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Lawrence and the Gay Lobby

By Rabbi David Eidensohn – Gender Central

On June 26, 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the United States Supreme Court decreed a constitutional right to have private homosexual sex. It struck down laws in many states that proscribed sodomy and other sexual acts. Family and religious groups greeted the decision with dismay and the Gay Lobby rejoiced. Homosexual marriage is next on the docket. Is there a constitutional right to marry someone of the same sex? Senate Majority Leader Frist wants to make a Constitutional Amendment in favor of heterosexual marriage, but President Bush is not in favor of one at this time.

One day after the decision, on June 27, 2003, the Gallup Poll published a poll entitled, “6 in 10 Americans Agree that Gay Sex Should be Legal.” Thus, the Supreme Court decision was in keeping with the feelings of the majority of Americans. About a third of Americans, 37%, disagreed.

Gallup has polled on this issue since 1977 and the public has changed its mind from time to time. At one point during the Reagan administration, only one third of Americans felt that sex should be allowed between homosexuals. This could be because of the problem of AIDS, or the conservative momentum of the Reagan Era, says Gallup. We see from this that homosexuality is something that pulls people in different ways. At this time, the pendulum swings to the gay side.

The Supreme Court decision was important legally because three “rights” conflicted. First is the individual’s right to have sex in privacy. Second is the right of states to declare morality and regulate behavior of its citizens, and third is the Federal Supreme Court’s right to countermand the duly legislated laws of a state. The Court minority contested the decision in Lawrence, but the ruling of the majority prevailed. The right of each person to privacy in sexual matters is now the law of the land. Is this a cause for rejoicing for gays? It certainly is. Is this a cause for dismay for family and religious people? Yes, it is. But why? What is so terrible and threatening about this ruling? Will people’s acts in private somehow cause pain to others?

The actual ruling in Lawrence will not affect anyone at all. The states did not maintain sodomy laws in order to send homosexuals to jail. These laws were there for mostly a symbolic value. They showed the flag for a society whose soul is from Sinai. It is for this reason that family people bewailed Lawrence and the Gay Lobby rejoiced. A flag was hurled into the dust. A flag is an important thing, but we must never forget the difference between a holy symbol and holiness itself. Lawrence damaged the perception of America as a biblical-value country. On the other hand, our problems with the Gay Lobby are real, not symbolic. We must not allow Lawrence to confuse the issue.

Although we don’t want to publicly admit it, even the family and religious groups that bewailed Lawrence do not want the police rapping on their bedroom doors. If sodomy laws are the flag, we chose a very shaky one. We cannot declare a law that is false to be holy. If sodomy laws are on the books as a symbol and never enforced, and if enforcing them outrages even conservative people, sodomy laws cannot be the standard of the family and religious community.

The entire perception of the Gay Lobby as people who seek only freedom to have sex and live their life is something those who fear the Gay Lobby should never encourage. Sodomy laws thus can never really be a flag for the family and religious community. In fact, declaring our purpose to be the control of people’s private lives is entirely deleterious, for two reasons. One, we cannot easily defend in this day and age, even if we are biblical, a police power and jail for people doing privately what they must biologically. Secondly, anal and oral sex practiced by heterosexuals are often included in sodomy laws. The idea of arresting a heterosexual for doing this is completely absurd. Who, indeed, has the religious authority to create a prohibition on something not mentioned in the bible? When we fight for sodomy laws, we are thus fighting to preserve the right of every minister to speak as if he knows G-d’s mind, and then send in the police. This will never prevail. If we fight for it, we will go down. When we do, we have failed ourselves for not fighting the real fight with the Gay Lobby, which wants to destroy family and religious communities and cultures.

Gallup polls have shown a steady decline in people opposed to the Gay Lobby. Other polls and political events show a steady increase for people who support Right to Life. The difference between the failure of the Family Lobby to fight gays, and the success of the Life Lobby to fight abortion, is that the Family Lobby raises the flag of religion controlling the state, and Right to Life speaks a secular language. As long as the anti-gay forces are arranged to defend a religion, they will fail. America will not tolerate religion dictating how people behave in the bedroom, whether you like that or not. Therefore, although we may support the sodomy laws for their symbolic if not practical value, a secular society could not long tolerate them in practical terms. Arresting someone for a symbol cannot prevail in our society. Therefore, the entire exercise of outrage over Lawrence is futile. It obscures our real problems with the Gay Lobby. Furious verbiage anchors us on such shifty and lost ground that we shout at the storm and nobody hears us. Casting the gay issue in religious and moral tones has cost us in recent times crucial support from senior neo-cons. The purists are not concerned, but the loss is grievous.

