Open Gay Lifestyles
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Openly gay lifestyles have been a source of tension in American society for some time. The gay community has taken a lead from the civil rights movement and more and more has asserted itself as a political force, demanding recognition, respect, and equal treatment under the law. One of the results, probably a predictable result, has been a backlash on the part of many against the gay community, leading to incidents of gay-bashing as well as the passage of laws against the so-called gay lifestyle and against giving gay people civil rights as a group. The picture that much of America has of gays is based largely on media images from urban centers, but this ignores the fact that gay people are found throughout America, in every walk of life, and probably in every community, though they may not be open about it in many places. Arguments have been offered both in support of and against openly gay lifestyles, and these arguments can be discussed in terms of how they reflect various categories of argument as well as in terms of their individual strengths and weaknesses. Cameron offers three arguments against homosexual lifestyles. The first is that no contemporary society accords homosexuality equivalent status with heterosexuality, and Cameron finds that no current or ancient religion of any consequences has done so, either. This is an appeal to Divine Law Theory, the view that the revelation of the bible in the Judeo-Christian tradition is the word of
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demonstrate with compelling evidence, including the idea that sexuality is a learned behavior in society. This would seem to indicate that there would be no sexuality in nature because there would be no society to teach it, and that is ridiculous.
Cameron also offers an argument against homosexuality from the category of Sickness and Health, claiming that homosexuality is associated with "personal lethality." He is not referring here to AIDS, as many would argue today, but to something more amorphous and less certain, a sort of psychological tendency toward death that he sees in homosexual behavior and that he claims has been present since the time of classical Greece. He says that in Greece "companies of homosexual warriors were assembled because it was believed that they made better killers" (Cameron 200). Of course, the fact that a society may believe such a thing does not make it so, but Cameron seems to accept belief as meaningful fact. He finds evidence of this lethality in a number of statistical statements--he says that the childless are more prone to suicide and that childless couples are more apt to be involved in homicide (whether as perpetrators or victims he does not say). He also claims that both suicide and
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Approximate Word count = 1517
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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