Not everyone in the United States is Catholic.  Not everyone in the United States is Christian.  Not everyone in the United States derives their moral values from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

However, an awful lot of people do. 

This creates a major tension in our society when it comes to what the law should be.  There are probably Christians out there (however divorced from their own theology) who think that homosexuality should be against the law, that we should go back to the days when sodomy was a crime that the police would actually lock you up for.  There are some Christians (however divorced from their own traditions) who think that homosexuality is fine and dandy.  In between those two extremes is the bulk of the Christian population, who (by and large) think that homosexuality is wrong but that the state has no business interfering in people's bedroom lives, if they aren't molesting children or somesuch.

There is also a fairly large group of secularists (broadly defined) who completely reject the idea that homosexuality is something that should be condemned or avoided.  People like my college friend Amp, for example.  Amp is politically radical, but also an intellectually honest, decent human being.  Come the revolution, I'll exert my influence to keep him out of the re-education camps.  (Or at least get him into one of the nice ones, with showers and Internet connections.)  Amp would argue that homosexuality ought to be normative right alongside with heterosexuality - in fact, that all these divisions and definitions are pointless.  People should just love whomever they choose.  There are profound and fundamental problems with Amp's philosophy, but I'm not going to get into that here.  (I may be mis-stating something that Amp believes, but he's fairly articulate for a degenerate hippie liberal, and I'm sure he can correct anything I've gotten wrong.)

Why am I dragging Amp into this?  Because although that big group of secularists would, by and large, recoil from the more extreme elements of his political and moral philosophy, they embrace the view of he and his ilk on homosexuality and society.  People should love who they want.  It's not hurting anybody.  Why is the state crushing the civil rights of gay people?  Etc. 

The point of all this is that we have (at minimum) two groups in American society who have radically conflicting positions on homosexuality (and by extension, all the social issues that homosexuality touches.)  Furthermore, both of these groups are fairly large.  All of these issues existed fifty years ago; none of the moral or civil rights questions have changed.  Only the demographics have changed:  there are now tens of millions of people on both sides.

So what ought the state do?  Continued tomorrow.

Robert @ 16:55 | | | . | E-Mail This Post