Jay Michaelson's
essay in Religion Dispatches, with my commentary:
Why Rick Santorum Can't Just Say: God Doesn't Want You To Be Gay
Gay rights and the collapse of pseudo-secularism
By JAY MICHAELSON
It’s been widely observed that religious foes of LGBT equality...
There are very few actual foes of LGBT equality, religious or otherwise, the Westboro Baptist Church notwithstanding.
The vast majority of people-- Christians included-- strongly support full rights for gays. The right to free exercise of religion, the right to freedom of speech, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to trial by jury, etc.
Gay marriage has nothing to do with "rights", because marrying anyone you want isn't a "right".
There have always been constraints on marriage. Constraints on who may legally marry is a matter of statutory law, decided by the mechanisms of representative democracy. There are no "rights" involved in defining marriage, as long as the definition applies to all and thereby satisfies the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Denying marriage to people who want to marry a sibling isn't denying the rights of the incestuous. Denying marriage to more than two people isn't denying the rights of polygamists. Denying marriage to people who want to marry themselves isn't denying the rights of narcissists. Denying marriage to people who want to marry children isn't denying the rights of pederasts. Denying marriage to people who want to marry the dead isn't denying the rights of necrophiliacs.
Denying marriage to gays isn't denying the rights of gays. It's simply defining marriage in accordance with the majority view, which is how a democracy works.
Gays and others who want to change the legal definition of marriage are entitled to do so, through the legislative process. Those who want to maintain the traditional definition are entitled to do so, through the legislative process. The only "right" involved is the right to access to and participation in the legislative process.
...frequently make arguments of convenience. These arguments are usually guised in the language of rhetorics other than that of religion. Thus homosexuality is pathological (medical), destructive of society (sociological), narcissistic (psychological)—anything, really, as long as it’s bad, which is what opponents of equality really mean.
There are religious reasons to oppose gay marriage and homosexual conduct (it's sinful), and there are secular reasons (it's not marriage as traditionally understood, it's unhealthy, pathological, destructive of society... ). Those are all perfectly defensible viewpoints.
Aware, however, that pure rhetorics of sin and God’s will are of limited public efficacy—mostly for cultural reasons, though also for legal/political ones—the more candid statements are rarely spoken publicly.
There are many millions of religious people who are quite willing to state simply that homosexual conduct is sinful. I think it is, and that's my primary reason for opposition to it. Many religious people carry the debate to secular issues, for which strong arguments can be made as well, that others who don't share their faith may agree on.
As Mark Jordan has recently described in great detail, this instrumental use of non-religious rhetoric has led to a discursive slipperiness, leaving the keen observer wondering: What, exactly, is wrong with homosexuality?
It's sinful. Also, it's unhealthy, for the person engaging in it and for the society that facilitates it.
Opponents of equality often seem unable to respond consistently, instead attempting to marshal a variety of non-religious arguments to bolster what is at heart a religious condition. Chosen, as they typically are, for efficacy rather than for accuracy, these arguments often turn out to be wrong.
Homosexual conduct is associated with astonishingly high rates of disease. It is a profound
public health issue, about which there is no honest debate.
Last week, for example, Rick Santorum argued that same-sex marriage would be a slippery slope, because “in terms of pleasure,” polygamous marriages offered as much pleasure as gay marriages do. This strange new line of thinking pre-supposes that the only reason for same-sex marriage is pleasure, just as the only reason for a homosexual “lifestyle” is pleasure, lust, and so on.
The connection between gay marriage and polygamy is obvious. If marriage to someone of the same sex is permitted, by what logic can marriage to more than one person be denied?
This is, of course, absurd. Gay couples get married for the same reasons that straight couples do, with pleasure being pretty far down the list, behind, say, love, companionship, taking care of one another, societal recognition, raising children, and so on. Santorum’s ignorant comment (one of many, of course) assumes, incorrectly, that homosexuality is a (changeable, optional) predilection of the gonads, rather than an orientation of the heart. Lust, not love.
