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May 2004

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Sermonizing on the Sex Lives of Animals

By Michael Bronski
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I had a moment of confusion recently as I packed for a trip to New Orleans to debate the issue of same-sex marriage. I would be taking the side in favor of same-sex marriage even though I had a great deal of criticism about how it has become the only item on the new “gay agenda.” My opponent would be a right-wing evangelical Prot- estant. The debate would be held at Loyola University, a liberal Jesuit school in the most conservative diocese in one of the U.S.’s most famous sex-and-party cities. I wasn’t sure if I should pack Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica , my Bible, my leather chaps, or all of the above. 

Actually, my confusion was due to the fact that a few months earlier I had written an essay (available on the web) that voiced reservations about the GLBT movement’s singular focus on the issue of marriage. Was I expected to take the pro-gay marriage side or the anti? This perplexity was cleared up a few days later when I received a follow-up email letting me know that my opponent would be Judge Darrell White, co-director of the Louisiana Family Forum, the local chapter of Focus on the Family and a major force in conservative religious politics in Louisiana. If it hadn’t been clear before, it was now: I had signed on to the “same-sex mar- riage now” bandwagon. 

Despite these initial reservations, I was determined to do my best not only in arguing the pro-gay side, but also in keeping my undoubtedly prejudicial views of Southern Pro- testant conservatism at bay. I had a chance to practice being polite when I met Judge White at the pre-debate dinner. He struck me as a pleasant, alert, intelligent-sounding man with classic Southern gentility and charm. I considered our introduction a success. Not only did I not call him a homophobe, I didn’t even want to. Little did I know that, despite the judge’s Louisiana bonhomie, he had no intention of being polite or putting aside preconceived notions on stage. 

The format for our discussion was classic high-school debating team. We would be discussing the question, “Should Same-Sex Marriage Be Made Legal in the United States?” Since I was taking the affirmative position, I would go first with 15 minutes to make my case; White would follow with 15 minutes to argue why same-sex marriage should not be made legal. We would each be given five minutes to respond. Then there would be two sets of student responses—pro and con—followed by questions from the audience. After years of gay political meetings where everyone yelled at one another, of political rallies where opposing sides chanted ugly sentiments in unison, this format seemed very adult. 

I delivered my speech. It was sturdy, but lithe, a point-by-point argument (replete with humorous asides, of course). I contended that while people may disagree over the religious status of same-sex marriage, civil marriage was simply a legal contract issued by the government that, under constitutional law, had to be available to same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples. Most important, it would not destroy heterosexual marriage and family, but grant financial and legal benefits to a whole new set of family units that could only work to the general good of society. Rather than arguing as a “gay activist,” I made my case as an advocate for social and economic justice. “Gay marriage would not just help gay men and lesbians,” I argued, “but would benefit all society by bringing stability and health to more families.” (Later, in my response to the judge, I said that familial stability and health would be advanced more effectively with universal health care, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, federal funding for parents who stay home to care for children, comprehensive sexual and health education, free contraception on demand, and daycare for all who want and need it.) 

After the audience of 200 students and others tied to the Loyola community gave me enthused and mildly sustained applause, White began his talk. I’m not sure what I was expecting. After all, he was a Southern evangelical with strong ties to the viciously homophobic Focus on the Family. Still, I had visited the Louisiana Family Forum website and was charmed by an elegantly posed portrait of the judge with his family—he has 7 children ranging in age from 6 to 31. Given also that Judge White was just that —a judge, albeit a retired one from the municipal court of Baton Rouge—I assumed he would do what I had done: shape his argument around legal and constitu- tional issues. 

Imagine my surprise when Judge White kicked off his portion of the debate by implying that all gay people were mentally ill. The 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to take homosexuality off its list of disorders, he argued, was a gay liberationist plot. He then went on at length about people having sex with animals, which, according to the judge, would logically follow from the legalization of same-sex marriage. He also implied that gay activists were lobbying the APA to change its diagnostic profile for pedophilia. Then he talked more about sex with animals. Was there something about Louisiana I had missed in the travel brochures? Was no dog on the street safe from random gay men with marriage licenses looking for a mate? I had an image of Judge White on a broomstick—a la the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz —flying over the French quarter cackling, “We’ll get you...and your little dog too.” 

The judge then read a long, very lame humor piece (now circulating on right-wing websites) in which a San Francisco city clerk quits her job when faced with having to marry a series of increasingly deranged people—zoophiles, male siblings, and a schizophrenic with two personalities who wants to marry himself. He followed that with a piece from a Bangor, Maine, newspaper in which a man, who was obviously mentally ill, announced that he had married his pet dog. White proceeded to paint a world run amok with political correctness, where grade-school students are forced to undergo sexuality “retraining” and queer activists topple the Catholic Church with anti-discrimination laws. Finally, he declared that same-sex marriage was “insulting” to heterosexuals because it insinuated that two parents of the opposite sex just weren’t necessary. 

But even more surprising than the judge’s “case”—made haphazardly, since he obviously hadn’t prepared a debate speech—was my reaction to it. Sure, I was angered by the judge’s blatant, ugly, and often juvenile homophobia, but I was also indignant. I had been stood up at the altar of civic engagement. I had taken the time to write a speech with logical, judicial arguments. My opponent, on the other hand, spewed rote insults adorned in rhetorical rags, which had only the vaguest connection to the matter at hand. For a moment during the judge’s weird presentation, I felt like someone invited to a costume party who shows up in an Anna May Wong costume, only to discover that it’s a formal affair. 

To be fair, some members of the audience snickered at parts of White’s speech (I confess to privately taking great delight in this). But in my response, I carefully avoided ridiculing his silly non-arguments and attempted to show that his desire to sustain families and children would be helped by same-sex marriage. White’s response? All culture wars, he declared, come down to, “Who sez?” Then, waving his Bible at the audience, he announced: “I say that, ‘He sez’.” There was only minor stirring. I think the audience was a little stunned by such nonverbal theatrics. The student responses, however, broke through the mood. The two men for the pro-gay marriage side were succinct and pungent; their opponents, a woman and man—both members of Compass, the school’s conservative Catholic group—argued theologically and legally against same-sex marriage, and while I disagreed with them, they were intelligent and respectful to the topic, to the forum, and to gay people. 

In retrospect, of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised by Judge White’s antics. The bottom line is that there are no good legal reasons to oppose same-sex marriage. (Although I believe that there are some pretty basic common sense reasons to question its usefulness in people’s lives.) That’s why he had to resort to innuendo, lies, and insults. It didn’t even matter that this wasn’t the venue or the crowd for it, the judge was a man on a mission ill-prepared for argument or common sense. 

These days I never really encounter—at close range, anyway—people who vehemently disagree with me or condemn who I am. I had looked forward to spirited debate with the enemy and all I came away with was—apart from disrespect—a deep sadness. Perhaps more than anything, my sadness was rooted in the judge’s constant invocation of bestiality to attack same-sex relationships. How sad that a man who professes Christianity—or any religion, really—would feel compelled to stoop so low to score points. But it also reminded me of an observation made by Abraham Joshua Heschel, a major 20th-century Jewish thinker: we lose the right to worship God when we deny the humanity in others. Which is, of course, another way of saying that if this is what our enemy has to fight with, we have already won. 

Michael Bronski writes regularly on culture and gay and lesbian issues. His most recent book is Pulp Friction .
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