The out-of-focus debate over homosexual rights

By Donald Hank

I have recently gotten into an on-line debate over a statement, attributed to one of the presidential candidates, that the candidate would not be uncomfortable with a "gay" president.

One list member criticized this statement, focusing on homosexuality itself and taking the position that homosexuality is deviant behavior. Another, a professor at a university, became irate at him, taking the position — now familiar in academe — that a person's orientation, no matter how weird or disgusting, is none of anyone else's business and is perfectly normal, and attacked the first member for his insensitivity toward homosexual victims of bias. Another emotional debater jumped into the melee, accusing the first member of calling someone an "idiot" who disagreed with him. I did a quick search and failed to find the word "idiot" in that first member's email.

This micro-debate illustrates just how emotional and irrational our national macro-debate over homosexual behavior has become.

I was urged by one member to respond. My first thought was of my short column Rage, rage, rage against the psychic cage, which points out how the Left uses feigned exaggerated outrage to beat up psychologically on dissidents, and that would certainly be a valid starting point.

But first, let me say that this whole debate misses the main point by a mile.

The main issue in America is the same as that in Europe, where religion is on a collision course with sexual promiscuity and sexual promiscuity is winning, operating under the banner of sexual "liberation" and posing as an innocent victim (just as radical feminism did before it wrecked the American family — what short memories we have!).

It is not just winning, it is driving out religion, as any fool could have foreseen. The arrest of Pastor Aka Green in Sweden a few years back epitomizes this fact. For opposing homosexual behavior in church on biblical grounds, Green faced life in prison! This, plus Canada's arrest of various opponents of homosexual behavior, including pastors and social activists who base their arguments on medical evidence, shows where we are headed.

But worse, the holocaust against orthodox religion is already here and is ignored by the media, which bodes a horrible future for America short of a miracle. And therein lies the real issue: not the horrendous attack on constitutionally protected religious freedom, but the ominous silence of a tacitly approving press and a nation of sheeplike beings that can only mouth the platitudes of the Left in defense of the "victim" group du jour while ignoring the real victims of their own creation!

In May 2006, Laigle's Forum was one of the few web sites to report on the ongoing legal battle involving the arrest, in October 2004, of a group of 11 Christians who had protested Philly Pride Presents, a homosexual event. The Christians, who had peaceably and publicly opposed homosexuality on biblical grounds, were charged with a "hate" crime and each faced 47 years in prison — a life sentence for most! — for expressing their faith in public in the "land of the free" and in the city (and state) founded by William Penn for the express purpose of offering a haven for people persecuted for their faith. The media, including the "conservative" outlets of Fox News and the radio talk show hosts, almost completely ignored this first major challenge to religious freedom since our founding as a nation.

In another slap in the face to religious (and other) traditions, the California legislature recently banned a school's making any distinctions based on biological sex. The Alliance Defense Fund worries:

"... if this law is allowed to stand, ... Teachers cannot teach that a student's birth at sex is a student's true sex... Schools that want to preserve separate gender-separate restrooms and locker rooms will be faced with a choice — either violate the law and refuse to allow boys and girls to enter each others' facilities or spend millions of taxpayer dollars to build separate facilities for the small number of students who decide they want to pass as the opposite sex.

This law was passed by people who have bought into the notion that "gay," lesbian, transgendered and cross dressers are so downtrodden, so targeted by traditionalists (especially Christians) and in such a desperate crisis that they must be given the right to turn society upside down and inside out at taxpayer expense just to prevent some undefined abuse.

Montgomery County school district in Maryland imposes the same kind of teaching policies.

So does Massachusetts, where schools teach that homosexuality is just as valid a sexual choice as any other, at variance with common sense, medical evidence and again, religious teachings. David Parker, the father of a very young boy who was exposed to pro-homosexual teaching in an elementary school in that state, was arrested at a school board meeting for protesting the fact that he was not notified of such teaching — notification that is mandated by law! Parker was led away in handcuffs for demanding rights to which he was entitled by state law.

