Toothless Tigers: Abortion and Homosexuality

The noisy foes of homosexuality and abortion baffle me. I live here in the northeast corner of the United States. We all constantly make choices about healthcare, vacations, home lifestyle, transportation, friendships, careers, and so on, as we go about our daily lives.

Why is there so much public hysteria about these essentially private issues?

Why do foes of those who are in favor of such issues believe they will ultimately somehow, some way, sometime pay the price for someone else's decision in favor of abortion or homosexuality?

Let's take these issues apart...I hope they decompose into smithereens on the scrap heap of triviality.

First of all, I don't want to imply these issues aren't important to individuals, perhaps of life-and-death importance. These are central issues to people deciding whether they need to have a third marriage to the same person, or whether or not to have an abortion.

My point is that those people should be able to choose and decide for themselves, just as people with money should be able to choose how to spend it (let's hope for good reasons), or any of the multitude of other lifestyle choices people make.

One theory I've heard is that the foes of abortion and homosexuality are running scared. Now, of what could they be frightened?

1. Perhaps they do not appreciate how new methods can solve old dilemmas. Homosexuality and safe, hospital abortions available for all, are age-old exceptions to the mainstream that have not been accepted by law until recently.

2. On homosexuality: perhaps people who are against homosexuality are frightened to accept them socially, even one at a time. Perhaps they have an us-them mindset, as if they were from a democratic society, and the others were Communists, so they call them different, worse, perverts, as if they were social predators. Perhaps they're worried it might spread, and society would fall apart if everyone did it, and there wouldn't be any babies. If so, they need to make themselves less frightened somehow, maybe read up on it and meet homosexuals.

3.On abortion: perhaps people are against abortion if they worry there won't be enough children like they used to be, as good as they used to be, whatever that implies, to replace themselves, spread their seed, their race, ahead of them into the future. Perhaps they are worried the cost will come out of their pockets.

Perhaps the extremists whipping up mass hysteria should confront the central question of their own immortality and sexuality. We are all humans, and we all have finite lives. Accepting the choices of others would go a long way to promoting peace if these toothless tyrants promoting mass activism would only care to listen.