Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
As you know part of my contribution as a guest blogger has been the fact that I write much from personal experience. This particular blog is one that I’ve thought about for awhile and have had some trepidation in writing because as you will see it touches on a very sensitive topic for most males. As a boy coming of age in the 1950’s one of the unvoiced, but omnipresent topics was male homosexuality. For a male growing up in that period, among the most upsetting epithets you could be called was queer. This was especially disturbing for those entering puberty, which in the 50’s context was coming into the macho essence of your own self worth. If you were queer you were deemed to be less of a male, a wimp, a fag and most essentially a loathsome pervert who did disgusting things with other males. People were bullied and beaten at school while being called degrading names. Even though I was always big for my age, I was a gentle and sensitive boy and while when attacked I would always fight back, I would be throwing punches through tears of frustration and rage at the injustice of it all. As I cried and fought, all those demeaning epithets would be hurled at me by the jeering bystanders. If I had the temerity to be winning, then other boys would attack me from behind. Finally, a teacher or Administrator would break it up, many times though my rescuer would sneer at the fact that my crying was “unmanly”.
At the same time in the 50’s, stories would occasionally appear in the papers and TV, of police raiding homosexual nightclubs and arresting the participants for engaging in lewd acts. These stories were always couched in vague terminology since homosexuality was such a sensitive topic, indeed most discussions of sexuality in general were not considered decent topics for open discussion in the media. Even though my parents were very open about sexuality for the time and I was told the “facts of life” at a young age, they never discussed homosexuality with me. To be honest I never asked because my father was what you would call a “Man’s Man”, or “hale fellow well met”. He was large and had a history as a brawler in his youth. I wanted to be like him have his respect, so although I could ask him anything about sex, I never asked him about homosexuality. Taboo subjects interested me. The mystique surrounding homosexuality perked my interest. Through reading and from Freud, I tried to get a handle on what this strange “perversion” was and why it was considered so bad that it needed the intervention of law enforcement. My attraction was always towards women, but I wanted to understand why some men (and some women) were attracted to the same sex. There simply wasn’t enough information at the time to give me any sort of understanding and Freud’s position was among the least helpful. What I did know is that having been called queer and fag, knowing how it hurt, my empathy for those who were homosexual and how they were treated increased. It is the question of do you side with the oppressors, or the oppressed? What moved me to finally write this piece was a story out of Louisiana in the Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/louisiana-police-sting-gay-men-anti-sodomy-law_n_3668116.html It is about the Sheriff’s Office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana that has arrested at least a dozen men since 2011 for agreeing to have consensual sex with undercover police officers. What makes this case so bizarre for these times, yet so familiar when its law enforcement dealing with homosexuality, is that they were arrested under a law that had been declared unconstitutional?
“In all of the cases, the men were arrested under the state’s anti-sodomy law, which was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.
“Technically invalid yet still on the books, the state’s “Crime Against Nature” law prohibits “unnatural carnal copulation by a human being with another of the same-sex or opposite-sex or with an animal” along with “solicitation by a human being of another with the intent to engage in any unnatural carnal copulation for compensation,” according to Louisiana legislature.
“This is a law that is currently on the Louisiana books, and the sheriff is charged with enforcing the laws passed by our Louisiana Legislature,” Casey Rayborn Hicks, a Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, told the Baton Rouge Advocate. “Whether the law is valid is something for the courts to determine, but the sheriff will enforce the laws that are enacted.”
However, the Advocate also revealed that none of these cases had been prosecuted by District Attorney Hillar Moore III, whose office could find no evidence of any crime being committed by any of the arrested men.”
Obviously, District Attorney Moore had more common sense than the Sheriff’s Office that formulated the “sting”. The statement by Mr. Hicks is thoroughly disingenuous to say the least. Knowing the “law on the books” was unconstitutional they did it anyway as their way of harassing gay men and most probably because of their own distaste for homosexuality. Before SCOTUS rulings such as Lawrence v. Texas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas , all over this country the police were harassing members of the LGBT community. Some of this harassment was done because of the predominant religious mores of the particular community and some was done because by nature many police officers and District Attorneys in the U.S. see themselves as macho defenders of justice and more importantly public morals.
