When you listen to the ultra-religious and the not-so-intelligentsia explain what’s wrong with homosexuality — and the people that practice it, perhaps more to the point — invariably, someone trots out the stale bit about the kids.  You know, that homosexuals are out to seduce and transform your child, recruiting them to the Pink Army.  And how all gays are pedophiles, to boot.

And here’s where I find out who knows me, and who doesn’t, really.  And also, who will bother reading this all the way through:

Homosexuality and pedophilia come from the same place.

I just want to let that sink in.

Let me add: from that same font flow heterosexual desires, foot fetishes, and my obsession with satin lingerie.

Backing up a bit: this week, on Birmingham’s public radio station WBHM, they’ve been running a week-long series on issues affecting the GBLT community, especially in Alabama.  I’ve long been a proponent of equal rights for everyone, regardless of race, religion — whatever.  And I really, honestly can not begin to understand why people would disagree with me.  I don’t get looking at people that look differently than me and thinking of them as lesser beings, sub-human.  I don’t understand being afraid of or hating people that are attracted to things that I’m not attracted to.

Frankly, I think that people are perfectly capable of letting you down on their own merits.

I’m friends with  many, many gay men, a few lesbians, and one transgendered woman.They’ve all got quirks, and eccentricities, and good sides and bad sides.  To a person, I can guarantee you that every single one of them — without exception — is less likely to plant seeds of Evil and Degeneration in a child than I am.  Me, a caucasian, heterosexual, (raised) Protestant, college educated (three Bachelor’s degrees) male, approaching middle-age.

So I’m listening to WBHM’s programming this week, and I hear things that don’t surprise me at all, but disturb me to no end nonetheless. Michael Jordan is a pastor at a Baptist church here in Birmingham:

“It’s like any other sin. Some say, well, we’re born with these homosexual propensities or nature. That can be true. Homosexuality can be a generational curse, just like lying, stealing, jealousy, hate, fornicating or whatever, adultery. But, that’s why when you get to the scriptures, you talk about, if you can be born a certain way, doesn’t mean God made you like that.”

Where to begin here? How about let’s start with this:

Erm, Pastor Jordan?  Here in the South, they used to say that sure, God made black people, but he also made apes. In fact, while I can’t say I’ve heard it personally, I’ll bet there’s some people around here that still say it.

Second, homosexuality (and heterosexuality) are not actions like lying, stealing, or fornicating.  Jealousy and hate, I think, okay — you’re a little bit closer.  It’s a description or definition of your desires — something you can’t control.

Now, I know that there are differing schools of thought on thought versus action.  Some will say it’s a sin to think about punching your fellow man, while others say it’s only a sin if you actually punch him.  But it seems that no matter who I talk to, it’s not an issue of whether you follow through or not — if you’re attracted to your same sex, or children, or animals, or mannequins, or cartoon characters, you’re wrong, sinning, sick, demented, perverted.

Or, if you’re too close to children, positively unhealthy. Eunie Smith, president of Eagle Forum of Alabama, a conservative activist group, says homosexuality shouldn’t be talked about in schools, much less tolerated.

“Well, young people are highly impressionable. And for the schools to provide some special status for those who would perceive themselves to be homosexual…would be to legitimize and therefore to encourage these unhealthy lifestyles.”

Yeah, Crusty McDustovaries, young people are impressionable, but I double-dog-dare you to find me a kid that has been turned gay by being educated about homsexuality. College experimentation doesn’t count.

And lifestyles are only unhealthy if they are practiced recklessly.  For instance, did you know that, in some high school populations, kids — white kids! that go to church! and praise Jesus! — are saving their virginity for marriage by having anal sex instead?  Because, as they are taught, you can catch AIDS and get pregnant through ‘normal’ vanilla intercourse.  Since they’re not taught that the risk of transmitting STDs increases with anal sex — well, it must be safer, yeah?

(I really wish they had told the girls in my high school that Jesus was all about the blow job.)

AIDS doesn’t kill fags, darlin’.  AIDS kills anyone who is not careful about how and with whom they have sex.  Education can help with this — making it a healthier lifestyle. But I guess that would make it harder for you to make complaints about, wouldn’t it?

