"Gay Rights" Confused With "Human Rights"

[ Human  Rights Speech: Geneva: HRC - http://bcove.me/qs3211sh ]This speech by US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is an excellent representation of the confusion present in the ethical discussion regarding "Gay Rights." The issue of the "human rights" of LGTB persons is a different topic from the "rightfulness of" birth-gender abrogation by choice, itself. I support "gay rights" as the struggle to insure the human rights of no person of any disposition are breached; but as an adherent to the authority of the Scriptures to define sound ethics, I cannot find room within the Scripturally-defined zone of rightful human conduct to approve the specific conduct inherent in birth-gender abrogation by choice.It may be informative to point out that the recently deceased dean of Harvard Divinity School, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, "came out" as a person with homosexual predispositions - but acknowledged also that he could not find in his understanding of The Scriptures ethical approbation to act upon those dispositions. The path he found or chose to resolve this conflict was to live in celibacy: others personally known to me, not guess work or rumor, but specific persons known to me, have chosen to turn away from homosexual conduct into heterosexual life. These are polar examples of resolution – there are paths leading to these choices, and I will not do LTGB people the disservice of reducing them in so brief a space as this. There are many gender-related dispositions humans must tame rather than simply follow: and society expects them to do so.The idea that, simply because a person claims to feel a certain inclination, he or she must be given the freedom to act upon it, does not really stand up to close scrutiny. Merely name-calling persons not giving such approval - labeling them "phobes" (people with fears so irrational as to constitute mental illness) does not really obtain as an argument. A referee in a formal debate would invalidate such a tactic as "ad hominem" (attacking the person, not the idea the person is advocating) and would demand a return from name-calling to actual discussion of ideas.Just because there is a constituency desiring a certain thing, does not automatically place a demand upon the rest of society to approve that desire. If the rest of the world of humans interacting with their sexual natures must practice restraint, selectivity, and self-denial – how successful a public relations campaign we have witnessed, having across the last forty years created an ethos demanding of us all, under penalty of being labeled medieval at best, and psychopathic at worst, that we approve a zone of behavior many across the eons have believed is a violation of the order of creation, or a sin against the will of a Creator?May men and women of all nations not have an opinion any longer than something is simply wrong?The human rights of LGTB should be as sacrosanct as any others. But there is no "human right" of mandatory universal approval. We should not be able to slander (publicly name-call) people into acquiescence to matters of morality with which they sincerely disagree.We can be for Gay Rights - and against gay conduct.That is not contradictory: it successfully "renders unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God, what is God's."At least, in this one rabbi's opinion. Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen8 December 2011  New York City