At the risk of sound rude (and ignorant), may I take this moment to speak on behalf of the so-called "straight people" everywhere? We have questions:
How do we tell which of you is the man, and which is the woman?
And what is your story…anyway? Shakespeare wrote, "Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them." Does that notion apply here? Certainly, some people are born gay, (I suppose), while others purposely seek a gay lifestyle, (I suppose). Still, there must be those who have homosexuality thrust upon them - by force, or circumstance. Simply put, we do not know who you are. And, if you come out of the closet, that can be scary too.
We can pretend that gay people are like the rest of us, but they are not, (unless we all are gay). I doubt that 1% of the world's people are gay. If they are, that would amount to roughly 70 million homosexuals on Earth, which is fine. (It is not like they can reproduce).
No one doubts that a man can love a man, and a woman can love a woman. We only wonder whether it is prudent to "do something about it."
When a gay man says, "I love him," we say, "Okay, but must you have sex with him?" A man can love a child, but he cannot have sex with that child. He can show his love for that child by taking the child to a ballgame, buying him ice cream, or taking him fishing. All the while, he must control himself. If he loses control and indulges himself in his love for that child, then that love becomes sick; it becomes a crime.
A man can love his sister, and she can love him back. But he cannot have sex with her - that is taboo. They certainly cannot marry and have children - that would be an abomination. Yet, both are grown. She may be a doctor, and he a lawyer. Intelligent, successful, and in love - yet, we are repulsed at the thought of them consummating their union. As a society, we would deny them the chance to lawfully spend their lives together as man and wife based on our revulsion at the thought of them coupling.
Fifty percent of the American people seem to want a constitutional amendment giving a man the right to couple with another man. Just this past week, the NAACP passed a resolution endorsing same sex marriage as a civil right. Yet, I doubt that one percent of the American people would consent to bestowing the same rights upon a man who wants to spend the rest of his life with his sister. Why deny a brother-sister couple the same civil rights, when given the choice, most men on Earth would marry their sister before they would marry another man.
The survival of any species is dependent upon its ability to produce offspring. That is the basic function of sex on this Earth - to insure the continuation of life. A man and a child can do that; a brother and a sister can do that. Two men cannot; neither can two women.
Why then this rush to wed one man with another? Who has convinced us that this is good, or necessary, or just?
If adult brothers and sisters want to have sex, no one can stop them. But, just because we cannot stop them, that is no reason to cheer them on. It is the same with grown men. If they want to have sex with each other, that is their business. But why do we, as a society, feel compelled to encourage this willful indulgence? It is as though we have conceded that since we cannot stop them, we should join them. Is that supposed to make us feel good about ourselves? Does our approval make it right? Or does it simply make us complicit in love gone awry?
Historically, incest and homosexuality have been condemned throughout all major societies. Today, both continue to be prohibited by custom or law in most societies around the world. More and more, however, Western societies - including the U.S. - while continuing to condemn incest, increasingly embrace homosexuality as a viable lifestyle.
Are we to believe a split has occurred, much like the split millions of years ago that sent apes in one direction and man in another - a split that insures one branch of this modern-day tandem makes it out of the trees, while the other does not?
Or, could it be that both incest and homosexuality are what they are, what they have always been, and what they always will be - not books to be read, but bookends - the extremes of our lusts, beyond which, sickness and deformity await mankind?
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