Friday, July 25, 2008
Gay-bashers trot out tired arguments
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Steven Kranowski
Kranowski is a bookkeeper for a construction company in Blacksburg.
It seems the gay-bashers have been running rampant on The Roanoke Times' letters and opinion pages lately. Jim Ludington started off the whole mess with the hateful, hurtful and unenlightened tirade he inflicted on these pages back on June 29 ("Gay marriage threatens our culture," commentary), which encouraged some of his fellow homophobes to write some equally mean-spirited and ignorant letters in his support.
Ludington and his cheerleaders once again regurgitated their usual, tired nonsense: Homosexuality violates their oh-so-delicate religious sensibilities (never mind that America is supposed to be a secular nation that shouldn't push one person's religious beliefs over anyone else's). They drag out the tired, slippery-slope argument warning about possible legalized polygamy and pedophilia.
These people should look at the regions of the world where same-sex marriage has been legalized; last time I looked, those places were doing just fine, thank you very much.
And just recently, yet another gay-basher has unleashed his bigotry upon these pages in the form of Star Parker's nasty little diatribe ("Moral war of attrition," July 22 commentary). She rails on about how our armed forces shouldn't allow gay people to serve openly, and yet the military forces of both Great Britain and Israel have recently been doing just that, and haven't suffered from this new policy in the slightest.
Particularly incendiary was Parker's insinuation that increased tolerance of gays leads to "a general moral unraveling of society, with all its destructive consequences." Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a perfect example of the logical fallacy known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc; i.e.; if B follows A, therefore A must cause B. As the bigots would have it, if things are going wrong in the world, just single out some conveniently available development you don't like, and blame it all on that.
I realize that my words simply bounce off the ears of those whose homophobia is too firmly established to dislodge, but for those people who remain on the fence, they should chew on these little facts: The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the World Health Organization, the American Counseling Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the Council on Child and Adolescent Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics and even the health ministries in Russia and China all agree that homosexuality isn't a choice and cannot be changed.
Moreover, those on the fence should take some time to review a recent study conducted by the American Psychological Association that shows that children raised by same-sex couples don't turn out any worse than those raised by opposite-sex couples.
Finally, in May 2005 the APA deemed legal recognition of same-sex marriage would be greatly beneficial to the health of gays everywhere.
For now, the gay-bashers may be winning, but people like myself who support full equality for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community can take solace in this: Time is on our side, and will expose Ludington, Parker and all the rest of the homophobes for the irrational, fear-mongering bigots that they are.
