I thought, for two seconds, there would be real discussion...

When I saw this Mother Jones Headline today, I thought "Holy Bejeezus, someone's about to start the discussion I've been trying to start for 8 years now."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/gay-choice-science-sexual-identity

"Gay by Choice? The Science of Sexual Identity"

Especially with this sub-header:

"If science proves sexual orientation is more fluid than we've been led to believe, can homosexuality still be a protected right?"

I thought, for about the two seconds it took me to skim the first paragraph, that we were about to have the  real discussion on the issue of the legitimacy of homosexuality.  

I was wrong, sort of.  I mean, the article kind of works its way around to my point of view, a little bit, but it is more from the angle of 'sexual reparation'.  I'm not a scientist by any stretch, but I don't actually believe in such a thing.  But I'm not a scientist, and as such, like most lazy lay-people, I try to argue the point based on my understanding of the logic.  

Now, the article is still an excellent one, don't get me wrong, and still allows a wide-open backdoor into what I think is the crucial issue at stake.  The author brilliantly, open-mindedly, uses the flawed argument by some researchers that "sex is fluid, changing, and can be repaired", and the wealth of real research that comes along with those notions (there really is an argument there), and then the article leaps heroically to a kind of "so what, what if they're right, how does that change anything' stance.  Open minded discussions like this are why I love Mother Jones.  

So the article ends up being more of a warning, which is really the discussion I want to have - it works its way around to there, although it doesn't entirely question the very nature of 'repairing' homosexuality.  But ok, the author wasn't trying to defeat anything in particular, he's trying to open the discussion, and that's what I love.

My logic goes like this:  there's nothing wrong with homosexuality, not by any observable, measurable reference we can make.  If you cut Mythology out of the picture, there is simply no general, broad reason, that I can see, for a person to undertake such a task as 'repairing' their sexual preferences.  

I mean, individually, I think it is completely possible to fall in love with someone outside your normal sexual menu.  A gay man could fall in love with a woman - I have no problem with that idea, I'll just nod along.  A straight man could fall in love with another man.  In these terms, I like the point the article brings up:  sexuality isn't exactly set in stone, and is a much more fluid, changing  situation.

The person mentioned in the article swears up and down that he was gay, and that he didn't want to be.   But then goes on to list all the reasons he didn't have for wanting to change.  It wasn't political, it wasn't fear, it wasn't societal, it wasn't his parents, I mean the list goes on and on.  Much like sex workers who have "no reason" for taking on that vocation, except being "really really into sex", which I find a little bit laughable as a reason, this gay man had no reason to switch, in the whole universe, except that he "really really wanted to be straight."  

Ok.  

It's a big discussion to have, a worthwhile one, but it can't be started with this as a background.  I don't think we can argue about whether sexual 'reparation' is possible because the idea that such a thing needs repair is laughable, and offensive, and marginalizing.  

I don't think that's what the author was intending, and in fact I think there is an attempt there to actually open up a different kind of discussion, namely, what is sexuality?  How on Earth can we think we can legislate such a thing, in any direction?  Those are good topics, I like those.  I just don't think we can use a word like 'repair' in this discussion.  He uses the term "reinvent" which I like better, but its still quickly turning into a dead end in my opinion.

The bone I have to pick with the 'gay legitimacy' debate is this:  it rests too strongly on theoretical science.  I have no doubt that there is a gene in all of us - no, let's not call it a gay gene, let's say that it is hardwired into our code, into each of us, among the billions of possibilities within us.  There are, theoretically, billions of latent genes within us that are holdovers from ancient humanity.  There is the possibility, a very real one, that if some of these genes switched on we'd become more dog-like, or fish-like, or ape-like.  Holdovers, an internal record of where we have been.

I believe very strongly that Life is a question, and each and every single one of us who has ever drawn breath is a partial answer.  One part of that question, very basically, is "How does something survive."  Plain and simple, that is the basic question being asked.  And, at least theoretically, we have survived in so many ways.  We survived in water, we survived in trees, we survived in caves, we survived in villages, fiefs, and nation states.  We may have survived in space.

That record is imprinted in each of us still - theoretically.  There is a lot of literature on this, if I feel like it I'll dig it out and link it here or copy it or reference it - but this is just a tangent right now, and I'm going back to my main discussion.

Having homosexuality embedded in each of us is like this.  It's part of who we are, it's part of our story.  You can't conceivably, just like my last post on religion, show that a consistent percentage of behavior flourishes within humanity and is somehow not part of our code.  You can't make the argument, not seriously anyway, that there are places where religion, or sexuality, are violently oppressed, and people still consistently practice this behavior, and still argue this isn't part of the human code.  That's ... I hate to be judgmental in the middle of an open-minded discussion ... but that's fatuous.  

