Having a Gay Old Time

I was pleasantly surprised recently to find that an overwhelming majority of my Composition students agreed with a peer's proposal that abortion rights should be severely curtailed because abortion is murder. I allow the students to choose the topic for their final essay, and it has not been uncommon for abortion to appear among their choices. The significance of yesterday's discussion was the number of these late generation Y'ers who did not believe abortion is just a clinical process some women are justified in choosing. I expected them to be fully marinated in the feminist soup of women's rights, but found them to be delightedly pro-life.

A couple years ago, Gallup reported that Americans were more pro-life than pro-choice. The margin in that poll was 51% lifers to 42% choicers. It marked the first time pro-lifers came out ahead, and the trend seems to be steady. A more recent poll measured the gap by party and then further by religious tendencies and showed a remarkable correlation. We are doing a good job refuting the feminist argument within a significant slice of the population.

There is another topic that always comes up for discussion with my students: gay marriage. In this case conservatives appear to be losing the battle. Gallup released a poll last year trumpeting "For First Time, Majority of Americans Favor Legal Gay Marriage." 53% to 45% Americans favor same-sex marriage with the same rights as "traditional" marriage. Granted, the results show that most of the increase in favorable positions came from Democrats and Independents; Republican opinion has remained virtually unchanged.

Back to my admittedly biased classroom; I did not poll them, but I sensed that if I had, most would have favored allowing gay marriage. Those who did speak agreed with the three students who proposed that gay marriage should be legal in all 50 states. And why not? "Love is love," as one proposal put it, and the benefits of marriage should not be denied to anyone who professes love for another regardless of gender. The other two proposals were based on the perceived discrimination against same-sex couples. This line of reasoning also garnered acceptance in the classroom. I asked if marriage rights should be granted to a man and his daughter or a man and his beloved sheep. The response (after extreme expressions of distaste) was resoundingly negative. I suggested that a man may love his daughter/sheep or whatever enough to want to marry her/it; doesn't the law discriminate against him as well. The silence was deafening, but they looked like I had fed them lemons.

So where are believers in this debate? We cannot quote Leviticus or Romans to argue against gay marriage in a pluralistic republic. Regardless, I believe there are still sound arguments against a homosexual lifestyle which do not rest on Biblical injunction.  I believe we should plot a course similar to the one Right to Life took with its sonogram displays. If we show people the real consequences of their choices, they can make better decisions. A fascinating article by the Family Research Council details the multitude of health issues present in the homosexual population. The most poignant is the undeniable fact that life expectancy is cut short by twenty years on average. Let's trumpet that from our billboards.

The Apostle Paul said that he would be willing to use any means necessary to win the lost to Christ. Let's use the same reasoning to influence behavior. With national health care looming on the horizon, there is a golden opportunity to use the liberals' arguments against them. If smoking is bad because it raises health costs and shortens life span, let's put homosexuality in the same category. The straight majority should not be expected to pay the exorbitant costs of treatment for aids or STI'S brought on by lifestyle choices. (This argument works even if Obamacare is repealed because we all pay for this kind of thing one way or another.)

Believers should lobby their local school boards to stop presenting the homosexual lifestyle as merely an alternative without consequences. Faced with information like that presented in the FRC article, I believe many could be convinced to change the policy of tolerance and open acceptance of homosexuality to one of warning and dissuasion. Homosexual behavior is a choice; report after report after report refutes the idea that it is genetic or otherwise biologically caused. If there are people who are genuinely confused about their gender identity, we owe the whole truth to them. Homosexuality is a deadly lifestyle, not because Leviticus says so but because science says so. It wouldn't be the first time science and the Bible were in agreement.