Homophobia vs. Racism By: Patrick Inniss Thirty plus years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it's amazing how many people still don't understand what racial equality is all about. A prime example of the widespread failure to come to a true acceptance of intrinsic human dignity and worth was provided by Washington State Senator Gary Nelson, R-Edmonds, while arguing against a bill to ban discrimination based upon sexual orientation. According to an article in The Seattle Times on February 23, 1994, Senator Nelson opposed gay rights because he felt that homosexuality was merely a behavior, and a minority defined by a behavior should not be protected like racial minorities or the disabled. In other words, gays should not be afforded the same legal protection as African Americans, for example, because gays choose to be gays, but blacks do not choose to be black.

I don't know exactly what Senator Nelson thought was the reason that racial minorities should be protected by the law, but his position sounded an awful lot like the stupid, insulting and paternalistic logic that says "Don't punish people for something they have no control over. They didn't ask to be black (or Asian, Hispanic, etc.)" Senator Nelson's implication that racial minorities deserve protection because they cannot help being what they are revealed a primitive notion of justice. Even more troubling, it betrayed underlying racism, suggesting the possibility that there really is something wrong with being, for instance, African-American, and that the only reason black people are granted human rights is that our condition is an inherent trait for which we should not be held responsible. In contrast, gays and lesbians are portrayed as waking up one morning and consciously deciding that they too should belong to an oppressed minority. "Go ahead," Senator Nelson might say, "discriminate against those homosexuals. They're asking for it. But let's go easy on the coloreds. After all, they were born that way." Those who disavow racism while sanctioning homophobia do not realize this: the fact that a person does not choose her or his racial identity has nothing to do with the reason that our society should prohibit discrimination. If we could choose our race, would racial discrimination then suddenly become legitimate? People choose their religious identities, yet we have enacted laws protecting religious minorities, so Nelson's argument that choice, or "behavior," distinguishes gays from protected minorities is invalid, even if it were true that gays choose to be gay. It is about time that our society put to rest the view that minorities are poor unfortunates who arrived at our regrettable position through some "accident of birth." Senator Nelson might find this difficult to comprehend, but most of us would, if given the opportunity, choose to be African or Hispanic or Asian, just the way we were born. Minorities do not deserve equal treatment because we are innocent of choosing our racial identity. We are entitled to equal treatment because we are equal. Copyright 1998 by Patrick Inniss. All rights reserved. This article among others published in the UTMC were originally published on "The Pat Inniss Website", they are reprinted with the permission of Pat Innis. Pat is an accomplished journalist and has had his works published in a great deal of print media including: Tri-Communities Newspaper in Seattle, The Examiner: the newsletter of the African Americans for Humanism, Secular Subjects (where he eventually served as president). He also produced the local access cable TV program "Freethinking 101".