|
Hi everyone. This is my first post to the Forum so if I seem a little new at this forgive me.
First to MKSUGURL, you shouldn't prepare to be blasted for respectfully posting a valid opinion. Blasting someone else's opinion only shows insecurity in the validity of one's own set of beliefs.
Second, I do disagree with you but not on your opinion on the "right"ness of the "gay lifestyle," but on the presumptions that lay beneath that statement. When I think of lifestyle, it puts me in the mind of the 1980s show "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" with Robin Leach...something that people have a choice in pursuing, which in my mind makes it open to comment, public or private.
The term "gay lifestyle" is a misnomer. That would be like saying the "female lifestyle" or the "black lifestyle." One does not choose their gender or their ethno-racial background. In turn one does not choose their sexual orientation. A person DOES have the choice of whether or not to accept themselves for who they are. Prior to the late 1960s in America, and even to a some extent to date in Latin America particularly, many fair-skinned persons otherwise considered black chose not to (publicly) accept their ethnicity and passed for white. Similarly in 2003, many gays, lesbians, bisexuals, etc. who either do not conform to stereotypes of said sexuality or slip past our radar screens make the same choices fair-skinned blacks made.
Here is where the mistake is generally made. A person who "comes out of the closet" is not choosing to be gay, rather they are choosing to publicly accept that fact. There, I suppose, one could make the argument that said person makes a lifestyle choice. How a person could be faulted for choosing honesty and self-acceptance over shame and self-depracation is beyond my comprehension, but that is a moral/religious debate for another thread.
All of this relates back to Madmax's posts concerning an organization's discretion in its admissions policies. If you see homosexuality as a choice, it could be somewhat logical to, having disagreed with that choice, discourage membership of individuals who have already, or are prone to make the disagreeable value judgments. Honestly, that is what selective criteria is designed to promote.
However, if you see it as something innate, or at the least something over which one does not control, using a person's sexuality against them gets away from the character judgment these criteria purport to encourage. Such a judgment would be equivalent in its justifiability to a judgment based on hair color, height, or race. It does differ from gender-based judgment in that single-sex fraternities are generally (at least historically) based on promotion of certain gender-based ideals. It would not make sense to admit a woman to an organization promoting the development of men, and vice-versa.
Being gay makes one no less of a man than being short or blond does. This being the case, there is a difference in choosing not to admit women to a fraternity and choosing not to admit a man to the same organization based on his sexual orientation.
All this having been said, I hope I have not blasted or disrespected anyone by this post.
Respectfully,
C. Mora
|