WARNING: If you are not open minded or only claim to be and cannot deal with a difference of opinions or viewpoints, stop reading here and now. This is my opinion and if you got problems with it you're free to leave and read a different blog or start your own blog - Respectfully.
As a psychologist (one who studies the psyche) I find a lot of issues with the diversity/equality debate that's carried out at the media level.
In short I find the arguments for equality so fraught with inconsistencies as to be a dangerous doctrine - unhealthy to minds and upbringing in society, some Orwellian types of logic. Meanwhile I find the arguments for diversity to be accomplishing the opposite of what they set out to achieve which is namely: equality.
I began studying sex offenders because I didn't want to have to deal with moral ambiguity in my work. Everyone (or about everyone, perhaps except for NAMBLA and the Girl Scouts) agree that those kinds of issues are NOT morally okay (at least in the U.S.) Studying sex offenders took me across a wide swath of other moral issues that gave me a lot of insight into my own values. I really did put my moral values on the chopping block in my studies, willing to drop them if they did not hold up (and I'm talking about my moral values as a middle class christian conservative military veteran heterosexual blue collar father eagle scout turned white collar administrator). At times this kind of a challenge was quite scary for me. But I consider having the honesty and integrity and courage to examine my values that way would be a prerequisite to my becoming a Ph.D. and a scientist - gotta practice what you preach. I'm happy to say my values held up quite well! But let me caution anyone who thinks simply because they read that list of adjectives/nouns that they know my values, you could guess many things and perhaps be correct, but there are stereotypes that I do not fit by any means in some of those adjectives.
This in mind, I am perfectly okay with what people wish to do with their sexual orientation. HOWEVER, the psychologist in me has some serious issues with certain movements and logic associated with it. One of them is the notion of "equality" when it comes to homosexuality. (here's where I tick off the gay community and get death threats (did anyone read the part where I said I'm okay with what people do with their orientation? Go up a couple lines) but express my old fashioned values and education and some common sense with some politically incorrect stabs at the world we live in). Any social scientist (and I would hope any sane normal human being) knows that the number of variables in a social setting between two genders are so immense as to be innumerable as well as the variables in interactions between the genders (male/male, male/female, female/female) as to make the notion of "equality" absurd. I won't even go into the number of variables but lets just say you don't have room on your computer to hold them all (I don't care if you have yottabytes of storage). But any social scientists KNOWS that the variables are immense.
When we get into "equality" between the genders/orientations, this is where you start to run into politics: How do you MEASURE the variables or the outcomes in your study? AYE! There's the rub! Yes, that IS the question. In addition to being politically charged we have to realize not all studies are VALID or RELIABLE.
Valid and Reliable are two key factors in any social study.
Valid in short means that the controls and definitions are specific enough to be clearly defined so that your outcomes can be actually "proven" and hold up under scrutiny. (Versus being just your opinion or "it seems.")
Meanwhile reliable, in short, means that you set up the study in such a way that it can be reproduced over and over again and again if someone follows your controls.
So I often laugh when I hear studies in the media and the studies are themselves so watered down by the time the media gets ahold of them as to be meaningless.
Further, studies only shed light on a facet of our makeup, they aren't and aren't intended to be the end-all-be-all summum bonum of science. Science is rarely so final, exact and conclusive. So these studies on equality, especially when it comes to homosexuality are quite incomplete, especially when you look at their operating definitions and controls and how reliable the studies are that they are laughable - more politically motivated than science (in my scientific opinion of the studies I've seen).
Another issue when it comes to social studies: It generally takes a decade for an issue to come to the surface and come to the attention of researchers (and a decade is a very short in science), a decade to examine the issues and study it, a decade to review it and see how it holds up and another decade to revise the conclusions. In short? A social study often takes about forty years to become established and fulfill the requirements of validity and reliability. Homosexuality as a social issue and the impact on children is nowhere NEAR fulfilling this length of time to be thoroughly examined. I would also propose that it wouldn't be complete for 80 years and might require a 2 or 3 generation longitudinal study to hold up to the questions that many of us would like to have answered.
But back to equality. In short and without a lot of mish-mashing, I've used some fairly straight forward common sense to establish that homosexuality is by no means "equal" to heterosexuality and visa versa. But in the sciences, "equality" can mean a few things. One can mean that they are ACTUALLY equal (the same, produce the same results, have the same interactions) or it could mean that we TREAT them as equal.
Here is where I again have problems. Equality and respect are two different things. I can give people respect but don't need to and shouldn't regard something that's different as equal when it clearly isn't, but I can give it equal respect or equal kindness. Further, a society that refuses or even makes it illegal to recognize differences surrenders its better judgment and sets its self up for a whole host of other issues.
Even the premise of "rights" is based on "equality" which leads me to some moral ambiguities I don't wish to clutter my entry with here. I'll save that for another day.
Meanwhile with diversity. If we are focused on diversity, how are we supposed to focus on equality? I mean, diverse means different, right? I suppose it depends on what we are looking for diversity in. So if I hire people based on some distinguishing feature (orientation, skin color, religion, language, nationality) back to the variables mentioned earlier, you're going to get different results, which if that's what you want....fine! But, depending on what you're looking to diversify or your outcomes, the results aren't going to be "equal." Unless the "uh-oh squad" wants us to PRETEND they are equal or water down our definitions so as to make the works and words meaningless.
So in all this, I would conclude: If they wish to be treated equal but don't assert they are equal, then focus on kindness or respect or Christlike charity. If movements wish to focus on diversity, then drop equality, unless you're simply focused on equal OPPORTUNITY (without the racist and unequal notions of affirmative action). But you can't have all of them. You just can't. They are outright contradictions of each other on so many levels.
As an American I might have to go back to Dr. Martin Luther King's speech when he said that he hoped one day his children would be judged on the content of their character and not on the color of their skin....somehow I think we missed that mark in a lot of ways and across a wide variety of issues and diversities.
I'm totally okay with the differences, but these groups and their leaders need to be honest about who they are and what they are and what they want because as it stands, the fronts for these groups essentially want to have their cake and eat it too and you can't do both, you've got to pick one or the other. To do otherwise is actually impossible...unless you live in magic unicorn rainbow land. The objectives are so contradictory as to be impossible.
But that's just my educated opinion.
