Even though I have been a vocal supporter of gay rights for twenty years or so, I did not feel compelled to personally change my profile image. Things have changed so much over the last few years that I think the United States has now reached a tipping point and my support is no longer required. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that the whole issue of gay rights has been a smoke screen that prevented us from focusing on real issues - a costly and ongoing unnecessary two front war, escalating healthcare costs, and out of control gun ownership. I am sincerely happy for all three of my gay friends that they can marry whoever they see fit, but I think now is a great time to reflect a bit on where we have been with this issue, understand how it has been used, and figure out where we are going to spend our energy going forward.
A few years out of college, I was going to be in Chicago on business. I called up a friend and asked if I could spend the weekend at his place before going to a hotel that I could expense back to my company. He said his roommate was, coincidentally, out of town and that we would try to recreate the magic of college. He had just bought his place and was excited to have an actual guest. His strategy for real estate? Follow the gays! He purchased his unit walking distance from “Boy’s Town” in North Chicago and was convinced that the influx of homosexuals was going to drive his property price up. He is not alone as there is real evidence of this trend. Name one other minority group that can descend upon a neighborhood and demonstrably show radical improvements resulting in higher prices? So why hate gays?
Sadly, once upon a time, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. Due to this classification and a constant state of fear and paranoia throughout the Cold War, there was a fear that gays could not be trusted. Their sexual orientation could be used against them as a form of blackmail and therefore they could not care for state secrets. It’s obviously twisted logic as simply declassifying homosexuality as a disorder eliminates the entire problem, but that’s the way it was from the end of WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Homosexuals were lumped right in there with communists as enemies against America.
Additionally, there are some scattered sections of both the Old Testament and the New Testament that condemn homosexuality. Speaking just for the Old Testament, though, the same book (Leviticus) that advocates the death sentence for gay sex also condemns tattoos and piercings, working on the Sabbath (Saturday), prohibits eating pork and shellfish, and expressly condones slavery. Since most people don’t go stoning people who work on Saturday or exchange in the slave trade anymore, it should be obvious that even the religious pick and choose which verses they want to take literally.
Understanding the whims of the religious right is extremely difficult to do. I once took part in a conversation where a fact was cited - gay people have a higher incidence of suicide and depression. Now, there are two different ways to interpret this fact. The insane way - that this is evidence that the gay sinners know they are violating God’s law and therefore depressed and/or suicidal about it. Then there is the sane version - that bible thumping assholes have somehow made gay people feel bad about themselves and even excommunicated their own sons and daughters to the point where some became isolated, confused, depressed, and sadly even suicidal. Ironically, it was the atheists who were arguing for compassion and acceptance instead of labeling homosexuals as sinners and treating them like lepers. Just as mainstream Christians somehow changed their minds about the bible passages legitimizing slavery, it seems that the homophobic rhetoric is increasingly a thing of the past. Mainstream Christians have always been picking and choosing certain sections of the bible but are now choosing to enforce the passages outlawing homosexuality with the rigor they enforce kosher laws.
With the Cold War a thing of the past, in the early 90’s, President Clinton vowed to allow gays to serve in the military. He came up with one of the worst compromises in the history of compromises allowing gays to serve, but not to let anyone know they are gay under the policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Although homosexuality was no longer classified as a mental disorder and the threat of communist infiltration and blackmail was now gone, it has taken us another twenty freaking years since the “don’t ask” days to legitimize gay marriage. However, gay marriage was never really the issue.
When you think about it, maybe 5% of the population is gay. Then some minority population literally interprets the bible in a homophobic way. So one small minority has been oppressed by another small minority while most of the country hasn’t been affected in any way. It took a lot of activity and awareness raising to get people like me, with no skin in the game, to start caring and stand up against the religious right in an activity that the religious right does particularly well - voting. Getting gay rights approved should have been a no brainer. This should have happened twenty years ago, but it didn’t. Gays wanted to stop being second class citizens and their opponents were irrationally afraid. If anything, gay marriage strengthens the notion of marriage.
A few years ago, a Millennial asked me how old one should be when they got married. I didn’t think long when I responded, “You ever go out to a club and see an old guy there that doesn’t belong? Don’t be that guy.” It was an off the cuff response, but I stand by it. I literally know nothing about the courtship rituals of homosexuals. I literally know next to nothing about the courtship rituals of heterosexuals and consider myself to be extremely lucky to have found someone who was patient enough, nice enough, and gullible enough to marry me. However, I have to imagine that there is a settling down clock on gay people just like there is for straight people. Sure, going out and having relationships with various people is fun, for a while. But at some point, don’t we all want that special someone? So if two dudes want to settle down, buy a house, and look forward to watching movies together on a Friday night instead of going out - that denigrates my marriage how? It just shows that, at some point, settling down is a part of the maturation process as we get older regardless of one’s sexual orientation.
This country’s attitudes towards gay marriage have completely reversed in the last twenty years with a solid majority now in favor of common sense. Part of that gives me hope that, as a society, we can change our attitudes and grow up. However... there is a part of me that wants to put on a tin foil hat and believes that gay marriage has been a smoke screen. It was controversial enough to start heated arguments from both sides of the political spectrum... Meanwhile we are spending as much on our military as we did in the Cold War, we have tried and spectacularly failed to mold Iraq and Afghanistan in our own image at an extreme sacrifice in terms of lives lost and debt, we do not have health care for all citizens and the cost for those who are insured is skyrocketing, and we seem to be the only OECD country that thinks that guns for all is a good idea. I’m really happy that common sense has prevailed and that our culture has changed over time. It gives me hope. Now can we move on to all of our other issues?
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