I’m presenting a series here called "Exposing the Religious Right."

The introduction/first installment is here.

The second installment, discussing the motivations/starting points of the RR is here.

I’m hoping that, through this series on the Religious Right (RR), I can shed some light on the RR, especially to other conservatives and Republicans who are wary of the RR.  This is not necessarily to defend the RR and every typical policy position of the RR, but to explain that there is a logic and practicality to the positions and activism of the RR, as opposed to mere animus and ignorance, as critics allege.

Highly relevant to the RR position I discuss below is their position I discussed previously, that Sex is For Marriage.


Homosexual Behavior is Wrong

The RR maintains that sex is for marriage.  Marriage, according to almost all of human history across all cultures, and according to the Bible and other holy books, is something requiring both a male and a female.  Therefore, the RR also maintains that homosexual behavior is wrong.  Genitals are designed for sex and male and female genitals are designed for each other, for reproduction, pleasure, and bonding, and any activity using them with anyone other than a marriage partner means doing something you ought not to be doing and bonding/sharing with someone in a way that is counterproductive to marriage and dishonors marriage.  Same-sex “behavior” is also nonproductive from a societal perspective, as it will never produce children and thereby does not tangibly benefit society as a whole, while both-sexes behavior does produce children, even if every instance does not.

The RR is well aware that there are people that, for whatever reasons, are not attracted to the opposite sex and/or are attracted to people of the same sex as them.  The RR is not denying the existence of those feelings or lack of feelings.  What I am saying is that the RR considers acting on those feelings with your genitals is wrong because it uses them in a way that was not intended and can even be physically and emotionally harmful.

Like all sex outside of marriage (except some of the list of legally prohibited or regulated sexual behavior I listed in the previous posting), the RR does not push for law enforcement to forcibly go into the homes of homosexual couples and catch them in the act.  However, the RR is definitely opposed to supporting the use of bath houses and rest stops for this activity; the claim that there is a right to engage in such activity; public demonstrations or simulations of such activity such as at parades, events, and theme parks; teaching in schools and training in the workplace that such activity is equivalent to heterosexual behavior; and forcing the public to recognize unions based on homosexuality - and therefore missing one of the sexes - as marriages.

The RR also cites public health issues in that these behaviors are associated with an increased transmission of disease, elevated level of health problems, shorter life spans, higher levels of domestic violence, substance abuse, and mental illness.

When homosexual behavior breaks up a marriage in which someone promised another lifelong commitment, when it causes a child to be raised in a situation without a father or a mother, those are also things that the RR sees as negatives.

But, as I already pointed out, who is going to know if you are doing it in the bedroom?  Nobody, unless you call the police with some made-up story that gets them into your home and into your bedroom while you put on a show for them.

Why so much focus on this?  For one, our society is obsessed with sex.  If you don’t think we have an obsession, then why do car magazines feature scantily clad women draped across the hood of a car, and why do people pay money to watch someone undress while dancing?  Everyone eats, but who pays to have a meal they are not going to eat slowly unveiled in front of them?  For another reason, the family is central to society, and homosexuality advocacy activism is seen by the RR as a threat to the family in a way that I will now explain.

Apparently, for some of the people who practice homosexuality to feel equal to those who don’t, they have to tear down every tradition and break society down and even deny the differences between the sexes, (which is self-defeating, because if there was no difference, wouldn’t everyone be bisexual)?

For homosexuality activists to accuse the RR of fixating on this matter is like when a woman gets dolled up, stands up on a stage, sings and dances, and then wonders aloud why everyone is looking at her.  The RR didn’t choose this fight.  A major reason the RR became active was as a defense they saw as a necessity in this fight.

The bottom line is that RR people do not sit around thinking of ways to crush the dreams of homosexual people, or how to make them feel uncomfortable, or how to beat them up, or how to vandalize their property, or insults to hurl at them.  The RR would pretty much leave homosexual people alone and let them live as they choose if it weren't for activism push by the homosexuality lobby.  Some RR people are uncomfortable with the notion of homosexuality, some find it disgusting, and some really just don’t care about it much at all, but just about everyone in the RR is in agreement in having no desire whatsoever to use the force of government to persecute people for being gay.

