The Gay Society / Social Requirement

To live in a society, there are certain requirements that must be equally met. Some of the requirements have been placed into our law codes. It is a requirement that you refrain from murder. It is also a requirement that the citizen observes and respects private property. For most citizens this type of requirement is easily met. The prisons of our society are filled with only those who could not meet the legal boundaries. The picture of social requirements gets blurry when the obligations are not so clear or fashioned by certain moral codes. In society, the obligations of morality demand action. Those who fall outside the moral lines are considered immoral and should be ultimately “converted”. This creates the dichotomy in social requirements, because moral demands reveal not only social requirements but also social prohibitions.
One social factor that separates gays from the rest of society is found in gender norms. Historically, the man, woman relationship is considered acceptable. Marriage and dating relationships are seen as the “seedbed of virtue” (Seidman, 2003). The homosexual community naturally works against the gender norms accepted and established by society. Men with men and women with women are not socially seen as normal. The gender roles are deemed as skewed and therefore the requirements are unwritten. The easy way for society to overcome this confusion is to claim the actions and lifestyle as wrong. Socially, history never defines its requirements without revealing its prohibitions. In the past, black persons could not marry white persons. This was not only the law, but also a moral requirement. Marriage between a white man and a white woman were not only accepted but also encouraged. Interracial marriage was prohibited in the United States until 1967. Spiritually, many claimed that the law against interracial marriage was biblically correct by using certain scriptures as the justification. One scripture in Leviticus states “thou shalt not let they cattle gender with a diverse kind…”(Leviticus 19:19, King James Version). The use of cattle in an argument for racism shows at what level the social requirement lay during the Civil Rights period. The same type of scripture justification has been used against homosexuality.

Society “has a vested interest in gender stereotypes: a society which is appalled at the thought of men sewing or a woman construction worker, a society that cannot accept gender fluidity…” (Parent & Spencer, 1997). Fulfilling created roles has been a hallmark of society, but the structure of social requirements is changing. Many gay couples now adopt children. Other gay couples are acting out familial roles with one man going to work and the other staying home with the children. Other cases of women having children as men and gay men and women using surrogates have helped society adjust and change its requirement boundaries.

Parent, M., & Spencer, C. (1995). Homosexuality in History. New York: Knopf

Seidman, S. (2003). The Social Construction of Sexuality. New York: Norton