Dr. John Corvino, author of What's
Wrong with Homosexuality?, argues that people are more than just
sex.
In a nearly 5-minute video, Corvino,
also known as the “Gay Moralist,” says that people immediately
think of anal sex when they think of homosexuality.
“The first thing to keep in mind is
that an argument against anal sex is not the same thing as an
argument against homosexuality. Because not all gay people engage in
anal sex. And not only gay people engage in anal sex.”
“This is something that a lot of
people seem to miss.”
“There's this great story about when
Congress was debating sodomy laws. And many of these laws applied to
straight sex and gay sex. And applied to both anal sex and oral sex.
And somebody pointed out that straight people do these things, too.
And Strom Thurmond, he was a senator from South Carolina, he was
about 90 years old at the time, he actually stood up and said, 'No
they don't!' And suddenly I understood why that man was so cranky.”
Corvino argued that all sex, not just
gay sex, is weird and icky.
“There's a reason why people refer to
sex as doing the nasty.”
“So, ultimately what I think we're
seeing here is a failure of empathy. People have this reaction of,
'That's just weird.' And then they elevate 'that's just weird' into
'that's unnatural' and they elevate 'that's unnatural' into 'that's
wrong.' And they don't step back and recognize that gay people's
sexual lives, just like straight people's sexual lives, are messy and
exciting and frightening and wonderful in various ways.”
“If we're going to have a mature
conversation about these issues, it's time for us to recognize that
human relationships in all of their beauty and complexity should not
be reduced to a sex act.” (The video is embedded on this page.
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Corvino is a philosophy professor at
Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.