"Mawwiage"

Mawwiage.

For some strange reason, I've been thinking a lot lately about marriage. And that gets me thinking about gay marriage.

Actually, forget gay people for a second: just consider transgendered people / hermaphrodites. I suppose right-wing Christians believe God created intersex people to test our faith--you know, the same reason He created fossils, and Jews. Nevertheless, for some people, the terribly inconvenient facts of biology do not allow them to fit neatly into traditional definitions of male and female. In some cases, a decision was made at birth to assign a person's gender through surgery. If that decision turns out to have been hasty, and a transgendered person ends up feeling an undeniable attraction towards the same (?) sex, who are we to judge?

The ambiguity of some peoples' gender, by itself, should be a good enough moral and legal reason to allow people to choose a same-sex spouse if they wish. (At present, Dick Cheney seems to understand this; President Obama does not.) A common objection is, well, why not let people marry their pets, then? Great question. The common-sense answer is that an animal cannot consent to such an arrangement, can't be the executor of a will, can't make life-or-death hospital decisions, etc. For some reason, these painfully basic considerations hardly make a dent in gay marriage opposition. In fact, in my experience, the strongest gay marriage opponents tend to be the least intellectually curious about the actual facts of biology and sexuality; they cannot articulate concretely, specifically, how gays corrupt straight people, children, and puppies, but they nevertheless feel certain this is the case. Why?

In my opinion, these are the tell-tale symptoms of prejudice. It's interesting to observe the same symptoms in what opponents to inter-racial marriage were saying, decades ago: they were simply defending themselves from black activists who were trying to corrupt white purity, to force us to accept them, etc. Today, after decades of soul-searching, most of us realize that was just a lame excuse for prejudice. The same is true of gay marriage opposition: it's not really about "defending the family", or even defending "marriage". Gently examine, probe, dissect those claims, and they fall apart. The truth is, it is the right-wing that wants to demean and bully other peoples' families, other peoples' marriages. "Defending marriage" is just a lame excuse for what is today a lingering prejudice in most of America, a prejudice that was once part of a strong global tradition of homophobia, a prejudice which has dwindled and retreated under the hammer-blows of ethical and scientific progress. To see this, we have to examine the forms "defending the family" has taken globally and historically.

Like antisemitism, homophobia is symptomatic of authoritarian societies. It is well-known that homosexuals were targeted by the Nazis, to protect the "healthy sensibility" of the German people, Christian civilization, and so on. It probably comes as no shock that these sentiments were shared by their allies, the Italian and Spanish fascists. And of course, as we all know, sexual hysteria and homophobia go back to the Middle Ages, the Church, and ancient Israel. But I was intrigued to discover that homosexuals were also demeaned and bullied in Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, and Castro's Cuba. In those contexts, homophobia was couched in terms of safegaurding the masculine ethic of the workers from the intrusion of the effeminate tendencies of the evil capitalists. In the McCarthy-era U.S., on the other hand, homosexuality was associated with communism. Today, our planet's most enthusiastic homophobes are the Islamists, such as the Taliban and their ilk. (I hasten to add that many Muslims are bitterly opposed to the Islamists.) North Korea probably ranks highly as well.

So that's a rather charming group we have there. Contrast it with the nations and movements that have been relatively tolerant of gays: Rome, Greece, and China at the peak of their enlightened civilizations; and the modern, Western democracies.

Now, I do not want to exaggerate the similarities between the American anti-gay movement and its analogues in fascist and theocratic regimes. Obviously, there is no equivalence between the right wing in Iran (for example) and the right wing in the U.S. However, in spite of differences in severity and intensity, there are some fascinating common threads.

There's plain ignorance, of course, like when conservatives suggest that gays "choose" to be sexually and emotionally attracted to the same gender. This issue was settled long ago among scientists, heterosexuals do not (and cannot) choose to dilate their pupils, or show other involuntary signs of arousal, when shown provocative photos of the opposite gender; and the same is true for homosexuals, who respond this way when shown photos of the same gender. The funniest (saddest?) example of homophobic ignorance was when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed there are no gay people in all of Iran. Now, ignorance is not necessarily anything to be ashamed of. It can be easily corrected if the facts are available, and if a person is intellectually curious. But prejudice has a way of dulling one's curiosity.

Then there's the idea that gays are boogeymen who will bring about the destruction of everything we hold dear...somehow. The late Jerry Falwell for instance felt sure the tragedies of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina were expressions of God's just wrath against gays (and feminists, etc). This takes on a milder form when mainstream gay marriage opponents speak in abstract terms about how treating gays equally will destroy "the family" or "marriage". How? Somehow.

