During the recent 15 years I have listened to an average of one session per year when gays and lesbians attempted to explain and justify homosexuality to a wider public.

Monday, January 03, 2000

During the recent 15 years I have listened to an average of one session per year when gays and lesbians attempted to explain and justify homosexuality to a wider public. Several times I was invited to participate, and a couple of times I moderated. Not only am I by now not hearing anything new or more convincing, but I grow weary of the same weak and unfair presentations. Gay and lesbian activists and advocates cannot logically or fairly promote homosexuality only on the basis of good in it, nor can they castigate those who differ with them only on the basis of bad among them.

They speak of these as dialogs, but usually they do all the talking. They stack the cards both in favor of their position and against those who differ. In point of fact, these who claim to champion cultural diversity deny the right to differ with them by cartooning all differences of opinion as behavioral hostility.

I have asked, and not once has a gay and lesbian activist or advocate attended a session in which they could listen to the opinions and concerns of those who cannot accept homosexuality. Admittedly, I know of none such offered, but they would be if some people I know had any reason to believe gays and lesbians would attend and listen with the same respect they rightly expect from others. (I do not include in this the emotional tirades against homosexuality and even homosexuals intended only to scare non-homosexuals away from it. There are those, and they distress me. I don’t want gays and lesbians to be dumped on in this outrageous manner. These help neither gays and lesbians or anyone else.)

The most recent session I attended, at which I listened but said nothing, began with the moderator reading a news account of the murder of a gay man. What more can be said to that? Throughout the evening were constant references to unfair and indecent treatment of gays and lesbians. I am convinced there was not a person present who would tolerate any of that, and I think everyone would actively deal with any such within their observation. But that is all about attitudes and actions of those who differ from homosexuality. A clinical psychologist present observed: "Everything I heard this evening is biased." He is correct: It was terribly biased.

There is physical violence and social abuse of homosexuals, and those things are all immoral. But there is more. There are those who have no idea if homosexuality is natural or moral, have utterly no interest in it, and take gays and lesbians as they meet them on the same bases they take others. There are those who find homosexuality repulsive and chose to have nothing to do with homosexuals; yet, they would never lift a hand or speak a word against them. There are those who have studied homosexuality clinically and have empirically driven concepts and have well thought-through moral objections to its practice, but also have warm and regular contact with gays and lesbians. There are those who have once considered themselves homosexual and so behaved, have since chosen to reject such behavior in themselves, and now live fully wholesome lives in marriage. There are all these, in almost any community, and many variations. But not a word was said about any of them at this meeting – or at any other such meetings.

The picture presented of homosexuals is of warm, loving, caring, long-term monogamous relationships of socially well-adjusted and vocationally productive people. There are such, and I for one, am not informed by spending a couple of hours listening to these descriptions. I have close contact with a number of them and have for more than 40 years.

There are others, however, and these are no more stereotypes than the models offered to us. There are the truly weird men who do, in fact, hang around public washrooms to solicit strangers. I have been approached by them all my life. There are men who spend every waking, non-working hour in the infamous bath houses going from one partner to another. There are men and women who ply the streets offering themselves for sale. There are men who will only have sex with little boys and prey upon them. But not a word was said about any of them at this meeting – or at any other such meetings.

These descriptions are terrible, and I don’t enjoy giving them. But they are accurate history and actually current. I do not blame the sponsors of such meetings for not laboring these others, but honesty and fairness requires reasonably acknowledgement.

What I resent is the bias the psychologist recognized: the best case for the homosexuals and the worst case for all who disagree with them. Two bold hours for their presentations and five nervous minutes for questions. This is not honest and it is not fair.

Gay and lesbian activities and advocates appropriately and helpfully correct misperceptions and legitimately feature fine things found within their community. But they need to be honest that not all is good. They cannot honestly, logically, or fairly cartoon everyone who differs from them as being murderers or abusers. There is honest, heart-felt, intellectually vigorous moral and conceptual objections to homosexuality. People differ with them, but many become offended at the same time they plea for tolerance of their differentness.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays.