Although S.Z. excerpted it in today’s Townhall Review, I really think Dennis Prager’s latest column deserves a closer look:

College taught her not to be a heterosexual

Dennis Prager

Perhaps the most important argument against same-sex marriage is that once society honors same-sex sex as it does man-woman sex, there will inevitably be a major increase in same-sex sex.

So the most important reason to ban gay marriage is so Dennis doesn’t have to think about other people having icky gay sex. I think he should title his next column “Cooties and the Subversion of Judeo-Christian Values.”

People do sexually (as in other areas) what society allows and especially what it honors.

Hmm, so if society honored having sex with Dennis, would that make you more likely to sleep with him? (I think we all what the answer is…)

One excellent example illustrating this is an article recently written in the McGill University newspaper by McGill student Anna Montrose. In it, she wrote:

It’s hard to go through four years of a Humanities B.A. reading Foucault and Butler and watching ‘The L Word’ and keep your rigid heterosexuality intact. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but it seems I no longer have the easy certainty of pinning my sexual desire to one gender and never the other.

(Michel Foucault is a major French “postmodern” philosopher; Judith Butler is a prominent “gender theorist” at UC Berkeley; and “The L-Word” is a popular TV drama about glamorous lesbians.)

Well, I’ve read Foucault and watched plenty of Queer Eye episodes, but I don’t feel sexually confused because of it (OK, so Foucault made me feel “confused,” but not in a sexual way). TV shows and books don’t turn people “queer”- at the very, very most, they can help bring out tendencies that are already there.

I interviewed Anna Montrose, a bright and articulate 22-year-old woman, on my syndicated radio show. She is a fine example of the type of thinking and behavior a homosexuality-celebrating culture — such as that at our universities — produces.

Yeah, it’s too bad our universities produce bright and articulate people, when they should be spawning Bible-thumping Neanderthals like Doug Giles.

The following are selected excerpts, edited for reasons of space, from that interview. The full transcript, the audio and her original article are all available on my website, www.dennisprager.com.

“And don’t forget to buy a ‘Traditional Values Kill Butt-Sex Dead’ t-shirt while you’re there!”

DP: Prior to attending university you had your ‘rigid heterosexuality’ intact. Is that correct?

AM: I think that that’s pretty fair to say.

DP: So you and I both believe that how people behave sexually, including which sex they will engage with sexually, is largely determined by society and not by nature.

AM: Yeah, I completely agree.

OK, Anna, that was really foolish of you. You just ceded a huge chunk of rhetorical ground to Dennis, who’s going to take this and say, “Seeeeeee? She says that sexuality is largely determined by external forces! Universities are converting our children to lesbianism! Send your kids to Bob Jones before it’s too late!!!”

Sure, we’ll certainly see more open homosexuals in more tolerant societies, but that’s because they aren’t afraid of being jailed or beaten like in, say, Iran. But guess what- even if you enact anti-sodomy laws or throw Rosie O’Donnell in the public stocks, there will still be gay people. The Old Testament wouldn’t have called homosexuality an “abomination” if homosexuality didn’t occur in ancient Israel. Gay people exist everywhere, regardless of whether society “honors” them.

DP: Gay rights activists say the opposite. They say that whether you act homosexually or not is fixed; and I don’t believe it’s fixed necessarily at all and neither do you.

AM: But I think that [the activists’] argument has a political purpose, which is to counter the argument that heterosexuality is fixed.

Again, Anna, you’re blowing it. Heterosexuality is fixed for some people (I mean, take a look at The General– there’s not a queer bone in that man’s body). The point is that heterosexuality isn’t fixed for everyone– some people are “fixed” gay, some people are “fixed” bi- and there’s nothing wrong with that. By arguing that one’s sexuality isn’t “natural” or “fixed,” you’re letting Dennis play to peoples’ fears that homosexuals are out to “convert” them.

DP: I agree with you. But we both think that they’re not telling the truth for the sake of making a political argument.

Since we both agree that largely whom we have sex with and sexual behavior generally are culturally determined, the only question is: Would we like culture to determine [these things] one way or the other? I think ‘yes’ and you think ‘not’. I have a heterosexual preference because my values tell me that male/female love is the ideal. You don’t think it’s the ideal. Is that fair?

