How is the "gay rights" movement the same as other civil rights movements?

The plain fact though is that you do desire for same-sex couples to be separated and treated differently from their opposite-sex counterparts in affairs of government.

We could argue all day about whether private individuals and organizations should be allowed to discriminate/segregate. But this is wholly unacceptable when it comes to access to government and the laws when there is no rational basis for this separation.

Your religious beliefs are not a rational basis for government to discriminate and segregate. No one has argued that this is the same thing as what black people experienced, so you are the one making the strawman argument.

 

And there it is folks. This so-called compromise isn't about avoiding controversy. The proposed 'solution' is itself controversial. It is instead about the desire to feel like one is being magnanimous toward gay people while simultaneously desiring to maintain one's perception of superiority. The real aim is to make sure that gay people don't achieve equality - including an equal status for their marital relationships.

 

And that is not a valid reason. Your interpretation of the Bible is not superior to the Constitution, and it doesn't make you superior to gay people. Very clearly your proposal of civil unions as a compromise isn't about equality, no matter how much you try to claim otherwise. It is undeniably about trying to maintain political power for your religion and beliefs.

 

I'm just stating obvious facts here. The bottom line is that the gay rights movement is based on a myth. It is nothing like any of the other civil rights movements.

 

" It is nothing like any of the other civil rights movements" OK, than you admit that it is a civil rights movement just not like others. We're cool.

 

Your statement is fiction based upon a myth that there is no, and has not been any discrimination against homosexuals.

As pointed out to you repeatedly, there is no rational distinction between being against discrimination against Jews and against discrimination against homosexuals.

 

We have a couple of posters who continue to insist that homosexuality is a behavior only, and therefore a "lifestyle choice", but that homosexuality as commonly understood simply does not exist. And they come across as saying "if I never do it, then I'm not queer! Honest, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!"

It's pretty obvious that these people WANT to "do it" so bad they're beside themselves, but so long as they remain chaste, they're not queer. So they hide behind "you can't PROVE there's such a thing a sexual orientation. Therefore there isn't, and therefore I don't have one! Honest, I don't, I don't, I don't.

 

The comparison is this:

Homosexuals are still discriminated against and there is no protection against discrimination against them.

They are not treated the same as other people in the eyes of the law.

For example, homosexual marriage. In many states they do not recognize the same rights in a homosexual couple as they would a heterosexual couple, such as the medical right to choose for your spouse. Medical professions will let a spouse choose for their significant other in case of emergency but will not acknowledge a homosexual partner.

Plus there is still a lot of bigotry in some places in America towards them. Need I remind you that there is a "sport" where some people will target a homosexual and beat him up so bad that he or she will will reuire several weeks od medical attention.

So, yes, homosexuals do have some civil rights issues to deal with, even today.

 

I totally agree with you and would like to point out that religion is far more a lifestyle choice than sexuality, yet discrimination on religious grounds (especially when the "victim" is Christian) isn't routinely supported by conservatives... I wonder why?

 

It needn't be; whether or not something is a civil right is not dependent on similarity to previous civil rights movements.

 

I don't know of any good studies on this (and I'd hate to have to construct a good methodology for one), but I suspect that sexual orientation is more biological than religious conviction, because it happens earlier in life. What evidence I have suggests that sexual orientation is primarily due to prenatal environmental factors, whereas religious conviction is instilled in early childhood. Now, by puberty both may be equally intractable, but at (say) the age of two, the religious infection could have been inoculated against, and I doubt that birth itself is early enough to alter sexual orientation.

Anyway, the point of my post is that some people are known to have done mighty battle against their orientation - people like Ted Haggard and Eddie Long come to mind. Your generic closet homosexual (of both sexes) often married people of opposite sex and had children, sometimes to stay WAY in the closet, and sometimes to convinced themselves that they weren't queer because, see, they didn't adopt the lifestyle, and that made it magically go away. The proliferation of "reparative therapy" programs (almost all religious, and implying that sexual orientation needed to be "repaired") and the ample supply of willing suckers (er, participants) shows that many homosexuals are themselves religious anti-queer bigots, and not immune from the anti-gay bigotry rampant in the nation. Tortured souls indeed.

And despite the essentially 100% recidivism rate after a couple of years, despite the most clearly sincere and dedicated efforts, shows that sexual orientation is NOT a choice, and that faking an unnatural lifestyle cannot alter it.

And through all this, we have at least two posters here doing everything possible to convince themselves that they're not queer because they do not ACT on their desires. And this is not surprising - many American blacks come in shades light enough to pass as white (incidentally the same is true in India), and they do it eagerly. I would guess that the motivation to pass as straight would be even stronger.

 

But I submit that's not what he's saying. He's saying that there's no such thing as gay. Homosexuality doesn't exist, it's a myth. And therefore it's different from the racial civil rights movement, because blacks are visibly black, and blackness is thus not imaginary.

This, I think, must be understood first. Then,

"if there's no such thing as gay, there can't be any "gay rights movement". It's all a scam. People of the same sex trying to "marry" is preposterous, a grand conspiracy of jerks. And if there's no such thing as gay, then I can't be gay. Hallelujah, I knew it, I knew it!"

 

Then why do those who support the gay rights myth make such comparisons?

 

Because as has been stated over and over again gays have faced much the same forms of discrimination as blacks.

Get over it. You've lost, completely.

 

Civil meaning: having to do with ordinary citizens, rights meaning liberties.

Please explain how this isn't a civil rights issue.

 

Ignorance and bigotry hang in the air like the stench of death.

 

Luckily the winds are shifting.

 

I still smell something though

 

Look, if you're going to insist on being uncivil by calling gay rights a 'myth', then I'm not going to try to engage you in a meaningful conversation.

Apart from that, the assertion contained in your question is a strawman. So really nothing to address anyway.

 

So now calling something that is unsubstantiated what it is, a myth, is being "uncivil". LOL! Oh the irony is rich.

 

...said the theist...

 

This is not my reading. We have one poster who keeps saying "If I don't actually do the sex thing, that makes me not homosexual, right? Right? It HAS to be right!" And then we have another poster saying "if homosexuality is a myth, then it doesn't exist, and that means I'm not homosexual, right? Right? It HAS to be right."