On 8 April, 2026, eleven
leaders of a Turkish gay-rights group faced a judicial trial on charges of “obscenity”
and “violating the protection of the family.”[1]
These charges are of course heavily subjective and even controversial,
especially well into the twenty-first century by which time gay and lesbian
couples were raising children in family units so the issue in Turkey could be
said to be which type of family warrants protection. The obscenity charge
had to do with the fact that two men or two women kissing romantically in
public still made a significant proportion of people uncomfortable in Turkey.
Turkish authorities had deemed photos showing gay couples kissing and put on
social media to be obscene. That homosexuality was not illegal there at the
time rendered the trial perplexing to many in the gay community in Turkey and
elsewhere in the world. Perhaps even more perplexing is the fact that the constitution
of Turkey contained an article on protecting family values and that gay couples
raising children were exempted from even being deemed families.
The gay association claimed
that the trial was “an attack on freedom of expression and freedom of
association.”[2] In
particularly harsh terms, the group also called the trial “a form of
dehumanization.”[3]
Whereas expression and association are jurisprudential terms, dehumanization
evokes human rights being severely violated. I contend that none of these
claims gets at the underlying issue, which is that, just as in climate change wherein
some regions (e.g., the poles) have been warming faster than others (e.g., the
equator), in any society some parts change more than others, such that the
latter can be expected as a matter of human nature to resist surges in the
former. Whereas people in a gay bar in San Francisco were used to seeing men
kiss each other, the same cannot be said in many cities in Turkey. Both being accustomed
and being uncomfortable are valid human reactions to the fact that change does
not happen at the same rate across a given society. In a healthy society, the gays
who are on the forefront in displaying their homosexual affection in gay neighborhoods
naturally tone down the visuals in other
neighborhoods, and heterosexuals not used to such displays try to tolerate them
under the correct supposition that culture changes. In an unhealthy society, gays
intentionally push their homosexuality where they know it is not as accepted,
and people unaccustomed to the visible gay affection seek to punish the gays
for what is only natural affection for gays.
A man can fall in love with another man, and a woman can fall in love with a woman. Bisexual men and women who have falling in love with people of both genders attest that the love is the same in substance. Also, falling in love with a personality is not the same as lusting after a particular sexual organ; indeed, people fall in love before having had sex with the beloved. In fact, anyone who has falling in love would acknowledge that the sex pales in comparison with the strong emotional attachment being felt. Selfless, or other-focused love is possible in human nature itself, and thus whether the person being put first is of the same or the other gender does not alter the qualities of the love because it is oriented to personality, not to sexual organs (though having access to preferred organs is no small matter).
Furthermore, a gay couple can truly love a child being raised because the parent-child love is the same, regardless of what the parents are doing sexually (at least one would hope the two are separate!). Just as a heterosexual step-father or step-mother can come to love a nonbiological child of the wife or husband, a gay spouse can love the biological child the spouse. That is to say, gay couples can indeed form genuine families, and the love therein is what the Turkish constitution could ideally have promoted and protected were love itself valued over hate by the government officials behind the trial.
That which should arguably be excoriated is not homosexuality per se, but the sordid elements culturally that can render the gay “community” as anything but warm and fuzzy. I am referring to the privileging of anonymous sex, even in imposing "open" relationships with separate sex with or without emotional attachment, as if monogamy were anti-woke and toxic. Lying, in cheating on a boyfriend or husban sexually, eclipses emotional intimacy and trust that could otherwise embrace gay couples and render them as more legitimate from the standpoint of heterosexuals. Also problematic is the utter slicing ruthlessness with which gay men reject other gay men not only sexually, but also emotionally. The narrowness of a hypertropic sex drive be exaggerated by an enabling cultural norm in the gay "community" that it is fine to "block" online or "flake" on showing up for sex as soon as a "hotter" guy is found for casual sex (i.e., "hooking up").
In short, responsibility, which is required for any genuine romantic relationship, may be a recessive value in the gay "community" whereas the primacy of momentary pleasure is privileged beyond its worth at the expense of emotional intimacy or connection. It may be that for too many gay men, the act of gay sex is more important to them than emotional intimacy and establishing trust and connection. Moreover, it may be that for too many gay men, "falling in love" is sex-centric rather than based on personality. I suspect that gay culture has been tacitly undergirding this toxic misordered concupiscence. If so, I would not be surprised if loneliness has been rife in the gay "community."
My point is that rather than thrown “obscene” and anti-family charges at homosexuality itself, genuine romantic love that a same-sex couple can have can be distinguished from the more primitive gay lifestyle. Societies that make this distinction would be able to relegate Turkey’s approach to punishing gay people as utterly crude and primitive, which are labels I would apply to the gay men who use sex to obviate commitment as if the sexual urges of gay men are such that those urges are different or stronger and thus cannot be resisted. The belief that such urges should not be resisted, even if doing so evicerates the integrity of intimate romantic relationships, is more troubling not only because people, whether gay or heterosexual, who live out that belief are functioning as animalistic primitives rather than as responsible adult-humans. Perhaps one day Christopher Robin of Winnie the Pooh lore will finally grow up, and associate intimately with other humans rather than only or primarily with more primative animals that enable his childishness. Perhaps Christopher will move on from his trophy animals, or perhaps he is naively their trophy.
Turkey’s approach of lashing out against gay visuals in 2026 was itself jejune, and thus did not evince sufficient maturity to facilitate the maturation of humanity’s homosexual population as it was shifting from informal relationships and the privileging of anonymous sex to the emotional intimacy that is only possible romantically in sustained relationships, including but not limited to marriage.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
