Being gay will save the world

A writer and advocate, he used this lecture to forefront his personal commitment to both his activism and his humanist principles. I CHOSE this title because being rational and being gay are both very important things for me as a person. I am perhaps fortunate in never having experienced the phase of acute self-doubt, or even self-disgust, which so many young gay people pass through about their sexuality and which some never entirely grow out of, even as adults.

What did happen to me was a determination, ever since I was very young, to fight the injustice, prejudice and discrimination which society meted out to homosexual people. And this, of course, led me on to a recognition of many other injustices in society which also needed to be fought.

It became increasingly apparent to ae during the s, and is certainly crystal clear now, that the basic issues of human rights, civil liberties, freedom to publish and sexual freedom are inseparable and have to be seen as a whole. I passionately want it to be a free society.

So, I believe, do most other Britons, of whatever political persuasion. And this is where the importance of being reasonable comes in.

Which countries impose the death penalty on gay people?

If we are reasonable, if we are rationalists, we make certain assumptions about human nature. Everyone, in fact, does this whether they are aware of it or not. One of the main reasons why I am not a Christian is because, quite apart from my scepticism as to the existence of the kind of God they claim to believe in, I do not share their assumptions about human nature.

The belief that all human beings are born radically evil because of original sin, and are only endowed with some redeeming good qualities through belief in an incredible creed and acceptance of a personal Saviour who was God made man is one which I cannot accept because it is contrary to the evidence.

Goodness is not confined to believing Christians; nor are such people more immune to evil behaviour than anyone else. The belief that the contrary is so is perverse and irrational and flies in the face of history. To believe in the humaneness of humanity is not to deny that there is evil in human relationships, or that some individuals can be very evil intend.

Yet there was never a time when rationality, and the search for reasonable solutions to social ills, based upon goodwill, logical thought and scientifically assessed knowledge, was more urgently necessary. This is what seems to be happening, to an increasing extent, in our public life.

Yet an increasing number of people seen to accept her as a serious being gay will save the world critic! He said:. The dazzling light of their faith blinds them to the surrounding world and to their own selves. As for me, who cares for nothing so much as to see the world and myself clearly, I am amazed at the coils of falsehood in which devout persons take delight.

Irrationality about sex is even more pervasive than irrationality about most other things. I suppose it is inevitable that something so bound up with emotion should invite a rush of blood to the head if to nowhere else. These people obviously have three patron Saint Josephs — Goebbels, McCarthy and Stalin: and they act on the well-tried principle that however big the lie, if you tell it often enough some people are bound to believe it.

Even if they do regard it as a virtue, they make absolutely no attempt whatsoever to be virtuous! In most other departments of life we at least make a pretence of learning before we presume to teach; in the field of sex we content ourselves with the smallest and vaguest minimum of information, often ostentatiously second-hand, usually unreliable.

However, most of them are sadly still alive and seemingly quite well. It occurs in nature. What about shaving, wearing clothes, eating cooked food? This has been endlessly disposed of, but people go on and on saying it. Let me repeat: numerous psychological researches have shown no statistically significant differences between the psychological health and successful social functioning of homosexual and heterosexual people.

I leave this one to the Christians, for whom sin and sexual pleasure commonly seem synonymous.