Addendum - Sources of Confusion

The homosexual agenda is a very hot issue that creates enormously out-of-proportion excitement on both sides. Unfortunately, everything but the actual cause of the problem is argued about: discrimination, education, morality, psychology, sociology, religion, marriage, laws, pornography, taxes, etc. etc. The issue is not any of these things, the issue is liberty, and is never going to be solved until that is understood. All the other solutions proposed are all more repressive government, less liberty, and exacerbation of all problems. Nowhere is the confusion surrounding this question more apparent than its manifestation as an educational issue.

Government Schools

The major issue with the normalization of homosexuality for most parents today is the movement by militant gays to have homosexuality promoted as both normal and moral by the public schools. Most parents, if they are aware of this agenda at all, are both alarmed and very resistant to it. In some cities and states this issue has become a major social-political battleground, with much more heat than light on both sides. The problem is a confusion about where the problem lies.

The homosexuals are understandably unhappy with what was, until just a few years ago, the prevailing attitude and view of all schools which regarded homosexuality as both a perversion of normal sexuality, as well as dangerous and harmful. Since the homosexuals do not agree with this view, they naturally want to see that view changed.

They have been very successful an many places with achieving this goal. It is just as understandable that those who regard homosexuality as both abnormal and immoral see these inroads by the homosexuals, which the homosexuals themselves have labeled, the “queering” of education, as a violation of their rights to determine what their children are taught, and they very much dislike their children being taught that.

From an Objectivist point of view, they are both right. While a thoroughgoing Objectivist must conclude on the basis of man’s nature and the facts of reality, homosexuality is indeed both abnormal, and its practices immoral, the Objectivist is opposed to forcing anyone to be taught anything. And that is the problem. So long as the government is in charge of educating children, there cannot possibly be a solution to a problem about who gets to say what the children are taught.

So long as people are willing to have their children educated by the government at other people’s expense, they will be forced to allow other people to decide what their children are going to be taught, and their children are going to be taught what they do not like.

The Religious Community

The religious community, obviously, was the first to become alarmed about the homosexual agenda and remains the most vocal in resisting it. Along with their opposition to sex education, rampant sexual promiscuity, and the sub-standard education of public schools, the religious community also initiated the only true solution to the problem; they began the homeschool movement.

They initiated it, but it has been taken over by every intelligent, capable, parent who cares about their children’s education (or their life). It is very fortunate and important that this has happened. The religious community often makes positive contributions to the public debate, such as those about the inadequacies of government schools. Unfortunately, they make all their arguments from their own narrow religious perspective.

Here is the problem, so long as all the homeschoolers were, “Christians,” those who opposed the homeschool movement put it down as just a bunch of religious zealots who were upset because the schools were undercutting the parent’s own “propagandizing” of their children. Fortunately, the movement is no longer a religious movement at all, and it is obviously the brightest and most capable parents who are making the decision to homeschool, and they are beating the pants off the government schools, not because they do such a good job (they do) but because the public schools do such a bad job.

The movement is tiny, compared to the huge educational machine the government controls, but it is big enough to prove to anyone who cares about the truth (or children) that private citizens no more need the government to provide their children an education than they need the government to provide their children underwear. Private enterprise is perfectly capable of producing a full supply of both products, much higher in quality and a much lower in price, than any government can.

With regard to the issue of homosexuality, itself, the religious community, by emphasizing their opposition to its normalization entirely on the basis of their own private religious beliefs, without addressing any of the very important aspects of homosexuality itself, has convinced most the only real objection to homosexuality is a religious one.

One of the unintentional results of the religious opposition to homosexuality is that they have turned it into a religion versus non-religion debate, removing the entire issue from the sphere of reasoned objective analysis and discussion. The religious opposition to homosexuality, on no other grounds than its being condemned by their religious authority, (the Bible, the Pope, the Ecumenical Council, etc.) leaves everyone, except those accepting those authorities, totally unconvinced. The moment one begins the discussion of homosexuality with, “the Bible says,” the discussion is over.

The gays are only too eager to reduce the entire debate about the normalization of homosexuality to a religious one. So long as the only argument against homosexuality is the fact some people’s religions are against it, there is no objective grounds at all for opposing homosexuality, the opposition can be attibuted entirely to religious prejudice. If that doesn’t work, just take over the religion and change its teachings to support homosexuality.

Of course, the religious are perfectly free, and ought to be, to promote their views in any way they choose, even if their method undercuts their objective. If they want to fight to have all sex education removed from the public schools (an impossible but noble thing to fight for) and do it in the name of religion, they have a perfect right to. The homosexuals also have a right to insist their views on sex be taught in the schools. In fact, everyone has a right to insist, argue, and campaign for what they want taught or not taught.

But this war can never be resolved, because no matter what is finally decided is to be done with the collective money to educate the collective children, most, if not all, are going to be unhappy with the results. The argument can never be resolved, because the whole argument is an attempt to solve the insolvable problem of discovering, the right way to do the wrong thing.

There is only one thing wrong with what is taught and how things are run in the public (government) schools, their existence.