Now, first confusion: there may be biological differences between GLB and straight people. Indeed, if mind-body materialism is true (as I think), there are certainly biological differences. But biological does not mean fixed in the architecture of the universe, unsusceptible to change, any more than social means easy to change -- as we socialists know! So the fact of biological differences tells us virtually nothing.
Second, it's true that "unable to change" means that something is not susceptible to moral evaluation, but that does not help GLB at all. Suppose someone is a psycho killer because of biological factors that he is unable to change. We might say, well, there's a sense in which we don't blame him, he can't help it, but that doesn't mean we have to approve of, tolerate, or permit him to wander about with a meataxe. We lock him up, right?
Now, I am not saying that being GLB is like being a psycho killer. I think, in fact, it is no different from being straight, just a neutral preference. But the point of the comparison is that the "can't help" argument is a confusion. Because there is something wrong with being a psycho killer, even if you can't help it, so "can't help it" is not really relevant to whether being GLB is OK.
Maybe it goes to whether people make bad choices, and are responsible for having made them. If it's not a choice, then you can't blame a GLB person for having made a bad choice. True, but the homophobes don't really care if it's a choice or not, it's the behavior that disgusts them. (And I actually think the aversion is far more aesthetic than moral.)
Third confusion: that if a predeliction is biological, then you have to act on it. Which is nonsense. Straight people have a biological predilection to have sex with the opposite sex, but celibacy is possible. Indeed, actual. I mean voluntary celibacy. So if the problem really was that homophobes thought that GLB people people make bad choices, the "it's biological" ansdwer would not satisfy them. And should not.
The real thing to be said is that whether or not being GLB or having homoereotic desires -- and acting on them -- is biological or changeable or not is all irrelevant. The real point is that it's perfectly OK to love whomever you like, if you are lucky enough to have someone love you in return. And if you or I or anyone else doesn't care himself or herself to love people of the same sex or whatever, that's OK for you, and has no implications for anyone else. And that's all there is, coherently, to be said.
So that's my two bits on this.
--- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> budge wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 4 Oct 2003 at 1:43pm Kelley wrote:
> > >
> > > surely you have heard that your statement is
> controversial
> > > --and not because i'm espousing the views of
> those who
> > > think that homosex is "unnatural". Rather, it's
> a
> > > controversial statement among those in the GLBT
> community.
>
> Note: Blacks did not _choose_ to be blacks in the
> Jim Crow south; they
> were born that way; they couldn't help it. That did
> not seem to be an
> argument against lynching them. "Jews" in Hitler's
> Germany had not
> _chosen_ their grandparents (or in some cases
> great-great-grandparents);
> they were born "that way." That did not seem to be
> an effective argument
> against the Final Solution.
>
> I wasn't born a communist; that does _not_ mean that
> I have no right to
> be a communist.
>
> Regardless of the current empirical evidence for or
> against a "gay gene"
> (and I want to emphasize the _current_, for this
> kind of evidence
> changes constantly), the fight for gay rights has to
> be based on the
> premise that a person has a perfect right to
> _choose_ to be gay.
>
> There has been quibble over the term "community"
> several times on this
> list, but as hard (even impossible) as it is to
> write a satisfactory
> abstract definition of "black community" or "gblt
> community," conscious
> members of those communities go on using the terms
> very effectively for
> their purposes, and I think questionins of those
> terms simply aren't in
> good faith.
>
> Carrol
>
> Carrol
> >
> > i type "GLBT community" into mapquest.com and it
> couldn't
> > show me the location or give me driving
> directions.
> >
> > maybe they haven't gotten their copy of the
> homosexual agenda?
> >
> > > http://www.queerbychoice.com/impliquotes.html
> >
> > bunch of traitors to their class.
> >
> > --
> > no Onan
> >
> > "superior sound quality"
> >
> > ___________________________________
> >
>
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>
> ___________________________________
>
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