Insight?

Ptichka brings home the NYT Magazine every week and every week I ignore it unless she points something out to me. Well, she pointed out the cover story from last Sunday's magazine because it focuses on the anti-gay-marriage movement in the US. Most of the story didn't really surprise me. The idea of homosexuality being a choice isn't anything new, even if there is a growing amount of scientific evidence to the contrary. The idea that being gay means that you automatically advocate a hedonistic life-style is also nothing new. I mean, homosexuals don't base their opinions on heterosexuals on Mardi Gras, the eighties, and Hollywood movies, so I don't think it's fair for straight people to use Pride, the eighties, and Hollywood movies to determine what gay people are like. The idea of gays recruiting through the educational system also isn't new. Then there is all the pseudo-science that the movement trots out and maybe after PZ Myers vanquishes the creationists, he can go after the Family Research Council and their ilk.

But what really surprised me was the second half of the following statistic:

Only about a quarter of voters surveyed in the national exit poll following the election favored same-sex marriage, and interestingly enough, only about half of gay and bisexual voters did.

I don't get it. Why not? I keep thinking about an article I read a while back in which the author complained that as homosexuals in the US gradually gained more rights sexual orientation would cease to be the defining feature of a homosexual individual's identity. Back then I didn't see it as such a bad thing. I still don't. Does one really need to belong to a collective outside of humanity to define oneself? Admittedly, being gay is part of my identity but not to the point where I am automatically accepting of someone because s/he is gay. You may belong to one of my tribes (and they are legion) but I can still think that you're an idiot and refuse to spend time with you on the grounds that you are idiot. The way I look at is that stupidity is equal opportunity. Being gay doesn't make one exempt from bad choices nor does it necessarily make one more socially progressive except in one little slice of the progressive pie, just as it doesn't make one more prone to making immoral ones or dumb ones. It just means that you'd rather sleep with a member of the same sex. End of story.

But if anyone else out there has any other ideas about why gays/bisexuals wouldn't approve of same-sex marriage, I'd love to hear from you. I'm curious.