PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

The moral wrong of denying gay rights
by Joseph Breems Friday, Mar. 13, 2009 at 1:10 PM
josephbreems@gmail.com

Gays and lesbians deserve to be treated as human beings. To oppose gay rights is to degrade, devalue, and dehumanize the gay community. It is time to take a stand against hetero-supremacy.

In 1986 Bayard Rustin, prominent civil rights activist and organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, claimed that “[t]wenty-five, thirty years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.”

In 1998 Coretta Scott King, also an outspoken activist and widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that "[w]e are all tied together in a single garment of destiny...I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be," quoting her late husband. "I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy."

At this point in our society’s history, it is difficult to deny that the chapter currently being written in America’s collective narrative of justice and equality is heavily concerned with the equal rights and protection of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) community.

From the 1998 torture and murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, to the current court battles in California over Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot initiative that rewrote the state constitution in order to legally prohibit the marriage of gay and lesbian couples, our nation is once again gripped by a struggle for who we are as a people.

Do we truly value equality as we so proudly profess to? How sincere are we when we place our right hands over our hearts and proclaim “liberty and justice for all”? Will our identity be one of a people free and equal or of a people chained to institutionalized inequality and de jure discrimination? These are pertinent and poignant questions to ask.

As long as the GLBT community is denied the same marriage and adoption rights as heterosexuals in this country, as long as legal protections against job, housing, and educational discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender expression are suppressed and sidelined, as long as an openly gay woman is disallowed from serving in the military, as long as an openly gay man is kept from visiting his ailing partner of years in the hospital, as long as the mere perception of being gay can and does result in one’s brutal beating and even death with little concern shown by the police and so-called justice system we remain an inherently unjust, unequal, and, frankly, bigoted people.

Have we learned nothing from our own troubled and painful past? Do we not see that a nation cannot be democratic while simultaneously creating, by its own laws, a second-class citizenry? Do we not understand by now that separate is most definitely not equal?

The arguments raised against equal rights and protections are varied and many, perhaps none being more germane and thus virulent than those pertaining to same-sex marriage.

Opponents of gay marriage, and of the GLBT community in general, often liken same-sex attraction and relationships to pedophilia and bestiality. They see it as an equally detestable perversion. I will say outright that anyone today who cannot distinguish between a consensual, adult relationship and the sexualization of children or animals is either subject to a crippling moral confusion or intentionally and thus dangerously ignorant. Such a view, or anything of the like, is arrogant, dehumanizing, and a threat to a democratic society.

Still others warn that if gays and lesbians are allowed to wed, what is to stop the legalization of other “alternative” forms of marriage like polygamy? The fact aside that a “slippery slope” argument such as this is a classic logical fallacy—meaning there is nothing reasonable to link the one to the other— there is also neither a logical nor a moral reason to saddle the GLBT community with the responsibility of speaking for polygamy, or any other marriage arrangement for that matter. If anyone wishes to take up the case, either for or against, that is their prerogative, but it is a vicious red herring to sidetrack the push for marriage equality for same-sex couples by unfoundedly yoking it to this issue.

Then there are those who see same-sex marriage as threatening to the future stability of our society. Their argument rests primarily on the belief that households headed by either two men or two women are innately harmful to the development of children.

According to Jeremiah G. Dys of the Family Policy Council, “study after study done in a non-partisan manner show that children need a mother and a father.” The trouble with this statement is that it has no legitimate backing. Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization of more than 60,000 pediatricians nationwide, has contrarily said that “[m]ore than 25 years of research have documented that there is no relationship between parents' sexual orientation and any measure of a child's emotional, psychosocial, and behavioral adjustment.”

What is more, an argument concerning the well being of children such as the one above would be better suited to support the criminalization of divorce and single parenthood, a cause for which I see no gay rights opponent raising the banner.

In my advocacy of equal rights and protection for the GLBT community I have been accused more than once of hypocrisy. How can I purport being open-minded, I have been asked, when I haven’t sufficiently listened to both sides? How can I so flippantly dismiss the moral arguments against “that lifestyle”? To this I have a few responses.

The first is that I have listened to them. Not only that, I have lived them. I grew up in a Christian home, I attended church regularly, I was a leader in my youth group; I was well versed in the objections to the “evil of homosexualism”. This is all to say that I am not some oblivious outsider but a member of the Christian community who understands intimately the oppositional mindset.

