Posted on 05/20/2003 8:14:33 AM PDT by theoverseer
In four Gospels - including the Sermon on the Mount - Jesus neglected to mention the subject of homosexuality. But that hasn’t stopped a handful of self-appointed leaders of the so-called Religious Right from deciding that it is an issue worth the presidency of the United States. In what the Washington Times described as a "stormy session" last week, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, Paul Weyrich, Gary Bauer and eight other "social conservatives" read the riot act to RNC chairman Marc Racicot for meeting with the "Human Rights Campaign," a group promoting legal protections for homosexuals. This indiscretion, they said, "could put Bush’s entire re-election campaign in jeopardy."
According to the Times’ report by Ralph Hallow, the RNC chairman defended himself by saying, "You people don’t want me to meet with other folks, but I meet with anybody and everybody." To this Gary Bauer retorted, "That can’t be true because you surely would not meet with the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan."
Nice analogy Gary. Way to love thy neighbor.
This demand to quarantine a political enemy might have had more credibility if the target – the Campaign for Human Rights -- were busily burning crosses on social conservatives’ lawns. But they aren’t. Moreover, the fact that it is, after all, crosses the Ku Klux Klan burns, might suggest a little more humility on the part of Christians addressing these issues. Just before the launching of the 2000 presidential campaign, George Bush himself was asked about similarly mean-spirited Republican attacks. His response was that politicians like him weren’t elected to pontificate about other people’s morals and that his own faith admonished him to take the beam out of his own eye before obsessing over the mote in someone else’s.
The real issue here is tolerance of differences in a pluralistic society. Tolerance is different from approval, but it is also different from stigmatizing and shunning those with whom we disagree.
I say this as someone who is well aware that Christians are themselves a persecuted community in liberal America, and as one who has stood up for the rights of Christians like Paul Weyrich and Gary Bauer to have their views, even when I have not agreed with some of their agendas. Not long ago, I went out on a public limb to defend Paul Weyrich when he was under attack by the Washington Post and other predictable sources for a remark he had made that was (reasonably) construed as anti-Semitic. I defended Weyrich because I have known him to be a decent man without malice towards Jews and I did not want to see him condemned for a careless remark. I defended him in order to protest the way in which we have become a less tolerant and more mean-spirited culture than we were.
I have this to say to Paul: A delegation to the chairman of the RNC to demand that he have no dialogue with the members of an organization for human rights is itself intolerant, and serves neither your ends nor ours. You told Racicot, "if the perception is out there that the party has accepted the homosexual agenda, the leaders of the pro-family community will be unable to help turn out the pro-family voters. It won’t matter what we say; people will leave in droves."
This is disingenuous, since you are a community leader and share the attitude you describe. In other words, what you are really saying is that if the mere perception is that the Republican Party has accepted the "homosexual agenda," you will tell your followers to defect with the disastrous consequences that may follow. As a fellow conservative, I do not understand how in good conscience you can do this. Are you prepared to have President Howard Dean or President John Kerry preside over our nation’s security? Do you think a liberal in the White House is going to advance the agendas of social conservatives? What can you be thinking?
In the second place, the very term "homosexual agenda," is an expression of intolerance as well. Since when do all homosexuals think alike? In fact, thirty percent of the gay population voted Republican in the last presidential election. This is a greater percentage than blacks, Hispanics or Jews. Were these homosexuals simply deluded into thinking that George Bush shared their agendas? Or do they perhaps have agendas that are as complex, diverse and separable from their sexuality as women, gun owners or Christians, for that matter?
In your confusion on these matters, you have fallen into the trap set for you by your enemies on the left. It is the left that insists its radical agendas are the agendas of blacks and women and gays. Are you ready to make this concession -- that the left speaks for these groups, for minorities and "the oppressed?" Isn’t it the heart of the conservative argument that liberalism (or, as I would call it, leftism) is bad doctrine for all humanity, not just white Christian males?
If the President’s party – or conservatism itself -- is to prevail in the political wars, it must address the concerns of all Americans and seek to win their hearts and minds. It is conservative values that forge our community and create our coalition, and neither you nor anyone else has - or should have - a monopoly in determining what those values are.
When you demonstrate to me that you have an equally all-consuming opposition to smoking and obesity, I'll believe your opposition to gays is rooted in your concern about their health rather than your irrational animus toward them.
Wrong. You might read a good con law treatise. Tribe's a liberal, but he's written a good one.
You say the Constitution protects your "liberty" because that word appears in the 5th and 14th Amendments and the 9th refers to "other" rights. OK. I have the right to "liberty," a word not defined in the Constitution. What does that mean; who decides what it means? The nine justices of the Supreme Court.
