By Desmond Rutherford (Adelaide, Australia) OCT 25 | Caught in a war, because that is what we are, there are battles that must be checked to ensure we have not lost sight of our objectives. We must also look to see if the battlefield has changed, if the aims themselves have been modified by the wins and losses along the way. Most of all we need to always keep watch on ourselves that we have not, do not, become our enemy in our assumptions, or the way we fight.
Destroying our enemy is not our aim. We fight for our freedom, not because we hate our enemy, but because we love each other, because we as LGBT people want our right to love each other to be accepted, unequivocally, and equally before all.
Religions, governments and communities have oppressed human sexual experience for millennia. Restricting sexual expression in any of its various forms is one of their primary means of controlling the population through associated guilt, condemnation, and persecution. Forced to conduct our lives in the shadows of unjust, unneeded laws and taboos, our enemies accused us of animal lust, and even condemned themselves for thinking of it.
In silence we cried for our loved ones as they were enslaved, stoned and tried by ordeal, and as we watched our passion become nothing but the lust they sneered at, and for which they sought to condemn us.
Our harmless life-affirming sensitivity was laughed at, cursed as weakness and begrudgingly acknowledged when they let us sing and dance to entertain them, just so long as we otherwise remained hidden.
Still, even now the enemy poisons the minds of innocents with the prejudices born of fear and ignorance; with hatred replacing the emptiness left behind when they drive love from their hearts and minds. Even worse, they try to get us to poison our own minds with their greed, lies and misrepresentations of what makes our lives, all lives, worthwhile.
They do not yet realise that if our love does not survive, then neither does theirs, for our love is as human as any, and whenever love is lost, life is diminished.
Our enemies, like all foes in a war, want us to be less in number than we are, they want us to be seen as a small community, to be given only token recognition and freedom; at best tolerated, but not really accepted and if possible, eventually defeated, and returned to the isolation of our minds where they can pretend our love does not exist, where they have convinced us we do not exist and therefore not entitled to their rituals.
The time has come to consider if those rituals are valid prizes. For some they will be, for others, not. They are not the real issue. The spoils of war do not grant equality, they only signify the victor and the vanquished . We should consider the war itself, and in particular who is at war.
The real war is with ourselves as a species, as human beings, and it is within us, each of us as individuals, for we have been convinced not to question who we are, and even if we do ask, then never to tell anyone. This is the real, source of the ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy that has been imposed, adopted and accepted as a cultural taboo since primitive man superstitiously, blamed natural events and disasters on the pleasure he derived from masturbation. This grew into guilt, shame and even allowing for the mix of sex and the mystics in the orgiastic traditions of antiquity, the extreme asceticism of Christianity saw its prelates appropriate the role of ‘protectors’ of public morality with damning effect on its followers as well as in the cultures it invaded.
This historical DADT was imposed not only on sex but on rational thought in the Dark Ages, the Inquisition (where you could be “put to the question”), puritan England, adopted by other religions, and exported to other lands including the New World of the Americas. We suffer from it still. We are at war with this immature inability to cope with humanity’s natural desire to orgasm; to accept as a species, that we like sex, and that there is nothing wrong with the pleasurable experiences it gives us.
We have restrained sex in all its forms; we reduce it to a ritual between a man and a woman but only if sanctioned by a faith in which we are expected, or have been indoctrinated, to believe, and only for the purposes of reproduction. We divide love and sex and then deny sex as a valid experience, depriving love of its expression, confusing sexual happiness with being sinful.
Or we proclaim sex as love and thereby deserve neither, practice neither, and condemn ourselves to a life where both are absent, unless we are saved by some act of penitence.
Where we deny such acts of contrition, where we revolt against these cultural taboos, we are attacked by those who adhere to them with unquestionable righteousness, and sanctity. They are the ones who deny us the equality of freedom to be who we are, yet they manage by appealing to their unsubstantiated superstitions, to make it seem we are at fault. They bully us, and they do so from the psychosis of their own fear and ignorance.
