Sexuality and Reality

 The U.S. Supreme Court has opened arguments on California’s Proposition 8, the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits same-sex marriage. Proposition 8, as we remember, was heavily backed by the Mormon Church. Religious institutions have been at the core of the opposition to gay marriage. But what's really the subject here?

Homosexuality is not normal, some may say. But what does “normal” actually mean? It really was never intended to mean “right” or “correct.” It means “common.” And homosexuality is less common than heterosexuality, no question – but that’s all you can say about it.

I would submit that there is no basis for throwing around the word “normal” when you talk about human sexuality, when there are entire websites and magazines devoted to FEET, to offer just one example. Did not Dr. Kinsey establish a long time ago that there are almost as many strokes as there are folks?

Sexuality is by no means a static target. People can have one kind of persuasion at one age and a different kind as they grow up. Or not! What governs sexuality – genes? Experience? Does it matter, as long as consenting adults are involved?

Can homosexuality be “cured”? If you’re trying to tell me that those who practice this therapy are experts in brain wiring, which is what is required, I would beg to differ.

If a certain percentage of non-human mammals, supposedly governed strictly by instinct, practice homosexuality, then what is “natural”?

Is a loving homosexual relationship that lasts for decades any less valid than a heterosexual marriage that lasts for six months?

There would seem to be too many easy answers for moralists to too many big questions.

The Big Thaw

Spring is only a few weeks away. The ice, still solid enough on northern lakes to support heavy trucks, is imperceptibly weakening as the sun angle increases a few degrees each day. When the ice finally starts to break up and water reappears, it will seem as if it happened all of a sudden, but the process will have started much earlier – we just couldn’t detect the evidence of it.

It’s my feeling that thaws are breaking out all over. Take immigration reform – an insoluble problem for decades. But Romney lost the election, many say, because of the Latino vote. It wasn’t some wild political swing. For decades, Latinos have been having more children than folks of other ethnicities – there are simply more of them, but the evidence is only now making headlines. True, not all Latinos are Democrats, but a lot voted that way. So now even Republicans are talking about immigration reform. Positions frozen for decades are unfreezing.

The same is happening with gun control, although it took a terrible tragedy to spur the breakup of long-frozen positions on that score. The NRA is no longer a solid block of immovable ice, or at least the block is smaller than it once was. Women will be officially allowed combat roles in the military – unthinkable until this month. Will widely accepted gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana be next? I wish the big thaw would extend to tax reform, but that ice is pretty thick yet.

Then there’s the economy. The struggling stock market has actually been improving for years, but it seems like it happened just last week, when the Dow closed above 14,000 for the first time in recent memory. Home sales are increasing; money is flowing again.

Even internationally, I hear ice cracking. Iran has agreed to return to the talks on its nuclear program. Is this simply deception, or is a hard frozen position melting? Even some members of the Syrian opposition are no longer ruling out talks with the brutal Assad regime.

Is common sense actually starting to bloom? I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced something is going on. Spring is a hard season not to like.

Anderson, We Hardly Knew Ye

We don’t have to guess at this anymore. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper “came out” to Daily Beast reporter Andrew Sullivan.

Though quite a few people knew this about him, the vast majority of us were dealing with guesswork or rumors. As a minority, gay people differ from most other groups in one critical respect. Members of racial minorities are “outed” at birth, and that status is almost impossible to hide. Gender is another difficult status to conceal, as is age, though less so. But “gayness” isn’t visibly obvious; it can be hidden, unless the individual chooses to reveal it.

In Cooper’s case, it represented an act of courage, because it clearly has an impact on his bread and butter: his audience. Those who believe homosexuality is a sin may now have doubts (or have their doubts reinforced) about the quality of his reporting. Some women fans may be disappointed to find that he’s “off the market.” But I would assume that for most of us in the modern world, it’s something we can accept.

The fact that Anderson is gay doesn’t change in any respect the quality of his reporting, his integrity or his bravery at war or disaster scenes. Those are facts that his audiences have seen with their own eyes. Sexual preference, when reduced to its essentials, “is what it is,” and doesn’t imply political positions or agendas. Blacks and Latinos complain often that they are treated as monolithic blocs by politicians, while the only real common denominator, in the end, is skin color. Culture is a factor, certainly, but that’s a social construct and can change over time. There are plenty of right-wing blacks and Latinos, as well as gay Republicans, whose voices are heard much more often now.

Homosexuality is not unknown, of course, in the rest of the animal kingdom, especially among mammals. Far from being a crime against nature, it actually seems to be part of nature. As for whether it’s “normal,” that word is interpreted by many to mean “correct” when it really should be “most common,” and as I have said in this space before, defining what’s “normal” (if you mean “correct”) in human sexuality is a treacherous road to go down.

So, thank you, Anderson, for clearing things up, and allowing us to move on – most of us, anyway.

The M Word (Again!)

Some day, the long fistfight over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry will be over. Both sides will have punched themselves out.