There are two components in the Gay Lobby manifesto. First, is the “flag” or “symbolic” issue defining the direction of American culture, such as sodomy laws. As important as these issues are, however, they are only symbols. The real battle with the Gay Lobby is not about abstractions. The struggle is about real legal, cultural, educational and political issues. What are they?

The Gay Lobby wants:

1) To demonize religious people who oppose homosexuality

2) To criminalize religions that adhere to the biblical proscription of homosexuality

3) To control education at all levels

4) To control media including Internet and proscribe “hate” or anti-gay thoughts

5) To lower the age of consensual sex

6) To revamp the traditional social attitudes regarding pedophilia, sexual sadism and masochism, bestiality, etc.

7) To allow a man to say he is a woman and enter a woman’s bathroom and dormitory

8) To recognize gay marriage

9) To demonize and criminalize the conversion therapy, the treatment of homosexuals to make them heterosexual, even if the homosexual and therapist agree it is the best path for the homosexual

10)Even before this is done, the Gay Lobby wants to demonize and criminalize conversion therapy for children, assuming that when the child comes of age he will surely regret not being homosexual

11)To promote the lie that therapists cannot cure homosexuality

12)To pass laws such as the HIV Confidentiality Laws that allow gays to infect others with impunity

13)To make gays exempt from restrictions on heterosexuals. As one gay said, “We are what we are,” in a case involving child pornography

14)To utterly destroy the social respect for traditional family, and replace it with “new” constructs such as homosexuality and transgender relations. To label all who oppose homosexuality as “homophobes,” and even quarantining them and removing them from their employ. (idea quoted in New York Times suggested by senior American Psychiatrist)

15)To seize the lion’s share of medical research funding for diseases that affect gays, and to ignore the major diseases such as cancer and heart trouble that kill most Americans

These goals are very frightening. Will the gays achieve them?

The story of the twentieth century is simply tales of small groups of fanatics who took over entire countries and warred against the world. If not checked, the gays will succeed just as the Communists and Nazis did. A focused core group of fanatics can dominate a large mass of disinterested people. America is not interested in fighting gays. Of course, as was the case with Lenin and Hitler, when people finally realize what Lenin and Hitler want, they become concerned. By then it is too late.

The Gay Lobby is not about homosexuality. The Gay Lobby is a conglomerate of many interests. What unites them is a hatred of the religious right, and fear of religion interfering with government and society. The more we use parochial religion as weapons against the Gay Lobby, the more it succeeds and rejoices. Not only secular people oppose the control of society by religious sects. Barry Goldwater was pro-gay rights because he felt government had no right to tell people how to live. When we oppose the Gay Lobby, we must do so in a way that conservatives and those who genuinely fear big government can agree with us. We must point out how the Gay Lobby wants to demonize and even criminalize biblical religion. We must point out how the Gay Lobby has created the AIDS and HIV epidemic and done serious damage to our health system. We must publicize the goals of the gays with regard to lowering the age of consensual sex and pedophilia.

Those of us who oppose the gays have arguments that can win people over. In a democracy, fulminating about the power of evil is not going to win. In a democracy, we must play the game; we must fight the battle in purely secular terms. Only by so doing can we preserve family and biblical values. Defense is not only the moral high ground. In the present reality, that is where biblical and family people really are. If we value our children, and even our own generation, we must focus on the political issues, and make sure there is something for us at the end of the day. The politicians throughout the country are passing legislation that technically demonizes and even criminalizes biblical and family people. The politicians who pass these laws protest they do not mean to hurt religious people, but since almost nobody bothers to read the bills, the state legislatures pass horrible bills by lying and false claims. If we only knew what was going on, we would have no time for sodomy laws. We, now, are already being packaged for the prisons of America for teaching the bible and meaning it.

Fighting the gays is hard work. We have to study the gay rights bills. Material about them is on our gendercentral.com site. We have to know facts. Much of the gay debate is on the above website. Armed with arguments that can win, we can overcome the focused and fanatic force of the Gay Lobby.

The gays are winning big in Europe and Canada. Europe and Canada have lived and do live with religious strife. France is Catholic and Germany Protestant. They fought three terrible wars between 1870 and 1945. Now they want to eradicate the religious fault lines that destroyed Europe and will probably continue to do so if not checked. In Europe, a politician never invokes the deity the way Americans do. In Europe, religion is a problem, not a solution. Canada is also terribly divided between Protestant English and French Catholics. Here, the solution is secularism, as it has always been when religion presents constant conflict.

In America, religion will thrive only as long as people do not fear it. Precisely by imposing religion upon society and threatening that one man’s morality will lead to prison for another, we drive religion from its influence and enthrone secularism.

American religion is respected precisely because it is so divided that it cannot mount a social threat. Let us invoke G-d and Sinai, and let us build fine moral families. But let us not fall apart because we lost a battle regarding sodomy laws.

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