Op-Ed: Talking with Liberals on Homosexuality



by Thomas R. Eddlem
January 20, 2006


Living in Massachusetts, I’ve had more than my share of opportunity to converse with liberals on issues of the day. And I can confirm that quite a few liberals are complete blockheads with respect to issues surrounding homosexuality, steadfastly refusing to adhere to anything resembling logic.

Pretty much every conversation I have ever had with liberals on homosexuality has gone something like this:

Liberal: I don’t see what’s wrong with gay marriage.
Me: Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that this is akin to saying “I don’t see why a triangle can’t have four sides,” and that marriage has been an institution between a man and a woman in every civilization throughout all of human history. You must admit that the state shouldn’t officially sanction immoral homosexual behavior in my name and in your name.
Liberal: I don’t see why not. It’s not like they have anything to do with choosing that they are gay. They are clearly born that way.
Me: But there has never been a shred of scientific evidence that homosexuality is an inherited trait. You must admit that – except for some modern scientific procedures – homosexuals live a sterile lifestyle and are therefore always at the end of their genetic line.
Liberal: But nobody would ever choose such a lifestyle.
Me: Why wouldn’t they?
Liberal: Because it is such a difficult lifestyle to endure. Nobody would ever willingly choose it.
Me: You mean that no one would voluntarily choose a lifestyle that would cause them so much loneliness and pain?
Liberal: I wouldn’t put it exactly that way, but something like that.
Me: I’d disagree with you there, because people choose self-destructive lifestyles such as alcoholism and drugs all the time. And sex can be at least as powerful an addiction as drugs. Let me ask you a question: Are you supporting work for a cure to homosexuality?
Liberal: What? Of course not. Are you crazy? Why would I want to do that?
Me: Well, you just got done telling me how terrible the lifestyle was to endure. I just thought you might want support a humanitarian solution that would relieve them of this terrible burden they have to bear.
Liberal: I don’t think homosexuality is so terrible, and certainly don’t think it needs a “cure.”
Me: Well, if it’s not such a terrible lifestyle to endure, if it’s not worse than drug or alcohol addiction, then you have to admit someone might choose it. Right?
Liberal: No. There is no way anyone would ever choose it.

There is the perfect circular logic of a liberal who takes it on faith that homosexuality is a genetic trait. And it is pure faith, because it is not backed up by one scintilla of scientific evidence. They say it’s a hard lifestyle for someone to endure, but are not humanitarian enough to seek a cure to relieve that burden. When called to task, they reverse themselves and say that it’s not a burdensome lifestyle.

The homosexual movement itself must live in the logical twilight, because they can never concede that their behavior is purely genetic (which implies that a cure should be found for their condition) or merely a free choice (which implies a moral condition to their behavior). Either way, their immoral lifestyle choice comes under fire. This explains why officials in the sodomy lobby have always sought out that twilight.

Many liberals made uncomfortable in conversation eventually come to the point of telling me to shut up, using one of two ruses. The first is deliberately rude and insulting: “Oh, you seem preoccupied with this issue. Perhaps thou dost protest too much.”

The second ruse is a bit more cleverly disguised, involving a statement like: “Jesus talked a lot about helping the poor, but never said a word about homosexuality. Maybe you should take an example from him.” When said sincerely (which it rarely is), the statement is proof of Irish author Elizabeth Bowen’s quip that “One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.” So it is with liberals and Christianity. Though Christians are asked to help the poor as part of their faith, almsgiving is not the primary aim of Christianity. Christianity is principally dedicated toward salvation of the soul, which involves repentance from sin.

Not that liberals would accept a declarative statement by Christ or any other moral precept on homosexuality as binding. It no longer persuades in public discourse when one says “God says so” or “The Bible says…” or “This is immoral…” Saying such things in public actually discredits and pigeon-holes Christians socially.

Liberals always need a secular argument why marriage can’t be a man and a woman, and the fact that our government is founded upon Judeo-Christian principles is never enough of a reply. While there’s probably no way to get through the skulls of some liberal blockheads who exercise the circular logic above, I have made some headway in the case against sodomatrimony using historical and cultural, non-religious arguments.

I had a discussion with a social liberal recently who wanted me to give him a non-religious reason why Americans should not accept homosexual marriage. I told him that the traditional legal American view of marriage of one man and one woman was obviously drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition, and that it is at least an objective standard that was not made up by Americans.

On the other hand, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that any two people could make a marriage (the Goodridge decision) was an arbitrary standard that they concocted. Anyone familiar with world history – or even American history – should be aware that a better cultural case can be made for polygamy than for the marriage of two people of the same sex. Polygamy was common throughout most primitive cultures, and is endorsed by Islam today. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, many of the early Hebrew patriarchs, such as Abraham, David and Solomon, practiced polygamy. Even in the United States, some early members of the Mormon faith practiced polygamy before the church repudiated the practice. Absent the objective Judeo-Christian standard, two people in a marriage becomes an entirely arbitrary number.

The Massachusetts SJC decision explicitly rejected polygamy as a legal marriage, but it offered no objective reason for rejecting it – just the say-so of a one-vote majority of court justices. A court that accepts sodomatrimony must eventually accept polygamy.

Without resting on the objective standard of America’s Judeo-Christian legal heritage, our country stands on the edge of a legal abyss. Liberals, even if they have rejected the objective Judeo-Christian standard of marriage, can at least be made to see how the Goodridge decision would eventually make marriage a meaningless social institution under the law.

Basically, my favorite tactic is to challenge the liberal to construct an objective standard to limit marriage other than the arbitrary criterion he or the one-vote majority in some court manufactured out of thin air. They can never do it (because God Himself ordained the only objective standard at the Garden of Eden). Any American, except for a few of the most dim-witted, can be made to understand this distinction.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman...cle_3099.shtml