Why the Right Should Stop Attacking Homosexuality

Here, I make an appeal to everyone on the political Right - which I will define below - to cease attacking homosexual individuals as immoral, obscene, vicious, flawed, self-destructive, or unnatural. Furthermore, while I denounce any governmental conferment of special privilege upon any group whatsoever, I also urge a cessation of all attempts to render homosexuals legally less protected in their basic individual rights than any other person.

I make this appeal as a highly socially conservative heterosexual who has the utmost respect for the institution of marriage as traditionally defined. I have, too, in the past argued a comparatively moderate position in criticism of homosexuality. While I did not consider homosexuals evil or deserving of hatred or insults, I did believe that homosexual behaviors and their open manifestation were more harmful than restraint from such behaviors and manifestations. Thus, I urged homosexuals themselves to confine themselves to "the closet" or to actively resist whatever temptations they might have had. Also, while I never advocated anti-sodomy laws or legal restrictions on the rights of homosexuals, I did wish to keep the term "marriage" confined to a union between one man and one woman - while extending full civil unions to homosexual couples. These earlier positions of mine were expressed in "Homosexuality: A Chosen Harm" and "A Rational Defense of Marriage."

I no longer hold the positions described above, and I believe that any future public blanket criticism of homosexuals - however well-intentioned such criticism might be - will do far more harm than good. Moreover, I urge the withdrawal of all objections to homosexual marriage or open manifestations of homosexual preferences - provided that those manifestations are done civilly and in accord with the same expectations of good taste as accompany manifestations of heterosexual preference.