I Am Homophobic

>>>>> "andrew" == andrew janssen <asjatnac-/[email protected]> writes:

  andrew> I wanted to comment on the author's remarks on
  andrew> heterosexuality not being "natural", because why would we
  andrew> then be "suppressing other tendencies, through strict gender
  andrew> roles".  This argument is rediculous. The same would then
  andrew> hold true to any law. Take murder, for example. Murder must
  andrew> be perfectly ok. People obviously have the urge, or
  andrew> tendency, to murder, but it still isn't ok! That's why we
  andrew> need the law or basis of human behaviour to go by.  Does
  andrew> that make me murderphobic, just because I think that?

The essay isn't perfectly coherent right through there, but the author
is *not* suggesting that homosexuality is acceptable because it's
natural. He assumes that's it's acceptable (in that essay, anyway; I
suspect Dru has explicit warrants for so thinking) in order to talk
about a different (not entirely relevant) issue. (Thanks to Bijan for
sorting this point out for me.)

So even if it stands out a bit, given what else he's doing in the
essay, I think the sentence you're likely referring to is perfectly
defensible: opponents of homosexuality -- and you may well be one such
-- often claim that heterosexuality is normative because it is
natural; Dru's point, I take it, is that if heterosexuality is so
natural, why does it require such *massive* reinforcement (including
rigid gender roles, ubiquitous gender identification, and so on) by
social structures?

It's analogous to parts of the argument against capitalism,
actually. Capitalism supporters say that a very material-acquisitive
mode of living is *natural*; opponents retort that if it's so natural,
why does 1 in 5 dollars (hell, it may be 1 in 4) spent in the
U.S. economy go toward the advertising agency, i.e., why does
capitalism require such massive social reinforcement?

  andrew> I'm not homophobic. I'm not afraid of gays any more than I
  andrew> think people should be afraid of me for my sins. Their sin
  andrew> is just much more obvious and harder to accept than
  andrew> most. 

Some of us found your claim that the "sin" committed by "gays" is
"just much more obvious and harder to accept than most" quite
interesting. What on earth do you mean?

Surely your finding it *harder* to "accept" (which really only has, as
a real world meaning, "systematically ignore", since that's what
Christians do to almost every other kind of sin; and, by the bye, it's
what they did vis-a-vis homosexuality until *after* the Stonewall
Rebellion. In other words, Christians don't *really* object, either to
gay men or lesbians, or to their having sex with one another. If they
did, very few Protestant churches in the South would have music
programs. It's been an open secret forever that tons and tons of gay
men were deeply involved in Southern Protestant denominations. It only
becomes a problem when the "open" part of "open secret" starts
overwhelming the "secret" part. -- which is, by the bye, as good a
definition of hypocrisy as I can imagine. What Christians object to
are the efforts of gay men and lesbians to *fight systematic
discrimination*, that is, Christians who object are really objectly
only to *political equality* for gay men and lesbians.) homosexuality
than you find it to accept "other sins" is a prima facie warrant
precisely for the author's thesis, namely, that our culture is deeply
heterosexist?

Why *else* would you find it so difficult to accept, i.e., ignore? You
ignore other sins which, by your own lights, are vastly more vile than
homosexuality, yeah? 

Where is the organized Christian crusade, say, against rape? Surely
rape is more vile by your lights than homosexuality? 

You must realize that this way of talking has very little public (in
the conceptual sense) traction, yes? It's only going to appeal to
people with whom you already agree.

Don't you think it's -- if nothing else -- kind of *boring*, i.e., in
bad conversational taste, to foist upon others your little private
moral vocabularies and eccentricities?

Clearly the author of the article doesn't think homosexuality is a
sin. What do you gain by asserting that it is?

If you're going to bash gay men and lesbians, you ought at least to do
so in terms which they can, in priniciple, come to terms with. (Yes,
yes, there are gay men and lesbians who share parts of the private
Christian moral vocabulary; but I assume very few of them have not
made even more private, even more local amendments to that vocabulary,
including, to be sure, excising all the talk about homosexuality being
a sin. So, in fact, I was being glib earlier: you can't even talk this
way and hope to be understood by a majority of people who call
themselves Christian or Jew in this country!)

          For you to label people as homophobic, or
  andrew> heterosexist, or whatever is the discrimination that we
  andrew> should be dealing with. 

"We" who? "We" Christian bigots? Calling a thing what it is isn't
discrimination. Calling a thing something it is not *may* be. You have
to demonstrate which of these we're doing, clearly.

By the way, what was the name of the last Christian bigot who was
beaten to death for saying gay men and lesbians are going to burn in
hell?

This happens to gay men and lesbians far too often. I mean, it
*really* happens, to specific people who have families and names and
histories and pets and jobs and mortgages...

*That's* what discrimination means. So if you're gonna claim it, you
gotta back it up.

I'd settle for the name of the last Christian bigot who was denied,
say, health insurance because he was a Christian... Come on, surely
you can name *one*?!

          You are outraged about homosexuals
  andrew> being discriminated against because some don't agree with
  andrew> what they are doing, but you discriminate because you don't
  andrew> agree with us. 

No, we're outraged by all forms of pernicious, systematic
discrimination. That's our gig, take it or leave it as you may prefer.

Hmm, here's a little test: imagine that instead of gay people we're
talking about black people; and instead of Christian or other
religious bigots, we're talking about the Klan...

Would you say that when we criticize the Klan for being a domestic
terrorist group, we're *discriminating* against them merely because we
don't agree with their racist claims about blacks?

You see how insane that is, right?

          Does that even make sense?  Don't get me
  andrew> wrong. Of course violence of any kind is wrong and I'll
  andrew> stand up personally to defend a gay person from that, but if
  andrew> you label me as heterosexist, then maybe you're just
  andrew> homosexist?

Wow. That's bizarre. You'll stand up to physically defend a gay person
from an assault, that is, you'll run substantial risk of being
assaulted or even killed yourself. That is something you are so
willing to do that you publicly pledge it to a group of complete
strangers. You'll do *all* of that?

But you won't take a few minutes to consider whether the
overwhelmingly orientation of our society to heterosexual experience
is a kind of systematic discrimination against people who aren't
heterosexual?

Isn't that kind of backwards? You claim you'll do the amazingly hard
brave thing, but you are completely unwilling to do a much easier
thing? 

That's just weird.

Best,
Kendall Clark