The following is a comment posted on the article “MDA: Abnormalizing the normal?” As we have a policy of disallowing comments which are more than 500 words long, we have decided instead to publish it as an article. As this article touches on religion, the comments section will be closely monitored and we will not hesitate to remove any comments that seek to denigrate religions.
by ‘Gemami’
Hi Joshua,
I knew it was only a matter of time before I get to see an article like this from you; it just had to happen. You’ve done very well to keep two of the main gay factors contributing to a never-ending debate, apart from each other and stayed focused on the part which supports your argument that gays are not ‘abnormal’. And you know what? I am able to follow you part of the way.
Based on your argument (definitely not on the film which, admittedly, I have not seen), it is clear that you tried to align the gay’s lifestyle to that of a normal heterosexual person’s; and I would agree inasmuch as that is a similar lifestyle under the bright of day between a gay and a hetero-person. It is true that a gay person goes to work like anyone else, he cries and laugh like anyone else, with the same salty teardrops and perhaps the same kind of laughter too. He eats the same food like anyone else; watches the same movies, swims in the same pool, runs the same tracks and blows the same candles off their birthday cakes – like everyone else. You see, Joshua, no one is arguing over these normal activities. You do agree that these are normal activities do you?
Unfortunately, what you have done is to place such a portrayal side-by-side with the gay’s other lifestyle – the one that brings them so much ridicule and scorn – and argued that the rest of us ought to accept that side of them which goes against the norms of society. Yes, yes, I know you will question the ‘norms of society’, its historical splendour, and the wisdom of those who had made them the norms and so forth. You would also argue that the gays are seen the way they are seen because they had been so suppressed since the beginning of time that they had no choice but to take their ‘lifestyle’ underground, resulting in an endless struggle to ‘regain’ their position in society. Well, we can argue this for the next few generations and we will still be divided.
And therein lays the crux of the problem. Why does the division continue to exist? Some may point their fingers at religion; others to culture and traditional taboos. Yet, there are others who think the gay is not normal because of the stereotype we see in movies and videos, or the reports of gay lifestyles that threaten the fabric of society with their outlandish and loud second nature. Is this a fair accusation – to place the reason for the gay’s struggle on all or any of these?
If the gay thinks he has the right to display his lifestyle, the sexual and the non-sexual ones, in the open; and demand acceptance from all and sundry; then does it not make sense that the religious, the culturalist and the traditionalist, too have a right to demand that their life-style be acceptable too? Why is the gay person always picking on these when he does not want the same people to pick on them? You may argue that there has to be a common ground for all sides to be able to stand on and accommodate one another without coming to blows with each other. Perhaps so, perhaps not.
You see, the gay person does not understand why, for example, the religious cannot find it in them to accept the gay’s lifestyle when their religion preaches love. On the flip side, the religious person does not understand why the gay is always picking on them in their fight for social acceptance when he knows that God is central to the religious person’s lifestyle. The religious is obliged to love, but his love is toward his God first and foremost, and this would mean the obeying of His commandments and all the other religious understandings he has come to embrace and accept; one of which is the creation of man and women for procreation. Period. The gay person can question the sanity of the religious person for believing in the existence of God and all His ‘ridiculous’ laws all they want but they will never understand. Even among the hetero setting, the religious may find unpleasant circumstances unacceptable to them and they will tell it as they are. Does it not seem clear that the gay person has been using this against the religious person in his fight for acceptance? It is clear that the gay person is attempting to put the religious person into the same bin he is attempting to get out of. And you call this a’ right’, and it is ‘fair’?
Ironically, the gay person is attempting to use both sides of the coin to fulfill its purpose. It has taken the religious and traditionalists head-on, attempting to question their moral authority in deciding in a civilized world on what is acceptable and what is not; while at the same time embrace the same things that a non-gay lifestyle has to offer, like marriage and child-bearing. This is clearly going against the norm of what (to a religious) God had intended when He created man and woman for procreation; or (to a traditionalist), what society has set for tradition and posterity.
No my friend, the gay is not asking for the simple act of acceptance of their lifestyle. They are proclaiming themselves the ‘Third Sex’. Now you tell me what this is all about and whether it should scare you.
