Terrence at the Republic of T has a post up that details a rash of anti-gay violence around the US lately. The list includes a gay man in New Mexico beaten and brutalized for hours by two thugs; thankfully the men have been caught and charged. It includes three punks beating up 6 people as they left a gay pride event in San Diego in five separate attacks. Those attacks were so brutal that the assailants are being charged with multiple accounts of attempted murder. It includes attacks on two people, one involving a crowbar, on two people in Detroit after a gay pride event. It includes a lesbian couple in Maine whose house was vandalized, with the vandals scrawling anti-gay epithets on the walls while urinating all over the place and destroying their belongings. It includes gay bars being burned down in Texas and Arkansas.
All of the above took place in one week. Does anyone still want to argue that gays should not be listed as a suspect class for equal protection clause purposes? The courts have been reluctant to assign that status, which would automatically trigger heightened scrutiny of those laws that affect them.
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Unfortunately this is not surprising with the way that they are treated as subhuman sex addicts.
Thanks for the link. What's worse is that there are other incidents that I didn't include in the list because I didn't think of them until afterwards, like the attack on performer Kevin Aviance in New York this summer...
And the way so-called "pro-family" organizations are committed to furthering the blood libel types of claims against their fellow GLBT citizens. And, the way the religious party of the US has exploited the issue as a wedge to generate political power at the expense of their fellow GLBT citizens.
I could go on.
Queue Christian with persecution complex with a single story of some christian being killed weakly trying to tie it to the "homosexual agenda" in 5...4...3...2...
You want to give heightened scrutiny to a group that has started having sex with infants and animals??? Sorry, wrong thread.
In all seriousness, there is a serious problem with violence in our society, and a disproportionate amount of that violence is directed against those who are viewed as different. It does not help that homosexuals are one of the few groups that it is socially acceptable to demonize in public. But there are a few problems with raising GLBT to suspect class status.
Humans are not born with a sexual identity: They are born with a sex drive, and that is geared at a level far higher than is needed for reproduction. Different societies have channelled this excess energy to achieve various goals, social and political. In reality, almost everyone is to some extent "bisexual," whether they act on those impulses or not. Individuals later imprint a sexual identity, based upon the culture and some genetic predispostion. They may be gay, straight, bi, or be turned on by a lime-green sock puppet named Louie. But enough about me.
So in giving suspect class status, a group is being chosen on the basis of a chosen culural affiliation and is therefore rather nebulous.
Perhaps more important, suspect clas status will end most of the current debates judicially, rather than through the democratic process. I think that is a mistake, for two reasons. First, the vast majority of the country is going to come to accept gay marriage, adoption, etc within the next 30 years anyway, so having it forced on the bigots will merely result in backlash. Second, there is a real value in having a policy passed by a legislature or referendum in terms of the overall community and its cohesiveness. One of the problems of modern America is the tendency to atomize into feuding subsets of cultures, each competing for a share of what is viewed as a limited pie. Consensus tends to be more successful in the long run than competition.
kehrsam, I'm afraid I don't understand how "suspect clas status will end most of the current debates judicially, rather than through the democratic process", as here in Washington state sexual orientation was added to the list by the legislature through the democratic process...
kehrsam wrote:
I don't think this is a convincing argument. Leaving aside all of the mounting evidence for a strong genetic predisposition (please note the word predisposition, not "cause") for homosexuality, even if you were right I don't think the conclusion is sound. After all, we apply a heightened review of religious discrimination as well and by any measure religion is far more a matter of chosen affiliation than an immutable trait.
While I don't think this argument is wholly without merit, I don't think it's terribly compelling. Yes, I would prefer that such a change would bubble up from the populace rather than being imposed by the courts, but history also tells us that such court rulings dramatically speed up the process of affecting such changes in the citizenry itself. Remember, Loving was hugely controversial in 1967 and was countered with precisely the same arguments with which today's rulings that have expanded gay rights are countered today. Yet 40 years later, things have changed so much in our cultural attitudes that it's almost inconceivable to us that it was an even an issue then. The same could be said for Brown v Board of Education and other court rulings that upheld the rights of a minority in the midst of a hostile public opinion. So I think affecting these changes generally requires a combination of democratic and judicial action.
Kehrsam, i must have missed where we had any real evidence for homsexuality being a cultural choice. As far as I am aware, it is mostly down to genes and environment, the current most likely nvironment being the mothers womb.
To put it simply - if it was a cultural choice, one of my best friends could have saved herself a lot of worrying and just learnt to love boys, instead of girls.
Guthrie: Of course sexual orientation is mostly cultural. The world has had societies where every male (occasionally females, but they sldom get a choice) goes through a homosexual period. Think of ancient greece, where every upper-class male had an older male lover as a teen and one or more teen boys as an adult. They all didn't have the gay gene, I'm guessing, that was the way their culture chose to channel male sexual energy (which definitely is genetic). Similarly, where is the evidence for an evolutiony explanation for bestiality, PVC underwear or Louie the Sock Puppet? The modern fallacy is that there is such a thing as "gender identity." We are all born with a ridiculous capacity for sex, and culture narrows our choices a bit.
