Response to article entitled The simple truth about homosexuality and same-sex marriage

Courtesy of a younger activist M Thomas:


The article originally appeared here on the Jamaica Observer website


Here is the response which I am in total agreement.

It seems as though the anti-gay American pastors are equipping you well with homophobic propaganda. However, because the talking points have not changed for the past 20 years they are quite easy to debunk.

1. 

"In every human civilisation in world history, it is known that marriage is between a male and a female. It is also known that physically, the male and female bodies were designed to "fit" together. The female vagina can accommodate the male penis without losing its elasticity and the male sperm is, by design, oriented toward the female egg."

Not so. There are many societies where instead of "male and female" marriage there is "male and femaleS" marriage. Again, procreation is not a legal requirement for marriage for anyone.

2. "

"Dr J Budziszewski in his article entitled 'Advancing a Heterosexual Public Ethic With Grace, Wit, and Natural Law' said: "Our whole physical and emotional design speaks to us of God's purposes. Interestingly, at the only place in the whole Bible where the expressions natural and unnatural are used, they're used in reference to normal and perverted sexuality (Romans 1:26-27)."

 Just as how same-sex marriage is seen as "unnatural", interracial marriage was seen the same way too. In the Perez_v. Lippol case which struck down California's anti-miscegenation law one oral argument made in the case was:

"The amalgamation of the races is not only unnatural, but is always productive of deplorable results. The purity of the public morals, the moral and physical development of both races, and the highest advancement of civilization . . . all require that [the races] should be kept distinctly separate, and that connections and alliances so unnatural should be prohibited by positive law and subject to no evasion."

Same world-view.

3. 

"When Paul calls homosexual union 'contrary to nature', he's not banking on the fact that his readers have studied natural law; he's banking on the fact that our very bodies speak to this. For example, when a man puts the part of himself that represents life into the cavity of another man that represents decay and expulsion, there is just no way to make the act mean something different from 'Life, being swallowed up in death".

Paul was not speaking about homosexual unions with love he was speaking about lust. Anal sex and homosexual unions are not the same thing since many married heterosexuals engage in the practice and one is not required to engage in it to be a homosexual.

4. 

"At ChristianAnswers.net, one writer says "If God had intended the human race to be fulfilled through both heterosexual and homosexual marriage, He would have designed our bodies to allow reproduction through both means and made both means of sexual intercourse healthy and natural."

Interracial marriage was opposed using God and the Bible. Argument from Loving v. Virginia case which legalised inter-racial marriage in the United States made by judge before he sent an inter-racial couple to prison for marrying:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Same world-view

5. "

"Homosexual intercourse carries a high risk of disease. This is recognised in the latter part of Verse 27 of Romans 1 where gay men are said to receive in their bodies the due penalty for their error. According to the executive summary of Health Implications Associated with Homosexuality, Medical Institute of Sexual Health (1999) "Homosexual men are at significantly increased risk for HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, anal cancer, gonorrhoea and gastrointestinal infections. Women who have sex with women are at significantly increased risk of bacterial vaginosis, breast cancer and ovarian cancer than are heterosexual women."

Homosexuality doesn't carry a high risk of disease. Unprotected sex of any kind does. It makes me wonder if you would say that black women "are said to receive in their bodies the due penalty for their error" since urban black women in the U.S. are 5 times more likely to become infected with HIV than previously estimated, and are twice as likely to die of AIDS-related causes, according to 2 posters presented this month at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2012) in Seattle. (http://www.hivandhepatitis.com/hiv-aids/hiv-aids-topics/hiv-disease-progression/3516-croi-us-black-women-have-higher-rates-of-hiv-infection-and-aids-death). Also lesbians are at a lower risk for sexually transmitted diseases than heterosexual women.

6.

"Gay Bowel Syndrome is one area that homosexuals are trying very hard to remove from public knowledge. The abstract for the 1976 journal article published in Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science entitled 'The gay bowel syndrome: clinico-pathologic correlation in 260 cases' describes gay bowel syndrome in the following manner:

"The clinical and pathological findings in a group of 260 homosexual men comprising 10 per cent of a private proctologic practice are reviewed. A clinical pattern of anorectal and colon diseases encountered with unusual frequency in these homosexual patients is termed the gay bowel syndrome. The clinical diagnoses in decreasing order of frequency include condylomaacuminata, hemorrhoids, non-specific proctitis, anal fistula, perirectal abscess, anal fissure, amebiasis, benign polyps, viral hepatitis, gonorrhoea, syphilis, anorectal trauma and foreign bodies, shigellosis, rectal ulcers and lymphogranulomavenereum."

