By Jove Artistic Director David Bullen takes on one of the big myths of homophobia and asks, ‘is being gay really so unnatural?’ And, if it is…is that such a bad thing?
One of the fall-back arguments you often hear in a homophobe’s arsenal is that being gay is “unnatural”. As LGB individuals have become more accepted by Western society, the argument crops up less and less – thankfully falling under the umbrella of outright homophobia – but as the debate over same-sex marriage continues it continues to rear its nasty little head. However, because it is often dismissed as a ludicrous statement, it’s not being challenged head on – so let’s do that. Let’s ask ourselves: is being gay unnatural?
Firstly – what do we define ‘unnatural’?
There are two main choices here. You might define ‘natural’ as anything that comes from nature and therefore does not come from human civilisation. It’s something that is instinctual; that stems from brain function prior to conscious thought, i.e. human choice. Thought becomes unnatural in this definition – anything that defies our basic animalistic instinct. However, homosexuality doesn’t get classed as unnatural through this definition, because, as any LGB individual will tell you, attraction towards the same sex is entirely involuntary. It’s as primitive as heterosexual attraction. I mean, you could argue for ‘homosexuality being a choice’, but if you are, you clearly do not know any LGB people and you clearly are getting desperate for any old straw to clutch.
Let’s look deeper at this then: natural is animalistic, it’s biological. It’s something that must make sense for us as animals and not as human beings. Heterosexuality, under this definition, makes sense because it results in procreation. OK, gays can’t do that. They don’t produce babies. They probably never will. So yes, under this definition, homosexuality is ‘unnatural’ – but so are a lot of things. Again, anything that isn’t about functioning as an animal is ‘unnatural’. Drinking cow’s milk is unnatural. Fashion is unnatural. Cutting our hair is unnatural. Getting tattoos, eating chocolate, drinking alcohol, drinking coffee, smoking, banking, shopping…what a long list of ‘vices’ that could go on and on. So far, none of these have crumbled our society (apart from banking, perhaps). If you’re going to proclaim homosexuality as unnatural, you better make sure you aren’t doing any other unnatural things first.
Besides, if you’re going down this route, you’ve got to ask yourself – aren’t we making it all about babies? If you’re going to legitimise a relationship on the basis that man plus woman equals babies, you’ve just condemned elderly couples, infertile couples, and any other heterosexual union that cannot have or does not want children. That’s a large percentage of the population right there.
So, gays can’t have babies – what’s the big deal?
If you’re hinging your argument against homosexuality on procreation, you’re on as much of a dodgy wicket as saying gay people choose to be that way. Yes, we as a society need babies. But we don’t need them nearly as much as we used to. After all, in Britain, the USA, and much of Europe we have good health care (another ‘unnatural’ thing, I suppose), low infant mortality rate, and, more to the point, a lot of orphans awaiting adoption. We have a surplus of children. Allowing a comparatively small percentage of the population to officially engage in a relationship that has no chance of reproduction isn’t going to kill off the human race. In fact, let’s be clear about this. It isn’t going to make more people gay, because as we’ve established, nature is doing that anyway, and has been doing so, in humans and hundreds of other species, for thousands of years. The first entry into the canon of Western literature – more than three millennia ago – hinges on a gay relationship (or, for those who wish to debate that, it is certainly a work that was interpreted as being about a gay relationship only a few hundred years later).
So recognising homosexuality and same-sex relationships isn’t going to make more people gay, it’s just going to allow the hundreds of individuals who have to live their lives in secret or denial to be free; to be as their instincts tell them to be, to be ‘natural’. It’s going to make a lot of people happy.
And the children?
I recently had a conversation with a representative from a pro-life, anti-gay organisation that shall remain nameless here so as not to give them any further publicity. They had been distributing a leaflet full of outright lies about same-sex marriage to the various communities in London, and I had phoned up to hear exactly how they could back their claims up. The gentleman was very eloquent in his bigotry, I have to say. He told me that it was a fact that the Catholic adoption service was forced to close because of legislation making it illegal to discriminate against homosexuality. All the good of that adoption service was lost because of the gays. How the children must be suffering! I was astounded: it’s sad that the adoption service was closed, but how many more children might have found homes through them if they had been willing to accept gay couples as foster parents? The children are suffering, that’s for sure, but not because of any gay men or women, but because of discrimination against them.
Homosexuality isn’t going to destabilise society and kill off the next generation, it’s not going to discourage anyone from having kids or getting married, it’s not going to ‘convert’ everyone. It’s just going to allow a proportion of the population the same chance at happiness as everyone else – and let’s not forget that the proportion of the population we’re talking about stay together long-term or cheat on their partners, contribute to the economy or live off the state, abide by the law or break it, make good or bad parents. They succeed, fail, live, and die as much as their heterosexual counterparts, and it’s about time that we stop pretending otherwise and clear the myths away.
