There <i>is</i> a fringe benefit…

Very often, when advocating for gay marriage and the equality of GLBTs, us heterosexuals have a tendency to point out how we don’t have a stake in the matter.

Keith Olbermann comes to mind.

While the point isn’t dishonest, I think that its just wrong.

Sure. I’m not gay. As Henry Rollins was known to comment of himself, and true for me, you’d never see the closet because I’d already have burnt the thing to the ground.

I don’t have that many gay friends and even less that I’m been particularly close to.

Heck, I don’t even have a stake in the marriage game – I’m not exactly prone to falling in love – platonic love, friendship, support and/or sex being all I have to offer in that department.

While I’ve not been prone to emphasise these points (the Rollins argument being my rebuttal of choice to allusions of closeted self-interest), I’ve assumed that they represent my minimal self-interest. Maybe because I have been disinterested or at least thought I’ve been, but upon reflection, that’s no longer a case I can make.

Despite all these points being true, it doesn’t negate my growing interest.

That gay marriage isn’t already accepted is a sign of a sick culture, and I want to live in a healthy culture.

The mental gymnastics being the best that the opponents have to offer, is at least a sign of diminished cognition. If you believe the fallacies, distortions and botched statistical analysis, then there is a lot more you can do to help make your culture and informed and thoughtful one.

I want to live in an informed and thoughtful culture! There’s my disinterest gone already!

If you think you can pass off hatred as critical, ethical thought, then not only are you a very silly person, but you have something wrong with your better nature. Maybe you don’t even have one. If you hate the sin and not the sinner, why would you go to such lengths to tell tales?

Indeed, if there was something intrinsically wrong about being gay, wouldn’t that be enough? Why dig up any more dirt? Surely one wouldn’t need any more than that! So what motivates you?

I’d prefer to live in an Australia where the hateful didn’t pretend that they loved the sinner. I want to live in a happy, caring and honest Australia. Honesty is very important to me and aside from the merely muddle-headed, I’m yet to see a single, honest, hetero-marriage campaigner. The less people engaging in this pathetic sophistry, the less our culture has a propensity for it, the happier I’ll be. Again, dis-interest gone!

Then there is all the stupid suspicion that seems to travel with the homophobe circus. At the heart of paranoid moral panic as is the campaign against gay-marriage, next to a left-ventricle of prejudice, pulses a right ventricle of credulity. A propensity for type one errors – false positives.

This kind of epistemic failure constitutes a profound attack on many of the principles of natural justice that make up our collective better nature – innocent until proven guilty, for example.

While there is nothing wrong with being gay in my preference utilitarianism, attempts to out people as gay – or prosecute any of the often accompanying accusations (“pederasty” alleged against dead judges anyone?) – without regard for the truth, are more dangerous than mere defamation (I say “mere”, as I hardly find being called gay to be derogatory) as they inculcate said deficient epistemic virtues.

That’s something to be far more worried about that gay marriage. And I am worried about it! Again, so much for my dis-interest!

And what about being close with your mates? This suspicion has a spill-over into social interactions between heterosexuals as well!

How many friendships have seen people hold back because they didn’t want people to think they were “poofs”?

Why would you bother holding back telling your mates how you feel? Why would you want to? And why would you want some silly, paranoid puritan passing judgement on how you and your mates treat each other, all because they need someone to accuse of sin?

That handshake that lasts too long. That hug at the end of an epic footy match. There’s more than one sad git out there that feels the need to draw conclusions.

Esmay Watson is looking over your back fence. She thinks she knows something about you.

And what about if one of your mates are gay! You… may catch it! :O

The relationships of heterosexuals haven’t gone entirely unscathed. Homophobia damages us all, and the persistence of obstacles to gay marriage is testimony to something being deeply wrong.

So I think I have to come out about my interest in the matter. I don’t like my country being screwed up like this – it’s that simple. I think it’s about time other concerned, compassionate, thinking, heterosexual Australians came out about their interest in the matter.

There are fringe benefits for the rest of us in an Australia capable of accepting GLBTs as equals – such an Australia would be a better Australia to live in.

And for the rest of the heterosexuals who don’t value natural justice, honesty, compassion and thoughtfulness, those heterosexuals that are now in the minority*, grow the hell up.

~ Bruce

* How long do you think it’ll be before hypocritically, a meme of singing from the tyranny of the majority hymn sheet spreads through the ranks of the homophobe?