The Religious Right Has A Point About Gays Destroying the World

To contact us Click HERE


Just not in the scary, violent, chaotic way they keep selling it.


Hear me out.


Think about smoking.

vintage ashtray

Around 60 years ago, everyone smoked. People smoked at home, in the office at work, on airplanes, in bars, restaurants, even hospitals. Smoking was totally okay and mainstream. Even pregnant women smoked. As a result, there were ashtrays EVERYWHERE. They attached them to walls, they built them into the armrests on airplanes, they were even pieces of furniture themselves. My partner has an ashtray stand that's about 3.5 feet tall, complete with a handle on top that lets you take it from place to place. People had big ones on their coffee tables, sometimes they were highly decorated and doubled as centerpieces. You may not realize this but there's most likely a cigarette lighter in your car. It's that plug you pull out of the dashboard so you can plug in an adapter to charge your phone.  Smoking was so common, so popular, they built a lighter into cars. It was part of the rations we gave to our military soldiers.

It's important to remember that nobody came up with smoking with the intent of hurting anyone. It was just discovered as this nifty little high. Tobacco became cheaper in a post-industrial society, so it became popular.

Then we discovered that it wasn't so nifty. Lung Cancer. Premature aging. Longer recovery from colds and other illnesses. It kills your taste buds and gives you a rapid heartbeat and it's highly, highly, highly addictive.

60 years later and you pretty much can't smoke ANYWHERE. I'm old enough to remember there being a smoking section in restaurants, in fact in college (1995-ish) there were a few restaurants we went to specifically because of the smoking section. It's easy to find cigarettes and lighters, but ashtrays are gone in many places. Now it's a moral concern. Nobody smokes on TV or in movies, unless they're a morally dubious person.  If we find out a pregnant woman is smoking, it's a scandal.

In many ways, the world of smokers was destroyed. Metaphorically speaking. What was once considered an everyday normality is now rare and considered a "bad habit".

How does this relate to gay rights? Well, just as smoking was NOT brought forth specifically to harm anyone, so true is "traditional marriage" and "heterocentrism". No one ever thought there was an issue with limiting marriage to 1 man and 1 woman. No one thought there was anything wrong with assuming everyone was attracted to the opposite sex. Just like smoking, it was just the way things were.

Just as the discovery that smoking actually harms smokers destroyed that happy-go-lucky world where everyone smoked, and smoked all the time, today's current push for gay rights is "destroying" that world of heterosexual privilege and conformity. It's destroying the presumption that effeminate men and masculine women are "wrong". It's destroying the notion that homosexuality is a moral issue.

And that's what scares some people. I was a smoker for 8 years, I'm glad to be rid of it, but I do have friends who smoke and it's something of an oddity in today's world. Some of them are really unhappy about how they pretty much can't smoke anywhere anymore --and yet they also admit that smoking is no good for them. Today's anti-gays are freaked out. They want to go back to that world where straight people ruled the earth and every marriage was 1 man and 1 woman. They want to be part of the majority again. They want to be mainstream again. They don't seem to understand that being popular, well liked, or fitting in with mainstream culture isn't a civil right, nor is it a legit reason to curb other people's civil rights.

What anti-gays don't seem to understand is the world is moving forward, with or without them. Some places speed ahead, other lag behind, but the momentum is still forward. All the lies and distortions they keep churning out are no different that the excuses tobacco companies keep churning out. And by positioning themselves as needing their thoughts, their ideas, their antiquated privilege and control of the country (nay, The World) to be absolute, to push gay people back into the closet --- is wasted effort. Like trying to shove toothpaste back into the tube. They're scared they're going to be treated like bigots, yet they don't seem to understand that continually demonizing gay people won't stop them from being treated like racists, it guarantees they will.
People don't mind if you smoke in your own home, but if you insist on smoking in their home and blowing the smoke in their face, they won't stand for it. We all need the air in the environment to live, it's not fair for smokers to pollute common areas at the expense of everyone's health. So too must anti-gays realize that they're allowed to believe whatever they want, practice whatever they want in their home or their church, but they don't have the right to pollute our culture with lies and bigotry. And people won't stand for the smoke of bigotry to be blown in their faces, either.