Even today when being Gay has been favorably portrayed in the media, when there are beloved Gay celebrities and when SCOTUS has ruled in favor of Gay Marriage, there are many who are horrified by the notion of homosexuality and consider it evil. Many of these people are in positions of power today and the vileness, to me at least; of their statements railing against the notion of Gay Rights proliferate even though those rights are now being recognized as Constitutional guarantees. Below are some links that will give you an idea of the amount of anti-gay bigotry that is hysterically increasing in the face of this country becoming far more accepting of people’s inherent right to their sexual preference.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/41549/10-craziest-michele-bachmann-anti-gay-quotes
There are many more quotations available, but let me point out that two of those links refer to people who were contenders for the GOP Presidential nomination and other was from a sitting Supreme Court Justice. Clearly the battle for the human rights of the LBGT community is far from over, even though much progress has been made. The fact is there are many in the United States that for religious reasons, personal prejudice and preference will keep battling against what seems to be a rising tide. I write this to emphasize that it is not time to rest in this issue which to me has an importance far beyond just the issue of who consenting adults have sex with. I have written before about the threat that religion of the extreme fundamentalist stripe creates towards the idea of democracy. http://jonathanturley.org/2013/07/05/morsi-democracy-and-problem-with-fundamentalist-politics/ . This blowback by religionists is taking place in many regions of the world.
“MOSCOW — A new law banning “homosexual propaganda” in Russia is raising concerns about the state of human rights in a country already notorious for silencing dissent.
The legislation is vague but its intent is clear: It is now “illegal to spread information about non-traditional sexual behavior” to minors (under 18), and there are hefty fines for those who disobey. Foreigners are also subject to fines and can be deported.” http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/27/19699629-homosexual-propaganda-law-signals-latest-russian-crackdown?lite
This crackdown in Russia is now being pushed to further extremes and affects visitors there:
“In an even wider crackdown in Russia over expressions of homosexuality, gay athletes and fans will be prohibited from displays of affection and the wearing of pro-homosexual rainbow pins and badges during the 2014 Olympics. Violators face steep fines and jail time, foreigners will face similar penalties plus deportation.” http://www.catholic.org/sports/story.php?id=51935
Much of this Russian zeal to crackdown on homosexuals stems from pressure coming from the Russian Orthodox Church upon Putin and other Russian officialdom. In post Communist Russia the Orthodox Church has been a major player and has undergone a tremendous resurgence. It has definitely been an important political player and Putin et. al. have courted their support. The Russian Orthodox Church probably outdoes the Catholic Church in its opposition to homosexuality. However, homophobia in Russia has a long history and in 1933 Stalin also came down hard on homosexuals and led one of his characteristic purges.
“In 1933, Joseph Stalin added Article 121 to the entire Soviet Union criminal code, which made male homosexuality a crime punishable by up to five years in prison with hard labor. The precise reason for Article 121 is in some dispute among historians. The few official government statements made about the law tended to confuse homosexuality with pedophilia and was tied up with a belief that homosexuality was only practiced among fascists or the aristocracy. The law remained intact until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union; it was repealed in 1993.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism_and_homosexuality
On Friday Professor Turley even posted a blog about the situation in Russia. http://jonathanturley.org/2013/08/02/russian-gays-forced-to-drink-urine-and-beaten-as-part-of-cure-by-nationalist-thugs/
Another example of “legal” homophobia around the world are the attacks on homosexuals by various African Governments and the draconian penalties for being homosexual that are being imposed:
“More than two-thirds of African countries have laws criminalizing homosexual acts, and despite accounting for a significant percentage of new infections in many countries, men who have sex with men tend to be left out of the HIV response.” http://www.irinnews.org/report/87793
As we can see there is still significant oppression of homosexuals around the world and I haven’t even gotten into the dangerous situations in many other countries for those who don’t meet the standard heterosexual criteria. In the U.S. Russia’s anti-homosexual laws have drawn praise from a source that seems a surprise, but then again maybe not a surprise at all:
“As the hub of the Soviet Union, Russia was reviled for rights abuses by many U.S. conservatives during the Cold War. Now some are voicing support and admiration as Russian authorities crack down on gay-rights activism. The latest step drawing praise from social conservatives is a bill signed into law Sunday by President Vladimir Putin that would impose hefty fines for holding gay pride rallies or providing information about the gay community to minors.
“You admire some of the things they’re doing in Russia against propaganda,” said Austin Ruse, president of the U.S.-based Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. “On the other hand, you know it would be impossible to do that here.” Ruse, whose institute is seeking accreditation at the United Nations, plans to travel to Russia this summer to meet with government officials and civic leaders. “We want to let them know they do in fact have support among American NGOs (non-governmental organizations) on social issues,” he said.
Among others commending Russia’s anti-gay efforts was Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality.”Russians do not want to follow America’s reckless and decadent promotion of gender confusion, sexual perversion, and anti-biblical ideologies to youth,” LaBarbera said on his website.
