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Jewish World Review April 19, 2005 / 10 Nisan, 5765 College taught her not to be a heterosexual By Dennis Prager
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Perhaps the most important argument against same-sex marriage is that once society honors same-sex sex as it does man-woman sex, there will inevitably be a major increase in same-sex sex. People do sexually (as in other areas) what society allows and especially what it honors.
One excellent example illustrating this is an article recently written in the McGill University newspaper by McGill student Anna Montrose. In it, she wrote:
"It's hard to go through four years of a Humanities B.A. reading Foucault and Butler and watching 'The L Word' and keep your rigid heterosexuality intact. I don't know when it happened exactly, but it seems I no longer have the easy certainty of pinning my sexual desire to one gender and never the other."
(Michel Foucault is a major French "postmodern" philosopher; Judith Butler is a prominent "gender theorist" at UC Berkeley; and "The L-Word" is a popular TV drama about glamorous lesbians.)
I interviewed Anna Montrose, a bright and articulate 22-year-old woman, on my syndicated radio show. She is a fine example of the type of thinking and behavior a homosexuality-celebrating culture — such as that at our universities — produces.
The following are selected excerpts, edited for reasons of space, from that interview.
DP: Prior to attending university you had your 'rigid heterosexuality' intact. Is that correct?
AM: I think that that's pretty fair to say.
DP: So you and I both believe that how people behave sexually, including which sex they will engage with sexually, is largely determined by society and not by nature.
AM: Yeah, I completely agree.
DP: Gay rights activists say the opposite. They say that whether you act homosexually or not is fixed; and I don't believe it's fixed necessarily at all and neither do you.
AM: But I think that [the activists'] argument has a political purpose, which is to counter the argument that heterosexuality is fixed.
DP: I agree with you. But we both think that they're not telling the truth for the sake of making a political argument.
Since we both agree that largely whom we have sex with and sexual behavior generally are culturally determined, the only question is: Would we like culture to determine [these things] one way or the other? I think 'yes' and you think 'not'. I have a heterosexual preference because my values tell me that male/female love is the ideal. You don't think it's the ideal. Is that fair?
AM: I think that it's one of many options.
DP: It's not necessarily a good thing to teach heterosexual behavior as the ideal?
AM: Yeah.
DP: You didn't know you were sexually attracted to women until you went to university? You had lived 18 years and thought you were only sexually attracted to males.
AM: That's true, but I also had never had a boyfriend either. I didn't date —
DP: Whether one has a boyfriend or girlfriend is very different from what one wants to have and where one's sexual fantasies lie.
AM: Yeah, that's completely true.
DP: All I'm saying about sexual choices is that society has a deep impact on sexual choices including whether it's same sex or opposite sex. So my whole position is: Thousands of years of Western civilization preferring male-female bonding leading to marriage and family is a good thing, and Anna feels that it's a bad thing. Is that totally fair? Or am I putting words in your mouth?
AM: I don't think it's necessarily preferable. I think that people should be able to make their own choices.
DP: So one is as good as the other.
AM: Yeah.
DP: So you're saying that for thousands of years, Western society has been wrong for preferring male-female marital bonding.
AM: I only think it's wrong in that it limits other possibilities, which are equally good.
DP: So it is wrong to tell people, wrong to tell little girls, to suggest in any way, subtly or non-subtly, that they should grow up and marry a boy?
AM: Yeah, I don't think that you should force anyone into —
DP: You said 'forced,' I just said 'suggest.'
AM: How would you just gently tell someone?
DP: By saying, for example, "Well, are you going to marry Jerry or Tony?" instead of, "Are you going to marry Jerry or Barbara?"
AM: I think that the coercion is on a sort of deeper level.
DP: So you feel it's [coercion] to suggest to a girl only male options for marriage?
AM: Right.
DP: Have you acted upon your new revelation of not being a rigid heterosexual?
AM: What do you mean 'acted on'?
DP: Well, had sexual contact with females.
AM: I guess I have, yeah.
DP: Have you had with a male?
AM: I had. I had a boyfriend for a year.
DP: Is there any difference or are they both equally meaningful to you?
AM: Well, there is definitely a difference, but they are also both meaningful.
DP: At this point, do you hope to marry one day?
AM: I haven't really decided on that.
DP: You don't even have that hope? You haven't decided on the hope? I asked if you hoped, not if you decided.
AM: Do I hope to marry? I don't know if I'm going to marry or not.
DP: I didn't ask if you knew; I was asking if you're hoping.
AM: I'm not sure what the difference is.
DP: I hope to win the lottery, but I don't expect to. There is a very big difference. So I'm asking if you hoped to.
AM: Well, hope would imply that that would be ideal. But I'm not going to say that getting married would be ideal. But I'm also not against marriage; I mean you get insurance benefits by getting married so I can definitely see a case where I would get married.
DP: For insurance benefits?
AM: Yeah.
DP: That's why you would marry?
AM: And tax benefits as well. It's very convenient.
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JWR contributor Dennis Prager hosts a national daily radio show based in Los Angeles. He the author of, most recently, "Happiness is a Serious Problem". Click here to comment on this column.
© 2005, Creators Syndicate
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Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