For almost two hundred years there was no right to an abortion, but viola! the Supremes discovered that "right" in the "penumbra" of the Constitution. They may read the right to keep and bear arms out of the Constitution by adopting the collective rights theory. The Ninth Circuit said "liberty" means the right to assisted suicide, but the Supremes said no, it's not in their secret penumbra.
So now YOU say that from the time of the Framers to now state legislatures have unconstitutionally declared sodomy illegal, because you just discovered the right to gay sex in your definition of "liberty."
You advocate judicial activism and the theory of subtantive due process because in this case it would assure you of the right to have whatever kind of sex you want. Fine. All I'm trying to communicate is that the Supremes are NOT libertarians and if you give them these tools they will take away far more rights from you than they will ever give you.
If you'll look around Horowitz's site, you will see that he has led the way in exposing the entire rotten empire of the pop-culture left for what it really is: a naked totalitarian power-grab. Religious Right buffonery is the number one weapon in the terror-apologist propaganda arsenal, their best opportunity to promote the big lie that they, and not we, promote the principles of The Enlightenment. A good example is this screed from British biologist, terror-apologist, and totalitarian bigot Richard Dawkins, which characterizes the War on Terror as a fundamentalist crusade against Islam and implies that we are no better than the Islamo-fascist enemy.
Hello... Matthew 10:15!
If you look to the supreme court or the constitution or any governmental body to define your rights, then you have surrendered part of those rights to the government. The government has a lot of power, but they do not have the authority to take away my rights. That is where we differ and probably always will.
Now if some guy wants to put his penis in the rectum of another guy or if two adult women enjoy have oral sex with each other, they have the right to do so. I may not do that myself, but it is their right. I may think it's immoral, but it is their right. I may get us all together to vote to put them in jail for doing it, but it is still their right. No one can take that right away. They can use force, but the right remains.
So look to the court or whomsoever for your rights, but don't tell me that's what I do.
You're kidding, right?
So you still won't discuss the facts but instead continue your obfuscation.
Do you deny the homosexual agenda exists after reading the following link?
The Homosexual Propaganda and Media Manipulation GamePerhaps you need some help? Here is what the link says:
1) The homosexual agenda can succeed by conversion of the average Americans emotions, mind, and will, through, a planned psychological attack in the form of propaganda to the nation via media (page 153);
2) “Propaganda relies more upon emotional manipulation that upon logic, since its goal is to bring about public change” (page 162);
3) Propaganda can be unabashedly subjective and one-sided, there is nothing wrong with this (page 163);
4) Homosexual agenda can succeed by “desensitization” achieved by lowering the intensity of antigay emotional reactions to a level of sheer indifference (page 153);
5) Homosexual agenda can succeed by “jamming” and “confusing” adversaries, so as to block or counteract the “rewarding of prejudice” (page 153);
6) “Heterosexuals dislike homosexuals on fundamentally emotional, not intellectual grounds” (page 166)
7) “Desensitizing” is “our recipe” for converting “ambivalent skeptics”;
8) Make victimizers look bad by linking to Nazi horror while helping straights to see gays as victims and feel protective towards them (page 221);
9) The Nazi story of “pink triangle as a symbol of victimization” should be a sufficient opening wedge into the vilification of our enemies (page 190);
10) Show grisly victimization of gays and demand that readers identify themselves with either social tolerance or gruesome cruelty;
11) Discourage anti-gay harassment by linking and calling all those that have opposing opinions to latent homosexuality (i.e., call people homophobic) (page 227)
12) Jam people by pointing out that it’s inconsistent with the reader’s belief in the value of love between individuals (page 233);
13) AIDS epidemic should be exploited “to increase attention and sympathy” as “victimized minority.”(page xxv)
14) “We argue that for all practical purposes, gays should be considered to have been born gay, even though sexual orientation, for most humans, seems to be the product of a complex interaction between innate predispositions and environmental factors during childhood and early adolescence” (page 184);
15) “Muddy the moral waters”, that is, to undercut the rationalization that justify religious opposition… this entails publicizing support by moderate churches and raising serious theological objections” (page 179);
16) Portray opposing churches “as antiquated backwaters”, badly out of step with the time and with the latest findings of psychology (page 179);
17) Jam the self-righteous pride by linking to a disreputable hate group (page 235);
18) The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome (page 178);
19) All opposing disagreements to homosexual behavior is rooted in “Homophobia, Homohatred, and Prejudice” (page 112)
20) It is acceptible to call people “Homophobic” or “Homohaters” if they do not agree 100% with homosexual views, opinions, or behavior. (page xxiii)
21) A media campaign should portray only the most favorable side of gays (page 170);
22) Show others accepting gays and homosexuals (page 241);
23) Heterosexuals are like Aryans and people who are against homosexual behavior are “Nazis” and “Clansman”.
