Patrick McSweeney


 

 

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

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Information

 

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