A Culture Shattered: Part 3
Reimaging Campaign (1990s)
By Debra Rae
http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-culture-shattered-part-i.html
http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-culture-shattered-part-2.html
By the 1990s, commonly held cultural definitions had succumbed to political correctness. Belief that diverse cultures can thrive independently of one another in a single, unified society, pluralism served as bridge between absolute truth and relativism. Having progressed from biblical, to modern, to postmodern worldviews, America was nothing if not inclusive.
• 1990s — Reimaging the Military to be Kinder, Gentler
One of President Clinton’s first policies was Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell in the armed forces. Barney Frank introduced an act that decriminalized sodomy in the military, and the Pentagon cleared homosexuals for service. Over time, army briefings classified evangelical Christians and Catholics as religious extremists, and a military brief directed officers to pay close attention, not to troops seeking homosexual gratification, but rather to troops who supported groups said not to share army values — namely, the American Family Association and the Family Research Council.
• 1990s — Reimaging the Marketplace of Ideas using Victim-Victimizer Theory
While the family-friendly Truth in Love Project and Love Won Out Seminar were met with outrage, the Los Angeles Unity-and-Diversity Festival drew accolades. Moreover, the WA Times launched an impactful Human Rights Campaign media blitz acknowledging bisexuality as the “in thing” among teens. Expanding the victim-victimizer theory, Dan Rather portrayed homosexuals as the nation’s most endangered species, and a 60 Minutes participant characterized critics of the gay revolution as “nuts.” Added to the influx of homosexual comedy within the mainstream, publication of Out magazine, Dial-a-Porn services, and gay-favoring ad debuts on national television, close to thirty openly gay characters regularly appeared on primetime TV. In the semblance of inclusiveness, Ellen DeGeneres famously came out, and Roseanne aired a lesbian kiss; in contrast, some years later, traditionalism was deemed so controversial, a marriage-friendly Super Bowl ad was rejected as unfit for public consumption. Really?
• 1990s — Reimaging Public Education to Restructure Society
The National Education Association promoted training to eliminate sexual orientation stereotyping. Tailoring tactics to public schools, gay groups self-identified as “victims.” At a time when schools fell desperately short in academics, the NEA called for a Lesbian and Gay History Month (October) and gay-friendly lessons — e.g., Children of the Rainbow curriculum. No longer Dick and Jane, first graders read Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy’s Roommate.
Targeting “questioning” youth, the United Way granted four thousand dollars for public school placement of gay-themed Alyson Publications — King and King, for one. On Valentines' Day, four self-identified avengers for “lesbian survival and visibility” handed out explicit pink leaflets to elementary-aged students, and the Sexual Minority Advocacy Council promoted Alyson books for ages five and up in the Seattle School District.
While abstinence programs were ridiculed as archaic, teens had easy access to the blatantly gay WA Blade magazine, not to mention school-based health care clinics ever sensitive to lifestyle-specific concerns. Though only 2.8% of men and 1.4% of women were gay, junior- and senior- high schools offered pro-gay Project 10-type counseling programs. The ten stands for Kinsey’s falsification that gays represented ten percent of the population. So effective was the reimaging campaign in public schools that a Zogby poll reported that two-thirds of America’s high school seniors favored legalization of gay marriage. Clearly, the dialectic had worked.
For the Days of Diversity, Santa Rosa high schools attended a weeklong, extra-curricular program. Fortified by hoopla promising gay-gene research, fourteen sessions urged students to embrace homosexual civil rights. Featuring workshops for twelve-year-olds (and above) on “Sex Options,” “Eroticizing Safer Sex,” and the “Wonderful World of Latex,” the New York Department of Education likewise sponsored a youth conference funded by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Displaying rainbow flags, Disney recognized public support of Gay Days and Gay Pride Month (June), marked by gay-themed rings, pins, wristbands, flags, and banners. No more Barbi and Ken; Adam and Steve took center stage.
