This blog is — was, shall remain — a friend to gay people. I hope it’s a friend to any person who wants to do whatever gives him joy and hurts no one else.
Many of my fellow Christians tell me that homosexuality is a sin. Maybe so, but it’s not my sin. And on the off-chance the Gospels mean what they say and I will one day stand before the throne of God and be judged on whether I loved Him and my neighbor, whether I did what I could for the hungry, thirsty, sick, weak, enchained… well, let’s say I’ve got approximately a lifetime’s worth of other things to think about before I start worrying myself over other people’s sins.
Anyway, though our laws are steeped in Judeo-Christian principles, one of those principles happens to be the divide between Caesar and God. We are not, nor are we meant to be, a theocracy. Gluttony is a sin, one of the seven deadlies, but Mayor Bloomberg was still an overbearing idiot when he tried to tell us what sort of sodas to drink. Sin is not the government’s business, no matter what clever rationales you come up with to make it so.
So should gay people be allowed to marry by law? I look at it this way. There are going to be gay people. They are going to have relationships. Is it better for the state that those relationships be brief, brutish and meaningless or committed, affectionate and long-lasting? You figure it out.
Having said all this, I think Homofascism — this current movement to regulate and restrict opinions and outlooks toward homosexuality — indeed, toward anything — should be crushed. Lawsuits against photographers who won’t shoot gay weddings. Television show cancellations because the hosts oppose gay marriage. Attempts to silence anti-gay preaching or force churches to recognize gay marriages. Crushed, all of it. Crushed by the united voice of the people, crushed in courts of law, in legislatures, in businesses and in conversation. When someone is sued, attacked, shamed, boycotted or fired for opposing gay marriage or just opposing gayness in general, straight and gay people alike should protest. No one should lose his television show, no one should be dragged before a judge, no one should have his business threatened. Don’t tell me about a company’s right to fire its employees. It has the right, but it isn’t right. It’s unAmerican and it’s despicable.
Gay rights, like all rights, do not in any way supersede the rights of others. A free person may have any opinion about homosexuality he chooses — or about blackness or about Judaism or any other damned thing — and he should be able to speak that opinion out loud and act on that opinion if he does no immediate harm. Basically, as long as he keeps his hands to himself, he should be able to believe and say whatever he wants without paying any price whatsoever for it other than the disagreement — and possibly dislike and disdain — of his fellow Americans.
Does he believe that homosexuality is a sin that degrades the practitioner? He should be able to say so. Does he feel it would be a sin for him to participate in a gay wedding as a baker or photographer? He should be allowed to follow his lights in peace. Does he feel male-female marriage is a pillar of freedom? Let him fight to preserve it. Does he find gay sex disgusting? Rude to say out loud maybe, but still, within his rights. Maybe he finds it unnatural (whatever that means). Or maybe he’s a leftist and feels that all gender behaviors are pure social constructs… hey, there’s no law against being an idiot. Me, I feel that heterosexuality is the human norm, but there are harmless variants outside the norm and, you know, who cares? I’ll say the same to anyone. We should all be able to say — and vote — what we please. It’s called freedom. It’s a beautiful thing, even when it gets ugly.
The next time a business — a TV network or restaurant or anything — finds itself under attack or boycott because one of its employees disapproves of gays, they should issue the following statement. “Our employees’ opinions do not represent our opinion. Our opinion is this: it’s a free country; to each his own. And in keeping with that philosophy, we are taking no action in this matter. Have a chicken sandwich.”
How hard is this? How did we lose this idea? You can be free, but so is the next guy. America. Simple.
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