I am going to do a defense of Doug here, because in cases like this I almost always root for the underdog. And even if I myself am a Christian, I hope that anyone who reads this will consider the merit of what I say in its own right. My whole experience with this Kickstarter campaign and the discussions that have been surrounding it have been the catalysts of this post, but the points are actually things that I have been thinking for a while, and should largely be applicable to the wider world. I will try as hard as I can not to step on any toes, but to say what I think is right.
Yet another caveat before I start: I do realize this is a tough issue for many homosexuals. I realize that there are whole lives of oppression, judgement and ostracizing involved in the issue. And perhaps the situation is too young to have stabilized, and it's too much to expect the discussion to not bound into the irrational when there are so many feelings involved. However, it seems to me there is a tendency now that those who have been oppressed for their sexual orientation now are gaining legitimacy and with it, more power. And anyone who has power has a responsibility to use that power in a good way. What I'm going to try here is to point out tendencies towards this not being the case.
The first thing that springs to mind is how abused language can get sometimes. I am in particular thinking of the term 'Homophobe' - a word packed with meaning, in a small bundle. It's not clear exactly what it's supposed to mean. First of all, I resent putting '-phobe' or '-phobia' at the end of words unless they're actually referring to a psychological disorder. Using the word in this way almost invariably is a way to discredit your opposition without rational argument, and nothing is more infuriating than getting discredited irrationally. One might even say that people who use such terms have a 'discussiophobia' - a (irrational) fear of rational discussion. But I digress. The point is, calling someone a homophobe when you know nothing about their motivations or beliefs is incredibly respectless (for more on what those motivations or beliefs could be, see below). To me, the term 'homophobe' is so full of meaning that it is meaningless. It cannot be brought into a discussion in the hopes of continuing in a rational manner.
Another meaningful but meaningless word is 'hate speech'. What in the world is that supposed to mean? If you say you hate gay people, or something that is synonymous, then yes, you're engaging in hate speech. But usually that's not when it is being used. Many of Doug's statements are being labelled as 'hate speech', although nothing of what he says condones hating gay people or promotes hating them (unless you consider being against gay marriage to be synonymous to hating gay people. But then, I think you need to look up the word 'hate' in some kind of dictionary.)
The second thing is how important context is. In the abovementioned interview, Doug and the interviewer had been chatting for a long while, in an informal style (if I remember correctly). He then said some remarks about gay marriage and he used some poor analogies to illustrate his point. I agree that he should have thought twice about using those analogies specifically. However. The way those things were taken out of context and quoted in various social media and gamer articles, etc. was pathetic. Any article that purports to write more than five sentences on the topic really should include at least the immediate context. Without it, it becomes a screamfest where those with the best quotes win.
The third thing is the comparisons of homosexuality to things like paedophilia, incest, zoophilia, etc: In some discussions about homosexuality, some of these other kinds of philias will be mentioned, and usually it results in massive chastise from everyone (at least the pro-gay people involved in the discussion), since "you cannot compare homosexuality with [insert some philia here] - they're totally different".
However. Usually the person who's bringing up this other philia isn't really comparing homosexuality to other philias. In the discussions I have seen, it's usually a matter of trying to take the statement "Homosexuality is on the same footing as heterosexuality" (or some paraphrasing of this statement) to its logical conclusion: Usually this statement is accompanied by 'because two people are in love, and that's all that matters'. And the point is then: Ok, let's try to apply this logic. Until homosexuality was accepted, used to be that 'all that mattered' was that 'two people of the opposite sex are in love'. However, there are several other implied restrictions. I'll try to exhaust the restrictions in the following sentence: "All that matters is that exactly two individuals of the species Homo Sapiens that are not closely related and whose age is no less than 16 that are alive and of the opposite sex are in love". So why are we removing the 'of the opposite sex' clause if we're not willing to remove any of the others? You could say that because the same sex clause is the only clause that wouldn't hurt someone. But this is blatantly false. You could for instance imagine allowing siblings that have undergone sterilization to get married - noone would get hurt. You could allow someone to marry someone else post-mortem as long as the person who died signed a contract saying it was his or her will. You could imagine an animal not being hurt by being married to a person. You could allow more than two persons to marry.
