A DrHurd.com reader writes:
“Barely a few decades ago, homosexuality was considered an abomination. Though many now have an enlightened attitude on the subject, how should one feel about incest or bestiality? In light of the fact that such things do not involve any violation of my rights, I’m not really against them, but how vehemently should I support them?”
Dr. Hurd replies,
How one should feel is dictated by what the facts and logical reasoning tell us. For most of history, people have been ignorant about homosexuality.
It wasn’t possible to form a rational opinion when the entire issue was surrounded by fear and ignorance.
Today, more knowledge is available on the subject. If one sifts through the political-religious hyperbole and looks instead at the psychological aspects grounded in research and scientific method, one will come to the conclusion that in all key respects, a same-sex relationship isn’t all that much different from an opposite-sex relationship in what it offers to the parties involved.
You imply that centuries of honest ignorance or irrational fear about a particular subject is relevant to one’s present evaluation of it.
Actually, it’s not. The truth is the truth regardless of the history of evasion or ignorance. For example, we don’t ask, “Given that slavery has been part of most societies in human history until relatively recently, how vehemently should I support freedom?” Slavery is wrong and immoral regardless of how often or how recently it has, or hasn’t, appeared in history. If it returned to the United States tomorrow or next decade, it would still be just as wrong as the last time it existed. The same works in reverse. Freedom has been the rare exception in human history. The United States is far and away the most consistent example of it, though most of human history has been quite the opposite. Even though the United States is now drifting in the direction of most of human history, we don’t ask, “Given that freedom has been the exception and not the norm, how strenuously do I support it?
You seem to feel a resentment against a perceived obligation to “support” homosexuality. This sounds like the perspective of a social conservative. Many social conservatives, like their counterparts on the left, feel like perpetual victims. They feel, and sometimes even say, “I shouldn’t have to raise my children in a society where people of the same sex get married.” Why not? What entitles you to live in a society where people, while not doing things that violate your individual rights, are not doing things of which you approve? If you don’t assert a “right” to not live in a society where people drink too much alcohol or spend what you consider too much money on vacations or buy cars of which you don’t approve or marry people of the opposite sex for what you consider the wrong reasons, then why do you feel entitled to live in a society where two people of the same sex don’t get married?
You don’t look at the unhappiness of many heterosexual marriages and the almost 50% divorce rate and conclude, “There ought to be a law against marriage. I shouldn’t have to raise my children around so many unhappy couples.” But to a social or religious conservative, it seems quite natural to say, “Gay marriage? Not in MY society!”
Whose society is it? Since when did “society” become public property, subject to the control of certain religious authorities or leaders? Conservatives claim to be against “big government.” But they’re quite happily for a big and strong government there to enforce what’s morally important to them. Their righteousness differs little in intensity, or basic substance, from those on the left who righteously assert their “right” to live in a world without big business, big profits, big oil or anything else they find morally offensive, but which in practice violates nobody’s rights to be free and left alone.
I’m sick of victims, on the left and the right, who aren’t really victims. These “victims” feel they have no control over their lives, and therefore must use the force of government to impose their will on others, or to impose on people a point-of-view they feel entitled to enjoy in society. As if force could actually change anyone’s mind.
Something is either a right, or it isn’t. If you maintain that attacking an innocent person with a gun is immoral and therefore should be illegal, you stand on solid ground. The victimizer is initiating force against his victim. If you maintain that two consenting adults of the same sex getting married is immoral and therefore should be illegal, you have no basis for that conclusion – unless you’re prepared to declare illegal all relationships between or among consenting adults of which you morally disapprove.
Defense of something as a right in no way implies endorsement of, or enthusiasm for, that thing. There are all kinds of things or actions of which you may disapprove – books, ideas, recreational activities, style of houses, style of clothing, people getting tattoos – which are nevertheless people’s individual right to pursue, on their own time, with their own money, and on their own property. An atheist or a secularist in no way needs to morally approve of a fundamentalist Baptist’s church services, or an Amish woman’s choice to wear 19th Century clothing and churn butter.
Approving the legality of another’s behavior in no way implies an endorsement or liking for the other person’s actions. As with many things, most Americans have no problem with this idea. But many Americans do express a problem on the issue of same-sex relationships or marriages. The reason they give is that marriage is a “public institution.” Really? If so, in what way? How is a marriage like a court house? Or a military base? And in what way do two people (gender aside) who form a legal and personal association imply some sort of public obligation? There is, obviously, a public and legally enforceable recognition – but that’s not the same as an obligation beyond those stated in marriage laws (the same laws to which gay people who willingly get married subject themselves).
Whenever you find something irrational, always look for the entitlement mentality. Scratch the surface of any militant social conservative, and that’s what you’ll find: A feeling of entitlement to not live in a society where somebody is doing something that offends them. They hide behind the psychological skirts of their helpless children by crying, “I shouldn’t have to raise my children in a society where I don’t like what’s going on.”
Again, there’s no entitlement. I will grant that parents are entitled to have their children taught in schools that align with their values. It borders on tyranny to forcibly send people’s children to schools that knowingly teach ideas or principles of which the parents disapprove. But this isn’t the fault of gay people getting married. This is the fault of a majority of Americans (including most of these social conservatives) permitting (if not demanding and expecting) their federal government to provide “free” education for them. If they put their energy into a movement designed to divorce education from the state (federal and local), then they’d be on a solid legal and moral footing; embracing the freedom to teach their children according to the values they hold most dear.
The frustration or sarcasm implied in your question is clear. “If I support homosexuality, do I now have to support bestiality and incest?” To the uncritical and unfocused mind, this question is fair. “If everything is OK, then why not incest?” But incest involves actual victims. Consensual sex does not. As for bestiality, it’s not even in the realm of human behavior. Since it involves sexual activity between a human and a non-human, it’s not a topic to be compared with sexual activity between or among actual humans. It all boils down to intellectual dishonesty, wrapped in context-dropping that refers to the deliberate refusal to include obvious, relevant facts and differences.
You cannot say, “Until recently, majority opinion condemned homosexuality. Now majority opinion says it’s OK. Does it mean we now have to say everything is OK?” When distilled down to this, it sounds pretty ignorant in that it evades the fact that objective proof is required to prove something as moral or immoral, rational or irrational by some standard objectively attained.
If, as your question implies, majority opinion is your only standard, then surely nothing will ever be absolute or objective.
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