Dr. Judith Reisman, Ph.D., reported that instructors at New York University assigned “nude body” workshops in which students were instructed to fondle same-sex peers and, for extra credit, to visit a homosexual bar. Compliments of Hot, Sexy, and Safer, Inc., sizzling college classes incorporated “safe sex” instruction. Touting “respect” for diversity (tolerance), liberal hecklers rudely disrupted conservatives Ralph Reed (at NW University) and Pat Buchanan (at Syracuse University), denigrating conservative guest speakers as homophobic, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and racist. Touted tolerance was, at its best, selective.
• 1990s — Reimaging Government and Law to Favor a Protected Class
First to reach out specifically to the gay political community, President Clinton promised not only to tolerate, but also to advocate on behalf of sexual orientation differences. The President appointed twenty-nine gays to influential positions in his administration and, doing so, established the nation’s first AIDS czar. Claiming June as their own, the LGBT community observed the month with programs, ceremonies, and activities, all sanctioned by Clinton who, by Presidential proclamation, instigated the first annual Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. At taxpayers' expense, a gay dance party rocked the federal building in Washington, D.C. The grateful homosexual lobby reciprocated by gracing the Clintons with millions of dollars in donations.
This was the decade of civil unions. By staging a mass wedding ceremony, the 1993 Gay Rights' March in D.C. demanded gay entrance into the mainstream; and an APA report stopped short of outwardly endorsing pedophilia (1999). The Gay Manifesto insisted on adult sex with children; and the Governor-sanctioned Podlodowski/Mileur Fund, administered by the Pride Foundation, was first to support America’s same-sex couples with children. In the Psychological Bulletin, three academics relinquished politically incorrect terms as “child abuse or molestation” for the presumably more benign label, “adult-child sex.”
While the Civil Rights Amendment Act (1993) recognized homosexuals as a protected class, DOMA was challenged rigorously in American courts. Policy via ordinance in San Francisco required gay-centricity (no exemption for religious opposition). Hawaii’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples (Boeh v Lewin), and the Aaron McKinney case introduced the gay-panic defense. Warning about the “real threat of violence” against gays, Attorney General Janet Reno broadened the law. While hate-crimes legislation thwarted attacks against gays, gay-rights opponents declined to testify in courts of law for fear of intimidation and threats of personal harm. Off message retaliatory crimes against opponents of the gay agenda failed to qualify as news.
• 1990s — Reimaging Medicine Attune to a High Risk, Yet Politically-Protected Minority
The National Cancer Institute’s federally funded search for a gay gene inspired reimaging in the medical/health arena. A 1993 study supposedly demonstrated genetic determinism for homosexuality; however, vital information that male participants lacked the genetic marker allegedly linked to homosexual behavior was conveniently withheld. Although a 1998 Psychological Reports article shaved an estimated 20-30 years off life expectancy for the average homosexual, and the Executive Director of Exodus International reported that gay men are six times more likely than straight ones to commit suicide, the Surgeon General nonetheless applauded homosexuality as “a wonderful, healthy part of our being.”
In the gay Advocate Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders pronounced the ban on gays in Boy Scouts as having “a negative effect on the mental health of homosexual youth,” and youth representing all lifestyle choices were welcomed into the Girl Scouts. The Center for Population Options exposed negative impact on LGB youth as a result of homophobia. Though scouting is both private and voluntary, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in August of 1999 that, contrary to their code of honor, Boy Scouts must admit gays.
• 1990s — Reimaging the Church to Mirror Secularism
Predicted by Dr. C. Everett Koop and Dr. Francis Schaeffer in the 1979 book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race, “Things considered unthinkable in the 1970s would be quite thinkable in the 1990s.” And so they were. Worldwide Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence presented themselves as a community-service order of “queer” nuns. Theirs was a gay spirituality whose ritual was rooted in faerie paganism and eastern philosophy. Initiates purposed “to ruin all detrimental conditions,” including guilt, even for the guilty. Hence, they “went forth to sin some more” in hopes of expiating stigmatic guilt purportedly placed on them by right-wing religious and political organizations. The fight for gay marriage heated up — first, in Hawaii (1998), debate for which ended in legislators' banning it. Thereafter, Defense of Marriage Acts held the line for traditionalism in thirty states, thus warranting a new round of the dialectic.