“Gay Bowel Syndrome” is used to insinuate that gay men suffer from unique diseases that nobody else has. But the problem with “Gay Bowel Syndrome” is that it is not a disease, nor is it a syndrome, nor is it particularly gay. In other words, there’s no such thing. That’s why the term has been dropped from medical literature, despite the efforts of some anti-gay activists to keep the term alive. That is why you only picked up the term from a 1976 journal. However, it is much easier to nauseate than to educate.

7. 

"A 2001 National Centre for Health Statistics study on marriage and divorce statistics reported that 66 per cent of first marriages last 10 years or longer, with 50 per cent lasting 20 years or longer. The 2003-2004 Gay/Lesbian Consumer Online Census surveyed the lifestyles of 7,862 homosexuals. Of those involved in a "current relationship" only 15 per cent describe their current relationship as having lasted 12 years or longer, with five per cent lasting more than 20 years."

Any fool can see the deception used here. The statistics cited from the National Centre for Health Statistics were those about first marriages. The ones from the 2003-2004 Gay/Lesbian Consumer Online Census were those about current relationships and not first marriages or relationships. Are these two statistics comparable?

8. ""

"In his study of male homosexuality in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, Pollak found that "few homosexual relationships last longer than two years, with many men reporting hundreds of lifetime partners. A nationally representative survey of 884 men and 1,288 women published in the Journal of Sex Research found that 77 per cent of married men and 88 per cent of married women had remained faithful to their marriage vows" 

Deception again. The study done on male homosexuals were about lifetime partners. Apart from the fact that the study on heterosexual marriage was not cited, the statistics were about marriage and not lifetime partners. It does not represent how many partners people had before they were married, between marriages or what people consider "remaining faithful to marriage vows".

9.

 "Psychology recognises that men and women are psychologically and emotionally designed to complement one another. Eph. 5:33 speaks of the husband loving his wife and the wife respecting her husband and continues in Eph 6:1 - 3 to instruct children to be obedient to their parents and to honour both mother and father that their days may be long on the earth. Psychologists also conclude that a union between a man and woman in which both spouses serve as good gender role models is the best environment in which to raise well-adjusted children."

Not so. The website of the American Psychological Association says "In summary, social science has shown that the concerns often raised about children of lesbian and gay parents—concerns that are generally grounded in prejudice against and stereotypes about gay people—are unfounded. Overall, the research indicates that the children of lesbian and gay parents do not differ markedly from the children of heterosexual parents in their development, adjustment, or overall well-being." (http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx)

10. 

"There are emotions that are powerful and addictive and ultimately terribly destructive. Same-sex marriages must satisfy criteria other than emotion. A marriage is more than a sexual pleasure centre. A marriage is a social unit that is interwoven with dozens of other lives. Sex is not enough. Passion cannot sustain an inherently unstable social unit."

Really? Same-sex relationships are more than just about sex. The American Psychological Association's website says "A third common misconception is that the goals and values of lesbian and gay couples are different from those of heterosexual couples. In fact, research has found that the factors that influence relationship satisfaction, commitment, and stability are remarkably similar for both same-sex cohabiting couples and heterosexual married couples."  (http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx)

11. 

"Everyone inherently knows that homosexuality is immoral and unnatural. This inherent knowledge — the truth — is being rejected and suppressed. Persons are pretending not to know the truth or they have seared their conscience to this knowledge. They then replace the truth with a lie — homosexuality is as natural as any heterosexual relationship — advocate same-sex marriage and try to portray homosexuality as normal through all available media (Rom. 1:18 - 31 NKV)."

Everyone knows that homophobia is prejudice that comes from the same world-view as previous ones. That is why the anti-gay agenda is losing.

12.
"Gay activists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen said: "Almost any behaviour begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it."

Like homophobia?