Radical Gay Activists have plans to change our nation and their agenda goes way beyond wardrobe makeovers
The moral debate that politicians and pundits refer to as “the culture war” in America is a real war in every sense of the word. It’s not just a clever turn of phrase or some kind of journalistic shorthand, but a dynamic confrontation, as sociologist James Davison Hunter has said, between forces with two dramatically different visions for America. It’s a struggle to define who we are, what we believe and how we will live our lives in this modern age.
On one side of this war are those who believe in traditional moral values and biblical standards of right and wrong. We are defending historic moral principles that have undergirded American society for more than 300 years-and we are fighting to preserve the integrity of our homes and our families.
On the other side are those who believe that anything goes. They are men and women who will accept no civil restraint or moral limits on their sexual freedom. The result is that we’re engaged in a life-and-death struggle, with fierce battles, real casualties and very real consequences.
For those of us who adhere to a traditional understanding of faith, family and freedom, the stakes could not be higher.
The battlefields of today’s culture war are well-known to most of us. They include issues such as abortion, euthanasia, the education of our children, day care, feminism, multiculturalism, judicial activism, resisting the anti-Christian and anti-American bias of the liberal media, and fending off the increasingly aggressive forays of those on the social and political left against religious liberty and biblical interpretation.
There seems to be no area of faith or morality the left won’t attack, but one dispute may be more volatile and more important to America’s future than any other: the legitimization and normalization of homosexuality.
Thanks to years of social conditioning and the constant drumbeat of homosexual activists-aided by the media-many people have decided that homosexuality is no longer a matter of concern. Homosexuals have a right to do as they please in the privacy of their own homes, they say. What right do we have to impose our morals on the rest of America?
There was a time when the answers to such questions would have been obvious. Not only were there cultural prohibitions on behaviors of this kind-with a 4,000-year history of cultural disapproval-but statistics regarding death, disease and other social dysfunctions associated with homosexuality were too overpowering to ignore.
But that is no longer the case. As much as anything else, the homosexual agenda has been a carefully crafted plan to blind ordinary Americans to the truth. Through lies, disinformation, falsified data and manipulation of the news media, homosexual activists have shielded millions from a reality so obvious that only a morally impoverished nation could fail to see it.
From the beginning, the homosexual agenda to erase moral values from our minds and our public policy has been so relentless and so successful that a practical understanding of the risks of homosexual behavior can no longer be assumed. The greatest tragedy as a result of this agenda is that precious lives are being lost every day. Thousands are dying either from their own bad choices or from ignorance about the genuine dangers of the “gay lifestyle.”
The entire agenda of the homosexual left is founded upon a conspiracy of ignorance, superimposed over a sophisticated public-relations campaign designed by homosexual activists to normalize their lifestyle. But no matter how much they may try to force middle America to accept a “live and let live” philosophy, we will never do that.
For one thing, the gay and lesbian community will not settle for mere “tolerance.” They have a strategic plan to enforce, not just tolerate, complete acceptance and affirmation of their lifestyle. They will settle for nothing less than the utter defeat of all who oppose them.
But also, Christian compassion forbids us to concede the victory while so many innocent lives are still at risk. So the struggle continues, and the signs of war are all around us.
The Gay Rights Platform
The news from Canada and Europe ought to give us fair warning of where this battle may be headed if we fail to react appropriately. The Human Rights Commission of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan recently decided that a newspaper ad that quoted biblical passages about homosexuality was a “human rights offense.”
Subsequently, both the newspaper and the individual who placed the ad were forced to pay three homosexual accusers $1,500 each. During the same period, the Supreme Court of British Columbia upheld the suspension without pay of a high school teacher because he had written a letter to the editor of his local newspaper stating his belief that “no one is born homosexual.”
Unfortunately, cases such as these are not unique. Wherever homosexuality is recognized as a viable alternative lifestyle, anyone who dares to speak out with a different point of view may be subjected to harsh penalties.
If things continue at the pace they’re on, homosexuality will soon be not just a tolerated behavior but a civil right, and same-sex relationships will be deemed morally superior to heterosexual relationships. This has been the stated goal of gay activists from the first. And it’s not hard to imagine that, if they have their way, homosexual rights will become the unquestioned law of the land.
The 1972 platform of the gay rights movement alerted average Americans to the direction the battle was taking when it included a program of sweeping changes to virtually all the basic institutions of society. The following objectives were included in the list of demands announced by the Gay and Lesbian Task Force during their March on Washington in 1993:
• Implementation of homosexual, bisexual and transgendered curriculum at all levels of education
• Lowering of the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sex
• Legalization of homosexual marriages
• Custody, adoption and foster care rights for homosexuals, lesbians and transgendered persons
• The redefinition of “family” to include the full diversity of all structured families
• Access to all programs of the Boy Scouts of America
• Affirmative action for homosexuals
• The inclusion of sex-change operations under a universal health-care plan.