Sadly, no! Dennis, when heterosexual guys hit puberty and see a hot woman, their first thought isn’t “my values say consensual relations with her would be ideal.” Instead, they say, “I wanna hit that!”

Why? Because that’s how they’re built. It’s biological. “Values” have nothing to do with whether you’re gay or straight, and your religion doesn’t determine your sexuality. For instance, I’m agnostic. To you, this means I’m a valueless heathen who’s probably into plant sex (which, while certainly interesting, is more of Seb’s bag). But in reality, I’m just as “hetero” as you are (though not as hetero as The General, but hey, who is?).

AM: I think that it’s one of many options.

DP: It’s not necessarily a good thing to teach heterosexual behavior as the ideal?

AM: Yeah.

DP: You didn’t know you were sexually attracted to women until you went to university? You had lived 18 years and thought you were only sexually attracted to males.

AM: That’s true, but I also had never had a boyfriend either. I didn’t date —

DP: Whether one has a boyfriend or girlfriend is very different from what one wants to have and where one’s sexual fantasies lie.

*Sigh*, you can’t “teach” heterosexuality, Dennis. Why do you think all those “ex-gay” ministries are such colossal failures?

DP: All I’m saying about sexual choices is that society has a deep impact on sexual choices including whether it’s same sex or opposite sex. So my whole position is: Thousands of years of Western civilization preferring male-female bonding leading to marriage and family is a good thing, and Anna feels that it’s a bad thing. Is that totally fair? Or am I putting words in your mouth?

AM: I don’t think it’s necessarily preferable. I think that people should be able to make their own choices.

DP: So one is as good as the other.

AM: Yeah.

DP: So you’re saying that for thousands of years, Western society has been wrong for preferring male-female marital bonding.

AM: I only think it’s wrong in that it limits other possibilities, which are equally good.

OK, Anna, good work. Emphasize that being gay or bi isn’t an “attack” on heterosexuality. (And incidentally, Dennis, just about every society has preferred “male-female marital bonding,” not just Western ones. Trust me, there aren’t a lotta gay marriages occurring in Sierra Leone…)

DP: So it is wrong to tell people, wrong to tell little girls, to suggest in any way, subtly or non-subtly, that they should grow up and marry a boy?

AM: Yeah, I don’t think that you should force anyone into —

DP: You said ‘forced,’ I just said ‘suggest.’

AM: How would you just gently tell someone?

DP: By saying, for example, “Well, are you going to marry Jerry or Tony?” instead of, “Are you going to marry Jerry or Barbara?”

Oh lordy, this is painful. (Incidentally, I don’t think there’s any way conservative parents could turn their daughters into lesbians faster than saying, “Why don’t you marry a nice boy like that Ben Shapiro at Townhall?”)

Above: Ben Shapiro. Heck, he’d turn me into a lesbian too…

AM: I think that the coercion is on a sort of deeper level.

DP: So you feel it’s [coercion] to suggest to a girl only male options for marriage?

AM: Right.

DP: Have you acted upon your new revelation of not being a rigid heterosexual?

AM: What do you mean ‘acted on’?

DP: Well, had sexual contact with females.

AM: I guess I have, yeah.

DP: So, tell me what you’ve done with other girls.

AM: What?

DP: You know, have you just made out with them… fondled their breasts…

AM: Uhm, I don’t think that’s really appro… hey, why have you had your hand in your pocket for the last twenty minutes?

DP: Have you had with a male?

AM: I had. I had a boyfriend for a year.

DP: Is there any difference or are they both equally meaningful to you?

AM: Well, there is definitely a difference, but they are also both meaningful.

DP: At this point, do you hope to marry one day?

AM: I haven’t really decided on that.

DP: Well, would you consider going out with my buddy Ben Shapiro?

AM: You mean that arrogant creep who always bitches about liberal bias in higher education and then brags about going to Harvard?

DP: Yeah, that’s him. See, Ben still hasn’t been deflowered. I mean, he thought it was gonna happen last Spring, but it turns out it was only a drag queen impersonating Ann Coulter…

AM: Ew, that’s totally nasty! Hell no!

DP: OK, OK, well he thought you’d say that, which is why he wanted me to ask you to give him a call the next time you’re with a girl, just so he could watch…

UPDATE: TBogg has more on this…