GOP and Gays

At GOP Progress today, Nate Nelson had this to say about Republicans and gays:

Without exception, the anti-gay sentiment within the Republican Party comes from those who cannot accept that people will believe and behave differently than they do. These are the people who believe that consensual sex between gay and lesbian adults should still be criminalized, simply because their interpretation of Christian scriptures tells them that it is wrong. In this, they are no different than the Islamic extremists who would impose shari’a upon the world.

This is complete garbage, of course, and the fact that this diary entry was promoted to the primary RSS feed is a sure sign that this site is going down the tubes.

I could flatter myself by saying that I’m utterly unique in America – the only Republican who opposes expansion of gay rights and yet doesn’t want to criminalize their sexual choices – but it’s more likely that Nate’s ramblings are wrong. Bummer, I was ready to go on a star trip there for a minute.

While the Bible does not condemn homosexuality beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is fairly clear on the point that homosexual behavior is not the natural way for men to conduct themselves.

Consider Romans 1:26-27:

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

Pretty obvious that means gay sex was considered abnormal and undesirable, no?

But it does not follow from this passage that homosexuals should be considered criminals or that American Christians’ have any desire for this outcome. Nelson’s making a mountain out of a mole hill, I suspect, for reasons of his own whereas most Christians would probably be happy to simply be able to turn on the television without having to see the obligatory “smart cool gay guy/gal vs. the stupid hetero loser” show on every channel.

As for Mr. Nelson’s assertion that American Christianity is akin to sharia, I’m nearly stupified to silence.  But not quite.  So I’d like to encourage Nate to spend some time practicing his way of life in Saudi Arabia or Iran before writing further on that topic.  I’ll pay for the ticket myself so long as the return date is two years in the future.

Nelson goes on to say this:

…they are the ones who destroy families, by encouraging men like Gene Robinson and Jim McGreevey to live a lie, a lie that they will inevitably fail to live with eventually. They share in the responsibility for the destruction of families that results when gays and lesbians are forced to admit their sexual orientation to heterosexual spouses and to their children.

This is another foolish extrapolation. After all, one must strongly suspect that the wife of a man who has suddenly announced his gayness after a decade of marriage will immediately blame the wayward husband for destroying her family, the Republican party being rather far down the list of causes (unless she is a knee-jerk liberal). In such a case it is, after all, the man himself who has chosen to betray her and in perhaps the most cutting way of all – my choosing to reject her gender entirely.

Consider the unfortunate wife’s position. Can the poor woman really be expected to equate the act of sex as she and her husband performed it to that which he does with another man and grant the other the same value as that which she gives?

Clearly not.

Nate is quite correct in saying that gay acts should not be criminalized. But neither should society be forced to grant them the same acceptance as normal human sexuality. We need only consider the design of the human body to understand that it was meant for one use and not the other.

That fact has nothing to do with Republicans or the Bible. It simply is.