Eww, that's disgusting!

Dahlia Lithwick, this time on Slate, reports on the Ick Factor as explored in a book by Martha Nussbaum titled From Disgust to Humanity. Nussbaum noted that a great deal of the Fundie attacks on gays are through language of disgust. They focus on what gays must do in bed to the point that gays are seen as a walking contagion, obsessed with sex, with a goal of polluting the rest of society.

Much like blacks were described under Jim Crow, which required separate drinking fountains and separate swimming pools.

One might debate whether the goal of marginalizing gays or the disgust of gays came first. Either way the tactic uses imagination to make gays seem to be less than human. Along with the disgust comes the drive to criminalize the contagion. The claim is the Ick Factor is a reliable guide to what must be made illegal. Surely God agrees. But, as we found with blacks, disgust is not equivalent to morality. Disgust does not bring us closer to justice.

Some of the change in the way both gays and blacks have been viewed has been because courts insist that citizens must treat the minority group as human.

It is imagination that fires up the disgust -- the straight guy thinks what if he were to do that to me? He imagines a personal assault. The solution? In the same way that ugly free speech is best countered with more free speech, the ugly result of imagination is only replaced by more imagination -- this time imagining the target to be just like me. Imagine how he is the same, not how he is different. Strange that we need imagination to see people as they really are.

Various commenters remind us that disgust is not the only driver in persecuting gays. Other reasons include:

* Gay sex is so much more pleasurable than straight sex that if we didn't put severe taboos on it everyone would try it, everyone would turn gay, and then where would our species be?

* Some people feel the need to have power over others. If the issue weren't gay sex it would be something else, like abortion.

* Exploiting the fear of others is a proven way to raise money for your cause.