I don’t often think about the sexual lives of gay people. I just don’t. Whatever any two consenting adults do to pleasure themselves in private is none of my business.
Many political and religious conservatives differ from me in this regard. Many conservatives are obsessed with thoughts that adult gay people are having consensual gay sex. Those conservatives pace their hallways at home and at the office fretting that gays are sexually satisfying each other in private. For proof, Google “God homosexual” and you’ll find more than one-half million web sites, almost all of them written by conservatives who argue that homosexuality is “unnatural” and that the Bible prohibits it.
At this site, we’ve sometimes discussed this conservative obsession with gay sex. What does Jesus say about homosexuality? Nothing. With regard to the Old Testament, we’ve warned of the need to beware of the ubiquitous cherry picking of Bible literalists. See here and here and see Mark Tiedemann’s commentary on the conservative spin regarding homosexuality.
Here is some additional evidence to show how amazingly obsessed conservatives are regarding homosexuality. This is truly amazing. Check out Conservapedia, a Wiki geared to conservatives [thanks to The Carpet Bagger Report for this tip] As indicated on the “Statistics” page of Conservapedia, the site contains almost 50,000 content pages covering a wide array of topics (all of them written from a notably conservative perspective). Now take a look at the following list of the top-rated pages in Conservapedia. Most of them, however, concern the “problem” of homosexuality.
1. Homosexuality [2,279,810]
2. Main Page [2,144,701]
3. Teen Homosexuality [367,030]
4. Homosexual Agenda [325,305]
5. Homosexuality and Anal Cancer [296,770]
6. Arguments Against Homosexuality [285,870]
7. Ex-homosexuals [272,478]
8. Wikipedia [270,085]
9. Homosexuality and Choice [268,310]
10. Examples of Bias in Wikipedia [254,327]
I assume that I’ve made my case that conservatives are obsessed with homosexuality (even though many conservatives engage in same-sex sex, whether or not they consider themselves to be “gay.”). I think it’s obvious that these conservative obsessions are making lives miserable for many good-hearted law-abiding tax-paying homosexuals. Many of those who detest homosexuality seem driven to make gays uncomfortable in order to change them or to “cure” them (Google “cure homosexual” and you’ll get another half-million web pages).
We’d all be better off if we got conservatives thinking about things other than gays. We all have better things to do. Getting conservatives to kick this addiction to fretting about gays is not going to be easy, however. “Just say no” campaigns just don’t work. And further, these conservatives are sick and need to be healed (to borrow some of their metaphors!).
My plan? Let’s flood the minds of Conservatives with other things. Let’s distract them. Let’s cause conservatives to think about the aberrant and unnatural behavior of heterosexuals.
Step 1: Let’s define “natural sexual behavior.” How about this: “natural sexual behavior” is having sex with the hope and for purpose of having babies. Fair enough? How often do heterosexuals engage in natural sex? Almost never.
Step 2: Ergo, sexual behavior that is not “natural” is “unnatural,” right?
Step 3: Let’s create a law that requires all people who have ever disparaged gays to wear t-shirts clearly displaying their own unnatural ways of having sex.
Step 4: But how would we ever determine who has disparaged gays? We’ll start with all Conservatives, since they tend disparage gays or to harbor or give comfort to others who disparage gays. Conservatives tend to lie about their bigotry and their sexual practices, though, so we might need to do some waterboarding to get them to fess up (Because many conservatives think waterboarding is OK).
Step 5: My proposed new law would require every American who has displayed bigotry toward gays to clearly display their own “unnatural sexual preferences,” all of their idiosycracies and dysfunctions on a t-shirt every day for a month. [Bear with me now—this is a thought experiment, not a real proposal!] Wearing these shirts every day for a month should be long enough for lots of people to take note of the wearers’ unnatural sexual propensities.
How detailed will these t-shirts be? Really detailed. Every deviation from “natural” sex will be emphasized. Here are some examples:
I am impotent.
I am incapable of becoming emotionally attached to others, so I have lots of meaningless sex.
I have sex through serial marriages (like numerous conservative politicians).
I like to have oral sex.
I am afraid to have oral sex.
I have premature ejaculations.
I am frigid.
The only kind of sex I have is in the missionary position, half-dressed, in the dark.
I am a married person who only tolerates sex once a month.
I need to use sex toys to have satisfactory sex.
I go to church hoping to meet people with whom I can have sex.
I have lied to my friends that I have sex a lot, when I almost never have sex.
I fantasize about having sex with people I’ve never met.
I treat sex like a sport—I don’t really care what the other person thinks.
I like to masturbate (this will be preprinted on every t-shirt).
I have sex by cheating on my partner to whom I profess to be faithful.
I refuse to have sex with the lights on.
I pay other people to have sex with me.
I have sex with almost anyone who is willing and I don’t respect myself.
I refuse to help my wife achieve orgasm.
I experience sublimated sexual satisfaction by working to enact laws to interfere with the sex lives of other consenting adults.
I work really hard to buy expensive things in the hope that I can have more sex with people who admire my things.
I need to have porno videos playing in order to have sex.
I don’t ever have sex with people who treat me with respect.
I only have sex with people who buy me expensive gifts.
I’ve never had satisfying sex.
To have sex, I make my wife pretend she’s my grade school teacher.
I need to use drugs to have sex
I immediately roll over and go to sleep right after sex even though my spouse resents me for it.
If all people who are bigoted toward gays are forced to display their own unnatural sexual behaviors prominently on t-shirts, then they’ll see that most of the sexual acts in which most people engage most of the time are unnatural. And we’ll also see undeniable proof that numerous “unnatural sexual preferences” are not homosexual acts.