In a sign of Russia’s evolving stature among some U.S. social conservatives, the Illinois-based World Congress of Families plans to hold its eighth international conference at the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses in Moscow next year. Past conferences in Europe, Mexico and Australia have brought together opponents of abortion and same-sex marriage from dozens of countries.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/russia-anti-gay-bill_n_3530050.html
My premise is that the battle for the right to be of different sexual orientation is a subset of the battle to impose a religious based morality on people under the color of law. The issue of Gay rights is just one aspect of this threat. It has assumed almost a center stage in the battle to theocratize governments because for males all over the world, the idea of not being “man enough” hits at the core of their being. I reject the whole concept that a male’s self worth should be tied up in his sexual preferences and experiences. Many who have known me view me in macho terms. As the son of a “man’s man” I learned how to interact with other males and can talk sports, cars and women with the best of them. There is a swagger to my walk and with my height and large head many friends called and call me “Big Mike”. I played many sports and while never a good athlete I was competent as a player. Those who really know me best though see my more sensitive, feminine and in many ways better side. I’m a bit of a gossip; I love Broadway Musicals; loved Judy Garland and Peter Allen and I cry copiously in both joy and sorrow. Yes those are clichés used regarding Gay men, but these clichés apply to me as well.
I believe that for the human race finally to learn to live together peacefully and harmoniously we need to learn to stop making these distinctions about what is the natural state for perhaps ten percent of all of humans and indeed animals. Our sexual drives are complex and the need to satisfy our sexual urges is what drives us to interact with others. Sexuality needs to be viewed in its true sense as a spectrum of responses humans make in the search for pleasure and fulfillment. A good part of sexuality is curiosity and indeed one of the reasons humans have progressed so far is that we have an insatiable curiosity. This leads me to my own confession which I alluded to in the title and in my opening of this blog. In the 60’s and in the early 70’s I was an active participant in what was known as the sexual revolution. For the homosexual community the opening battle for their rights could be said to have occurred in the Stonewall Riots. I had many gay friends and acquaintances when those protests began on June 28th 1969. I even knew some who directly participated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots
When news of the protests reached the media I cried in joy at the unity in fighting back against police repression and the corruption it engendered. In the following days I shared the sense of triumph coming from those protests with my Gay friends. To me looking back this was the opening shot of the fight for Gay freedom. Since I was so openly a supporter of freedom from oppression for the Gay community it was inevitable that a few years later one of my Gay male friends would proposition me. That this occurred was well known in my social group and there was good natured pressure on me to at least give it a try. This pressure arose partly because at the time I was involved in a ménage with two women and they playfully taunted me that what was good for the goose, was good for the gander. It was with much fear and trepidation that I took my male friend up on his offer. My experience was a good one and there was pleasure to be had, but it also confirmed for me that my sexual preference was for the female body. So it goes and it matters not if it had led me on a different relationship path. It was said back in the day that one could be a married man for years, but if a man had even one homosexual experience he was a queer. That is frankly nonsense and is believed by ignorant people. Admittedly I gave into peer pressure and in a sense I can’t claim that my experiment was one of courage, but I would also be lying if I denied that I was curious about the difference between gay and straight sex. The truth is that there is really very little difference except body structure and the limits that imposes. The underlying reality though is that normal human interaction between individuals doesn’t differ to any great degree and depends primarily on the personality of the participants. I look back upon my experiments in sexuality with warmth and a certain amount of pride that I was able to satisfy my curiosity along with the pleasure it brought.
However, that is not my point. What one does with their sexuality, provided it is consensual and among peers, is nobody’s business but that of the participants. One’s sexuality neither defines ones character, nor does it define one’s self worth. Those “paragons” of morality, who would call those whose sexual practices don’t conform to their own “evil,” are to my mind somewhat crazy. Why should any of us care how people get their pleasure as long as it harms no one?
In many places of the world, in many eras of civilization’s long history, religion has made sexuality a target of hatred. Some, but certainly not all religions target sexuality as a means of gaining political power. In many eras through history religion and government have had a symbiotic relationship, with religious belief being used to assist the powers that be in retaining their power and their positions atop a society’s hierarchy. We see in the Gospels of Christianity for instance a Jesus who disdains wealth, abjures the rich and would even break bread with those looked down upon by society. Jesus never once deals with homosexuality. Yet the Roman Catholic Church began under the control of the Roman Emperor and so the emphasis of Jesus strictures to “turn the other cheek” or the difficulties of a rich man getting into Heaven were downplayed and the Pentateuch’s sexual rigidity was brought to the forefront. I don’t mean to single out Christianity in this respect, because we see the same pattern existing in all great religions. Economic disparity and oppression are hard to justify morally and certainly would put any religion on a collision course with the elite’s power that they seek to share, so sexuality becomes an easy focus. Those with political power and wealth don’t mind sexual repression since it never interferes with their own pleasures and it certainly helps to keep the common folk down. Since most places throughout human history have been dominated by Alpha Males repression of homosexuality has found approval, but no more so than repression of women’s rights. The irony is that some of the most “Alpha” of males like the Spartan Army and Alexander The Great were probably gay, or at the least “Bi”. Then of course they were pagans and in many of those religions sexuality was of little import.
