The objection?
Reuters quotes Karen England of the Capitol Resource Institute, a self-described “pro-family grassroots advocacy group”: “This bill would also prohibit anything that reflects adversely on those people. They’re after their lifestyle to be embraced, and they want to force it on kids as young as kindergarten."
On the one hand, I deplore the necessity to point out traits in people that have nothing to do with accomplishments. Race, gender, sexual orientation. What do these have to do with the significance of a person’s actions? Oh, sure, they may be of interest in some way, but knowing that Leonardo Da Vinci was gay doesn’t enhance or diminish his artistic accomplishment with, say, the Mona Lisa. The same can be said of what other luminaries such as Oscar Wilde, Leonard Bernstein, Michelangelo and others have accomplished.
But there is a definite advantage to bringing up the subject of the sexual orientation of significant historical figures, the same that comes with discussing race and gender: It
provides counter-examples to widely held negative stereotypes. It’s hard for racists to hold on to the ugly stereotype of blacks as muggers and criminals when confronted with the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks (to name the obvious.) Similarly, it’s hard to point to homosexuals as sinful degenerates who’ll bring the sky crashing down when the history books provide overwhelming proof that people who happen to be gay have done wonders for their communities — and even humanity as a whole.
What I have a hard time figuring out is why people are so opposed
to homosexuality. What, exactly, is there to oppose? How is
homosexuality harmful? How are heterosexuals harmed by
homosexuals? How are kids harmed by learning about homosexuality?
Repressed, Latent Homosexuality?
Maybe this hostility towards gays is the manifestation of a great internal battle with repressed homosexual urges. It’s not farfetched, as suggested by a 1996 University of Georgia study titled “Is Homophobia Associated with Homosexual Arousal?” Conducted by Henry E. Adams, Ph.D., Lester W. Wright, Jr., Ph.D., and Bethany A. Lohr, it was published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (Volume 405, No. 3). The study consisted of measuring the physical response of thirty-five homophobic and twenty non-homophobic men (as determined by an Index of Homophobia scale developed by the study’s authors) to sexually explicit heterosexual, gay and lesbian material. The results:
“Men in both groups were aroused by about the same degree by the video depicting
heterosexual sexual behavior and by the video showing two women engaged in sexual behavior. The only significant difference in degree of arousal between the two groups occurred when they viewed the video depicting male hoomosexual sex: The homophobic men showed a significant increase in penile circumference to the male homosexual video, but the controlled [non-homophobic] men did not. Broken down further, the measurements showed that while sixty-six percent of the non-homophobic group showed no significant tumescence while watching the male homosexual video, only twenty percent of the homophobic men showed little or no evidence of arousal. Similarly, while twenty-four percent of the non-homophobic men showed definite tumescence while watching the homosexual video, fifty-four percent of the homophobic men did.”
Interpreting the results suggests that homophobes may actually have some sort of latent homosexuality they can’t come to grips with. So, they lash out. An alternative explanation put forth by the study’s authors lies with anxiety, ostensibly linked to arousal, in the face of a perceived threat. But this view doesn’t seem to be particularly convincing.
The Lazy and the Weak
Perhaps other explanations for hostility towards gays lie with intellectual laziness and spiritual weakness. Laziness, because so far the only justification for deeming homosexuality immoral doesn’t come from pointing to anything immoral about gay sex in itself, but from the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality. Never mind that it’s strange for Christians to completely ignore their raison d’etre, the New Testament, in favor of the
Old (whose morality conflicts, in many respects, with Jesus’ teaching). Accepting what a book says without subjecting it to some form of critical thought is the very definition of intellectual laziness.
As for spiritual weakness, it simply stems from the inability of some people to live their lives unless other people live that same life, too. To hear the likes of Karen England, it’s as if merely learning about homosexuals will spontaneously convert heterosexual kids into gays against their will. Or that allowing gay marriage suddenly will cause all heterosexual couples to turn gay and dissolve their relationships against their will. It’s bollocks, of course. Only the insecure and, yes, spiritually weak, can feel their values and identity slip away in the mere presence of other, arguably different values and identities. What does it say about a couple’s love for one another when its value relies on what other people do or don’t do?
And what about weakness in terms of faith? Groups like the Capitol Resource Institute and Focus on the Family act as if God needs help, despite holding him up as all-powerful and the sole being capable of judging. Conclusion: God is either not really all that powerful (he needs humans to do his dirty work), or these anti-gay Christians are faltering in their faith that he knows what he’s doing and will deal with everyone appropriately when the time for judgment — his judgment — comes.
These are harsh accusations, but given the vitriol directed against gays, they are well-deserved. And as for those textbooks, opening them up to be more inclusive is a good idea. There’s nothing to lose but prejudice and hate — two things the world definitely needs less of.
Note: I would like to thank Ben Edward Akerley, author of the excellent The X-Rated Bible: An Irreverent Survey of Sex in the Scriptures , for bringing that University of Georgia study to my attention.