Psych 101

by capper

Dad29, a sometimes reasonable person, put up this picture and opened the comment thread for discussion.

My new friend, Billiam, put up this comment:

Hmmm, because 2 men holding hands is not natural. 2 men holding guns is an exercise of a Right Guaranteed by The Constitution. Now, no one is trying to ban men holding hands. Sadly, the same can't be said of a Constitutional Right.

Seeing that Bill is a conservative, this would seem a logical response for him. Wrong, but logical.

Wrong in the sense that just this past year, Wisconsin joined a number of other states in banning gay marriage. No states have banned the 2nd Amendment, although to be honest, there have been attempts.

But the answer to the question can be found in any Psych 101 text. It is a version of the fight or flight response. When people encounter something that is foreign to them, or that they don't understand, it is human nature for the person to feel threatened. When faced with a threat, real or perceived, it is also human nature to want to flee from it, or to fight it.

Since homosexuality is not the norm for most people, and many, including myself, can't understand the feelings that a homosexual person may be experiencing, it makes them foreign, and people have a hard time accepting that. Since the normal person would feel rather silly running everytime they encounter a homosexual or find themselves faces with the fact of homosexuality, they respond with fear, which leads to anger, which helps with distancing themselves emotionally.

I have had many gay friends. The man that married me and mrs. capper was gay, as was one of our ushers. We attend the usher's commitment ceremony. Even though I cannot understand the homosexual point of view, I can understand that it is not a threat to me, my masculinity, or my marriage. That is why I had voted no against the ban, and hope to see it repealed some day. It is nothing more than prejudice against gays.

But the thing that really prompted me to write on this subject wasn't Dad's post or Bill's comment. It was another comment by someone named Amy:

Yes, Billiam did (nail it), with an extension: we are also endowed with a God-given right to protect ourselves, and Catholic teaching recognizes that right beyond even the Constitution.

That only made me think of this: