Superman is not gay

Foi bem interessante essa discussão lá no LLL.

Unfortunately, the left is doing what it always does: It is trying to solve a problem by creating another ,usually bigger problem (Alex defines himself as a libertarian but in this case his opinion is not libertarian at all. More on that later).

Talking about the “gay issue”, I believe there are actually two sides to be considered: the public and the private.

On the public side, an issue does exist. It is the fact that the government provides economic and legal incentives for hetero couples that are not provided for any other type of group. Conservatives justify such incentives based on the theory that traditional couples provide stability to society, and that it is in the country’s interest to provide rewards for being married and have children. Some data supports these claims. However, the legal benefits (inheritance issues, hospital visit rights, etc) are still an inheritance of the social/religious value attributed to traditional marriage. These are justified only by moral standards.

The libertarian approach to this situation is that government should not be involved in these issues at all. No incentives should have been given to hetero couples, not economic nor legal. If the government wants to promote the option of getting married, it should do it in a non-intrusive way (ads, speeches, etc). Civil unions could be created to solve legal arrangements, but no public subsidy should have been attached to them.

The progressive approach on the other hand, is to expand the problem by providing the same benefits to same sex couples. From the start this would increase the size and cost of these programs, which is always messy. Also, it would open a legal argument that could ultimately justify similar incentives to a number of other groups (like polygamists), compounding the problem in many unexpected ways.

These 3 positions are clear, just like in any other economic discussion. That's until we start to look into the private aspects of the debate.

Homosexuals are discriminated in several ways for many reasons. By definition, if any conflict involves violence it becomes responsibility of the State and therefore a public issue. In the past, the government turned a blind eye on these cases. Now a days, almost everyone agrees that these attacks are a shame and should be punished. There is no controversy there anymore.

But there is much more involved here besides violence.

Conservatives and libertarians believe the government should not directly interfere on private deals. It should not dictate how much money you make, who companies can hire and why they fire people. The left wants to make sure everybody is equal. One of the ways to promote this objective is by social pressure aimed to convert these private issues into public issues.

This is very simple, and unfortunately it has been working effectively for quite a while. The way they apply this strategy is by moving away from the concept of individual responsibility and into the “it is just something different” reasoning. That’s because if there are no better choices, or even better conditions, everyone is the same and any distinction in any area made between two individuals is pure discrimination.

Looking back at the LLL discussion, you can see that the great majority of people (Alex included) are happy to follow the “it is just different” tag line. Maybe unconsciously, they have completely accepted the fact that the final goal is not public justice for gays, but private equality. If you don’t believe that being gay is as desirable as being hetero you are a bigot racist monster.

Just like being strong is not better than being weak, being smart is not better than being dumb or being sober is not better than being wasted out of your mind. If everybody is special, nobody really is. Not even superman.