| Topic: |
Science > Abortion |
| User: |
"rob wade" |
| Date: |
22 Oct 2005 02:07:41 PM |
| Object: |
How 'gay rights' is being sold to America |
How 'gay rights' is being sold to America
Exposed: Powerful manipulation techniques behind radical homosexual
agenda
David Kupelian
WorldNetDaily.com
"I did not choose to be homosexual. I would change my sexual
orientation if that were within my power."
So confessed Robert Bauman, the powerful conservative congressman from
Maryland. Americans were stunned in 1980 when headlines revealed Bauman
had been caught red-handed having a sexual rendezvous with a young male
prostitute. In his book "The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of
a Gay Conservative," Bauman revealed the conditions that shaped his own
tortured double life as a pro-family Republican congressman and closet
homosexual.
At the tender age of five, Bauman had been sexually seduced by a
twelve-year-old neighbor. Reflecting on that pivotal experience, as
well as subsequent similar episodes, Bauman described the powerful
feelings he found welling up within him at a young age:
This was not a matter of chance attraction to a forbidden object. This
was a frightening force from deep within my being, an involuntary
reaction to the sight, smell, and feel of other boys. I neither
understood nor accepted it. And I came to hate myself because of the
presence within me of this horrible weakness, this uncleanness of
spirit over which I seemed to have no control. ...
I was sure my predicament was a unique punishment designed only for me.
Unable to understand it myself, I could never even attempt an
explanation to someone else. I countered my dilemma with a plan that
constituted the essence of simplicity. I made up my mind that I was not
"queer." I heard all those denunciations of homos by my military school
peers and firmly resolved I could never be considered one of such a
despicable breed.
Bauman was elected in 1973 as representative of the First Congressional
District of Maryland, became chairman of the American Conservative
Union in 1979, and, many thought, was on his way to becoming Speaker of
the House. But he was leading a double life as a married man with four
children while at the same time engaging in anonymous homosexual
one-night stands. He described the wrenching emotional aftermath he
experienced after every episode: "Each time I would feel great guilt
and head for Saturday confession at St. Peter's or St. Joseph's on
Capitol Hill so I could make amends with God and be in the state of
grace for Sunday Communion. I would always vow to myself and God I
would never do it again."
Submerging himself "in the excitement of politics where compliments,
victories and deference helped reassure me I was a good person," Bauman
looked every bit the quintessential conservative, family-values
congressman. "If I could save the world," he later mused, "I might
avoid having to save myself." Looking back on his secret double life,
Bauman engaged in some painful self-examination:
How could any normal and moral human being do what I did? How could
anyone, however callous, repeatedly be unfaithful to one's spouse
(lying, evading responsibility, breaking solemn vows)? I have described
how it could be done. Why I did it is the serious question. And I have
no answer, even to this day. I do not know. In many ways I was driven
by a force over which I seemed to have little control.
Of course, my choice was conscious and deliberate. It could have been
altered. But some compulsion drove me, blotting out all I had learned,
diminishing in importance all that was most dear and important. I
seemed willing to risk my marriage, my wife and children, even life
itself.
It's hard not to have compassion on a fellow human being desperately
struggling to overcome a powerful compulsion he "neither understood nor
accepted." What happened to Bauman was a tragedy. He needed help -
not rejection and condemnation for being a "queer," nor acceptance and
praise for being an "oppressed minority" - but real help in
understanding and overcoming his sexual problem.
In today's polarized climate, however, it seems most of us either
condemn homosexuals as evil corrupters of society or we fawn over them
as noble victims and cultural heroes. We either accuse them of
"choosing" to be "wicked sexual deviants," or we claim - utterly
without evidence - that "gayness" is an inborn, genetic trait.
Reality, however, lies somewhere else. Deep down, people of conscience
know homosexuality is neither an innocent, inborn "minority"
characteristic like skin color, nor a conscious choice to become evil
and to corrupt others. But without understanding what we're really
dealing with, we're not only powerless to help others but easily
confused and corrupted ourselves.
Bauman, under the sway of an overwhelming and self-destructive
compulsion, even admits in retrospect that perhaps he wanted to be
caught so he could get help:
I can see numerous instances when my conduct, which I thought carefully
discreet, was really designed to reveal to someone, anyone, what was
happening to me. Perhaps my unconscious conclusion was that someone
else must deal with the chaos of my life because I was rapidly reaching
the point at which I could not do it myself.
Finally, in 1980, at the age of forty-three, Bauman got his wish and
was found out. After the dramatic public exposure of his solicitation
of a teenage male hustler, the congressman saw his political career
crash. He lost not only his reelection bid but also his family, his
historic home, and many of his powerful friends as well.
In truth, Robert Bauman's sad story is in some ways not too different
from that of many others in America before today's era of "gay pride,"
out-of-the-closet politicians and celebrities, "lesbian and gay
studies" in most colleges, "Gay Day" at Disneyland, and powerful
homosexual lobbying and journalistic and legal groups throughout the
land.
Back then, most people like Bauman remained "in the closet" with regard
to their homosexuality. And in their secret world they suffered
conflict, fear of exposure, and sometimes worse.
