Monday, April 05, 2004
Anti-gay hate mongering on the web....
Boy, this stuff is bothersome. It's like reading KKK or Nazi propaganda. Go to the Family Research Council or any other dozens of sites. Some of the most disturbing things (besides bizarre Protocols-of-Zion like treatesies, like the "Gay Agenda Manifesto") are when people start citing statistics to argue against gay marriage.
We all know how to lie with statistics. But boy, these people have some doozies. And they all site the same supposed studies. You can get a good summary of them here:
Making sense (trying to!) of varying statistics on gay monogamy
What do we make of all this weird science? People citing dozens of obscure, suspect studies to argue that gay couples are less monogamous than straight couples, therefore, undeserving of marriage.
Man, where do you even start debunking this crap?
Could we have a few basic points, like:
1. Comparing a "gay relationship" to a "married couple" is hardly a comparison, when by relationship they mean casual dating to just about anything. When the studies cite people who have made an "explicit marriage-like public commitment," then the monogomy stats go way up.
2. Most of the studies in the non-monogamy camp are from the '70's and early '80s. We know how the community has changed since then. These statistics-mongers act as if the "average homosexual couple" is some lab experiment rat in a time-bubble with some inherent non-monogomous acting color-coded flavor that is some immutable quality. The idea of an evolving community and changing norms is, of course, anathema to them from the start. Even so, we all know there were monogamous couples even then. None of these "studies" had any methodology for non-skewed selection methods - so where did they get the few hundred people they asked? These aren't studies - they're anecdotes told by gay people for gay people. Like using black lingo to prove that blacks aren't educated....
3. Men as a whole are less committed to monogamy than women. The studies make no mention of the higher monogamy rates (than straights) in lesbian couples.
4. Next, let's take the promiscuity statistics paintbrush that is so often used to paint gay people as some kind of strange, sex-crazed less-than-human beasts. Let's do this. Let's ask straight men this question: "if you are talking about the number of sexual partner's you've had with your male friends, would you think it better to have a larger, or a smaller, number?" I think that you would find a very high majority saying it would be better to have a larger number. What does this prove? It proves that men like having sexual partners. (Nature/nuture/culture - the reason for it is less important.) The same thing is true of gay men and straight men; less so of lesbians and straight women. Straight men have sex with women - logically, there would be less opportunity to have as many sexual partners than if they had sex with men who also had a greater interest in having more sexual partners. I'm saying nothing new, folks - this has been said a zillion times. The points here are many: 1) it's a gender thing, not a gay thing; 2) using it to deride gay people is the worst prejudicial stereotype, like "hook-nosed, money hungry Jews" and "ignorant, lazy Blacks"; 3) what the hell has it to do with partnerships, or committment in the first place? It's a red herring - everyone has more partners when they are young and single, then they find a partner, fall in love, and have less partners. That's relationships and sexuality: gay or straight, it's the same.
5. Okay. Even if, as the one and only recent, fairly scientific study suggests, only 50% of Vermont gay male civil union couples are committed to sexual monogamy compared with 70% of straight married men - a statistic that I would be happy to grant - then, we are saying that gay people don't deserve the legal protections of marriage because of 20% more gay couples than straight couples might have an arrangement that allows for sex outside of marriage? Regardless of whether or not monogamy is "bad" or "good" for marriage (an entirely debatable argument), I think that there is enough jurisprudence in the American justice system that effectively disallows discrimination based upon statistical profiling. Otherwise, colleges could disallow minority students (to keep their grade point averages up) and so on and so on. Besides, if the issue is infedelity, isn't the logical response to make infidelity illegal, not gay marriage? What about the rights of the 50% of monogamous gay couples who are creating a fine, upstanding example of fedilitous commitment? Shouldn't these people's marriages be considered better role models (and more legal?) than, say, those of Bill Cllinton, Jim Baker, or Brittany Spears?