Ed,
I agree, cultural change can be top-down; I just don't happen to think it is as effective as the other way around. The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were far more important in terms of our racial evolution than either Brown or Loving. And in saying so, I am not meaning to minimize the importance of either of those decisions.
Ab_Normal: I was assuming that the change to suspect class would have to come judicially at present because 48 Senators recently voted for the very opposite. Yes, recognition will come from legislatures eventually, but it will be a long fight.
Good points, all.
kehrsam, I am going to have to join the opposing camp on this one as well, as you seem to be confusing a lot of different concepts. Sexual orientation, for instance, has a lot less to do with sexual acts as it does with emotion. For example, I am a Kinsey 6 (pure homosexual) on the good doctor's scale - no experience with women of any kind, never wanted, never will. I really hate when people say that we are all bisexual at some core - I am most certainly not. Now, it might have been possible, back in my horny teenage years, to have performed with a woman, but that does not make me straight or bi, any more than a male prisoner getting a bj from another male prisoner means either or both of them are gay, or bi. The capacity to enjoy a sexual act is not the definition of sexual orientation.
Rather, orientation refers to the full gamut of attraction - physical, emotional, psychological, romantic. That I could never and do not want with a woman. Even the cultures you speak of - where males allegedly go through a "homosexual phase" - don't necessarily hold up when one examines the evidence. A lot of the older man/teenage boy stuff came out of a misreading of Greek literature - at a time when society really needed to find male/male love offensive, so the Ancient Greeks became nothing more than pedophiles. But if you look at the actual text (and I am thinking of analyses like the one in Boswell's "Chritianity, Homosexuality and Social Tolerance") it turns out that the use of the diminutive form of a word ("boy" instead of "man") does not necessarily mean anything about the age of the lover. Just like in our culture, the Greeks often used diminutive forms to denote those who they loved, not their ages.
And adding to Ed's comments, even if sexual orientation were not a fixed characteristic in the human species (and all attempts to change sexual orientation, not to mention gender identify - say in the intersexed or in the famous Canadian case where the boy was raised as a girl after a circumcision accident - have failed miserably), the protection the Constitution gives to religious lifestyle choices should apply to gays and lesbians as well - especially as the arguments against gays and lesbians that often lead to violence are religious in nature.
I really get fed up with the nonsense that being gay is a choice and is not biologically determined. I've worked with gay folks my whole life, working for some and employing many. (Much of that time was in NYC and the San Francisco Bay Area where people have been open about their sexual orientation in ways that won't appear in Dubuque until the year 3000.) I've known and still know many people who are gay (including a number of relatives of mine) and to a person they say they didn't know they were gay until puberty, at which point they discovered their attraction to the same sex in the same way I (and presumably other heterosexuals) discovered my attraction to women. Many of my gay friends were appalled being attracted to the same sex and tried to "overcome" it but this only led to an excess of emotional anguish and torment. Those who grew up in the American hinterlands fled those hinterlands for the big cities where anonymity and other gays could be had. Those who grew up on the coasts usually moved into the big cities for the same reasons.
Among the hundreds of gay people whom I count as friends, I can't cite one who "chose" to be gay. in my anecdotal experience choice is simply not an option, unless the choice was to live a false existence as a heterosexual because society condemns those who follow their instincts. I think it's absolute nonsense--I guess I said it above too--to label being gay a choice. Admittedly, I haven't conducted a exhaustive scientific survey of the literature or a large population, but from my experience, one is born gay and has little choice about it. And the many, many gays I know do not fit the classic "Christian" sterotype of one with an insatiable appetite for sex. They are very much like straights with the same ambitions, drives and preferences, except for the guardedness they have to maintain lest they be condemned or worse by some narrow minded bigot.
I do think that the opprobrium which being gay attracts in our society will greatly diminish in time, especially with many in their teens and twenties accepting quite matter of factly today. And in the best of all possible worlds, effecting acceptance through legislation would be ideal. But litigation it also important, very important. Without Brown vs. Board of Education there in all likelihood would have been no civil rights or voting rights acts in the '60's. The Supreme Court fostered the atmosphere that gave validity and ultimately legitimacy to the freedom riders and sit-ins of the era. Without the Supreme Court weighing in, the landmark legislation of the '60's would likely have been delayed until the '80's or '90's and the nation would have been poorer for it. I think litigation can be catalytic in importance, as it was in racial civil rights.
I've never really cared if homosexuality is a choice. In fact, I always cringe a bit when pro gay rights people make the argument that it's not a choice, because I feel like that's saying that if it were a choice it would be acceptable to treat them the way they are. It's completely irrelevant to me. Whether gays choose their sexual or are born with it; it still has no affect on my life either way.
And I don't buy that anything that is genetic or inborn is therefore acceptable. Pedophilia might be something people are born with, but that doesn't make me more accepting of it. So it's pretty much irrelevant in my mind why people have their sexuality. If it harms other people it's not ok; if it doesn't then it's no one's business but their own.
The scary wild card in America's future is whether, when the current "Republican" Party loses power - or simply reveals that they will no longer advance the nutsos' "Armaggedon agenda" - and they find themselves politically isolated, the completely unhinged edge of the Xian right develops "Xian Values Warriors" who resort to violence, and a network to protect them.
