Philip Vander Elst
Philip Vander Elst is a former editor of Freedom Today and his many publications include Power Against People: A Christian Critique of the State, IEA, 2008.
In his Preface to Animal Farm (1946), his satirical critique of totalitarian socialism, George Orwell declared: "If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." A century earlier, John Stuart Mill said much the same thing in his famous essay On Liberty (1859), perhaps the most rigorous and eloquent defence of freedom of conscience and speech ever written. Today, by contrast, the noisy advocates of "social liberalism" - particularly "gay rights" activists and their supporters - have turned their backs on this great liberal tradition and show no hesitation in trampling upon the civil rights of their opponents, especially if these happen to be religious believers.
If anyone doubts this, I urge them to read The Homosexual Agenda, by Alan Sears and Craig Osten (Broadman & Holman, USA, 2003). This is an exhaustively documented American study that is disturbing on two counts. First, because it offers abundant evidence that the "gay rights" agenda is destroying religious freedom in the United States and other democracies. Secondly, because it shows, with chapter and verse, that militant homosexual activists are determined to use the power of the State to change public attitudes and enforce conformity with their practical demands. Equally disturbing is the extent to which these same activists are willing to employ "black propaganda" and intimidation to silence their critics.
Here, for instance, are just a few of the many examples of persecution and intimidation documented by Sears and Osten (see page references for the original sources):
* In Canada, serious limits have been placed on Christian broadcasters who take a biblical stand against homosexual behaviour. Focus on the Family, for instance, cannot air programmes that might portray homosexual behaviour in a negative light, or it will face sanctions from the Canadian Communications Commission (p.182).
* In Sweden, the parliament approved an amendment that bans all speech and materials opposing homosexual behaviour and other alternative lifestyles. Violaters could spend up to four years in jail. According to Annelie Enochson, a Christian member of parliament, Christians could be arrested for speaking about homosexual behaviour in churches (p.183).
* Yeshiva University is a private Orthodox Jewish college that adheres to traditional Jewish teaching that homosexual behaviour is sinful. Two lesbians who wanted to have access to married student housing for themselves and their partners sued the university after their request was denied. In what has chilling ramifications for the religious freedom of any person or organisation that holds to a biblical view of homosexual behaviour, the court has ruled against the university (p.80).
* [In] a 1987 article titled "The Overhauling of Straight America" and a 1989 book titled After the Ball . . . homosexual activists [Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen] laid out a six-point strategy to radically change America's perception of homosexual behaviour. These six points [include]: "Portrays gays as victims, not aggressive challengers" and "Make gays look good" and "Make the victimisers look bad." "We intend to make the anti-gays look so nasty that average Americans will want to disassociate themselves from such types" (pp.18 & 23). In After the Ball [they] wrote: ". . . our primary objective regarding die-hard homohaters of this sort [i.e., orthodox religious believers] is to cow and silence them" (pp. 186-187).
* In the early 1990s [in Colorado Springs, USA] rocks were frequently thrown through the windows of [Focus on the Family's] then-downtown headquarters . . . Focus on the Family employees were verbally assaulted in local restaurants by homosexual activists and their allies. As a result, employees were told for their safety to remove their nametags in public. Homosexual activists played a part in helping launch an expensive, time-consuming IRS audit of the ministry, which turned up nothing . . . Bomb threats were made on a regular basis to the ministry's headquarters (pp. 144-145).
* In 1993, the Hamilton Square Baptist Church in San Francisco invited a well-known pro-family leader to speak at the church. Radical homosexual activists stormed the church doors, pounding on them and screaming, "We want your children! Give us your children!" The church experienced a great deal of vandalism, and the San Francisco Police Department said it could do nothing to stop the rampaging homosexual activists. Dr. David Innes, the senior pastor, was told: "You have to understand, this is San Francisco" (p.147).
* The ultimate goal [of "gay rights" activists] is to not only restrict, but also to punish any speech that does not affirm homosexual behavior. As Cathy Renna of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation put it, "People often get their views from their religions, so we don't want the pulpit saying that gay is wrong" (p. 147).
* In their private meetings, homosexual activists boldly proclaim their goal to get children to reject their parents' beliefs. At a 1999 Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Educational Network (GLSEN) conference in Atlanta, the following comments were made: "The fear of the religious right is that the schools of today are the governments of tomorrow. And you know what, they're right" and "If we do our jobs right, we're going to raise a generation of kids who don't believe the claims of the religious right" (p. 47).
* Homosexual activists in California have begun to come up with ways to force private schools to adopt a pro-homosexual curriculum. In September 2001, Governor Gray Davis signed a bill that forces private schools that wish to compete with public schools in interscholastic sports to have an anti-discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation (p. 53).
This pattern of persecution and intimidation revealed by Craig and Osten is now receiving fresh impetus from the international campaign to redefine marriage. According to the Christian human rights organisation, Christian Concern, hundreds of Canadians have faced legal proceedings for opposing same-sex "marriage" in the public sphere following its introduction in 2005.
Within five years of marriage being redefined in Canada, an estimated two to three hundred cases have been brought against individuals, mostly Christians, who have opposed same-sex marriage in the public sphere. The proceedings have been brought at employment boards, courts, and human rights commissions. A number of employees have been dismissed from their jobs because they have maintained conscientious objection to same-sex marriage. Businesses have been sued and churches have been threatened with sanctions over their religious beliefs.
