Right Side of the Rainbow

Paleoconservative Star Parker acknowledges what most suspect, many fear and others cheer — the tide of public opinion is turning on gay marriage:

The most recent polling shows that a strong majority of Americans oppose legal recognition of same sex marriage (58 percent) and a slight majority favor a constitutional amendment (50 percent for, 47 percent opposed). The support breaks out consistently along partly lines. Republicans favor the amendment (66 percent for) and Democrats oppose (55 percent against).

These results are about the same as they were last year. However, they have changed a lot over the last 10 years. Today 39 percent of Americans support legal recognition of same sex marriage, up from 27 percent 10 years ago and 58 percent oppose, down from 68 percent 10 years ago.

Completing the picture of what seems reasonable to call a trend, the area of the population where support for same-sex marriage is strongest and growing is among young people. Time does not seem to favor those who want to preserve tradition.

Correct. And this is one reason why gays and lesbians should not seek court rulings that elicit backlash from transient majorities. We should instead follow the example of a winning football team in the closing minutes of the game: fall on the ball and run the clock. We don’t need yardage. We need time.

But Ms. Parker’s admission of the apparent isn’t what caught my attention. This is:

… along with the trend toward increasing acceptance of the idea of same-sex marriage has been the complete obliteration of the idea that homosexuality is a type of behavior as opposed to a state of being. The discussion has long disappeared that this is about attitudes regarding this behavior and it has become almost exclusively cast as discrimination claims against gays and lesbians.

[…]

Now there are without question instances where individuals change their sexual behavior.

I have never heard of instance of a black person becoming white or vice versa.

Yet, somehow we have gotten to the point where it is generally accepted that being gay is a fact and not a choice. [Emphasis mine.]

Notice the conflation of behavior with orientation? Ms. Parker first reduces the homosexual to his genitals, and then concludes that what he can do with them explains the whole of his being.

Here, as fairly as I can put it, is Mr. Parker’s argument in syllogistic form, albeit it with one modification:

Minor premise: There are without question instances where heterosexuals have changed their sexual behavior (e.g., in prison, in the military, in British boarding schools).

Major premise: Behavior is a synonym for orientation.

Conclusion: Therefore, heterosexuality is a choice and not a fact.

In Ms. Parker’s argument, the outside experiences of a few homosexuals belie the inside experiences of all the rest. Accordingly, she ignores any of the extra-sexual elements of gay attraction or relationships, including emotional comfort, psychological support, intellectual stimulation or spiritual growth. She does not commend to us the mysteries that in any case bind one human intimately to another. She commends to us only what people can do with their sex organs. That, she would have us believe, tells the whole story — or at least it does where gays and lesbians are concerned.

Fortunately, Ms. Parker’s argument is evidently unpersuasive to the Nation’s youth. They have come to see gays and lesbians in a way she does not: as human beings.