By the 1990s, the World Council of Churches had condemned “homophobia”; and a reimaging event, Out Together, featured lesbian Christians. The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church revised its housing policy to permit “committed same-sex couples” to live together in seminary housing, but denied that privilege to heterosexual counterparts, and a confirmed Episcopal Bishop in Minnesota pledged to ordain homosexuals. Evangelical Lutherans endorsed same-sex unions, and attendees at a Presbyterian Layman’s conference performed a lesbian milk-and-honey ritual.
• 1990s — Reimaging the Family to Inclusive Alternatives
In response to changing socio-economic structures, the U.N. proclaimed 1994 the International Year of Families. Not coincidentally, its designated Families Day coincided with GLBT festivals and celebrations in Zurich, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Manchester, Toronto, PA, CA, and NY. Center Voices presented a reading of Three Mothers of Zachary, a series of monologues detailing the life of a gay boy, who ultimately commits suicide. The Gender Identity Project hosted its Trans Prom dance extravaganza for gender-non-conforming people, and NYC Youth Pride Chorus of young LGBT artists presented Lullabies and Wake-Up Calls to jumpstart the Pride season. Of course, Straight Prom dance extravaganzas and the like were out of the question.
Over all, the reimaging campaign of the 1990s proved highly successful. This was the decade of a kinder, gentler military, verbal and social engineering, celebrated diversity, the diapraxed church, and cultural supremacy for a high-risk, politically protected minority.
More to follow in Part 4 of 5.
A Culture Shattered: Part 4
Legitimizing the Antithesis (2000s)
By Debra Rae
For breaking through the thick congressional wall on behalf of gay rights, President Obama was dubbed the nation’s “first gay president.” Indeed, he hosted Gay Pride events at the White House, helped bring an end to Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell, signed hate crimes legislation, and mandated visitation rights for partners of LGBT patients. Obama went so far as to appoint the first transgender in an American presidential administration — Amanda Simpson, Senior Technical Advisor to the Department of Commerce.
Although the California Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of an amendment which says, “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,” gays continued to demand extraordinarily large representation in public and even private arenas. A Zogby-GLCensus Partners poll of over 1500 participants identified legal recognition of same-sex marriage as a primary goal. Accordingly, in reversing his previously held position on marriage, President Obama lent unbridled support for same-sex marriage, likely the most socially fundamental issue of the twenty-first century.
The US Supreme Court unanimously approved a Wisconsin hate-crimes statute (Wisconsin v Mitchell, 2000), and its Lawrence ruling overturned Texas' same-sex, anti-sodomy law. The Lawrence decision also rendered unenforceable what thirteen other state laws prohibited. In 2003 when the Massachusetts Supreme Court advanced the notion that gay marriage extended civil rights to disadvantaged groups (Goodrich v the Massachusetts Department of Public Health), even authentic advocates of the civil rights movement (Alveda King, for one) were incensed. The growing number of ex-gays proved that homosexuals likely possess no unchangeable characteristics. What’s more, far from disadvantaged, the gay community boasted incomes forty-one percent above the national average. Not robed judges, but God alone grants natural, unalienable rights.
A fair-minded person’s exercise of freedom of conscience is not hatred, bigotry, discrimination, or extremism, yet Senator Ted Kennedy likened said vitriol to “terrorism.” Fact is, San Francisco documented fewer cases of anti-gay violence than gay-to-gay domestic violence; but media spokesperson Paul Begala fingered “extremist, hate mongering conservative” groups — you know, the American Family Association and the Family Research Council — as brutal murderers.
• 2000s — Legitimization in the Media
Surprise, surprise! NBC’s Will and Grace exposed ex-gays as hypocrites, and the gay media strategy paid big dividends with daytime soap operas. Movies as Brokeback Mountain glamorized homosexuality, and Boyz magazine showcased it. Generous grants from the tax-funded National Endowment of the Arts supported the Los Angeles Gay-Lesbian Film Festival, Lesbian Visual Arts, and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus — and retold the Passion Play from a gay perspective. Vocal opponents of taxpayers' funding what the Bible calls “confusion,” “vile,” and “reprobate” were attacked, not necessarily for their ideas, but rather on a personal level. Following a yearlong gay activist “search and destroy” campaign, talk radio’s Dr. Laura Schlessinger was hounded off her conservative television show.