It has to be in the code.  But.  To my understanding, it is a huge leap to resting the entire "gay legitimacy" argument on science.  Is there some kind of active, switched-on gay gene?  How the hell do I know?  And no one else does either.  And I think it's flimsy, and dangerous, to rest these arguments on unproven science.  

ESPECIALLY BECAUSE THERE IS A MUCH BETTER FIGHT I WANT TO HAVE.

Why the fuck isn't choice enough?

Why the fuck can't we continue to fight the good fight on choice?  Why did we cop out into science?  

Let me put it this way, and I've tried to make this argument to people and I just get stares, and the same mantra repeated over and over:  "But... it is science."  OK.  I GET IT.  IT'S SCIENCE.

Whatever makes that argument go away for the time being, I'm down.

Let's get back to the real problem as I see it:  Why the fuck don't we have a real choice?  Why isn't choice enough?

We're talking about a behavior that affects no one, except the people actually doing the loving.  It doesn't affect the parents, as much as they want to control everything in their baby's life.  Those parents have to grow up and get the fuck out of the mix.  It doesn't affect our government, it doesn't affect the neighbors.  

This whole bullshit about "Oh yeah but then I have to explain it to my kids" is just bullshit.  We explain Santa Claus to our kids with a straight face, and leave it to them to find out from their friends what the deal is.  

We half explain some total bullshit about 'straight' or heterosexual sex, and largely leave it to the street to explain the real deal to our kids.  We let our kids watch nearly every fucked up thing, even the news, without so much as an explanation.  

And when we do explain something, it's usually whatever shitty half-explanation television gave us today.  Whatever explanation preserves power for the elite.  If television gave people the indoctrination to explain it to their kids, this would all go away.  

It doesn't, so people can rest on that horrific argument about how my life needs to be changed because Douche-Man over there doesn't have any kind of a real connection with his kids and can't talk to them.  That's my problem now.

So, fuck that idea.  The real problem here is that there is no discernible reason, in this instance, why men and women can't just choose.  

Let me put it this way - in the Woodrose Strange Universe of Simplified Science - let's presume that they come up with the Secret Special Test, and it can detect whether you in fact have an active Gay Gene.  What does that mean?

Are 'Gay' people expected to take the test, and abide by its ruling?  Are 'Straights'?  Are the 'Trans'?

If I'm gay, and I take this test, and find to my embarrassment ("Woops!") that I in fact have no science to back up my legitimacy, am I supposed to start making crude remarks at women and start paying them less?  Am I supposed to go out and find a Special Lady and start pumping out kids?  What does this mean?

If I'm Transgender, am I going to be jailed for having chosen wrong, and perhaps making 'irreparable' choices to my body?  I would be committing a crime every day I draw breath, just by existing.  

If I'm straight, and I find out I have an active gay gene, does this mean I get divorced from My Special Lady, and start a whole new life built around same sex partnership?  Do either of these hypothetical, fictitious people have to undergo massive counseling to figure out why on Earth they got such an idea in their heads?  I mean, I hate to agree with the Ruling Ignorant Party on this issue here, but as any Religious Nut will tell you, people are more than their genes, and they have choices.

What do these choices mean for the Transgender among us?  They are a consistent, measurable presence.  Do we wipe them out too according to the whim of Science, or Religion, or State?

I am largely appalled that the wacko group that is trying to enforce choice-fascism uses the very nature of choice to make their insane argument.  Why have we allowed that to become a dirty word?  Choice is a wonderful thing just as much as it is a nightmare.  The other side has dug in and said "People are more than just their genes - they have Choice - God made it so."  OF COURSE THEY DO.

There are people born with all kinds of defects and challenges.  Genetically, maybe they could interpret the message as saying they should lay down and die.  Choice makes them get up and shake up the world.

The battle over Homosexual/Transgender legitimacy is, and if I am wrong please direct me to the documentation, a religious one.  Separation of church and state is about as defunct as it has ever been.  It was a wonderful concept, one meant to protect both sides.  Because both are horrors when wrongly enforcing ideology on the other.  

I am horrified at the idea of State, as in the Commissar legacy, intervening in or mixing in or crushing Religion.  I'm not even remotely religious, but the idea of beating religious people about the head for their beliefs is anathema to me.  We have to take care of each other, not kill each other.  

The idea of Religion telling State what to do is equally horrific.   Not more so - both are really really bad.  They are equally heinous when dancing in each other's circle.

And yet, what is more intrusive than either of these institutions in our daily lives?  There might be nothing worse than the State when it becomes too powerful and Omniscient.  Especially when that power is subverted by corporate and religious intentions.  There is no bigger blight than the state of religious persecution today, and by that I mean persecution by the religious, right here in the USA.  

Maybe the one thing that seems to affect no outside party, except for the Fascist elements among us, is sexuality, and the denizens of the supposed 'fringe' of that world.  And it is these people on the fringe, the ones who affect nothing except themselves,  who are in fact beaten and marginalized, whose rights are voted away by a majority and to whom the Supreme Court can say "Hey - the people have spoken" as though that was something we could do now, vote away each other's rights.  

