And back to something completely different, on topic and from another angle completely.
I was reading a book several days ago called The Death of Right and Wrong, by Tammy Bruce, who is an openly gay feminist who is not particuarly religious. And she writes some interesting things.
For example, "Instead of being about tolerance and equal treatment under the law, today's gay movement, in the hands of extremists, now uses the language of rights to demand acceptance of the depraved, the damaged, and the malignantly narcissistic." She is talking about the gay movement in America, of course. And she writes:
"Of course, there are those rare individuals who are born with a chromosome abnormality that produces legitimate gender issues. What I'm talking about here is something very different: men, and sometimes women, who have been so traumatized that they are unable to accept themselves. Psychologically they feel the compulsion to disappear themselves by changing their very existence. How all this works has not been studied with a serious and objective psychological eye. In fact, researchers supportive of 'reassignment surgery' readily admit that there is really no research addressing the possibility that 'gender identity disorder' is in fact a mental illness, to be treated as such rather than taken as a cue for surgical transformation [... quoting from a medical report ...] 'the question of whether distress is inherent to transvestism or imposed by social pressures is not resolved ... It is again not clearly defined who is ill and who is not, the judgment resting upon the personal values of the evaluator.' [in her own words] Theories that rest on the subjective 'personal values' of a researcher instead of on concrete scientific definitions are a cornerstone of moral relativism. They have condemned many who simply need psychiatric help to believing that mutilating their bodies will solve their problems."
When I first read James Dobson's book I thought he was being incredibly presumptuous and unfair when he said things like: "In the present instance, homosexual activists, heady with power and exhilaration, feel the political climate is right to tell us what they have wanted all along. This is the real deal: Most gays and lesbians do NOT want to marry each other. That would entangle them in all sorts of legal constraints. Who needs a life-time commitment to one person? THE INTENTION HERE IS TO CREATE AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LEGAL STRUCTURE."
Or: "The shouting and blustering of homosexual activists is not unlike that of a rebellious teen who slams doors, throws things around, and threatens to run away. Most parents have had to deal with this kind of behavior and have learned that giving in at such a time can be disastrous for both parties. What's needed is loving firmness in the face of temper tantrums and accusations."
But now I am tempted to think that Tammy Bruce and James Dobson are talking about the same people, what Ms. Bruce calls the "Gay Elite," who have the attitude 'any-perversion-is-our-perversion.' She describes one instance when (I am paraphrasing) a young lesbian with almost every visible piece of skin pierced was talking at some sort of gay issues meeting about the kind of S&M practice she had with her girlfriend, and Ms. Bruce stood up and said that "the desire to cause pain to someone else is sick, S&M has nothing to do with homosexuality and the fact that no one at this meeting is saying anything in response is highly disturbing." She was shouted down, called names, etc.
I was wondering if anyone else has read this book, or her other book, The New Thought Police? She makes several good points, although I don't agree with everything she says.
I think that most people who are against gay marriage are against it for one or both of these reasons: 1) they are disturbed by the kinds of extreme Left attitudes The Death of Right and Wrong talks about, and 2) they think marriage is an institution that should be protected by the church. I get the impression, reading and listening to people opposed to gay marriage, that they would much rather deny homosexuality exists; they'd rather it just go away. "Man and woman were made for each other." "Being black or white, Hispanic or Asian, is not like being homosexual. The ban on interracial marriage was put in place to keep 2 races apart; that was wrong. Marriage is God's way, and society's way, of bringing 2 people together; that is right." Not everybody is "made for each other" like that. It is nice to go on pretending that God made everybody that way, but it denies the lives of many people; you can't do it for long without selectively not seeing whole parts of humanity. Homosexuality is a reality; it isn't something that you can go on denying, and compassionate, conscientious people should be willing to listen to other's experiences and struggles. I liked another part in "Trembling before G-d," where one said that at some level you know there's a difference between "this is something that needs to be fixed" and "this is who I am."
edit:
sunwalk, thank you ... I am trying
But yes, see it if you can, it's great. And with the DVD there's another feature, a short film called something like "On the Road with 'Trembling'" and it's very good too, about the response to the film.