I've long been fascinated by the fact that in their haste to condemn what they call "the gay agenda," a lot of social conservatives forget the political opportunity this creates to mainstream the very thing they condemn. (The major push for gays in the Boy Scouts, for example, does not come from gay activists, but from otherwise boring middle class heterosexuals who embrace the exciting opportunity to certify themselves as non-bigots.)

I found an interesting criticism of "gay fetishism" by Katie McKy, and while I disagree with her apparent contention that conservatism is inherently "homophobic" (as well as her apparent approval of identity politics), she has an interesting point about homosexuality supplying easy access to "permanent" moral purity:

....[I]f one is straight and frames homosexuality as sin, it's the sweetest sin, for it's not one's sin. This gives homosexuality an infinite shelf life. It's never grows stale, for whereas it demands change of others, it requires no personal change. No sacrifice. So long as one is straight and heterosexuality demarcates purity, one is permanently pure.

But does this really invest the left with "moral authority"? Isn't it all too easy to slam the fundamentalist right wing for a "homo fetish"? It is, and in honesty, I think there's an element of truth there, because it is always very easy to remain morally pure when the moral impurity you're condemning consists of something you'd rather not do anyway. (That's why it's safe for me to condemn golf!)

But, in logic, how does that convey moral authority to the defenders of the alleged moral impurity?

It might be better to illustrate with a less emotionally charged example, so let's try divorce. If we divide the electorate into the ranks of the divorced and the married-but-undivorced, let's suppose that the undivorced couples declared that divorce was one of the most grievous sins in the Bible. That Jesus had specifically condemned it, that no biblically pure country should allow it, and that "history showed" that all countries allowing divorce eventually collapsed. Clearly, this would create a false appearance that the undivorced were morally pure, and I suppose it could be exploited politically if divorce weren't so common. (Exclusive homosexuality, of course, is practiced by a much smaller percentage of people than divorce.)

A fundamentalist "divorce fetish" stigma (coupled with the automatic moral purity this would convey on the undivorced) would set up a political opposition consisting of the divorced people along with their undivorced defenders.

Would they gain any moral authority by their simple refusal to condemn the divorced?

If something like this "divorce fetish" scenario happened I would defend divorced people just as I defend sexual freedom, cigarette smokers and drug addicts but I don't understand how that entitles me to the broad claim of moral authority so often invoked by the saintly heterosexuals who defend gays against religious bigots:

Queer people are the divine other, for homo-bigots believe that they have Biblical clearance to hate.

"Yes, uh, Flight 2002," they imagine God saying, "you have clearance to land on the civil rights of your fellow homosexual citizens. On final approach, you might run into some Constitutional interference, but tune that out and when you taxi over to the tarmac, we'll, uh, amend that Constitution."

The homo-fetish also serves an ancient purpose. It's no longer safe to publicly articulate racial hatred. But there remains a deep desire to define and elevate oneself by what one isn't. With God's green light, the fundy Right references gays everyday. However, with only 3 gay references in the Bible, and a hundred times that number of warnings against wealth, the arithmetic suggests that the real work of being a Christian is casting off wealth. Jesus told one story about a man going to Hell. That man was a rich man, a man who lived on the sweet side of a wall while a poor man suffered on the other.

Does the cry of "I am not a homo!" invite people to say "I am not a bigot!" and then claim moral purity? Isn't claiming you're pure because you're "not a bigot" almost as easy as claiming you're pure because you're "not a homo"?

And if "the real work of being a Christian is casting off wealth," are the certified non-bigots doing that with their own wealth?

On the contrary, I think many of them simply hate the wealthy, and advocate government confiscation of their wealth.

So how come I don't get to say I'm not a bigot if I defend the wealthy?