"that's so gay"

[This is something I posted on Facebook in response to something rather insensitive]

“Gay” is a sexual orientation and not a synonym for “lame” or “stupid” or [insert negative word]. Yes, language has its own evolution and words change meaning over time. But the vast majority of contemporary homosexuals identify as “gay”. Moreover, “gay” and “homosexual” are used interchangeably in most (or at least many) psychology and sociology textbooks. Stop being so mentally lazy and put some thought into what you’re saying. If you’re a morally decent person, then you would be upset if somebody used races (“Hispanic” or “African” or “Caucasian”) as synonyms for “lame/stupid”. Obviously sexual orientation and race are separate, but my point is that they’re both innate, part of a person’s identity, and beyond the person’s power to change (don’t get me started on “sexual reorientation therapy”; it doesn’t work and is often very harmful). If you use “gay” as an insult around me after I ask you to stop doing that, then I’m not going to associate with you or talk to you. It’s disrespectful and makes you look like a jackass. Stop it.

 The fact that “gay” didn’t originally mean homosexual doesn’t make it any less disrespectful (and doesn’t make me any less irritated) when people now use “gay” as an insult. Why? Because people who comprise a relatively large percentage of the population use the word to describe an important and innate aspect of who they are and everybody who goes through public school learns that “gay” is used that way when they take sex ed in high school (or even junior high in many cases). It’s how the word is used in most textbooks that touch on the subject (including those used by religious institutions!), it’s how the word is used by both of the APAs (American Psychiatric Association and American Psychological Association), etc.

Apart from being annoyed, I’m also fascinated by the fact that some people so stubbornly cling to “gay” as an insult even after all facing all of these points-- If people want to describe something as “lame” or “stupid”, why don’t they just use those words?? That in itself is worthy of psychological research IMO. Let’s say that I tell X, “it offends/upsets me when you use the word in that way, so could you please not do that around me?” It ought to be easy for a well-adjusted and morally decent person to sympathize wth my perspective to the point where they don’t use the word that way when they’re around me. But let’s suppose that X replies by saying, “nah, I’m gonna keep using the word in the same way around you”. Why is that? I would say that X seems to have some issues he/she should work on. Even if X doesn’t have any issues, he/she would still be an unpleasant person that at least I wouldn’t want to be around.

I'm often quite critical of popular atheist authors, but today I feel like giving a shout out to Sam Harris, who has said (in different forms aloud and in print):

The larger issue is dogmatism. The larger issue is belief without evidence; belief that is intrinsically divisive because it is immune to criticism – beliefs that divide us into separate moral communities where we have Christians against Muslims against Jews, blacks against whites, one nation against another nation. […] Ideology immune to criticism is a problem. The [bigger] problem, however, is that only in religion do we put a veneer of sanctity over dogmatism, call it ‘faith’, and then once called ‘faith’ it becomes (apparently) a necessary and redeeming and precious part of the human experience. I don’t think it is. And I think we can have our ethics, and have our spirituality, and indeed even be mystics without ever presupposing anything on insufficient evidence and without ever lying to ourselves and to other human beings about what we know to be true.

By “religious beliefs”, Harris doesn’t mean merely a sense or feeling of wonderment, a feeling that there is more to realty than our five senses can discern, or something vague (but respectable) like that. Instead, he’s referring to massive and intricate belief systems involving dozens or hundreds of very specific (and competing or even mutually exclusive) ideas about the nature and will of God, about human beings, about history, etc. Here’s the situation as Harris summarizes it: there are competing religious systems that each have detailed ideas about reality with followers who (for the most part) can’t offer any actual evidence for thinking their specific ideas are accurate, but there’s an implicit taboo against putting religious claims under the microscope (metaphorically), which allows some of the more harmful ideas to flourish and taint society, and yet we’re (for the most part) expected to have some respect or admiration for these ideas because they’re taken on “faith”.

In every other area of inquiry – politics, philosophy, economics, etc. – we quite reasonably expect other people to substantiate their intricate belief systems/conclusions, especially when those ideas adversely affect the way they treat or view other people. It’s only in the context of religion that we show such misguided and totally undeserved “respect” for wildly implausible and evidence-lacking ideas, some of which have real life consequences. Many legislators propose and often pass destructive laws, many parents renounce their own children, and tons of people form socially disadvantageous “clicks” with a gratuitous us-vs.-them mentality, to say nothing of the more violent and extreme cases, all because of some (occasionally barbaric) religious texts that they “just know” to be “divinely inspired” based on the flimsiest of evidence (and often none at all). And then they become stunned and morally outraged when others critically analyze their ideas. Obviously religion is much more important to people’s psychological well-being than the other areas and it’s good to show compassion and sensitivity, but that doesn’t mean we should treat “faith” with kid gloves (err infant gloves) and show it such an undue level of admiration.

To be fair, there are some very sophisticated religious apologists who do try to offer evidence for at least some of their ideas (with varying degrees of success – I’ll let that issue pass for now), but that isn’t the case for the vast majority of believers.

If you're religious in Harris's sense, take a moment to imagine approaching someone of an opposing religious system in conversation and asking them what reasons/evidence they have for being so confident in their very specific ideas about God and reality. Let's say you're an "evangelical Christian" and they're a Mormon. Now imagine that Mormon replying by saying something like, “it’s okay guys; I don’t think it… I FEEL it.” Not good enough. But that's the kind of answer most religious people give, regardless of whether they're "born again christian", or Mormon, or Muslim, etc. Believers ought to have the humility to recognize that they don’t actually “know” their detailed ideas to be true, that their dogmas aren’t self-evident truths, and that their confidence *far* exceeds what can be reasonablyinferred from the evidence/arguments.