Rabid Anti-Gayness = Gayness?

It's a theory that just won't go away, what with all these wide-stanced politicians screaming "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" by day and screaming "Oh Adam! Oh Steve!" by night. Is homophobia, especially the rabid fire-and-brimstone variety, just repressed homosexuality leaking out? The evidence in the political arena is starting to get voluminous enough to matter.

And consider this beauty of a post on the American River Christian Club website (hat tip Pharyngula):

"EVERYWHERE I LOOK, ON TV IN SCHOOL EVERYWHERE BUT IN CHURCH ALL I SEE IS GAY THIS, GAY RIGHTS THAT OPEN DISPLAYS OF THIER LIFESTYLE BEING PUSHED DOWN OUR THROATS, I KNOW THAT JESUS LOVES THE SINNER BUT HATES THE SIN, IT JUST APEARS THAT, THAT SIN IS BEING THRUST UPON US IS THERE NOTHING THAT CAN BE DONE, IS THIS WHAT WE HAVE TO LOOK FORWARD TO, SODOMITES RUNNING AROUND, OPENLY PROMOTING THIER LIFESTYLE, GAY MARRIAGE, GAY PASTORS, GAY CHURCHES, ITS LIKE GETTING OUT OF CONTROL, AND ITS VERY SAD TO SEE THIS DAY COME TO LIGHT, AND THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT.
THATS THE SADDEST THING EVER"

The lifestyle being pushed down our throats? Sin being thrust upon us and there is nothing we can do? Sodomites running around? This guy isn't complaining, he's fantasizing. As one of the most heterosexual guys around, I have never, not once, concerned myself with the fact that some guys are attracted to other guys, and I've always wondered about those that do so to such an obsessive degree. I know, it's a sin according to the Bible. So what? So are various ways of cutting one's hair, working on the sabbath, eating shellfish, and a whole host of other offenses, depending on which parts of the book one arbitrarily decides to interpret literally. Yet no one is going stark raving bonkers over people doing any of those things. Why homosexuality then?

Let's examine some comments left me here by Little David, who I consider a good example of this obsessive attitude towards homosexuality. In an article responding to some commentary of mine on Intelligent Design, he responded with:

"The Science Avenger evidently believes in evolution. Well, then let us examine just how much he is willing to bow to 'science' and 'evolution' and how willing he is to sacrifice the bullshit 'liberal' viewpoint.

What does the Science Avenger think about homosexuality?"

Nice transition eh? And what is it with conservatives and their scare quote tourettes syndrome? None of the words he put quotes around needed them. It's just a dishonest rhetorical trick to cast doubt on a concept without having to do the hard work of doing so with evidence. He also treats us to this gem:

"What Is Wrong With Huckabee

Alternatively I could have titled this post 'I'd Vote For A Flaming Faggot Before I Would Vote For Huckabee' except the title would have been too lengthy."

Cute huh? I count no less than 8 articles on his site citing homosexuality in one fashion or another. His justification for his attitudes? Well, he was kind enough to leave them on another thread of mine, one about a different topic of course, atheism in this case. This is where it gets good, because nothing brings out the stupid (and the MSU) like homophobes trying to rationalize their views:

"Homosexuality is not as prevalent in other species as it is in the human species. There are occasional examples of homosexuality even amongst birds for example. However these examples are fairly rare. Many of the instances I have read about only describe a platonic relationship (best friends?) without any sexual activity."

This ladies and germs, is what we in the reality-based community call MSU, Making Shit Up, a favorite pastime of too-many conservatives these days. Homosexuality is prevalent throughout the animal kingdom, as any biologist, or farmer could tell you (google "freemartin"). There is even a species of bedbug that procreates via homosexual stabbing rape. Examples are plentiful, and no one has any excuse for missing them when the facts are easily ascertained.

But homophobes aren't interested in facts, they are interested in maintaining their view, and they'll keep moving the goalposts to do so. They used to claim that there was no homosexuality among animals at all, until the weight of evidence against that position made it untenable. So they moved the goalposts to "it's not as prevalent", as if any of that matters.

And indeed, why does it? There are many traits of human beings that are not as prevalent in other species, such as tool use, culture, bipedalism, and drinking beer. Why is less-prevalence relevant to homosexuality and nothing else? They can't ever answer this question without mentioning more traits that bring even more inconsistencies into the picture, like danger:

"Homosexuality is a threat to society through the homosexual community suffering from Sexually Transmitted Diseases (and I am not just talking about Aids) at higher rates then heterosexuals do."

Just when I thought the Chicken Little award was a shoe-in for those that claim terrorism represents the greatest threat our nation has ever faced, we get this wingding of a claim that homosexuality is a threat to society.

How? Homosexuality has been around as long as humanity has, and here we are. STDs are not a threat to wipe out humanity, and given that 99% of their spread can be controlled by individual decisions (ie wearing a condom, being celibate, or being monogamous), that is not likely to change. It is also worth noting that homosexuality has little to do with the plights of the areas of the world hardest hit by STDs (ie AIDS in Africa). So once again we find the homophobic argument completely at odds with the facts. But then, given the disdain and ignorance with which homophobes address scientific issues, can we really be surprised by comments like that, or this:

"Homosexuality goes against evolution because those who practice it faithfully can not reproduce and this is the purpose of sexuality in our species."

It is sad that in what was once the greatest nation on earth, technologically and scientifically advanced beyond all others, we could have such deep-rooted scientific ignorance. Evolution, as beginner biology students learn, is purposeless. It has no goal, no agenda, no conscious intent. Species simply mutate and are selected and change over time. No trait of a species can be "against evolution", because there is nothing to be against.

Further, even if we assign a meaning to "against evolution" that makes sense, say "threatening he perpetuation of the species", the logic of this argument still does not follow. Consider worker bees and ants. They are born sterile females. Yet they perform a crucial function towards the perpetuation of their species. There is some speculation that homosexuality among humans might have played a beneficial function by giving society a few workers who did not produce children.

Let's get down to brass tacks on that topic. Many, if not most, of the serious problems human beings face right now are caused by the huge population of humans we have. It is beyond question that humanity would be very well served right now by having a lot of people that don't procreate, which means that the good Christian who has 14 children is FAR more of a threat to humanity than is a homosexual.

Finally, note the implicit claim above that having sex for no purpose other than the pleasure of it goes against nature. That's the bottom line with these people. As one famous person put it "A promiscuous person is someone who is having more sex than you are". Homosexuals have a lot of sex, as do we single liberated people, and in the end, that's what really gets the goat of homophobes. Of course, I don't suspect they restrict their sex lives to having children. They no doubt have healthy sex lives with whoever they choose to have sex with, whether childbearing is part of the equation or not. That is as it should be. Now if they can only stop being such hypocrites and let everyone else do the same, despite the fact that some of us see no need to restrain our sex lives as they do, we can put all this nonsense behind us and get on with solving real human problems. I know, I'm not betting on it either.

So my political strategy, and I encourage everyone else to implement it, is to raise the issue of repressed homosexuals ranting about homosexuality. Make the legends of Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, and all the other homohypocrites live forever, and throw them into the faces of everyone who insults our intelligence with bullshit arguments like the above. As to whether or not individual objectors to homosexuality are themselves repressed homosexuals, it is worth considering and suggesting, at least until they give us arguments with even the slightest respect for science and logic. Their individual peccadillo's are not our problem.