There is nothing wrong with choice.  There is nothing anywhere, except in so-called 'Bibles', that makes it wrong for people to make choices that do not affect the quality of life of anyone anywhere, except for the practitioners.  This is an issue of pure choice, and as such, it needs to be left alone.  Just on the basis of choice, not on the basis of still-unproven science.  Leaving it up to science means you tie yourself to whatever Science burps out as an explanation.  

I understand how that argument could have been deceptively powerful, and might have gotten some of the ninnies off the backs of homosexuals for a while.  Because the Fascist-Religious-State machine that runs everything for us made choice a simple matter:  If you can choose, then just choose something else.  As if that is a real argument.

Ok.  

Choose something else.  If you chose your wife, choose another one so I can have the one you have.  If you chose to take care of your kids, just choose not to anymore and let me have the one you have.  If you chose that car, just choose another one because I want the one you like.  If you chose that job, just go ahead and choose another one because we don't want you to be free to choose your work.  If you chose --  I mean I could go on for a billion pages on that example.

People don't just make choices out of thin air, and it isn't the same as "whim".  But the Machine, the ruling elite, has turned "choice" into whim, because they are the only Real People in their eyes.  It is only they who make informed decisions, it is only they  who truly care, whose feelings truly matter.  

They will be just as silly when they defend their own choices:  "Oh, it wasn't a choice.  I just knew I was made for this person."  Or "I knew instantly this is what I would do with my whole life, it was a calling."  Because of course, only they matter.  The whole world and everything in it is a movie, with them as Star.  The rest of us are extras who aren't fully participating in their direction.

So I can see how science would be a seductive, easy answer to get some breathing room.  But just like in Dreyer's Joan of Arc, this is a dangerous course.  

In the film, Joan is asked by a Bishop, or a Cardinal (I don't remember which) who is trying to logically trap her into going back on her beliefs, whether she is in a State of Grace and has been guaranteed Salvation by God.  

She doesn't realize that one of the monks who is helping her is actually working for the other side - in her weakened state he came to her and told her he had been sent by God to help her, and she must do as he says - but he is actually trying to help trap her.  So she looks to him, he nods 'yes' and she answers that, yes, she has been guaranteed Salvation.  

One of the monks attending, who is sympathetic to Joan, shouts "That is a dangerous answer!" and this is borne out moments later.  The Bishop shouts at her "So you are saying you have no need of the Church then?!?"

It is a very uncomfortable, infuriating moment in a great movie.  And it should be a warning to any and all who take that course.  Don't stray from the real principle at hand, and don't try to win on things outside your jurisdiction.  

This notion of "God made me that way" is exasperating.  God is a story someone wrote down in a book.  If you don't believe that, fine.  That's my belief.  Should we revoke your rights to life-style if we can prove there is no God?  

I know, that's nearly impossible to prove - but if, in the Woodrose Universe of Simplified Science, we can prove it - is that the end of your legitimate claim to homosexuality? If we can prove that you don't have the gene you were hoping for, is that the end of the discussion?  That's just patent nonsense.  

This isn't a matter for science - this is a matter for legislation, if I've ever heard one.  Gay, Straight, it's just not an issue.  And contrary to a lot of the so-called 'debate' in this country, Transgender is not "a whole different/new problem", with its own rules.  It isn't a problem.  It's a choice.  The problem is getting society to calm the fuck down and accept other people's choices, ones that don't affect the rest of society more than the huuuuge problem of... say, allowing someone to change their name.  Big whoop.

People are guaranteed the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It's the best argument I've heard yet for leaving people the hell alone.   As the article so wonderfully, intelligently points out:  there is a very dark side to relying on Science for this.  Namely:  can we then medicate the Gay or Trans out of our kids?  

Can we view it, as some of the scientists in this article insist, as a deformation, as a mental defect, as anything that can be "repaired"?  Can parents, seeing it as a kind of Down's Syndrome, for example, choose to abort gay babies, the way some parents choose to deal with Down's?  Or pre-select in some way, engineer in some way, to suppress this gene?  

This goes down a very scary road, and does nothing for the argument that so desperately needs to be won - this is, no doubt, no argument, a Religious issue.  Religion is the enemy here, and needs to be choke-collared.  We cannot lose the war on Freedom, and we certainly won't win it with the 'Dangerous Answer', to quote Dreyer, of Science.

I guess in the end, the article does end up starting the discussion I really want to have, and does it deftly.  Just in the writing of this post my esteem of the article, and Gary Greenberg, the author, and Mother Jones, for taking on the issue which could draw ire from both sides,  has risen.

(I want to thank Mother Jones and Gary Greenberg for the great work starting a badly needed discussion)