THE BELL CURVE:Gays belong anywhere they want to be

The Pilot’s “In Theory” religious team last week boxed with the question of whether or not the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for dealing with homosexuality in the military should be revised or abandoned altogether. The topic was in the news because U.S. Marine Gen. Peter Pace recently equated homosexuality with adultery and called gay people “immoral.”

Having spent four years in the military, I wasn’t surprised at the general’s rejection of several million possible recruits on moral grounds. The Marines guard us from all our enemies, including those in our ranks who practice what some military leaders regard as deviant sex. So I read Gen. Pace’s comments with the same yawn of familiarity with which I’ve greeted similar Christian fundamentalist proclamations for God knows how many years.

But this time something snapped. It hit me quite suddenly and forcefully that some topics in a secular society aren’t debatable. They become debatable when the people on one side of the argument tend to examine and weigh both sides while their opponents stick steadfastly to the position that there is nothing to debate since they hold the only morally right position.

So I’m ready to sell out to the enemy by embracing his tactics. I’m ready to say without equivocation that there is only one right side to this question: that discriminating at any level against the rights and the humanity of gay people is quite simply spiritually, ethically and democratically wrong.

This is an uncompromising position that would make further debate irrelevant. And it should be the base for dealing with people who — for whatever reason, be it fear or spiritual conviction or personal dislike or concern for society — would deny the rights of citizenship to an entire group of citizens because of their sexual preference.

Am I biased in this conviction? You bet. In my immediate family there are two gay members whom I have watched over the years cope with a society that far too often has regarded them with fear and suspicion.

I have watched this pair evolve into fine human beings who could find peace only when they accepted the identity God had bestowed on them and contributed fulsomely to the society in which they live from that place.

One of them, in a desperate effort to avoid that identity early on and become what society would find more comfortable, tried a Christian “cure” with devastatingly bad results. A year of dealing with “we love the sinner but not the sin” brought her to the edge of a choice between suicide and embracing who she clearly was. She made the right choice and has blessed those of us close to her ever since.

No one who has watched and loved a gay person growing up could ever doubt the biological base calling the shots. But this is unacceptable to those in our society who would prefer to regard homosexuality as some sort of sickness that needs to be cured before its victim can become a productive member of society. This is where we need to draw the line.

Those of us who feel that gay people come from the same base the rest of us do — be it evolutionary or in the image of our particular God — must take a stand to turn away this nonsense about homosexuality and embrace gay people in the democratic covenant that respects equality for all humankind.

The “In Theory” panelists all got to that place — sort of.

Several of them had to run on a little to cover their religious backsides. And several hit it on the button, like Deborah Barrett who said flat out: “Congress should make it clear that discrimination against gay soldiers will no longer be tolerated.”

But most of them didn’t move beyond the military to point out that discrimination against all gay citizens should no longer be tolerated.

We’re already gearing up for the next presidential election, and candidates are sprouting like spring flowers all over the country.

Those of us who share the views offered here should not let candidates get away with vague rhetoric. Their feet should be held to the fire to take a firm position on discrimination against gay people at every level of our society.