Republicans & Conservatives Archives

Christine and John, Here Here!

But, I would take issue with your claim about it not making a difference. It would make an enormous difference to Gay persons and their entire network of hetero friends and families. Discrimination and violence against them would also fade somewhat in time if the law of the land treated them equally as citizens as their hetero counterparts.

David

Of course you are right on the level of the individual. My point is that it will not have much of an impact on society or its institutions. There just is not that much demand for it.

C&J
Agreed. In 10 years it will be a non-issue. In 50,historians will be amuzed there was even a controversy,a bit like womans suffrage etc.
As often happens, we agree,but I question how you got there and some side conclusions. The reason there is a good deal of AIDS reseach is not so much the prominence of Gays in influencial positions,although that doesn’t hurt, as the potential danger the virus represents .Aids is a hetro desease in much of the world and it continues to spread rapidly.
Another point,although you are correct that gays are represented in the entertainment industry,acedemia,richest nieghborhoods etc. and have “flamboyant” lifestyles etc. , do not forget that those are the gays that you can see. Those are the ones whoes situation allows them the freedom to be themselves. Doing so can be a problem for,lets say, a highschool teacher or ironworker.There are a lot more gay people out there than you think.
It is nice to hear your position,comming from the right. Its really just a matter of equal rights.I trust you will hold your leadership to account when they try and use this as a wedge issue and take advantage of the rampant homophobia prevelent in the right wing rank and file.
I liked Michael Kinsey’s take. There is no “sanctity” issue involved. It is beyond the power of the state to santify anything. ALL civil marriages are in actuality,civil unions. Change a few words and leave “marriage” to the churches where it belongs.

Gay marriage has been legal in Massachusetts for six years now and nothing has changed for the vast majority of the commonwealth. C+J are 100% correct to point out how little of an impact same-sex marriage has on everyone else. There was a flurry of weddings at my local UU church back in 2004, but the frenzy has since died down as everyone who wanted to be married has done so.

Warped Reality

What do you mean,nothings changed!? You all sent your first Rep senator in 47 years to Washington! Hmmm…maybe I should rethink my position…?

Bills

I don’t think there are more gay people than I think (how is that for a sentence?). Gays are about 3-5% of the population. That is what I think based on the most current studies I can find.

The figures on gay marriage, where it is legal, track with a small number, as do in a more deadly sense the incidence of AIDS.

I just don’t care about sexual orientation and don’t want to be bothered. I don’t expect the heterosexual people to talk about it all the time and not the gays either.

I wish we would just go back to the old fashioned virtue of keeping quiet about most personal things. Lots of things just are none of my business, and I get annoyed when people try to draw me into those things.

I do not like the flamboyant lifestyle, gay or straight. Many of people’s personal problems and many of societies problems are caused by what we used to call immorality. I do not plan to legislate about it, but it should come as no surprise that some lifesyle choices are less healthy than others.

When people insist on telling about their problems and proclivities, I advise them to settle down into a reasonably monogamous relationship, get more exercise, don’t drink to excess, don’t do drugs at all and read good literature. After that, they usually leave me alone.

Re using the issue politically, I wish that would just go away too. I would not support using it as a wedge issue, but as we wrote in the original article, it is well-loved by activists on both sides.

Christine said: “it is well-loved by activists on both sides. “

Especially, when they need a distraction from something else they are doing.

As a political issue, however, because it is, the Democrats have the surest way to put the issue to bed. Republicans on the other hand use it as a rally for their religiously fundamentalist base. As a political issue, that is a quite a divergence in each party’s position, which both sides, as you say, exploit for purposes other than just doing the right thing by people according to MLK, judging people by the content of their character, not some biased and culturally charged label others force them to wear.

In some respects, the abortion issue parallels the gay issue. It is a personal morality decision to choose or not choose abortion as an option to early detection of pregnancy, without any significant impact on the rest of society when a person chooses to have an abortion, or not.

As a political issue, however, the role of religion in government lies at the center of the debate and partisan positions, making it a vastly more passionate and politically divisive issue than the GLBT issue.

Good article. I wish everyone felt this way. I am curious however if we can ever get an accurate statistic on this subject with decades of hidden lifestyles. I would even go so far as to say I think the numbers are greater than we are led to believe.

Jeff

I think we made too strong a distinction. There are some people who don’t care much about sex at all and others whose preferences may change over time. I read that the mother from “Family Ties” recently “discovered” she was gay after two marriages and something 60 years of life. Who cares?

