There is a new community paper in our town that is being launched with the specific agenda to “advance the public agenda on behalf of the LGBT community”. I want to respond with a natutal law, non-religious argument why the LGBT and black equality issue are not comparable.
Any suggestions for how I articulate the argument that equality for the “Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transexual community” is not the same as “the equality that was fought for the black community” as they state.
Thanks for your (name removed by moderator)ut.
The LGBT community often uses the language of civil rights to present themselves as a protected class, because that is the term used by the United States federal government in anti-discrimination law. The reason why they do is obvious - they want to use the law to mandate acceptance of their chosen lifestyles and present that current lack of acceptance as unjust discrimination. Blacks are a protected class. The LGBT community is not, at least at the federal level, no matter how loudly and stridently they wish to be treated as one. If they can get us to believe that they should be, then it becomes far easier to convince people to agree with them. But because of how membership in the LGBT community works, it is a disaster of epic proportions to treat them as if they are a protected class. It completely destroys the idea of what constitutes a protected class.
Race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, familial status (parent/child), disability, veteran, and genetic are the basic protected classes spelled out in federal law. They are sometimes treated differently in different situations, and some things are unjust discrimination if done against one protected class but not another. But regardless of the details, the general principle is that you can’t unjustly discriminate against a protected class. The key thing to note is that membership in a protected class is not dependent upon behavior. Some classes may be entered into by free choice, such as veteran, but once in them you do not remain a member of the class because of your actions. For example, a veteran is a veteran because they have served in the military at some point. It doesn’t matter if the person in question is currently in the military; past active duty is all that matters. Spouses can divorce and end their relationship with each other, but the breaking of that relationship doesn’t remove the familial relationships they have with their parents and children. A member of a religion can continue to claim membership in that religion even if they don’t attend the worship services of their religion or follow any of its teachings, as long as they have been a member at some point in the past.
The problem with the LGBT community claiming status as a protected class is that membership in that community is SOLELY based upon behavior. It’s not necessarily obvious because they’ve been very successful at wrapping themselves tightly in the imagery of civil rights, and using that imagery to present themselves as discriminated against for “what they are”. But they don’t merely ask for acceptance of what they are, which is people who feel certain desires. They want acceptance of what they DO based on feeling those desires.
The LGBT community doesn’t view their disordered desires as disordered. As far as they’re concerned, they feel a desire to act in a certain way and should be permitted to do so simply because they feel a desire to act in a certain way. The mere existence of that desire is all it takes in their minds to justify it. Just as one example, rather than explain why it’s in the public interest to permit the redefinition of marriage and legislate societal acceptance of same sex marriage, those in the LGBT community pushing for it have chosen to present the lack of it as discrimination. That way, they’ve neatly sidestepped any need to explain themselves. Why go to the trouble of convincing people that your desired sexual activities are good? Get the public at large to agree that those desired sexual activities NOT being granted special legal recognition is discriminatory, and then you force anyone who disagrees with you to go on the defensive explaining why that “discrimination” exists.
I choose not to play according to the rules they wish to use because there is a clear problem with granting protected class status to the LGBT community. If we’re going to change the idea of a protected class to include ongoing chosen behavior (not everyone who feels these disordered desires presents their desires as something which MUST be acted upon), we would be determining that certain behaviors place one into a protected class without defining WHY such behavior needs to be protected. To return to the example of the redefinition of marriage, that’s where the slippery slope arguments all come from. If we redefine marriage simply because some people have certain desires, then what do we say when different people come forward with different desires and demand that they also be granted protected class status? If we grant the one without any reason beyond “I desire to do this and therefore it must be protected”, then we will find ourselves granting the others for the same reason. And we will find ourselves going far beyond marriage in looking at what needs to be redefined if we’re going to grant protected class status on the basis of behavior.