Today, thanks to America's politically correct "gay-friendly" culture,
millions of human beings in the grip of this same unnatural sexual
compulsion find it much easier to accept - even to wear as a badge of
honor.
But they still don't understand it. In fact, they have less desire than
ever to understand it - just as the larger society has also lost
interest in understanding homosexuality. But sometimes not knowing what
you're dealing with can be dangerous. So let's take off the
rainbow-colored glasses and objectively explore this phenomenon we call
"gay rights."
It grew out of the "sexual liberation" movement of the 1960s. To be
precise, the June 11, 1969, "Stonewall riot" - when a group of
homosexuals at New York City's Stonewall Inn resisted police commands
to disperse - is widely regarded as the birth of the "gay liberation"
movement.
This emerging political force made considerable strides during the
'70s, most notably in persuading - many say intimidating - the
American Psychiatric Association in 1973 into removing homosexuality
from its official list of mental disorders. But "gay rights" was young,
inexperienced, underfunded, and understaffed as political movements go,
and the issue received little support from politicians or the nation in
general.
"Equality for gays" was not yet a phrase that reverberated in the
hearts and minds of Americans. Then came AIDS.
The problem of the plague
Surely, many activists thought, this would be their movement's death
knell. For while they were trying to convince the mainstream that
homosexuals represented a normal, healthy, alternative lifestyle, along
comes a modern plague - horrible, incurable, fatal, and spread
primarily by promiscuous homosexual men.
AIDS - originally named GRID (gay-related immunodeficiency disease)
until activist homosexuals pressured the medical establishment to
switch to the generic acronym AIDS (acquired immune deficiency
syndrome) - was the ultimate public relations nightmare. It gave
society a brand-new reason to fear and shun homosexuals - namely,
concern over becoming infected with a nightmarish new disease.
And AIDS did something else. In order for the medical establishment and
news media to communicate to the public how the disease was being
transmitted, it became necessary to focus publicly on the one thing
homosexuals most wanted to downplay - the sometimes-bizarre sexual
acts in which they engage and their often astronomically high numbers
of sexual partners. (A widely cited 1978 study by Alan P. Bell and
Martin S. Wineburg reported that 43 percent of homosexuals had more
than five hundred sex partners during their lifetime.)
In addition, the "silver bullet" medical cure Americans had virtually
come to expect, having grown up in the age of miracle drugs like the
polio vaccine and penicillin, never materialized. Rather, AIDS experts
and public health authorities issued dire warnings about a disease
reminiscent of the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages:
By the early years of the next century, we could have lost between 50
and 100 million people worldwide. There's no question about that.
-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop
Ninety percent of the people infected [with HIV] don't even know it.
- Dr. Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the HIV virus
In many areas, the number of persons affected with the AIDS virus is at
least 100 times greater than reported case of AIDS. - Dr. James
Curran, director of AIDS and HIV immunology and prevention activities
at the Centers for Disease Control
Meanwhile, throughout the '80s and beyond, as AIDS infection and death
rates skyrocketed with each passing year, high-profile figures were
dying of the disease, including actor Rock Hudson in 1985, ABC News
anchor Max Robinson in 1988, and ballet superstar Rudolf Nureyev in
1993.
During this time the public experienced two distinct and widespread
reactions to the unfolding AIDS epidemic. One was the natural sympathy
evoked by witnessing the terrible suffering and death of AIDS victims.
But the other, if less politically correct, was fear and loathing of
homosexuals. After all, there was no way back in those early days of
the disease to rule out AIDS transmission via "casual contact" - that
is, by means other than sex and intravenous drug use. As prominent
Harvard AIDS researcher Dr. William Haseltine warned at the time:
"Anyone who tells you categorically that AIDS is not contracted by
saliva is not telling you the truth. AIDS may, in fact, be
transmissible by tears, saliva, bodily fluids and mosquito bites."
Fears that AIDS would "break out" into the general population were
further fanned by horror stories such as that of Kimberly Bergalis, a
Florida girl who contracted AIDS (along with several other patients)
from her homosexual dentist, David Acer.
As a matter of fact, many Americans not part of the two main "at-risk
groups" (male homosexuals and IV drug abusers) were dying, mostly from
HIV-tainted blood transfusions. One of them, Ryan White, an
eighteen-year-old Indiana boy with hemophilia who became infected with
HIV through a blood transfusion, died of AIDS in 1990 and became the
poster boy for rallying Americans to support AIDS research. Two years
later tennis great Arthur Ashe, also infected by an HIV-tainted
transfusion, succumbed to the disease.
As a public relations matter, AIDS was daunting. This modern plague, if
not handled brilliantly in the court of public opinion, could result in
homosexuals being widely shunned. On the other hand, perhaps the
sympathy factor could be harnessed and multiplied to advance the
activists' cause. The movement definitely needed help.
The defiant, storm-trooper tactics of in-your-face groups like ACT-UP
(AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) may or may not have been successful
in pressuring the federal government to increase its commitment to
combating AIDS. But such tactics definitely were successful in giving
activist homosexuals a very bad name.
One infamous incident was the assault on New York's famed St.
Patrick's Cathedral on December 10, 1989. While Cardinal John O'Connor
presided over the 10:15 Sunday morning Mass, a multitude of
"pro-choice" and "gay rights" activists protested angrily outside.
