The fundamentalists accuse us of wanting special rights, but have a double standard about those rights. It is their code-word to deny us legitimacy. They want rights for themselves to dictate public morality and the right to discriminate against us. Even as a gay man, I don't want special rights, I want equal rights. I want discriminatory laws removed from the books. However, private discrimination cannot be eliminated by laws, perhaps it shouldn't be. All of us are prejudiced in some way. We have to discriminate in order to make choices. They don't have to associate with us. I don't want to associate with them. I believe them to be just as immoral and evil as they think we are.
There is a fundamental difference between our viewpoint of rights and theirs. We are not demanding that others follow our ways. We have no all-encompasing social agenda. However, they want to control minds, limit access to knowledge. This is a gulf so wide a universe could be lost in it.
I find their insistence on censorship and moral control just as obscene as any pornography they define as obscene. By preventing that knowledge of alternate lifestyles be discussed openly and taught in schools they preserve and perpetuate bigotry and misunderstanding. They don't want their children exposed so they can teach them lies about us, nor allow them to have the freedom to decide for themselves, a vast moral problem in itself (should parents have this control?). Thus they are directly responsible for perpetuating gay-bashing.
Their mentality is fascist, and if they gain the power and legislation they want, they will not stop with gay rights or the abortion issues. They need scapegoats. Subconsciously, they know this and that creates the avoidance reaction which must be directed to an object of despite. Who will be next? Hitler thought his way was moral and good. That way leads to holocaust and the suffering of millions and always fails at a great price to humanity. Someday, when the last rationale for prejudice is taken away, they will be forced to face the real cause of the problem, which is within themselves.
Some, but not all, fundamentalists say that our sexuality is perverted, wrong, immoral. How dare they! We should say that it is equal to theirs, moral or immoral as the intent of the persons participating in it. Amid their charges of wanting their lives free of our influence is bigotry, purely and simply.
They accuse our lifestyle of spreading AIDS, but that isn't true anymore. We represent the most responsible community in the fight against the disease. Most AIDS cases are now spread by intravenous drug users, a class so despicable to them as to be left unrecognized. Their policies on sexuality, forbidding information to be taught in schools and distributed at large are largely responsible for spreading venereal diseases. It seems to me that whatever they so despise and fear they wish to hide away rather than face it and do something constructive about it.
Many right-wingers would love to destroy our movement and us, but nature continues to produce us, as it has done throughout the existence of the human race. It would seem that we are created by God. Laws cannot stop nature or God. To accept us means a fundamental change to a sacred tradition.
They suffer from an acute disease called homophobia. A phobia is an irrational, deeply-seated fear of something. They fear homosexuality. It should be called fear of self, as the word could be interpreted; that would be nearer the truth. It is really an obsession. That is not their only fear. These restricted people fear pleasure in themselves and in others. They act out their fears. In their campaign against real and imagined evils they do evil because they are only focused on evil. These are sick people.
We live in an abusive, increasingly violent dysfunctional society that has long condoned expressions of anger against minorities. Thus we have anti-semitism, the KKK, gay bashing, the bully beating up the weak kid in the schoolyard. Why and how does this anger originate? Just as in abusive family situations, it is passed from relatives, mostly parents, to their children, and the children must pass it on. Our society creates abusive people. It is in need of mass therapy. The horror of the sickness of fundamentalists and fascists is that they don't know that they're sick. They believe that sickness is health because it is the norm, and that health is sickness. Shades of Orwell's 1984!
By making an issue of family values fundamentalists would like to hide the moral indiscretions and abuses that have recently been brought to light in dysfunctional families beneath the sanctity of the family inviolate, ruled by the male father figure. Their authoritarian values would institutionalize abuse.
There must come a time when bigotry is defined as a social dysfunction, or mental disturbance, definitely pathological. Then it could be treated.
Fundamentalists say that they are guided by their religious interpretations and want to do the moral and good. Fortunately or not, religion has no proof of its rightness. But religion is political and social control, and they are increasingly using religion for blatently political ends. Like sexuality, religion should be a private, personal affair. Only sometimes is it a guide to live a spiritual life. To lead a spiritual life often leads one away from the religious precepts. Those who follow that personal and individual way are often outcast. Some may become saints, often difficult creatures to the devout. I see no saints among them. Religion has done much harmful to the race, as well as good, but I wonder whether it's good and evil perhaps cancel out. However, if religion is supposed to promote the good, and Christianity can be included in that definition, we can only conclude that there are many who call themselves Christian, but in fact are not. Fundamentalism, in any religion, be it Christian, Moslem, Jewish or even Buddhist, is fascist in nature. It is literal-minded, absolutist and authoritarian, denying subtleties, uncertanties and grey areas of thought. Fundamentalism ought to be a return to the spiritual roots of a religion, but all too often it is a return to the inflexible doctrine fostering obedience, one way of life and us vs. them attitudes. Fundamentalism, as we have known it, leads away from the spiritual. Thus these people cannot be spiritually motivated.
This country was not founded as a christian nation, but one for believers of all religions, or none. The Declaration of Independence states that "All men are created equal." It does not designate by race, sex, religion, national origin or whether one is even a citizen. And the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. We should accuse these right-wingers of being un-american.
Like ours, theirs is also a minority position, and they know they must win the minds of the middle class. We have friends there, too. However, the vast majority of citizens don't want homosexuality or any other form of blatent sexuality thrown in their faces, but they don't want to persecute it, either. It should be a private issue. Laws should protect the right to consensual sexuality for everyone.
There are definite moral models to follow. Violations of another person, including that person's posessions, freedom of choice, movement, etc., should be prevented. Thus murder, assaults, robbery, burglary are clearly immoral and should be crimes. Extrapolating from those issues leads to the body of laws protecting the citizens and defining their duties and obligations to society and the government's obligations to the citizens. Laws need go no further. Limiting the rights of any segment of the population also restricts the freedom of everyone.
If they think they can take away our rights, then we have the right to take away theirs'. If they want to come into our bedrooms and stop our sexual expression we have the right to shoot them, metaphorically or literally.
We have allowed the right wing to place us on the defensive, as if they had all the right answers and are the only arbiters of morality. They have many weaknesses that can be attacked. Many of their leaders, the Jim Bakkers, Falwells and their ilk are charlatans, bilking their followers for money and power. Or preaching lies, hatred and bigotry by the likes of Janes Dobson, Jimmy Swaggart and Pat Robertson.
Certain fundamentalists and other right-wingers don't deserve better treatment than they have accorded us. It's time to take off the velvet gloves, brothers and sisters. We can unleash more accurately aimed vituperation at them than they have at us. It's time to turn their own lies back on them. We need to pound away at them, asking them why they hate and fear us. Why does homosexuality disgust them? Is it because we don't reproduce? They have little rationale when every child born into this overpopulated world lowers the quality of life for everyone. They call themselves pro-life, but their policies tend to increase suffering. I wonder if they really care at all about human life on this world.
There are issues on which we might campaign to limit their rights. We should tie them up in class-action litigation for slander. Charge that they are using their religious organizations to promote political causes, a violation of tax laws. What other skeletons might they have in their closets? Our agenda is clear. What is theirs? Keep on asking why until the raw hatred breaks through their justifications and exposes them for what they are. They should be made to suffer the abuses that they have heaped on us.