The “Ick” Factor
In a conversation from June 2013, we discuss Brokeback Mountain, Liberace Behind the Candelabra, and the necessity or lack there of “no homo”.
Steven Tyler
Per usual, Kwaisi wins the Wikipedia challenge. From spin.com:
“he does admit to having a homosexual tryst in his youth. “Gay sex just doesn’t do it for me,” he reveals. “I tried it one time when I was younger, but just didn’t dig it.”
The “Ick” Factor
It’s disappearing. From prospect.org:
“Let it not be said that conservatives have failed to evolve on the question of gay rights. These days, even if you are adamantly opposed to marriage equality, you’re required to express a kind of libertarian attitude toward homosexuality itself. Love the sinner, hate the sin? Not anymore. Now it’s love the sinner, and as for the sin, well that’s none of my business, you do what you like. But this public display of live-and-let-livism is a rather shocking contradiction with the very grounds on which many conservatives base their beliefs about this issue, namely the Old Testament. I give you Mike Huckabee, speaking yesterday at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition: “I’m not against anybody. I’m really not. I’m not a hater. I’m not homophobic,” he said. “I honestly don’t care what people do personally in their individual lives.
Well hold on there! You honestly don’t care? But doesn’t the Bible condemn the act itself? Yahweh doesn’t say, “Whatever you do in the bedroom is none of anybody’s business, just don’t think you can get married…”
“…You might recall that for a long time, talk about gay rights inevitably brought up the “ick factor,” namely that many straight people couldn’t think about gay people’s rights without immediately imagining two men having sex, which they found unsettling. Sometimes this was raised with the admission that there was nothing rational about it, but there were some who tried to find in that reaction a core of rationality…”
“But the ick factor is gone—maybe not for ordinary people, but for their leaders. Even in front of an audience of evangelicals, a Republican politician can’t cast aspersions on gay people, at least not directly (after all, everything’s being recorded). But if you’re going to cite the Old Testament as the basis for your beliefs, that’s exactly what you’re doing, since those passages call same-sex relations an “abomination.” On the other hand, there will come a day when most Christians put as much stock in the verse saying that homosexuality is an “abomination” as they do in the nearby passage saying that eating shellfish is also an “abomination.”
The only place where we disagree is that it’s not just conservatives who have come around. We know many whom would consider themselves to be progressive, liberal and libertarian who do not or did not support gay rights.