Some, wearing gold-colored robes similar to clerical vestments, hoisted
a large portrait of a pornographically altered frontal nude portrait of
Jesus.
"You bigot, O'Connor, you're killing us!" screamed one protester, while
signs called the archbishop "Murderer!"
Then it got really ugly. Scores of protesters entered the church,
resulting in what many in the packed house of parishioners described as
a "nightmare."
"The radical homosexuals turned a celebration of the Holy Eucharist
into a screaming babble of sacrilege by standing in the pews, shouting
and waving their fists, tossing condoms into the air," recounted the
New York Post. One of the invaders grabbed a consecrated wafer and
threw it to the ground.
Outside, demonstrators, many of them members of ACT-UP, carried
placards that summed up their sentiments toward the Catholic Church:
"Keep your church out of my crotch." "Keep your rosaries off my
ovaries." "Eternal life to Cardinal John O'Connor NOW!" "Curb your
dogma."
Clearly, the young movement was flirting with oblivion if it persisted
in such ugly, indefensible tactics. It needed a new, more civilized
direction if it ever hoped to convince Americans that homosexuality was
a perfectly normal alternative lifestyle.
This new direction would somehow have to convert the fearsome AIDS
epidemic from a negative into a positive. What was needed was a
comprehensive, long-term public relations campaign that had to be
brilliantly conceived and skillfully executed.
War conference
In February 1988, some 175 leading activists representing homosexual
groups from across the nation held a war conference in Warrenton,
Virginia, to map out their movement's future. Shortly thereafter,
activists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen put into book form the
comprehensive public relations plan they had been advocating with their
gay-rights peers for several years.
Kirk and Madsen were not the kind of drooling activists that would
burst into churches and throw condoms in the air. They were smart guys
- very smart. Kirk, a Harvard-educated researcher in neuropsychiatry,
worked with the Johns Hopkins Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth
and designed aptitude tests for adults with 200+ IQs. Madsen, with a
doctorate in politics from Harvard, was an expert on public persuasion
tactics and social marketing. Together they wrote "After the Ball: How
America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the '90s."
"As cynical as it may seem," they explained at the outset, "AIDS gives
us a chance, however brief, to establish ourselves as a victimized
minority legitimately deserving of America's special protection and
care. At the same time," they warned, "it generates mass hysteria of
precisely the sort that has brought about public stonings and leper
colonies since the Dark Ages and before. ... How can we maximize the
sympathy and minimize the fear? How, given the horrid hand that AIDS
has dealt us, can we best play it?"
The bottom line of Kirk and Madsen's master plan? "The campaign we
outline in this book, though complex, depends centrally upon a program
of unabashed propaganda, firmly grounded in long-established principles
of psychology and advertising."
Arguing that, skillfully handled, the AIDS epidemic could conquer
American resistance to homosexuality and form the basis of a
comprehensive, long-term marketing campaign to sell "gay rights" to
straight America, "After the Ball" became the public-relations "bible"
of the movement.
Kirk and Madsen's "war goal," explains marketing expert Paul E. Rondeau
of Regent University, was to "force acceptance of homosexual culture
into the mainstream, to silence opposition, and ultimately to convert
American society." In his comprehensive study, "Selling Homosexuality
to America," Rondeau writes:
The extensive three-stage strategy to Desensitize, Jam and Convert the
American public is reminiscent of George Orwell's premise of
goodthink and badthink in "1984." As Kirk and Madsen put it, "To one
extent or another, the separability - and manipulability - of the
verbal label is the basis for all the abstract principles underlying
our proposed campaign."
Separability? Manipulability? Allow me to translate this psychological
marketing jargon: We can change what people actually think and feel by
breaking their current negative associations with our cause and
replacing them with positive associations.
Simple case in point: homosexual activists call their movement "gay
rights." This accomplishes two major objectives: (1) Use of the word
gay rather than homosexual masks the controversial sexual behavior
involved and accentuates instead a vague but positive-sounding cultural
identity - gay, which, after all, once meant "happy"; and (2)
describing their battle from the get-go as one over "rights" implies
homosexuals are being denied the basic freedoms of citizenship that
others enjoy.
So merely by using the term gay rights, and persuading politicians and
the media to adopt this terminology, activists seeking to transform
America have framed the terms of the debate in their favor almost
before the contest begins. (And in public relations warfare, he who
frames the terms of the debate almost always wins. The abortion rights
movement has prevailed in that war precisely because it succeeded,
early on, in framing the debate as a question, not of abortion, but of
choice. The abortion vanguard correctly anticipated that it would be
far easier to defend an abstract, positive-sounding idea like choice
than the unrestricted slaughter of unborn babies.)
Okay, you might be wondering, even granting the movement's cutting-edge
marketing savvy, how do you sell middle America on those five hundred
sex partners and weird sexual practices? Answer, according to Kirk and
Madsen, you don't. Just don't talk about it. Rather, look and act as
normal as possible for the camera.
"When you're very different, and people hate you for it," they explain,
"this is what you do: first you get your foot in the door, by being as
similar as possible; then, and only then - when your one little
difference is finally accepted - can you start dragging in your other
peculiarities, one by one. You hammer in the wedge narrow end first. As
the saying goes, allow the camel's nose beneath your tent, and his
whole body will soon follow."