I will even admit that I personally struggle with homophobic feelings, whether it be looking down on a man who holds himself in a stereotypically effeminate manner or immediately judging a woman I deem as “too butch”. This is relevant because I suspect that most condemnatory reactions to gays and lesbians and their rights are just that, reactionary— knee-jerk responses to difference. They are less the expression of thoughtful and deeply held moral convictions and more the result of irrational discomfort.

The second is that the assumption by those who claim to argue against equal rights and protection for the GLBT community from a biblical standpoint that they have a monopoly on morality is categorically false. To deny gays and lesbians equal marriage rights is to undervalue, or really allot no value at all, to their human capacity to love and human need to be loved. It is to say that their ability to form romantic emotional, spiritual, and intellectual bonds is intrinsically inferior to that of heterosexuals. It is to reduce them to their sexual desires and practices and therefore dehumanize them.

Standing against equal rights and protection for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons is to treat them as animals and that, I say without hesitation, is immoral.

To claim that opponents of gay rights have equally valid arguments to those of supporters and so should be heard in equal measure is to take into account neither the motivation for these arguments nor their intended outcome. The GLBT community fights so that its members might live free from fear and discrimination and equal with their fellow heterosexual citizens. Their opponents fight to suppress these aspirations.

Regardless of who “wins” in the end, the heterosexual majority, on a personal level, really has next to nothing to lose. On the contrary, as a despised minority the very humanity of gays and lesbians is on the line. In light of this, to tell the GLBT community that it should give balanced consideration to the voices of those who would deny the community justice and equality is in some ways like saying to Dr. King that he should have first heard white supremacists out before pursuing his radical civil rights agenda.

I do not equivocate when I say that it is not narrow-minded, hypocritical, or self-defeating to be intolerant of intolerance. Indeed, such a stance is the only way to guard against unjust and immoral forces.

Do not take this article as comprehensive in its treatment of particular arguments against equal rights and protection for the GLBT community. Though I touched on a few specific contentions, the primary thrust of the article is to expose the dehumanizing nature of the denial of equality and how the pursuit of this same equality is part of the broader struggle for a more just and moral society.

Also, do not take my advocacy of gay rights as a justification for all of the tactics utilized by the GLBT community and its allies in pursuit of those rights. I am advocating neither crude disrespect nor verbal and physical abuse. Such behavior strays into the realm of intolerable intolerance of which I just spoke.

What I am advocating is for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons to have equal rights and protection like any other citizen in this country. I am advocating, as philosopher Carlos Ball phrased it, a fully human life for all rather than a merely recognizable one. I am advocating dignity.

This is not a question. It is not a plea. It is a demand.

We will not be pitied. We will not beg. We demand equality, we demand justice, and we demand to be treated as human beings.

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what is right is right
by Nessie Thursday, Apr. 30, 2009 at 4:55 AM

what is right is right
Anon , 21.10.2008 09:43



the will of the people



Prop 8



Proposition 8 places into the California Constitution the same language that voters already passed by 61% of the vote in 2000. This is necessary to overturn an outrageous California Supreme Court decision that overturned Proposition 22.


About Proposition 8

Proposition 8 is simple and straightforward. It contains the same 14 words that were previously approved in 2000 by over 61% of California voters: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Because four activist judges in San Francisco wrongly overturned the people’s vote, we need to pass this measure as a constitutional amendment to restore the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

Voting YES on Proposition 8 does 3 simple things:

It restores the definition of marriage to what the vast majority of California voters already approved and what Californians agree should be supported, not undermined.

It overturns the outrageous decision of four activist Supreme Court judges who ignored the will of the people.

It protects our children from being taught in public schools that “same-sex marriage” is the same as traditional marriage, and prevents other consequences to Californians who will be forced to not just be tolerant of gay lifestyles, but face mandatory compliance regardless of their personal beliefs.

yes on prop 8 = yes to same-sex marriages



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quite the contrary
by debate coach Thursday, Apr. 30, 2009 at 11:14 PM

To oppose gay rights is to degrade, devalue, and dehumanize the gay community.

They degrade, devalue, and dehumanize themselves very well with their fetish for Nazi garb.They will never be taken seriously. 

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