• 2000s — Legitimization in the Marketplace of Ideas
As the number of same-sex households soared, especially in Vermont and Delaware, freedom of conviction faced increasing opposition. “Miss Manners” of lesbianism Kathy Belge called it “just plain vindictive” should heterosexuals even suggest countering gay- with straight- pride events. Though tax moneys supported gay pride, heterosexual pride was unthinkably offensive. Canada’s Parliament sanctioned a law to criminalize speech even thought to be “anti-gay.” This, of course, begged the question, “Who decides?” You can bet it wasn’t Ann Coulter! Liberal monism prevailed. When two heterosexual women declined a lesbian as their roommate, the Madison Equal Opportunities Commission ignored their concerns by ordering the women to write a letter of apology, pay an exorbitant fine, and complete “sensitivity training.”
• 2000s — Legitimization in the Work Place
Despite voters' registered opposition to gay marriage, ACT-UP and OUT activists for homosexual rights chanted, marched, and invaded businesses and government offices, Microsoft caved to gay rights, corporations introduced diversity training, and more than half of the US’s largest corporations extended health insurance to employees' same-sex domestic partners. Wal-Mart pressured suppliers to give homosexuals preferential treatment — then, rolled out the red carpet in favor of gay marriage. In opposing Missouri’s efforts to license gays as foster parents, a Christian social worker was outright fired.
• 2000s — Legitimization in Education
Education emerged as the movement’s top industry (social services following), and American Airlines spread the love as official carrier of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Teachers' network. Polls conducted even by liberal newspapers like The Boston Globe revealed opposition to gay marriage by as much as a two-to-one margin, yet public universities, high schools, and grade schools marginalized “we, the people” by openly championing the diversity agenda.
In school common areas, gay-friendly visual imagery portrayed the culture in favorable light, and Candlewick Press published the bizarrely explicit It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris. Lesbian activists representing the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) advanced the FLASH curriculum and demanded that LGBT youth be singled out for specific — i.e., special — protection under school disciplinary codes. “Safe Zone” requirements forced teachers to validate lifestyles they privately opposed.
A GLSEN summer workshop taught gay sex techniques to curious high school students, and some tax-funded Gay-Straight Alliances advanced the pro-gay agenda via booster clubs. GLSEN-promoted, daylong National Days of Silence not only disrupted the educational process of some eight thousand American schools, but also denied nonparticipating students their legitimate right to a “least restrictive educational environment.”
In New York City, the Harvey Milk Public School focused on needs of homo- and bi- sexual students, the transgendered and questioning youth; and Chicago’s school board introduced new, anti-discrimination language into its books. When a school in Massachusetts celebrated “To B GLAD Day,” parents were not told that the acronym stood for “Transgender, Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Day” and would feature workshops about “Life Outside the Gender Norm,” “Being Gay in the Professional World,” and “Fighting Homophobia.” It’s no wonder that two-thirds of our nation’s high school seniors polled were shown to favor legalization of homosexual marriage. Even more favored homosexual adoptions, and fully ninety percent favored “hate crimes” laws that exceed protections afforded other groups.
San Francisco State University offered dozens of classes on gay issues, not to mention an undergraduate minor in LGBT studies. While Dartmouth featured studies in “Queer Theory” and “Queer Texts,” Brown offered “Unnatural Acts: Introduction to Lesbian and Gay Literature”; and Stanford students studied “Homosexuals, Heretics, Witches, and Werewolves.” George Mason University even elected a GT homecoming queen!
