly, I have had someone try to defend traditional marriage with this argument, seriously. Way to funny!
"what is to stop people from marrying their pets or a random animal. "
It must take a lot of imagination to envision even a couple people wanting to get on their pet's health insurance or a claim to their social security.
Santorio, yes, I take it you've seen the research that finds male homosexuality correlates in families with highly fertility females.
actually i hadn't; interesting
I don't think this is the most recent research in the area but it was what I and at home:
Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 34, No. 1, February 2005, pp. 117–122 ( C 2005)
DOI: 10.1007/s10508-005-1006-8
"Family Size in White Gay and Heterosexual Men"
"We found increased fecundity in the relatives of gay men and this is one explanation of how a genetic influence might persist in spite
of reduced reproductive fitness in the gay phenotype."
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