Conformity

Dying Gaul, Roman, 230-220 BCE

Real social change does not come from conformity. As I look at today's GLBT movement, I am both impressed and disappointed. I am impressed with the result of our struggle in the 1960s and 1970s to embolden gay protest and visibility. I am disappointed in the application of that new political power to conformist causes. I am sophisticated enough to understand that this is the rock and roll of change in human society.

I contributed volunteer hours to the gay marriage movement here in Boston, despite the fact that I feel the government (or religion) should have no place in the psycho-sexual bond between free adults of any preference. Using marriage as a political lever to pry open the doors of equal citizenship for GLBT people has its logical basis, when working with the real world on its own terms. Marriage has more to do with wealth and property than with true affection or healthy sexuality. State/church marriage has a very poor statistical basis of success in modern society for many valid reasons. But, it is not an inherently violent process, so, as a humanist, I do not challenge its ethical basis, just its practical worth for human health and well being.

The recent lifting of barriers for GLBT people to participate in militarism is another thing. The current U.S. military is based on violence, control and aggression on the behalf of corporate interests. While I do not support discrimination against GLBT people by any institution funded by taxpaying citizens, I find it disappointing that GLBT people, an oppressed population murdered and tortured for centuries by militaristic elements of societies, should be so interested in joining those militaristic elements of any society.

To any GLBT person who should make a case for the value of gays in a military as a protection of GLBT people in a society, I would say, "Look to history." The head of Hitler's S.A. was a sadistic gay man whose troops ushered thousands of gay men to concentration camps with pink stars on their clothing. From the time of the Spartans, homosexual bonding in uniformed troops has most likely been a mainstay of militarism. Hitler praised the homosexual Goering,

I liked him. I made him the head of my S.A. He is the only one of its heads that ran the S.A. properly. I gave him a disheveled rabble. In a very short time he had organised a division of 11,000 men.

I will admit to being an idealistic pacifist, a very unpopular world-view in these times of hedonistic materialism among the wealthy and envious poverty among the rest. These trends are perhaps more pronounced in the GLBT community. The political leadership of the GLBT community has certainly moved drastically to the Right with the infusion of national lobbying money from wealthy GLBT people, whose loyalty to their class supersedes their compassion for their fellow minority citizens or their respect of subcultural mores which have withstood centuries of persecution.

My humanist practice would not allow me to kill for any reason other than my own individual self defense if attacked with lethal intent. So, putting on a uniform and picking up a gun to train to kill another human being I do not even know over a political ideology determined by someone to whom I have submitted my human will is an alien concept to me. I suppose, in militarist terms, this makes me a conscientious objector. In my mind, this makes me a human being and a humanist.