The prejudice against the LBGT community is a real evil that we face simply because it is a prejudice against the reality of human nature. To demonize people for their sexuality, their sex, the color of their skin or for their ethnicity is the real evil in this world. I support, nay demand, full citizenship rights for the LBGT community and if in your opposition to that natural state you want to call me queer, go right ahead, I’ll wear the mantle proudly.
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
VV: and are we really doing anyone any favors if we don’t restrain someone from doing the same when the outcome is certain?
YES, YOU ARE.
You have no inherent right to force your conclusions about life upon other people, you have no inherent right to control their lives, you have no inherent right to make any decisions for them about what to do with their lives or what risks to take. You do not own other people, what you think is good for society or for others is completely immaterial.
The ONLY inherent right you have, with regard to others, is the right to not be directly harmed by them. To enforce that right we form governments that are supposed to act as our servants, so we will not engage in vigilantism, to encode the specifics of that right to not be harmed and to hire and deploy force on our behalf to prevent such harm from occurring.
And by “harm” we do not mean our feelings, or our sense of propriety, or our sense of morality, or even our sense of whether something is dangerous to an individual. We pass speed limit laws and laws against drunk driving because of the probability of those people causing harm to other innocents. We do not outlaw smoking cigarettes, we outlaw smoking cigarettes around other people, because the smoke pollution is proven dangerous and is not contained.
To the extent the government regulates morality I think it is wrong, morality enforcement is not their job, their job is preventing harm. Those obviously have some overlap, since much of what we consider “moral” is in the same wheelhouse as not causing harm to others, but they are not identical, and laws against promiscuity are clearly only in the “morality” wheelhouse and not in the “harm to others” wheelhouse.
You are doing a favor to others by not pre-judging the outcomes of their life experiments and by not taking control of their lives away from them. Letting them learn their own mistakes, develop their own wisdom, and solve their own problems is not only a favor, it is their fundamental right as free persons; it is what it means to be free.
Tony C wrote: “To the extent the government regulates morality I think it is wrong, morality enforcement is not their job, their job is preventing harm.”
This sentence seems very confusing to me. Do you have some esoteric definition of the word “morality”?
Morality is about the right or wrong of behavior. For example, stealing, murder, lying, etc. are immoral because they cause harm. Government has an interest in promoting good behavior and deterring harmful behavior. In other words, government promotes moral behavior and punishes or discourages immoral behavior. So it seems oxymoronic in a sense to say “morality enforcement is not their job, their job is preventing harm.” I agree that some forms of immoral behavior do not arise to the level of punishment by government, but to declare morality to be outside of the job of government makes no sense.
Do you possibly have in mind ethics instead of morality? Or are you implying sexual morality when you say morality is not the government’s job?
“So it seems oxymoronic in a sense to say “morality enforcement is not their job, their job is preventing harm.”
DavidM,
Are you serious or just being purposely obtuse. Yes the government tries to stop crimes like murder and robbery. Are you equating two men having sex with crime? In this context, when we are discussing morality, we are discussing sexuality. Do you really feel that the particular sexuality we are discussing should be criminal? Please don’t weasel this by throwing in bestiality etc. Should homosexual sex be a crime? Should the government regulate sexuality between two consenting adult peers? That’s the morality Tony is talking about.
Tony,
I would be interested in laws that create disincentives for promiscuity, or for the kind of reckless behavior that leads to promiscuity–behavior that leads to a greater likelihood of contracting an STD. The right gets caught up in thinking about promiscuity as a moral infraction, and the left gets caught up in objecting to this characterization, and what gets lost sight of is the fact that, morals aside, we are all constrained by our immediate physical reality, part of which is the presence in our environment of incurable diseases and our ability to contract them.
If it could be shown that there was a positive relationship between a one hour earlier bar closure time in college towns and the rates of STD infection among college students, a change in the law requiring an earlier closure time might be something to think about. As long as the laws aren’t singling out people for their sexual orientation.
I agree that government officials are no wiser than the rest of us, but community knowledge builds over time as you see people making the same mistakes generation after generation. Usurious interest rates for example. At some point, we shouldn’t learn from experience if we don’t have to, and are we really doing anyone any favors if we don’t restrain someone from doing the same when the outcome is certain?