Gay couples certainly have a range of motives and desires, just as straight couples do.
Likewise, Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, recently gave an interview on Christian Radio wherein he described the “homosexual lifestyle” again in terms of selfishness and pleasure. The radio host, in turn, stated that LGBT activists (it was interesting to hear her say the acronym—I think its foreignness and length helped her case) simply don’t understand how a person changes when they are born again in Christ. Because LGBT activists are irreligious, they just don’t get how religiously-inspired change is possible.
This, too, is factually wrong. As readers of this publication know, a great many LGBT activists (this one included) are religious.
Indeed yes. I think that they are mistaken about God's law regarding homosexual conduct, but it is certainly true that there are many quite religious people who are gay and are gay activists.
Many others are formerly religious. We know quite well what it is to live in the light of God, Christ, dharma, et cetera. And many of us have experienced that doing so while not lying and repressing oneself is actually more religiously spacious than the alternative.
Relation to God is about truth, not "spaciousness".
And, to state the obvious, any queer person in a committed relationship with a partner or with a circle of friends and companions knows that selfishness is as pathetic in a queer life as it is in a straight one. Apparently Chambers has forgotten that during the AIDS plague, queers were highly unselfish in their taking care of one another (including, let’s mention out loud, lesbians taking care of gay men).
That's true, and deeply admirable. I've seen it myself in my medical practice, and I have great respect for the selfless men and women who care for their friends and partners.
But we must not forget the maniacal promiscuity and recklessness that spreads AIDS and myriad other diseases in the gay community.
There has been much courage and love, and much depravity.
It’s a pity that Chambers’ experience of the gay community (apparently extremely brief, according to this report) was limited to its most vapid representatives. But even K’d-up circuit boys take care of one another.
"K'd up circuit boys"?
Does "K'd up" refer to ketamine, K-Y jelly, or Kaposi's?
In making these bogus arguments, Santorum and Chambers inevitably run afoul of the facts, because the facts are not what really interest them. If we assume that Santorum is being sincere in his bigotry rather than purely opportunistic, what he’s really interested in is religion, not social policy.
"K'd up circuit boys..."?
If it were social policy that motivated him, he’d read the studies of same-sex couples in Massachusetts and in other countries, which show that they raise children as well as opposite-sex couples, form stable families, and the rest.
"K'd up circuit boys..."?
But what Santorum is motivated by is actually religion: a fear of sexuality and of women souped-up by a misreading of Leviticus, Romans, and Corinthians.
It's odd to hear a gay guy accuse Santorum, who has seven kids and a beloved wife of twenty years, of having a fear of sexuality and of women.
But he can’t really say that on television. If he were honest, he’d just come out and say something like: “I’m sorry, but God just cannot abide any homosexual behavior.” But he isn’t.
He'd be right to do so. But he's trying to point out that there are solid non-religious reasons to critique homosexual behavior. Why Michaelson finds the effort to appeal to common values objectionable is unclear.
Now, in no way am I claiming that the Bible prohibits same-sex intimacy.
It condemns same-sex sex. Intimacy is another matter, and can mean very different things.
I have written abook showing the exact opposite: that Biblical values demand us to affirm it. Rick Santorum’s views are not dictated by St. Paul, but he believes that they are, and that’s enough.
The Bible is quite clear on the sinfulness of homosexual acts. It is also clear on the blessing of love and care for each other. Relationships of all sorts can involve a composite of good and bad.
Let me take one further step. Santorum and other homophobes...
I really don't like the word "homophobe". Very few people are afraid of homosexuals, and even fewer are afraid to the point of diagnosable mental illness, which is what "phobia" means.
Many people hold the opinion that homosexual acts are sinful. That's an opinion, not a phobia.
Heterophobes like Michaelson should know the difference.
... cannot speak frankly because their real motivations are private, emotional, and incoherent.
