Gay Marriage

29^th September 2007

I am currently being quite ill, and thus, it provides me with a sufficient excuse to tackle this much debated issue. If this sucks, it’ll be entirely because I’m ill.

I will begin with my own opinion. My opinion is that, for instance, when two beings have spent years living together and being intimately related, they have a right to be considered family. That is, if one of them has to be hospitalised, the other should have the right to be considered family by the hospital staff, and that for every other issue, such as death, taxes, etc, they should have access to the status of a partner. You don’t have to believe in homosexuality to understand the need for this measure. So I’m pro-civil union or whatever they call it. It’s the least that can be done, and I believe that even George W. Bush is for the civil union. Get back to me on this if that be not the case.

Now, another thing you may have to get back to me about. When people talk about gay marriage, what are they talking about exactly? I see two sides to marriage nowadays: the civil side, at the courthouse, and the religious/cultural side, at the church or some other place convenient for a crowd. That’s what I see. Politics only deals with the first of these. If you’re a Catholic, the country and its president have absolutely no say in your situation because there’s separation of Church and state, and so these are two entirely different things. If as a Catholic you want to marry someone of the same gender, you will have to talk to the Pope about it, the president can’t do anything, and moreover, he is not allowed or entitled to.

Perhaps there is a difference between a legal marriage and a civil union – and quite frankly I wouldn’t know about it – but it seems to me to be fairly the same thing. It’s a legal document, binding two people together which offers them both new rights and duties. It’s a contract. Depending on where you live, it can open doors to lower taxes, specific options, new rights, etc. But it’s basically merely a change of status according to the law. I believe that should be an option to every couple, homosexual or not.

The important fact here is that politicians are not entitled to talk about marriage in its religious aspect. I mean, they can, as people, but they have no specific authority about it in their roles of politicians. No politicians is a relevant actor of the Catholic faith, for instance, unless he also happens to be a priest or some other member of the clergy.

That is where I wonder about why all the fuss. If homosexuals are allowed civil union, what more do you want? Religious marriage? Well that’s all fine with me, but you will have to address actual members of your given religion for that, provided you’re actually religious.

It certainly offends some people that the Catholic Church forbids gay marriage. But let’s be serious for a second: the Catholic Church forbids its followers to marry someone of the same sex, and if you’re part of the Catholic Church, then you must share their beliefs (otherwise you would not be a Catholic) and if you do share its beliefs, then you don’t want to marry someone of the same sex because you know why the Catholic Church is against gay marriage! For those of you who don’t know, the Catholic Church believes that sex should only be used to procreate, not for fun or any other reason. An orgasm that doesn’t find its end in creating a baby is inherently sinful, from the Catholic point of view. If you don’t agree with this, then you’re not a Catholic, and therefore you don’t much care what the Pope has to say or thinks about gay marriage. Right? So there’s no problem and no reason to bitch. The Pope can’t force anyone to believe in Catholicism, and, it shall be remembered, he has no political power of that kind. Being Catholic is a free choice you make, or not. Otherwise you can be a disagreeing Catholic and then you just make-do however you can with your clerical authority, but that’s quite another topic.

Back to some more fundamentals about gay marriage. Nearly every argument I heard against gay marriage was ridiculous. I’ll try to list a few from off the top of my mind (which is all nebulous with flu-esque fog):

It’s a danger to humanity in that it will decrease the number of humans being born.

It’s sick.

It’s a danger to children in that an education given by homosexuals may turn them into homosexuals too.

It’s disgusting.

They take it in the ass! It’s sick!

And many others I naturally forget. Let’s tackle with those. The first one is just lame; we are not living in a world where decrease of our number is a real danger. Quite the contrary, and everyone knows this. Secondly, just because homosexuals can’t marry doesn’t mean they will fall back on a woman (or man) and make babies. As an aside, if homosexual couples were allowed to adopt children, they would do the job of any parents. Which leads me to my second point.

If homosexuals are allowed to educate children, then people are worried about the impact on the kids. It here must be said that a homosexual is a homosexual person and that this defines only his or her sexuality. You don’t define yourself by your sexuality, or so I hope, and whatever you happen to prefer sexually doesn’t bear much of an impact on how you’d educate a child. Would you say loving big boobs has any influence on how you’d educate your son or daughter? I would not. It doesn’t mean anything; it doesn’t matter a single moment what I like sexually with regards to my skills as an educator of children. This is the problem of homosexuals today: their homosexuality is perceived as more than just a sexuality; and to be fair, many gays play along. I don’t think it helps the homosexual cause to try to put more to homosexuality than there is. Many think it’s a lifestyle and everything, but no, homosexuality is just a sexuality; if you turn it into a lifestyle, that’s your choice and responsibility, but being homosexual, essentially, is just a sexuality. You’re attracted to people of your gender, and that’s all there is to it. I wouldn’t think it’s important in raising a child, and if anyone disagrees, then let me know what part of your sexual life you think would influence your children with regards to the education you give them.

