Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Let me tell ya sumpthin' 'bout this here "Gay Marriage Issue"... Now, we had this same darn thing back in the Sixties. It was the same crap. There were pissed-off folks lined up on one side of the street sayin' black people oughtta be able to eat at the lunch counter same as anybody and there were fat, white women in mu-mus with curlers in their hair on the other side of the street screamin' "We ain't gonna let no n*****s into our school!"
See? Like I said: The same crap then as now...
They eventually did, you know... Integrate the schools, that is... Something that, today, we take for granted. We take for granted that all the kids who live on the same side of town are going to attend the same high school -- wasn't always so. And, when they finally DID integrate all the schools, it wasn't a matter of simply opening up the front doors and letting everybody in -- oh, no -- it took reams of court orders and a fairly large presence of National Guard for quite some time to make it come about.
This hue and cry over who can legally marry whom isn't new, either. Blacks and whites weren't allowed to intermarry in many states when I was a kid and, even in the states where they were allowed to get married, they took their lives in their hands to do so and appear in public. Opponents of racial intermarriage were fond of saying things like "Dogs don't mate with cats, ya know" and "you'll never find a zebra mated to a rhino" as deluded "validations" of their opinions -- never allowing such facts as, "unlike 'dogs and cats' and 'zebras and rhinos', black and white humans are members of the very same species" to become problematic for them. (A more accurate correlation would have involved the mating processes between different colors of dogs or different breeds of cats -- which occurs most of the time.)
Today, you'll hear those with objections to "gay marriage" say things like "homosexual behavior isn't 'natural' because you won't find any animals doing it". Statements like this are just as problematic for opponents of gay marriage as the above was for opponents of inter-racial marriage.
First, it ignores the fact that humans ARE animals and the even more problematic fact that most other species of animals DO engage in such behavior. In fact, over 1,500 different species of animals have been observed engaging in homosexual behavior with a few species -- such as dwarf chimpanzees -- openly engaging in it throughout their lifetimes. Homosexual relationships between male killer whales are known to last much longer than their heterosexual counterparts and, in many species of ducks and geese, females will even lay eggs in the nests of homosexual male couples -- leaving the hatchlings to the two males to raise (which, we are learning, they appear to do better than heterosexual couples of the same species).
In fact, one biologist has said that only those creatures that are "asexual" -- in other words, ones that don't engage in sexual behavior at all -- do NOT (at least occasionally) engage in homosexual behavior. There IS a type of related behavior that other animals don't seem to engage in, however and that's "homophobia".
Now, in the end -- in the final analysis -- some people are always going be what they call "resistant to change" and a lifetime of observation of human behavior tells me that the reason isn't because their lives are so perfect and wonderful -- so much so that they don't want to upset the apple-cart -- like you'd expect. Nah... My theory is that they believe their lives (from their perspective, anyway) really do suck but, as long as there's another faction -- some other group of people -- they can point to and say "Hey, look! Their lives suck even more than our lives suck!", they've got something (no matter how irrelevant or how petty) that empowers them on some deluded level.
My theory flies in the face of most of the social psychologists and behavior analysts of the world who would maintain that it is the members of the ruling classes -- those living in the lap of luxury in their social stratum -- who are the most resistant to changes in the status quo. That may be but, at least they have the intelligence not to show it. That's why you don't see scattered bands of old geezers out there, wearing tiaras and Armani suits, carrying correctly-spelled protest signs.
Getting back to the point that I'm attempting to make here, allow me to state the following:
One faction of human beings trying to dictate to another faction what their lifestyle choices should be is inherently "wrong". It's wrong because it forces the assumption that one group's choices in lifestyle follow some type of "universal rule" of correctness which then facilitates the branding of anyone in disagreement with that "rule" as guilty of aberrant behavior.
See? Like I said: The same crap then as now...
