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Sorry, Mr. Goldberg, Surrender Is Not an Option 6/25/2003 Neville Chamberlain, meet Jonah Goldberg.
In a stunning article in Townhall.com June 20, “Time to face facts: Gays gain victory,” Mr. Goldberg, a leading conservative writer and National Review Online columnist, says the homosexual lobby has won and that it’s time for all sides to admit that and move on. Social conservatives, he says, need to “to make the best of what they consider a bad situation.” Goldberg continues:
But that would require making some painful capitulations — intellectual, moral, philosophical and financial. It would also require gay activists to understand that they've won and that the best course of action for them would be magnanimity in victory.
Like some other conservative pundits (e.g., The Washington Times’ Tony Blankley, John Podhoretz, Paul Greenberg, and David Horowitz), Goldberg has been making pro-homosexual noises lately, but he alone is calling for abject surrender. In a previous Townhall column, he praised the homosexual lobby group Human Rights Campaign (HRC) for inviting him to one of their seminars. (Had he bothered to check with us, he’d have learned that HRC never invites those who take a principled stand against homosexuality; in fact, I was once barred from even attending an HRC press conference at the National Press Club.)
Reading his column, it is as if Goldberg was looking for a chance to throw up the white flag and—presented with the “gay marriage” insanity in Canada—jumped at the opportunity. Had he been born earlier, Goldberg could have written a similar piece 30 years ago after the infamous Roe v. Wade decision mandating national legal abortion, another moral issue. Pro-lifers would scoff at the idea of “capitulating” to NARAL and other feminist advocates of legalized killing of the unborn, and we do the same to Mr. Goldberg on the homosexual issue.
Sorry, Jonah, but surrender is not an option, at least for those committed to defending truth. We must fight on, hard as that may be, just as so many faithful Americans have over the last three decades years defending the lives of the unborn. Sure, we must fight intelligently, and much more strategically—obviously playing to our strengths rather than our weaknesses—for example, concentrating on issues like "gay adoption" and the “gay”/”transgender” schools agenda in which sizeable majorities resent the intrusions of the “gay” lobby. (Of course, how reliable are poll numbers in this era of relentless pro-homosexual media advocacy?)
Goldberg has little to offer and I'm afraid his latest column on the issue is cowardice in the name of analysis. Funny how there's been an odd parallel in the last few brutal weeks with all the bad news on the “gay” agenda front. Along with the attacks on Sen. Santorum, Canada’s homosexual “marriages," etc., and the usual media hype over all things "gay," there has been another set of headlines that the PC set have been reluctant to discuss: the skyrocketing STD rates in San Francisco and Boston; the homosexual men who are having "unsafe" (condomless) sex at higher and higher rates; how “gay” Internet chat rooms have become the modern equivalent of homosexual bathhouses in the ‘70s and '80s (the incubators of AIDS; see deceased homosexual author Randy Shilts’ book, And the Band Played On). It's almost as if God is warning us about what lies ahead when we bless and promote ungodly behavior in society.
I recently picked up a thick magazine called XY Survival Guide 2 at a Borders Bookstore in northern Virginia. It bills itself as: "Everything you need to know about being young and gay." This "survival guide" promotes hard-core homosexual porn, drug use and promiscuity to thousands of confused boys who've bought the lie that they're "gay" (or maybe they're just considering it). It makes youth homosexuality out to be oh-so-cool. I take no joy in predicting that many of these same kids will be dead in 30 years while Mr. Goldberg is enjoying retirement at his beach house in Florida. These boys will pay the price if we follow his advice and capitulate, just as babies pay the price for liberals' selfish "pro-choice," convenience agenda.
"Magnanimity in victory"? What planet is Goldberg living on? Not mine. The “gays” will come after us in our churches and Christian organizations; they already are! (Two words for Jonah: Boy Scouts.) They want nothing short of government-mandated full affirmation and scowl at the notion that they should merely be tolerated. Already, homosexual lawyers calmly discuss "religious-motivated bigotry" (see Canada's “gay-marriage” court decision). They're fighting for the "right" of gay men to give blood and open homosexuals to be in leadership roles at Christian organizations. Far from magnanimous, they want to censor us out of the public square, slowly if need be but rapidly when they are able. (Again, events in Canada are instructive here: there the country's leading homosexual activist is trying to ban anti-gay "hate propaganda" (translate: critical and religious speech). We have no alternative but to oppose this movement the best we can, while lovingly drawing people out of its grip—just as we fought and continue to fight against abortion while trying to save every baby we can.
Goldberg's thesis is old news. A real conservative, Norman Podhoretz (yes, John Podhoretz’ father), wrote a piece in the journal Commentary several years ago titled, "How the Gay-Rights Movement Won." But Podhoretz ended his piece (pardon my paraphrase) by saying that he will never accept the idea that it is right for a man to use another man as a woman for sex. In other words, he reaffirmed moral truth rather than countenance capitulation. Jonah Goldberg will never have to rely on the "magnanimity" of a homosexual activist judge for standing up for the unalterable and divinely revealed truth that homosexuality is wrong. But others of us might have to, and I don't relish the prospect.
Every day we get emails from homosexual activists ridiculing our values and urging us to give up. I expect that from them, but not from a National Review columnist. The "conservative" flight from moral truth continues to amaze conservatives and delight liberals, not to mention “gay” militants.
Peter LaBarbera is editor of Culture & Family Report and senior policy analyst at the Culture & Family Institute of CWA. |
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