Now, I’m not in favor of a special status for gay kids, not any more than I am for smart kids, or any kid that is “different.”  In fact, after listening to the segment about kids in school getting bullied, etc., it’s hard for me to feel that bad for them.  Though I can certainly empathize: as a nerd, I was bullied constantly until high school.  And I’m sorry that you’re being picked on because of something you can’t change — but welcome to the world.  Grow a thicker skin, buy a helmet, and push through it.  If you’re Asian in the south, or have childhood cancer, or are smarter than average, you get bullied, too.  And you’re gonna get fucked with the rest of your life, so go ahead and learn to fight back, to realize that your differences set you apart from the crowd and make you special — whatever gets you through.  This is the rest of your life, only magnified through the overly-dramatic eyes of a teenager.

But if you’re a parent that thinks your child can “catch” being gay?  You probably should have had your birthing privileges revoked a while back, you fucking moron.

Pastor Jordan’s the one who inspired my opening thought, that you can equate pedophilia and homosexuality:

“But, to turn around and accept a confessing gay person and say leave him alone, they are right and God made him like that, no, absolutely not. Because if a pedophile come in with the same sin, the church would put me out if I turned around and accept it.”

And here’s where I have problems. When I say that you can equate {fill in the blank}philia and homosexuality and heterosexuality and fetishes, what I mean is this: as human beings, we are attracted to (and turned off by) what we are.  It is what it is.  You can’t help what turns you on or off (unless you know something that I don’t).

For the scientists in the crowd, I’ll admit up front that this is backed up purely with anecdotal evidence and personal experience.  But it’s a pretty strong argument: if you found yourself attracted to something that would mark you as a social pariah, that risked getting you beaten up or imprisoned or killed, and you were capable of forcing yourself to not be attracted to that and instead being turned on by something else — well, you’d probably switch, wouldn’t you?

Right?

Now, to extricate myself from the near hole I’ve put myself in with my gay friends: there is an important distinction between pedophilia and bestiality, and the rest of the predilictions.  That line, not so simply put, is consent.

Sexual relations with a child — and I’ll leave it to you to debate that definition, though I think setting a specific age is dangerously context-free — is wrong because the child is incapable of making an informed decision in the matter.  Even removing infants and rape from the matter, a thirteen-year-old is akin to a twenty-something who has been drugged.  They are no of the right mind to make a choice in the matter.  Ditto animals.  Even if they say yes, you’re overlooking the fact that it’s not a fair question in the first place.

Look, you see or hear or smell something, and it triggers biological processes in your lizard brain.  You can’t help getting turned on or repulsed; it just happens.  I can not hold it against a man who is sexually attracted to whatever — whether it be Megan Fox, or Johnny Depp, or leather thigh-high boots, or being smacked around by a woman in shrink wrap, or even adolescent boys.  That’s part of their make-up.  It’s the way, as some would say, that God made them. Maybe it’s flawed, just like people born without a limp or with mental retardation or bipolar disorder, but it’s still part of who we are, as people. And if their leanings lead them to blowjobs from older men that remind them of Dad, or wearing a diaper and suckling as foreplay, or having a car battery attached to their testicles — well, I say as long as no one is getting hurt involuntarily, let ’em.  Who am I — or you, or your pastor, or some crusted old crone who is probably just jealous because no one has been interested in having sex with her in decades anyway — to deny someone pleasure? Do we have so much to celebrate in this world that we should limit ourselves?

If you said yes, fuck off out of here and get to church.

To my GBLT friends, I congratulate you for pushing through the bullshit and doing the best you can to enjoy your life in as many respects as you can.  Don’t let anyone saying “That’s so gay,” or calling you a faggot, or quoting scriptures get you down.  They’re only words, and they’re probably coming from a place of fear or sadness.  Love is love is love, and the world can never have too much.

To those of you that still insist that my friends can be cured, or that they’re going to Hell, or that they’re abominations, or that they’re out to build an army of Boy Scouts: take a deep look inside yourself and try to figure out why you feel that way.  Is it because a book written two millenia ago and editted by people who did whatever they had to do to remain in power tells you so?  Is it because you’re afraid of anything different than you?  Do you just not understand it? Maybe you won’t change, but maybe you’ll learn a little something about yourself, and maybe you’ll grow a little, if not a lot.

Because, like homosexuality, stupidity can’t be cured.  But one at least comes from a place of love and warm, fuzzy feelings.