24) Homosexual persecution is identical to Jewish persecution (page 57, 62, );
25) Homosexual persecution is identical racial prejudice to Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics (inferring inborn) (page 62, 73);
26) All scientific/medical arguments to prevent 1973 APA/AMA removal from disorder list were rooted in cultural prejudice, medieval knowledge of science/medicine, and misinformation.
27) “Two-thirds of all boys” have rudimentary homosexual experiences (inferring most teenagers want to have homosexual sex) (page 44)
28) “Vast majority” of homosexuals do not engage in compulsive high-risk sex (page 49)
29) American opposition is based solely on prejudiced, outdated, and hypocritical Victorian morals (page 51)
30) All homosexually suicides are based entirely on societal rejection (page xv)
31) All sexual morality should be abolished (pages 64 to 67);
32) Homosexual civil rights are “explicitly set forth in the Bill of Rights”;
33) Health concerns for AIDS prevention are unwarranted (page 91)
34) Opposition to homosexual marriages is based on “family nostalgia” and “sexual guilt” based on religious/Victorian values (page 92)
35) Adoption agencies have been “placing kids with gay people for a long time,” as long as “you do not bring up” the fact that your gay;
36) “Kids in gay households ultimately receive better-than-average parenting” (page 97)
37) All speech that is opposing homosexual behavior should be banned under “clear and present danger to public order” (page 101)
38) All and any news or media coverage that is presents homosexual in negative form is prejudiced and invalid (page 54);
39) Everyone comes out must be prepped by a media campaign carefully crafted, repeatedly displayed mass-media images of gays (page 169);
40) “Gay activists have tried to manipulate the American judicial system.” Sometimes the tactic works: many executive orders (which side step the democratic process) and ordinances passed by city councils now protect certain rights (page 171);
41) “Employ images that desensitize, jam, and/or convert on an emotional level” (page 173);
42) “Gain access to the kinds of public media that would automatically confer legitimacy upon these messages and sponsors” (page 173);
43) “Ambivalent skeptics” are our most promising targets (page 176)…
44) Associate gay cause with “talk about racism, sexism, militarism, poverty, and all the conditions that oppress the unempowered.” (page 181)
45) Project gays as victims of circumstance and oppression, not as aggressive challengers (page 183);
46) “Mustachioed leather men, drag queens, and bull dykes” should not appear in gay commercials and other public presentations (until later after wide acceptance) (page 183);
47) Groups on the farthest margins of acceptability, such as NAMBLA, must play no part at all in the medioa campaign (page 184);
48) Gays should be portrayed as victims of prejudice…graphic pictures of brutalized gays, dramatizations of job and housing insecurity, loss of child custody, public humiliation… (page 185);
49) In time we see no reason why more and more diversity should not be introduced into the projected image (i.e., drag queens, pedophiles, etc.) (page 186);
50) Infer and speculate that famous historical figures were gay for two reasons: first, they are dead as a door nail, hence in no position to deny the truth and sue for libel; (page 188)
51) In TV and print, images of victimizers can be combined with those of their gay victims by a method propagandists call the “bracket technique” (page 190);
51) The media campaign will reach straights on an emotional level, casting gays as society’s victims and inviting straights to be their protectors (page 187);
52) We like television because it’s the most graphic and intrusive medium for our message (page 201)
53) Over the long-term, “television and magazines” are probably the media of choice (page 204);
54) Ads must manage to get the word gay into the headline or tagline (page 207);
55) Each message should tap public sentiment, patriotic, or otherwise, and drill an unimpeachable agreeable proposition into the mainstreams head (page 208);
56) Several years down the road, our tactics will have carved out, slice by slice, a large portion of access to mainstream media (page 213);
57) Associate and link gays to good causes and non-controversial activities (page 219);
58) The more people who appear to practice homosexuality, and the more innate it appears to be, the less abnormal and objectionable, and the more legitimate it will seem (which is why it is important to maintain claims to 10% of the population)(page 217)
59) Stage candid interviews with gays who appear as solid citizens. Subjects in commercials should be interviewed alone, not with their lovers (for now) (page 247);
60) Most people derive their impressions of the world through the national media (page 250);
61) It will be a sheer delight to besmirch our tormentors, we cannot waste our resources on revenge alone (page 189);
62) “Too many Americans share this mistrust of gay citizens” (page 55);
Whoops. Yeah, the homosexual agenda doesn't exist, and Clinton never lied about Lewinski.
The right to coitus comes from nature, and is inextricably bound with survival of man. Where does the right to non-coital acts come from?
You choose to eat a healthy balanced diet, excercise, and not smoke. Good for you. No one is forcing you to eat greasy burgers or smoke cigarettes. I guess it's too much to hope that this analogy won't be lost on you.
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