• 2000s — Legitimization in Government
While Massachusetts' Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshal went so far as to characterize homosexuality as “a superior form of love,” Nebraska’s ACLU sued over a constitutional amendment affirming traditional marriages. The New York-based Lambda Legal Defense demanded approval, not just permission for civil unions. Vermont was first in line to recognize “marriage lite,” and Washington D.C. approved a bill recognizing same-sex marriages in other states. California law required companies that do business with the state to subsidize homosexual relationships. President Obama revoked conscience protection for health workers; and his AIDS Czar, Jeffrey Crowley, promoted free comprehensive health care for gays. The Local Law Enforcement Act (2000) expanded the scope of what’s considered a “hate crime,” and groundwork was laid for criminal pursuit of Bible-honoring Christian preachers. Under scrutiny of the Canadian Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission, Canadians were forbidden to oppose or criticize the movement, and the Swedish parliament passed a constitutional amendment making it a crime to teach that homosexual behavior is immoral.
• 2000s — Legitimization on the Net
For not offering dating services to gays and lesbians, homosexual Eric McKinley from New Jersey sued the dating site www.eHarmony.com in March 2005. As part of the settlement, e-Harmony was forced to provide a new website, called “Compatible Partners,” pay the state fifty thousand dollars to cover the cost of the investigation, and an additional five thousand dollars for McKinley, likewise given a year’s free membership. Nice work, if you can get it.
• 2000s — Legitimization in Church
A report from the US Census Bureau identified what is characterized as a “post-family society,” also known as the “post-Christian society,” evidenced in gay-friendly Bible translations that radically retold Scriptures. In a gay newspaper, Steve Warren made the disconcerting admission that gays have on their side “the spirit of the age.” Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson referenced the “religious language” of lesbianism and “the sacred masculine.” Gay spirituality groups as Flesh and Spirit Community, Gay Mystics, Gay Spirit Culture Project, Q-Spirit, and the like identified Gay Pride with its own unique brand of interfaith spirituality, one which everyone must tolerate and even celebrate.
In the US, Reformed Judaism was the first major mainstream religion to adopt a national policy sanctioning homosexuality. By joining a mainline denomination — namely, the United Church of Christ — the world’s largest homosexual church (Cathedral of Hope in Texas) sought legitimization, seemingly successfully. Founder and CEO of Sojourners Jim Wallis included same-sex couples in the effort to strengthen marriage, and Presbyterians voted against mandatory fidelity in traditional marriage and chastity in singleness for its clergy and lay office holders. V. Gene Robinson was the first Anglican clergyman to live in an openly homosexual relationship, and, upon “marrying” her lesbian partner, Karen Dammann retained ministerial credentials in the United Methodist Church.
Traditionalists didn’t fare so well. For displaying a sign that read “Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism, Jesus is Our Lord,” Harry Hammond was convicted in a British court of law and, for distributing Christian tracts, Dale McAlpine served a jail sentence. Neither parroted the right kind of state-approved speech and, for that, they paid.
• 2000s — Legitimization in the Global Village
By the 2000s the gay agenda was firmly established in the Global Village. The UN and other global entities applauded sustainable, zero-population growth gay unions. CEDAW guaranteed the right for lesbians to marry. Iceland’s Prime Minister was among the first to marry her lesbian partner and, when President Obama publicly supported gay marriage, incoming French Socialist President François Hollande followed his lead. China’s policy granted “no approval, no disapproval, and no promotion”; however, in 2001 the Ministry of Health in China officially removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. Although Israel recognized same-sex marriages performed in foreign jurisdictions, the Knesset defeated a bill to legalize them. On the other hand, Canada was on board with the agenda in redefining marriage as “the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others.”
Speaking at the World Day for Cultural Diversity, Dialogue and Development, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanded that diversity be acknowledged and celebrated. In popular culture, diversity spoke—not merely to acceptance of multiple ethnic cultures — but to “tolerance,” specifically as it relates to gays — their sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression; government recognition of same-sex relationships, anti-discrimination/sodomy laws, equal age of consent for same-sex activity, LGBT adoption and military service.
More to follow in Part 5 of 5.
A Culture Shattered: Part 5
Era of Enforcement (2010s)
By Debra Rae
By the 2010s advocacy groups had successfully lifted the stigma against other-oriented lifestyles, and gays had successfully joined the ranks of blacks and Native Americans in their shared pleas for emancipation. Harvey Milk Day was officially celebrated to acknowledge Milk’s contributions to an agenda so entrenched that, like it or not, independent thinkers were obliged to join the celebration — or else.