In other words, sadomasochists, leather fetishists, cross-dressers,
transgenders, and other "peculiar" members of the homosexual community
need to keep away from the tent and out of sight while the sales job is
under way. Later, once the camel is safely inside, there will be room
for all.
Rondeau explains Kirk and Madsen's techniques of "desensitization,"
"jamming," and "conversion" this way:
Desensitization is described as inundating the public in a "continuous
flood of gay-related advertising, presented in the least offensive
fashion possible. If straights can't shut off the shower, they may at
least eventually get used to being wet." But, the activists did not
mean advertising in the usual marketing context but, rather, quite a
different approach: "The main thing is to talk about gayness until the
issue becomes thoroughly tiresome." They add, "[S]eek desensitization
and nothing more. ... If you can get [straights] to think
[homosexuality] is just another thing - meriting no more than a shrug
of the shoulders - then your battle for legal and social rights is
virtually won."
This planned hegemony is a variant of the type that Michael Warren
describes in "Seeing Through the Media" where it "is not raw overt
coercion; it is one group's covert orchestration of compliance by
another group through structuring the consciousness of the second
group."
"Structuring the consciousness" of others? If that phraseology is
uncomfortably reminiscent of various mind control and brainwashing
tales you might have heard over the years, don't be surprised.
Manipulating the emotions and thereby restructuring the thoughts and
beliefs of large numbers of people is what modern marketing is all
about.
"Jamming," explains Rondeau, "is psychological terrorism meant to
silence expression of or even support for dissenting opinion." Radio
counselor and psychologist Dr. Laura Schlessinger experienced big-time
jamming during the run-up to her planned television show. Outraged over
a single comment critical of homosexuals she had made on her radio
program, activists launched a massive intimidation campaign against the
television program's advertisers. As a result, the new show was
stillborn.
But perhaps the highest-profile example of jamming occurred after the
1998 murder of University of Wyoming freshman Matthew Shepard. Lured
from a bar, robbed and savagely beaten by two men, Shepard died five
days later of head injuries. In the frenzied, saturation media coverage
that followed, the press and homosexual activists singled out
conservative Christians as having created a "climate of anti-gay hate"
in which such a brutal act could happen.
NBC's Today show took the lead, focusing on a Christian ad campaign
running at the time that offered to help homosexuals change their
orientation. Reporter David Gregory narrated: "The ads were
controversial for portraying gays and lesbians as sinners who had made
poor choices, despite the growing belief that homosexuality may be
genetic. ... Have the ads fostered a climate of anti-gay hate that
leads to incidents like the killing of Matthew Shepard? Gay rights
activists say the ads convey a message that gay people are defective."
And in a now-infamous interview, Today's Katie Couric asked Wyoming
Governor Jim Geringer: "Some gay rights activists have said that some
conservative political organizations like the Christian Coalition, the
Family Research Council and Focus on the Family are contributing to
this anti-homosexual atmosphere by having an ad campaign saying if you
are a homosexual you can change your orientation. That prompts people
to say, 'If I meet someone who's homosexual, I'm going to take action
to try to convince them or try to harm them.' Do you believe that such
groups are contributing to this climate?"
Consciously or not, the media were following Kirk and Madsen's playbook
to the letter, discrediting anyone who disagreed with the homosexual
agenda by associating them with lowlife murderers. In reality, none of
the Christian groups smeared by NBC had ever condoned mistreatment of
homosexuals - in fact, they had explicitly condemned it.
As if to add even more shame to the whole-hog jamming of Christians
after the Shepard murder, in 2004 a comprehensive new investigation by
ABC News 20/20 concluded that homosexuality very likely wasn't a factor
in Shepard's murder, but rather Shepard had been targeted for his
money.
So much for desensitization and jamming. But what about "conversion"?
Here, Kirk and Madsen announce defiantly:
We mean conversion of the average American's emotions, mind, and
will, through a planned psychological attack, in the form of propaganda
fed to the nation via the media. We mean "subverting" the mechanism of
prejudice to our own ends - using the very processes that made
America hate us to turn their hatred into warm regard - whether they
like it or not.
Transforming another person's hatred into love ("warm regard") is the
object of classic brainwashing. As Kirk and Madsen explain:
In Conversion, we mimic the natural process of stereotype-learning,
with the following effect: we take the bigot's good feelings about
all-right guys, and attach them to the label "gay," either weakening
or, eventually, replacing his bad feelings toward the label and the
prior stereotype. ... Whereas in Jamming the target is shown a bigot
being rejected by his crowd for his prejudice against gays, in
Conversion the target is shown his crowd actually associating with gays
in good fellowship. Once again, it's very difficult for the average
person, who, by nature and training, almost invariably feels what he
sees his fellows feeling, not to respond in this knee-jerk fashion to a
sufficiently calculated advertisement.
We're talking about some serious messing around with Americans' minds
here. Do the homosexual activists thus engaged really know they're
deceiving the public, or are they convinced they're just telling the
truth?
"It makes no difference that the ads are lies," write Kirk and Madsen,
"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."
