The Gay Agenda
There
is a gay agenda, and the tactics used to
advance it have become as hateful as the attitudes
of the alleged bigots that gay activists oppose.
Judging
by readers’ responses, my recent column
criticizing gay activists for outing not only
legislators who oppose their agenda, but also
legislative staffers, has stirred up a hornet nest. Some critics insist I’ve simply conjured up
the notion of a gay agenda.
The
gay agenda is not a secret document. It was first published in a 1985 article by
Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen in the gay magazine Christopher
Street. There
was no initial enthusiasm for this agenda in the gay
community. In
fact, some gays considered the proposed tactics
fraudulent and demeaning.
But a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision
upholding a Georgia
statute criminalizing sodomy galvanized many
activists.
In
February, 1988, a “war conference” of 175
leading gay activists representing organizations
from every part of the United States
convened in Warrenton, Va. The
purpose of the conference, according to Kirk and
Madsen in their 1989 book After
the Ball, was to establish an agenda for the gay
movement.
The
agenda described by Kirk and Madsen is radical
indeed. Among
other things, it advocates junking the centuries’
old definitions of marriage and family and returning
to an ancient Greek model of homosexual
relationships between young boys and older men.
Central
to the agenda is a “propaganda campaign” that
portrays gays as victims, attacks all opponents of
their agenda as latent homosexuals, and utilizes an
advertising campaign of lies. Kirk and Madsen defend this ad campaign,
saying “it makes no difference that the ads are
lies: not
to us, because we’re using them to ethically good
effect, to counter negative stereotypes that are
every bit as much lies, and far more wicked ones;
not to bigots, because the ads will have their
effect on them whether they believe them or not.”
To
the activists who established the gay agenda in the
1980s, anyone who opposed them was a bigot and a “homohater.” All critics must be “jammed” through a
psychological linking technique used with success in
anti-drinking and anti-smoking ad campaigns.
If
the gay agenda were confined to a positive public
relations campaign to improve the image of
homosexuals, there would not be so much opposition
to it. But
the agenda is as hateful as the attitudes of the
alleged bigots that the activists set out to
confront.
Those
who seek to preserve the traditional definition of
marriage, meaning the union of a man and a woman,
are not bigots. Neither are they all latent homosexuals, as
Kirk and Madsen claim.
The
activists’ strategy has worked — after a
fashion. Movies
and television routinely portray their lifestyle
positively. Reporters
now frequently refer to policies that gays oppose as
“gay-bashing.” Yet, the in-your-face tactics of these
activists, especially the outing of legislative
staffers, turn many off.
Gay
activists have now launched a campaign to dig into
the personal lives of all legislators who supported
Virginia’s 2004 law banning civil unions. They are looking for any rumor or suggestion
of questionable private conduct so that these
despised lawmakers can be outed — whether the
allegations involve homosexual conduct or other
behavior that might prove embarrassing.
The
irony is apparently lost on these radicals that the
right to be left alone — the centerpiece of their
campaign — no longer extends to those who disagree
with the gay agenda. And they have abandoned any pretense of
confining their outing tactics to public officials
who remain closet homosexuals while publicly
opposing the gay agenda. They will slime any opponent with whatever
sleaze is at hand.
Haven’t
we had enough of double standards and spiteful
political attacks?
--
September 20,
2004
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