Tethered Swimming   Cynical optimism with a sense of humor…

Since California passed Proposition 8 two months ago there has been an enormous and acrimonious backlash.  The most publicized parts of this backlash have occurred around people who supported 8, usually for religious reasons, but who also have a lot of homosexual people in their lives.  Less than two weeks after the election there was a well publicized story out of Sacramento; the art director of a major non-profit theater resigned after it became known that he had donated $1,000 to help ban gay marriage.  The guy, Scott Eckern, is a Mormon, made the donation out of religious conviction, and was quoted in The New York Times as saying, “I honestly had no idea that this would be the reaction.”

That’s an almost incredible statement; what did he think the reaction would be?  Did he think that the euphoria which greeted the court decision legalizing same sex marriage would be replaced with aw-shucks resignation when it was taken away?  Something’s missing from that picture; how could this guy, who works with openly homosexual people day in and day out, not realize how important this issue is to them?  The answer lies in the following chart of a Gallup poll which has been conducted since 1977.

The scientific consensus (at least in males) is heavily on “Born With“.  And while the percentage of Americans who agree has been steadily increasing for decades (with a brief dip during the gay mongering of the mid naughts), it’s still a minority opinion.  What’s more, when Gallup removed “Both” and “Neither” (which are cop out nonsense), “No Opinion” shot up like a rocket but “Born With” held steady.  That tells us that it’s very likely that a majority of Americans do not believe that sexual orientation in inherent at birth.

That fact goes a long way towards explaining how Eckern and others like him were blindsided by the reaction to the passage of Proposition 8.  If you’ve never internalized or accepted the fact that homosexuality is not a choice then you wouldn’t think of gay marriage as a life or death issue.

The real proof is in the language though.  Without batting an eye people will use terms like “choice of lifestyle”, “ex-gay”, and “homosexual agenda“.  All three of those very common formulations assume a conscious decision on the part of the person in question.  A person makes a “choice” between two alternatives; to be “ex-” anything is to imply a non-permanent condition; an “agenda” is a list of things a person wants, not of things a person needs.

For exactly the same reason support for civil unions equivalent to marriage always runs higher than support for actual gay marriage.  If homosexuality is a choice then it’s much easier to defend the idea of reserving the M-word for heterosexual couples.  In that framework “marriage” becomes a kind of hetero-merit badge for people who chose to do things the old fashioned way.

Advocates of gay marriage and gay rights in general often portray their cause as a civil rights issue, which it is.  But arguing it on civil rights grounds in a country where “Born With” is a minority opinion is like trying to build a house without a foundation.  Gay marriage – gay anything - can only be understood as a civil rights issue once you accept the fact that being homosexual is not a choice.  If, deep down in your heart of hearts, you believe that homosexuality is a choice, then gay marriage is nothing more than a kind of preferential treatment and homosexuals are just another interest group.  That’s the type of thinking that misleads people like Scott Eckern.  Civil rights arguments will be wasted on them until they understand that homosexuality isn’t just a phase people can pass through.