This Is One Jonah Whose Advice Should Be Ignored     6/25/2003
By Robert Knight

Goldberg downplays record of ‘gay’ intolerance

Jonah Goldberg of National Review has been watching television lately, and he’s noticed that there are a whole lot of “gay” characters, most of them saints.

In “Time to Face the Facts: Gays Gain Victory” (June 20, Townhall.com), he also notes that Sen. Rick Santorum got a load of liberal buckshot for restating a Supreme Court sodomy decision, and that Attorney General John Ashcroft tried, but failed, to cancel a “gay pride” celebration at the Justice Department.

“It is all but impossible to say a negative word about gays in public settings,” he observes, adding that Canada is moving fast to legalize so-called “gay marriage.”

Mr. Goldberg, who disparaged the French people as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” and has written some witty stuff from time to time, suggests that it is time for us to pull down the flag and surrender to “gay” militants. In the face of a velvet onslaught from less than 2 percent of the population, he counsels conservatives to make “some painful capitulations – intellectual, moral, philosophical and financial.”

I don't know about the cheese part, but Mr. Goldberg seems himself to have warmed to the role of "surrender monkey."

He then asks homosexual activists to show “magnanimity in victory.” To paraphrase Bugs Bunny, “he don’t know them very well, do he?”

Here’s a sample of the current magnanimity expressed by “gay” activists.

The San Francisco Bar Association has voted to remove any sitting judge with any connections to the Boy Scouts of America. The Frisco bar insisted that the California Bar Association adopt this standard, but they declined, deciding instead to require judges to declare their affiliation with any group “that discriminates” before sitting on any case involving “gay” issues. In other words, the judges — those in question are mostly fathers who volunteer with the evil Boy Scouts — must be "outed" if they want to remain judges. Does anyone find this un-American?

Speaking of the Scouts, Dade County, Florida’s United Way recently cut off $500,000 to them, citing the Scouts’ unwillingness not only to put boys under the tutelage of homosexual leaders, but because the local Scout council shockingly declines to send adult leaders to “gay” sensitivity training run by homosexual activists or to turn sexually confused boys over to “gay” counselors. Does Mr. Goldberg think this will get any better by surrendering?

At Penn State, the local homosexual activists litigated to throw a Christian club off campus because the club declined to name a lesbian as an officer of the club. The Christians made it clear that anyone, including the lesbian, was welcome to join the club, but that club leaders must actually believe in Biblical morality. At a Washington, D.C. seminar a few months later, lesbian activist Chai Feldblum chided accommodationist conservatives for believing that the two interests could be reconciled. In the name of diversity, tolerance and equality, the Christians must recant or go, she said. Wake up and smell the coffee.

In Los Angeles, a former homosexual, Jim Johnson, who operated a ministry called Beyond Rejection, asked that his AIDS clients desist from unsafe sex and illicit drugs. “Gay” militants, enraged that he would “preach” to them about abstinence, persuaded the city to cut off his funding and forced the clinic to close. Who cares about the people dying of AIDS? They weren’t in a Politically Correct environment.

At Kodak, a 23-year employee, tired of the flood of “gay” propaganda coming through the company’s e-mail system, sent back a posting objecting to the force-feeding of views in the name of “diversity.” He was fired instantly after refusing to apologise, with no appeal.

In Massachusetts, parents are being told that their children are the property of homosexual counselors sent in by the state’s Gay and Lesbian Youth Commission. When a parent taped a publicly sponsored seminar at which homosexual counselors explained to 14-year-olds how to “fist” each other and perform other perverse homosexual acts, the “gay” lawyers sued the parent, trying to ruin him financially. Not too magnanimous.

Mr. Goldberg notes that Canada is moving very quickly to embrace the homosexual agenda, but he declines to list some of the practical outcomes, such as two Ontario mayors being hauled before “human rights commissions” and threatened with fines for not declaring “gay pride week.”

He doesn’t mention the man who took out an ad in a Saskatchewan newspaper listing five Bible verses about homosexuality. The man was fined $4,500, as was the publisher. The money was awarded to three homosexual men who didn’t like the ad.

And Mr. Goldberg doesn’t mention that the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has banned any discussion over the airwaves that might reflect negatively on homosexuality. This includes pastors reading from the Bible. More than one conservative Canadian has remarked that a totalitarian curtain is falling on Canada. Apparently, surrendering doesn’t improve things.

What Mr. Goldberg doesn’t seem to understand is that for all the “gay” talk about “not telling us what to do,” the homosexual militants are insisting that they can tell us what to think and what our children should think. Far from being a force for tolerance, homosexual activism is the greatest internal threat to the freedoms of religion, speech and association. When “sexual orientation” laws and policies are enacted, they guarantee harassment of employees and citizens who believe that homosexuality is wrong.

Mr. Goldberg might want to look at some of the mail we get at Concerned Women for America after each broadcast of Concerned Women Today that addresses homosexual issues. The sheer viciousness of the threats and hatred directed at yours truly, my colleague Peter LaBarbera, or CWA President Sandy Rios is unspeakable (and unprintable). One “gay” website has called for a “horrible death” of pro-family leaders, including CWA Chairman Beverly LaHaye and Mr. LaBarbera. A state leader with the Log Cabin Republicans (the group that attacks social conservatives as “extremists”) has praised the site as having “personality” and said that she looked forward to it returning online.

Sure, there are anti-homosexual nuts out there, too, but they are scattered and powerless. The clout of the "gay" movement, meanwhile, keeps growing, with help from well-meaning folks like Mr. Goldberg. The National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association, which has members in every major newsroom, periodically debates whether journalists dealing with the “gay” issue should bother including any dissenting views. Many “mainstream” media stories, including those from Associated Press, are now entirely one-sided. In the pages of the homosexual press, the flow of threats toward anyone objecting to the “gay” movement is increasing exponentially.

In his March 12 Townhall.com column, “Opening up honest discussion on gay issues,” Mr. Goldberg congratulated the homosexual pressure group Human Rights Campaign for allowing him to be on a panel at one of their meetings. He saw this as a sign of the group’s commitment to “tolerance and respect.” Given Mr. Goldberg’s new role as a counselor of surrender, HRC knew exactly what it was doing. They wouldn’t think of inviting someone with a genuine conservative perspective.

Centuries ago, a different Jonah warned the people of the corrupt city of Ninevah to repent—not surrender—to their sinful natures. Mr. Goldberg would be well advised to take a page out of the Old Book’s chapter that bears his name.

Robert Knight is director of the Culture & Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America.

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