If the human race had spent as much energy in learning to appreciate the existence of love, in developing a mature acceptance of sex, as it did in fabricating taboos about sex, then just maybe, we would not be at war with ourselves or God however such being may be perceived to exist.
As few as we are, we are fortunately many today, and though we cannot by our birthright be annihilated, we have been oppressed to the point where the human race is lucky that we LGBT people (with some assistance at times from enlightened cultures) have been the champion defenders of the freedom of sexual expression for as long as the species has existed. We refused to deny our natural human appreciation of sexual freedom, and that still puts us at odds with those who desire us to be smaller in number than we are.
It concerns me that so many people are accepting statistics about homosexuals being as low as 5% of the population. Even accepting such a low figure as a point for discussion, does not justify its use
People will use quoted small percentages as statistical proof that we are inconsequential or that it is permissible to ignore us, to keep the closeted oppressed, and to deny us equality.
Humans are naturally transitional in sexual experience, particularly between puberty and adulthood (approx. 11 - 26 years of age,) and will include attractions to either or both sexes if they are not subjected to the fears and oppressions and unnecessary restrictions of culture.
Whatever the genetic role is in influencing some kind of final sexuality of the individual, freedom to be who we are demands that we do not limit our potentials just to appease the masses, the religions, or any community. (Some would add, “any person,” but that is really a matter for individuals to (freely) decide between themselves.)
Indeed if you accept even the low end of the transitional sexual experiences of the human race at some 25% (high end is probably around 80%) then as a people freed from the intimidation of the ignorant, freed from the culture of denial and persecution, and liberated to accept our human nature as good and loving, then the argument for our influence to be free to do good is even stronger, and with even higher numbers.
Limiting the number of people who would explore their sexuality from being counted amongst the LGBT community, only encourages the bigots to keep the majority of the population oppressed in the closet, by denying them awareness of their true numbers, and denying their rights to valid, natural human experiences in their lives.
Freedom of consensual, sexual experience is a universal inalienable right and should not be subjected to the restrictions, whims and prejudices of any group, government or religion. The only exceptions are for education of safe sex practices, and for respect of the sexual partner’s consent. (Please note: nothing in this article should be taken as a justification for molestation of minors. The safe and factually informative education of minors is another subject warranting its own article.)
Conservative right wing parties and politicians by their very doctrine do not want to allow freedom of sexual expression. They represent an unacceptable tax on our freedom to live and pursue happiness. On these grounds alone, voting for the conservative right wing parties is not acceptable.
Unfortunately, not voting for a party that is sympathetic to LGBT freedom, just because they are slow to enact such freedoms, is tantamount to voting for the conservative oppressors; the tyrants of our freewill
Equality may begin with the recognition of all human rights, including those of LGBT people, but the birthright of love is too often ignored as inconsequential or an impossible dream, or a romantic notion to cover up a primitive beastly sexual desire. This is so far from the truth, from reality, that those who propose it cannot see the self-evident truth that sexual happiness, even sexual expression is the result of love, and whom we love is our inalienable right to determine for ourselves.
Far from the heterosexual community granting equality to LGBT people, the truth of the matter is that that we have always believed in liberating the whole human race to be able to love whom they wish. We don’t always appreciate that is what we do, but it is why our enemies withhold the recognition of our equality from us. They fear love, condemn sex and extol hatred, often with hypocrisy.
We can show them they need not fear and hate, but we too must avoid becoming like the enemy and adopting their madness.
And so it has been throughout human history with only brief respites in cultures which understood that love is to be mentored, savoured, honoured and above all else recognised as the only sane reason for existence.
The inalienable birthright of every human being is to love. Who we love, regardless of gender, must be a civil liberty, with the freedom of sexual expression being the province of the lovers.
We in the LGBT community may not always think on these matters in this way when we defend our rights, but in these times of the war over the equality of Love and the freedom of sexual expression, we deserve to see ourselves as contributing to the Love that finally dares to speak for all humanity.
There is still much more to be done, and working together, we can make it better for us all.
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