I don’t agree with the assertion that our only choices are a strictly libertarian government or a strictly autocratic one. People are always predicting a slippery slope into anarchy or a slippery slope into autocracy. I believe either one can happen, but the center right must have some stability.
Vestal Virgin
“I believe either one can happen, but the center right must have some stability.”
VV,
The problem with working to legislate promiscuity in any manner is who defines promiscuity and what disincentives/laws get passed to regulate it?
The center right’s stability is a peculiar thing. As I wrote in my lifetime homosexuals were harassed and denied the rights of citizenship. Then too were Blacks and Latinos. Divorce laws were religious based and punitive mostly towards women.This was all approved of by a center-right consensus. Once again though you castigate homosexuals for a meme that is more an indictment of male sexuality in this society, than it is specifically about Gays.
SWince I’ve known and been friendly with many Gay males and with many straight males my own personal experience is that they are similar in their sexual attitudes.Read the real histories of some of our Presidents and you will find sexual behavior that to me is reprehensible. Many of us, including myself, have opinions on how people should behave. Why would our opinions be any more needing to be enforced than others. Public Morality is historically a bankrupt stance because it has always been enforced hypocritically.
VV: So you would prohibit “promiscuity” among adult heterosexuals as well? They can also contract HIV from each other, or herpes, or syphilis. Of course it isn’t just “promiscuity,” all such diseases are NOT contracted by multiple exposure, but by ONE exposure to a carrier. So would you prohibit all sexual activity between heterosexuals without proof by medical exam that they are not a carrier of any sexually transmitted disease?
The problem, once again, is that the logical extension of your “intervention” turns into a dictatorship. It is the nature of “freedom” that people will make mistakes in their choices, even fatal mistakes.
It is the consensus of the people that the right to choose one’s life (freedom) using one’s own judgment is more important than somebody else’s judgment over what level of risk they should be “allowed” to expose themselves too.
We are not PETS, VV. The government does not OWN us, society does not OWN us.
VV says: Humans are subject to limited perspectives, due to lack of life experience, stress from such things as personal tragedy or financial problems, chance, and so on. This means even the most responsible people sometimes can’t foresee all the consequences or future regret of their unwise choices.
True, but shouldn’t that work against your position? What guarantee do we have that some government official is not subject to the same flaws and foibles? Not to mention, what guarantee do we have they won’t use their power to forward their OWN agenda, religious or not, against our wishes?
We are flawed and make emotional non-rational decisions, but so are government officials prone to errors, emotional and non-rational decisions. Laws should be based in rationality, not somebody else’s proclamation that their morality of what we should be allowed to do trumps everybody else’s.
Tony C wrote: “So you would prohibit “promiscuity” among adult heterosexuals as well? ”
It is not always about prohibition by law. Promiscuity is immoral for both homosexuals and heterosexuals because of the negative consequences to the individuals participating in it. It also harms others in that sometimes HIV from homosexuals donating blood has infected others. Now we test for HIV in blood donations, but the principle of causing other innocent people harm still applies in regards to their sexual behavior.
Laws can provide incentives for monogamy like tax benefits for filing married returns. Of course, now that marriage is being completely changed by homosexuals and probably will equate even less with monogamy than it does now, the government will have a more difficult time figuring out ways to encourage monogamy.
Tony,
I disagree, but I’m not sure there’s anything to say, since it’s a foundational difference in thinking. I agree with Squeeky that promiscuity, given the rates of HIV transmission, is a culture of self-harm that the government should intervene to stop.
Humans are subject to limited perspectives, due to lack of life experience, stress from such things as personal tragedy or financial problems, chance, and so on. This means even the most responsible people sometimes can’t foresee all the consequences or future regret of their unwise choices.
Vestal Virgin
Squeeky,
Even if gay people are punching above their weight (for lack of a better phrase) in terms of sexually risky behavior, by giving them all the opportunities that straight people have to channel their sexual desires in a healthy way (and participation in the kind of upbringing that produces a sexually responsible adulthood), you can then target their public promiscuity with a clear conscience, and with immunity to left wing criticism, that you haven’t targeted someone based on their class membership rather than their behavior. You won’t have targeted innocent people, like me, who are outside the subset within the class engaging in the behavior. There’s enough straight sexual misbehavior and enough gay people who don’t engage in reckless sexual behavior that group-based legal sanctions are inappropriate and ineffective to fight STDs since this assumed overlap doesn’t exist.
Vestal Virgin
Squeeky: I think it is significant that there have been so few so far. I wonder what happens if the numbers stay low, around the 2% to 5% range? Will that mean there really are some important differences between straights and gays?
There are differences, obviously. There are medically observable differences in brain function, and there is the obvious difference in sexual orientation. The fact that you can discriminate against them proves there are differences.
