Second responce to Nazrul Islam on Gay Marriage

Published in News From Bangladesh in June 3, 2008

I apologise for giving the impression of proving my ego for any purpose in my last response to you. So I will simply concentrate on some of the points you have raised instead. When you refer to "Guy Marriage", you are probably referring to "Gay Marriage" - the term that encompasses both homosexual men and women. As far as demographic statistics are concerned, I will ask you to kindly go to Google's website (or any other search engine) and look up terms "Homosexuality", "Homosexual Studies" etc. and find relevant links (you will unfortunately run into pornographic sites as well if you include the term "Gay", so simply avoid them). Ten percent is not an absolute figure but a rough one provided by studies (in the western world) that involved interviewing people and asking them to report the gender they are more sexually attracted to and engage in sexual activities with.

You asked me the following: "So you don't seem to have any problem with 10% but you think ,more than that would threatened human propagation like maybe anything more than 10%. Suppose 90% of humans practice homosexuality , you will really be concern than!". To this I have to ask you to refer to my earlier response to Asif Khan explaining that homosexuality is indeed widespread in the animal kingdom and that this practice or state of being has not disappeared through evolution in a small percentage of human beings. Studies are showing this percentage to be around ten percentage not ninety as you ask hypothetically. To your hypothetical scenario, all I have to say is that if 90% of the human population was indeed homosexual, then what control would we have over it's evolutionary effect? None. We would simply have to face the facts and probably go extinct quickly. But the fact is 90% of the human population is not gay and what my concerns would have been had that been the case is completely irrelevant to the discussion. I would like to reiterate that neither homosexual or heterosexual women and men choose this state of being or orientation. They simply find themselves in this situation. Any discussion regarding homosexual practices and one's personal opinion of them need to be put in that context.

If you accept this then you will see that promotions and legalisation of gay marriage resulting in the percentage of homosexual population increasing from 10% to 60% is absurd since this is not something you can promote. The only thing that can be promoted is awareness of homosexual people and their right to live their lives according to their natural state of being. I am not going to get involved in the much bigger discussion regarding acceptance of homosexuality within framework of the world's major religions. This is a discussion that is still evolving and I have only started to learn about it. Needless to say only a fraction of the religious scholars around the world express a view in favour of homosexuals whereas majority are against. I will ask you to kindly do your own research on the web if you are interested.

Finally you mentioned that I defend Gay Marriage. Not necessarily. It is more complicated than that. I defend gays and lesbian's right to live in a society according to their sexual preferences and not be ostracised by the government and society in general. If there is no place for homosexuals in the framework of the world's religions (a subject that is being debated) then the orthodoxy of those religions can be respected and a new framework can be created for homosexuals by a) ensuring that any kind of discrimination against them by government and private entities is strictly illegal and b) administering Civil Partnerships or Civil Unions for them giving them the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual married couples but without the requirement of any divine blessing. This is what has happened the UK.