6. Okay. Another big point here that isn't so obvious. All these studies are asking people's *opinion* about monogamy. None of them actually study how many couples *really are* monogamous. So, fewer gay couples *think* that they ought to be monogamous. But isn't the real question, how many couples are cheating on their partner? And isn't "cheating" defined when you are violating the terms of your relationship? (That is, monogamy for one couple might be - no lusting in your heart - while for another, lusting is okay if you don't touch. For a third, maybe a little touching in the showers, but that's where they draw the line.) The point is, of those 70% of straight men who "ought" to be monogamous (however they define that), how many of them actually are? There's no study. And my sense is, if you DID do a study of this- a CHEATING study - I think you might find that gay couples cheat LESS than straight couples (if you could ever get a straight answer out of a straight couple - it's unlikely that most cheaters are going to confess). Even if a small percentage of gay couples have drawn the line in a little further place than their straight partners, aren't the odds that they'll break that code smaller? At least the gay couples have openly discussed the terms of their relationship more. Does that mean they stick to their agreements more? Maybe not. But common sense says it is likely so. But what are the stats? That's the crucial point - all this other stuff is hogwash.
7. Okay - but let's debate the hogwash, just for fun. So, even if 50% of gay couples commit to monogomy without the support of legal marriage, isn't it logical to think that allowing gay couples to marry and providing full marriage rights might actually *encourage* even more gay couples to tighten their standards for monogamy (again, assuming that "monogamy" has many definitions, and you may or may not think that tighter standards are necessarily better)?
8. Here's the final radical-conservative answer to all this: "It is much more likely that allowing gays to marry will increase non-monogamous heterosexual relationships than it will encourage monogamy amongst gay couples." Man, talk about Queer Eye for the Straight Marriage. So, all these newly married gay folk are going to be going around to their straight neighbors, throwing "key" parties and fixing them up at swinger clubs? I just don't know how one explains the extreme paranoia exhibited by this kind of thinking. What are these people on? How dissatisfied with their own sex life can they be? They must be REALLY horny....
I can just imagine the conversation at one of these Conservative Anti-Gay Christian households: "Damn, Martha. The homosexuals down the street just got married! Guess that means I've got to go out tomorrow and sleep with the nearest prostitute I can find...."
Boy, this stuff is bothersome. It's like reading KKK or Nazi propaganda. Go to the Family Research Council or any other dozens of sites. Some of the most disturbing things (besides bizarre Protocols-of-Zion like treatesies, like the "Gay Agenda Manifesto") are when people start citing statistics to argue against gay marriage.
We all know how to lie with statistics. But boy, these people have some doozies. And they all site the same supposed studies. You can get a good summary of them here:
Making sense (trying to!) of varying statistics on gay monogamy
What do we make of all this weird science? People citing dozens of obscure, suspect studies to argue that gay couples are less monogamous than straight couples, therefore, undeserving of marriage.
Man, where do you even start debunking this crap?
Could we have a few basic points, like:
1. Comparing a "gay relationship" to a "married couple" is hardly a comparison, when by relationship they mean casual dating to just about anything. When the studies cite people who have made an "explicit marriage-like public commitment," then the monogomy stats go way up.
2. Most of the studies in the non-monogamy camp are from the '70's and early '80s. We know how the community has changed since then. These statistics-mongers act as if the "average homosexual couple" is some lab experiment rat in a time-bubble with some inherent non-monogomous acting color-coded flavor that is some immutable quality. The idea of an evolving community and changing norms is, of course, anathema to them from the start. Even so, we all know there were monogamous couples even then. None of these "studies" had any methodology for non-skewed selection methods - so where did they get the few hundred people they asked? These aren't studies - they're anecdotes told by gay people for gay people. Like using black lingo to prove that blacks aren't educated....
3. Men as a whole are less committed to monogamy than women. The studies make no mention of the higher monogamy rates (than straights) in lesbian couples.
