Creep of the week: Ryan Anderson (again!)

Hello, gay and lesbian readers. I’d like to talk to you about your pathetic lives devoid of friends or family. It’s hard when the only way you know how to connect with other humans is to mash your identical genitals together. Which is why you’re probably reading this on your computer at home, alone with your cats or in a print copy of the paper you picked up to hide your giant erection as you wait by the restroom door at a gay club, hoping to make a new “friend.”

 

But don’t worry. Ryan Anderson, author of “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” sees your pain. And he wants to invite you to dinner. And to babysit his kids or something. You know, so that your loneliness and alienation stop driving you to do gay sex stuff.

Speaking at Cleveland Right to Life’s Bringing America Back to Life Convention in early March, Anderson basically said, Hey, we’ve got crisis-pregnancy centers to stop pregnant women from getting an abortion. What would the “functional equivalent look like for people with same-sex attractions?”

Let me just stop and point out that he says “people with same-sex attractions” in order to make clear that “gay” is something people do, not something people are. It’s an important distinction when your goal is to dehumanize. 

Anderson continues, “If we’re not in favor of same-sex marriage, what are we in favor of for people with same-sex attractions and how are we helping them live out their vocations?”

An interesting question. Particularly because he’s implying that gays need help from straight people, antigay straight Christians especially, to live their lives. It’s a weird claim. But when you see gays and lesbians as isolated perverts trying to make their way through this world, one hook-up at a time, it makes a kind of sick sense. 

“There’s a universal human desire for friendship, for companionship. We all have a need for relationships that matter,” Anderson said.

So true! And that is the foundational argument for marriage equality. But, as you may have guessed, Anderson’s going in the opposite direction here.

“When Thanksgiving comes around, when Christmas comes around, are you inviting a same-sex-attracted colleague or friend or member of your church who isn’t married and doesn’t have a family of his or her own … Are you inviting them into your family to share Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner? Are you having them be big brother or big sister, godfather or godmother to your children if they’re not going to be married and have children of their own? Are there ways in which we can show that there are other forms of community that matter, that are important, that are meaningful, without having to redefine marriage?”

In other words, silly gay or lesbian, marriage is for heteros. You don’t need legal protections for your family. You don’t need a family at all! Just accept that you’re going to always be alone and childless so you might as well get adopted by a church group full of people who pity you.

And notice that, in Anderson’s world, homos are super hard up for social engagements. I mean, Joe Blow, your single colleague who likes dudes, would probably spend Christmas on his knees in a bathhouse if he didn’t get to sit next to your Aunt Rita and listen to her extol the virtues of Donald Trump’s Mexican wall over mashed potatoes and ambrosia. 

Why wouldn’t gays and lesbians live chaste lives when they have so many Christians who hate them inviting them to dinner?

To everyone who thinks Anderson has a great argument here, I say please, please, oh please invite me to Thanksgiving. Because I would have to decline since I have my own very real family, fuck you very much.

D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock and roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister and teaches writing at the University of Michigan.

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