Homosexualizing history
Another important technique promoted by "After the Ball," and employed
repeatedly to great effect in recent years, is to claim that famous
historical figures - "from Socrates to Eleanor Roosevelt, Tchaikovsky
to Bessie Smith, Alexander the Great to Alexander Hamilton, and
Leonardo da Vinci to Walt Whitman" - were homosexual or bisexual.
Although the authors know these claims are unproven at best and often
baseless (they refer to them as "suspected 'inverts'"), that doesn't
stop them from advocating the tactic.
A recent example of this was the highly publicized, though utterly
unsubstantiated, speculation that Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual.
Even more outrageous was the suggestion by openly "gay" New Hampshire
Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson - a comment he quickly retracted after
a firestorm of protest - that Jesus Christ was a homosexual!
As Kirk and Madsen explain:
Famous historical figures are considered especially useful to us for
two reasons: first, they are invariably dead as a doornail, hence in no
position to deny the truth and sue for libel. Second, and more serious,
the virtues and accomplishments that make these historic gay figures
admirable cannot be gainsaid or dismissed by the public, since high
school history textbooks have already set them in incontrovertible
cement.
The flip side of this "celebrity endorsement" tactic consists of
associating all detractors of the radical homosexual agenda with
negative images of universally despised tyrants and lowlifes. "After
the Ball" lists some of the negative images with which opponents should
be associated - including "Klansmen demanding that gays be
slaughtered or castrated," "hysterical backwoods preachers, drooling
with hate," "menacing punks, thugs and convicts who speak coolly about
the 'fags' they have bashed," and a "tour of Nazi concentration camps
where homosexuals were tortured and gassed."
Indeed, says Rondeau, "perhaps the most menacing focus of the campaign
is the special treatment reserved for the religious dissenters. The
strategy is to 'jam homohatred by linking it to Nazi horror.'"
Kirk and Madsen explain the leverage gained by this nasty technique:
Most contemporary hate groups on the Religious Right will bitterly
resent the implied connection between homohatred and Nazi fascism. But
since they can't defend the latter, they'll end up having to distance
themselves by insisting that they would never go to such extremes. Such
declarations of civility toward gays, of course, set our worst
detractors on the slippery slope toward recognition of fundamental gay
rights.
Homosexual activists love to compare their opponents with Adolf Hitler
and Nazis, apparently undaunted by the fact that, according to William
L. Shirer's twelve-hundred-page "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,"
widely regarded as the definitive book on Nazi Germany, "many of the
early Nazis" were homosexuals.
But this is not about truth. It's about manipulation. In a sense,
modern psychology-based marketers understand people better than people
understand themselves. They use emotional threads to tie their
"product" (in this case, homosexuality) to preexisting positive
attributes in the consumers' mind. And in a cultural-political campaign
like this, they also successfully tie all who oppose their agenda to
preexisting negatives, such as Nazis. The net effect of this
conditioning can be so powerful over time that ultimately one's prior
beliefs - based on experience, religious training, conscience, and
common sense - are overwhelmed and replaced as a result of successive
waves of emotion-driven reprogramming.
Still, one wonders how the press could allow itself to be used in such
a blatantly propagandistic way and in pursuit of such a subversive
agenda. And make no mistake, the "gay rights" agenda, which includes
indoctrinating kindergartners with pro-homosexual propaganda and
legalizing same-sex marriage, is extraordinarily subversive to
America's foundational values and institutions.
For the answer to that question you have to realize what's happened to
the news media in recent years.
As you no doubt already know, the establishment press is oriented far
to the left of the American mainstream, as study after study for the
past three decades has documented beyond rational dispute. But did you
know that, in addition, a major homosexual presence has emerged in the
"mainstream" media, especially since the dawn of the 1990s?
Indeed, part of the mobilization that occurred in the wake of the 1988
War Conference was the recognition that the news media represented the
prime tool for changing the hearts and minds of Americans.
And if getting your message before the media was the name of the game,
how much better would it be to actually be the media? Thus 1990 saw the
launch of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA),
which has since grown into a formidable organization.
To celebrate its tenth anniversary, homosexual journalists from many
major news organizations gathered in San Francisco for NLGJA's gala
conference held September 7-10, 2000. The discussion on center stage
was surreal. It focused on the question of whether or not, when
reporting on stories related to homosexuality, mainstream journalists
have a responsibility to include any viewpoints that contradict those
of homosexuals. You heard me right.
MSNBC producer Ramon Escobar framed the issue this way: "This whole
issue of 'balance' that we as journalists are supposed to achieve. ...
When we cover the black community, I've never seen a newsroom where
you're covering one side and then you have to go run out and get the
Klan's point of view: 'Well, I've got to go do my Klan interview.' How
do you be fair?"
NLGJA member Jeffrey Kofman, at the time a CBS correspondent who later
migrated to NBC, restated the question: "The argument [is]: Why do we
constantly see in coverage of gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender
issues the homophobes and the fag-haters quoted in stories when, of
course, we don't do that with Jews, blacks, etcetera?"
Paula Madison, vice president of diversity at NBC and news director of
WNBC in New York, added: "I agree with him. I don't see why we would
seek out ... the absurd, inane point of view just to get another point
of view."
