One of the most puzzling things about conservative opposition to homosexuality and the conservative push to save marriage as the culturally Christian ideal of one man wed to one woman is that they are excessively fixated on male homosexuality. Opposing male homosexual acts may be part of traditional Christian (and Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, etc.) dogma, but the same is true for fornication and other sexual sins that are all but excused today.
Furthermore, only a small minority of men are homosexual. Most men have no interest in sexual relations with other men, and never will. There’s no evidence that I know of that suggests one can convert people to homosexuality. As far as I see it, Christian hysteria about it is a major waste of effort.
Gay men have never been at the forefront of trying to dismantle ordinary heterosexual marriage, but rather have simply wanted to avoid being hounded for their behavior. Sometimes, of course, their behavior does get out of hand, and in those cases something needs to be done (hooking up for sex in city parks being an example), but for the most part it has little to no influence on others’ lives. Most straight men are perfectly content so long as it is out of sight and out of mind.
Perhaps there’s a grain of truth in the characterization of opponents of homosexuality as “homophobes,” but a certain degree of homophobia is probably natural amongst straight men. Although we aren’t supposed to admit it today, most of us find gay male sex disgusting, and the thought of it as a widespread public activity can inspire some anger. Gay PRIDE parades seem calculated to stir this up, and a degree of outrage over the sexual antics of those parading themselves in public ought to be expected. If the point of the PRIDE parades truly is, at least in part, an attempt to bait straight men, they have done their job pretty well.
The result has been disproportionate focus on these antics and the provocateurs who engage in them on the part of conservative organizations. A real, organized anti-homosexual movement – which never existed before – came about in response, and its main target is the flagrant male homosexual. I can imagine that the attention the flagrant types get from this gives them great personal satisfaction, which only provides the motivation for more of the same. And so the rest of the country is treated to this bizarre, and increasingly obnoxious, spectacle that brings circuses of the old days to mind.
However, it should be pointed out that this is just a sideshow. A certain subset of homosexual men may love attention and drama, and they may be as good as anyone at getting it, but as far as threats to the integrity of the normal, heterosexual family, they rank somewhere along the scale of a gnat or mosquito, hardly meriting a bark, much less a roar.
Behind all the bluster and show, a far more insidious threat has been gnawing at the roots of the family. And although it is not exclusively so, it tends to be strongly motivated by a politicized form of female homosexuality. First, it should be stated that homosexuality may not be a proper term for what we know of as lesbianism, because the male kind of homosexuality suggests an additional element of sexuality, whereas in the female case there seems to be something of an omission. Where gay men appear to have elements of both male and female sexuality, the lesbian typically has little discernible measure of either. So perhaps lesbians should be referred to as “anti-sexual” rather than homosexual. The difference between lesbians and gay men is polar; there is no real affinity between the groups if we are to take human sexuality as a spectrum.
Back in the 70s, while gay men were going to discos and drag shows, lesbian feminists were attending political meetings in which they denounced the “patriarchy” and conspired to subjugate men. They worked their way into positions at universities, published papers and infiltrated and took over public bureaucracies. They were far overrepresented as “first women” in a number of occupations, from FBI agent to astronaut. In fact, given that lesbians comprise less than 1% of the female population, their domination of early entry into the traditionally male sphere of influence was quite an accomplishment, and suggests that not only do they have a higher ability in these occupations than the average female, but a far higher “Wille zur Macht” as well. If there is anything that characterizes the political lesbian, it is precisely this drive for power and dominance, which also happens to be a theme that permeates feminist literature.
There’s nothing particularly odious about the drive to succeed, especially from a male perspective, so rather than get in their way, Western men generally obliged these driven females, finding them adequate for the job, and perhaps in many cases possessed of an ambition that they respected and that most of their male peers lacked. Additionally, men have little interest in mannish or androgynous women, so sexual tension in the workplace was no real issue with them.
Aside from some prurient interest in girl-on-girl porn (which is actually a straight male genre), men could care less about all things lesbian. Just as John in delivery doesn’t care what Rob in accounting is doing on the weekend, the activities of the lesbians they know or know of arouse not the slightest interest. They feel no strong emotions either way, and tend to ignore them. This mirrors society’s attitude toward gender feminism, and thus we have conservative Christians railing about flamboyant gayboys while gender feminists write and lobby for laws designed to strike right at the heart of social norms regarding marriage.
If anyone thinks I’m exaggerating, they need only read the lesbian feminist texts themselves. Condemnation of men and masculinity in toto are common themes in lesbian feminism. As opposed to the ambivalent attitude toward the feminine that homosexual men often display, lesbian feminists unequivocally label masculinity as a negative force, and offer “final solutions” up to and including androcide. The sheer force and volume of hostility against men is so overwhelming in the genre that it raises the question of why men have tolerated it for so long, allowing people who literally want to wipe them and their sons off the face of the earth to continue in positions of influence in academic and political institutions. The likely answer is that it’s a combination of indifference and a sense that it shouldn’t be taken seriously, but given the damage that’s been done, this attitude should be reevaluated.
Before we can take steps to reintroduce some balance into the narrative, far more men and women must be made aware of the radicals who have had disproportionate influence in family law and all matters concerning relations between the sexes for far too long. In order to do so, they will first have to cut through some of the emotion surrounding the homosexual issue, including the gay marriage issue, and take a realistic view of the threat posed by each faction.
Straight men ought to ask themselves whether gay men are a threat to their marriages and families in any way. I think they’ll find that they are not. Women should start to question whether gender feminism, with its concomitant hatred of men and drive to upend traditional forms of family, are ultimately in their own and their children’s interest. For a few, it may be an advantage, but we are seeing a slow, yet steady degradation of female “sexual capital” as a result of these policies. A society in which women play first the whore and then the beast of burden – a characteristic of barbarism – rather than maiden then mother is where we are headed if things don’t change soon.
As for lesbians themselves, I see no reason that they should be permanently stained by their association with lesbian gender feminism when the movement has finally been discredited, just as there’s no reason to permanently associate Germans with Nazis or Calvinists with Cromwell. Historically, and even today, we have had honest, open and accomplished lesbians who have borne no particular enmity to men in general. Why lesbianism has come to be associated with a particularly vile, misandric form of feminism would be a good topic for an academic publication, but for the time being we can only offer speculation.
Conservatives should begin to pay attention to the decades-long assault on the family that has been ongoing not in bathhouses or gay bars, but rather in the halls of state capitols, universities, and courts across the nation. Sometimes, the easiest targets are merely a diversion. Although nobody is suggesting Christians drop their spiritual opposition to physical acts of homosexuality, it would be better if they were to put it in its proper perspective, and recognize that fornication – very common amongst straight Christians themselves – is just as grave a sin, and certainly the greater evil in terms of its power to cause social problems and decay (e.g. widespread abortion, illegitimacy and divorce).
The non-religious or skeptical among us should be outraged that a tiny faction of radicals has managed to exert so much influence over our private families and lives. Many of those who complain about social conservatives and their influence would do well to remember that they cannot be arrested or have their children seized for defying churches, but they certainly can and will in the event that they run up against policies put in place by the gender feminist fanatics who dominate family law.
It’s time we took a serious look at who is really behind the destruction of the family, and rather than rage about side issues, hold them to account.
