Let's take a break from our chronicle of collapse to talk about something more festive: gay rights.  I was watching a recent Daily Show, and Jon Stewart was talking with Mike Huckabee about the gay marriage bans that have been sweeping across the country.  Now, Huckabee is obviously a pretty likable guy, and he's extremely media savvy.  His paleopolitics are quite frightening if you dig into them, but in general, I think he's probably a pretty good guy.  But he was clearly uncomfortable talking about the gay issue, as Stewart essentially forced him into repeating the usual conservative talking points: marriage is for reproduction, homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, most people are opposed to gay marriage, etc.  Stewart occupied the usual liberal high ground, reminding Huckabee that the Bible allowed slavery, that racially-mixed marriages used to be illegal, that gay folks are being denied the dignity of marriage, and the like.  I can't remember if Huckabee had to resort to the slippery slope about gay marriage leading to polygamy, animal marriage, and other horrors, but that is a common enough conservative talking point amongst other pundits.

In any case, while the progressive audience voiced their approval of Stewart's enlightened points, I couldn't help being struck by the cross purposes at which he and Huckabee were driving.  They were essentially speaking two separate languages, describing two different points of view on human nature, sexuality, religion, and the law.  And while Stewart and others who support gay marriage are certainly on the side of the angels in this one, in my opinion, I don't think anything will really come of trying to shoehorn gay marriage into the American legal canon (especially since it's looking like it will have to be a court-driven phenomenon, which will certainly rile up the red state troops for decades, a la Roe v. Wade).

Let me explain a bit.  First, for Huckabee and other conservative religious people, gay marriage is not a human rights issue, like slavery or genocide or racial discrimination.  First and foremost, gay marriage is about gay sex, which is a sin.  That bears repeating: in conservative religion, gay sex is a sin.  It is a sign of moral debauchery if not treachery, like pedophilia, rape, or incest.  This is why conservatives are constantly making the slippery slope argument: "Hey, if we let gay people get married, then why not let people marry horses, or children, or goo-filled apple pies?" These sexual deviations are all of the same piece: a departure from the normal and natural.  All of the other planks of the anti-gay camp follow from this aversion to gay sex, and are actually just window dressing.  I mean, do conservatives really think that heterosexual marriage is necessary to promote procreation?  I mean, look around.  There are almost 7 billion people in the world, estimated to be 9 billion by 2042.  Are we really struggling to find ways to prop up reproduction?  And are conservatives actually concerned about the well-being of children raised in gay-parent households?  There are mountains of evidence that indicate that heterosexual divorce, single parenting, and serial step-parenting comprise a veritable epidemic of child abuse and neglect.  Where are the massive conservative campaigns to outlaw heterosexual divorce and single-parent households?  And we hardly need to go into the absurdity of quoting a couple anti-homosexual passages from the Bible as a basis for opposition to modern gay marriage.  The Bible is about a million times more concerned with helping the poor, the downtrodden, and the oppressed, than it is with who puts their thingie in which orifice.  Virtually no one, no matter how religious, uses the Bible to consistently tackle contemporary social, economic, and sexual issues.  What does Habakkuk say about stem cell research?  Not much.  How about the Gospel of John and subprime mortgages?  Hmm, not a lot in there. 

In my opinion, all of these superfluous conservative arguments are just covers for the visceral disgust that they feel towards gay sex (or as events have consistently shown, an outward projection of self-loathing that some feel because of their own closeted preferences).  They just cannot bring themselves to talk about giving any social sanction at all, especially a legal one, to a relationship built on homosexual sex acts.  So the liberal arguments about moral progress and changing times just cannot find any traction.  The comparison to interracial marriage is a non-starter, because at least with mixed-race straight couples you still had a penis going into a vagina, as it should.  The leap to different orifice combinations is just a different animal altogether, one that most church-folk are not willing to entertain, no matter what the social context.

We're also here into the realm of Western religious loathing of the body and it pleasures.  Let's not forget that in Protestant tradition, sex is the transmitter of original sin.  Through sex comes death.  Sex is dangerous, rebellious, and forever dogging the righteous.  Homosexuality is one of those dirty, dangerous temptations of the flesh, along with all other manner of sexual depravity.  We must constantly be on guard, protecting our chastity, or these wicked sexual pleasures will lure us onto the rocks of spiritual death.  This is the reason that conservatives are always so worried about gay teachers, coaches, scout masters, and other adult authority figures leading their children down the gay path.  Since homosexuality is a sinful, aberrant temptation, then obviously there is some kind of gay conspiracy to capture as many children as possible for the Gay Army of Darkness. Today, gay sex.  Tomorrow, possibly cannibalism.

I don't want to get too outlandish or stereotypical here, but my main point is that when someone like Jon Stewart is making all of his carefully-considered and airtight arguments against someone like Huckabee, there is absolutely no chance that the latter will alter his point of view.  The visceral disgust of many people towards the idea of gay sex really derails any possibility of a rational, considered discussion of an issue like gay marriage.  You just cannot convince people to legally recognize and sanction something that they consider to be sinful, dirty, and wicked.  I wish it were not so, but I think that's the case.

So what to do then?  Do we go down the route of trying to "prove" that homosexuality is innate or natural?  A recent study uncovered a possible genetic source for male homosexuality called "Sexually Antagonistic Selection."  Working off certain evidence (male homosexuality occurs at a low but stable rate in almost all societies; female relatives of gay men produce more offspring than the general population; among these female relatives, those on the mother's side out reproduce those on the father's side; among a gay man's male relatives, homosexuality is more common on the mother's side than the father's side), researchers hypothesized that a combination of genes passed on only through the X chromosome results in higher rates of androphilia ("attraction to men") in both men and women.  The result is genetically asymmetrical by gender, but advantageous overall. In men, higher androphilia results in them being gay, which reduces reproductive success.   But this is more than made up for by the same genetic markers producing more fecund females.  So we may be looking at a genetic cause for male homosexuality that actually increases the fertility of humanity overall, a development that, if true, would absolutely destroy the religious argument that gay marriage (at least in its male form) harms human reproductive capacity. 

But again, while interesting, I don't think that religious people will greet this and other scientific discoveries as hallelujah moments, renouncing their anti-gay beliefs.  More likely, they would just shrug at evidence like this as just more proof of the natural world being a seedbed of sexual dysfunction and debauchery.  Evolution made you this way, you say?  Well, then so much the worse for Darwin.  The religiously-convicted will never see homosexuality as natural, no matter what the facts, simply because most people are not gay.  Here we're up against another age-old thought process: the way that most people do things is obviously the right way.  Behavioral and existential minorities will always fight the sheer power and weight of the statistical majority. 

So what do do?  What's the best strategy for getting gay marriage recognized by the wider society?  I honestly don't know.  As Huckabee noted, opinion polls consistently show that large portions of the American public are opposed to gay marriage.  I have a feeling that as the general economy and the fortunes of families decline throughout the Long Emergency, the desire to scapegoat and generally pick on minority groups like gays and lesbians will actually grow.  For many conservatives, locked in the narrative that blames liberal culture for abandoning traditional institutions and destroying the country, gay marriage will increasingly be seen as just one more brick in the wall, joining feminism, open immigration, political correctness, and other leftie boners.  I see wider portions of the country becoming more disgruntled and ornery, as their hallucinated wealth evaporates and the prospects for the future grow dim and portentous.  These folks will fight gay marriage out of spite and anger alone, and I do not see much progress being made.