What People Mean When They Claim to ‘Disagree With’ Homosexuality

A thought-experiment where I try to get inside the mind of someone who says they “don’t agree with the gay lifestyle”

As a proud gay boy, I’ve already written extensively about obstacles faced by the LGBT+ community throughout our lives. Tokenism. Microaggressions. Sexual abuse. Underrepresentation. Social access. Lack of Queer-oriented sex ed. Neglect by school administrations.

But today, I’m going to examine the raw, fundamental dynamic of “orientationism” (discrimination based on another person due to their sexual orientation). At its core, like any “-ism” out there, it begins as a prejudicial attitude.

Very quickly, it can snowball from a passive belief into bigoted statements and/or actions that result in targeted mistreatment of other people.

At that point, it stops being a mere “prejudice.”

Bigotry in Motion

To illustrate my point, allow me to direct your attention to ABC’s hidden camera show What Would You Do? This program stages conflicts driven by actors in public areas. Its cameras capture how ordinary people — who have no idea they’re secretly being filmed — react to these difficult situations.

Airing in 2020, one segment (filmed in 2019, pre-pandemic) used Homewood Sporting Goods in Birmingham, Alabama as a setting. Two actors named Sam and Connor pretended to be a gay couple shopping for athletic gear. A third actor named Barden portrayed an obnoxious lout who proceeded to berate and harass this gay couple right in the middle of the store.

From a day’s worth of filming, WWYD showed us the reactions of four different customers who chose to intervene. After being told they’d been covertly filmed the entire time, these four individuals all would have had to sign consent forms allowing ABC to show their likenesses on national television.

If you watch the segment, the first, third, and fourth shown customers all reacted in ways that — in my opinion — were rational and appropriate.

It was the second shown customer whose speech and mindset was highly problematic.

This second customer gently took Barden aside to reprimand him for his behavior. While this was initially encouraging, the customer’s advice to Barden contained extremely bigoted and inhumane sentiments:

We may not agree with it, but as humans, it’s human nature. You just got to let them. I don’t agree with it. But they have a right to be that way. They have to answer for that.

Shortly thereafter, when Connor and Sam thanked the guy for choosing to intervene, he directly told them:

From a personal standpoint, you know, I may agree with you or not agree with you. But you have the right to live your life, and I can’t judge you for that.

While this customer was polite and eloquent, there was so much wrong with his rhetoric here that I barely even know where to begin…

Gee, You’re So Generous…

The video’s Comments Section contained lots of lively discussion amongst viewers. Many folks disagreed with one another, from all angles and from every spot along the political spectrum. I even weighed in, myself.

First, it was extremely presumptuous for that second customer to frame himself as “letting” the gay couple openly be together in public. As though they somehow needed his — or any other heterosexual person’s — permission to shop together in a clothing store.

Let’s not kid ourselves: respect and decency are THE BARE MINIMUM to which anyone who isn’t causing harm to another person should be entitled.

So this customer was really in no position to “let” anyone be any particular sexual orientation. He was just saying it to make himself feel and appear magnanimous.

People are going to experience sexual attraction — whether it happens to be similar or dissimilar to our own — regardless of what we happen to think about it.

Furthermore, his line of “They’ll have to answer for that” implies he believes that his Creator will punish the gay couple for their “sin” once they reach the afterlife.

If that’s his religious belief, then that’s his religious belief. None of us can stop him from subscribing to that nonsensical dogma. But there is absolutely no need for him to utter it WITHIN EARSHOT of the two complete strangers (to him) about whose existence he is implicitly condemning.

Finally, it’s extremely disingenuous for this second customer to have claimed he wasn’t passing judgment on them — when, clearly, his own dialogue with Barden suggests that this customer very much views homosexuality as “immoral.”

He’s full of shit.

Nature or Nurture?

Why should anybody have an “opinion” about anyone else’s sexuality per se?

As long as they aren’t violating your personal space or trying to sexually proposition you…why is it so important for you to publicly voice how “immoral” you believe they are?

Obviously, you have the right to free speech. And nobody can literally prevent you from believing that homosexuality is wrong. But when you blabber on about it in these public venues, here’s what you are essentially saying to LGBT+ people:

“I respect you, but I fundamentally disagree with who you are as a person.”

Well, maybe I “fundamentally disagree with” your existence on this planet? How about that?

And let’s dig deeper. I realize people believe homosexuality is wrong or immoral because religious text suggests that’s the case.

But how do we know that those pages and pages of religious text went unaltered for so many centuries? And, even if they did survive unaltered for that entire time…how do we know for sure that its authors were necessarily recording the words of an omnipotent being?

