Tolerance Toward Intolerance

College. Tertiary level of education. Though it has a certain ring of intellectualism to it, college is pretty much the same as school in so many aspects. Same hour long classes, power hungry teachers with control issues who prey sadistically on the innocent and juvenile for vestigial pleasure, a sea of people who try just so hard to get on your nerves AND English classes.

As utterly annoying as I find this particular class, I cannot refute the fact that I do learn a thing or two by sitting through these irksome hours. Most of what I learn is non-textual, it usually has to do with the cohesion of one or two pieces of intriguing jigsaw puzzles that are people which allow such profound insights into how brilliantly narrow-minded we can be. At the end of some classes I cannot stop myself from marveling at the ignorance of people. 

So a typical English class, we're all just sitting there and mindlessly listening to someone delivering their public speech, nodding every now and then when she catches our eye. In due course of time, my turn soon arrived and I went up there, strangely unapprehensive of the dozens of questions my audience would bombard me with when I am done with my speech.

So I started off with my speech, the topic being 'Same-Sex Marriage' by giving a brief preamble of homosexuality, the reasons why such people should be allowed to marry, and concluded without any interruptions only to arrive at the part of time where I was targeted with vicious questions whose sole purpose is to garner a mark for the interrogator when I am not able to answer it satisfyingly. The questions that were asked were so wonderfully biased and prejudiced that they would have been seriously condemned had a homosexual person been there(if there already wasn't, I remain in the dark when it comes to matters of my class).

The questions that my professor asked me were not just shocking but also entirely asinine. "Won't legalizing homosexual marriages decrease the population, if not now then at least in the distant future because everyone would choose to marry someone of the same sex?" "Won't it increase the rate of STDs because it has been proved that these people are the cause of most of these diseases?" "Won't it compromise the sexual morality because these people have multiple partners?"  I was stunned to hear these questions from a well educated, fully functioning member of society who was there to impart knowledge to us fellow students, not because she is conservative(most of us are), but because she was harboring such inanely biased, thoroughly misinformed notions. You can't judge a person's morality by their sexual orientation(hell, who are we to even judge another person?), how can you just assume that gay people have multiple partners? And people can't become gay as if it were a part of evolution.

First, the questions that were asked as part of the public speech routine clearly accused homosexuality as being a choice. And let me clarify, this is not true. Homosexuality is a sexual orientation just like heterosexuality that most of the general population seems to be inclined toward. Simply, homosexuality is the sexual orientation characterized by the tendency of a person to form sexual, romantic and emotional relationships with people of the same sexual identity as themselves. It is NOT a choice and this can be vouched by the fact that homosexuality has been noted in other species of animals as well(which is one of many); clearly indicative of the fact that it is not a disease or a choice. Furthermore, one can not cause another straight person to BECOME homosexual. C'mon, people! Think a little. Homosexuality is not a communicable disease that one can 'catch' from another person by breathing the same air as someone or by platonic physical proximity.

People were offended by the arguments of my speech- which was much anticipated on my part. If marriage is about the union of two people who love each other, then why shouldn't two people of the same gender be allowed to declare their love? It is discriminatory to not allow gay people to marry simply because their internal biology is not the same as the general majority of the population. By saying that, you automatically reduced the sanctitude of marriage by implying that marriage also takes into account the genetic make up of a person.

I completely understand why people would think gay people are different, after all they are a minority and anything that does not fit into the same category as the majority is almost always seen as abnormal or different, but it is no reason for us to hate them, isolate them and subject them to verbal abuse and inhumane treatment. Still, it is completely unfair to deny a person of the same right you are entitled to. You can't say marriage should be between a man and a women only just because it has been happening between a man and a women so far. This line of reasoning can be further expanded and it is sort of like saying that things should remain the same just because they have been the same way for a while now. This prevents any shred of progress from ever being made in any aspect.


Also, it becomes awfully lopsided to deny the right to marry just because its love between two men or two women. It is not false. It is not a lie. You can't say people are incapable of loving someone of the same gender as themselves. No matter what form love takes it is still the same, homosexual love is no more different from the love that exists between a heterosexual couple.

Another argument against same-sex marriage is that they should not be allowed to marry because they are incapable of having and raising children their own. If this really is the reason why same-sex marriage is not allowed, then what of the thousands of people who get married everyday despite the fact that they are infertile or impotent, AND people who voluntarily decide that they don't want children? These people are incapable of having their own children as well, in line of the same argument they should not be allowed to marry either. After all, they can't have children too. This argument also proves to be flimsy as it identifies marriages solely as an institution for child rearing purposes. Marriage is not just about procreation, it is a sacred covenant that declares love and celebrates union.

Research as proved that same sex couples are just as efficient as a heterosexual couple when it comes to child rearing. There is no consistent difference between between homosexual and heterosexual parents in terms of emotional health or parenting skills and attitude, and children of same sex couples are no more likely to be confused about their own sexual identity as children of heterosexual couples. So you can't just say this is why they shouldn't be allowed to marry, who are WE to deny someone else' fair right?

Finally, this argument can be given an award for its triteness- religion. According to most, the Book of Genesis says that same sex marriage is a sin(at least this is what one of my friends from class told me after my speech) and I am sure this is the case in almost every other religion, be it Hinduism, Islam or Buddhism. WHY are we letting an antediluvian book dictate our evey belief, attitude, decision and ultimately our way of life? So we are going to abuse and discriminate against another person just because we believe in some external supernatural force that governs all our lives(I mean, how paranoid is it to believe that your life, right from its start to its end, is determined by some unknown force)? We are going to deny a fellow human being of the same happiness that we are entitled to just because we claim some book someone wrote says that its wrong or sinful? For all we know, the Bible, the Kuran, the gazillion Hindu texts and every other sacred text could have been written by paranoid, yet awfully whimsical homeless people when they was not in a drug induced stupor! If religion demands social equality, unity and compassion; then doesn't what we are doing defeat the entire purpose of religion itself?

Shifting back, marriage in itself is NOT a religious affair. It is a purely objective covenant that has merely been co-opted by religion as simply a means to declare love. If marriage really were a religious institution then atheists and agnostics shouldn't be allowed to marry either, don't you think?

So at the end of it all, it really isn't about being incapable of having children or being bad parents- it is our close-minded, intolerable attitudes toward anything that is remotely different from ourselves that occludes us from seeing homosexuality as a natural phenomenon. It is time we grew oblivious to all out innate and societal biases and accept people for who they are. It is time for us to GROW UP and stop being such obstinate, egocentric beings. It is time we shed our tolerance toward intolerance. It is time for us to change and accept change.