The Ace of Spades Grand Unified Theory of Teh Ghey

I had this as an addendum to Professor Oogly's theories, but I figure if I wrote this much, I should make it its own post.

1) Of course there is no biological necessity for gay sex. This is so mornoically obvious it makes the world stupider to even note it.

a) However, a lot of sex is "biologically unnecessary," in the sense we're talking about procreation. Oral sex of all types is a procreative dead end (unless you're, you know, filthy about it). And even couples with large families have sex for non-procreative purposes far more than for procreative purposes.

2) Gay sex is also "deviant" by most definitions of the word. It does represent a deviation from the norm, obviously. It represents a deviation from the default, "normal" (in the sense of standard) sex drive.

a) Many people believe it's deviant in terms of morality, which is why gays object to any usage of the term "deviant." I don't think they'd care as much if we were speaking in a purely biological or statistical sense.

i) Whether or not it's mrally deviant is for any person to choose. I'd note, however, that people are, yes, "born gay." Let me adapt Dennis Miller's observation, because I really didn't get the references he used. If you're watching Dr. No and you see Ursula Andress rising from the ocean like Venus with sparkling Caribbean water sluicing between her well-tanned breasts and you still want to fuck James Bond? You're gay. You, sir, are a stone-cold homo. And there is very little that can be done about that.

ii) Ergo, attacking people for the immorality of homosexuality is essentially attacking them for an inborn trait that they did not choose and, furthermore, would, in all likelihood, prefer not to have, as it would make their lives a hell of a lot easier.

iii) And it's pretty easy for anyone who has no attraction to the opposite sex to slam someone who does. It's simply a "sin" you have absolutely no interest in partaking in; ergo, it's not terribly hard to resist. I don't like Brussel Sprouts. Let me enlarge that: I don't like vegetables. It is, therefore, an extraordinarily easy thing for me to "resist" vegetable consumption, and were people to deem it a major "sin," trust me, what you'd have right here is one of the most sin-free people on the face of the earth. If you said to me "Let he who is without the sin of eating vegetables throw the first stone," that would be me, bending over, looking for a nice big fucking rock.

iv) The line in Leviticus about homosexuality being an "abhorrence" or "abomination" is right amidst prohibitions on eating shellfish and pork. It seems, to me anyway, most of Leviticus is a recording of folk wisdom for healthy living, and not necessarily God talking about morality. There are Christians, Muslims, and Jews who do avoid pork and shellfish, but I think most of those who observe this rule recognize it as an age-old guidance against food-poisoning and parasites, and not necessarily God saying that shellfish and pork were sinful. The line about homosexuality may similarly be folk-wisdom about an orderly society, and a statement of the belief that homosexuality tends to cause social disruptions, as well as childlessness.

Even if one thinks the Bible's injunctions ought to be strictly observed, there seems to me to be no reason to do one's own editing on the Good Book and elevate the prohibition against homosexuality to the status of a Commandment. God gave us Ten of them, but he could have given us eleven, or even twelve, which is a good round numinous number too. And if this particular wisdom were so central to Christianity, Jesus surely could have gotten around to talking about it at some point.

I'm a heathen, of course. Your mileage may vary.

b) Homosexuality, however, being a deviation from the default sex drive that is factory-standard in most human beings often comes with little glitches. If there's one bug in your computer, it might cause other bugs.

i) Which is why pedophilia is much more common in gay men than in straight men. Although, of course, it's disgracefully common in straight men too. You can only claim that pedophilia is not more common among gay men if you define man-on-boy sex as somehow not homosexual sex. Which, to me, seems a semantic hurdle that's very difficult to leap over.

ii) Not perfectly on point, but no, gay scoutmasters should not go on overnight trips with boys in the woods. Not even because of the higher incidence of pedophilia; forget that. Simply because it's wildly inappropriate. It is, in fact, as wildly inappropriate as allowing me, a straight guy, to supervise overnight trips in the woods with sixteen year old girls. No one would think it's appropriate to let a straight guy take sixteen year old girls into the woods alone; something could always happen. So why on earth is it appropriate for a gay guy to go on overnight trips with sixteen year olds of the sex he's attracted to?

