Thoughts on religous and general homophobia

Being gay is not a choice:

No one chooses to be homosexual, just like every straight person doesn’t choose to be straight. No straight person, no staunchly straight person anyway, ever once looked at someone of the same gender and thought, “Man I want to tap that!” Gay people knew they were gay the same way that straight people knew they were straight: They were inherently attracted to people of the same gender and people of the opposite gender, respectively.

It’s true that some people do choose to partner with others of the same gender, as a life choice, due to having bad experiences with those of the opposite gender. But that still doesn’t make those people gay, at their core. It makes them straight people who choose to partner with those of the same gender because they no longer trust the opposite gender (or no longer want to partner with them for any other reason). Likewise, thousands, if not millions of gay people married people of the opposite gender in an age when being homosexual was grounds for fearing for your life if anyone found out. But those gay people didn’t become straight just because they chose to hide their true sexuality from the world. They were just gay people concealing their true selves from a world forcing them to do so. For so many of them, their only other choice was to live seemingly loveless lives, keeping secret any love relationship they were having.

So what that they can't have babies with one another?

Some say gay people shouldn’t have the right to marry, in part because two people of the same gender cannot procreate with one another. But just because they cannot procreate with one another doesn’t mean they are incapable of reproducing. Gay men’s sperm isn’t infertile simply because they are gay; they can still have children with a woman, they just may or may not raise that child with that woman. Two lesbian women are fully capable of having children also. They just use donor sperm. Two gay people are just as capable of raising children as any two straight people. You can’t argue that last point with any logic; simply because there are two straight people raising a child together, a mommy and a daddy, doesn’t mean those two people are good parents. If that were the case there would be no need for the foster care system.

Legalizing gay marriage doesn't affect your straight one:

The law states there is a separation of church and state, so logically there should be no law based on Christian (or some other religious) morals. Yet there still is a law stating that gay people cannot marry. This law seems to have no logical merit; two homosexual people getting married is not dangerous, nor does it cause anyone physical, emotional or mental harm. So the only explanation is that this law is souly based on Christian morals. What other explanation is there? Two gay people getting married doesn’t infringe on or threaten any straight couple’s marriage…I don’t care what anyone says. Two homosexual people getting married has absolutely no effect on the marriage of two straight people who are already married, or on those planning to marry. If you are a homophobic person reading this and thinking to yourself, “But legalizing homosexual marriage would completely corrupt straight marriage,” please think really hard about where that belief came from (because it is a belief, not a fact). Legalizing gay marriage doesn’t change how your straight marriage functions, or change the taxes you have to pay, or the rights you have as a married person. If gay marriage were legalized tomorrow, you wouldn’t treat your spouse any differently or raise your children in another way. If your homophobia is based on a religious foundation, realize that legalizing gay marriage will in no way change how you practice your religion, or how your church operates. You may not want to accept this, but there are actually religious gay people in the world, so there may be a few homosexuals in your church. It makes no sense to me, since so many mainstream religions tell them to not love themselves, to not love who they love…but they are out there. But whether gay people attend your church or not, legalizing gay marriage will most certainly not infringe on your life in any way, shape or form. If you feel strongly that legalizing gay marriage will somehow break apart your religion as you know it, you either need to get a new religion or become more secure in your current religion.

Something else to think about…by creating laws based on one religion’s morals, we force everyone in this country to adhere to at least part of that religion…that they may not believe in. Forcing people to adhere to laws based on a religion they do not subscribe to takes away their freedom of religion, and that is simply un-American.