This leads naturally to the notion that attacking gays is, in fact, defense. I find the thinking behind this notion utterly fascinating. It seems that gay people, like all people, wish to be socially accepted and tolerated, as well as treated equally under the law. This is regarded as a fiendish assault which must be defended against. So for example, when a state official interrupted a same-sex wedding ceremony that was taking place in a California courtroom, the morning after Proposition 8 passed, in front of dozens of supportive family and friends, that was an attack on a family. But gay marriage opponents consider that action to be a defense of "the family" (if they bother to consider it). They consider it to be a defense of religious freedom, too, when in reality it is an attack on the freedom of Unitarians, Episcopelians, and many other religious/non-religious people who believe in the sacredness and worth of same-sex marriage. Presumably, when the Obama administration fired Dan Choi, a West Point grad and fluent Arab speaker who had been to Iraq, because he came out of the closet, that somehow defended our entire nation. These are remarkable feats of Orwellian doublethink, and it takes a well-trained intellect not to notice the obvious contradictions.

Speaking of contradiction -- in anti-gay movements, this sometimes borders on full-blown schizophrenia. It's quite interesting how, among those who preach against homosexuality, so many turn out to be gay, or pedophiles, or adulterers themselves. Maybe they should take counsel from G. W. Bush's favorite philosopher, Jesus, who said "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Boo-yah!

Remarkably, many conservatives excuse homophobia on "moral" grounds, i.e. the Bible (which in my opinion is often morally bankrupt to start with). This claim is almost too funny to be true. Anyone who has glanced at the Bible for a nanosecond will double over with laughter at the idea that the mainstream conservative agenda is Bible-based. If they want gay marriage to be illegal because of what it says in the Bible, then they ought to want all marriage outside the Church, divorce, and military service to be illegal, too. They ought to be liberal bleeding-hearts who give all their belongings to the poor, and who advocate "turning the other cheek" over pre-emptive war. They ought to believe in exorcism and speaking in tongues. Now, some conservatives, like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, are slightly more consistent in these matters than most. But those cases cause one to double over with laughter for other reasons.

And this brings me to, in my opinion, the most universal and most fundamental characteristic of homophobia: its deep connections to organized dogmatism. Homophobia as dogma goes back as far as ancient Israel, continues through the Inquisition, and leads up to the rise of secular religions (like communism) and Islamism today. In Jerusalem, the Holiest place on Earth (not to be confused with Disney Land, which is merely the Happiest place on Earth), about the only thing that arouses the united voice of the Orthodox Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious leaders is their opposition to a gay pride parade.

Why is this important? Because the unstated basis for American conservative opposition to gay marriage, today, is a remnant of this powerful prejudice. It's based on an unquestionable dogma: homosexuality is wrong. Because God says so. Normally, we don't accept that kind of statement. So for example, anyone who claimed today "watching movies is wrong, God says so" would be challenged to back up that assertion. Asking a conservative the exact same question about homosexuality, on the other hand, is unthinkable. That question is declared to be out-of-bounds, and for good cause: you can't justify prejudice.

So this is what it feels like to have a prejudice: it feels like being certain of something, but being unable to articulate good reasons for it; being un-curious about relevant facts, and consequences surrounding the issue.

I think I can say this, because I myself used to be strongly opposed to gay marriage. Like many straight men, I felt some disgust at the idea of male-male homosexuality. I think this can be forgiven. But you know what? I suppose I also feel some disgust at the idea of my parents', or grandparents' sexuality. In fact, I'm not enthusiastic about the sex lives of most people I see walking down the street. A mature person, however, can appreciate the fact that two people love and care for each other, and have committed themselves to another person for life. Personally, I find happiness in the fact that they have found happiness. And when it comes to their sex lives, I mind my own damn business.

The good news is this prejudice has been chipped away at for so long, it is no longer about remotely-plausible goals like defending civilization, or family, or the Bible. In America, it has been reduced to defending a word. The word "marriage". That's like opposing interracial dating in defense of the word "white". So the rational basis for the anti-gay marriage position has never been flimsier. The prejudice is still hanging on by a thread. But I think as more gay people openly demonstrate the dignity and love of their commitments, and how they are just regular people; and as more straight Americans look in the mirror, and forgive themselves for the prejudice they see; and as the younger generation grows up; then that thread will finally snap.