Congress (Kind Of) Agrees: Homosexuality Is a Birth Defect
Before President Barack Obama sparked a firestorm by proposing to eliminate the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays in the military, Democrats in Congress took a much bigger step on behalf of the nation’s homosexuals.
The U.S. House of Representatives – with anticipated Senate approval – voted last week to extend hate crime legislation, including homosexuals as a protected group.
Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., hate crime laws were enacted to ensure Americans’ safety, regardless of race, color, or national origin – characteristics that cannot be chosen or changed.
To that end, Congress has, with the proposed expansion, more or less conflated homosexuality with these inborn traits – a tacit agreement that homosexuality is congenital.
Which, incidentally, I declared long ago.
That is, indeed, the silver lining of the hate crime legislation expansion.
Besides being tautological (aren’t all crimes “hate crimes?”), these laws are arbitrary – perhaps unconstitutionally so – since their enforcement relies on unfettered governmental discretion. As such, hate crime laws constitute one hell of a slippery slope toward suppression of expression. And bonus: To prosecute a hate crime is to infer not state of mind – i.e. the customary legal standard - but rather state of heart … which is as irrelevant as it is immeasurable.
Anyway, about that silver lining: Tacit congressional recognition that homosexuality is, for gay people, an inevitability – something with which one is born, like skin color – does go a long way toward closing America’s biggest cultural chasm.
To accept – even begrudgingly – that homosexuality can’t be helped is to foster unconditional humanity. Notwithstanding a doubtless deviation from the norm, homosexuality shouldn’t be the basis for mistreatment or discrimination. You know, kind of like how it would be wrong to discriminate against someone who has a second pinkie … even though a second pinkie is an abnormality, a birth defect.
So, here’s a tepid “way to go, Congress” … when you’re right, you’re right.
Comments
By Danielle on October 12th, 2009 at 8:47 am
There is no way in the world that homosexuality exists from birth. It goes against nature. Beings on this planet procreate to continue their existence. If not for technology, procreation would end with the sudden increase in homosexuals I have observed in the past two decades. Now homosexuality is a choice. If you are not exposed to it at a young age (0-17) you are not as liable to explore this particular facet of cultural denigration. With the internet and wide-spread media attention, we are bound to find homosexuals getting younger and younger with the persistent claim of, “I was born this way.”
Personally I don’t care to know if someone is homosexual or not. I do not agree with PDA among heterosexuals, I definitely do not want my very young children seeing two men or two women kissing in public and I have a right to not have them subjected to that. This is something everyone needs to keep at home. Society wants homosexuals to have rights? Fine. Parents should also have the right to raise their children as they deem fit. People used to have respect for children. People once upon a time, did not use profane language in public when children were present and kept PDA to a minimum. The more our society loses its respectfulness and moral worth, the more I fear for the future of our youth.
“To accept – even begrudgingly – that homosexuality can’t be helped is to foster unconditional humanity.”
I’ll never accept this. It is a choice, one that I wish people would leave at home and not subject the rest of the world to.
By Chris on October 12th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Actually, homosexuality is not a birth defect, it is merely forms the upper end of the sexuaqlity spectrum. Deviations from the norm are not classified as ‘birth defects”. By that reasoning would it be ok to say that redheads have birth defects, or verry short people have birth defects?? No, so think next time when you write.
By Mande Wilkes on October 12th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Chris -
But federal hate crime laws don’t protect redheads, so . . . apples and oranges, as far as Congress is concerned. If you object to the classification of homosexuality as a birth defect, please write your representatives.
-Mande
By southernmapart on October 12th, 2009 at 11:08 am
This article appears to have been written by someone who lacks any experience rearing children in a society which is protecting the deviations from the “norm” in sexual activity.
“Norm” is described as the sexual activity that procreated (most of) us, which is the basis of life.
By Darth on October 12th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Further Alien and Sedition acts… this time within the unnatural category. Predictably extra penalties because someone snatched a drag queen’s purse or perhaps a besotted state supreme court judge rear-ends or side-swipes Linda Ketner’s car, will get pitched as unconstitutional.
By Pat Hendrix on October 12th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Flawless reasoning, Mande. By the standard implied in your reply, because someone is born with black skin they have a birth defect. As someone trained in the law, you should recognize the importance of language.
