New York State Governor Pataki Broke My Back
By Rabbi David Eidensohn
New York State Governor George Pataki, once a favored son of the conservative and family community, sold out to the Gay Lobby and broke the back of religious people and traditional family in New York State. He forced the Senate Republicans, many of them family and religious people, to vote for the Gay Rights Bill. The bill passed on December 17. New York thus demonized and criminalized family values and biblical teachings. That strange man talking to your child, nothing you can do about it. He can rent your apartment, and do what he wants, as long as nobody catches him in a crime. The most important civil right, to protect your children as you understand, is gone. In its place is the civil right to your home, your business, and even your speech. If you read the bible in public, you are reading a hate book, according to some interpretations. That is how Gay Rights Laws are interpreted in Europe and Canada, and maybe, in New York.
There are now about a dozen states in the union that have Gay Rights laws. The recent passage in Pennsylvania of a Gay Rights Bill there raised concerns that reading the bible about the sin of homosexuality in church is a crime. Although Maine voted for and then removed a Gay Rights Bill, the trend is not favorable. If the gays push the bill to its logical extensions, family and religious people will suffer badly. The ground has been pulled out from under us. The America we once knew that loved G-d and the bible is now an America that labels the bible as a hate book. Gay Rights states protect perverts of every stripe and demonize traditional family and religion. May we say that someone who dresses like someone else and who runs around the black looking for a dozen partners in one night is a pervert? I will say it. How long will we have the freedom to say that something disgusts us? Is bestiality next? What about sadism and masochism? Aren't they privileged to pursue their particular sexual orientation? If someone protests, is that person a hater? If we religious and family people are haters, we are criminals, and what will happen to our institutions?
How will we fight back? Will we retreat into our homes and peer nervously outside to see if "they" are encroaching on us? Will we think about moving somewhere else? Will we become enraged and speak out? Or will we do something effective.
George Pataki, like so many prominent New York State politicians, was once a family oriented politician. He changed after winning the governorship. Al D'Amato and Elliot Spitzer also changed. Other senior politicians in New York are religious, but vote and support Gay Rights. If we can't hold on to our own, what can we do? Why are we losing? If we can't criticize ourselves at this point, if we can't bite the bullet and change some, we are lost. The Gay Rights battle is ours to lose, because the majority of Americans believe in G-d and religion, and are not interested in demonizing the bible and traditional people. Why are we failing? Why is the Gay Lobby winning?
There are those who claim that the Gay Lobby wins by its persistent lobbying, its indefatigable pushing until it gets what it wants. In man-hours, there are more of us than there are of them. This is not the sole answer. The problem is the structure of our effort. We are programmed to destroy ourselves, and to elevate the Gay Lobby. Why?
Two groups wage the battle against the Gay Lobby in America. One is the religious right, and the other is the secular conservative known as neo-conservatives. There are also parents who are traditional and are not aligned politically, but these usually do not have potent political power. What does the religious right say about the Gay Lobby? It invokes the bible and traditional family values. Is this an effective program? When religious people enter the political arena, do they do good or harm? This interesting question is at the root of our discussion, so we must delve into it a bit.
When I went to Yeshiva or religious school in the fifties, I was a social pariah. People were materialistic and secular, and there was no place in America for serious religion. We Orthodox rabbinical students called ourselves "losers" and although it was a joke, there was a truth to it. We were people lost in a world of Darwin and consumption. Adults would see me wearing a yarmulka head covering and explode in vituperation. They were not mean; they feared that I would fail in life if I did not enter the mainstream. They also had a certain amount of guilt or other issues aroused at the sight of an old-fashioned Jew. For whatever reason, they tried to blow me away, to force me to leave my religious lifestyle.
Enter the sixties. The children of those people who laced into me were now druggies, rioters, in sexual free-fall and rebellion against their parents, society, the colleges, and capitalism. Do you want to know something? We were somewhat smug. Let those people learn why religion is important. Let them choke on their materialism. It sounds mean, but if you lived as a "loser," you would understand. Soon, barely controlling their revulsion, these same parents were lining up to put their children into Yeshiva Day Schools. All of a sudden, people like my mother who was once brutally derided for the way she raised her children became success stories. People envied her the peace of mind of being a queen over a large brood of devoted children and grandchildren, while they lived in fear or worse. In other words, the deeply religious community prospered only when the general community collapsed. This symbiotic relationship between the religious and the anti-religious is an important ingredient in our discussion of the Gay Lobby's successes. What keeps the religious community going today is not so much what they teach, but what the alternative is.
