Homesexuality and America

It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality.  It’s like disapproving of rain.  ~Francis Maude

I wonder whether Homosexuality is as big an issue in India as it is in the United States. I never really cared it about when I was in India; I guess I didn’t have to. None of my friends were homosexual and although I did hear gay jokes from time to time they never really meant anything different than any other jokes. And homosexuality being the taboo

subject that it is, wasn’t really talked about as much other stuff. Even in DYC where we talk about practically everything, from abortion to proactive-ism, homosexuality isn’t really something that is discussed. The closest I’ve come to having an actual discussion about it was when my parents, who are staunch Christians, told me that homosexuality is a sin and that the Bible condemns it. For the longest time I only thought about homosexuality in an abstract, I don’t really care kind of way.

In the six months that I’ve been here in the United States, however, I’ve had to deal with homosexuality in a much more personal way than I would have normally liked. Three of my closest friends here in college are LGBTQs (Translation = Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Questioning). Two are them are fairly stereotypical homosexuals. They act exactly as one would generally expect a gay or bisexual person to act like. Despite being fairly good friends with them I never actually did see homosexuality the way they did. It was only when my closest guy friend—a guy whom I almost got set up with(yes, as in the dating kind)—“came out” to me at the end of last year that I came face to face with this issue for real.

Francis[ actual name withheld ] isn’t really a stereotypical homosexual person. It actually took me a while to believe him when he told me that he was gay. Lesson # 1: Homosexuals are really not the way movies and books make us think they are. Francis[ actual name withheld ] is like any other guy of his age; he plays sports, he almost obsessively loves football, he dresses in jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts and jackets, he has a relatively deep voice (no high pitched whining at all), he knows about more about current affairs and politics than I do and he’s a staunch activist of human rights. The only difference between Francis[ actual name withheld ] and any other guy of his age is his sexual preference. It seems a little unfair that I can announce that I find a guy attractive out loud and not get any reaction(except maybe a few agreements), but Francis[ actual name withheld ] can’t do the same without getting called a homo, a fag or even a pervert, even if people think that he’s joking.

I could hardly dare to say that having a gay best friend means that I can now understand homosexuals and their predicaments. On the contrary, the more I learn about homosexuality the more I realize how difficult it is for a straight/heterosexual person like me to really see the world the way they do. Homosexuals, even in a ‘liberal’ country like America are constantly facing discrimination. The common man in America is almost as superstitious about homosexuality as someone in India is about a black cat crossing one’s path (no offense to anyone who does believe that). Homosexuality is considered to be a disease, a mental disorder or even “God’s curse”. I recently watched a documentary called For The Bible Tells Me So”, which is a defense of homosexuality against the Christian way of thinking about it. It includes interviews with several sets of religious parents regarding their personal experiences raising homosexual children, and also interviews with those (adult) children. It also includes footage of anti-homosexuality rallies and has several very opinionated quotes that condemn homosexuality. Watching that footage made me wonder: If watching all that made me feel so queasy, what about the homosexual person against whom all that hate was directed? They must feel a million times worse than I do.

One of the most common beliefs about homosexuality is that it is a choice. Parents who find out that their child is homosexual send them for counseling and put them under medication in an effort to ‘de-gay’ them. I don’t think a homosexual can choose to be who he/she is more than I can choose to be straight. It’s just that socially it is not acceptable to be anything other than heterosexual. Legally a homosexual person has fewer rights than a heterosexual person, Gay marriages are not allowed in most of the states in the US—it seems interesting that the government is working harder to ban gay marriages than it is to deal with the ever increasing divorce rates; gay partners are not given the same rights as family members for hospital visitation and gay people getting appointed to high posts have to face death threats almost every day (case in point Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who had to wear a bullet proof vest under his robes when he was getting ordained, just in case.) I think that denying such rights to gay people is one of the grossest injustices being done in the world today. And trying to legalize this injustice is even more depraved than that. As Rita May Brown says: “No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love. The only queer people are those who don’t love anybody.”

Even if homosexuality is a sin—which I personally don’t agree with any longer—it still doesn’t give heterosexual people the license to de-humanize them. Gay people are god’s creation, just as straight people are. I feel depriving homosexuals of any right that is given to a heterosexual people is what really should be called a sin. As Paul Newman put it: I’m a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either… There are so many qualities that make up a human being… by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private [lives] is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.

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