By Tabitha Kazabrown
Brown Daily Herald
Tolerance can be a virtue. America would be a happier place if
tolerance were practiced more often. However, a line must be drawn
between a desire for tolerance and coercively using government
power to enforce tolerance. As Hobbes said, freedom is found in
"the silence of the laws."
When laws are silent, they may be viewed as passively tolerant
or passively intolerant. The average American does not want
homosexual sex to be illegal. After all, sex is private business.
Legal silence tolerates sexual behavior between consenting adults,
and this makes people happy, because the freedom to engage in
sexual behavior of their choice is protected. All laws regulating
consensual sexual behavior, then, should be struck down.
Gay rights activists, however, want more than passive tolerance,
because they interpret the law’s silence as permitting
intolerance.
It is not enough for their sexual behavior to be their private
business; they want the majority of Americans, who find homosexual
sex morally and aesthetically abhorrent, to be forced to tolerate
it through the law.
Their legal claim must fail, because the form of protection they
desire rests on the legal status of a behavior, not a state of
being.
The moral code of America generally frowns on those who do not
tolerate states of being. If a person is disgusted by the elderly
simply because they are old, then he may be considered intolerant.
The same moral code generally tolerates those who do not tolerate
certain behaviors. If a person is disgusted by the way old people
drive, so be it.
Intolerance of behavior is fine, as long as the expression of
intolerance is not a physical attack. A person may not shoot bad
old drivers, but he may scream obscenities in his car.
Homosexuality can be a state of being. The active homosexual
lifestyle, however, is a sexual behavior. Homosexuality is a label
given to those who have sexual relationships with members of the
same sex. Their identity is therefore based upon their sexual
behavior. Beyond their sexual acts, there is nothing to
differentiate them from anyone else.
Sexual acts of all kinds are completely exposed to criticism.
Indeed, some homosexuals apparently find heterosexual sex
repulsive, and they will gladly say so.Oral sex, anal sex,
contraceptive sex, sex with animals, S&M – all of these are
sexual acts which various people find acceptable or
unacceptable.
If one form of sexual behavior is legally protected from
disapproval, then all forms of sexual behavior may also be thus
protected.
If sexual lifestyles were to be legally protected, what would we
have to accept? Nonconsensual sex would remain illegal, but once
consensual sexual behavior gained legal status, who would have
claims? Prostitutes? Adulterers? Pornographers? Nondiscrimination
status makes a strong statement: no one has the right to be
intolerant of these particular states of being. Once a form of
behavior is included, the ground rules change.
The law is silent about homosexuality as a state of being,
because besides their sexual behavior, homosexuals are just like
everyone else. The law must be silent about the homosexual
lifestyle, because sexual behavior should not be affirmed by the
law.
It should be illegal to discriminate against people for their
state of being, such as being black, but it must be legal to
discriminate based upon behavior. Homosexual lifestyles are not
states of being; they inherently involve behavior which may be
judged. Legal protection would force obligations on third parties
that would violate their rights to freedom of association, speech,
and religion.
Employers who discriminate against qualified homosexual job
applicants, while perhaps irrational, must have that right, because
they have the right to choose what behavioral type of employee they
want to work with; therefore, attributes such as attitude and
sexual behavior may be taken into account. A job applicant with
four nose rings will probably not be hired by a bank, even if he is
qualified.
Discrimination based upon behavior may not be good in and of
itself, but it is a right employers must have. IBM extended
benefits to gay couples; as a private company, they chose to treat
homosexual behavior in the same way they treat heterosexual
behavior. People who discriminate against practicing homosexuals
lose qualified applicants, and risk public disapproval. The market,
then, takes care of its own; the government should have no coercive
role.
Everyone must have the right to think and say homosexual sex is
immoral and destructive.
There are religious and secular reasons why homosexual sex may
be disapproved. But is disapproval of homosexual sex the same as
hatred of homosexuals?
Certainly, some people are unable to separate an act from the
actor. And yet, some are able to do so; for example, death penalty
opponents can hate the crime and yet find compassion for the
criminal. In any case, it does not matter if disapproval is
directed at the individual or his acts.
As long as the disapproval does not physically affront the
individual involved, the law should allow it. As a matter of taste,
however, those who can "love the sinner, hate the sin" are
commendable.
Gay rights activists may argue that disapproval of homosexual
sex is the same as disapproval of a natural bodily function.
However, sexual lifestyles, unlike physical processes, involve will
and choice. It does not matter if homosexuality is determined by
nature, nurture, or choice. People choose their sexual lifestyles.
Indeed, even the most necessary physical processes, such as eating,
may be judged when the manner in which they are carried out is
taken into consideration. Eating may be natural, but when someone
eats sloppily, people have the right to disapprove.
Tolerance for sexual behaviors unlike one’s own may be a virtue
to some people, as intolerance for certain sexual behaviors is,
likewise, a virtue to other people.
Those who participate in disapproved sexual behaviors may
strategically wish to have them legitimized by the government. Gay
rights activists have failed to convince most Americans that
homosexual sex is deserving of acceptance; therefore, they have
turned to the power of the government to enforce their agenda.
Their ideas about sexuality should not be the law of the land; they
must rely on the power of persuasion.
Americans must have the right to do wrong, as long as they do
not infringe on others’ rights’ however, no one can demand approval
of these wrongs. If a woman is promiscuous, people may be disgusted
and call her a slut. If a man cheats on his wife, people may be
disgusted and call him an adulterer.
If a man has sex with a man, people may be disgusted and call
him a homosexual.
There should be no laws prohibiting consensual sexual behavior,
nor should there be laws requiring approval of any form of sexual
behavior. After all, "you can’t legislate morality."