Reply to Jonah Goldberg’s “Gays Gain Victory”

6/22/2003

By Rabbi David Eidensohn

The Washington Times, in a June 20, 2003 commentary, presents Jonah Goldberg’s “Time to Face Facts: Gays Gain Victory.” Mr. Goldberg describes the great gains of gays, and concludes they have won the cultural battle with biblical and family people. He concludes, “The challenge for social conservatives, it seems to me, is to make the best of what they consider a bad situation. But that would require making some painful capitulations – intellectual, moral, philosophical and financial.”

Assuming the gays have won, something we can debate, what “intellectual, moral, philosophical and financial capitulations” do I have to make? When Hitler and Stalin won, did I intellectually, morally, philosophically and financially capitulate? Winning may impress Darwin and Haeckel, but it should not impress moral people. If the gays are wrong morally and they are winning, we must redouble our efforts to defeat them, not join them.

Mr. Goldberg begins and concludes his column by saying nobody, even the gays, admits or faces up to the gay victory. Thus, Mr. Goldberg declares gays have won even when they do not claim this. This is very strange, if it were true. Why, if the gays won, are they silent about it? Do they know something Mr. Goldberg does not?

Mr. Goldberg lists many achievements of gays in the movies and general culture. He shows how the Justice Department headed by someone who is Religious Right could not stop a gay program on government property. True, these are gains. The gays are no longer in the closet. This is true. However, the second phase of the battle is now beginning. The gays want biblical and family people, those who denigrate homosexuality, to be in the closet. One prominent therapist declared to the New York Times his wish for those who oppose the gay lobby to be quarantined and dismissed from employ.

There is a ferocious battle going on over the issue of conversion therapy. May a therapist treat a homosexual if both the homosexual and the therapist feel this is the best thing for the homosexual? The gays say that no homosexual should ever change, as this is “internalized homophobia.”

The gays also contend that no conversion therapy works, a position actually spoken by Clinton’s Surgeon General. The Surgeon General’s remarks came months after Dr. Robert Spitzer of Columbia presented a study that conversion therapy does work. This is war, and the gays have not won it.

The gays hold on mental therapists of the American Psychological and Psychiatric Association is loosening. Dr. Epstein, editor of the official magazine of the American Psychological Association’s, allowed advertisements in the magazine from NARTH. NARTH is a group of conservative therapists who believe in conversion therapy for homosexuals. The gay lobby threatened Dr. Epstein. This time, however, the threats didn’t work, but backfired.

A past president of a major therapists organization that backed the gay line said in a speech: “Our organization has become so g-damned politically correct it stifles research.”

Dr. Robert Spitzer, once the major friend of the gays in the American Psychiatric Association, has now done battle with the gays by declaring that homosexuals can become heterosexuals.

There are ferocious wars going on in the American Psychiatric Association over gay demands not to consider pedophilia, gender-identity disorder, and sexual sadism diseases. Imagine, a man cannot control his impulses to molest children. He comes to a therapist who tells him, “What you are doing is not sick, so I won’t treat you.” The gays may lose this fight. They are surely not winning it.

A major goal of gays, one far removed from them, is to declare gay unions as marriage. Congress has passed a law stating that marriage is only one man and one woman. True, Canada has accepted gay marriages, along with two other countries in Europe. However, the vast majority of countries do not recognize gay marriage. Is this victory for the gays?

Gays try to remove pedophilia from the mental therapists’ list of mental diseases. They want to lower the age of consensual sex. However, when the Rind report came out, suggesting that adult-child is not so bad, Congress condemned it. Is this a victory for the gay lobby? In these two cases, regarding gay marriage and pedophilia, the federal government has clearly chosen the family and biblical posture and rejected gay demands. Mr. Goldberg is thus obviously wrong. He doesn’t even know what the battle is about. Mr. Goldberg, if you didn’t watch so much television, you might know what you are talking about.

The gays had HIV Confidentiality Laws passed in the eighties, allowing them freedom to infect people with HIV and AIDS. Those laws are still there, but they are constantly being watered down, and ultimately may be removed entirely. In 2,000, the gays openly said they felt “the ground shifting under their feet.”

Mr. Goldberg proves his point of the gay victory with four paragraphs about television and movies. These feature gays in ways unthinkable in earlier years. Yes, movies and television are pro-gay. However, movies and television are not everything. Indeed, a large segment of American society is disappointed with movies and television. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times complained recently that ABC television has no family program, only gay and dysfunctional family shows. We know the entertainment world, as well as the liberal newspapers and colleges, are pro-gay. This is not news. However, most Americans are not pro-gay.

As people begin to realize just what gays plan to do with our country, schools and children, they may wake up and join our ranks. This happened in Massachusetts, of all places, in the teeth of radicalism. Brian Camenker, near Newton, founded a secular parents program to battle the gay public school presence, and achieved anti-gay legislative success. Maine passed a gay rights law. The religious right battled back and the law was annulled.

In New York, where I live, I have fought the gays for twenty years, and nobody cared. Now, a gay rights bill has passed, and people are worried and becoming active. America is splitting in two parts. Secular America sees a doubling of white-women having non-marital children in just a few years. Secular America sees men refusing to marry or marrying later. People are frightened of secular America. They are afraid of the feminist and gay movements. Women are afraid of becoming “successful” and aging without children, or even without a husband. The religious community is fattening on the detritus of the secular community with its gay and feminist agenda. Gloria Steinhem led the feminist movement for years in the chant, “We need men like a fish needs a bicycle.” Recently, at the age of 67, Gloria scandalized her followers by marrying. For years, the gay lobby told women to be happy with vibrators and cooing, but it just isn’t enough.

The gay lobby wants to brand as incitement and hate any form of protest against the gay lobby. We are still quite free to say what we want, although we must be vigilant.

The gay lobby wants to destroy the tax exemptions of religious groups that discriminate against homosexuals. So far, they have failed.

Many Americans are afraid of the entertainment industry with its deleterious influences on gender and family issues. However, the confused and frightened masses of America need leadership. They need people to write and tell them what the issues are, and how they can fight back. They don’t need Jonah Goldberg to tell them lies about a supposed gay victory.

America is now up for grabs. We need people to tell us there is hope. This country is known for its moderation, for its strong religious segments. Those who believe in G-d need never despair; surely not because of some news and television shows.

The great tragedy of Goldberg’s article is the incredible ignorance of gay issues it manifests. An article about such an important topic breezes from start to end with no discussion of many important gay issues, although Mr. Goldberg does seem to be an expert at remembering all of the television shows and movies he saw.

In fifteen short paragraphs, Mr. Goldberg never informs us of the issues, because he doesn’t know them. This is the conservative equivalent of journalist cheating so famous in the New York Times. Anyone wishing to see what is happening in the gay issue, in all of its manifestations, can visit my website, www.gendercentral.com, and see dozens of articles over the past years covering the issues. There is a lot of facts in those articles, and a lot of hope, even as things get worse. When it gets worse radically, there is always a reaction. The gays will suffer from that reaction.

Yes, Mr. Goldberg. It is time to face facts. When you learn them, you can discuss them.

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