I was reading an article in Mother Jones (it’s not online yet, I’ll link to it when it is) about homosexuality and “cures”. I’d like to steer clear of whether or not it can be cured, is psycholgical vs. physical, or any of that stuff. What I’d like to explore is the reason that (often right-leaning) people want to believe that it is “curable”. What came to my mind as I was reading this was the possibility that a reason this is such important point to people is equality.

Bear with me for a moment. If homosexual relationships are “okay”, “acceptable”, or “natural”, however you want to frame it, then heterosexual relationships might turn into relationships of equals. So much of the debate in question is answered with “breakdown of traditional marriage!” which could be phrased as a marriage of non-equals. Perhaps a reason why people find male-male and female-female relationships so threatening is because it might mean that a female-male relationship could also be a relationship of equals.

This was a thought driven home rather forcefully the other day when a creepy (read: trapped-in-the-dark-ages) guy tried to pick me up by declaring that he would love to have a woman cook for him! When I responded that I like having a man cook for me, he became confused by that concept. What he needed to understand was that I was not interested in a “traditional marriage” but in a marriage of equals.

Obviously there are many factors at issue with arguments both for and against homosexual relationships. But the issue of equality seems to be one that underlies many of the arguments used. Thoughts?