• 2010s — Enforcement in Education
The 2010s marked the first time an accrediting agency for higher education demanded a report from a private Christian college, forced to give account of its rules concerning homosexuality. On the global level, the UN Alliance of Civilizations partnered with the UNESCO to initiate a campaign to “Do ONE Thing” for diversity (but only the right “one thing”). I’m reminded of a junior high teacher in the Bronx who prayed with her students following the untimely death of a classmate. For this “one thing,” she lost her job. Similarly, while pursuing a master’s degree in counseling at Augusta State University, grad student Jennifer Keeton agreed with many professionals (and former gays) that homosexuality is not biological, but rather a lifestyle choice. For this, Keeton faced expulsion unless she attended sensitivity training, participated in the local gay pride parade, read gay-friendly material, and submitted a monthly two-page reflection on how the program influenced her beliefs.
• 2010s — Enforcement in the Arts
In April 2010 the non-profit Foundation for Sex Positive Culture hosted the Seattle Erotic Art Festival to welcome predominantly female-identified, sex-positive individuals — i.e., queer, transgender, kinky, bi- and poly- sex service workers. “Targeting colleges and universities with the messages, "Whore Pride” and “Out loud and Proud,” the SWOT (Sex Workers Outreach Team) claimed to “build community” by decriminalizing sex workers. Think about it. Heroine-using sex workers in East Africa engage in the practice of “flash-blood” (or “flush-blood”) by deliberately self-injecting another addict’s blood — this, to share the high or to stave off pangs of withdrawal. Do we really want to decriminalize sex workers who put clients at risk for AIDS and who knows what?
• 2010s — Enforcement in Religion
By the 2010s, many religionists engaged in alternative lifestyles. Rabbi Steven Greenberg self-identified as the world’s first openly gay Orthodox rabbi, and a partnered lesbian, Episcopal cleric Mary Glasspool, followed Robinson’s lead in “coming out.” Astonishingly, former president of Exodus International, Alan Chambers issued a public apology to the LGBT community. “For quite some time,” he lamented, “We’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical.” In repudiating the organization’s core mission at its 38th annual meeting, Chambers undermined its good work and, in turn, empowered radical activists by his change of heart.
The American Foundation for Equal Rights made a case that religious hostility fueled the campaign behind Proposition 8. Two experts retained by same-sex marriage proponents argued that religion had been used to justify discrimination against African Americans and women, as well as gays. That the court allowed internal communications of churches into evidence astonished a lawyer for the Proposition 8 campaign. He believed this to be a “major expression of religious bigotry.”
Leading the fight for marriage equality, the Foundation feigned dedication to protect and advance equal rights for every American. Truth be told, advocates presume some to be “more equal” than others. Take, for example, florist Barronell Stutzman, whom the state of Washington harassed and sued. Not for committing some heinous crime, but rather for standing firm on her biblical convictions. A devout Christian, Stutzman declined a long-time client’s request to grace his same-sex wedding with floral arrangements. Though the gay couple graciously accepted her position, this small business owner from Richland, Washington, was blindsided by a broader agenda capsulated in UNESCO’s Declaration on Tolerance and enforced by its minions. Stutzman learned that civil rights of a gay couple trump her own, a lesson likewise learned by British seniors fined for denying privately owned lodging to a same-sex couple. For perceiving homosexuality to be sinful, and thereby offending gays, a Swedish Pentecostal pastor was jailed; and Bible-teaching U.S. Military chaplains faced charges of discrimination.
• 2010s — Enforcement in Government and Law
True, New York University Professor Judith Stacey offers expert testimony of gay marriage benefits, and advocates aren’t all political progressives. Dick Cheney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Laura Bush endorse marriage “equality,” and Cindy McCain and her daughter, Meghan, serve as willing poster girls for it. But consider this: If one’s sexual preference is defended as a “civil right,” why not condone bestiality-oriented tourists who visit Exit Point Stallions Farm? For having sex with several large-breed dogs at this Whatcom County animal-sex farm, a British visitor was arrested — in my opinion, rightfully so. On behalf of bullied youth, an It Gets Better Project pledged to spread the word. Unfortunately, that message had been lost to Miss California Carrie Prejean once her dream to compete for a Miss USA title was smashed simply because she championed traditional marriage. For similar reasons, two Christian publishing companies were sued; and Chick-fil-A owners faced public bullying.
