posted June 16, 2006 01:57 PM              

Sometimes..things come out of NoWhere..and you just post..I kind of like to let that happen..

I'll be more careful..next time. .

I didn't know we had police patroling. ...

posted June 16, 2006 07:25 PM              

the only person being rude is you. ...

posted June 27, 2006 12:45 AM              

"The homosexual lifestyle is inconsistent with the proper raising of children. Because homosexual relationships are characteristically unstable, they are less likely to provide children the security they need. "

Listen to an activist of the far right rant against gays and lesbians for a few minutes, and you will hear the expression "the homosexual lifestyle" at least once. It is one of the standing phrases of the Religious Right, and they use it ad nauseam and beyond. However, they rarely explain what it is supposed to mean. It is the purpose of this little essay to shed some light on the definiton and proper usage of the word lifestyle, and to show that the Religious Right usage of the word in conjunction with homosexual is propagandistic and misleading.

Let us first notice that there is an inherent ambiguity in the phrase the homosexual lifestyle. It is supposed to mean the lifestyle that homosexuals have, or the lifestyle that homosexuality is?

I will come back to that question after I have explored the meaning of the word lifestyle.

Webster's dictionary defines lifestyle as

"the way in which an individual lives, e.g. as to dress, habits, friendships, values."

The Cambridge International Dictionary of English gives the following definition:

"someone's way of living; the things that a person or particular group of people usually do
He doesn't have a very healthy lifestyle - a lot of stress, a lot of food and no exercise.

It's a TV show that looks at the lifestyles of movie stars.

The group of women had pursued an alternative lifestyle, bringing up their children communally and sharing their resources. "

Dictionary.com gives the following usage note:

"When lifestyle began to gain wide currency a generation ago, a number of critics objected to it as voguish and superficial, perhaps because it appeared to elevate habits of consumption, dress, and recreation to a primary basis of social classification. Nonetheless, the word has proved durable and useful, if only because such categories do in fact figure importantly in the schemes that Americans commonly invoke in explaining social values and social behavior, whether appropriately or not, as in Rachel Brownstein's remark that an anticonventional lifestyle is no sure sign of feminist politics, or indeed, of any politics at all. As such, the word has won the occasionally grudging acceptance of the Usage Panel. Fifty-three percent of the Panelists accepts the word in the sentence Bohemian attitudes toward conventional society have been outstripped and outdated by the lifestyles of millions of young people, and fully 70 percent accepts the word in the sentence Salaries in the Bay Area may be higher, but it may cost employees as much as 30 percent more to maintain their lifestyles, where the economic context makes more apparent the need for a word that denotes categories based on consumption practices."

In summary, lifestyle is generally understood to refer to habits of consumption, dress and recreation, such as favourite foods and drinks, where they are eaten (at home/restaurants/parties), and with whom (alone/family/friends), what products one uses for body hygiene, what clothes one wears, what shows one watches on television, what movies ones sees, and so on.

It should be clear even to someone who has never consciously met a gay man or a lesbian woman that there is no uniformity of consumption habits, or dress, or hobbies among the group of people with a homosexual orientation. And why should there be? There is no connection whatsoever between who we love and what we like for breakfast.

Now that we have disposed of the idea of a uniform lifestyle among homosexuals, we can address the second idea: that homosexuality itself is a lifestyle.

From the examples, it is apparent that a lifestyle has two distinguishing qualities. It is

a. superficial
b. freely chosen.

Religious faith does not belong to the category of lifestyle, because it permeates the very essence of one's personality. It may be freely chosen, but it is not superficial.

Race, nationality, gender and the color of your eyes are not lifestyles, because they are inborn traits. They may be superficial, but they are not freely chosen.

As we see, a certain trait can fail to be a lifestyle on just one of the two accounts. Love towards and sexual attraction to members of the same sex fails to be a lifestyle on both accounts. It is neither superficial, nor freely chosen. Throughout history, gay men and lesbians have lived their relationships in spite of social disaproval, and often under the threat of incarceration, torture or death from governmental or religious persecution. No mere lifestyle would ever prevail over such adversity. Nor would a mere lifestyle independently occur in societies all over the world, and throughout recorded history.

That sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic of human and animal sexuality is the conclusive result of decades of anthropological, psychological, zoological and sociobiological research. Not only is it not a lifestyle, it is about as far removed from being a lifestyle as anything can be. The phrase the homosexual lifestyle is the classical example of an oxymoron, i.e. two words that are used together, but have the opposite meaning (like the fiery cold, or Justice Thomas).

To put it in a less educated way, the phrase homosexual lifestyle is nonsense. Yet the Religious Right continues to use it with persistent malevolence, because it compresses the religious right view of homosexuality into a single, convenient phrase. With today's soundbite-driven, short-attention span mass media, such phrases are the stock and trade of any successful propagandist.

The phrase homosexual lifestyle demeans and trivializes same-sex relationships, by suggesting that they are not an expression of deep feelings of love and companionship, but only transitory associations with no intrinsic worth or value. It denies the true nature and depth of sexual orientation, by relegating it to the arbitariness and shallowness of a mere lifestyle choice. And it is an insult to the millions of gays and lesbians who have suffered greatly during their coming-out process, and who most certainly do not need the arrogant, condescending advice of religious fanatics who think that who we love can be changed as easily as having a hot dog with mayonnaise instead of with ketchup.

Suggestions for countering the rhetorical device of the homosexual lifestyle.

1. Ask for a definition of the word lifestyle. If none is forthcoming, supply one of your own. I suggest habits of consumption, dress and recreation.

2. Ask for a detailed characterization of the homosexual lifestyle. What movies do homosexuals see? What soap do they use? What cars do they drive? What toppings do they have on their pizza?

3. If there is a homosexual lifestyle, there must also be a heterosexual lifestyle. Ask for a description of the heterosexual lifestyle. Also ask your opponent why he or she chose the heterosexual lifestyle, and under what circumstances. Ask for the exact date it happened. If your opponent can't remember the date or the circumstances, inquire why the details of such a monumental decision would have slipped from memory.

4. Point out that no one in their right mind would choose a lifestyle that makes one subject to all kinds of discrimination, constant harassment and vicious namecalling. Why would anyone want to be a second-class citizen, legally banned from marrying, and in some states, thanks to archaic sodomy laws, even officially be considered a habitual criminal?

5. Ask why some animals seem to choose the homosexual lifestyle as well.