Let's update this in today's terms. In other words, if the Gay Lobby turns public schools into a study of sexual perversion for children, many parents will take their children out and send them to parochial schools. Thus, religion thrives when the gays destroy the main institutions of secular society. The enemy of the religious is not the gays, but the public schools. The gays who destroy the public schools are thus "a friend" of the religious! Of course, this is true only in the abstract, but there is genuineness to it, even if we have overstated it for effect.
Can this religious group thriving because of the Gay Lobby now attack it? Or should they ignore the Gay Lobby and attack the public school, in order to get children into parochial schools? I don't know if anyone articulated the question like that, or even if anyone consciously thought this way. However, the line of attack of the religious community must reveal its deepest needs, to get people to leave the general society and enter into the religious one. This is done when there is a radical seizure of the general society.
None of this is to intimate that the religious community supports the Gay Lobby directly, or in any fashion. It only means that the religious community's major problem and program goal is to defeat its competition, the public school and the public arena, and to take people away from it into the religious fold. Although the religious program also calls for attack on the Gay Lobby, it has other interests, and thus diffuses its focus against the Gay Lobby. This brings us to the second issue, of the religious community being all over the map, and unable to focus on the Gay Lobby properly.
In the recent SONDA battle in New York State, I needed something from a major religious organization, a partner in the battle. The religious organization explained to me that the particular resource that could have been crucial to SONDA was unavailable, because it was tied up in fighting against something else. The other issue was important, but not nearly as much as SONDA. The religious organization, however, has to fight all of the challenges to family and religion, such as abortion and gambling, and has only a part of its resources for the Gay Lobby. The Gay Lobby is fully concentrated, and well organized up to the international level. How can we win like this?
The greatest problem in relying on a religious group to fight the Gay Lobby is that the religious group has a priority to convert people to its cause and to promote its religion. Fighting gays is important, but not the purpose of the organization. This lack of true of focus puts the family lobby at a disadvantage when fighting the Gay Lobby.
Unfortunately, the Gay Lobby rejoices with the Religious Right fights it. Of course, the Religious Right is a formidable anti-Gay Lobby force. However, the Gay Lobby wants the gay issue to be fought for or against a religious perspective. Since America does not like religion in the public arena, the gays prevail, and they are prevailing. The previously mentioned symbiotic relationship between religion and radicalism works both ways. The religious community waxes fat over the destruction committed by the secular radicals, and the secular radicals wax fat over the religious focus declared by the family lobby.
The major problem of having religion fight the family lobby battle is that religion itself is poorly equipped to deal with political issues of this nature. Religions are themselves badly split and their opposition to the homosexual lobby is often dwarfed by their centuries long bitter and bloody battles with other religions. Religion itself is a divided camp, and furthermore, the religious camp has a lot of baggage with its wars and opinions the Gay Lobby exploits. Therefore, as long as the family lobby turns to the Religious Right for succor it will fail, although here and there a good campaign will win some battles.
Americans don't like religion in the public arena. Although Pat Robertson utilized church membership and organization to propel himself into a successful fight with the first George Bush in a primary, he subsequently made mistakes when people realized that he was a preacher, telling people "he knew" things that only a prophet could know. In a church, be a prophet, but in politics?
When Jerry Falwell said something about another religion, there was an explosion, not so much against his religious beliefs, but against someone who believes in such things being such a prominent player in the political world. Had people as talented as Pat and Jerry devoted their entire energies to fighting the gay lobby we don't know how successful they could be. However, they are primarily religious preachers, and this always interferes with their political battles. Either we learn to fight without the religious burden or we will lose to the Gay Lobby.
The enormous success of the pro-life movement is only because a religious Catholic doctor had the foresight to create a truly non-sectarian movement without the trappings of the Religious Right. Until the family movement fights the Gay Lobby in a non-sectarian fashion, it cannot win.