Is there any chance that these or any of the other 54 demands of homosexual activists will actually be met? Read the headlines. Every day, it seems, another fortress of America’s traditional moral values faces the wrecking ball, while judges, juries and legislators tell us that the values we once took for granted can no longer be invoked. More and more, it seems, Christian virtues are forbidden, while sexual hedonism is everywhere exalted and homosexual behavior may not be challenged.
For most of the last decade, the liberal media have trumpeted the news that researchers have found proof that homosexuality is innate, genetic and normal behavior within a sizable percentage of the population. In particular, the findings of researchers Simon LeVay and Dean Hamer were held up as irrefutable proof that homosexuality was innate and inborn. News accounts suggested that these new discoveries only confirmed what homosexual activists had been saying for years and proved at last that anyone who objects to homosexuality is bigoted, ignorant and a danger to society.
The only problem was that their findings, along with their methodology, were imprecise, unorthodox and chock-full of holes. Reports fed to the media were misleading, and the stories they generated were quickly proven false.
In the wake of all the sensationalism, researchers at Yale, MIT, Columbia and the Washington University School of Medicine pointed out the errors in LeVay and Hamer’s findings, denying that any of the data or accompanying analysis could substantiate their claim of a so-called gay gene. Some analysts even said a proper interpretation of the data would lead to the opposite conclusion. But, predictably, evidence indicating that homosexuality is a learned behavior and not a genetic trait went mostly unreported by the media.
Fortunately, politically correct spin and wishful thinking cannot change the facts. The tactics proposed by two Harvard-educated sociologists, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, to brainwash the American public and silence the critics of homosexuality have had a profound effect on the culture, but the facts speak for themselves.
Homosexuality is an emotional disorder with deep psychological roots, but it is also a learned behavior. Homosexuals have waged a relentless campaign for decades to focus the debate on rights instead of behavior.
In the age of civil rights, the gay rights lobby understood their chances of winning public acceptance would be greater if homosexuals and lesbians were perceived as oppressed minorities rather than as the sexual hedonists they are. The last thing they wanted America to think about was what they do behind closed doors.
But not everyone is buying the cover-up. African Americans and Hispanics who have won legitimate civil rights victories since the 1960s have a right to be offended by the claims of the homosexual lobby. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, expressing opposition to President Clinton’s efforts to permit gays to serve in the military, remarked: “Skin color is a benign, non-behavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument.”
The point is well-made: Skin color is morally neutral and tells nothing about the character of a person. Sexual behavior, on the other hand, has everything to do with character and tells us a great deal about the person. But these are facts that the homosexual community wants Americans-particularly young Americans-to simply ignore.
What We Can Do
In his compelling book The Broken Hearth, former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett offers a dramatic assessment of America’s predicament at this hour: “My concern is we are now embarked upon an experiment that violates a universal social law: In attempting to raise children without two parents, we are seeing, on a massive scale, the voluntary breakup of the minimal family unit. This is historically unprecedented, an authentic cultural revolution-and, I believe, socially calamitous.”
If our society is to avoid the disasters that come from such a dangerous shift in the social and moral order, we must strengthen traditional marriage and promote the value of strong families in our schools, our churches and our homes. We must promote abstinence before marriage and reject attempts to undermine the laws of human nature by redefining marriage to include non-monogamous couples.
To do less would be unthinkable. But in order to empower those who are determined to stand against the tide of moral relativism, we need more and better resources.
We especially need support for our views about marriage, the family and human sexuality. In a society with a media climate that has become hostile to the Christian religion and traditional values, good intentions aren’t enough. We need motivation and inspiration to empower every man, woman and child to withstand the destructive forces that threaten our nation’s survival. And that comes only with a solid faith commitment.
The constant barrage of pro-homosexual programming makes it difficult for young men and women to escape the indoctrination. High-school age and younger children are already damaged by family disintegration, the erotic images of television and the movies, vulgar rock music, a wide-open Internet, and other media that contribute to identity confusion. Some vulnerable children are being catapulted into destructive and desperately unhappy behaviors.
It is not coincidental that, from earliest times, homosexuality has been discouraged. Civilized societies promote traditional families, founded on a lifelong commitment of marriage between a man and a woman, and the bearing or adoption of children.
The encouragement of family formation has allowed societies to prosper, to reproduce themselves, to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, and to provide healthy nurture and training for future generations. We turn our backs on that sane and responsible model only at our great peril.
On many occasions homosexual activists have said that the only thing standing between them and full acceptance of the homosexual agenda is the Christian activist who believes in the Christian gospel and who holds to biblical standards of right and wrong. Clearly, we are the main target of a massive public relations campaign, and when we come against what the homosexuals stand for, things really start to light up.
But that must not deter us. Christian morality is under attack in this country as never before, but sooner or later the truth will be visible to everyone, for, as President Abraham Lincoln reportedly said to a White House guest in 1865, “You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” God is with us, and we will not be silenced. ?
Louis P. Sheldon is the founder and chairman of Traditional Values Coalition (www.traditionalvalues.org), the largest nondenominational, grass-roots church lobby in America.
This article is adapted from The Gay Agenda by Louis P. Sheldon, recently published by FrontLine. For more information, go to www.charismahouse.com.
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