When we were younger, my brother used to get engaged to a different woman every spring. Used to call it off every fall. It wasn’t exactly a shock to any of us when he said he was gay. For me, at least, it was more of a relief. A sign that he had finally come to terms with who he is.
From time to time, I’ve been asked if I’m disappointed or upset at my brother’s sexual orientation. I’ve never understood the question. Why should I care? Why should I be bothered about a thing that has nothing to do with me?
Too bad conservative Christian groups don’t share that philosophy. We might have been spared their recently renewed frontal assault on American gays. In case you missed it: A few days ago, full-page ads began appearing in The New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers. The ads, coordinated by the Center for Reclaiming America, founded by Coral Ridge Ministries of Ft. Lauderdale, call on gays to “confront the truth of their sexual sin” and renounce their sexual orientation. Or, if they must be gay, then at least be celibate.
How condescending and paternalistic. Not unlike an atheist who said, “If you must be Christian, at least don’t pray.”
It gets worse, though. The ads further suggest that homosexuality is a condition that can be, in effect, cured. The gall of these folks surpasses my meager understanding.
In their own eyes, they’re on a divine mission, the last bastion of defense for a nation beset and oppressed by hordes of marauding gay men and lesbians. Robert Knight of the Family Research Council, a conservative group supporting the ad campaign, puts it like this: “We’re basically not going to take it anymore.”
And one struggles to understand just what “it” the guy is referring to. Have gay people been roasting straight children on a spit or something?
No, the offense gay people have committed can be boiled down to this: They exist. That’s it. Forget all the other claptrap about “decency” and “family values.” Religious conservatives’ problem with gays is simply that they exist and, increasingly, refuse to do so in shame at the margins of American culture. They no longer hide as they once did. They seek to define themselves instead of being defined by the fears and stereotypes of others. In a pluralistic society, that’s their right.
If some don’t like them, think them abominable, think them headed to hell in the express lane, fine. That’s their right. But don’t attack gay people and pretend it’s because of some harm they’ve done you. That’s not a right–it’s a lie.
There are many people who believe things I do not. Many lifestyles I find bizarre, bewildering and downright strange. But wouldn’t it be a saner world if we could all resolve that unless someone else’s beliefs or behaviors pose a direct threat, then what is done in the privacy of those other lives is none of our business? The tired tirades of conservative bigots aside, gays don’t pose that threat.
I don’t feel this way because I have a brother who’s gay. Heck, I felt the same when that guy was so deep in the closet his breath smelled like mothballs. I just find that I’m kept busy enough running my own life without trying to run someone else’s.
Which pretty neatly sums up the way most Americans seem to feel about gays: Live and let live. Polls show no endorsement of gay life, but no obsessive fear of it, either.
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So what’s with the religious conservatives? Why are they so compelled to press nosy noses to the window of other lives, to meddle in the affairs of other people, to impose their creed upon those who never asked the favor? There’s something in it that is anathema to American ideals of individual freedom.
It’s mighty nice of them to suggest that homosexuals can be cured of their affliction. But from where I sit, gay people aren’t the ones who need it.