A friend of mine—in reaction to Oklahoma Federal Judge Kern’s overturning a ban on non-heterosexual marriage—recently authored a blog outlining his condemnation of homosexuality and disapproval of the current trajectory of Western marriage culture. Ordinarily I would just shake my head and move on, but this particular instantiation of dogmatic heteronormative religious anti-queer ideology is so utterly rife with contradictions, non-sequiturs, equivocations, conflations, hypocrisy, platitudes, and empty distinctions unconvincingly presented as redeeming or reconciliatory that I simply cannot stomach remaining silent.

His post begins with an especially empty and confused distinction: “We should not disapprove of people as a class. […] We must always make a distinction between the person and their actions. We disapprove of the actions, not the people.”

This distinction is nonsense. Of course there is an obvious difference between a person and her or his actions—the former is a performer and the latter is a performance—but with regard to the regulatory goals of anti-queer rights advocates, the actor and action are inseparable. Action does not exist in a void. Action presupposes an actor, so to condemn an action concurrently and necessarily condemns the actor. We do not oppress or socio-legally imprison actions, but the people who act. Actions do not have inherent rights to freedom and self-determination, people do. It is not the freedom of an action that anti-queer advocates aim to curtail, but the freedom and agency of, not just one class of people—the queer community is not monolithic—but numerous classes of people; all classes of people except heterosexuals, in fact. There is no practical difference between regulating the action and regulating the actor in this case. You cannot criminalize a person’s natural mode of being and expression of agency without criminalizing the person.

Also, as a writing teacher I feel compelled to point out the lack of grammatical agreement between the singular “the person” and the plural “their actions” in the aforementioned quotation.

The author goes on to say that his disapproval of homosexual actions actually comes from love, and that we “must always love and accept people [original emphasis]. In fact,” he continues, “in order to truly love someone, we have to disapprove of things that hurt them as people. Homosexual actions are contrary to the dignity of the human person and thus we must always disapprove of such actions.”

Contradictions and mistakes abound. Let’s deconstruct each of the three premises individually:

Premise 1: “We must always love and accept people [original emphasis].”

Counter-argument 1: If you “love and accept people,” then you must love and accept them for who they are, not who you want them to be. Otherwise you’re not accepting, but rejecting their identities. And non-heterosexual identity is precisely that: identity. Non-heterosexuality is fundamentally intertwined in the selfhood of non-heterosexuals. You cannot separate the two and purport to love and accept one but not the other. To think otherwise is an error.

Premise 2: “In order to truly love someone, we have to disapprove of things that hurt them as people.” (Note again the lack of grammatical agreement between the singular “someone” and the plural “them as people”).

Counter-argument 2: To begin, the notion of “truly lov[ing] someone” is a loaded and problematic one. By who’s truth should “true” love be judged? Who’s to determine whether one person’s love is more or less true than another’s? Is love even the kind of thing that can be “true” or “false”? False love—should such a thing exist—it seems to me, would not be love at all, but deception. The author suggests that “true love” is contingent upon disapproval of harmful things; in other words, disapproval of harm or hurt is the criterion he proposes for distinguishing “true love.” This is a specious, capricious, and arbitrary criterion. To what measure of hurt does he refer? In what sense is non-heterosexuality hurtful? In no way apparent to me does non-heterosexuality cause harm to individuals or society. If anything it’s the opposite. For non-heterosexuals, non-heterosexuality is not hurtful, but a means of flourishing. Non-heterosexuality and non-heterosexual love are equally natural, beautiful, admirable, defensible, and commendable expressions of the human condition as heterosexuality and heterosexual love. Only in context of intolerant dogmatic archaic religious ideology is this equality contestable. And only in said context is non-heterosexual socio-legal equity contested. The argument that “in order to truly love someone, we have to approve of things that enrich or fulfill them as people” is made just as easily—and I think more convincingly. If anything, the denial of such enrichment or fulfillment constitutes harm or hurt, in which case, by the author’s own logic and criterion, if we truly love all people, then we must disapprove of those who disapprove of non-heterosexuality.

Premise 3: “Homosexual actions are contrary to the dignity of the human person and thus we must always disapprove of such actions.”