Perhaps then we will be able to better see that gays and their aggressors have a lot in common. In fact, all of us are a long way from “natural.” It’s time to get that basic lesson straight.
Then, after we all take careful note of the hundreds of millions of Americans among us who are “unnatural,” maybe we can start to focus on treating each other based on factors other than our private consensual sexual behaviors.
As long as we are making up stuff; new laws, new definitions, I'll share one that has helped me a lot, although it's not really new. Whenever I see the word "god" I think of the word – rulemaker – a g – o – d is one who makes rules {laws} for others.
Your thought experiment is about playing god. You don't feel people should play god, so "let's show them how it feels" to be made into sinners {sin is the transgression of the law, 1John 3:4}. Your attempt to make conservatives "see the light" will just offend them.
History is a battle of the rulemakers, who will decide, who will make the rules, especially, for others. Most conservatives think it's just about religion as well, but it's really about who makes the rules, ie: government.
Many Americans want things in government to change. They feel powerless and disenfranchised. Strange ideas, coming from self-governing people.
Larry, you've missed the point. Erich is not suggesting we actually carry out his *thought* experiment, but rather that conservatives imagine how they would feel if such a rule were in place. Hopefully that would make them see the hypocrisy of their views toward homosexuality, at least regarding it supposed particular unnaturalness.
Of course, it won't work, because they will quote cherry-picked scripture as though it were the source of all morality for everyone, including those who believe the bible to be a fairy tale. And so it goes around and around and around.
Funny post, Erich! Thanks.
I posted about Conservapedia last March listing instances where topics were locked because experts who actually know subjects kept trying to post corrections to unsupported claims.
: Conservapedia: Providing aid to the Obscurationists
While I generally agree with the point of this post, I want to warn people that the use of the Conservapedia page view statistics as evidence in support of any claim is problematic, as there seems to have been an effort on the part of some of Conservapedia's detractors to distort those statistics using bots to repeatedly access pages related to homosexuality. See, for example, this post and especially the comments that include both analysis of the statistics as well as an admission from one person who participated in the bot effort.
Larry,
Kudos, man, couldn't agree more. The apparent contradiction of Americans who want government to step in and yet see themselves as "self-governing" is born of poor thought and selfishness—what they want is for government to make it possible for Them (whichever group you mean at the time) to live the way they want and not have to put up with differences among others which may lead to a tangle of mutual responsibilities. They want to be "free" to choose their own lives, but they want government to limit those choices to a pre-approved list.
Why do people have sex? Cindy Meston and David Buss have compiled a long list of reasons (I commented on this list briefly here). Here's the introduction to their extensive survey:
Why people have sex is an extremely important, but surprisingly little studied topic. One reason for its relative neglect is that scientists might simply assume that the answers are obvious: to experience sexual pleasure, to relieve sexual tension, or to reproduce. Previous research
already tells us that the answers cannot be as few or psychologically simple.
For the full article by Meston and Buss, see here.
The reasons are interesting. Here are the top 15 reasons given for having sex:
1. I was attracted to the person
2. I wanted to experience the physical pleasure
3. It feels good
4. I wanted to show my affection to the person
5. I wanted to express my love for the person
6. I was sexually aroused and wanted the release
7. I was ‘‘horny’’
8. It’s fun
9. I realized I was in love
10. I was ‘‘in the heat of the moment’’
11. I wanted to please my partner
12. I desired emotional closeness (i.e., intimacy)
13. I wanted the pure pleasure
14. I wanted to achieve an orgasm
15. It’s exciting, adventurous
Here are the most infrequent reasons for having sex, from the same survey:
1. I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted
disease (e.g., herpes, AIDS)
2. Someone offered me money to do it
3. I wanted to get a raise
4. It was an initiation rite to a club or organization
5. I wanted to get a job
6. I wanted to get a promotion
7. The person offered to give me drugs for doing it
8. I wanted to punish myself
9. I wanted to hurt/humiliate the person
10. I wanted to feel closer to God
11. I wanted to breakup my relationship
12. I wanted to breakup another’s relationship
13. I wanted to be used or degraded
14. I wanted to gain access to that person’s friend
15. I wanted to get a favor from someone
16. I wanted to enhance my reputation
17. It would get me gifts
18. I wanted to make money
19. I wanted to hurt an enemy
20. Because of a bet
This article couldn't be complete without a list of many health-related reasons for having lots of sex. For that very useful list, go here.
A few years ago, I read a novel titled "The Tomorrow File" by Lawrence Sanders. This bit of speculative fiction centers on a group of spin doctors that work for corporations and elected officials. Throughout the book homosexuals are referred to as "Republicans" and heterosexuals are callded "Democrats".
A large part of the reason that people identify with the Republican is that they believe the laws should be made by an elite (who they assume will include themselves) to apply to the masses, but not necessarily to the elites.
The Democrats are those that want to prevent a stratification of our society, by limiting the political power and influence of the elitists.
What is needed, is a disruption in the two party system into three or posiblly four political parties that have an equal chance at gaining legislative seats.
The problem is that most people do not like being held accountable for all their actions, and would rather let someone else decide, then complain about the outcome than take a stand on what they believe is right. Stripped of the burden of responsibilty, they will vehemently defend their apathy by obsessing over ways to force the same values on their neighbors.
Here's Mike Huckabee suggesting that homosexuality is as bad as beastiality. http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2008/01/huckabee_eq…