Are we thinking straight?

. PHOTO: AFP

When Maitraie Devi and Mircéa Eliade fell in love in the late 1920's in then Calcutta, their love sadly did not consummate mostly because the society at that time was not open to interracial marriages. Interracial marriages were illegal in Canada and the United States in the past as well. But I wonder how many people nowadays would support the idea that two people in love should not be allowed to get married simply because they belong to two different races. Keep in mind that such attitude had certainly made sense in the past among the majority of people in societies across the world. Just as we used to believe that the earth was flat, the sun revolved around the earth and so on. If we are to accept things simply because they have been around for a significant period of time, why not go back to the time when women did not have the same rights as men? Let us also go back to the time when in order to be disposed of; dead bodies required a clean bill of character issued by a person with religious authority. We should also assert that the marriages of all straight couples without children should be declared null and void since "marriage also symbolises and protects the inherently reproductive human relationship."

Before we worry about "what lesson we intend to leave behind for our future generations," perhaps we should take a closer look at the history of mankind. One might safely pronounce that any society is bound to evolve and change through time and those who resist such change can only delay the pace of such evolution/change at best. What is inevitable is going to happen one day, sooner or later.

We can be proactive and bring that day closer or we can blindly follow faith and traditions to make this already intolerant world a little more prejudiced to subject gay people and their families/friends to unnecessary and cruel anguish. Whatever decision you make, I just hope you don't make it based on misconceptions and misinformation. After all, evidence of human homosexuality dates back as far as the Greeks and the Romans, homosexual lifestyle has been documented among more than 200 different animals so far and the American Psychiatric Association deleted homosexuality from its official nomenclature of mental disorders in 1973!