However, the activists make it impossible for the RR to stay silent, given the RR's deeply held convictions.  The activists have forced a response by the RR by demanding not just tolerance but affirmation and support, overhauling public school curricula into social engineering to esteem homosexual behavior, demanding the alteration of marriage for everyone into something that loses its essence, parades and other public events like mass coordinated gatherings at family-oriented theme parks, hate crimes legislation that criminalize thoughts and feelings, and workplace restrictions on religious expression and practice.  The rewriting of medical and psychological diagnostic materials and school textbooks, the insertion of homosexual activist themes into the mass media, the actions of GLAAD, HRC, LAMBDA, GLSEN, GSA, and PFLAG groups have driven otherwise politically inactive people to align with RR organizations.

Activists claim that people who practice homosexuality are exactly the same as everyone else and that the only thing that sets them apart is the attraction to the same sex.  If that is true, then the RR understands that when you’re calling attention to yourself as a homosexual in a parade or some other public event, you’re calling attention to your sexual desires in front of their children, and the RR tends to react against sexualizing children and assaulting their innocence with sexual thoughts.

Your family may not be thrilled with your homosexuality, but no law is going to change that.  The reason your family isn’t thrilled likely has to do with all of the baggage that comes along with the lifestyle and things like grandchildren, not what someone from the RR is saying.  Most parents want their kids to experience parenthood, just like they did, and they’ll understand if you are physically unable to have children.  But to make the choice to avoid having children, thus stopping the family line, or raising their grandchildren purposely without a mother or without a father, disturbs some parents on some level.

A common retort to  the RR's disapproval of homosexual behavior is “Say goodbye to fashion, and entertainment, and art, and, blah blah blah because so-and-so was/is gay.”  But this is missing the point.  You are more than your sexual attraction.  RR people aren’t saying they don’t want you to exist.  They are saying that they don’t approve of certain behaviors.  Activists are the ones making it “all or nothing.”  You may not approve of adultery, or lying, or child abuse, or any other numbers of sins and crimes engaged in by people who have contributed to society over the various years. Do you think you approve of everything that airline pilot likes to do?  Do you think that you approve of everything that doctor has ever done?  No, but you still accept them as part of society, and the same goes for how the RR people feel about you.  That is one of the basic tenets of Christianity - that everyone is flawed, but we are to love them anyway.  The solution to living together isn’t to glorify those flaws, but rather to work in keeping them in check, improving ourselves, and true tolerance.

I’m not going to get into the cause of homosexual attraction here.  As for behavior, the fact that the RR cites is that you do have a choice of whether or not you will engage in homosexual behavior.  You do have a choice of whether or not to act your attractions or feelings.  If not, we could never fault anyone for adultery, polygamy, child molestation, murder, or attempting suicide, and I’m not equating homosexual behavior with those things, so don’t even go there.  A bisexual person who chooses monogamy refrains from acting on all attractions.

Since the RR believes marriage is something created by God - holy matrimony – that requires a male and a female, and because they believe homosexual behavior is wrong and a choice, the people of the RR are not going to give their blessing to changing the entire institution of marriage to include any coupling that requests such recognition.

If you had a deeply held conviction regarding a practice as old as time that was recognized by law, how would you feel if a minority of people got together and demanded that the law be changed so that another practice that was inherently different would be identified with your tradition?

Marriage is a basic building block for society, uniting both sexes and providing a stable context for sexual activity, bringing a basic order to society.  Both-sex couplings are the only kind of union that can naturally produce children and provide both a male and a female parent.  Since the RR sees this as the best way to raise the next generation of citizens, soldiers, leaders, votes, taxpayers, etc., the government has a vested interest in regulating marriage.  It does not have that same interest in regulating single-sex couplings, which can never produce children without the aid of at least one third party.

The RR is not working to keep you from living together, from having ceremonies, from entering contracts, or from enjoying the same protections against harassment, physical attacks, and property crimes as anyone else.  However, the RR will not agree to let you indoctrinate their children in schools, or to let you remove the core meaning of marriage, or agree that homosexual behavior is a healthy equivalent to heterosexual behavior, or that it is okay for people to pretend to me members of the other sex by either dressing inappropriately or by undergoing elective surgery and hormone treatments.

You may vehemently disagree with the RR’s position in this matter.  It is a very polarizing issue.  I’m attempting to explain the RR's position, and to say that in my experience with the RR, the RR does not hate people for having homosexual feelings or acting on them, though it does think that the behavior is wrong and shouldn't be presented as positive, and does promote the option of people with homosexual tendencies and feelings dealing with them openly and then living either asexually or as heterosexuals.