‘How can those gay people be happy, it’s against nature.’

I like to natter online. In fact I’ll pretty much talk to anyone. Mostly I find that guys who read my profiles are more interested in trying to get into my pants, virtually or IRL, but you can never tell what’ll turn into a good conversation so I keep on talking. The quote which begins this entry is something that was said to me by an Indian guy. My initial reaction was, get the hell out of this conversation, close the window, run away. Which is frankly just rude, I have my rules, unless the person I’m chatting to becomes rude, ‘violent’ or threatening I’ll keep on talking as though I was IRL.
I suggested that the guy reread my profile (which clearly states that I am bisexual) and tried to explain various things from my point of view but he just kept going and was clearly more interested in telling me what was wrong with me until I told him I was going to block him and thus did so.

I’m a member of various lgbt message boards and theres been an interesting debate on one of them, pretty well described on Chime’s LJ. There’s been an MSN survey on homosexuality floating around the gay communities as well as Stonewall List which suggested that the doctors involved who are so happy about being able to “take the discussion about sexual preferences out of the realm of morality and put it in the realm of science.” are actually fairly well funded by the American Religious Right. I’m not sure that theres many phrases that send quite the same shiver down my spine as ‘American Religious Right’, possibly ‘Suicide Bombers’, ‘Taliban’ and ‘Religious Fundamentalist’…in anycase the idea that bigoted parents to be, rather than learning to live with their son or daughter as who they are could actually change the genetic sexual leaning of their child to make them ‘normal’ gives me far more than just the wiggins.

And it really made clear to me exactly what the response is to ‘it’s against nature’. ‘Its against nature’ is an excuse, it doesn’t matter to the person saying it that there have been sightings of lesbian, gay and bisexual birds of all species for years now. It doesn’t matter to that person that gay tortoises sometimes mate for life. It’s something that it’s easy to say, and it sounds a little better perhaps than ‘Ewww, thats sick! I don’t like you because your sexuality grosses me out’ which is what they really mean. So how far is it going to go? How far will people take their faith in ‘against nature’, it’s presumably against nature to genetically alter your child but if it will stop the kid from being in his very essense ‘against nature’ how many people will care? I think the religious right is going to have an interesting time working out where the balance is between genetic alteration ‘against nature and against God’ and homo/bi-sexuality also, ‘against nature and against God’.
Theres a kid in the states called Zach who’s getting a bit of publicity at the moment because he’s being sent to a gay treatment camp. How far would such parents take this? How far as parents do you accept the person who has been born to you and how far do you seek to change them?

On one of the communities a similarity to the deaf community was proposed. That various deaf people refused to be cured or upgrade hearing aids because they were a part of a non-hearing community with it’s own rules and interections was commented upon. If anyone has seen the film, The Eye, then it kind of reminds me how, when she’s cured of her blindness she has a hard time fitting in. The way humans all draw demarcation lines around their communities. You are this and we are that and we cannot do this together.

How much should it be a person’s choice that they remain the way they were born? Entirely their own. And how much should parents influence a childs decision? Parents always influence a childs decision and they decide according to their own morality what choice is right and wrong.

All education, all discipline to someone somewhere looks like propaganda, indoctrination. And what we need is for people to understand that someone’s sexuality is not wrong, how can it be wrong. Treating people as though they were not people, as though they were little boxes through whoum you live life, whoum you convince/control into being as you wish them to be is deeply wrong, but we are all guilty of it to the greater or lesser extent.

Eventually I think I must quote another friend of mine about that MSN Survey ‘I wish there was a box to check which said “it makes no difference whether it’s a choice or not because there’s nothing inherently wrong with queerness, its just a sociocultural prejudice”.’ (- Mountain Climbing Rob.)

Because we are so happy in our against nature state, we have no concerns, we recieve no bigotry from the heterosexual people out there (who we must of course regard ourselves as completely separate from because there can be no links between cultures) we of course must resort to our own indoctrinations. (Please note sarcasm)

Where is it right to draw the line? How can a community raise a child when in the end parents must make the decision based on their own moralities and there is nothing to prevent bigotry, there is nothing to prevent a wrong choice that can eventually blanket the world with it’s implications. Education needs to speed up a little or the science of barbarity willovertake us and we will be living in Utopia, all exactly the same with no thoughts but that what our parents told us to be and do was exactly right and we shall tell our children the same.
Its the same old thing, learn to discuss and accept with open mind or encourage your children to lie to you to save themselves.