Using the Phrase "Gay Lifestyle"

Dave Muskera, a writer for a publication called "American Chronicle," just nails it with an article titled, "The Gay Lifestyle. Are You Missing Out?" He covers the two primary ways the phrase "gay lifestyle" is misused:



So by using the term gay lifestyle, which has constantly been negatively spun, the hope of the propaganda machine is that there will be a non-thinking automatic negative emotional response in the minds and hearts of most people. Well, I fear it has worked with a distressingly large number of otherwise good and gentle folks. These same people never consider what kind of kinky heterosexual sex films could be made at a New Orleans Mardi Gra or the annual Carnival Festival in Brazil. In both events, open sexual intercourse in the streets is not all that unusual. But these nice folks don’t think about these things or even the thousands of images that could be pulled from heterosexual porn. And even if all this were paraded in front of them, it would never be used to condemn all heterosexuals for sinful misbehavior. Yet, somehow, the stupid immature shenanigans of a relatively few gay people is always offered-up and usually accepted as evidence that all gays are somehow evil, sick and depraved.



There are some heterosexuals I know (not me or Pastor Brenda, mind you) that are engaging in pretty wild lifestyles while gay couples like Apostle Dale and his spouse Garrey just work hard and live in very nicely decorated homes. Their lives are much closer to the example Jesus set for us than guys I work with who are barhopping and getting drunk at every opportunity. The idea of these co-workers' lives being thrown up in my face to condemn my sexual orientation is laughable, yet Dale and Garrey have to deal with that kind of stupidity on a regular basis.



If you’re still with me. I have one other point. Sort of the flip side of why using the term gay lifestyle is so important to the far right. It’s a little more subtle. Focus on the word “lifestyle”. Everything that word means as found in a dictionary or conjures in your mind points to “lifestyle” as something, or some set of something’s, that people do because they choose to do so. It is massively important to the religious far right to made sure everyone buys into the idea that gay people chose their sexual orientation. They chose, in other words, to sin. And therefore, they can choose to become ex-gay. So choice is the big unspoken reason underlying the use of the lifestyle term. I’m not going to expound in this article about the choice issue. Suffice to say, sexual orientation is not chosen consciously and every major reputable scientific group agrees on that. But by paring the two words, gay and lifestyle over and over, the right has been successful at keeping sexual orientation from being considered as just a variation along the line of sexual attraction.



Sensing they are losing what little credibility they have, some in the religious right is allowing for at least the possibility that sexual orientation is not a choice while contending that homosexuals still should not act upon it. Clearly, this is a much weaker arguement than orientation being a concious decision, and any opportunity to imply such helps their case--not with truth but deception.



Sadly, right-wing homophobic zealots are not seeking the truth. They just want to convince other people that the twisted way they see the world should be how everyone else views it.



If deception is what it takes, so be it. Nobody can rationalize or justify better than someone trying to shove their bigotry down someone else's throat.