Why "Gay Rights" are Wrong

The Supreme Legislature of the People's Republic of Massachusetts has decreed that homosexuals in that benighted state must be given the privilege of nominal matrimony. No doubt this precedent will be embraced by black-robed Bolsheviks throughout the land. This is a perfect example of how the Left is the real extremist and aggressor in the culture-war. On issues like this, even someone as moderate as I am is pushed willy-nilly into the reactionary camp.

My own opinion is that homosexuality is unnatural, immoral, and disgusting. However, I do not hold this opinion with any great fervor. Any moralistic impulses I ever had have pretty well atrophied, and my sense of disgust is easily obviated: "out of sight, out of mind" -- "live and let live" -- these bromides sum up my basic attitude toward homosexuals. I have no desire whatsoever to persecute them; the most they have to fear from me is that I will make fun of them and call them names. (Judging from my hate mail, some of them can't even abide that -- the sissies.)

The case against "gay rights" is perfectly consistent with the assumption that the law should be completely indifferent to what people do in their private lives. I will address nothing but the public role of homosexuals. My sole argument is that all citizens should be equal before the law -- including both homosexuals and people who think that homosexuality is immoral or disgusting.

The first thing to remark about "gay rights" is that their entire purpose is to enact special privileges for a certain favored class of people. Homosexuals already have the same rights that all the rest of us do; what they (or their self-appointed spokesmen) want, is to have more rights than the rest of us. They want to have rights against the rest of us: the "right" to violate our rights.

Not content with the freedom to associate with each other and express themselves, the Sodomy Lobby tries to deprive others of these same rights. This is vividly exemplified by their attempts to force the Boy Scouts to let in homosexuals. As it happens, I am a member of another group the Boy Scouts "discriminate" against: atheists. Yet I do not feel the slightest bit "oppressed" by this discrimination, and have absolutely no desire to impose myself where I am not wanted.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court has (for the time being) reaffirmed the Boy Scouts' right to freedom of association. Of course, neither the homosexual activists nor their liberal apologists have never given any consideration to the Boy Scouts' rights. To them, the Boy Scouts (and anyone else who denies homosexuals anything they want) are simply "homophobes," and therefore have no rights that homosexuals and liberals need to respect.

Another special privilege that homosexual activists seek is "hate crimes" law. Since anyone who physically attacks a homosexual is already guilty of felonious assault, there are only two purposes served by such legislation: (1) to make it a greater offense to attack a homosexual than to attack a heterosexual, and (2) to punish the motive of the person who attacked the homosexual.

The first purpose of "hate crimes" law is a transparently unjust and un-Constitutional violation of the principle that all citizens should enjoy the equal protection of the law. If an attacker is punished more severely because of the legal status of the person he attacks, then the rest of us that that much less protected, because we are not given such a special legal status.

The second purpose of "hate crimes" law is achieved indirectly. It is only possible to prove that an attack was motivated by "hate" if the attacker expresses his "hate" -- so, in effect, the law punishes the attacker for what he says, not what he does: not for physically assaulting someone, but for using words like "fag" or "queer." It is a very small step from that, to punishing someone for using such words without physically assaulting someone; and a very small step from that, to punishing someone for saying or doing anything that some homosexual chooses to consider "offensive" (writing this essay, for example).

A third example of special privilege is one that might, at first glance, seem to be a true claim to equal rights: the claim that homosexuals should have legally recognized marriages, and custody of children. To refute this claim, we have to step back a moment and ask ourselves: what is marriage, anyway? What purpose does it serve?

Marriage is the union of one man and one woman for the purpose of procreation. (No other society has ever even contemplated the possibility of homosexual "marriage"; and even in societies that allow polygamy, a man's wives are married to him, not each other.) It serves to solemnify and legally reinforce their union, and thereby provide a more secure and stable environment for their children. To the homosexual lobby, however, marriage is nothing but a social sanction that they want to force the rest of us to give them, just to enhance their "self-esteem."

One can argue over whether homosexuality is immoral or disgusting: but it is self-evident that homosexuality is unnatural. Sex is fundamentally a means for procreation. Human beings can separate sexual activity from reproduction, but it is an indisputable fact that only a man and a woman can make a baby. It is precisely in marriage that sexual activity is purposefully directed towards procreation, even if only indirectly -- I certainly do not endorse the papist notion that contraception is immoral. (There are few things more insane than allowing sexual ethics to be defined by celibate [except for the occasional altar-boy] priests, but that's another matter.)

Since two homosexuals cannot make a baby, allowing them to have children (whether by adoption or artificial insemination) only enables them to pretend to be what they aren't: a mother and father. To analogize them to childless heterosexual couples is nothing but a mind-blanking refusal to face reality. There's a lot more to parenthood than providing a spermatozoon and an ovum. If homosexuals are not even willing or able to accept their natural roles as men or women, they are certainly unfit for the social role of father or mother.

It is only common sense (and even sociologists have come to recognize this fact ) that it takes a mother and a father, together, to raise a child optimally. Two pseudo-fathers or pseudo-mothers are no substitute. Of course, there are plenty of heterosexuals who make less than ideal parents: but bad parents are no argument for worse ones.

An important part of the parents' job is to teach the child how to live -- and this is done most effectively by example. In particular, a father and mother implicitly teach the child what manhood and womanhood are, and prepare the child to assume either role in turn. Homosexuals simply cannot do this job.

Just try to imagine the ignorance and confusion of a child raised by two pseudo-fathers or pseudo-mothers, when he or she grows to manhood or womanhood and has to deal, somehow, with the opposite sex. Of course, homosexual activists would never consider a child's well-being: they only care about their selfish, irresponsible demand for social acceptance. Marriage and child-custody are nothing but tokens of that acceptance. Their liberal (and libertarian) apologists only care about free-floating "rights" that have been cut off from reality and from right and wrong.

It is clear, then, that the whole idea of same-sex "marriage" is absurd. It can be nothing but a grotesque travesty of marriage. It is as if a group of atheists wanted to found a "Church of Irreligion" and force the rest of society to pretend that their "church" was just as good as any other. Just as a "Church of Irreligion" would be transparently blasphemous, same-sex "marriage" is transparently anti-familial and anti-social.

Advocates of "gay rights" often claim that they only want equal rights for homosexuals. This is a lie, plain and simple. It is precisely for the sake of equal rights that "gay rights" have to be rejected.

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