• 2010s — Enforcement in the Workplace
California’s “Hey, Mister, Nice Dress Law” (AB 196) mandated stiff fines for any business owner who dared to fire a cross-dresser, even in a private store, or where small, highly impressionable children were involved while, in Maine, a veteran newsman (Larry Grard) lost his job for composing a personal email disapproving of gay marriage. Though the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (2013) sounds fair and balanced, ENDA actually affords special rights for homosexuals and transgendered individuals. It forbids employers from factoring into their managerial decisions negative consequences of employee behaviors in the workplace, and it allows federal government to impose on employers what the free market can work out itself. Plus, it makes it illegal for organizations or small businesses with fifteen or more employees to: “fail or refuse to hire (or to discharge) any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity” based on identities that (unlike race or gender) are subjective, self-disclosed, and self-defined.“ Notice the words, "perceived sexual orientation” and “self-defined.”
• 2010s — Enforcement in the Global Village
Recognized as legit by the UN, NAMBLA openly campaigns to eliminate age of consent laws; and in 2011 the State Department spent $300,000 promoting homosexual activism in Cuba, where Raul Castro’s daughter, a trained sexologist, led an “LGBT” parade in Havana and maintained that Uncle Fidel (who locked up homosexuals for being public menaces) was, in fact, a closet gay-rights advocate.
Concluding Thoughts
The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution (Bill of Rights) delineate specific rights reserved for U.S. citizens and residents. Protected by the Constitution, civil rights include freedom of speech, but apparently no longer for conservative speakers on college campuses, where student hecklers routinely disrupt lectures. Discrimination that interferes with equality of opportunity in education is unlawful yet, in sync with the gay agenda, teachers willfully refuse to speak on the National Day of Silence and thereby halt instruction. Although gays enjoy freedom from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, Christians no longer enjoy the same on the basis of religion. Case in point: At taxpayer expense, one can retell the Passion Play from the gay perspective, but try telling Harvey Milk’s story from a traditionalist’s point of view, and see what that gets you!
Discrimination that interferes with employment is unlawful, yet small business owners, as Barronell Stutzman, are threatened with potential bankruptcy for basing private business decisions on religious convictions. Because ex-NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal identified as black doesn’t make her black anymore than a self-defined gender identity makes it so; but now it is illegal for organizations or small businesses with fifteen or more employees to discriminate based on the whim of some subjective self-identity.
Discrimination that interferes with housing is unlawful, yet two heterosexual women were severely punished for declining to welcome a lesbian roommate into their home when, in reality, it was the lesbian who presumed to interfere with their established household, not the other way around. Immunities are legal protections that prevent hindering another’s enjoyment of life, yet Miss California Carrie Prejean and Boy/Girl Scouts suffered negative impact of viewpoint discrimination merely for applauding a “morally straight” lifestyle.
Looking past their own ambivalence, nine robed justices will settle the matter regarding the constitutional right to gay marriage and associated federal benefits. The threat to churches, schools, and nonprofits will turn on how the Supreme Court rules at the end of June 2015. This matters culturally, demographically, and religiously. Marriage is rightly viewed as a privilege and responsibility, not an arbitrary civil right. In fact, for thousands of years, legal union in marriage has been the norm embraced worldwide by all civilized cultures. Homosexual unions may well be “sustainable,” but failing to meet the required birth rate would imperil our culture and all that’s good about it.
Most importantly, to prohibit personally held convictions of conscience is to violate the Establishment Clause of Free Exercise. Journalist Emily Belz fears, “A decades-long philosophical shift in U.S. law schools and courtrooms is enshrining consensual adult sexual expression as the ultimate American right, even above religious rights.” In less than a decade, the LGBT community’s sway over the political narrative in our country has grown as fast — if not faster — than its membership. Admittedly, the America of my childhood is lost, its culture shattered. This core issue will decide if, in fact, it is lost forever.
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber-
http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
