What's Wrong With Homosexuality? by John Corvino is a compilation
of seven essays the author has written to debate
this point. Corvino has
With a book this short, covering seven different arguments, there was no
time to delay. Corvino got to the crux of each matter immediately and stated the
dirty reasons why homophobes seem to get their knickers in a twist. In the
chapter entitled "God Said It, I Believe It, That Settles it":
"My point is this: If you adopt a simplistic 'God said it' approach to the
[Biblical] text, then be prepared to swallow some pretty nasty conclusions about
slavery, women, and so on. If, instead, you insist on sensitivity to historical
and cultural context, then the homosexuality passages must be reexamined in that
light. Loving, mutual, nonidolatrous same-sex unions are simply not on the
Biblical authors' radar, much less the target of these texts."
It always amazes me that homophobes who spout Biblical passages against
gays are usually ignorant of the passages the Bible says about their own lives.
Selective prejudice, where one picks verses that supposedly condemn gays while
ignoring other verses that affect the bigots themselves (if the bigots are even
aware of other Biblical verses) always applies to others and never to
oneself:
"The fact that many people approvingly cite natural law theory to condemn
homosexuality while ignoring its other conclusions says a great deal about
people's capacity to tolerate inconsistency in the service of prejudice. Like
Aquinas, the NNL [New Natural Law] theorists label masturbation, contraception,
and non-coital heterosexual sex unnatural for the very same reasons that they
label homosexual sex unnatural: the failure to achieve a reproductive-type
union. They even condemn non-coital sex for heterosexuals unable to achieve
coitus (say, because of injury). I suppose one can give them credit for
consistency even while blanching at their coldness.
"For the rest of us, it often seems that an act is unnatural when the
person making the claim finds it abhorrent or revolting."
In the chapter entitled "Man on Man, Man on Dog, or Whatever the Case May
Be", Corvino writes about the unfortunate tendency of others opposed to
homosexuality to lump polygamy, incest and bestiality all in the same group. He
addresses what he calls the PIB argument, and states right upfront: why are they
even connected? What could possibly be the connection that links my
consensual relationship with my long-term boyfriend Mark with the most
disgusting sexual practices listed above? The answer is that homophobes find our
sexual relations "yucky", and everything else they consider yucky gets lumped in
with it.
I was glad Corvino raised the "yucky" issue. In this essay he reveals the
main reason why some people find homosexuality so revolting. When homophobes are
pressed to name one, and only one reason why they find our personal lives so
disgusting, the answer is revealed. I have had to deal with this, and it never
ceases to amaze me how total strangers feel that they should have a say in my
intimate sex life. What turns some people off, and what makes them think that
gay sex is "yucky", is that they imagine gay men engaging in anal sex. While I
don't consider anal sex exclusively the domain of gay men, as certainly
heterosexual couples and even lesbians can and do engage in it, I know--from
conversations with fellow gay friends and from my past boyfriends--that I am
part of a large minority of gay men who have never shared this act of intimacy.
Nor has Corvino. So are we still yucky? Will the bigots like us now? Corvino
also describes other acts of sexual intimacy between men and women--and let's
even go so far as to say married men and women--that are off the sexual
vanilla spectrum. Would homophobes approve of BDSM between a husband and wife?
Would these same homophobes condemn me for simply holding my boyfriend's hand?
Even if there was a connection between homosexuality and polygamy, it seems
highly unlikely that the religious fundamentalists (for it is usually splinter
sects who are the most prominent in the practice of polygamy) would even want to
be associated with the gay movement.
"I conclude that the best response to the logical version of the PIB
argument remains the simple one we started with: What does one thing have to
do with the other?"
One reason that is sometimes given to deny gay marriage is "if we allow
same-sex couples to marry, gay males' sexual infidelity will bleed into the
general population". I cannot see how these can be connected. Will straight
married men suddenly decide to cheat on their wives when they see gay men cheat
on their husbands? Do straight married people need married gays to give them
licence to cheat? Straights need no further encouragement to be unfaithful. I
have always liked the saying that if you want to preserve heterosexual marriage,
then don't ban gay marriage: ban heterosexual divorce:
"Divorce is another analogy worth mentioning at least briefly. According to
the Bible, Jesus himself said that 'Whoever divorces his wife and marries
another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and
marries another, she commits adultery' (Mark 10:11-12). Adultery is a violation
of the Ten Commandments, punishable by death in the Old Testament. Yet
fundamentalists take a rather different attitude toward, say, the thrice married
Newt Gingrich or the four-times married Rush Limbaugh than they do towards gays
and lesbians--even though all of the above are unrepentant sinners according to
traditional interpretations. (It's not enough to simply 'regret' the divorce:
the Bible makes it clear that continuing with your current spouse makes you a
persistent adulterer.) What this disparity suggests is that people are willing
to subject the gay and lesbian minority to a rather different standard of
Biblical literalism than they themselves would tolerate."
What's Wrong With Homosexuality? might not be read by those who
believe the answer to the title's question is "Everything!", but it will provide
those who are affected most by bigots' venom with succinct answers with
Biblical, logical and ethical backing.
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