"All of us," Kofman rejoined, "have seen and continue to see a lot of
coverage that includes perspectives on gay issues that include people
who just simply are intolerant and perhaps not qualified as well."
Are you getting the picture? Whereas fifty years ago a news story
portraying homosexuality as normal and respectable was unheard of, now
we're facing exactly the opposite spectacle. Up on that glitzy
convention stage were representatives of top broadcast news networks
debating whether or not professional journalists should give voice to
the Christian or traditional viewpoint on homosexuality. Or, they
suggested, Wouldn't it be better just to censor such "hateful" and
"bigoted" viewpoints as being the moral equivalent of a "pro-racism" or
"pro-bigotry" viewpoint, and thus beyond the margins of civilized
debate?
By the way, lest you think this was just an unrepresentative group of
radical journalists blowing off steam in their off-hours, here's who
sponsored this particular homosexual journalists conference: Hearst
Newspapers; Knight-Ridder, Inc.; CBS News; Gannett Foundation; CNN;
Bloomberg News; NBC News; the Dallas Morning News; Fox News Channel;
the Los Angeles Times; the New York Daily News; the San Francisco
Chronicle; Time, Inc.; the Wall Street Journal; the Washington Post;
and the San Jose Mercury News.
No wonder the "mainstream press," overwhelmingly sympathetic toward the
"gay rights" agenda, seems to be on the same page as homosexual
activists engaged in desensitizing, jamming, and converting Americans
to their world view. As a matter of fact, as we saw in the Matthew
Shepard case, it's hard to tell them apart.
Thus a lot of the credit for the "gay-ing of America" can be laid at
the door of the news media who, intentionally or not, have worked in
tandem with the movement's public relations machinery for years now.
We forgot one thing
Today, the homosexual activist movement is a juggernaut, racking up
success after success. Even the occasional losses, such as voter
rejection of same-sex marriage in the 2004 election, are simply the
expected "one step back" in the time-honored "two steps forward one
step back" mode of most long-term political wars. (After all, by
audaciously conducting thousands of illegal same-sex marriage
ceremonies, homosexuals all but guaranteed legal and social acceptance
of their fall-back position - homosexual civil unions with the full
legal force of marriage, something most Americans regarded as radical
and unacceptable just a few years ago.)
As just one of a multitude of success indicators, consider that the
popular teen magazine Seventeen conducted a reader poll in 1991,
shortly after activist homosexuals abandoned the streets in favor of
the television studio. At the time, only 17 percent of the magazine's
adolescent readers accepted homosexuality as appropriate. In 1999,
after eight years of intense "gay rights" marketing, a whopping 54
percent, more than three times as many teens, accepted homosexuality as
appropriate. This stunning turnaround is reflected in virtually every
area of society.
Whether in culture, politics, law, business, the news media,
entertainment, education, or even the church, homosexual strides have
been nothing short of astonishing. Once condemned as "immoral
deviants," homosexuals and lesbians today are honored, idealized,
defended as victims, and celebrated as role models. Thanks to
"hate-crimes" legislation, they are now afforded extra protections as a
special class of people - protections not granted to all members of
society. (If you were assaulted, the perpetrator would get one
sentence, but if you were assaulted because of your homosexuality, the
perpetrator would receive a more severe sentence under hate-crimes
sentencing guidelines.)
Meanwhile, in what was once a vibrant Judeo-Christian culture,
Christians and other proponents of traditional biblical principles are
routinely cast as bigots and "homophobes," thanks to constant jamming.
Direct quotes from the Bible regarding homosexuality are routinely
condemned as "hate speech," and - as we have seen - pro-homosexual
journalists piously agonize over whether or not they should dignify the
traditional, biblical viewpoint by even acknowledging it.
Multitudes of activists - with almost limitless time and energy to
devote to advancing their agenda, largely unencumbered by any need to
change diapers, pay for dental braces, or attend their children's
soccer games, as do most heterosexual married people - have succeeded
in their goal of transforming society. As public relations campaigns
go, it's been an unqualified success.
However, in the "gay rights" movement's relentless struggle to
legitimize homosexuality, and in the greater society's veneration of
them as heroes of the great civil rights crusade of the new millennium,
we've forgotten one thing. In the endlessly clever media campaign
that's bamboozled everyone, "restructured their consciousness," turned
their hate into love and their rejection into acceptance, something
crucial has been lost.
We've forgotten about reality. We've been living in a Madison Avenue
fantasy world of marketing images and carefully crafted rhetoric in the
foreground, with court battles, fascistlike intimidation, and
relentless waves of persuasion in the background.
But what about the truth we've left behind? What about the reality of
homosexuality, of what causes it, and of what it means physically and
spiritually for those so oriented? Do we even care any more?
Let's rewind and go back to former Congressman Robert Bauman, who in
poignantly describing his internal struggles against his homosexual
compulsions confided that he had been sexually seduced when he was five
years old by an older boy.
Did that experience have anything to do with Bauman's future
homosexuality?
There was a time when psychiatry, psychology, religion, and common
sense all said "yes." In fact, sexually abused young males are "up to 7
times more likely to self-identify as gay or bisexual than peers who
had not been abused," concludes the peer-reviewed 1998 study, "Sexual
Abuse of Boys," by William C. Holmes, M.D. and Gail B. Slap, M.D.
