Positive Liberty

John Derbyshire has just explained in detail why he is a “mild, tolerant homophobe.” Here are my replies to his recent comments in the National Review Online:

A “mild, tolerant homophobe” is the homo-activist’s worst nightmare. Even to admit the possible existence of such a creature would explode his entire ideology. Anyone who does not give whole-hearted, roaring approval to the entire homo-agenda must, must, be tarred as a stump-toothed knuckle-dragging primitive, probably afflicted with grave psychiatric problems and hopelessly out of touch with the zeitgeist.

Derbyshire is right to note that there are different levels of homo-antipathy, but if he spent even a few minutes with homosexuals, he would soon realize that we are quite well aware of this fact, too.

Of course we like the Fred Phelpses a lot better–They do wonders to clarify the issue. But merely failing to reach Phelps’ level doesn’t mean that one’s own position is correct. Nor does it mean that a mild, tolerant homophobia is the right answer. It might well be that you too are wrong, just not quite so sure of yourself. Ooh… Now there’s a winning position. We’re wrong, but we’re less convinced about it…

To the best of my observation, it is congenital. The people afflicted by it report that they have always felt that way. You can’t say it’s unnatural, either — there is plenty of evidence for it in the animal kingdom. And, let’s face it, in 99.99 percent of cases, it’s perfectly harmless.

I am speaking about homophobia, of course.

How many people are cured of homophobia in their lifetimes? Zero??? Hmm… Maybe you do have a point. After all, if virtually no one can ever be cured of a condition, it’s probably innate, and the fact that no one ever, ever changes their minds about homosexuality must mean that you’re right. Humanity will always be split, because no one ever changes their minds or comes to accept a homosexual family member.

Perhaps we should try to find out just what exactly homophobia is. Why aren’t homosexualists agitating for intensive scientific research on homophobia? They’re afraid of what we might find, perhaps.

A check on amazon.com revealed nearly five thousand books about homophobia, clear evidence that no one ever studies the subject. Sociologists, psychologists, sexologists, and political scientists have left homophobia entirely alone for the last thirty-three years, ever since the term was coined by psychologist George Weinberg.

Isn’t it a cruel, bigoted, outrageous thing, to be a homophobe?

To believe that it is, you have to think very badly of the human race at large.

Isn’t it a cruel, bigoted, outrageous thing, to be religiously intolerant? To believe that it is, you have to think very badly of the human race at large. Just remember all the very smart, very good, very holy people–who approved of burning at the stake for heresy. Are you telling me that all of those people were wrong? They can’t all have been wrong–that would mean that the human race was occasionally evil, even when it claimed to be good. Nope, it’s too horrible to contemplate.

But seriously, to believe that the human race is capable of overcoming such a massive evil means, on the contrary, that we’ve got a profound capacity in both directions. We’ve behaved abominably in the past. We’ve also done a great deal to end sexism, religious bigotry, and racism–And in their heyday each of these were surely more grievous evils than homophobia. This is just one more struggle, slightly different, and if anything much smaller on the whole.

I object to the word “gay” as a synonym for “male homosexual” in part because in my experience homosexuals are not gay at all. If anything they are, in the generality, rather morose. Could anything be less gay than a “gay bar”?

Translation: All of my knowledge about the gay community comes from a couple of ACT-UP protests that I watched on video in the mid-80s. Oh yeah, and I read some academic lesbians complaining about patriarchy.

Suddenly it hit me: This man has never been to a drag show. You have a sad, narrow little life, my dear…

This is a shame, as one of the more traditional approaches to homosexuality was that it is funny. I suppose a homo-activist would say that this approach was demeaning to homosexuals, in the same way that the slow-thinking Amos’n'Andy caricatures were demeaning to black people. Well, there is humor and there is humor. Jokes can be used to insult and offend people; but they can also be great humanizers. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” someone once said. He meant human nature, of which laughter is a key component, though you would never know it from mixing with ideologues.

The gay community is a morose, humorless bunch, full of grumpy people like Quentin Crisp, Noel Coward, Armistead Maupin, Harvey Fierstein, Dan Savage, and the dour author of… Rusty is a Homosexual, whose total seriousness puts him in a league all by himself.

