If You Mention It, They Will Cum

I can't in, uh, good faith link him directly, but I can link to The Editors linking him, and by him, of course, I mean rebbe Dennis Prager, who worries:

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity--especially females--can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage.

The persistent male conviction that lesbianism is more prevalent than dude-on-dude action is, how-you-say, perfectly reflective of a desperate insecurity in the masculine psyche. Otherwise, what strikes me most about this sort of writing is how Prager pivots from a reasonable and mature view of the actual nature of human sexuality to an insane and alarmist declaration that It Must Be Controlled. The dogmatic insistence that sexual "orientation" is biologically predetermined and innate, and that because it's inherent it must not be used as a basis for discrimination, has always struck me as farcically reductionist, an argument for determining a just social order by cataloging those things which cannot be helped and agreeing not to pay attention to them.

But sexuality isn't the same as race (well, even race isn't the same as race), and though it, like all human behaviors, has genetic and hormonal antecedents, it is not mere biological determinism that causes me to suck cock. Predilection is not identity. Human sexuality does exist on a spectrum; its characteristics and emphases change even within the individual over the course of a lifetime. Some people have very stable sexual interests; others "oscillate wildly," as goes the title of The Smiths' song. The fight against discrimination based on sexual identity is categorically confused: sexuality doesn't constitute an identity. It constitutes a portion of the totality of each autonomous individual identity, and the reason not to discriminate against those whose sexual tastes and practices diverge from your own is not that minority sexualities constitute a protected class, that like the color of one's skin, the angle of one's wrist is genetic and, goddamnit, queers are people too. It's simply that fucking is none of your fucking business.

For divines like Dennis P., though, moral autonomy in the absence of demonstrable harm to others is just crazy talk. They perceive themselves as agents of heavenly authority, and they believe that they're compelled to enforce their deity's moral injunctions on others here on this earth. Ultimately Prager et al. are making a very tired argument about sin and free will, claiming that in sexual behaviors and practices there are right and wrong choices, good and evil ones. (Their god is extremely punctilious in these matters.) You have the freedom to choose, but you must choose correctly. The proper action is determined in advance by the formal, scriptural strictures on morality and good conduct. God created the tree in your garden; don't eat the fruit.

Religious moralists interestingly see sin as infinitely more alluring than righteousness. They are beset by temptation. Prager sounds like some of the more extravagant queens I know as he proclaims that straight men everywhere are going to be swiftly and easily turned. Ooo, girl, he says he's straight . . . Truly, though, gay sex is much less popular, and while exposing The Children Who Are The Future to early and frank talk about homosexual variants of sexual practice will bless them with much less consternation about that time in seventh grade when you and your buddies jerked off together to that porno you stole from Billy Baron's house down the street, it will not, in fact, turn the nation into a bathhouse . . . to my chagrin.