This brings us to the next anti-gay army, the neo-conservatives. Why are they opposed to the Gay Lobby? I have read their writings, and I am not sure. They don't like radicalism; they fear for family, they decry an assault on a pillar of civilization, etc. None of this will do successful battle with the homosexual asking for equal rights.
The most effective anti-gay lobby is the parents who want to take back public schools. They have no problem with the religious right. They have no difficulty articulating their position. Brian Camenker's wonderful work in Massachusetts, in the eye of the hurricane, says it all. In fact, in Massachusetts we have the most successful programs, including Ed Pollack's online newspaper, www.massnews.com.
What Brian and Ed have done in Massachusetts must be replicated nationwide, and we need a non-sectarian organization to do it. Our National Council of Non-Sectarian Council of Pro-Family Advocates is a website and offers information and some activism, but the next step is to make a truly national non-sectarian program on the lines of the Right to Life movement.
The recent defeat of the family position in New York State with the SONDA bill taught some important lessons. Senate bill S720 was riddled with questionable language, and made promises that, to one who studied the issues, were lies. However, until just before the vote, the opponents of the bill, the family lobby, did not realize these problems. Just days before the vote, I contacted various people and they checked out my claims and agreed with them. Had this been done earlier, had people fighting the bill read it carefully, perhaps a great danger could have been averted. Rule number one, therefore, is to read the bill when you oppose it.
Rule number two is to realize that the bill you just stopped will not go away. In June 2001, we managed to bottle up the bill, and then we went to sleep. The Gays never go to sleep. When we woke up, shocked by the introduction of the bill when we did not expect it, it was almost all over with. The gays prevailed.
Rule number three is Research and Development. In business, without investing money and time into new products, one cannot progress. In politics, we must constantly search out new people, new issues, and new procedures. If we just play the same old song, we become stale.
Rule number four is to encourage our kind of people to enter the political fray. The Republican Party is no longer interested in our program, at least not in New York State. We have many family people in the Republican Party, but we have no time for them, so the Gay Lobby works and bends them out of shape.
What will the family community now do? Will it return to Pataki, Bruno, and the former family Republicans who gained public office with our backing and then turn on us? Will we go over to the Democrats to punish Pataki and make things even worse for family issues? Will we join the Conservative party, which is certainly the best party on these issues? Will we make a new party when we don't even have time to hold on to our old friends with regular lobbying?
There are no easy answers, but even so, the questions will not go away. More of the same doesn't seem to work. If you want to do something, get informed. Once you have facts, you can do some important work. Here is how:
On this website are many articles filled with facts, statistics from the Federal government and other places. If you are informed, you can debate the issues. If you know the problems, you can deal with them.
We have to fight. How do you fight? Don't be afraid to talk, to speak up. Don't fear phoning your representative and expressing your opinion, in a civilized and intelligent way.
If you have the time and energy, think about going into politics. You are surely not less intelligent than many of the people in high positions. Join a political party and grow into the political process. Don't leave it for "them."
Write letters to your local newspaper and call up on the local talk show. If people don't speak up, a great silence enhances the Gay Lobby. There are now senior Conservative websites and publications that refuse to advertise pro-family anti-Gay ads even for money, even when they are desperate for money. This is because the "silence" out there says that civilized people don't attack the Gay Lobby.
If you have children in public school, or even if you don't, but you love children, get involved with the battle to keep the Gay Lobby out of public schools. Attend school board meetings. Get together with a few other people, and emulate what Brian Camanker is going in Massachusetts, with secular parents who have had enough of sexual perversion in their schools.
If you are dilly-dallying about all of this, just think ahead, and consider what changes will take place if you don't make your move.
In the past few years, we have lost the public schools to the Gays, the medical health dollar, the public health system (HIV Confidentiality Laws that allow gays to infect with impunity), the mental health community, and even our religions are split badly on the gay issue. The Republican Party, the stalwarts in it from strong religious and family backgrounds, like Governor Pataki of New York and Senator Bruno the majority chairman of the New York State Senate, have flipped over to the Gay Side. The country will still be there, theoretically, but how will you like it? And, what about your children?
And if you ever see George Pataki campaigning for national office, just remind him that he broke our back. One day, we may just return the favor. It all depends on you.