Counter-argument 3: I agree that we ought disapprove of actions contrary to human dignity, but homosexuality (& other forms of non-heterosexuality) and homosexual (& non-heterosexual) actions are not contrary to human dignity. Non-heterosexuality may be contrary to fundamentalist Christian doctrine or other anachronistic universalist religious dogma, but it is not contrary to human dignity. In fact it’s exactly the opposite. Denying freedom, self-determination, and social equality to human beings because of antiquated mythological religious ideology is contrary to human dignity. Human dignity means being free to live and express one’s natural identity without oppression or discrimination insofar as said lifestyle and expression brings no harm or socio-legal imprisonment to others. The liberty and expression of non-heterosexuality has nothing to say about religion and does nothing to limit the freedom of religious zealots, but the socio-legal institutionalization of uncompromising anti-queer fanaticism moves precisely to limit the freedom of non-heterosexuals. By Mill’s Harm Principle, the former is obviously permissible, and the latter is both impermissible and ethically repugnant.

The author next attempts to hedge or mask his distasteful condemnation of non-heterosexuality by saying that “We need to always treat homosexuals, regardless of their life choices, with charity and love, WITHOUT [original caps] condescension, patronization, or moral arrogance.”

This rhetorical attempt to placate the queer-community and its allies is socially intolerant hypocrisy at its finest. There are several problematic components of the above claim. First, the author makes a category mistake in asserting that being homosexual (and presumable anything other than heterosexual) is the kind of thing about which one chooses. Non-heterosexuality is not a choice, but one of countless natural dimensions of the human condition. Non-heterosexuality is not a “life choice,” it is simply life. Furthermore, to treat non-heterosexuals as pariahs, reject their natural identities, and support the prevention, revocation, or demolition of non-heterosexual socio-legal equality is, in no way, to treat non-heterosexuals with charity or love. And what, on grounds of ancient religious dogma, is advocation for non-heterosexual socio-legal inequality if not moral arrogance? Is it not moral arrogance to arbitrarily claim that non-heterosexuality is contrary to human dignity? Is it not moral arrogance to inexplicably argue that non-heterosexual actions are hurtful or harmful and that, in effect, the religious community knows what’s best for all people—especially non-heterosexuals? Moreover, to reject non-heterosexuality, deny non-heterosexuals socio-legal equality, espouse oppressive, exclusionary, and discriminatory religious myth as if it were simple fact and then call it love is both offensive and antithetical to the very idea of love and smacks with precisely the condescension and patronization which the author argues the anti-queer cause should avoid.

The author then—referencing Judge Kern’s reasoning that the sanctity of marriage and the encouragement of procreation are not valid or logical reasons to ban same-sex marriage—in a profound non-sequitur moves to argue that the rejection of non-heterosexuality somehow entails a narrow teleological prescription about heterosexual marriage; namely, that the purpose of marriage is to have children and that he “would be in favor of limiting marriage to couples who have to say on record that they are at least open [original emphasis] to having children.” This is an absurd—remarkably inane—line of reasoning. What of love? What of commitment? What of legal rights of access and decision-making power that come with marriage? What of inheritance and the social securities that marriage entails? Are these not valid reasons to marry? What of the infertile or the elderly or those uninterested in having children of their own? What of couples who would prefer to raise adopted children while in wedlock? The author now not only wants to preclude the socio-legal equality of non-heterosexuals, but to limit the freedom of all people who do not share his precise ideology. “The stability of our society” depends on it, he argues.”Just a suggestion, America.” I can think of no more appropriate term for this than fascism; for as Sinclair Lewis so aptly stated, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

Marriage is a human institution, not a Christian one. It is a social and civil right of all citizens of age and sound mind, not a privilege of heterosexuals, the devout, or those bent on reproduction. Marriage is a natural human freedom to take the long walk with someone for whom you care deeply and with whom you wish to build a life of mutual devising, together. Freedom is essential to American prosperity, not its curtailment or the institutionalization of discrimination, inequality, inequity, exclusion, and oppression on the basis of outrageous dogmatic ideology rooted in ancient religious mythology. Love, sex, commitment, shared experience, partnership, cooperation, and companionship—these are among the aspects of being human that make life worth living, and in no way are they—nor should they be—reserved for the close-minded, the bigoted, the hyper-religious, or the heteronormative. Life is an opportunity to live together with the people important to us, regardless of sexual orientation, gender, fertility, or religion. That is what’s worth protecting—worth fighting for—and that is what the stability of our society depends upon. Of this I have never been more sure.