Why is it so hard to believe that most/all of them may have been immortalizing their own heteronormative prejudices into written scripture?

Ultimately, I suspect a big part of orientationism is based on the eternal debate over whether homosexuality is inborn or voluntary. But even that argument falls apart.

Let’s assume for a moment that every single homosexual person in the world is literally choosing to be attracted to others of the same sex.

How is that any different from ordering a glass of iced tea in a restaurant? Or picking out a pair of brown leather shoes in a department store?

It isn’t! Even if sexuality is 100% a choice for everybody 100% of the time…as long as there is romantic and sexual consent, how would someone be causing secular damage to another person?

Of course, I suspect many of these orientationist voices simply want to express their belief that homosexuality is an “unnatural choice” whereas heterosexuality is the way every person is naturally born. And, if possessing this worldview, it drives their animosity against those of us in the LGBT+ community.

Straw Men Galore

In the Comments Section of the WWYD YouTube video, somebody posed the question to us Queer folks: does it really affect us if he says that?

As I replied: it doesn’t affect me if he simply holds that internal belief. I realize I won’t be able to change the way he views homosexuality.

But it *does* affect me if he preaches to me about my alleged “sin” in public, or if he votes to legislate away my ability to marry somebody of the same sex as me. (Please refer to all of the voter referendums banning civil marriage for same-sex couples throughout the 1990s and the aughts.)

If you actively oppose same-sex marriage and are willing to take action to deny those rights to same-sex couples, then you are blatantly enforcing your contempt against us into secular law.

If you are simply indifferent to same-sex marital rights but you’re willing to go along with their prohibition, then you are enabling injustice under the trope of “That’s just the way it is.”

There are many things in life that don’t affect me personally, and I may not necessarily like or understand them…but I don’t stand in the way of other people’s right to enjoy or experience them.

Ketchup.

Folks who drink from pouched beverages.

The TV show Criminal Minds.

Taylor Hicks music.

Also, to those of you who would accuse me of being “intolerant” of the religious beliefs held by people who disapprove of homosexuality…

Since when is mean-spirited animosity something that any of us should aspire to “tolerate”? If they don’t want me pushing authoritarian laws or social norms that would restrict their own freedoms, then why should I sit by and silently acquiesce to them doing it to me?

Another commenter tried to liken homosexuality to chain-smoking. Since many orientationist folks go out of their way to refer to homosexuality as a “lifestyle,” they are trying to liken it to an unhealthy or disgusting habit.

The difference, here, is that medical science has clearly proven that smoking is bad for your health and can become an addiction.

The state of enjoying same-sex intimacy or romance, in and of itself, hasn’t been proven to be innately unhealthy to one’s physiology.

One last point: critics of queer culture will dredge up “evidence” that many people claim to have changed their sexuality out of free will. Gay to straight. Straight to bisexual. Bisexual to pansexual.

Apparently, this “proves” that human sexuality is a “choice” for everybody across the board (unless you’re heterosexual, of course).

No. All it proves is that sexuality can be fluid or subject to change in some people. Or even in many people.

That doesn’t mean sexuality is fluid or a conscious choice for everyone.

You’re Not Fooling Anyone

Back to the YouTube Comments Section of that WWYD video…

A different commenter asked, probably with feigned innocence: “How does this have anything to do with people literally existing?”

The answer, as articulated by another commenter:

I don’t have to just accept that people like you look down on me for an inborn trait. Weird that you’re batting so hard for your “right” to hate.

Now, in my own words…

If you aren’t going to believe us (members of the LGBT+ community) that we organically are the way we are in terms of our sexual orientation or gender identity, then that’s your prerogative.

We can’t force you to accept us. We can’t control whether you think we’re disgusting or blasphemous.

But we’re going to stand up for our identities and dignity.

As a cisgender gay person, it would be ridiculous for me to “disagree with” the fact that another person is transgender.

As a White person, it would be ridiculous for me to “disagree with” the fact that Black and Brown people have ancestors descended from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, or southern/eastern parts of Asia.

As someone with a penis, it would be ridiculous for me to “disagree with” the fact that many women, trans, or nonbinary people have vaginas.

As someone born in the early-1980s, it would be ridiculous for me to “disagree with” the fact that someone else was born in a different era than I was.

As a Pagan (polytheist), it would be ridiculous for me to “disagree with” the fact that not everybody else in the world views the concepts of creationism and spirituality in the same way that I do.

In the words of Balki Bartokomous…

Don’t be ridiculous!

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