Hello there blogosexuals! How are we? Top stuff!
Never one to miss the opportunity to moan over an issue that appears settled, I have written the next two posts about gay marriage. Part 1 will hopefully serve as a helpful Q & A formatted list of how you should respond to the all too numerous gay equality opposition that exists all over the world, even in liberal Europe. Part 2 will explain why you should give a (non-literal) fuck about the whole issue. But for now, on with the show!
We’re entering the dying throes of the year and our country is different to the one that welcomed 2013. England and Wales have now joined a group of 17 nations that have officially legalised gay marriage and it’s awesome. It’s been a long summer of in-fighting within the often irritable bowels of parliament but the issue has finally been resolved. No matter what happens next I will always be grateful for David Cameron’s tenacity in chasing up the issue at great risk to himself and his party. Who am I? I consider myself one of the vocal members of a largely silent majority that supports equal rights for homosexuals. I myself am not partial to sexy wrestling with the chaps but if it were only gay people that fought for gay rights then nothing would happen. The first part of this blog entry will serve as a reminder of the counter-arguments you might consider employing should you debate someone that opposes gay rights. I don’t hope to add anything to the argument nor do I expect to present it in a more beautiful way than the proper writers that have gone before me. The argument for equality has previously been robustly mounted by countless thoughtful individuals who have had to exhibit far more determination and bravery than I ever will.
“It’s just not natural Dave! That isn’t where you put it!”
Biology has nothing to say about the legal unionising of a couple and it doesn’t say how we morally should behave. The important distinction to make here is that it should not be considered unnatural for gay people to have sex because it won’t result in babies. Sex for pleasure, masturbation, celibacy and condom use are equally unnatural to someone who takes the procreation position. Obviously gay sex and gay relationships are natural or the practice wouldn’t be as ubiquitous as it is. It’s natural for a certain percentage of our population to feel attracted to the same sex rather than the opposite sex. Furthermore, it’s natural for the animal kingdom to produce homosexual groups; at least 1500 animals have been documented to exhibit homosexual behaviour in some way, one of the best examples being rams who commit for life to a specific same-sex partner. It’s also important to realise that marriage these days is a legal union that recognises a commitment between two people, and there’s no biological evidence to suggest that gay people are inferior at loving each other. If anything, when I turn to my favourite copy of heat magazine I am reminded how ineffective the people that our society admires are at maintaining their special union.
If you have a gay couple that have been with each other for their entire lives into old age (often under much more trying circumstances than you or I will ever have to encounter) it’s impossible to conclude that they have a different relationship to everyone else. Man COMMITS FOR LIFE to woman, (wo)man COMMITS FOR LIFE to (wo)man – what difference do you see? From what I can tell there are many scumbags who can procreate together and raise their kids in awful conditions, I do not see them as being better by definition just because they have the machinery to make a baby. In fact the ability to procreate seems to me to be one of the smaller issues when it comes to whether you should get married or not. Firstly and most importantly, do you like each other enough to commit for life? Secondly, if you want to bring up a family are you capable, loving parents? Thirdly, can you actually make a baby or shall we find one for you? Marriage and procreation are completely divisible.
“But Gawd hates fags”
True, this viewpoint has been adopted by various religions and that is fine; but at the end of the day if you have the ceremony, shout hallelujah and don’t sign the paper, you’re not married. Marriage is deeply entrenched within our past, it’s so old it even predates Christianity! That’s why it’s important for people to remind everyone else that the Church’s rights to religious marriages will not be infringed upon. It makes it more upsetting that the Church insists that it is the oppressed party when it just isn’t, a gay marriage bill won’t change anything for them. They will still marry straight people, the state will just be allowed to marry gay people, there’s absolutely no crossover. Furthermore, if there were to be any crossover then I would insist that everyone complained. It is not the right of the state to decide how a church should run as long as it complies with the law. If the Church wants to be bigoted then we need to let them be bigoted. If they don’t want to allow female bishops, if they want to claim that condoms are evil, or if they want to claim that homosexuality is morally wrong then we need to let them be entitled to their terrible views. But there is no reason for the state to bow down to their bleating. The worst thing about the gay marriage bill in the UK is that in a pathetic attempt to appease the vocal religious opposition the tories included a clause that stated that the Church of England would be legally FORBIDDEN to marry gay people. How about that?! They’re not even getting the option to join the 21st century any more!
Sadly it gets worse than that my pious friends, did you know that I can get married?! That’s right! I can stroll on past my local church, take a piss upon their shrubberies and then saunter into the registry office wearing my favourite antichrist t-shirt. A simple flick of my wrist with pen in hand confirms me as a married citizen; free to join the legions of holy ordained couples in tax break heaven. If you don’t think gay people should be married based on religious principles then I really think you should start taking on piss-taking heterosexual atheists like myself.
As far as I’m concerned we should treat religious concerns with exactly the same amount of respect as a group of individuals that assert that Zeus thinks that homosexuals are icky and therefore sub-hetero. I’m sure they would be sincere and that any change to the status quo would damage their fragile beliefs but we shouldn’t concede that their ‘God says no’ argument is sufficient.
“What about the terribly complicated legal ramifications?! FREE SPEECH DAVE! FREE SPEECH! MY GRANDFATHER FOUGHT FOR FREE SPEECH!”
