Posted on 11/12/2005 4:07:04 PM PST by dvan
By 1 hour, 10 minutes ago
OAKLAND, California (Reuters) - As U.S. gays and lesbians prepare to battle a raft of state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage that will likely be on the ballot next fall, activists are recasting the issue as one that needs to be fought on moral rather than political grounds.
That is the message Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the oldest and leading U.S. grass-roots gay and lesbian coalition, has taken to more than 2,500 gay rights organizers at its annual conference held in Oakland this week.
"What I really want people to understand is rather than seeing these as political contests, these are really profound, unfair, bordering on immoral elections," Foreman told Reuters on Saturday. "Imagine if this was being done to a minority in Kosovo -- people would be outraged."
The conference, due to end on Sunday, is the first national gathering of gay and lesbian organizers since Tuesday's elections in which Texan voters approved, by nearly a 76 percent majority, a state constitutional amendment banning
Opponents, who believe marriage is only between a man and a woman, argue that same-sex marriage is unnatural and damaging to families.
If last year's conference, which came on the heels of elections in which 11 states approved changing their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage, was a time to vent anger and hurt over the defeats, this year the drive is to organize broad-based grass-roots campaigns to defeat more such votes, said Patrick Guerriero, president of the gay advocacy group Log Cabin Republicans.
"We've gone from some of the (2004) post-election anger to a movement that is optimistic about the future," Guerriero said in an interview.
"We need to be more mobilized as a community, more bipartisan in our message," Guerriero said, pointing to the need to engage people of faith, centrist Republicans and conservative Democrats.
UPHILL CLIMB
It will be a steep hill to climb, activists said.
"We're going to have another 10 to 12 anti-marriage, anti-family recognition constitutional amendments on the ballots next fall," Foreman said. "That's going to be an enormous challenge.'
Two key elements in the strategy to defeat more votes banning same-sex marriage will be reaching out to people of faith and demanding that Democrats, who have long counted on gays and lesbian as core supporters, stand up for the gay community, Foreman said.
"The Democrats' response to gay issues over the last few years has been incoherent and spineless, and that has only worked to their disadvantage," Foreman said. "There is a sense among large gay donors to the Democratic party that they need to have the party take a stand for us."
In a moral world the gays would lose on a moral basis. In a leftist bizarro world 2+2=3.
"Imagine if this was being done to a minority in Kosovo -- people would be outraged."
He's trying to liken it to ethnic cleansing. I'm sure the MSM will buy that argument hook, line, and sinker.
Bump
I know why he picked this analogy. It was the ONLY comparison to a minority group he could think of that would not offend some PC sensibility or other. I'm surprised he didn't pick an Eskimo or whatever we're supposed to call those people these days.
If those all pass, that would make 29-31 states with traditional marriage constitutional amendments.
We're moving along.
Doggone historical realities.
Morals??? (snort). The gays are going to talk about Gay Marriage as moral???? SNORT. Hahaha. Maybe they can get Teddy Kennedy to help them. He's great on morals.
It's called "playing the victim card". They've gone from equating their struggles to the civil rights struggles of the 1950's and 1960's, to equating their struggles of the Kosovar's being bombed from 15,000 feet in the sky by General Weasel Clark.
There's nothing moral about gay marriages or the gay lifestyle either. It's an abomination.
They have no moral ground from which to stand on.
Considering the Marxist Islamic KLA is known for sex slavery and running heroin, I guess the liberal queers have the whole "morality" angle figured out.
Please, PLEASE, put the issue in MORAL terms! Save us who are on the side of families the work of framing the issue.
I never understood the significance of the debate between whether it's meaningful that homosexual instinct is innate (some folks are born that way), or if it is a taste that is developed for any number (or combination) of reasons.
Nature or nurture as some folks pose it.
It doesn't really matter what it is. To say that it is a natural instinct doesn't mean that it is to be required accomodation by our laws. People have plenty of perfectly natural instincts that don't serve public policy - that they are 'natural' isn't a reason to accomodate them.
