Democracy and Gay Rights

America’s choice is clear: openness and democracy, or bigotry and oligarchy.

Andrew Garib, Turn Left | Very few issues are cut and dry in contemporary politics, and even fewer have a clear majority for or against a given side in the debate. The issues that Americans have decided upon – for example, civil rights, women’s rights, and women’s suffrage – have more often than not been resolved, at least legislatively, in decades past. On the other hand, contemporary issues are by definition those that have not been decided upon by the masses, whether or not a sound morality has found resonance with one debating faction or another. And yet there is one contemporary topic that much of America seems to have decided is an issue neither contentious nor worthy of debate in their eyes – one that is nonetheless as ethically cut-and-dry as women’s and civil rights.

North of the border and in Europe, gay rights are in the forefront of progressive popular and legislative discussion, while the winds of legislative change for the LGBT community’s rights here in the United States blow against fronts of reason, equality and progress. Conservative congressmen in the US contemplate defining marriage has an exclusively heterosexual institution. Radicals in congress such as Representative Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) almost freely converse in homophobic language, such as calling homosexuality a ‘sickness,’ an ‘aberration’ and a ‘sin’ that needs to be ‘controlled’ – a disgusting and hateful spate reminiscent of Strom Thurmond of 1948 or George Wallace of 1963 on civil rights. Hateful, regressive and irrational legislation, such as the anti-gay constitutional amendment effectively eliminating any federal benefits for same-sex couples, litter the floors of Capitol Hill.

What does a heterosexual from the suburbs care about gay rights, you may ask? Issues of gender identity and sexual orientation don’t affect a majority of people like healthcare and taxation, and gays are so well represented in pop culture that it’s hard to believe they’re an oppressed minority.

Think again. Of nearly all the major issues we have been publicly dealing with in our political system, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights stand out as both the most divisive and yet the most morally clear. Differences between pro- and anti-gay rights arguments can be summed up by this: the pro-gay rights make a clear case, whereas the anti-gay rights can only resort to stalwart social convention, ‘natural order’, millennia outdated religious doctrine and plain irrational disgust for alternative sexual lifestyles. The fact is, there is no reasonable argument against gay rights except for convention – and conventions change as fast as our society is changing today. Despite this, the ethical clarity of the issue is not reflected in either government action, or the general will of the American people to do anything about it.

The convention argument is perhaps the weakest in terms of persuasion, yet strongest in terms of law. Gay rights to marriage claims are often refuted by evoking the traditional definition of marriage. The meanings of words, it would be argued, should not be changed to suit a particular group or minority. But words change meanings all the time – for example, the word ‘ignorant’, which simply means ‘lacking knowledge’, has in contemporary vernacular come to represent, for a good example, those who feel that marriage can and should only be defined between a man and a woman. Why not legally change the definitions of the words ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ if it means that gay couples can enjoy their lives together and receive the same benefits heterosexual couples do – especially if it comes short of affecting the rights of conventional couples and families?

The ‘natural order’ argument is my particular favourite. It is argued that homosexual relationships are unnatural and abhorrent, because human bodies were not designed to be used that way. Human bodies were never designed to have clothing, however, or piercings, or sandals. Why not repudiate them, too, if they are unnatural? There is no rational reason why homosexuals cannot enjoy a relationship they define themselves, no matter what crackpot version of the theory of evolution one happens to produce. The idea of natural order is as quaint as much of Aristotelian thought, and probably three times as old.

Finally, the most dangerous argument: religion. Religious zealotry is dangerous to gay rights not in its ability to convince a Supreme Court judge (no matter who Bush decides to appoint next) but in its ability to sway masses, to be used, like Marxism in Stalinist Russia, as the excuse, and not the reason, to argue against gay rights. Nevertheless, Americans, like any other people, tend to forget things that at one time seemed like a good idea, but at another time proved inconvenient. The separation between the church and the state, so fundamental to our notion of the modern nation- state, erodes at those key times when piety makes for good politics.

Despite the irrationality of the anti-gay rights argument, the persistent conservative campaign against social progress continues to have success, reflecting a mix of apathy and homophobia that dominates American thought towards gender identity and sexual orientation issues. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy may be a pop-cultural tour de force, but isn’t about to change marriage or adoption rights for homosexual couples. I’m convinced that in the eyes of the average American, the debate on gay rights is argued between homophobes and liberal zealots. The average American is apathetic, just as many of us are apathetic towards ongoing human rights abuses in Tibet, or the African World War in the late 90’s, or the economic and cultural slump of the preteen Russian democratic republic – issues simply too remote to be considered in our daily life. Americans need to understand how the issue is deeply connected with our most fundamental freedoms. The argument for gay rights need be more assertive than, for example, the notion that the state simply has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.

I am passionate about the gay rights issue because it holds the best contemporary mirror to modern Western society and its insecurities, its fear of change and its underlying motives for bigotry, hatred and violence. The way our society reflects on gay rights is so telling because we know – just as we knew about slavery, women’s suffrage and civil rights – the justice of our cause. The crude, cold, hateful and deceptive words used against gay rights in all aspects of the issue are more telling about the limitations of the openness of our society than the nature of homosexuality.

I sincerely hope that Americans – indeed, North Americans – consider the distinctions between sin and crime, toleration and disgust, ‘natural’ and desirable, religious freedom and religious persecution. Reactionary arguments based upon social convention, ‘natural’ order and religion could be used to support any number of regressive policies. If we allow for the combination of apathy, bigotry, and religious zealotry that underlies many popular political beliefs in our country today, gay rights won’t be the only issues that creep upon the American conscience.

In a time when lies, rhetoric, invasion of privacy and active ignorance of civil liberties are the mechanisms of government influence on mass culture, and in an atmosphere of paranoia over national security, we can only guess in what peril our freedoms will be in the coming years. Our eternal vigilance, self-criticality and civil libertarian outlook are necessary in our functioning democracy. The gay rights issue – as morally unambiguous as it is – is a test for the American democracy as much as it is an indicator of the progress of our society. If the actions of our current administration are tolerated, then I am afraid, America will have failed on both counts. End.