4. Next, let's take the promiscuity statistics paintbrush that is so often used to paint gay people as some kind of strange, sex-crazed less-than-human beasts. Let's do this. Let's ask straight men this question: "if you are talking about the number of sexual partner's you've had with your male friends, would you think it better to have a larger, or a smaller, number?" I think that you would find a very high majority saying it would be better to have a larger number. What does this prove? It proves that men like having sexual partners. (Nature/nuture/culture - the reason for it is less important.) The same thing is true of gay men and straight men; less so of lesbians and straight women. Straight men have sex with women - logically, there would be less opportunity to have as many sexual partners than if they had sex with men who also had a greater interest in having more sexual partners. I'm saying nothing new, folks - this has been said a zillion times. The points here are many: 1) it's a gender thing, not a gay thing; 2) using it to deride gay people is the worst prejudicial stereotype, like "hook-nosed, money hungry Jews" and "ignorant, lazy Blacks"; 3) what the hell has it to do with partnerships, or committment in the first place? It's a red herring - everyone has more partners when they are young and single, then they find a partner, fall in love, and have less partners. That's relationships and sexuality: gay or straight, it's the same.
5. Okay. Even if, as the one and only recent, fairly scientific study suggests, only 50% of Vermont gay male civil union couples are committed to sexual monogamy compared with 70% of straight married men - a statistic that I would be happy to grant - then, we are saying that gay people don't deserve the legal protections of marriage because of 20% more gay couples than straight couples might have an arrangement that allows for sex outside of marriage? Regardless of whether or not monogamy is "bad" or "good" for marriage (an entirely debatable argument), I think that there is enough jurisprudence in the American justice system that effectively disallows discrimination based upon statistical profiling. Otherwise, colleges could disallow minority students (to keep their grade point averages up) and so on and so on. Besides, if the issue is infedelity, isn't the logical response to make infidelity illegal, not gay marriage? What about the rights of the 50% of monogamous gay couples who are creating a fine, upstanding example of fedilitous commitment? Shouldn't these people's marriages be considered better role models (and more legal?) than, say, those of Bill Cllinton, Jim Baker, or Brittany Spears?
6. Okay. Another big point here that isn't so obvious. All these studies are asking people's *opinion* about monogamy. None of them actually study how many couples *really are* monogamous. So, fewer gay couples *think* that they ought to be monogamous. But isn't the real question, how many couples are cheating on their partner? And isn't "cheating" defined when you are violating the terms of your relationship? (That is, monogamy for one couple might be - no lusting in your heart - while for another, lusting is okay if you don't touch. For a third, maybe a little touching in the showers, but that's where they draw the line.) The point is, of those 70% of straight men who "ought" to be monogamous (however they define that), how many of them actually are? There's no study. And my sense is, if you DID do a study of this- a CHEATING study - I think you might find that gay couples cheat LESS than straight couples (if you could ever get a straight answer out of a straight couple - it's unlikely that most cheaters are going to confess). Even if a small percentage of gay couples have drawn the line in a little further place than their straight partners, aren't the odds that they'll break that code smaller? At least the gay couples have openly discussed the terms of their relationship more. Does that mean they stick to their agreements more? Maybe not. But common sense says it is likely so. But what are the stats? That's the crucial point - all this other stuff is hogwash.
7. Okay - but let's debate the hogwash, just for fun. So, even if 50% of gay couples commit to monogomy without the support of legal marriage, isn't it logical to think that allowing gay couples to marry and providing full marriage rights might actually *encourage* even more gay couples to tighten their standards for monogamy (again, assuming that "monogamy" has many definitions, and you may or may not think that tighter standards are necessarily better)?
8. Here's the final radical-conservative answer to all this: "It is much more likely that allowing gays to marry will increase non-monogamous heterosexual relationships than it will encourage monogamy amongst gay couples." Man, talk about Queer Eye for the Straight Marriage. So, all these newly married gay folk are going to be going around to their straight neighbors, throwing "key" parties and fixing them up at swinger clubs? I just don't know how one explains the extreme paranoia exhibited by this kind of thinking. What are these people on? How dissatisfied with their own sex life can they be? They must be REALLY horny....
I can just imagine the conversation at one of these Conservative Anti-Gay Christian households: "Damn, Martha. The homosexuals down the street just got married! Guess that means I've got to go out tomorrow and sleep with the nearest prostitute I can find...."
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