Gay rights laws:
Jr, David R Carlin
OF SEVERAL MINDS David R. Carlin, Jr. GAY RIGHTS LAWS THE NECESSARY CAVEAT A few years ago in this space (November 29, 1985) I wrote apiece in which I agreed with those who opposed gay rights...
...they were chanting, "We're here, we're queer," etc...
...Those who shout "homophobia" may see themselves as champions of liberal society...
...Disagreements arising from intellectual shortcomings can be eliminated through further inquiry and discussion...
...A month or so after this year's failure of the gay rights bill in the House, a small number of demonstrators set up a picket line in front of a Newport restaurant managed by a friend of mine, a House member who had voted against the bill...
...So how could I not vote for it...
...y are its enemies...
...The demonstrators were probably not connected with the group that organized the lobbying effort in favor of the gay rights bill-a remarkably polite and persistent group which arranged one of the most effective letter-writing campaigns I have witnessed in my years in politics...
...Defending my vote against a gay rights bill a few years ago, I explained to one of the lobbyists supporting it that I would withdraw my opposition if, for example, a clause was attached to the legislation disavowing any intention to grant the state's moral seal of approval to homosexual conduct...
...Unlike the picketers, the lobbying group hurled no charges of homophobia at those who disagreed with them, though they did flash an occasional pink triangle...
...In this sense it is more extreme than charging a person with being sexist or racist or anti-Semitic, all three of which are thought to be moral failings rather than clinical conditions...
...All the letters, as I recall, were uncomplimentary, though they disagreed among themselves as to whether my opinions were chiefly un-American, un-Christian, or psychopathic...
...The picketers got a lot of coverage in the newspapers and on TV...
...Whether that motto applies in my case or not, there was a certain consistency in my voting the way I did...
...It seemed to me that those who disapproved of such conduct for moral or religious reasons had a perfect right to object when their government was asked to grant its endorsement to this conduct...
...GAY RIGHTS LAWS THE NECESSARY CAVEAT A few years ago in this space (November 29, 1985) I wrote apiece in which I agreed with those who opposed gay rights legislation...
...my children and I saw the event just after coming out of church...
...society as a whole ought to be a vast and unending conversation among countless interlocutors who are living, dead, and yet to be born...
...A friend, who had the good grace not to write a letter to the editor, wondered why I would want to make a fool of myself in a national publication...
...They are no more doing psychology than the folks who hurled the word "pig" at police officers two decades ago were doing zoology...
...I say "extreme" because this explanation signifies despair of any rational solution of the disagreement...
...Your condition may call for therapy or even force, but it would be useless for me to engage in further rational discussion with you...
...In truth, they are its enemies...
...and in that role I have to take much more abuse than a few unflattering letters to the editor...
...The bill that came before the Senate this year did have such a disclaimer...
...The demonstrators were carrying a number of signs, some of them pink triangles, some with references to homophobia...
...I argued that the real aim behind such legislation was not so much to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians as to provide government's moral stamp of approval for homosexual conduct...
...but sometimes we may find ourselves resorting to more extreme explanations, accounting for the other person's failure to see things our way as the result of some psychopathic condition...
...Usually we account for the other person's blindness in terms of some intellectual deficiency ("He's too dumb to understand") or character failing ("He's too pig-headed to admit I'm right...
...so can disagreements arising from defects of character...
...though in both cases, especially the latter, the rational road to agreement may be long and arduous...
...Well, that didn't bother me very much, since in my other life, as I have mentioned here from time to time, I am a politician, a state senator in Rhode Island...
...My guess is that proponents of gay rights laws will have increasing success as time passes, especially if they can make it clear, as such proponents in my state have begun to do, that they are not asking government to endorse homosexual conduct...
...Now I realize that many who toss the term "homophobic" about are using it as insult rather than as diagnosis...
...But disagreements arising from psychopatholo-gies do not yield to discussion and inquiry...
...It was early Sunday afternoon...
...If I say that you are homophobic, I am placing you beyond the pale of rationality...
...A foolish consistency, as Emerson said, is the hobgoblin of little minds...
...That particular column drew more letters to the editor than all the other columns I have written combined...
...But in both cases the point of the insult is to label the target as nonrational...
...Communists, that dying breed, used to be like that, insisting that anti-Communists were blind in an irremediable way...
...Despite these views, in that other life of mine I voted a few months ago in favor of a gay rights bill that passed the Rhode Island Senate by a two-vote margin, though a weakened version of the bill later died in the House on a tie vote...
...they are only asking for prohibition of a mode of discrimination that makes no sense in a modern, liberal society...
...they said that the shortest way to debate with such people was to shoot them...
...At all events the barrage of criticism I received the last time I wrote on this subject did little to change my mind, since it did little to persuade me that the premises I had argued from were mistaken...
...I have developed a thick skin-and perhaps a thick skull as well...
...But one of the fundamental premises of a liberal society is that people ought to discuss their differences rationally...
...To accuse someone of being homophobic is to charge that person with suffering from a psychopathology ("He disagrees with me because he's sick...
...the House member got a lot of sympathy from his constituents...
...When people disagree with us on important questions, either we have to admit that we are wrong and the other person is right, or we have to explain, if only to ourselves, how the others could fail to see what is plain to us...
...If I write off those who disagree with me as beyond the reach of rational appeal, then, make no mistake about it, I am the enemy of a liberal society...
Vol. 117 • October 1990 • No. 17