The idea that homosexual parents would raise kids who’d become homosexual is preposterous. Most homosexuals had heterosexual parents. Secondly, to make a remark like this you’d have to assume that being homosexual is bad, and perhaps it is, I don’t even discuss that point here. I don’t believe that children need to have exactly two parents of exactly two genders and whatever. I think a child adapts to whatever his or her family happens to be. If we lived in societies where we have 3 fathers and 5 mothers, we’d get along fine. If we lived in societies where there’s one nominal mother for the kids and every male in the tribe is a father to them, we’d get along fine as well. There can only be a difference if, in a given society, you have either less or more parents than others; but it’s only comparative and so, in reality, it doesn’t affect the children very much. There are other factors which would affect a child a lot more. Say having abusive parents, or unloving parents. Best to have one good parent than two bad ones. Best to have two homosexual loving parents than two unloving heterosexual ones. So the deal is this: if you want to forbid parenthood to a certain category of people, homosexuals, then I want my own categories not to be allowed parenthood too. That would include idiots and unloving motherfuckers. I think an idiot would do a lot of damage to a child trying to raise him/her, and so that is ample reason not to allow that person to be a parent. Sounds unfair? Well, perhaps, but no more than forbidding a homosexual person to be a parent.

Where the thing becomes a total joke is here: homosexual couples can’t adopt a child, but a homosexual individual can. You are allowed to adopt a child as a single person, regardless of your sexual preferences, but not if you happen to have a partner. In reality, what every homosexual wanting to adopt a child does is to adopt it on behalf of just one of the two. So it comes down to the same, except that only one of the two gets to have legal rights over the child, and that’s not an optimal situation for the child, or the other partner.

By the way, if paragraphs don’t quite link, I don’t care. They surely do on some level or other, even if just loosely. Bear with me, I’m ill. So, what now. Should homosexuals be allowed to marry? Let’s see what happens if they are: instead of living together as concubines, they live together as married people. Big deal.

I understand that most anti-gay marriage people are so because they believe homosexuality to be wrong, unnatural, sick, perverted, etc. But even if homosexuality was all this, would that be a sufficient reason to forbid homosexual marriage? The question is worth asking. I don’t have a problem with saying that homosexuality is abnormal, and don’t you get all shocked and call me a Nazi. Abnormal means not normal, and normal means within the norm, and the norm is just a mathematical thing, it’s a number. It’s all just a comparison of numbers, there’s no moral judgement in that statement of mine. If 6% of the population is homosexual (that’s the number I hear most often), then it is definitely not the norm. That’s all I’m saying. There are many more things with even less people and it doesn’t make it intrinsically perverted, make no mistake. I’m just saying it’s counter-productive to try to pass something abnormal as normal, because it just isn’t. Call a cat a cat and down with political correctness. I’ve used the word homosexual more often than the word gay because I see no demeaning aspect to the word homosexual. Things go wrong when we start to assume that everyone means more than the words they use.

See, even if homosexuality was a problem, something to be cured, well I would still not condone a ban on homosexual marriage. Mental illness is a problem, and if homosexuality truly is a problem, it’s definitely a mental one, and people who suffer from mental illnesses aren’t forbidden to marry. Maybe that’s too far-fetched, I’ll concede that to you, but you get my point.

I don’t believe that homosexuality is a choice because I can’t recall choosing to be heterosexual. It never seemed an option to me, and so, instead of believing that homosexuals make the choice of being homosexual, which is, to heterosexual, a choice against their liking, I’d rather believe that homosexuals and me just don’t have the same original tastes. Disgusted heterosexuals are so because they think that homosexuals feel the same as they (the disgusted heterosexuals) do about sex with someone of the same gender. Mistake! You guys aren’t given the same bases. I wasn’t given what it takes to sexually desire another man, so I can’t relate to a male homosexual, but I know enough to know that there’s a basic difference and that the different taste comes from there, and not from choice, which would be just absurd. Besides, why would anyone choose to be homosexual? I don’t see anything that would make that condition so appealing.