While homosexuality is protected, homosexuals themselves are not. None of these school districts that mandate the normalization of homosexuality and the false teaching that it is genetically determined or otherwise inevitable ever mention — or are even allowed to mention — statistics showing the health hazards of homosexual behavior, such as the fact that 70% of AIDS sufferers are practicing homosexual males, or evidence that it is often caused by dysfunctional family backgrounds and sexual abuse. Nor do they teach that many who are trapped in the "gay" lifestyle escape and reprogram themselves, becoming functional, healthy heterosexuals, some of whom marry and raise families.

Where did all this madness come from?

In order to understand that, you must have a basic understanding of the Left, something an alarmingly small percentage of Americans have. The above-cited column Rage, rage, rage against the psychic cage provides some insight.

It is also enormously helpful to read about the Leftist mindset, as summarized in my recent article Olavo de Carvalho on the revolutionary mind. De Carvalho is probably the only person who has found the common threads running through the Left since its earliest history and has, for the first time, offered a cogent definition of the Left, a group that has defied definition due to the extreme divergence of its views, platforms, agendas and policies over time and from region to region.

Further, to understand how the Left operates specifically in today's America in an attempt to sell homosexuality and suppress religion, you absolutely must read the first chapter of "The Marketing of Evil" by David Kupelian, entitled "Selling gay rights to America."

For those interested in posting comments at Laigle's Forum or in emailing me with criticisms of this column, particularly those focusing on the threadbare notion that "gays" are victims of bias in dire need of special protection and that expressing the viewpoint that homosexual behavior (nota bene: I did not say "homosexual orientation" or "homosexual tendencies"!) should not be criticized, I am going to set the bar, requiring that you do the following:

Before you post your critique, please answer these questions:

1 — How is it that those who point out the hazards of homosexual behavior in an attempt to warn people of those hazards are guilty of "hate" but not the media and academe, which forbid or discourage even the suggestion that homosexual behavior could possibly harm anyone? How is this different from treating smokers the same way, namely, celebrating their lifestyle but never warning that they are harming themselves by pursuing it? (See my WND article on the comparison of smoking and homosexuality).

2 — If you believe that same-sex marriage should receive the sanction of the state, are you aware that if this were done, then same-sex adoption could not be prohibited? Thinking back on your own childhood, would you trade the upbringing you had with two parents for an upbringing with two homosexuals? If you and your spouse were killed in an accident, and your children were to be adopted out, would it be ok with you that they be adopted by a same-sex couple? Would you be willing to change your last will and testament asap, asking the family court to specifically allow your children to be adopted by a same-sex couple?

Once you have answered these, please let me know if you have read the first chapter of "The Marketing of Evil" by David Kupelian, entitled "Selling gay rights to America."

Once you have read at least the first chapter, and have carefully read the present column, I will deem you qualified to debate on this issue and I will cheerfully post your response (or respond to your email) on this issue and respond to it in detail.

Those who pretend there is a "civil rights" issue for homosexuals are either deliberately or carelessly ignoring the real issue of the dangerously dwindling religious freedom in America.

My Anabaptist ancestors came to these shores to avoid persecution back home in Europe for their religious beliefs. Some were burned at the stake, others imprisoned, others tortured by unbelievably cruel means. If you side with those who falsely frame the issue as "civil rights" for homosexuals, you are helping slam the door on the one last haven for the religious orthodox, the group that did more than any other to shape the precepts on which our nation is founded.

Now in the worst case scenario in which your "victims," the homosexuals, feel the need to escape (a laughably remote possibility), they have the entire rest of the Western world to flee to.

But if my victims, the religious orthodox who fear God and oppose homosexuality on biblical grounds, are squeezed out of America by the intolerant worshippers of "tolerance," whose shores will they flee to?

© Donald Hank