There Are No Homosexuals - Ya Think?

Rob Tisinai always hits it right on the money with cold, clear logic.  Today he's responding to this claim by avowed heterosexual activist (see how nasty that sounds?) Matt Barber:

Being black is what someone is.

On the other hand, being “gay” is what someone does. It involves feelings and changeable behaviors. Homosexual conduct is more akin to the aforementioned gambling or pot smoking behaviors than it is to skin color (and for those in the lifestyle, especially men, sodomy most definitely involves rolling the dice). To compare “black” or “heterosexual” to “gay” is to compare apples to oranges. Understandably, many African Americans find this disingenuous comparison tremendously offensive.

Rob responds with this bulls-eye:

So much wrong here. First, of course, is the notion that being gay is not a neutral, immutable characteristic. And then there’s this strange claim that being gay involves feelings while being straight or black does not.

Third (and this is so dumb, it deserves its own paragraph), he says that comparing “heterosexual” to “gay” is like comparing apples to oranges. What? He’s staking his argument on the belief that straight is something you are, but gay is something you do? That gay involves changeable behavior but straight does not? This is bizarre even inside Matt’s own distorted world. Seriously — if he thinks that being gay is a choice, then he’s saying that people are choosing not to be straight. In other words, heterosexuality involves feelings and changeable behavior, just like homosexuality. So by his criteria, they’re not different at all.

But it’s a cheap shot to point out Matt Barber’s intellectual confusion, like mocking a short guy for not being able to dunk. The real point is not Matt’s logical inconsistency, but the way his entire no-homosexuals-just-homosexual-acts starting point is an unsubstantiated and total break from reality.

And remember this point, fellas:

And by the way, Matt, religion is all about feelings and changeable behavior. Unless you don’t mean the stuff about loving Jesus and turning away from sin.

Of course, what Barber is claiming is the standard traditional Christian worldview derived from both the Old and New Testaments; most directly stated by St. Paul in Romans 1:26-27:

Because of this [idolatry], God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

You see?  Heterosexuality is not merely the default human state, it's the only human condition; therefore, any deviation from heterosexual behavior is, ipso facto, a choice.  And if every man, woman, and child is "by nature" heterosexual, there can be no love between people of the same sex, only lust and "indecent acts."

Which is a lie.  A big, fat lie.  It is simply not true, no more than the notion that the earth has "four corners" (see Revelation 7:1 and 20:8).  But the straight boys are so terrified of us girly boys  - and what's wrong with this picture? - that they will cling to those Bible verses, ignorant and unmerciful, to the last gasp.

As Rob points out in his previous post on this subject, adopting the tone of the homophobes:

There’s no discrimination against homosexuals because there are no homosexuals. Just homosexual conduct. Homosexuality isn’t a state of being — it’s merely a set of actions. Hate crimes against homosexuals? No! Civil equality for homosexuals? No! Anti-bullying laws to protect young homosexuals? No! None of these things are necessary if there are no homosexuals.

This thinking is important when it comes to the “immutability” argument in Constitutional law. Is homosexuality a choice? Our opponents say that deciding to engage in homosexual acts is a choice, and people can stop being gay just by giving up gay sex. That makes sense, though, only if homosexuality is nothing more than same-sex sex. Obviously, though, it’s a great deal more — I was gay before I ever had sex, I’m gay when I’m not having sex, I’m gay right now as I type this (and there’s no man in sight). . . .

Language matters. Orwell taught us to be wary of political language that “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

. . . The claim that there are no homosexuals, just homosexual conduct, is pure wind. The assertion that “gay” is something you do, but never something you are, is pure wind. And it’s a dangerous wind, at that.