Over the years, I have almost completely avoided commentary on DADT, marriage equality, and on broader gender identity issues. I have done so because I’m pretty sure that my views on these issues tend to offend (or at the least, make uncomfortable) both liberals and conservatives, activists on the left and right, equally. I’m a “deep libertarian” on these issues. Here’re a few short paragraphs, in an effort to try to summarize my beliefs and thoughts.
There is no “default” gender identity in a given human being – we each have innate tendencies, perhaps, but gender identity is something we construct as part of our socialization. I believe in nurture over nature, I suppose – with the following caveat: we don’t have much conscious control over how that nurture works out – either as children growing up ourselves, nor as parents and mentors guiding those children. I think the whole “gender identity” question would be very well-served by completely eliminating such broad-brush-strokes categories as “gay” or “straight” and recognizing that it works more like a complex, multi-dimensional rainbow spectrum of preferences, interests, likes, dislikes, fears, discomforts, etc., all under the constraints of thousands of years of evolved cultural expectations.
I hate such “typing” as is exemplified in declaring “I’m straight” or “I’m gay” – I view it as unscientific and ultimately naive. There’s little difference between that kind of “typing” and the strangely one-dimensional views of people who used to go around saying things like: “there are four races of humans: yellow, white, red, black.” Get real: it’s a continuum. The first instance of miscegenation falsifies the whole construct. Likewise, the first instance of genuinely queer gender identity (as in the person who checks “other” on the form) falsifies the gay-straight dialectic.
On the question of marriage equality, my prescription is stunningly simple, and consists of trying for a rational answer to the following question: what business does the government have in anyone’s marriage? Get the government out of the business of recognizing marriage, altogether. If two people want to derive benefits of partnership (survivorship, parenting privileges, etc.) let them form a business partnership using civil business laws that have nothing to do with cultural tradition or churches or temples or ordination, etc.
On the question of DADT, I have always been annoyed with what I perceived as a certain shallowness and misunderstanding, on the part of critics, of the human psychology behind the desperation evident in military’s insistence on DADT. Finally, someone has nailed it (see this editorial in the NYT). Dale Carpenter writes, succinctly: “Gays are to be excluded, not because of their own merits, but because we fear that some people around them might not be able to handle the truth. [DADT] is not a judgment about gays at all, but about heterosexuals.” Put another way, it’s a fear of homophobia. Homophobophobia? Metahomophobia?