In any event, governmental discretion is used on all cases, not just hate crimes. So that point proves weak as well.
As for the PDA comment above, give me a break. I live in SC, too, and I’ve never seen two dudes making out. Not even at Vickery’s, and that saying something. And as for your “rights” on the matter, you have no constitutional right to not see gay people holding hands. Then again, I’m not a lawyer. Maybe Mande can find the “feeling grossed out” statute.
By CMouse on October 12th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Thirty years ago the DSM classified homosexuality as deviant sexual behavior. Now “experts” tell us we should accept this kind of behavior as normal? Don’t look now, but the APA has dropped the “gay gene” theory from its materials. These “gay” folks have stolen the word, the rainbow, and are making a mockery out of the legal system If you’re conservative and choose to be gay, you live with it and go on. If you’re a liberal, I guess you walk up and down the street protesting with your genetalia on display for everyone to see. The folks want to overturn 5,000 years of marriage for the care and rearing of children so they can openly practice their sexual deviency. Write our congressmen? You’ve got to be kidding! They don’t listen anymore. All they do is march in lockstep with the New Messiah because he’s so wonderful. cc: Mr. Flag@whitehouse.gov
By Crooner on October 12th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
OK, so it might be a choice for chicks (see, e.g., Anne Heche) but what guy would choose to do… THAT!
By PandaChris on October 12th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
FITS:
Obviously one of your better posts!
Haters wont get it but I do!
By Mary on October 12th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
So, am I to assume that those who answered the guestion are homosexual? That would be the only way that they could answer the question “Is homosexuality a birth defect?”
The only people who can honestly answer this question are people who are gay.
Using the redhead term being mentioned above, it’s like a brunette person saying that redheads feel sexy. How does the brunette know? Only the readhead can answer the question. The brunette doesn’t truely know how the redhead feels, only what she thinks she might feel.
How do people know, without a doubt, that homosexuality is a choice? Somehow, I seriously doubt that any person who choose to be gay. Being gay means being hated by most of society, being discriminated against, not wanting your children around them because the “gayness” might be contagious. It’s the most ignorant, uneducated thing I have ever heard.
And no, I am not gay. I have been happily married for 16 years. But I know a lesbian and I have seen her cry way too many times, she has tried to commit suicide, and wishes she did not feel the way that she does because she knows that people hate her for no good reason. I have no doubt in my mind that she will succeed in killing herself one day, because she only wants to be happy. She is miserable because of the way others treat her. Homesexuality is against God but so is hate.
By scooter on October 12th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Homosexuality is not a birth defect, nor is it chosen. Both remarks demonstrate great ignorance and disrespect. Sexual orientation is not catching, so people need not run and hide. People need to teach their children to be loving and respectful of all kinds of folks. Trying to cover their little eyes is teaching them that something is bad, and therefore, something to be hated. Don’t we have enough hate already?
By Aquinas on October 14th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Mande, I must comment on your statement, “To accept – even begrudgingly – that homosexuality can’t be helped is to foster unconditional humanity.” If you mean that because homosexuality is often “discovered” rather than “chosen”, I would agree. That is, of course, much different than “discovering” one’s skin color. The issue as I see it is while one doesn’t choose the color of their skin, one certainly chooses if and when to act on a sexual desire, however it manifests itself.
If by making that statement you are lead to the erroneous conclusion that homosexual attraction is neutral or even good (which I think Congress certainly does, and you tend to), I would have to point out that the desire itself is a disorder. I have found that those who refer to themselves as “gay” or “lesbian” regard their sexual attraction as the most important mark of their identity. Once a person accepts that label, they tend to see themselves, their relationships, and even God through a “gay” lens. I prefer not to reduce them to a sexual tendency.