I really take issue with the "if you're against gay marriage, you're a homophobe" logic. It's a black and white logic that belongs in some kind of fascist state, but not in a democracy with free speech. If you're against gay marriage, you're against the concept of two people of the same sex going through the ritual we call marriage. That's it. Now, the reasons behind such a stance are varied, and some people probably are what some other people could legitimately call homophobes (or at least homo-dislikers) - as in, they don't like people who are homosexual, period. However, most other people, even those who are against gay marriage, get along fine with people who are homosexual, and don't hate those. In fact, I want to stop using the word "hate" here, because it's a really strong term and usually the feelings that are associated with this cannot be well described by this word.
So what reasons can people have for being against gay marriage that are not related to an irrational hatred towards homosexuals? Some people think it's just 'wrong'. That is, somewhere in their gut, there is a feeling of wrongness about the concept of homosexuality, and they're not particularly inclined to suffocate that feeling. And then you might say "Well, those people are the same kind of people who thought interracial marriage was a bad thing, and they were clearly wrong!"
Well, no. They weren't "clearly wrong", because there are no criteria upon which to base a verdict of correctness, unless you demand that everyone should be a consequentialist - that is, racial intermarriage has had no significant negative consequences, and lots of positive ones, so it must be the right thing to do. And being a consequentialist is totally fine, but there must be room for other types of ethics as well. Some people base their ethics system upon how they feel about some issue. And saying that only consequentialists are allowed opinions on some matter is inherently undemocratic, so such people must be allowed their say as well. Then there is another set of ethics, coming from the religious sphere. And this is more critical, in my mind. Especially when it comes to allowing in-church gay marriage, or even forcing churches to marry gay people, I can see why people would react. The point in that case is this:
- A religious person could believe that the most important thing in the world is to serve God.
- Part of serving God is trying to live as He wishes us to live.
- There are parts of the Bible that indicate He doesn't wish us to live in homosexual relationships
And then the most cited answer is that Jesus told us to love one another, and so when two people are in love, we should sanctify it. Now, I'm not claiming to know what God wants, so I'm not going to say that people who think that God wants us to sanctify homosexuality are wrong. But I will point out that this particular line of reasoning is clearly wrong.
The main thing to say is that there are several kinds of 'love' talked about in the Bible. Usually, what Jesus and the apostles are talking about is 'agape', unconditional love, and that which is to be strived for by all Christians - as in love for your neighbor. The 'love' that we're talking about in the context of marriage is usually affectionate and erotic love, which is something else. Admittedly, the Church has done its part in confusing these terms, since we usually quote some passage by Paul in weddings which talk about the virtues of love - but this is agape, and shouldn't really be used in that context, except to say that you should also love your partner unconditionally as a Christian. Other than that, it has little to do with two people being in love. And this is why you cannot simply say that when two people are in love, God likes it, no matter who they are. Maybe He does, but that's not the point of much of the Bible, at least.
The last thing I can think of that I would like to rid these debates of is the concept that the people who are against gay marriage somehow are on a 'lower plane' of intelligence. Comments such as 'There is no point in discussing further with you, because you're obviously stuck in a prehistoric way of thinking' or the like can sometimes be called for, but more often than not when I see it in use it just serves to give the impression that you have run out of good arguments yourself and use this as a way to invalidate your opponent because of that fact. Admittedly, this is a more general problem, but in the gay marriage debate I more often than not see the proponents of gay marriage assuming that they're somehow more enlightened than their counterparts.
Clearly, I have been defending mostly one part of the debate in this post, and as I mentioned at the beginning, this is because I tend to side with the underdog. However, it is also because I really cannot stand it when a debate revolves around strawmen and misunderstandings that arise because of lack of appreciation of context. Granted, both sides are guilty of this, but as I see it, the pro-gay marriage side at this point is the more powerful part (in the arenas where I tend to be located, at least - I'm not saying that pro-gayism is the majority in the world or anything like that), and so they have more of a responsibility to do their debating properly, as I see it.
