Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review Sept. 20, 2000 / 19 Elul, 5760

Betsy Hart

Betsy Hart
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Debbie Schlussel
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Gay righters no longer seek just tolerance but endorsement


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- CONTROVERSIAL radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger has launched her new television show to much furor and fanfare --- but gay activists and their allies in the fashionable elite are hoping it's a short-lived debut.

They are aggressively working to force her off the air by pressuring advertisers to drop her show because of comments she's made about homosexuals, including calling homosexuality a "biological error" and saying that gay behavior is "deviant" because it deviates from the heterosexual norm.

Now, it's true that "Dr. Laura" sometimes makes even her admirers wince at her tone or choice of words. But admirers she has. Every day millions of Americans tune in to her top-rated talk show on which she champions traditional values. I'm often one of them, and I hardly remember Dr. Laura discussing homosexuality.

But to hear the gay movement and their allies tell it, these comments, which they themselves keep repeating, are a daily call to arms, not a rapid response once offered in the crush of a three-hour radio broadcast.

This is not to minimize Dr. Laura's beliefs on the matter. Like tens of millions of Americans, including myself, she simply believes that homosexual behavior is morally wrong. But the activist community is desperate to move the issue away from her mainstream-though-politically-incorrect views on the issue and focus only on a few biting comments they can evidence as her "hate-filled homophobia."

But there is really no way in which Dr. Laura could have discussed her beliefs on homosexuality that would have caused the activists to behave any differently. They simply won't tolerate a person of her stature offering a notion of anything less than a full moral endorsement of gay behavior.

For no longer is the homosexual movement about tolerance, about being treated fairly, with respect and equality under the law, something all decent Americans should and do embrace. It is about forcing all of us to morally affirm the gay lifestyle - even when our own deeply held religious or moral beliefs teach otherwise.

Consider the most "in-your-face" strategy possible: public, practicing gays forcing themselves into the ranks of the Boy Scouts of America, a private service organization that has admirably trained and encouraged young men for a century, and which doesn't admit open homosexuals.

The Scouts had never made a public display of their moral stance, but the activists did - they sued. Yet when the Supreme Court recently affirmed the right of the Scouts as a private organization to decide their own moral course, that was, well, intolerable. So now when it comes to the Boy Scouts, according to a recent report in the Christian Science Monitor, "... Gay-rights groups across the nation are working to paint the 6 million-strong organization as a bastion of bigots undeserving of community support."

That's tolerance?

The gay movement consistently maintains that not embracing homosexual behavior is akin to racism. But this is condescending to both racial minorities and gays. It may well be that sexual orientation is deeply ingrained - those of us who believe in original sin know that's true of the sin with which we all struggle - but behavior is not ingrained.

And as a consortium of scholars once wrote in an issue of "First Things" on the matter as excerpted in the Wall Street Journal: "Any discipline of denial or restraint has been popularly depicted as unhealthy and dehumanizing. We insist, however, that it is dehumanizing to define ourselves by our desires alone."

Nevertheless, the gay-rights movement is even intent on crushing any notion that homosexual behavior can be changed, no matter how much a gay man or woman wants that change. That's one premise in a book overtly sympathetic to the homosexual movement, "Just the Facts," backed by a coalition of educators and gay organizations and recently distributed to every public school district in the United States.

JWR columnist Mona Charen quotes Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, as saying of the book that "gays need to receive support from their schools. They need to receive affirmation."

     Bingo. It's not tolerance the movement seeks any longer. It's full moral endorsement even at the cost of riding roughshod over deeply held religious beliefs and freedom of association and expression.

The losers here include not only those who hold traditional moral beliefs and truly seek a fair and tolerant society, but also those many gays who believe in tolerance and so want no part of the activist homosexual agenda.

I can't find any winners.



JWR contributor Betsy Hart, a frequent commentator on CNN and the Fox News Channel, can be reached by clicking here.

Up

09/14/00: The stupidity of smart growth
09/07/00: It takes more than a kiss
08/30/00: Helping out at school is more than an obligation
08/24/00: Family time comes far down the summer schedule
08/16/00: A tale of two wives
08/09/00: The Brady Bill isn't achieving its aim
08/01/00: Attention feminists: How to really keep our daughters safe
07/25/00: Everything is protective: the parents, the gear, the age
07/18/00: Say it ain't so, Ann
07/11/00: Limiting a child's choices
07/06/00: Accounting for your health
06/21/00: It's a bad time to be a boy in America
06/13/00: The state of our unions
06/02/00: Federalizing care of kids
05/25/00: "STOP WHINING, GET BACK INTO THE GAME, AND DO YOUR BEST!"
05/17/00: The natural food threat
05/09/00: To stop gun violence, keep families intact
05/03/00: Pass the fat, please
04/25/00: Something just for boys
04/18/00: When toleration goes too far
04/10/00: Women warriors
04/05/00: Confessions of a soccer mom
03/30/00: Getting an education about schools
03/22/00: If you're a parent, act like one!
03/14/00: Not child advocates, but self-advocates
03/06/00: McCain not what he seemed at first
02/29/00: An effective answer to social problems
02/22/00: The feminists' newest target: Toys
02/06/00: Harassing the harassers
01/31/00: It doesn't take a village to raise a child --- it takes a scheduler
01/25/00: Psuedo science and global warming
01/18/00: Socially responsible nonsense
01/10/00: Monica may be onto something
12/27/99: Sometimes it matters quite a lot what government thinks
12/17/99: Teens have no inherent 'right to privacy'
12/10/99: Buying a minivan and tossing the SUV
12/03/99: On the mommy track
11/05/99:The waste of recycling
11/01/99: Welcome to Harvard pre-school
10/22/99: No disaster for women that Dole is out
10/19/99: 'Humanitarian' hypocrites
10/15/99: On a first-name basis with a three-year-old

© 2000, Scripps Howard News Service