If I could write the law, it would come out something like this. For the purpose of rights and responsibilities, there would be no such thing as “marriage” in our legal codes. All willing couples, regardless of gender, would get some kind of certificate of union, with all the rights and privileges –- and I mean all -- currently afforded couples whom we now call married. But issuing that certificate would be all that government could do, and the spiritual and emotional components would be the province of some other entity.

This way, the county clerks wouldn’t be in the position of having to perform any ceremonies, and their sensibilities, or their biases, if you prefer, would not be part of the equation. If a couple wanted to find a church or some other party to perform a ceremony so they could call themselves “married,” that, in effect, would be none of government’s business. The person administering the ceremony would not be able to say, “By the power vested in me…”, because no power (at least no LEGAL power) would be vested in that individual.

We could avoid the insoluble arguments over the definition of marriage, which kinds of couples are more capable of raising children, or whether a same-sex union lasting 20 years is more valid or justified than a heterosexual union lasting only three years. Clearly, if two people of any sex want to make a long-standing or even a till-death-do-us-part commitment to each other, that’s something that society should encourage. And it appears that a certain percentage of human beings, indeed, mammals in general, are gay. They can’t “fight” it; why should others waste time trying?

I know this horse left the barn a few thousand years ago; I’ll leave it to the interpreters of the Bible or other books to tell me how many thousand. But I’m hoping that evolution (whoops, I mean SOCIAL evolution) takes us past this discussion eventually and that we can focus on other issues. How about curing cancer or ending war? Well, those are horses that may never leave the barn, but we can hope, can’t we?

The M Word (repeat)

To paraphrase the old Universal Pictures slogan from the 1930s, "A Good Blog Is Worth Repeating." This one goes back to Oct. 13, 2008, before the passage of California's Proposition 8. Reposting is about not having anything new to say -- but on this subject, I don't:

The M Word

The debate over same-sex marriage could be ended very easily by rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, if you don’t mind the Biblical reference. Just remove the word “marriage” from the law.

You may or may not accept the premise that a certain percentage of human beings are just wired gay, which I do, seeing as how that seems to be the case in mammals generally. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a hardware or software issue, or even what Miss California thinks.

Your local county clerk would issue licenses for domestic partnership (or whatever you want to call it) ONLY, and these would have the full legal status that marriage has now. There would be no government-performed ceremonies (including judicial ones), so the religious or philosophical objections of clerk’s personnel or other officials would have no bearing – it simply would be none of their business.

In many religions, marriage is a sacrament, and that is its proper status. Churches and other religious or quasi-religious institutions should be free to perform gay marriage ceremonies, or not, and if marriage had no legal status, there would be no opportunity for lawsuits over this issue.

This all comes under the heading of my impossible solutions to modern problems, although I heard that someone is mounting a California initiative with very similar provisions. But frankly, I’m tired of listening to this debate. Boycotting a business that supported Proposition 8, in the middle of a recession, makes no sense. And is a straight marriage that lasts six months “better” than a gay marriage between two committed partners that lasts 20 years? Will gay unions really undermine the family unit as we know it? We should be celebrating and reinforcing the commitment, not the ceremony.

If we’re really committed to the separation of church and state, removing the word “marriage,” with all its emotional and spiritual accoutrements, from our legal codes would be a great place to start.

There, now I've said it.

The M Word

Some day, the long fistfight over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry will be over. Both sides will have punched themselves out.

I don’t mean to trivialize this, but if I could write the law, it would come out something like this. For the purpose of rights and responsibilities, there would be no such thing as “marriage” in our legal codes. All couples, regardless of gender, seeking what we now call marriage would get some kind of certificate of union, with all the rights and privileges –- and I mean all -- currently afforded couples whom we now call married. But issuing that certificate would be all that government could do, and the spiritual and emotional components would be the province of some other entity. 

This way, the county clerks wouldn’t be in the position of having to perform any ceremonies, and their sensibilities, or their biases, if you prefer, would not be part of the equation. If a couple wanted to find a church or some other party to perform a ceremony so they could call themselves “married,” that, in effect, would be none of government’s business.

We could avoid the insoluble arguments over which kinds of couples are more capable of raising children, or whether a same-sex union lasting 20 years is more valid or justified than a heterosexual union lasting only three years. etc. Clearly, if two people of any sex want to make a long-standing or even a till-death-do-us-part commitment to each other, that’s something that society should encourage. And it appears that a certain percentage of human beings, indeed, mammals in general, are gay. They can’t “fight” it; why should others waste time trying?

I know this horse left the barn a few thousand years ago; I’ll leave it to the interpreters of the Bible or other books to tell me how many thousand. Just so you know, I will vote against California’s Proposition 8. But I’m hoping that evolution takes us past this discussion eventually and that we can focus on other issues. How about ending war?  Well, there’s a horse that may never leave the barn, but we can hope, can’t we?

There, now I’ve said it.