On that topic, a reader recently wrote to me: "We are a family of eight
siblings and the oldest is gay, and has lived with the same partner for
41 years. At various times, my siblings and I have tried to discover
why he is gay and none of the rest of us are. We finally found out
through an older cousin that my brother was repeatedly sexually
molested when he was six years old by a 19-year-old man."
Even Kirk and Madsen, who advise activists to claim they were born
homosexual, know better. "We argue that, for all practical purposes,
gays should be considered to have been born gay," they write, "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."
If "environmental factors" are involved - and everyone knows they
are, whether or not they publicly admit it - why then advise
homosexuals to claim they were "born gay"?
"To suggest in public that homosexuality might be chosen," Kirk and
Madsen explain, "is to open the can of worms labeled 'moral choices and
sin' and give the religious intransigents a stick to beat us with.
Straights must be taught that it is as natural for some persons to be
homosexual as it is for others to be heterosexual: wickedness and
seduction have nothing to do with it."
Unfortunately, with all the brainy marketing behind the campaign to
mainstream homosexuality, what's been swept under the rug is the
recognition - once commonplace in America - that flawed early
relationships or sexual victimization can put a child on the road to
homosexuality.
Children are exquisitely impressionable, so much so that sexual
seduction or assault is a major trauma that can, and often does,
reprogram the victim's identity - his view of who and what he is.
While the Holmes and Slap study confirms this, the point is
self-evident: our prisons are full of child molesters who were molested
as children and batterers who were battered as children.
What about the twelve-year-old who molested Bauman? What caused him to
sexually seduce a five-year-old boy? No doubt he felt a strong
compulsion to do to a new kid what had been done to him. But why?
An innocent young child has a "bright light" quality that feels
mysteriously threatening to those in the grip of corruption. In fact,
many see this dynamic at the core of a great deal of child abuse.
To the person who's already been "converted" and is acting out the
homosexual "lifestyle," it's deeply satisfying - far beyond mere
sexual pleasure - to "initiate" an innocent person. Doing so serves
to anesthetize his own conscience and assuage his inner conflict by
destroying the innocence of another person, since that innocence tends
to make him aware of his own corruption.
There was a time when most Americans knew that homosexuals were not
"born that way" but rather had their normal gender-identity development
disturbed and redirected through early childhood experiences.
There was a time when we recognized on some level that unhealthy
relationships with mothers and fathers could cause girls and boys to
grow up with gender confusion - just like emotionally devastating
traumatic experiences of molestation - if not dealt with properly.
But that was a time before much of America itself was seduced into
believing there was no God, or if there was a God, He is
inconsequential to the affairs of the world. It was a time when
Judeo-Christian morality inspired the culture and laws of the land.
Today we've basically abandoned "old-fashioned" notions of right and
wrong in favor of "consensuality," which means two people can do
whatever they want, no matter how abominable, as long as they "don't
hurt anybody else." The problem with that - aside from the fact that
it denies the existence of God and His laws - is that in such a
deluded state you have no basis for determining if you're hurting
another person or not. A pedophile justifies sex with children
precisely because he doesn't believe he's hurting the child; rather he
believes he's loving him!
You might wonder: Where and when will this "gay rights" public
relations steamroller stop? The end game is not only to bring about the
complete acceptance of homosexuality, including same-sex marriage, but
also to prohibit and even criminalize public criticism of
homosexuality, including the quotation of biblical passages
disapproving of homosexuality.
In other words, total jamming of criticism with the force of law. This
is already essentially the case in Canada and parts of Scandinavia.
"Why?" you might ask. "I thought gays just wanted equal rights and to
be free to do what they want in their own bedrooms." No, they've had
that for years.
Their campaign will not end until Christians and other traditionalists
opposing homosexuality are shut up, discredited, and utterly silenced
- and all because of a little factor we've forgotten about in our
cleverness, namely this: In truth, there is something wrong with
homosexuality.
Simply put, it is unnatural and self-destructive - just as Western
civilization has long understood it.
Homosexual activists fancy their cause as identical to that of blacks
and the '60s civil rights movement. But being black is not unnatural
and self-destructive. Being of African origin obviously doesn't involve
fleeing one's own conscience and the author of that conscience - God.
But it is precisely because of this difference that the "gay civil
rights" movement is not about changing the laws so homosexuals can have
equal opportunity for advancement or access as it was for blacks during
the '60s. Homosexuals already live in freedom and can reside, work, or
play virtually anywhere they want. In fact, as a group, homosexuals
enjoy a higher income level than the general American population.
It's not about rights. It's about redefining truth and censoring all
criticism so that militant homosexuals can be comfortable in their
"lifestyle" without having to be disturbed by reality.
Remember, all of us - homosexuals included - have a conscience
(that other-dimensional standard that God has tucked away inside each
of us) that causes us inner conflict when we're doing the wrong thing.
But if we tumble into the grip of dark forces we don't understand and
then start to defend our obsessions and compulsions, we inevitably come
to regard our conscience as an enemy. And although we may be somewhat
successful in drowning out that inner warning bell, what happens when
this same rejected conscience factor appears in another person and gets
too close to us for comfort? We feel threatened.
