Gay Rights?

I've been giving this issue some thought as of late and I think I'm ready to share it now.

Jason Collins recently came out as the first openly gay player in the NBA and that has lead to much debate on the subject of gays being accepted in the locker room.

I'm going to try discussing this rationally and logically with no real moral slant other than where our laws stand now.

The first question I ask myself is why do we separate men and women into different locker rooms in the first place?

I believe the answer that most would give is that  it's because the vast majority of men are sexually attracted to women and that the vast majority of women are sexually attracted to men. Separating them when they are naked and lathered up in the shower makes perfect sense. Natural sexual attraction like that can lead to totally inappropriate actions and responses when they are naked together.

In our society, inappropriate sexual remarks and actions are not tolerated. Work places have men and women working together with their clothes ON and we still have new laws on sexual harassment added every single year. People get fired over saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

With all that being said, let's look at the scenarios. IF a gay teen boy were placed into a teen girl's locker room, most of the girls in the locker room would be uncomfortable with the situation. Even if the boy would have absolutely no attraction for the girls, many girls may have a heavy sexual attraction for him OR be naturally embarrassed by his presence.  In other words they would be sexually uncomfortable just because he is there. Parents, for good reason, would not like their daughters exposed to such a situation.

Let's reverse that scenario. Let's say a gay teen girl is placed in the teen boy's locker room. Parents would be upset and most of the teen guys would become sexually interested even if the girl had no interest in them. ALL would feel the regular sexual tension and pressure of the situation. The situation itself would be considered harassment, because it's the tension that is causing the uncomfortable feelings to develop.

Now let's push these scenarios a bit farther. What if a straight male shared a locker room with straight females or a straight female shared a locker room with straight males. In high school, in college, in gyms?

The obvious answer in these scenarios is that the circumstances certainly would not get better if we placed all people into these exact types of situations regularly. Despite shows like Big Brother ruling the world's airways, the vast majority of husbands and wives and girlfriends and boyfriends would not want their significant other sharing locker rooms naked with the opposite sex. Many of the people involved would feel that this would be a sexual violation of the highest order. If staring at a co-worker with her clothes ON can get a man fired from his job, imagine the consequences of him standing in front of her in any state of sexual arousal while doing the staring.


In fact many of us would consider this wrong without ever giving it a second thought. IF harassment occurs in normal situations that we all deal with everyday, then it's only going to get amplified when we are in close proximity with our clothes off. Common sense tells us that.

For those of you who don't see it yet, that's the conundrum. We separate people in locker rooms, for good reason, based on their potential sexual attraction to one another. We don't do it JUST because they are male and female. That's just a shortcut we've come up with because it works out most of the time.

So what about gays? Is a gay guy naked in a male locker room any less sexually attracted to some of the men than if a straight guy were naked in a female locker room filled with naked women?

The same goes for straight women who share a locker room with a lesbian. IF someone in the locker room is sexually attracted to a woman, she has the RIGHT to feel uncomfortable and call it harassment, if it's a man or a woman. Women have the right to say that they are uncomfortable in these situations.

Men, too.

Instead we try to validate the gay person's right to be there. Since gay males are attracted to their own sex, the logical conclusion should be they shouldn't be in a male locker room. There very presence is harassment to many of the men there. Lesbians don't belong in a female locker room either because it will make females sexually uncomfortable. This is the very definition of harassment.

Unless you would be comfortable with teen boys and girls sharing locker rooms together in junior and senior high, you should not be comfortable with gays in locker rooms. The scenario IS the same. It's about unwanted sexual attraction in the most vulnerable of positions.

You just have to take the time to see it.

For those men and women who say they wouldn't mind sharing because they aren't bothered by it, I caution you, at work you may not be the person who feels violated by inappropriate work place behavior or remarks either. The problem is that YOU are encouraging the inappropriate behavior that may get someone else fired while others ARE getting sexually harassed. You are the enablers who are causing others to be violated.

The victim is the person violated,  NOT the person who doesn't have a locker room to dress in.

We live in difficult times, but this is not a difficult decision.

There are other scenarios of course. All-gay locker rooms wouldn't work either, if they are mixed gender or not, because of the potential sexual attraction that many will have for so many of the others.

If a lesbian teen is in a monogamous relationship with another teen girl, she shouldn't have to face the temptation or fear of sharing  a locker room with other lesbians (or any girls OR guys for that matter.) And her lesbian partner wouldn't want her in that type of situation either, any more than a straight guy would want his naked girlfriend sharing a locker room with naked straight men. I'm pretty sure the straight guy wouldn't want his girlfriend to share the locker room with all gay guys either, or lesbians. Why? Because loving monogamous relationships don't discriminate against groups of people. They rightfully discriminate against potential individual rivals who may cause an otherwise monogamous heart to wander. That's being discriminating in the best sense of the word.

If the situation were totally reversed, gay men in a monogamous relationship should feel the same way, right? Right?

So why don't we hear about this aspect of the situation? Where is Jason Collins' boyfriend in all of this? Why is he happy allowing HIS man in the locker room with all of these naked, rich athletically built men around him daily? Why doesn't this situation bother either one of them enough to talk about THAT to the press?

Shouldn't Jason Collins be uncomfortable in his current locker room situation in much the same way that a straight girl wouldn't want to share a locker room with straight guys?

I repeat, we live in difficult times, but this is not a difficult decision.