The question is always not whether there are differences in a group that is being discriminated against based upon their differences, the question is whether the discrimination is warranted or not, whether the differences are material or immaterial.
Why would it be “important” if gays are more promiscuous than straights? It is not illegal for you to be promiscuous, or a guy to be promiscuous; I’ve seen straight guys on the Internet legally selling consultation services to help other straight guys learn to get a new woman in bed every week. I’ve read of a real-life straight female sex addict having sex with over two hundred guys in a year.
Why is quantity of sex “important” for gays but not for straights?
Again, I believe a person has a fundamental right to end their own life if they want. Given that right, the amount of danger they expose themselves to is none of my business or yours; if they want to assume the risk of sky diving, skiing, or racing cars at 200 mph, I won’t stand in their way. If they want to assume the risks of drug use, sex with strangers, or getting drunk every night, that is not our business.
Our business does not start with their risky behavior, our business starts only if it plausibly endangers others that have not also assumed that risk.
Until you can show that any differences between gays and straights plausibly endanger others in some way that the already legal behavior of straights and gays does not, the differences are superfluous, immaterial, inconsequential to the question of whether they should be allowed to marry when they wish.
Unmarried straight sex is already legal for both genders; unmarried straight promiscuity or sex with strangers is already legal, even several new strangers every day.
If there are differences in the rate of marriage, once full equality is achieved and once a generation has passed, that still won’t be “significant” as you claim, it will reflect another difference in the psychology of homosexuality (or perhaps one gender of homosexuality) that we already know is different. Nothing more.
You question “What happens” if the numbers stay low, and the answer is … nothing. Nothing need happen, nothing should happen. The law should reflect that people have the freedom to make a choice, but this is not a business of marketing choices. We do not discontinue a freedom because only a few citizens choose to exercise it; or even if zero citizens choose to exercise it.
There are about 20 million gay adults in this country. Your 2% would constitute 400,000 getting married. That would not be “a few” exercising their right.
A freedom should not be curtailed based on how many people want to exercise it at any given time. That is not a valid basis for curtailment; the only valid basis for curtailing a freedom is whether exercising it is plausibly likely to infringe upon other freedoms and rights of other people.
It is not the government’s business to protect us from ourselves or our own choices and assumptions of risk, it is only their business to protect us from the infliction of harm by others.
VestalVirgin:
I think maybe there are some differences in the public sex stuff. When straights go “parking”, there isn’t a car of boys that shows up, and then a car full of girls, and then people pair up. I don’t ever recall single males just showing up, well around here it was out by the airport, but I don’t recall single boys showing up on the prowl. People went out as couples. And maybe came back as a “threesome”, although it might take a few weeks to discover that fact. If you know what I mean.
Here, the above guys went to a public place for the specific purpose of picking up a strange male sex partner. The same way they do in public rest rooms, and highway rest areas. I am just not aware of any comparable large scale straight behavior. I mean, you don’t see guys hanging around the ladies room trying to pick up whatever chick walks in. And you don’t see the ladies out prowling the public parks at night.
I have heard of some mobile apps that are supposed to facilitate this kind of hookup, but any girl who does that kind of stuff, deserves whatever she catches, IMHO.
Most straights go out to a bar like respectable people! Or we join church singles groups. Or, if a lonely drunk, AA meetings. At these places, you have have a right to be there cruising for sex.
There was this gay gay who was a client of my BFF Fabia Sheen, Esq., an attorney, where I help out when she is behind on stuff, or her regular legal assistant is out with a sick kid or on vacation. Anyway, he kind of warmed up to me, because I called him “B*tch” once when he wasn’t doing what we told him to. Anyway, he was telling me about how this sex with a “stranger” stuff is real big with gays, and how that was kind of the whole point sometimes, to just have this spontaneous impersonal experience with somebody you didn’t know.
Which, if he was right, and I assume he was, that just dictates that the hookups are going to occur differently than what happens in bars. Because there, you usually have to talk to somebody, and buy a few drinks, and then kind of worm your way into a low rent rendezvous. Which he said is a lot more of a personal connection than what gays are sometimes looking for.
As far as gays being more promiscuous because they don’t or didn’t have the option of marriage. who knows. Time will tell. I think it is significant that there have been so few so far. I wonder what happens if the numbers stay low, around the 2% to 5% range? Will that mean there really are some important differences between straights and gays?
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I meant to say, “I’m not sure the comparison holds.”
Squeeky,
Yeah, yeah. Videos of men in women’s clothes. Cheeky sarcasm. Cheeky play acting. Etc. And to think those darn liberals substitute labels like “homophobe” and other kinds of name calling for rational thought! The bassterdz!