The best recent data shows around 3-5%. That means that if you know 20 people, one of them will be gay. Of course, people tend to cluster. I think of my own extended family, maybe 100 cousins, aunts etc, people I know fairly well. None of them are gay. On the other hand, I have been in some circles of acquaintances with lots of gays, so everybody’s experience will be different.

I think we need to look to lifestyle choices. Not many gay people want to get married. I cannot say whether that is because there are not many gays in general or that they just don’t want to marry. In Massachusetts gay marriages make up 0.7% of the total. The national average of gay households (married or not) is 0.47%. The highest concentration in the country is DC where it is 1.4%. With numbers this low, it is hard to believe that the total population could be higher than 3-5%.

The bottom line is what we wrote above. It just will not make a big difference.

David

I think abortion is a more difficult issue. It depends on what you think life means. Ancient people practiced infanticide. As far as they were concerned, babies didn’t count as full people. We have seen that today with various handicaps.

It is interesting to me that some people who support abortion on demand oppose abortion designed to eliminate handicapped fetuses or to do gender selection. That shows how fluid the definitions can be. Of course, if you really believe that the fetus is not yet a human, you shouldn’t make any such distinctions.

Christine
Jeff et al

Psyce 101. All humans are to one degree or another homosexual. We fall somewhere on a scale.Some more,some less. This is basic sexual drive and may or may not be behaviorily relevant. It just is. Its not surprising given that our nearest animal relatives,chimps and bonoboes, engage in homosexual acts all the time. Statistics really do not mean much.

Bills, you may have given the social conservatives a new wedge issue. I hope there isn’t a Psych 101 professor named Scopes somewhere in America.

Christine, I imagine there are quite a few Republican politicians who have reached the same conclusions as yourself on on this issue. They just don’t have the same freedom as you when it comes to exercising their right to free speech on the issue.

jlw

I think that we indeed should just let it go away. I believe further, however, that activists on both sides want to provoke. Remember those “Act-Up” guys blowing whistles and shutting down debates?

I believe in no special rights or restrictions based on any group status. The gay issue is a little more complicated because there is a behavior associated with the status. The gay marriage, IMO, is fairly easy. I would add (maybe snidely) that gay marriage will keep divorce lawyers fully employed, but why should gays be protected from that?

In other cases, it is harder because of the behavior issue. We would have to demand that people in our military NOT act on their urges in many situations. My guess is that this will be harder on gays. Remember that the prayer asks “lead us not into temptation” because temptation is hard to resist. Imagine letting a 19 year old straight guy loose in a women’s dorm and telling him not even to look too long much less act up. We are going to have to demand extraordinary discipline from our gay recruits.

Christine, there are activists on both sides of just about every issue. IMO, they are a necessary part of our society. They often force the majority to face the issue and make a determination.

I agree that their is a behavior involved in the gay rights/marriage issue that has a stigma attached to it. The stigma is primarilly applied by conservative fundamentalist religious beliefs and the greater the influence those beliefs have over a society the greater the emphasis on the stigma is and the harsher the punishment is for those that engage in the behavior. Example, hanging homosexuals from street lights in Tehran.

I agree that the proportional rate of divorce amoung homosexuals will be equal to that in heterosexual marriages but, the vast majority of business for divorce lawyers will still come from the heterosexual community.

I agree that if homosexuals in the military pretend they are going to a gay bathhouse retreat or that they are in prison there will be problems. I don’t think they still engage in the practice but the local state penitentiary used to designate Friday nights as ladies night. The homosexual prisoners were allowed and encouraged to dress up in womens clothes and makeup for the enjoyment of the prisoners and possibly some of the guards.

As to the behavior you mentioned relating to 19 year old straight guys, the military may not promote the behavior but they haven’t done a lot to discourage it until recently. Just the other day, the millitary issued orders that all medical units in the field stock up on morning after birth control pills because of the high rate of pregnancy in female soldiers. Once a female soldier is confirmed pregnant she is immediately shipped back to the states leaving a void in a position, sometimes a mission critical position, that has to be filled.

jlw

The Iranians hang people for lots of reasons. That regime is benighted.

I think we agree that “gay integration” (for lack of a better term) can be accomplished, but that “activists” will make trouble and try to push the debate to extremes.

IMO - it is like abortion in this way (as David said). Most Americans think abortion is a bad thing but should be the woman’s choice. The extremes want to push either to make it illegal or to make it seem like everyone should think it is a good thing.

There is a big difference between tolerance and celebration. Activist sometimes demand celebration and they provoke a reaction.

Log Cabin Republican here!

Republican’s are supposed to be the ones that are accepting of minorities….but not anymore.

It’s time that we change that!