Therefore, we feel compelled to silence the "voice of conscience" -
not just the one inside of us, but the one in other people, which tends
to revive our own conscience with which we're at war. This means we
can't tolerate dissent. We simply can't stand it. It makes us want to
scream.
To the homosexual living in denial, then, even a loving offer of help
from, say, a Christian ex-gay ministry or "reparative therapy"
counselor (to help overcome homosexual addiction) feels like the most
vile, abusive hatred. In fact, it's real love - which we misinterpret
as hatred and "bigotry" simply because it causes us to confront a truth
that is not welcome in us.
Love and redemption
When all is said and done, the "mainstreaming" of homosexuality over
the last few decades has been a great tragedy. But of all the societal
confusion, chaos, and corruption it has ushered in, the most tragic
dimension of all is what it has done to people struggling with
homosexual and "transgender" attractions and compulsions.
Remember, our conflicts contain the seeds of redemption - that is, as
long as we know we have a problem, there's hope for a change. But if
we deny there's a problem, we are literally robbed of the chance to
find healing. That's exactly what America has done in buying into the
"gay rights movement." We have betrayed our homosexual brothers and
sisters.
Glorifying dysfunctionality and corruption, we have relieved
homosexuals of the inner conflict they once felt over their condition
- something they desperately need, indeed all of us need, if we're
ever going to overcome our problems and find wholeness.
A generation ago, we understood there is such a thing as sin, and that
sin is a serious matter and to be avoided. Now there is no societal
consciousness of sin - only limitless "freedom," "choice," and
"consensual relationships." Beguiled by our scientific and
technological advances into believing we are enlightened, in reality as
we move further and further away from our Judeo-Christian spiritual
roots, we actually understand less and less about ourselves. Most of
all, we've forgotten as a society what love is because supporting and
justifying homosexuality is not real love any more than glorifying
drinking helps the alcoholic or celebrating smoking helps wipe out lung
cancer.
We defend our own corruption at great peril. And if defending that
corruption becomes a national movement, as it has with our cultural and
legal adoption of the "gay rights agenda," we're all in serious
trouble.
In truth, most homosexuals experience guilt and conflict when they
first discover homosexual urges. Thus there is a strong temptation -
especially in today's pro-"gay" culture - for them to "resolve" the
conflict by giving in to the compulsion and affirming, "It's okay to be
gay."
But if they do, there is just no way out for them. For this reason, the
most loving stance for others to take is not to serve as enablers of
self-destructive and immoral compulsions, but to stand in patient but
firm opposition. In other words, we need to side with the afflicted
person's conscience. In America, we've done the opposite.
""Hating the sin but not the sinner," the classic Christian
expression for loving your struggling neighbor by nonjudgmentally
disagreeing with his errant behavior, actually has great power - more
than we realize. By resisting the temptation to hate, yet still
standing firm against what's wrong, God's love is able to come through
that obedient "neutral zone."
We started this journey into the world of "gay rights" with the
poignant words of former congressman Robert Bauman, who said: "I did
not choose to be homosexual. I would change my sexual orientation if
that were within my power." Sadly, we've failed Bauman and millions
suffering with similar sexual problems by glorifying and pandering to
their dysfunction and pretending it's normal.
In the end, we have to ask ourselves which is worse - the previous
era in America, when homosexuals were reviled and driven underground?
Or today's America, when the pendulum has swung so far in the other
direction that those in the grip of powerful self-destructive
compulsions are fawned over and lionized as heroes?
Either way, because the rest of us have failed to find real love, they
remain victims.
.
|
|
| User: "ריעין ברתון/Riain Barton" |
|
| Title: Re: How 'gay rights' is being sold to America |
22 Oct 2005 02:35:08 PM |
|
|
School Principal Dorothy Hardin says she understands the concerns of
parents but believes they shouldn't worry because the message is
tolerance, understanding and awareness.
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
IGNORANCE is the Key Prerequisite for Being a Control-Freak.
Definition of a Human Being
Re: The gay agenda is being revealed daily now in SF, Seattle, NY, Portland, etc.
Re: The gay agenda is being revealed daily now in SF, Seattle, NY, Portland, etc.
Re: The gay agenda is being revealed daily now in SF, Seattle, NY, Portland, etc.
LIVE BABIES BEING BORN AFTER ABORTIONS
Christia NeoCon Gactimus: Women "Liked" Being Raped (No Wonder He Worships AWOL Bush)
Teens being discouraged from using condoms in US schools
| Re: Still no answer to "Why do this?" Re: Markmans, the moron, admits to being a FORGER and SPAMMER
It's not racism, it's being a realist
Happy Holiday Season - why did some spend it in a NG being bitter?
CA Man Brutally Murdered for Being Gay (Christian Morality!)
Christian Morality: MI Man Shot in the Head for Being Gay (Praise Jesus! Hate the Sin!)
J Young Christian Morality: WV Gay Man Left to DIE for Being Gay (Kill Gays! Praise Jesus! Christian Family Values!)
J Young Christian Morality: WI Woman Brutally Attacked for Being Gay (Praise Jesus! Family Values! Kill Gays! Hate the Sin!)
|
|
|
