To the homophobe in/among us…
First thing first, homosexuality is as natural as the sun and the moon. Maybe it disgusts you because you’ve grown up within a social…
First thing first, homosexuality is as natural as the sun and the moon. Maybe it disgusts you because you’ve grown up within a social conditioning that doesn’t accept it. We tend to dislike/hate what we generally don’t understand. Also, it’s not unique to us. Homosexuality has been noticed in over 1350 species including bees, penguins and chimps. So, the whole ‘unnatural’ debate doesn’t hold ground. Closing our eyes won’t turn day into night.
Most of us are deliberately ignorant while a lot of us are comfortably old-fashioned. But some of us are stuck in the middle because of lack of context (of subject) and contact (of homosexuals). The only aspect natural about their ignorance is it’s not entirely their fault.
Coming back to the Supreme Court’s epic decision yesterday: it affects 1/5th of world’s population, so, it is indeed a big, big deal. So many people who have been hiding who they are just because they cared (or feared) too much about family values would hopefully begin to breathe freely now. But the fight has just began. Only homosexuality is decriminalized. There is a long way to get other rights. Given how slow Indian judiciary is, maybe they will get the right to get married, etc. by 2050. For the record, Taiwan became the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2017. Hopefully, it won’t be the last.
Moreover, same-sex marriage is a different ball game altogether. It’s an entirely different conversation due to its many complex layers. And right now, Indian society is taking baby steps towards acknowledging that homosexuals are human beings too. In some sense, what is going on is a version of a civil rights movement. The LGBTQ community has been demanding for the basic of all basics: decency. As far as rules/regulations go, what people do in their privacy is their business — not yours, not mine, not the court’s nor the government’s. And that’s what this fight is all about. It’s about letting people be.
In discussions/debates such as these, the curse of choice is often invoked. I am teetotaler/acapnotic who have friends who drink/smoke. I stick to my liking while they stick to theirs. I can’t/shouldn’t impose my liking on them or vice versa. That’s the only way we can overcome the overwhelming web of monoculture. Diversity is possible when we are able to absorb all the shades of humanity.
For example, if somebody likes the colour blue and the majority of the world doesn’t like the colour blue, does that mean that the minority of blue-lovers are to be discriminated, oppressed and persecuted by the state and the society? The answer is obviously no. But we are in 2018 and people are still getting discriminated (in countries in India and Turkey), imprisoned (in countries like Indonesia and Iran) and killed (in countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan) just because they are homosexuals.
To the conservatives in the country, India is blindly aping the West. When in reality, it’s doing the exact opposite. The very law that was disbanded yesterday (Section 377) was a legacy of the British Raj; an anarchic law imposed on us during the Victorian era. An era where morals were so weak that even the legs of a wooden table were covered by the table cloth because they were apparently capable of arousing men! If anything, India managed to get rid of the Western influence of the past yesterday and started moving toward the liberal essence of our collective past where people weren’t criticized/discriminated/persecuted for who they were — be them homosexual, eunuchs, transgender, etc. There are more than enough stories and legends of how Bharat — Sanskrit for India, India is a Latinized word — didn’t care about people’s sexual orientation. So much so there are homosexual deities worshiped to this day in our country.
I conveniently highlighted Bharat, not Hindustan, because the latter attunes to the rise of the Mughal era. And even during their reign, all Mughal emperors, except Akbar, were known bisexuals with more than one same-sex lover on record each. Similarly, in the West, there have been massive figures such as Alexander the Great, Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Newton, Hitler, Turning, etc. who were homosexuals. Which, again, doesn’t mean anything other than attest the fact that gay people have always been around — powerful or not, closeted or not. They are nothing new. Things get murkier when private matters become public discourse.
Which is also why we are acting as if homosexuals are social deviants. You are born a certain way and you grow up in a certain manner. If homosexuality is unnatural, then so is left-handedness. More than 75% of our species is born right-handed (the opposite is true for polar bears), so does that mean being left-handed is unacceptable? The answer is obviously no but not very long ago, the answer was yes. In fact, my dad is left-handed but his teachers used to hit him on his left hand’s knuckles to make him write with his right hand. Today, he writes with his right hand producing a terrible handwriting but does everything else with his left hand.
That’s social conditioning in a box.
It doesn’t take a person to be ultra-woke to understand that adult relationship isn’t a male-female patent. The only reason why a man-woman partnership looks natural to you is because that’s the only example that has been presented to you for years now. It’s like me saying my national anthem is the best in the world or you saying your national anthem is the best in the world, overlooking the anomaly that it’s the ONLY national anthem we’ve ever heard in our entire lives.
Some of the critics might point out if everybody is allowed to do what they want, then there would be chaos in the society. Which sounds like a thorough point but when you go through the examples presented, you can see that the original posit doesn’t make sense.
Like, what if everybody is allowed to own a gun?
Or what if cannibals are allowed to persist in our society?
Or what about pedophiles — aren’t they humans too with needs?
Well, gun control is all about making sure responsible folks have access to dangerous weapons.
Well, cannibals would be least interested in persisting when their prime goal would be subsisting on us.
Well, pedophilia is actually a medical condition unlike homosexuality. Also, would you allow your kid to spend 15 minutes with a pedophile?
Speaking of children, the Great Wall of Homophobia is best tested when you happen to be a parent of a child who wants to come out. So, what exactly happens on that fateful day? Would your love for him/her drop suddenly? Certainly not. On the contrary, at that point, maybe you’ll realize that all the ‘values’ and ‘rules’ that you bothered too much about don’t really mean anything. Your love for your child must triumph everything else. Of course, you’ll be a bit (or a lot) conflicted because of the social conditioning in place but you’ll emerge as a better person from that moment.
Lastly, we as individuals don’t get to decide what is right or wrong for others. Especially when it’s not even our place to decide. At the most, we can try to understand and expand our horizon because all things said and undone, most of us here are mere spectators because we are in the majority; the majority of straights. It is their fight and it’s been a ceaseless, cruel fight of a minority against the majoritarian arrogance. What they need is not our moral high ground — aided by the rigidity of religion or not — but our unconditional empathy. If empathy is too much to ask for, then, perhaps the least we can do is be indifferent.