That they are developed for whatever reason also isn't a reason to accomodate them.
I never understood the fixation on both sides of the argument with the nature/nurture debate. It really doesn't matter what the reason is - there's no particular need to change the longstanding institution of marriage for 100% of the culture to accomodate 1-2% of the culture.
That's not to say we should institutionally be mean to that 1-2%. We shouldn't. But the legal fact remains: every homosexual has the same right to get married as any heterosexual: find a person of the opposite sex to agree to marry you, fill out some forms, pay some money, have a ceremony, and you're good to go.
This is really weak.
Nobody is going to make the imaginary stupid connection being implied here.
I am afraid that homosexuals do not make a choice to be sexually or romantically attracted to the same gender. They can only choose to act on their desires or to resist them.
Much has been made of the recent study by Robert Spitzer on homosexuals who appear to have changed their sexual orientation to heterosexual. It is true that many of these persons have succeeded in living in heterosexual marriages, but only a minority of them reported no longer having same-sex desires. Moreover, the sample of individuals Spitzer studied were not randomly selected; they were volunteers. Spitzer has made it clear he believes that the large majority of gay men who try to change their orientation through therapy do not succeed.
Accordingly, I think there is a good case, based on compassion, to have limited legal recognition of same-sex unions. The only other reasonable alternative is of course celibacy (chastity) for gay men: but let us be realistic, most men are unable to follow this path. They may attempt a heterosexual marriage, which would have a high probability of failure (an arrangement not fair to any woman!). If they do choose to act on their homosexual desires, far better that they do so in the context of a caring, stable relationship. (Given that 25% of sexually active urban gay men have HIV, any reduction of homosexual promiscuity is to be welcomed. There is a minority of gay men who are in long-term monogamous relationships.)
There are other studies which prove quite different results. Johns-Hopkins' latest belief -- after they closed their Homosexual Studies Program (whatever it was really called) -- is that homosexuality thrives in a cohort situation. If people in your community are ok with it, it is much more likely to thrive. It is a behavior that is CHOSEN. It is a habit/ behavior reinforced by doing it many times, hence harder to break the more you do it. As the fight intensifies, watch for more 'research' to support homosexuality. Lies can be used in any field to prove anything, if you have an agenda.
But again, I would like to reiterate my skepticism that homosexuality is chosen. The behavior is chosen but not the underlying desire. Homosexuality for most gay men appears to originate in childhood, before puberty; no one is making a conscious choice to be gay, it happens before such a choice is possible. Some claim that homosexuality is the result of weak fathers, sexual abuse by adults, rejection by peers, or childhood sexual experiences with peers -- but the problem with each of these claims is that there are a lot of children who experience these things who turn out heterosexual, and it is still very unclear what actually sends one child down one path and other child the other path. Genetics may play a role (based on the Bailey and Pillard twin studies), but that's unclear as well. The key thing to understand is most gay men report that they have no conscious memory of when or how they became gay. Also, most gay men report that their same-sex desires are as deeply determined as most heterosexuals report their opposite-sex desires to be deeply determined.
The only situation where homosexuality apears to be chosen is in prison or similar situations. However, in these circumstances, homosexuality is almost always a substitute for heterosexual behavior; men who have been in prison for many years and who have had only homosexual contact for that time, will immediately revert to heterosexual contact when it becomes available to them.
I am wracking my brain trying to remember where I heard that. I would check with Exodus Intl: http://www.exodus-international.org/. They have a great speakers bureau, many well-educated people involved. Joseph Nicolosi, Phd, is on their board. I am sure you can find the study through Exodus.
No luck: I just tried the search on Google, 'johns-hopkins site:www.exodus-international.org'. Four links turned up, three of which mentioned a researcher, Dr. Money of Johns-Hopkins, who advanced the "blank slate" theory of sexuality. The first link that came up contained a quote from Money asserting that the theory that homosexuality was genetic had been discarded, but the reference for that statement dated to 1974.
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