I’ve heard it all, I’ve been told that freedom of speech is at threat because any gay marriage dissenters will be made to ‘disappear’ by the overzealous left and that gay people won’t be able to have a divorce because they don’t have sex.
Basically, in this United Kingdom we have a law that prohibits those that work in the public sector from saying negative things about the things that their society accepts. So your nurses can’t let their racism seep into their hospital and your teachers can’t let their religious bias seep into their classroom. Now, the idea that public sector equality duty (our ‘anti-free speech’ laws) is the fault of gay marriage is ridiculous! Generally, my opinion is that we should go into these issues with the assumption that everyone is at least born equal biologically, that there is no reason to bear prejudice against people of different races, genders, or sexualities. We can of course note the obvious differences, but cultures all over the world have overgeneralised to see these three groups as deficient in several ways. What of the Catholic adoption agencies that have been closed down because they refuse to place babies with homosexual couples? It is important to remember at this point that the consensus in the scientific world is that gay people make absolutely fine parents, it’s a farce in itself that they have to pass some kind of parenting test whilst the rest of us straight people need only have a drunken one night stand to prove we’re capable! Imagine the moderate Nazi adoption agency? Ever willing to give children to Aryans but never to Jews or black people. I think any new charity or agency should have to conform to the rules of the society they’re in otherwise become martyrs and risk closure, if our society says that gays are equally capable parents and should not be discriminated against then they should comply (especially if their pay masters ARE the society they live in). What of the poor teacher that would be condemned for refusing to teach that gay marriage is okay? All you need to do is substitute ‘gay marriage’ for ‘racial equality’ and it seems obvious, it is right that bigoted prejudice should be discouraged by our political infrastructure. You have the right to believe any crazy thing you want privately but if you want to teach sexuality inequality to kids, refuse to give babies to homosexuals, and want to refuse to perform abortions based on your sincerely held beliefs then you must accept that you are vulnerable to your employers. If you go into a job where you’re supposed to open certain services to the public then I don’t see it as the employer’s job to bend over backwards so that they don’t have to violate the beliefs of Bill the racist or Janet the homophobe. It’s slightly unfashionable to be on the side of the employer but in these types of situations I can’t help but think that it sucks to have an employee come up to you and say they won’t do the job they’re paid for because their god/beliefs told them they shouldn’t. But like I say, this is not actually an argument against gay marriage at all! More so the existing law of public sector equality duty.
“What about the terribly complicated legal ramifications?! YOU NEED A VAGINA AND A PENIS FOR SEX DAVE! YOU CAN’T JUST POKE WHATEVER YOUR SEXUAL ORGAN MAY BE INTO A COLD TAP AND CALL IT SEX!”
This is one of the most ridiculous points I’ve ever read in the gay marriage debate, but I will play along! First I must dismiss any notion that gay people have sex, should it be more appropriately named sodomy? Rather than the more current gay/anal sex? But what about when straight folk have it? Is it anal sex or sodomy then? I gather that since sodomy has no existential purpose (though this seems a terribly grandiose term) and no procreative result that the concept of consummation is meaningless. But hang on, does this mean that sex with a condom is meaningless? Can we even count that as sex anymore?! The mind boggles, but I will roll with it! So we have a problem in being unable to use non-consummation and adultery as grounds for divorce (as gay people don’t have sex). Firstly, the idea that consummation is more important to the idea of marriage than all the festivities and legal concessions that preceded seems crazy to me! Should celibate people be refused the right to get married? Or even people that don’t intend to have a child? Is this really what we think marriage is in 2013? Having checked a few marriage application forms out I can tell you now that there is no box to tick that promises you will consummate.
“What if same-sex friends want to marry to pick up some of the legal perks?”
Unfortunately, this problem is not specific to gay marriage and can also be abused by straight marriage; so as far as I’m concerned, it’s not gay marriage’s problem.
“But…but I’m not scared of gays!”
Gooooooooooooooooal! Well played my anti-equal-rights-for-gays friend! The chances are that you’re probably not literally afraid of homosexuals, which is great! Maybe you’re slightly apprehensive about them craving your limp penis/girly bits but they don’t scare you like a James Wan film. Homophobia is indeed a poorly chosen word as it implies fear when obviously there tends to be none in the situations that it is applied. But I also think it’s cheeky of opposition to things like the same-sex bill to moan that they’re not afraid of gays and therefore they’re not homophobes. They know that they’re not being accused of being afraid, it’s just pedantic. But yes, many of the opposition certainly are an as yet undefined word that means intolerant of gay people getting the same rights as straight people.
Did I miss anything? Please let me know! I’m sure there are still plenty of crazy angles we can approach the problem from. But for God’s sake let’s keep it good and Christian and avoid the back passage.
TTFN!
psychopolemic 
That consummation thing: most straight married couples road-test each other before marrying, and judgments making a marriage void for non-consummation, or any other ground, are very rare. And sexual activity with another person would be “unreasonable behaviour” even if you could not plead adultery. At the moment, we have two slightly different institutions: marriage for gay people, and marriage for straights. Better to abolish divorce for adultery completely.
Not all gay men use the anus: look up intercrural sex.
And- good article. This will not be an issue, very soon.
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