Now, frankly, I don't think they have either the guts or the brains to manage it, but it does worry me some.
It could also be that, when they see that the "Governement" no longer sanctions their position, they will crawl back into their ass'oles and leave the nation mostly at peace again.
Let me attempt to backtrack a little bit, because an argument has broken out where none was intended. I think everyone on this thread thinks gays deserve the same rights as everyone else, the question then is as to the proper social mechanisms to get there.
My point about choice was that granting suspect class status for a group that at least appears to be self-selected is not necessarily going to work well. Ed's example of religion as an-already-protected suspect class is not very encouraging, given that religions conflicting with each other and government are pretty much the reason this blog exists.
No, this is not an intractable problem, but in the short term-- at least -- it would be a major problem. Education (and more people actually knowing gay people in their lives) will have a far greater impact over the long haul.
With regard to inherent predisposition, CPT, I'm sorry if I offended you with the "we're all bisexual at heart" comment. If it makes you feel any better, Baptist preachers tend to be even more offended when I say things like that.
Unfortunately, Anthropology doesn't really allow other conclusions. I cited the greeks earlier, and there are (generally unpersuasive, in my opinion) arguments there, but there are also scores of other cultures where boys and/or young men lead an exclusively homosexual life, followed by an exclusively hetero existence. Even allowing for some genetic predispostion, culture seems to be overwhelmingly in control.
As for sexual orientation being a largely psychological construct, I agree completely. I'm just not convinced that this makes it genetic. In particular, I think the majority of cultures through history would reject that such a thing even exists. Peace to all.
The damned thing ate my last comment, i'll keep this short and see how it works.
What do your cultures say about old men who are homosexual? Also, to some extent you may be right that in some cases homsosexuality is a cultural choice, however that is not the case in many other situations, where the culture is against homosexuality, see the past few hundred years in western Europe for example. It is not a stretch of the imagination to see that a low background level of homosexuals, of say 1 or 2% may persist, due to the combination of factors that produce it in the first place, no matter what the culture.
I couldnt actually care what the majority of coultures through history think about the matter, what counts is what the science shows.
The majority of cultures through history also believed in elves and fairies.
Matthew wrote
I really agree with this. And I get that same urge to cringe as well.
kersham wrote:
I think Ed's example of religion is spot on, but I'm not really sure where you are going with this. Are you suggesting religion should not be a protected class? I'm not going to argue with you about it or anything- just wondering.
One more thing to think about: a more useful way to think about sexuality is as a spectrum. I think the either/or scenario (or suggesting that we are all bi)is a bit silly. What, after all, is the point of using a description of sexuality that doesn't actually describe sexuality?
But for the record, I think the pervasiveness of homosexuality in human culture (particularly in cultures where it is expressly forbidden and punishable by death) speaks for itself. I'm not sure what this has to do with being a protected class though. It seems to me that this very personal and intimate "decision" should not be subject to oversight and punishment regardless of why it was made. And given the rampant discrimination (which is often violent) the need for protection is clear.
Skemono, if we're diuscussing an emotion such as sexual orientation, yes I think it relevant whether people of other cultures know that emotion to exist, don't you? With the exception of those following the Abrahamic religions, most cultures have seen no need to distinguish hetero from homo; it's all sex, and in general, it's all good.
Leni:
My point about religion was not that it should not be a protected class, but rather to point out that even were homosexuality made one that would do very little to address the conflict. We need to change the culture, and unfortunately, that will take a while.
I see.
Still, I don't know that the point is to address the cultural conflict, except possibly indirectly. I think the point is to protect a group of people from the deprivation of their liberty. It strikes me as more of an intervention that will (hopefully) prevent further deprivations. Or if not prevent them, then at least provide an avenue for redress.
Joy. In 30 year I'll most likely be deab.
dead.
Apparently I'm going faster than I thought.
Matthew -- I think your comments are spot-on. Well said.
Kehrsam and others -- It seems to me that this thread labors under a misconception. We should not speak here of giving suspect class status based on "homosexuality." Instead, we should speak of "sexual orientation."
Why? Well, this would make the status more parallel to the suspect class statuses that already exist. Note that "black" or "Asian" are not suspect classes. "Race" is. This means that white people can also theoretically face discrimination. The same is true, and even more so, with "gender," where we do not protect women alone from discrimination -- but rather we protect women and men alike (and, in more enlightened places, we also protect those who are somewhere in between, which is one implication of gender being a suspect class at all).
So... GLBT will not be a suspect class. "Sexual orientation" will be, and this will include everyone. It's not an exception to the principle of equal treatment for all. It's a straightforward application of the same.
Jason:
Agreed, we often use sloppy language in discussions such as this. Still, the practical change affects one group more than others in this case. :D
Of course it does -- if treatment were equal already this would be a moot issue. Do you not feel that making race a suspect class affected black people more than white?
Of course it does -- if treatment were equal already this would be a moot issue. Do you not feel that making race a suspect class affected black people more than white?
Ooooohhh! That's racist! And we certainly can't have THAT, can we?
(/sarcasm)