Multiple events help sup­port National Coming-Out Day

“Sexual ori­en­ta­tion is not only based on gen­der, but the type of peo­ple you are attracted to—the char­ac­ter­is­tics that you like about them,” said Dr. Corvino dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion titled, “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?”

He went on to say that “Homosexuality is not some­thing of which to be ashamed. It’s not some­thing to be ter­ri­fied of or some­thing to dis­crim­i­nate against.” .

Dr. John Corvino, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wayne State University, has been talk­ing about homo­sex­u­al­ity issues for almost 18 years.

FSU pro­fes­sor Katherine Harris, President of the Gender Alliance of Ferris Employees, said, “I’ve seen some of his lec­tures before on video. He is very pol­ished and because he uses humor and doesn’t argue right in front of your face, he helps give lee­way to talk about the issues at hand and make you think about them.”

FSU pro­fes­sional med­ical tech­nol­ogy, pathol­ogy, and phys­i­ol­ogy major, Carl Byington, said, “I thought every­thing he said was cor­rect and easy for most any­one to under­stand. His humor and use of exam­ple were very enter­tain­ing but kept in mind the seri­ous­ness of the sub­ject of gay, homo­sex­ual, bisex­ual, and trans­gen­der issues.”

Dr. Corvino goes on to say that when we argue about issues such as gay mar­riage or homo­sex­u­al­ity in gen­eral, “we need argu­ments that have reasons—not just someone’s opin­ions based on their reli­gious back­ground or conservativeness.”

Same-sex rela­tion­ships make some peo­ple happy, so why dis­rupt that? We have to stop this moral abom­i­na­tion said Dr. Corvino. “We should make moral judg­ments,” said Corvino, “Not just judge peo­ple on who they are or what they do.”

He talked about why homo­sex­u­al­ity is right and didn’t give rea­sons why it’s not wrong. He explained that the argu­ments peo­ple come up with, such as, “homo­sex­u­al­ity is unnat­ural” or “ani­mals don’t do that,” are lousy arguments.

Byington said, “The con­flict of inter­est and use of nature vs nur­ture were very inter­est­ing to lis­ten to. The idea that nat­ural ver­sus unnat­ural events within a het­ero­sex­ual and homo­sex­ual cou­ple was also just as intriguing.”

He went on to say, “If soci­ety as a mass views het­ero­sex­ual rela­tions as nat­ural then why view homo­sex­ual rela­tions as unnat­ural? We are all human beings, some just choose to be with the same sex. This doesn’t change our DNA or alter our genetic code to be any­thing less than what we are—human.”

Corvino said that peo­ple can­not choose their feel­ings, but they can choose the activ­i­ties they par­tic­i­pate in with regard to those feelings.

That could cause uproar because peo­ple say homo­sex­u­als should just choose other activ­i­ties then. When think­ing about that, Corvino said, “Just because it both­ers you on a visual level doesn’t make it morally wrong. We make other people’s lives more dif­fi­cult when we think homo­sex­u­al­ity is morally wrong.”

“Straight peo­ple talk about their boyfriends and girl­friends just fine in pub­lic, but once gays and les­bians talk about their part­ners it becomes an issue,” said Corvino.

President Eisler said, in regards to Corvino’s lec­ture, “It was well pre­sented. He’s a very artic­u­late and thought­ful per­son. His issues were well pre­sented and had well-reasoned ques­tions. I’m very pleased with the Ferris employ­ees who put this together with Dr. Corvino.”