The Catholic view to which Santorum (and I) subscribe is quite coherent-- homosexual desire is not sinful. Homosexual acts are. People who have homosexual desire and/or commit homosexual acts are God's beloved sons and daughters, just like each of us. We are all sinners, loved always and redeemed, if we accept redemption. Part of accepting redemption is acting, as best we can, in accordance with God's will.
It’s not as though Santorum dispassionately selected Catholicism from a menu of religious ideologies. He believes because he feels.
And feels because he believes.
Even before his wife’s miscarriage (in 1996), before his political career, some concatenation of circumstances installed what some have called religious “software” in his brain.
Huh? I'll have to ask my neurosurgical colleagues in Pennsylvania who operated on him...
Things are good when religion is dominant, bad when it is not. This is the truth of his experience.
What?
I’m reminded of a story told by Tim LaHaye, notorious author of the apocalyptic “Left Behind” series. LaHaye was ten years old when his father died, and obviously devastated by the loss. As LaHaye tells it, it was during a pastor’s eulogy for his father that he truly came to believe. The pastor explained how his father was now in heaven with Jesus, and the young LaHaye knew this to be true, felt it to be true. Indeed, he must have wished it to be true as well. Of course he did; what ten-year-old boy wouldn’t?
That, not evolution or homosexuality or any other point of dogma, is the real issue for people like LaHaye, Santorum, and Chambers: the fundamental comfort that religion provides.
Ketamine, amyl nitrite, and promiscuity provide comfort.
A relationship to God provides truth, which is comforting and terrifying in turns. Fear and trembling.
If people evolved from apes, according to this logic, Timmy LaHaye’s father is not in heaven with Jesus and Rick Santorum’s son died for no reason.
Evolution and the Catholic understanding of man are quite consistent, if one accepts that man's physical nature evolved and his spirit/soul were independently created.
And this is why we cannot argue with people who subscribe to this framework: there is simply too much at stake for them.
We believe what we say.
They have wedded their fundamental sense of okay-ness to the truthfulness of a set of doctrines.
We believe what we say.
Not only is sociology not at issue for Rick Santorum, Romans isn’t either. What is at stake is his very sense that the world is a good place, that things are basically okay, and that he himself is okay as a result. That may be expressed in a theological framework, but it is a psychological reality.
Santorum is figuratively on Dr. Michaelson's couch, getting psychoanalyzed. For free, no less.
If I marry my partner, therefore, Rick Santorum is not okay.
Right. The only reason one could oppose gay marriage is if one has a psychiatric condition. All sane people agree with Jay Michaelson and K'd up circuit boys.
The rest is window dressing. The fake sociology, the religious doctrines of sin and salvation, all of it.
Reluctance to bestow a legal imprimatur on a sexual culture synonymous with promiscuity and contagion is "fake sociology"?
Santorum and Chambers have had powerful religious experiences, and they avail themselves of such doctrines to articulate the inexpressible.
This is expressible: gay marriage isn't marriage.
The fake secularism, the fake science, the bogus constructions of homosexuality—
All based on publicly available data and obvious inferences...
all of these are so transparently false because they are mere props. As one after another of them collapse,
Here's
"fake science": gay lifestyle is associated with astronomical rates of promiscuity, mental illness, violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, HPV, herpes, anal cancer ... . The life expectancy of an active urban homosexual man is equal to the
life expectancy of men in Canada in 1871.
anti-gays will eventually be left only with their convictions, and the reasons why they have them. Perhaps only then, echoing Portnoy’s therapist, might we say “Now vee may perhaps to begin.”
In my view, the most shameful aspect of contemporary homosexual culture is not the sex itself. The most shameful aspect is the willful lying by "activists" like Michaelson about the real world consequences of gay sex, especially among men. Male homosexuality is deadly, more deadly than drunk driving, I.V. drug abuse, and Russian roulette. The leading killer of gay men is gay men.
Condoms aren't the answer. They haven't been the answer. The answer is continence and chastity, and a respect for God, for others and for oneself, which is the Catholic understanding and Rick Santorum's understanding.
It is Michaelson, not Santorum, who is devaluing the lives of gay men.