I’ll take your “our generation didn’t invent sex” answer as nonresponsive as to why the law should treat gay public hook ups differently from heterosexuals’ Lovers’ Lanes, or whatever the heterosexual hook up method of the day is. The CDC says there were “only” 329,000+ births to teen mothers in 2011. That’s ‘only’ 900 per day. (By comparison, the murder rate is about 40 per day, if I’ve got it right.)
I did also look on the CDC website and the numbers for HIV transmission via homosexual sex utterly dwarf other means of transmission.
So, good point demanding that liberals rethink their response. However, what’s also sorely needed is a gay culture of personal conservatism. But I fail to see how we’re ever going to get there when conservative social institutions (such as SSM for goodness sake, still impermissible in 37 states), which would necessarily play a role in creating such a thing, reject gay people as a class.
I saw that you compared gay rights activists to prohibitionists. I suspect that prohibition was partly motivated by a desire to shut down bars which admitted ‘female impersonators’, as they were called at the time, or more accurately, ‘female impersonators’ were seen as being part of a range of vices associated with bars. When prohibition was lifted, New Jersey, for example, created an alcohol control agency and gave it power to regulate bars that allowed “female impersonators”.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4454178135630442074&q=mattachine&hl=en&as_sdt=2,5
So I’m not sure the example holds.
Thanks for making such common sense points. I wish you wouldn’t spoil it by (1) saying homphobic things that alienate people (gay people as a group are “skeevy”); and (2) advocating for use of the criminal law in a way that singles out gay people when the wider population also creates social problems for itself through analogous behaviors.
Vestal Virgin
@VestalV:
Thank you for those two studies. Your comments are informative and I really enjoyed your Moonlight Savings Time video. Like my father used to tell me, “Every new generation of young people thinks it is the one that discovered sex.” Which made more sense to me when I found of couple of books in his library by Vance Randolph called Roll Me in Your Arms, and Blow The Candle Out. Nope, it sure wasn’t my generation that discovered sex!
Anyway, I try to learn about old stuff, so I watch the TCM channel, and METV, a lot which explains to me why people from the 1960s are sooo weird! My goodness, shows like Route 66 and Naked City, I could just imagine somebody watching that on acid back then and being marked for life. Oh, the drama! Anyway, there was a really good movie on TCM once, and there was a song I just fell in love with called Shanghai Lil, that had James Cagney and Ruby Keeler. But here is a different version which is pretty interesting, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raOa51TKFX8
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@David:
Thank you! I am glad you enjoy the stuff I write! Actually, it kind of writes itself when you get to realizing that a lot of the folks on the other side of this issue just have the same mindset as those wonderful W.C.T.U folks who brought us Prohibition. At their heart, both groups are composed of self-righteous prigs parading their own personal prejudices around as Divine Revelation.
In the larger sense, this is often just an inter-denominational struggle between the Old Religion (i.e. the 10 Commandments + Love Your Neighbor) and the New Religion (Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! All Org*sms! All the time!). That is why some people here are so full of venom and are “damning” people from their pulpits.
Oh, and be careful of The Pavane above! That can be read in two completely opposite ways.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
But, if you don’t have access…
Squeeky,
Food for thought:
1. https://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3527903a.html
2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21402272
Vestal Virgin
David,
I am not aware of any junior high or high school handing out condoms as part of sex education. However, if you want to throw economics and taxpayer money into the mix, which is cheaper: a few packs of condoms or birth control pills, or supporting a kid born to a teenage mother who cannot support herself? You know, SSI, food stamps and WIC? Not to mention child welfare services if she does not know how to properly care for a baby. Also takes her out of the job market and furthering her education. Way to go, saving all those taxpayer dollars that would have been spent on condoms or birth control.
David,
once again you are not stating facts. Science has not proven that you are not born gay. Secondly, homosexuals are just as capable of having marriages that last as long as heterosexuals. As Mike S. suggested above, when you have 50 % of marriages ending in divorce, gay marriages have a very low threshold to meet. It is not a religious issue, it is an issue of equality and equal footing under the law.
davidm,
“The liberation of Blacks led by Republican politics is a different issue entirely. People are born black. Nobody is born gay. Science has proven this, or have you not been paying attention? Sexual behavior is greatly shaped by choices we make as well as by biological and environmental factors. With the science available to us, denying this is simply choosing to remain ignorant.”
*****
I’ve been paying attention.
Let’s see. You said, “Nobody is born gay. Science has proven this…”
Then you said, “Sexual behavior is greatly shaped by choices we make as well as by BIOLOGICAL and environmental factors.”
Say what?
*****
Please provide the scientific data that proves that no one is born gay.
davidm,
Those civil rights activists were a nefarious lot, too–deceiving Blacks in this country with their sly rhetoric about equality!