Canada, moreover,
. . . is not the only country with same-sex marriage laws that has witnessed subsequent restrictions on religious freedom. Last week, new laws were introduced in Denmark requiring all Established Evangelical Lutheran churches to perform same-sex marriages." (www.christianconcern.com/our-concerns/social, Articles, June 12, 2012).
The persecution of dissidents in the cause of "gay rights" is also becoming habitual in Britain, as anyone who reads the newspapers or the reports of the Christian Institute (Newcastle), or visits the website of Christian Concern, can see for themselves. To quote only one of many recent examples documented by Christian Concern:
A Christian blog writer, who goes by the pseudonym "Archbishop Cranmer," is under investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for posting an advert on behalf of the Coalition for Marriage [which] is campaigning to preserve the current legal definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. . . . The complainants, including the Jewish Gay and Lesbian Group, have described the advert as "offensive" and "homophobic.". . . Critics have noted that the Chairman of the ASA is Lord Chris Smith of Finsbury, who is Vice President of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and a leading supporter of same-sex marriage" ("Writer Under Investigation for Advert Supporting Marriage," May 14, 2012).
What all this demonstrates is that far from representing a genuine movement of human emancipation, "social liberals" pose a serious threat to freedom. That was certainly the view of America's most prominent libertarian thinker, the late Professor Murray Rothbard. In an article he wrote as far back as 1993, advocating a libertarian and Christian conservative coalition of resistance to political correctness, Rothbard praised Christian conservatives for fighting back "against a left-liberal elite that used government to assault and virtually destroy Christian values, principles, and culture." If we valued personal liberty and therefore private property rights and freedom of association, Rothbard argued, we could not allow the State to enforce conformity with politically correct values in the name of "anti-discrimination" laws.
[These] new egalitarian "rights". . . are concocted at the expense of the genuine rights of every person over his own property; secondly, all this "rights" talk is irrelevant, since the problem of hiring, firing, associating, etc. is something to be decided upon by people and institutions themselves, on the basis of what's most convenient for the particular organisation. "Rights" have nothing to do with the case. And third, the [American] Constitution has been systematically perverted to abandon strictly limited minimal government on behalf of a crusade by the federal courts to multiply and enforce such phony rights to the hilt ("The Religious Right: Towards a Coalition," February 1993, LewRockwell.com).
America's most prominent libertarian novelist, the late Ayn Rand, was equally critical of the agenda of the "gay rights" movement, condemning as "hideous" what she considered their demand for "special privileges" from the government. In response to a question about her view of homosexuality, she declared in 1968:
I do not approve of such practices or regard them as necessarily moral, but it is improper for the law to interfere with a relationship between consenting adults.
In 1971, Rand reiterated this position, adding that in her personal opinion, homosexuality "involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises," concluding that homosexuality "is immoral . . ." ("Objectivism and Homosexuality," Wikipedia article).
The attitude to homosexuality adopted by such a leading libertarian figure as Ayn Rand, who was a strong atheist and extremely hostile to Christianity, clearly shows two things. First, that there is no contradiction between a commitment to tolerance and disapproval of what is being tolerated. After all, that is one of the key insights of traditional classical liberalism represented by thinkers like John Stuart Mill and F. A. Hayek. Secondly, it suggests that opposition to homosexual practice cannot be automatically dismissed as a hateful and irrational expression of religious "homophobia." There may be perfectly reasonable grounds for adopting a tolerant but negative attitude towards it.
So why do so many people of all faiths and none feel that there is something wrong with homosexuality, and that the encouragement and celebration of homosexual practice is undesirable? The answer should be (and once was) obvious. Whether you like to think of it as the pattern set by God or Nature, it is an undeniable fact that the human race is divided into two sexes, male and female, whose bodies are clearly complementary and designed to fit together for sexual reproduction. This not only implies that the natural and normal family unit ought to be based on the love and mutual commitment of a man and a woman, a mother and a father. It also implies, to be unavoidably frank, that the female vagina is the natural and proper recipient of the male penis, not another man's anus. To say all this is not to condemn homosexuals as individuals, or deny their right, in a free society, to live together and form partnerships, but simply focuses attention on common sense realities borne out by a mass of sociological and medical evidence.
Dr Linda Stalley, for example, in a 1997 paper entitled "The Homosexual Lifestyle from a Christian Medical Perspective," sets out the anatomical reasons why anal intercourse is inherently unhealthy and unhygienic as compared with vaginal intercourse, and many other medical studies reveal the above average physical health risks associated with homosexual behaviour. One report, for instance, found that at least 75 percent of homosexual men have had a history of one or more sexually transmitted diseases. Other studies reveal that both male and female homosexuals are more prone to mental and emotional disorders than their heterosexual counterparts, and suffer from higher levels of alcohol, tobacco, and drug abuse, as well as from higher levels of depression and domestic violence (see: "How Healthy Is Homosexuality?" available at http://www.perryville.org/2011/11/15/how-healthy-is-homosexuality/).
Consider, in conclusion, this sad and honest admission by Sir Elton John, speaking about the challenges his son, Zachary, will face growing up with two male parents: "It's going to be heartbreaking for him to grow up and realise he hasn't got a mummy" (dailymail.co.uk, July 17, 2012). Those currently resisting the government's intention of redefining marriage to include homosexual partnerships hope to protect other children from similar heartache. *
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