Gays have come a long way in the last 25 years. Not only are they on the brink of overturning America's traditional understanding of basic institutions like marriage and family, they're also perilously close to gaining a wide array of additional "advantages" in the form of special minority protected class status.
Yet underneath all the confusing rhetoric (and scare tactics and hate labeling) on both sides of the gay rights debate is one basic issue.
It's not fundamentally a legal issue, although it has tremendous legal repercussions. It's not really about denying basic rights to gays or being forced to attend "sensitivity training."
It's not fundamentally a medical issue, although it has far-reaching medical implications. It's not really about finding a "gay gene" or funding AIDS research or health insurance for "domestic partners."
Fundamentally, it's a moral issue. And, basically, that moral issue is: Is homosexuality right or wrong?
Because what gay activists are pushing for is not just social sympathy or religious tolerance or political participation. They want validation -- that is, complete acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle as the moral equivalent of heterosexuality. The goal of making it "OK to be gay" is the uniting force behind all gay activism.
Apparently, the courts have been doing their best to help out, according to Hadley Arkes, professor of jurisprudence at Amherst College and a contributing editor of National Review.
Arkes said the judges, especially the federal judges, have been systematically dismantling provisions in the law that "regard homosexuality as something less than legitimate or desirable." Arkes cited "an almost brazen willingness to strike down any law that implies an adverse judgment on homosexuality" (Arkes 37).
Indeed, now that liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has replaced Justice White on the high court, judicial activists have the swing vote to overturn Bowers v. Hardwick. Bowers was the 1986 case in which the court, by one vote, refused to overturn Georgia's sodomy statute -- or refused to "discover a constitutional right to engage in homosexuality," as Arkes put it (Arkes 37).
The Justices appear to have found the test case they've been looking for in Romer v. Evans, the case against Colorado's controversial Amendment 2. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Romer v. Evans in October and is expected to hand down its ruling in early 1996. If the Court strikes down Amendment 2, it will automatically transform the laws on marriage and family -- beginning with same-sex marriages.
Is it "okay to be gay?" It depends on what you mean by "gay."
Many religious people differentiate between homosexual orientation and homosexual behavior, usually viewing only homosexual behavior -- but not homosexual orientation -- as wrong or sinful. Others feel that both homosexual orientation and behavior are every bit as legitimate as heterosexuality. Gay clergy often fall somewhere in the middle.
Attorney John Whitehead, founder of The Rutherford Insitute (the major U.S. legal defense organization for religious liberties), makes the orientation/behavior distinction. Pope John Paul makes a distinction, too.
Richard Mouw, ethicist and president of Fuller Theological Seminary, says evangelicals who preach a conservative but compassionate theology want to preserve what they say is the Bible's teaching -- that sexual intimacy "only properly occurs within the bounds of a relationship that is heterosexual, lifelong, faithful and confirmed by marriage" (Holmes 4).
But evangelical arrogance about homosexuality is out of line, Mouw contends. "We've often had a kind of arrogant tone, a self-righteousness that doesn't signal to the world what is certainly true," he says, "and that is that we are all sinners who struggle with our sexuality."
Most homosexuals would vehemently disagree that their behavior is sin, citing John Boswell's 1980 book, "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality," as scholarly proof that the early Christian church placed few sanctions against homosexuality (Neuhaus 1). Many homosexuals also cite major secular sexuality studies by Alfred Kinsey and Evelyn Hooker as "proof" that homosexual activity is a normal and healthy human sexual preference.
Homosexuals even have the support of the American Psychiatric Association. In 1973, the APA began to revise homosexuality's listing as a pathological "sexual deviation." By 1986, homosexual behavior had been totally removed from the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-II).
The back-and-forth debate over the true nature of homosexuality may well produce more questions than answers. But one thing's for sure: the gay debate is likely to heat up even more in these next few months preceding the Supreme Court's historic decision on Romer v. Evans -- a decision that could have, according to attorney Melissa Wells-Petry, "as severe an impacton society" as Roe v. Wade.