Elaine M wrote: “Those civil rights activists were a nefarious lot, too–deceiving Blacks in this country with their sly rhetoric about equality!”
The liberation of Blacks led by Republican politics is a different issue entirely. People are born black. Nobody is born gay. Science has proven this, or have you not been paying attention? Sexual behavior is greatly shaped by choices we make as well as by biological and environmental factors. With the science available to us, denying this is simply choosing to remain ignorant.
David,
How about the problems being related to NOT doing anything about it. No sex education and little or no information on STDs or contraception in those states. What sex education there is seems to be the “abstinence only” variety, which has been proven to not only be ineffective, but results in an increased number of teen pregnancies. Enforced ignorance as public policy–what could possibly go wrong?
OS wrote: “What sex education there is seems to be the “abstinence only” variety, which has been proven to not only be ineffective, but results in an increased number of teen pregnancies.”
I don’t believe in abstinence only sex education programs, but I do believe in programs that are not afraid to suggest abstinence, and in programs that do not encourage sexual activity by handing out taxpayer funded condoms.
davidm2575 1, August 9, 2013 at 9:49 am
rafflaw wrote: “When someone loves another they should have the same legal rights as any other lovers.”
Nobody disagrees with this statement. The problem is that marriage is more about a kind of love that is enduring, not the erotic sexual lust that homosexuals emphasize.
*****
What percentage of homosexuals who are asking for the same legal rights as heterosexuals have emphasized their desire for “erotic sexual lust” instead of the “kind of love that is enduring?” Do you have data to back up your claim? Gays can have erotic sex without getting married–just like heterosexuals.
DavidM: … the fact that once they win this culture war most of them will choose not to marry suggests that their argument is a ruse, that something more nefarious is underway.
First, you do not know what will happen in the future; once homosexuals are treated the same as heterosexuals, and once full-benefit marriage becomes an option for them, that alone may change their culture and attitudes.
In other arenas, being treated like second-class citizens in poverty-stricken inner cities does seem to be the driving cause of cultural differences the white middle class finds distasteful from afar. In sociological studies, gangs in inner cities exhibit the psychology of an embattled group that cannot escape their environment, they are very high in “identification” and solidarity: Not only in gang colors and signs, but in their choice of music, dress, language, brutality, machoism (in which standing amongst peers must be protected at any cost, and disrespect or challenge must be answered with violence) and other matters of philosophy. For example, they run their lives without long term planning as if they expect to die before 30, and most of them assert they probably will. That means education and professionalism are worthless, saving is pointless, and minimum wage work is for suckers, a waste of the little life they have. They engage in sex and reproduction earlier, and by some reports more promiscuously, because there may not BE a later; and there is little motivation to postpone gratification if you believe you will live and die in the poverty and desperation into which you were born. Most internalize their second-class status and do not believe they are smart enough, talented enough, beautiful enough or athletic enough to escape that fate.
Infants that are by adoption or child services removed from this culture and raised in the middle class do not exhibit these psychological traits; they grow up, attend college, and become more mainstream citizens than their same-age peers raised in poverty and the violence that results from poverty (driven by desperation).
That is just one extreme example, to illustrate the point that the social environment can be largely responsible for the resultant culture and mindset. Gay culture may change when gays are accepted by the mainstream in another generation.
Or it may not, but the principle remains the same: SOME gays clearly DO want to get married, and it is wrong to deny the few a fundamental right just because the majority do not wish to partake of it. Your musings about nefarious purpose are meaningless if you cannot identify such a purpose precisely and detail precisely how 20 million or so homosexuals have managed to form a conspiracy that nobody but homosexuals know about.
DavidM says: I guess what I am trying to ask is, do you think they manage it okay or are the problems you outline unable to be dealt with properly by these countries?
Beats me, I don’t know the law in those countries. What I suspect, without research, is that those countries subjugate women to a severe degree and treat them like property, as they were treated in the Bible (particularly the Old Testament, which is shared by Judaism, Islam and Christianity), and in much of the world prior to the last two or three centuries.
If women are second class citizens in polygamous countries than how they manage polygamy does not apply to America or other countries in which women are considered equal under the law. To be relevant to the USA, a country would have to allow both legal polygamy AND legal polyandry; one woman with multiple husbands. If it doesn’t, it de facto discriminates against women in favor of men, and that is (IMO) undoubtedly reflected in the rest of the laws and the country subjugates women as property of men. To me that makes suspect (and probably invalidates) any “solution” they have to the problems of multiple-marriage.
But as I have said, those are my logical expectations, not a result of any study, which I doubt I will conduct; my interest level is not high enough to bother.