Published in the Salt Lake Tribune, November 7, 1993, as the Common Carrier article.

In the 1992 election, an Oregon initiative aiming to keep homosexuals from being employed as schoolteachers, police, or in other public capacities, received 44 percent of the vote. A Colorado initiative denying homosexuals protection against discrimination in employment and housing was enacted and is likely to provide a model for others elsewhere.

Meanwhile, skinheads and other thugs regularly mug homosexuals. These thugs and the supporters of anti-gay legislation would appear to be totally different. While the thugs are motivated by irrational hatred of those who differ from themselves, those behind the initiatives are mostly decent people who wouldn't think of physically injuring gays. They do want to deprive gays of jobs, housing and self-respect. But they, like the members of the Eagle Forum in Utah, are acting out of moral conviction. Most are, indeed, religious people who believe that in opposing homosexuality, they are bearing religious witness to a moral fact, since the Bible asserts that homosexuality is a great and terrible sin.

So there is mindless hatred of difference on the one side and moral decency on the other. Biblical inspiration does lead the religious opponents of homosexuality to do things that would have a disastrous impact on many of their fellow citizens. But unlike the gay-bashers, these people can see themselves as thoroughly upright and decent individuals.

Yet, when I hear people condemning homosexuality on the basis of the Bible, I wonder whether they also accept the rest of the Bible's many views about what is right or wrong in human behavior and, if not, why they make an exception for what it says of homosexuality. Do they agree, as Deuteronomy commands, that individuals who commit adultery should be put to death or that the clothes they wear must not be made of more than one sort of material or that dissolute sons should be stoned to death? Or with the Old Testament's acceptance of polygamy? Or with Jesus' emphatic prohibition of divorce found in Matthew?

Very few religious people would accept all of what is to be found in the Bible as morally binding. Most of us find the idea of cutting off the hands of a thief, as the Koran requires, to be barbaric. And most of the decent people supporting anti-gay initiatives would be equally appalled at stoning to death dissolute sons, punishing someone for wearing a shirt of polyester and cotton mix, and otherwise turning all of the Bible into law or morality.

But how, then, can they believe that they know that homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says it is? Simple consistency requires them to either accept all of the Bible's moral rules or to have some good reason for holding some of its commands to be authoritative when others are clearly not.

If they thought seriously about it, most of the religiously motivated opponents of homosexuality would have to conclude, I believe, that they simply see that the Bible is to be followed in this case and that is not to be followed in what it says of adulterers or dissolute sons. But if this is so, they are actually in the position of holding that they know the Bible to be correct about homosexuality because they are certain that homosexuality is wrong and unnatural and not that it's wrong because of what the Bible says.

I believe that it is important for these people to understand that their view does not in fact rest on the Bible. It's important because they are largely decent people who would not inflict great injury on others unless they had the best of reasons to do so. Since depriving gays of jobs, housing and self-respect is a great injury, these decent people should seriously consider whether their conviction that homosexually is wrong is simply a residue of bigotry and not much different from the hatred of the skinheads. Consensual gay behavior is not, after all, injurious to those who have a different sexual orientation. It is not pillage, theft, rape, murder, or manipulative deception, but merely people having sex in ways that they find rewarding.

Many of us would find these ways distasteful or even disgusting. But many of us also intensely dislike some forms of heterosexual sex, the ways that other people dress, the foods they eat and, in general, how they conduct their lives. We recognize, however, that such feelings are not an adequate reason for coercing people to change their behavior.

That we shouldn't punish homosexuality seems to me to be especially clear when we consider that sexual identity and preferences are so deeply rooted and that for most people a satisfying sex life is essential for happiness. There are those who hold the Coke-Pepsi theory of sexuality. They seem to think that gays could just as easily be straight: "No Cokes? OK. I'll have a Pepsi." But anyone with even minimal sex drive who has thought seriously about his or her own sexual preference can see how misguided this view is.

In conclusion, I believe that those religious crusaders against homosexuality who are unwilling to reflect deeply about the issues touched on here can't be taking their moral convictions seriously. They are running the risk that their opposition to gays is not that much different from the bigotry and hatred of skinheads, that it is bigotry clad in a tie and white shirt.

--Mendel Cohen