While in a short relationship with a very broad-brushing ex-girlfriend (I am a male hetero), I wondered where her obvious dislike and broad brushing against homosexuals came from. While she was somewhat religious, she would not be considered a religious nut by any means, yet she thought that basically "all homosexuals = molesters". Before we broke up she went on another tangent that "all lazy workers are communists" and said she was a big Ayn Rand fan. While doing some research in an attempt to counter the laissez-faire capitalist arguments, I came across Rand's dislike of homosexuals.
We know that the GOP is made up of basically two factions who see eye to eye on only a couple things. You have the religious nuts and the lassiz faire capitalists (with overlap in beliefs of course). We know the religious nuts use Leviticus, Paul, and other religious "traditions" to attack homosexuals (as we see in Iraq this covers all religious nuts around the world). Yet the lassiz faire capitalists are on average a more "educated" group (at least in degrees). Yet even they dislike homosexuals. In reading history about Ayn Rand, her anti-homosexual stances seemed really out of place and she even went against her mentors' stances who even thought she went way too far.
So, what we have here is a two-pronged attack, one based on religion and the other on a tangent of a market ideology, also something that the two groups can actually agree on. I was not aware of this until recently and I doubt the GLBT community does but it would be very useful if it was incorporated in talking points to keep and expand the rights of your community.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand"Another source of controversy is Rand's view of homosexuality. According to remarks at the Ford Hall forum at Northeastern University in 1971, Rand's personal view was that homosexuality is "immoral" and "disgusting."<30> Specifically, she stated that "there is a psychological immorality at the root of homosexuality" because "it involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises."<31> A number of noted current and former Objectivists have been highly critical of Rand for her views on homosexuality. <32> Others, such as Kurt Keefner, have argued that "Rand’s views were in line with the views at the time of the general public and the psychiatric community", though he admits that "she never provided the slightest argument for her position, <...> because she regarded the matter as self-evident, like the woman president issue." <33>
In the same appearance, Rand noted, "I do not believe that the government has the right to prohibit it. It is the privilege of any individual to use his sex life in whichever way he wants it."<34> Rand also defended the right of businesses to discriminate on the basis of homosexuality. Rand's defenders argue that her support for this type of discrimination was motivated by her valuing property rights above civil or "human rights" (as she did not believe that human rights were distinct from property rights) and therefore her view did not constitute an endorsement of the morality of the prejudice per se. Rand did oppose some prejudices on moral grounds, in essays like "Racism" and "Global Balkanization," while still arguing for the right of individuals and businesses to act on such prejudice without government intervention.<35>"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_and_homosexuality"As Rand's former "intellectual heir" and extra-marital lover, psychiatrist Nathaniel Branden is uniquely qualified to speak of Rand's view on sex. In 1983, he wrote that she was "absolutely and totally ignorant” about homosexuality. Branden added that he saw her perspective "as calamitous, as wrong, as reckless, as irresponsible, and as cruel, and as one which I know has hurt too many people who ... looked up to her and assumed that if she would make that strong a statement she must have awfully good reasons". To support the claim that Rand's views have caused harm, Branden offers the example of a Rand-influenced psychiatrist who tried to "cure" a client of homosexuality.
Barbara Branden, wife of Nathaniel Branden and Rand's authorized biographer, "considered her
profoundly negative judgment to be rash and unreasonable." <2> Noted gay Objectivist writer Arthur Silber summed the issue up by saying, "Rand did have an extremely unfortunate tendency to moralize in areas where moral judgments were irrelevant and unjustified. ... especially in ... aesthetics and sexuality." <3>
Harry Binswanger, of the Ayn Rand Institute writes that, while Rand generally condemned homosexuality, she would adopt a more tolerant view of it "when she was in an especially good mood." <4> He also noted that he "asked her privately (circa 1980) specifically whether she thought it was immoral. She said that we didn't know enough about the development of homosexuality in a person's psychology to say that it would have to involve immorality." The implication is that Rand's negative view of homosexuality mellowed somewhat with age, although there doesn't appear to be any independent support for this conclusion."
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