A couple of weeks ago this piece of propaganda hit my desk. It’s a flyer from Covington, Northern Kentucky, aimed against the first ever Northern Kentucky Gay Pride which is scheduled to take place next month. The writing style – if you can call it that – is ranting and raving, close to unreadable; but the flyer does somehow get its point across: gay men will seduce your young sons and turn them gay; they are dangerous paedophiles, they are not normal human beings, and they do not deserve basic human rights such as the freedom of association. “Sure”, it says, “assault is illegal, but it is safe to say that most normal people are happy to see that some among us will put these social rejects in their place when there [sic] excesses become to [sic] much to tolerate.”
I must admit that, quite naively, I had believed this line of argument against homosexuality to have safely died out back in the 1950s and 1960s, and encountering it roaming freely in the wild in the 21st century made me feel physically sick. But I decided to write it off as yet another scary but far-away expression of the US culture wars, not something I needed to be immediately concerned about. The US culture wars, however, have a way of spilling over the Atlantic, sooner or later.
And so this particular piece of the culture wars came back to haunt me today, in the form of Michael Burleigh’s piece on the Pope’s visit in today’s Telegraph. The whole article is full of unpleasantly hateful language and poorly-thought-out attacks on secularists and liberals, but what struck me was this: “Because child abuse is involved, rather than the more widespread phenomenon of homosexual predation on young men, these manifestations will receive much media attention”. Not only has the moral and logical fallacy of homosexuality = paedophilia not died a death in the middle of last century – no, it appears to be alive and kicking today even in Britain!
I really don’t think that speaking out against this kind of thinking is even remotely likely to reach those who hold these opinions – and yet I still feel strangely compelled to comment. Call it feeding the trolls.
As a bisexual woman and a survivor of child abuse (perpetrated by a straight man), let me at least skim the surface of the many things which are wrong with equating (male) homosexuality with paedophilia.
Firstly – and I can’t believe this actually needs saying – homosexuality is not the same a paedophilia. The vast majority of gay people are sexually attracted to adults – admittedly of our own sex, but adults nonetheless. Conversely, paedophiles aren’t all male, and don’t all just molest “young male children” (Covington flyer). I know, it might be a challenge to keep track of so many complex distinctions, but unfortunately the world is rarely black and white.
Here, though, is the thing that really bothers me: The “protect our young male children from these perverts” lobby shows a shocking disregard for young female children. There is an implicit value statement here which says boys are worth protecting, girls can just be left to the paedophiles. That’s the part of it that makes me feel physically sick. It begs the question, how many of these people’s daughters suffer horrific abuse in silence while their fathers are out there putting “perverts” and “social rejects in their place” to protect their sons?
Food for thought?