COLUMN: Fine line between homosexual acceptance and tolerance
I arrived home from my two-year “trip” not long ago and remember turning on the television for the first time since my departure. I was shocked. Channel after channel of homosexual relationships inundated the screen. When I left just a few years earlier, I only remember faint rumors of some Ellen Degeneres coming out of the closet, and well … that was about it. Anything else was just hush-hush.
But not today. Since then, for that and many other reasons, I don’t watch a whole lot of TV.
The spread of homosexual acceptance isn’t just reserved for prime-time programming though. For example, at Weber State University a push was recently made to create a new officer in their student senate: a gay-issues senator.
And in Cache Valley, we see similar crusades.
A proposal presented Monday to the faculty senate of USU asked for employee benefits to be extended towards same-sex couples as they are to heterosexual USU employees. The report estimates that approximately 68 faculty members are gay or lesbian. On its face, the proposal seems fair enough. Other USU employees have health-care coverage for themselves and their spouses. Why not allow all employees to receive similar compensation?
The proposal though was rejected for the time being because of the recently passed Amendment Three in last year’s election. But I think the issue goes deeper than that.
Spencer W. Kimball, a former LDS leader once wrote, “Right and wrong, righteousness and sin, are not dependent upon man’s interpretations, conventions and attitudes. Social acceptance does not change the status of an act, making wrong into right. If all the people in the world were to accept homosexuality, the practice would still be a deep, dark sin.”
Though homosexuality is gaining acceptance throughout the world, I still believe it is immoral. Wrong is still wrong. Sin is still sin.
Now I’m not proposing we place a scarlet “H” on the chest of every alleged homosexual out there. Some ultra-conservatives though might welcome such a notion. I fear that some within our own Loganite community wouldn’t mind a separate drinking fountain for gays and lesbians. And heck, scratch them from the voting registry while you’re at it.
I believe that people of a different sexual orientation are discriminated against in our society, even, and perhaps especially here in Logan. Gay-bashing is rampant, and in my opinion as wrong as the behavior itself. If all channels of communications on the matter are suffocated, those who legitimately want to overcome such a problem (and yes, I consider it a problem) will be hushed into seclusion.
But where is the line between tolerance and acceptance?
In life, we all need lines drawn to say this I will do and this I will not. But where does one draw the line on tough issues such as homosexuality? If nothing is done, we’ll only draw closer and closer to that line, sooner or later passing it without even noticing. Eventually, you’re so far past that you deny that a line ever existed, therefore why worry?
The English poet Alexander Pope once wrote:
“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
Legalization of all aspects of homosexuality would be a way of admitting that there is not a problem with being homosexual. Then what? If homosexuals are allowed to marry, what would stop them from adopting children? Is it fair to that child to be raised in an environment that encourages inherently wrong behavior?
The family is the fundamental unit of society. By slowly chipping away at it, everything else will one day crumble.
So will giving benefits to homosexual couples ultimately cause fire and brimstone to pelt our little Cache Valley society? Probably not. But, where does one draw the line?
I say better sooner than later.
Jon Cox is a junior majoring in print journalism. Comments can be sent to jcox@cc.usu.edu.