Straight marriage doesn't equal Godly marriage:

So you think legalizing gay marriage will break up the sanctity of “holy marriage”? How many straight couples do you know who have gotten divorced? If you live in America, that answer should be, sadly “Most of the couples I know,” since the divorce rate is 50 percent nowadays. Clearly marriage among straight people isn’t all that holy. Think of all the people you have heard about who ran off to Vegas to get married on a whim, and then realized what a mistake it was and had the marriage annulled. And think of all the straight people who have gotten married for all the wrong, selfish reasons (Kim Kardashian anyone?). Straight people have always had the right to marry, so they take it for granted and do not treat marriage as it was meant to be treated. Now think of all the homosexual couples who have been together for ages, who are completely committed to their life partners, who would, given the chance, actually treat marriage in the holy manner it’s supposed to be treated? Think of all the thousands of gay couples who showed up in Multnomah County to get married a few years ago because they were so excited that they finally got to devote themselves lawfully to the person who they loved the most who loved them the most…and then had their lawful marriages ripped away from them when the county decided their marriages no longer lawful. What if someone did that to you marriage, just up and decided on a whim it was no longer valid? I can’t imagine you would just sit there and take it. So if you think marriage is holy and you are scared that legalizing gay marriage will somehow desecrate your straight marriage, how about you go find all those straight couples on the verge of divorce, or straight people who have treated marriage like it means nothing, and get on them for taking marriage for granted, for abusing and misusing it. Please do that before you ever again complain about your fear of gay marriage being legalized one day. Thanks.

Legalize it already:

Really, the whole business of gay marriage not being legal yet, in this day and age, is just ridiculous. Interracial marriage was outlawed for a long time simply because black people had been socially outcast for so long, been made out to be lesser than white people. Not legalizing gay marriage at this stage is just as ridiculous as if interracial marriage were still illegal. The only reason gay people are still not allowed to marry is because the right-wing powers that be don’t understand homosexuals and their lifestyle (which isn’t all that different from straight people’s lifestyles).

Hate Pride Parades? Vote gay rights!:

If you are one of those people who hates gay pride parades and how strongly gay people feel the need to flaunt their homosexuality publically, vote for every gay rights issue you possibly can. “But I’m anti-gay, so why would I vote pro gay rights?” Because the more rights gay people have, the more equal they will be and the less they will need to remind everyone else of the rights they lack. No one is ever going to have a pro-dog owner rally, because everyone in America is allowed to own a dog and no one minds anyone else owning a dog. By the same token, if every gay person had the exact same rights as all straight people in America, gay people would have nothing to rally about. Subordinated groups have rallies and pride parades because they understandably feel the urge to fight for their rights by making the masses aware of those rights they lack, to remind the public that they are not going to stop fighting until they have the same rights as everyone else. If gay people had all the rights straight people did, they would be much more likely to peacefully exist among the masses because they wouldn’t have anything to rally for. So by voting “No” on every gay rights issue, you are actually doing yourself a great public disservice. You want all “the gays” to stop bitching? Give them what they want. By doing so you are doing no harm to your freedoms, and you are getting the gay community closer and closer to having no reason to shout out loud about how many rights they still have to fight for.

Gay couples don't automatically produce gay children:

Just to set the record straight (no pun intended), all gay couples do not produce gay children. Straight people produce gay children, and gay people produce straight children. If straight people didn’t have gay children, where the hell did all those gay people come from in the first place? If gay people only produced gay children, there would be many more gay people in the world than there are. Gay people, married or not, are going to have children whether you like it or not. I can’t make you change your mind, but please, I beg you, stop using “But gay people will have gay children,” as a reason to continue to try to stop gay people from having the rights they deserve.

And you think being gay is wrong:

All the religious people I’ve ever met tell me that the Bible says “Man shall not lay with man,” and so God will send all the gay people to Hell once they die…even if any of those gay people believe in God and have led better lives than the straight people presumably going to Heaven simply for believing in God. I would like to offer this: What if God put gay and LBGT people on Earth to test everyone else’s tolerance and acceptance levels? In my heaven, any bigoted, close-minded, anti-gay people, whether Christian or otherwise, would be the ones to go automatically to Hell for hating on the LBGT people on this planet. I’m sure God doesn’t appreciate right-wing Christian homophobes hating his LBGT creatures that he so lovingly created. In my humble opinion, anyone who thinks they have it SO figured out that they feel compelled to tell anyone else that who they love and how they live is wrong, needs to be taken off their pedestal and humbled a bit by being straight to Hell.