When I lived with my parents before college, we would often watch television while eating dinner. One of the many shows my parents subjected me to was “Star Trek: Voyager.” Although I may not have been a big fan of the show, one episode stuck out among all the rest.
In that episode, an anthropomorphic hologram that served as the ship’s doctor was fighting over legal rights to a holographic novel he had written. Since he was not recognized as a person by Starfleet’s government, someone had stolen his novel, preventing him from making some wanted adjustments in it. In the ensuing trial, he and his shipmates fought for his recognition as a “person.” This trial, and this episode, is awesome in that it symbolizes the fight against discrimination and empowers the civil rights movement.
First, it illustrates how discrimination is not discriminatory. People are inherently discriminatory. We demonstrate it, for example, by only socializing with people of our own color or by joining fraternities or sororities. That discrimination, however, has been taken to extremes in the past. First it was about race, then gender; now it is sexual preference.
Innate discrimination will always lead people to discriminate against one group or another. The battles against some forms of discrimination have largely been fought, but the future will only bring new forms of discrimination, perhaps against human clones or intelligent holograms. Not to mention the fact that most battles will more than likely have to be fought over again.
Nonetheless, the war against discrimination rages on. The only way to win the war is to restrain discrimination to a tolerable level. The current battle is for the freedom of sexual orientation. Just as in all other civil rights movements, the pro-gay marriage advocates will eventually win, though they will lose some big battles along the way, such as the recently important ban on gay marriage in California known as Proposition 8.
The fight against gay marriage is only another manifestation of discrimination in the long war against people who are “different.” As modern, civilized human beings, heterosexuals need to overcome their inherent prejudice and join the fight against discrimination. That means allowing gays to have the right to marry, whether we like it or not.
In all reality, the arguments thrown against gay marriage and gay rights are not much different than any of those used in the past to support racism and sexism.
What’s more, resisting gay marriage and delaying the inevitable will only hurt the cause of heterosexuals and the religious. The attention attributed to the subject will only exaggerate gays’ roles in society and possibly (for lack of a better word) “recruit” more people to their orientation. Not only will it help the cause of gay rights, but it will tarnish the reputation of the Religious Right, which serves as the foundation for the fight against gay rights. Their involvement in politics can only be described as a conflict of interest. The Religious Right, as I mentioned in a previous article, has always been a source of intolerance and inflexibility toward change. As such, they have, in the past, been a staple of discrimination.
Overcoming that inflexibility toward change and being tolerable is the key to overcoming discrimination. As a Christian myself, I disagree with homosexuality vehemently. In the past, I have never been a strong advocate of gay rights for just that reason, but I have decided to support the movement. More people need to overcome their personal bias as I have to support gays politically.
Needless to say, I believe there should be clear limits on how much we reduce our discrimination. As I said, people are inherently discriminatory for a good reason. For example, there needs to be caps on who (or what) people have sex with and who they marry. Bestiality, of course, should obviously be restricted. Additionally, I do not think churches should be penalized for forbidding openly gay priests or even female priests, simply because they are private institutions with their own beliefs. You cannot mandate religious tenets.
That being said, our society needs to overcome its own prejudice and inherent discrimination to do what is right in the political arena. Instead of delaying the inevitable, states need to allow some form of gay marriage. Though I used to prefer civil unions in order to preserve the integrity of marriage, I have come to realize that the difference is really trivial and that civil unions are only another means to discriminate between straights and gays. Having said that, I applaud anyone who can overcome his or her own conflict of interest and join the fight in the war on discrimination.
Lazarus Austin is a senior majoring in history. He can be contacted at [email protected].