Compare and Contrast - Gay vs. Race

Last time, I talked about the extrapolation fallacy.  When we draw a comparison, it's always tempting to take it a little further to gain more insight, but that can produce more confusion than insight.  Let's take a look at a popular example.

"Being gay in our culture is like being black in the 50s."

This is a very important and widely used comparison.  It's the basis of labeling people as bigots -- the racists of our day.  There are many similarities.  But there are also many differences, which often get ignored.  Like any analogy, we can learn much from these differences.

The fact that gay individuals have been treated as second class citizens is the obvious similarity, but the scale of the class gap really is not similar at all.  It doesn't take much research to see the decades of Jim Crow laws and such were far more severe and blatant than the discrimination based on orientation.  So while the comparison is apt, we need to temper the reactions.

Another difference is the ability to hide.  There was no don't-ask-don't-tell when it came to race.  This changes the way orientation discrimination has progressed, both in good ways and bad ways.  For instance, the good: I suspect most people are friends with someone who is gay, but they just don't know it.  When the friend comes out to them, this provides opportunities to overcome stereotypes because they are already friends.  On the other hand, the bad: keeping secrets can have emotional consequences like feelings of isolation, higher levels of depression, etc.

A very important similarity is the fact that orientation, at least for most of us, is not something we actively choose, just like race is not something that is chosen.  But there's a remarkable difference.  While race is mostly identified its physical characteristic, people were of the unfortunate belief that there were personality and behavioral differences.  People mistakenly believed that those of African heritage were mentally inferior or some other such nonsense.  On the other hand, orientation is primarily a trait that affects behavior -- sexual and relationship behavior in particular -- but many want to view it as some kind of purely physical attribute, like race.

These kinds of differences confuse the lines of communication, because people tend to forget about the differences and focus only on the similarities, and often take the analogy too far.  This is getting too long, so I'll put other examples in future posts.  This analogy is one used by the "pro-LGTBQ" side, so let's look at one used by the "anti-LGTBQ" side next, alcoholism.