They eventually did, you know... Integrate the schools, that is... Something that, today, we take for granted. We take for granted that all the kids who live on the same side of town are going to attend the same high school -- wasn't always so. And, when they finally DID integrate all the schools, it wasn't a matter of simply opening up the front doors and letting everybody in -- oh, no -- it took reams of court orders and a fairly large presence of National Guard for quite some time to make it come about.
This hue and cry over who can legally marry whom isn't new, either. Blacks and whites weren't allowed to intermarry in many states when I was a kid and, even in the states where they were allowed to get married, they took their lives in their hands to do so and appear in public. Opponents of racial intermarriage were fond of saying things like "Dogs don't mate with cats, ya know" and "you'll never find a zebra mated to a rhino" as deluded "validations" of their opinions -- never allowing such facts as, "unlike 'dogs and cats' and 'zebras and rhinos', black and white humans are members of the very same species" to become problematic for them. (A more accurate correlation would have involved the mating processes between different colors of dogs or different breeds of cats -- which occurs most of the time.)
Today, you'll hear those with objections to "gay marriage" say things like "homosexual behavior isn't 'natural' because you won't find any animals doing it". Statements like this are just as problematic for opponents of gay marriage as the above was for opponents of inter-racial marriage.
First, it ignores the fact that humans ARE animals and the even more problematic fact that most other species of animals DO engage in such behavior. In fact, over 1,500 different species of animals have been observed engaging in homosexual behavior with a few species -- such as dwarf chimpanzees -- openly engaging in it throughout their lifetimes. Homosexual relationships between male killer whales are known to last much longer than their heterosexual counterparts and, in many species of ducks and geese, females will even lay eggs in the nests of homosexual male couples -- leaving the hatchlings to the two males to raise (which, we are learning, they appear to do better than heterosexual couples of the same species).
In fact, one biologist has said that only those creatures that are "asexual" -- in other words, ones that don't engage in sexual behavior at all -- do NOT (at least occasionally) engage in homosexual behavior. There IS a type of related behavior that other animals don't seem to engage in, however and that's "homophobia".
Now, in the end -- in the final analysis -- some people are always going be what they call "resistant to change" and a lifetime of observation of human behavior tells me that the reason isn't because their lives are so perfect and wonderful -- so much so that they don't want to upset the apple-cart -- like you'd expect. Nah... My theory is that they believe their lives (from their perspective, anyway) really do suck but, as long as there's another faction -- some other group of people -- they can point to and say "Hey, look! Their lives suck even more than our lives suck!", they've got something (no matter how irrelevant or how petty) that empowers them on some deluded level.
My theory flies in the face of most of the social psychologists and behavior analysts of the world who would maintain that it is the members of the ruling classes -- those living in the lap of luxury in their social stratum -- who are the most resistant to changes in the status quo. That may be but, at least they have the intelligence not to show it. That's why you don't see scattered bands of old geezers out there, wearing tiaras and Armani suits, carrying correctly-spelled protest signs.
Getting back to the point that I'm attempting to make here, allow me to state the following:
One faction of human beings trying to dictate to another faction what their lifestyle choices should be is inherently "wrong". It's wrong because it forces the assumption that one group's choices in lifestyle follow some type of "universal rule" of correctness which then facilitates the branding of anyone in disagreement with that "rule" as guilty of aberrant behavior.
Lifestyle choices are just that: "Choices". If there were cut-and-dried rules to choices, they would cease to be choices and even the most conservative and orthodox of religious adherents among us agree that human beings have been divinely endowed with something called "free will" that confers upon each one of us the ability to decide for ourselves how we are going to live our lives. This is never more true than for those living in a country that claims concepts like "freedom" and "liberty" as the basis for its existence.
2 comments:
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in excess body fat and carrying a misspelled sign.
I think it's already here, NW, just not yet with the numbers to qualify it as a "majority". Free speech allows for all views, fortunately (or unfortunately -- depending upon which side of an issue one is on). The thing is that, while fascism would not allow a liberal viewpoint should it become the law of the land, liberality WOULD allow for a fascist viewpoint. That simple fact reassures me I'm on the correct side as a dyed in the wool Liberal. ;)
Post a Comment