I have a rare blood type. In fact, I am missing some gene, and that screws up my regular and unremarkable type O. This makes my blood incompatible with any other normal type O blood, and I could not receive a blood transfusion from people who have it (mechanically, I could, but it would be rejected by my body, so it would do more harm than good). About 1 in 2 million people have the same abnormality, and chances are not all of them have a type O blood. This means that there are possibly fewer than 50 people in the US whose blood would be compatible with mine. This means that I am one disaster away from not having any chance at all. If I need a blood transfusion in an emergency, blood banks are almost sure not to have anything to offer to me. And if I ever need a bone marrow transplant, - forget it. Most people would have at least some reasonable second chance. I will have none.
This certainly makes me unique in some way. Am I ashamed of being different? No. Am I proud of being special? No. This is the way I am, it is somewhat inconvenient, but oh well!
This morning I heard a recording of a conversation on NPR between a grandpa and his grandson. It turns out that both are gay. Grandpa came out of the closet in the 70s after he had been married and had fathered several children. He said it was not easy to eventually have to tell each of his children about his sexual orientation. But then he said that his proudest moment came when he told his then 9-year-old grandson about being gay. The grandson who is by now a young man proceeds to tell about his own discovery of his homosexuality. The grandpa takes obvious pleasure in hearing that his grandson is like himself. There is some warm and satisfied laughter exchanged by the two men. This left me profoundly perplexed.
Would it make me truly pleased to find out that my child or my grandchild had the same "unique" blood type I do? Not at all. That uniqueness could make their life hard and could subject them to danger. I would certainly accept it - what else can you do about it? But to act truly pleased? Strange at best.
I see nothing to be ashamed of about being a homosexual. But to be not ashamed and to be proud are two different things. Similarly of not being proud of my rare blood type, I am not proud to be a heterosexual. What is there to be proud of? This is the way I was, well, - made. There is no achievement or accomplishment of my own. I have always thought that the gay pride was actually overcompensating for the perceived prejudice. But two wrongs don't make one right, it would seem.
Homosexuals will always be a minority group - this is just the law of life. It is not easy to be a minority. It can be dangerous. So why would anybody who is gay be truly pleased that their child or grandchild also turned out to be gay? Just because he or she is "like you"? Seems psychologically odd to me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
If we looked at it from a scientific standpoint homosexuality is a black hole for reproduction. Therefore if we were simply organisms floating about we would probably see them as a threat to our existence and either shun or completely get rid of it as an evolutionary defect.
ReplyDeleteSo perhaps gay pride is only a defense mechanism for something that knows it should be shunned by evolutionary advancement.
Also, it is not unique that a people would celebrate something that they believe is inherit in them. There is celebration of races of cultures and of traditions, things that people grow up with. People like to have categories in common and feel like it is something to be celebrated. Like when you find out someone else likes the same band as you, you feel connected. (Or if that person is someone you hate you feel violated as if that thing in some way belonged to you.)
I do not think when it comes to any kind of genetic difference that there is any true reason for it to be celebrated. It is simply our societal categories that create differences and similarities.
You make a very eloquent argument, Demosthenes! I believe, though, that in the case of homosexuality you are a bit off likening celebration of it to celebration of cultures and traditions, not genetic anomalies. Gays position themselves as people who are genetically wired this way, don't they? They claim it is almost a condition which they cannot change, something inherent and permanent. They grow up in our culture and traditions, not in some particular culture of their own. Is there a particular gay culture? Is there gay music (like they say in Russia, we love Tchaikovsky not simply because he was gay)? poetry? visual art? music? food?
ReplyDeleteWhat that group of people has in common is their sexual preferences. Likewise, we could then argue that men who like tall blond women form a subculture in our society and can legitimately celebrate their "difference" and be proud of their taste.
So if gays posit themselves as a genetically different group, why was my analogy with my genetic anomaly off? Again, I think this is the case in our society when a particular group of people wants to have its cake and eat it, too. You are either wired this way, in which case it is medical, not societal and cultural, or it is a matter of your choice, in which case you should not claim that it is genetic and unchangeable. And if this is a medical congenital "condition", celebrating that one's grandson is gay is akin to a diabetic to be celebrating that his grandchild also has that disease. Diabetics also have a similarity of life styles, limitations, difficulties, diets, etc which could possibly be construed as a subculture.