The gay guy could supervise sixteen year old girls without any objection, for the same reason that no one objects when straight guys take boys into the woods -- because in both cases, you're supervising underage kids you have no attraction to. Ergo, very little risk of something sexual happening.

iii) But the fact that there does seem to me to be a higher incidence of sexual dysfunctions among gays doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of gays have no sexual dysfunctions at all (other than homosexuality, of course, which I'm not saying is a dysfunction, just being clear). So the pedophilia thing should not be used as a club to pound gays.

iv) And if you just want to talk higher incidences of deviant, violent, and inappropriate sexual behavior, like rape, well, the main culprit is men, straight and gay, and yet no one blames all men for the rapes of a few. Well, some do, of course. But those people are silly and we tell them so. To such anti-men feminist basket cases, we say, "You, Madame, are a goof."

3) And, actually, there just may be a "biological necessity," or at least a biological usefulness to homosexuality after all. It's always been my harebrained, crackpot theory that homosexuality was an evolutionary response to overpopulation; that the homosexual sex-drive would be triggered, chemically, by too-high populations, thus tending to reduce population growth by pushing some people into sexual orientations that do not result in offspring. I am as shocked as anyone to learn that I may be right about that. Recent science suggests this may be the case, as the more children a woman has, the more likely later-born male children will be homosexual.

a) One knock against my evolutionary-check-against-overbreeding theory is that the incidence of homosexuality still seems too low to really make much of a difference. 3% or so of the population? That's not going to seriously restrain population growth. I figure you'd need 10-20% of babies in the womb "flipping" over to gay to make any kind of real difference.

b) Then again, that 3% is an average, including both very populated areas (cities) and underpopulated areas (farm-towns, etc.) Maybe in areas of higher populations-- where people receive more pheremonal signals from other people due to high population density -- the percentage is higher. There does seem to be something, for example, about prisons that turns straight men gay. And it's not just lack of sex; I have gone without sex for long periods of time (very, very, VERY long) without getting the idea the my best friend Stinky might be a good lay.

4) And, why there's not, in my mind, "anything wrong with it," gays still shouldn't be allowed to marry. Marriage is an institution primarily for the creation of families, i.e., offspring, and gays do not have children together naturally, and do not have them by other methods at high rates, either.

a) For those who say "But we don't require childbirth as a prerequisite to marriage!" I respond: Well, we don't require "stability" as a prerequsite to the home-mortgage deduction, either. And yet we let people deduct mortgage payments from their gross income on their taxes because we believe, rightly or wrongly, that home-ownership tends to be a stabilizing force in society. But obviously a lot of home owners are unstable, and do not contribute to the bourgeious stability of society through home ownership, and still we do not police every single homeowner's "contribution to civil stability" when we check their tax returns. In other words, while laws exist to encourage certain behaviors, we do not madate that those taking advantage fo the law actually engage in that behavior. We play the odds. Most home owners will tend to be more responsible and peaceable because they own a home, without requiring them to actually be responsible and peaceable citizens. Similarly, most married straight couples (and even most unmarried straight couples, alas) will have children, whether we require it as prerequisite to state-sanctioned marriage or not.

b) Furthermore, men and women tend to form more or less monogamous and more or less enduring couples after a certain age. People who claim "marriage is a creation of the state" are, in fact, goofs. Marriage existed de facto from caveman days, with men and women pairing up more or less forever. Marriage in fact has always existed, though only later did it become formally recognized as a legal institution. (Though not much later; even in caveman days, I'm pretty sure people tended to respect each other's marriages. )

i) There is less evidence that such is the case with homosexuals. There is some evidence, I'm sure, but enduring-to-the-grave bonding does not seem as prevalent.

ii) Those, like Andrew Sullivan, who argue that gays should be allowed to marry in order to encourage them to form enduring-to-the-grave bonds are putting the cart before the horse. Heterosexual marriage was legally formalized because it already widely, almost universally, existed prior to the trivial recognition of it by a legal (or, in hunter-gatherer days, proto-legal) authority; the same should be the case with gay marriage. When there is widespread de facto gay marriage on the ground, then the state can and perhaps should recognize such an institution. The horse should come before the cart. De facto gay marriage should be shown to exist widely before we invent a new legal sanction for it.

There. All done.

posted by Ace at 03:38 PM

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