The Illinois General Assembly is reportedly considering approving faux marriage “civil unions” during the Veto Session. In light of this, we are re-posting our 2008 articles on the need to defend marriage. Below is the fifth in a series of bullet points gathered from several sources. They are compiled to help clear up some of the confusion regarding this easy to understand issue.
Matt Barber is director of Cultural Affairs with Liberty Counsel and associate dean with Liberty University School of Law. Back in February, he wrote an excellent article titled, “Unmasking The “Gay Agenda.” Here are a few excerpts:
- Americans who self-identify as homosexual comprise roughly one to three percent of the population. Yet the homosexual movement – led by extremist homosexual pressure groups like the so-called Human Rights Campaign (HRC) – represent, per capita, one of America’s most powerful and well-funded political lobbies. Consider that HRC and the HRC foundation alone have an annual budget in excess of 50 million.
- Through a carefully crafted, decades-old propaganda campaign, homosexual activists have successfully cast homosexuals – many of whom enjoy positions of influence and affluence – as a disadvantaged minority. They have repackaged and sold to the public behaviors which thousands of years of history, every major world religion and uncompromising human biology have long identified as immoral and sexually deviant.
Their Goal:
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As with every major political movement, the homosexual lobby is pushing a specific agenda. It is often called the “homosexual agenda.” At its core is a concerted effort to remove from society all traditional notions of sexual morality and replace them with the post-modern concept of sexual relativism. That is to say, when it comes to sex, there is never right or wrong. All sexual appetites are “equal.” If it feels good, do it.
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Ultimately, the homosexual lobby’s primary objective is to radically redefine our foundational institutions of legitimate marriage and the nuclear family by unraveling God’s natural design for human sexuality. In so doing, they hope to elevate their own spiritual and biological counterfeit and establish a sexually androgynous society wherein natural distinctions between male and female are dissolved.
Barber is correct when he writes that this creates “cultural and moral anarchy,” their plan of attack is out in the open for everyone to see:
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Ironically, sexual relativists are anything but relative. They are quite affirmative in principle. But the principles they foist demand comprehensive acceptance of homosexual conduct – by force of law – through federal edicts such as “hate crimes” legislation, the so-called “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” (ENDA) and by imposing government sanctioned “same-sex marriage.” All such government mandates grant special protected “minority” status to those who define themselves by aberrant sexual preferences and changeable sexual behaviors. These laws put people with traditional values directly in the crosshairs of official government policy.
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Throughout society, homosexual activists demand that homosexual behaviors not only be “tolerated,” but celebrated. (That’s what the euphemistic slogan “celebrate diversity” supposes). They have masked their true political agenda by hijacking the language of the genuine civil rights movement and through the crafty and disingenuous rhetoric of “tolerance” and “diversity.”
Opponents to this agenda, Barber writes, are to be branded “homophobic,” “hateful” or “discriminatory.” They are to be silenced by all means possible.” Matt Barber, a former professional boxer, hits back hard with some tough talk:
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Reality is replaced with fantasy. Gone are references to, or images of, the millions of homosexual men wasting away in hospice due to behaviorally related diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis and Syphilis. (Unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences.)
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And gone are references to, or images of, men and women trapped in the homosexual lifestyle who aimlessly seek to fill a spiritual and emotional void through promiscuous and meaningless sexual encounters.
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In order to cut through much of the propagandist sugarcoating, one need only consider what two men must actually do in order to “consummate” a so-called “homosexual marriage.” Most people are repulsed by the mechanics of homosexual conduct, but everyone is for “civil rights.” Of course, in reality, the homosexual lifestyle has nothing to do with civil rights and everything to do with conduct.
Robert Knight, the director of the Culture and Media Institute at the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia. Mr. Knight has cited the words of homosexual activists to help readers understand the radical power of achieving official recognition for homosexual relationships as “marriage.” Here are a few examples.
“A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution.”
~ Michelangelo Signorile, “Bridal Wave,” OUT magazine, December/January 1994, p. 161.
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“[E]nlarging the concept to embrace same-sex couples would necessarily transform it into something new….Extending the right to marry to homosexual people — that is, abolishing the traditional gender requirements of marriage — can be one of the means, perhaps the principal one, through which the institution divests itself of the sexist trappings of the past.”
~ Tom Stoddard, quoted in Roberta Achtenberg, et al, “Approaching 2000: Meeting the Challenges to San Francisco’s Families,” The Final Report of the Mayor’s Task Force on Family Policy, City and County of San Francisco, June 13, 1990, p.1.
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“It is also a chance to wholly transform the definition of family in American culture. It is the final tool with which to dismantle all sodomy statutes, get education about homosexuality and AIDS into public schools, and, in short, usher in a sea change in how society views and treats us.”
~Michelangelo Signorile, “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do,” OUT magazine, May 1996, p. 30.
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“Being queer is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender, and seeking state approval for doing so. […] Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society. […] As a lesbian, I am fundamentally different from non-lesbian women. […] In arguing for the right to legal marriage, lesbians and homosexual men would be forced to claim that we are just like heterosexual couples, have the same goals and purposes, and vow to structure our lives similarly. […] We must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and of radically reordering society’s view of reality.”
~ Paula Ettelbrick, “Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” in William Rubenstein, ed., Lesbians, Gay Men and the Law (New York: The New Press, 1993), pp. 401-405.
Up next: Religious liberty and civil unions.