I agree to the idea that perhaps we are all mostly bisexual and define our sexual preferences because of the environment we live in, but with caution. I don’t think that the environment can be so influential, as proven by homosexuals who grew up in heterosexual contexts. In most civilised countries, it’s relatively ok to be homosexual, and it’s not like you have to tell the whole world about it, and so there’s little trouble about being homosexual; which means that if societial pressure was the only reason not to choose to become homosexual, then a lot more people would make this choice. Thing is, they don’t, because it’s not a choice. You’re either gay or you’re not, and people who came back from homosexuality are just bisexual. This is a lot more gradual and graduated than commonly perceived.

Now a word for Christians and non-Christians alike. Generally, Christians are supposed to be against homosexuality, but I would like to stress out that Jesus Christ never spoke against homosexuals, and talked very little about sexual matters, because, I believe, it’s just details really. I do not appreciate Christian beliefs being used and abused to excuse psycho-rigidity and other farts of the mind. So that’s for Christians and non-Christians alike.

If homosexuality is a problem, then it must have a solution. But it hasn’t a solution, meaning that you can’t change someone’s sexual orientation. I don’t see how I would be made into a homosexual, for instance. I don’t think I’m solvable like that, nor do I believe homosexuals are. So what can we do? Force homosexuals to live a fake heterosexual life and be sad? That doesn’t sound like a good plan to me, on every level of it. Whether you think it’s a sin, a mental disease, or anything, the fact remains that it wouldn’t help to force homosexuals to be deprived of the love they need. And don’t you tell me that love has nothing to do with sex, otherwise I demand you start dating people of your own gender (if you’re heterosexual) and tell me later on that it doesn’t matter what body your date had. But then again, love has nothing to do with sex, too, and so it doesn’t matter what genders loving people have. Right?

That’s the thing with marriage, I see it as the union of two souls, if those exist, and I hope they do, and for all I know, souls don’t have bodies, and thus don’t have genders. I readily admit I could be wrong about the angel-like state of souls as being genderless, but let’s keep it that way for this here paragraph. If souls aren’t gendered, then it’s just your body that is, and so it doesn’t really matter intrinsically what bodies you’re attracted to physically as long as you love correctly.

Meditate on the following: if we had no sexual desires, we would be neither homosexual nor heterosexual.

Then what else to say... Oh yeah, back to why gay marriage is so dangerous. That’s something I hear often, that homosexual marriage is a threat to marriage, nation, and everything. How is homosexual marriage a threat to the values of marriage? Do they change? The values of marriage, I think, are about devotion to the other in love and respect. Whether there are two penises or just one [or none] doesn’t seem to make a difference in that deal. So which values are under attack?

Generally, the idea is that the homosexual couple is a threat to marriage, nation, society, etc., because they cannot procreate. But see, that’s where it’s stupid: sterile couples would then be a threat to marriage, nation, and society too, which is just equally ridiculous. And as I pointed out earlier, homosexuals couples can’t raise children because they are not allowed to do so as a married couple, or just a couple. If you don’t allow them to raise kids, don’t blame them of that too! Dammit. Being a parent means a lot more than just shooting sperm down a woman’s sex, right? In fact, that alone is not being a parent, just a fucker. Being a parent means being there for a child and educating him or her and providing for his/her well-being. That’s a parent, and your sexuality has little to do with it.

Do you think heterosexual married couples who enjoy butt-sex are worse parents because of it? If yes, I am dying of curiosity to know how and why.

I think I said most of what I wanted to say. I’ll conclude on reminding you that homosexuality does not define people, but people’s sexualities. Don’t let someone’s homosexuality pervade throughout that whole person and define everything about them. You’re only homosexual in your sexuality. Collecting tea-cups is not homosexual, it’s just collecting tea-cups (and I use that example because I’ve seen it on TV in some silly show). Even butt-sexing someone isn’t per se homosexual. Take me for instance, I could butt-fuck 20 males in a row, I’d still not be homosexual. Know why? Because I don’t desire males! No matter how many I’d do in the butt, it won’t change how I don’t feel about them. Being homosexuals is only about that: desiring people of the same sex. Being a man and doing another man in the ass is a homosexual act, but that doesn’t mean you are as a person (although, granted, you’d have to be pretty weird to do a man in the butt if you’re not homosexual, but I’m talking theoretically to get my point across).

I’ll end this in those beautiful words of mine: you’re only homosexual in your sexuality.