But there really is a time to be serious, and to put the jokes aside. See, straights have a monopoly on humor, and it’s their positive duty to use it on gay people. Gay people, on the other hand, aren’t funny, because I can’t be troubled to recall any who are. (“Hey, John… The audience isn’t laughing yet…” “Hold on, I’m just getting to the part about Amos’n'Andy…”)

But Derbyshire still isn’t laughing, because AIDS is apparently just another reason to oppose homosexuality:

Male homosexuals apparently all believe that (a) AIDS has been a ghastly tragedy for them, deserving of widespread sympathy from the rest of us, not to mention lavish government-research funding paid from our taxes; (b) that the presence of this horrible disease in our society is no responsibility of theirs whatsoever; and (c) that AIDS is pretty harmless anyway, now easily controlled by drugs.

For the record, my answers would be “yes, sort of…” “no,” and “not really.” Perhaps others would say differently, but let’s not distract from one of the great argument strategies of the blogosphere: Pick a large, diverse group of people. Assume that they must all have exactly the same views. Point out that they do not, and you immediately prove that the group contains nothing but hypocritical morons. (“Come on, people… Laugh at this stuff… Homosexuals are supposed to be funny, remember?”)

In any case, I see no good news for homosexuals in opinion polls.

He apparently didn’t see these, or these, which show a slow-growing but unmistakable trend toward acceptance of homosexuals in American public opinion. He probably also didn’t see this most recent poll, which puts support for same-sex marriage at 42%. It’s the most favorable result since Gallup started asking the question in 1996–It’s also a rise of eight percent in the last two months.

But why wait for public opinion to change the world? We’ve always got science, which moves so much faster:

Now, the trend in current research on homosexuality… suggests that the homosexual orientation is indeed mostly congenital — the result of events in the mother’s womb, or in early infancy, with perhaps some slight genetic predisposition….

Supposing this is true, let us conduct a wee thought experiment — admittedly a fanciful one. A young woman in the late stages of pregnancy, or carrying a small infant, shows up at her doctor’s office. “Doctor,” she asks, “is there some kind of test you can do to tell me if my child is likely to become a homosexual adult?” The doctor says yes, there is. “And,” the woman continues, “suppose the test is positive — would that be something we can fix? I mean, is there some sort of medical, or genetic, or biochemical intervention we can do at this stage, to prevent that happening?” The doctor says yes, there is. “How much does the test cost? And supposing it’s positive, how much does the fix cost?” The doctor says $50, and $500. The woman takes out her checkbook.

Of course this is not happening anywhere in the U.S.A. right now. If my understanding of the state of current research is correct, however, it might very well be happening on a daily basis ten years from now.

I think I get it now: Being gay is kind of like having cystic fibrosis. It’s not your fault, there’s nothing evil about it, and we can only hope that science will one day find a cure.

In the meantime, we should do with gay people just like we now do with those who have cystic fibrosis: We should make fun of them at every chance we get. We should keep them from expressing themselves in public. We should forbid them from pursuing happiness–and then complain that they aren’t happy enough.

We healthy people should be cheerfully disdainful of the sick whenever they whine about their “rights.”

Derbyshire’s peroration is a fantasy about his imaginary cure finally wiping out homosexuality once and for all:

It would also be a very miserable one for homosexuals, as they became an aging, fading cohort, with practically no younger people of their inclination to socialize with. The situation would also be self-reinforcing: As more and more parents took the test and got the fix, the loneliness facing homosexuals would become so dire that no person of conscience could think of raising a person who might become homosexual. The fix might even be applicable later in life, with adult homosexuals “converting” en masse.

In which case, there would be someone, somewhere, who was the last homosexual. What a situation! Think what a playwright or a novelist could do with it!

What a situation! Why, it’s never, ever happened in the modern world, that some minority gets targeted for elimination. Who could have imagined? Say, we ought to try that sometime…

Imagine a single, inexpensive pill that could make me a heterosexual. Thanks, but I’d rather drink drano. I can’t imagine anything more horrible than a pill that would cause me to stop loving my husband. There are other reasons to want to be gay, too–but then, Derbyshire is congenitally incapable of appreciating these, so I guess they’re not worth talking about. Any questioning of homophobia is simply off the table.

Oh, but the pill, you see, the pill would change what you want. It could make you want what we want. Come, be a mild, tolerant homophobe like us…

And they say that we like to recruit.