Q for Rick Perry: If Homosexuality is Like Alcoholism, Does That Explain All the Anonymous Sex?

Rick Perry, who had pretty successfully
repaired his image as a back-country doofus by donning a pair of
smart-guy glasses, has stepped in it again. This time, while
speaking in San Francisco of all places, he explained
that being gay is like being a drunk:

“Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular
lifestyle or not, ,” Perry said. “I may have the genetic coding
that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to
do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.”

There’s a lot to think about here. For starters, why the hell is
a politician even talking about this issue? Is it really
the proper role of the state to care what consenting adults get up
to?

As it happens, the Texas Republican Party apparently believes
that’s exactly the sort of thing the state should be intimately
involved with. Recently,
the group did remove “decades-old language in the state party
platform that states, ‘homosexuality tears at the fabric of
society.'” At the same time, though, the party added a plank about
“the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative
therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and
wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle.”

Explained a conservative delegate:

“The platform reflects what the people in the Republican Party
have asked for, and that should be no surprise: family values,
protection of marriage between one man and one woman and everything
that goes along with that,” said Jonathan Saenz, president of the
conservative group Texas Values and a convention delegate.

Let me go bold here and suggest that if you believe in limited
government, as most Texas Republicans claim to, the only fucking
you should be worried about is what the state is doing to
taxpayers.

Back to Perry, though: If being gay is like being
an alcoholic, why not suggest
moderation management rather than abstinence? Count your drinks
and your sexual episodes!

I get what Perry seems to be saying: Being predisposed to
certain behavior or even being “born that way” is no excuse for any
particular behavior; it doesn’t mean you don’t have responsibility
for your actions. But then the analogy loses all meaning. You know
why? Having a substance abuse problem is bad for the user and for
the people around him (drunk driving and all that). Being gay, not
so much. Sure, Mom and Dad may be disappointed and all you old
girlfriends discomfited, but the externalities of being gay just
aren’t at all comparable to the worst externalities of being an
alcoholic. Drunk drivers are rightly fined and jailed. Gay drivers
don’t run stop signs or plow into schoolkids (if they do, it’s not
because of being gay).

Remember back in 2012? The Republican Party got sidetracked when
a couple of its candidates felt it was really important to talk
about rape and fertility. Not a good idea from a pure-politics
angle or from a conservative angle either. I don’t think that
equating homosexuality with alcoholism is much better. Especially
in a country that no longer
frets over gays and lesbians like a rerun of
In Living Color. For god’s sake, even the Texas
Republican Party no longer believes that “homosexuality tears
at the fabric of society.”