One of the stongest arguments I have found that helps shed some light onto this and other sexual issues, is that because we are ontologically created as sexual persons, male and female, the body naturally comes with a “nuptial” meaning, a language that it speaks. A man only makes “sense” vis-a-vis a woman, and vice-versa. There is an inherent meaning to our sex. When we deviate from that meaning, we move away from the very core of what it means to be a total person. As Christopher West puts it, “No one is ontologically (in his or her very being) oriented toward the same sex. Having a same-sex attraction can never define who a person is in the essence of his or her identity. It’s true that a person’s identity can’t be separated from his or her sexuality. But sexual identity refers to being created either as male or female. …If someone experiences a strong attraction toward the same sex, this is more properly described as a DISORIENTATION, since it departs from the natural, God-given complementarity of the sexes.” Or as Dr. Joseph Nicolosi put it: One should regard himself as a heterosexual with a homosexual problem.
Dr. Nicolosi points out that while homosexuality is certainly not a birth defect, it IS a defect of another stripe: an attempt to repair an emotional need. Through his 20+ years of working mainly with same-sex male patients, he has discovered that homosexuality is a symptomatic representation of what the person is striving for: male affirmation. When a boy grows up not receiving that male affirmation – particulalry from his father, or father figure – he experiences a narcissistic hurt. If that hurt is not resoved, it can become sexualized as the boy hits puberty, leading him to believe that he is “just this way.” He then spends his adult life trying to find a way to overcome the hurt by sexually acting out, yet never finding any true and lasting peace. Homosexuality is ultimately a cry for affirmation. It is the hurt of having a father who is not interested in the person as a MALE.
So now that Congress in its omnicient understanding of the human person has decided what constitues hate, are my thoughts on this matter going to be labeled a hate crime? God help us if it goes this way…
By Richard Phillips on December 13th, 2009 at 1:12 am
Okay People get real!
There have been Gay, Lesbian and the like HUMAN BEINGS on this planet for as long as there have been OUR heterosexual counterparts.
No doubt, there shall always be for truth be told, where ever heterosexual orientation springs from, so too does heterosexual orientation.
All this nonsense about [sic] “God”…give me a break!…this is the same “God” that made homosexual persons, for christsakes.
Choice??! How simple-minded can so-called adults be? No one ‘chooses’ their respective sexual orientation. Furthermore, even if all of you self-centered heterosexuals out there (you know who you are), made a conscious choice to be heterosexual, SUCH would be your choice and no one would have the right to pass judgement upon a choice made by you for yourselves. The same would hold true for those of us who are NOT heterosexual…if it were merely a matter of conscious choice, which it is not.
And NO, being homosexual has ZERO to do with the lack of a so-called “father” figure. Hell, every homosexual male I’ve ever encountered had both parents, who were married to each other, and had brothers and sisters growing up in the very same household. My brothers are heterosexual, but thank goodness none of my parents heterosexuality “rubbed off” on me.
Theres is nothing wrong with those of us who are gay, but there is plenty wrong with those who seek to bully their heterosexuality upon us. NEWSFLASH: Such and those days are coming to an end, and heterosexual persons will just have to get use to it.
Richard Phillips
By Richard Phillips on December 13th, 2009 at 1:26 am
(correction made to the third paragraph)
Okay People get real!
There have been Gay, Lesbian and the like HUMAN BEINGS on this planet for as long as there have been OUR heterosexual counterparts.
No doubt, there shall always be for truth be told, where ever heterosexual orientation springs from, so too does homosexual orientation.
All this nonsense about [sic] “God”…give me a break!…this is the same “God” that made homosexual persons, for christsakes.
Choice??! How simple-minded can so-called adults be? No one ‘chooses’ their respective sexual orientation. Furthermore, even if all of you self-centered heterosexuals out there (you know who you are), made a conscious choice to be heterosexual, SUCH would be your choice and no one would have the right to pass judgement upon a choice made by you for yourselves. The same would hold true for those of us who are NOT heterosexual…if it were merely a matter of conscious choice, which it is not.
And NO, being homosexual has ZERO to do with the lack of a so-called “father” figure. Hell, every homosexual male I’ve ever encountered had both parents, who were married to each other, and had brothers and sisters growing up in the very same household. My brothers are heterosexual, but thank goodness none of my parents heterosexuality “rubbed off” on me.
Theres is nothing wrong with those of us who are gay, but there is plenty wrong with those who seek to bully their heterosexuality upon us. NEWSFLASH: Such and those days are coming to an end, and heterosexual persons will just have to get use to it.
Richard Phillips