Em excelente artigo, o colunista Rip Rense comenta sobre a perseguição que a raivosa militância gay empreendeu contra a Dra. Laura Schlessinger, nos EUA.
The sad 'gay' anger: Rip Rense defends Dr. Laura from anti-free-speechers
US - Wednesday, August 30, 2000
The sad 'gay' anger
by Rip Rense
Is Dr. Laura Schlessinger wrong? Isn't homosexuality "deviant"? Isn't it a clinical description? Here's what Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary says: "Deviating especially from the accepted norm."
Hey, if you "gay" folks aren't literally a deviation from the accepted norm, then Mike Tyson is a vegetarian. Come on, admit it! You're unusual! Your behavior is confined to a minority of human behavior. Does this make you evil? Or deserving of persecution? Never -- and Dr. Laura, as near as I can tell, didn't imply that. In fact, she has said that "gays" can make good parents! Did you miss that one?
Who is persecuting whom here?
Now, I'm no fan of radio shrinks. I think most of them trade on turning travail into entertainment, as they pompously dispense quick-fix advice to hapless, or genuinely troubled souls. But I'll defend Dr. Laura on the "gay" issue, to an extent.
Yes, the lady did use the term "biological errors." Now that's an interesting charge. An argument can be made that all humans are biological errors -- especially Donald Trump. In "Galapagos," Kurt Vonnegut advanced the notion that the human brain is a useless over-adaptation -- that it provides more awareness than we glorified chimps can emotionally handle. Maybe. Plenty of evidence! World War II, for example.
But to look at this dispassionately, Homo Sapiens don't seem to have been designed to be homosexuals. The schematic clearly delineates two opposing constructs: Tab A, and Slot B. Last I looked, the sexes were supposed to attract one another for purposes of perpetuating the species. Sometimes this doesn't happen, thanks to one or two chromosomes more or less, or other physical (or yes, psychological) factors. "Chromosomally challenged" persons, or those attracted to the same sex for other reasons, certainly might be considered "errors," in a strictly scientific context.
But then, blind people are technically "errors," too, aren't they? And people with webbed toes. Those cursed with horrid things like cerebral palsy. Any genetically flawed person might be considered an error, right? President Reagan was genetically predisposed to Alzheimer's Disease, so he eventually became an "error." I'm nearsighted. Tom Brokaw has a speech impediment. WND columnist Maralyn Lois Polak tells me she's a biological error, evolutionarily speaking, because she hasn't reproduced.
In other words, if homosexuals are a biological error, they have plenty of company! Barbara Walters comes quickly to mind. The problem with the word, "error," is that it has a pejorative connotation, and is tragically bound to incite the ignorant and unintelligent. This is where Dr. Laura went seriously awry, because such words from a figure of her influence -- deliberate or not -- inspire ill will. The world needs more ill will like it needs Madonna to cover another Don McLean song.
What's more, using the word, "error," doesn't effectively serve Schlessinger's cause. So let's call Dr. Laura's use of the word "error" an error in judgement, although not scientifically inaccurate. And not motivated, by any evidence I can find, by hatred or malice. Give the woman a little credit for having apologized for whatever grief her remarks might have caused.
This brings up that favorite politically correct boogie-man of our day, hate. All the hubbub, folderol, fooferaw, rigmarole, and brouhaha about the "gay" community being victimized by hate is emphatically, totally, sadly ... correct.
The current hate, however, isn't coming from Dr. Laura. Much of it seems to be coming from the "gay" community itself -- or at least its very vocal contingent. These folks, billing themselves as a "Coalition Against Hate," are hell-bent on destroying Schlessinger, pure and simple. Just look at the photo they chose for their indelicately named StopDrLaura.com website: there she is, baring her lower teeth, like one of Satan's own mastiffs. The group has succeeded in pressuring many sponsors, including Proctor and Gamble and United Airlines, into withdrawing from the woman's forthcoming TV show. This is a vicious, relentless attack -- not on Schlessinger's ideas, but on her very career. These people are seeking to deny her right to free speech. Where is the ACLU to defend her? Remember all the hue and cry about free-speech violation when Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center sought to censor pop music lyrics about rape and murder? Where are these indignant situational ethicists?
Yes, not-so-gay "gay" militants absolutely hate Dr. Laura. What's more, they hate any suggestion that they are not completely normal. That they are not utterly healthy examples of a wholesome, sane lifestyle. They hate anyone who suggests otherwise, no matter how mildly or reasonably, and immediately cry "homophobe" and "hate-monger." By now, they probably hate me, too.
Show me one instance in which Schlessinger has espoused hatred, or urged any attack on "gay" people. She is on the record repeatedly urging only compassion toward "gays." What, then, is this woman up to? She is countermanding an aggressive propagandizing effort by the militant segment of the "gay" community to force "the norm" population to recognize "gay" behavior as ... normal.
She is speaking out against an effort by the "gay" activists, egged on by a sympathetic media and Hollywood glitterati, to convince the world that being "gay" is just way cool. That being "gay" is equivalent to being a persecuted ethnic minority. (I think there are many "white" gays who have not experienced discrimination, or persecution -- certainly nothing comparable to the experiences of African-Americans in this country, and other minorities.) That being "gay" should be taught as a lifestyle choice in school.
Do I exaggerate? Consider this: at a March 25 conference of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network at Tufts University -- partially funded by the Massachusetts Department of Education -- teens as young as 14 were invited to discuss homosexual acts in graphic slang. This is not rumor; it was covered by the Boston Herald. The discussion took place in a workshop called, "What They Didn't Tell You About Queer Sex and Sexuality in Health Class: A Workshop for Youth Only, Ages 14-21." WorldNetDaily reported that at this workshop, Massachusetts Department of Education HIV counselors Margot Abels and Michael Gaucher blithely discussed the practice of "fisting" -- the insertion of a fist and arm into the anus or vagina. Ms. Abels reportedly told the young people that having a fist stuck up one's hindquarters is "an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be that close and intimate with."
I'll say!
The activist "gay" agenda, you see, is not merely to combat discrimination. That would be perfectly noble. It is to celebrate and promote homosexual behavior. Big difference.
Celebrate? Just what is there to celebrate? The fact that insanely promiscuous male-to-male oral and anal intercourse (a sadistic act, incidentally, which no one ever mentions) loosed AIDS upon the North American population -- including innocent heterosexual children? Which, in turn, has paved the way for things like drug-resistant super-gonorrhea, drug-resistant super tuberculosis, the outbreak of super-syphilis, and other diseases? That the predominant image the "gay" community has projected to the world in the last 20 years is one of craven lasciviousness and horrific tragedy?
Oh, hooray.
Blind people don't celebrate being blind, near as I can tell. They don't advocate that blindness be taught in schools as a "lifestyle alternative." Hey, kids, get a sharp stick and be like us! Being blind is a grotesquely unfair way to go through life. It makes life more difficult. Being "gay" is also a terribly unfair way to have to go through life. Ask any "gay" person. It's a social handicap that the majority population instinctively persecutes. Coping with this requires heroic character, and countless "gays" have displayed nothing less. (No, I'm not equating blindness with homosexuality -- I am pointing out that both, like it or not, are social liabilities.)
Charlton Heston has advanced the notion of tolerate, don't celebrate. I'll go him one better. "Accept, but don't celebrate." Accept the fact that a degree of the population has always been "gay," and always will be. The mistake of the activist contingent of the "gay" community is imagining that society will ever embrace homosexuality. This won't happen -- if for no other reason, an instinctive Darwinian repudiation of low-percentage reproductive stock. David Crosby, notwithstanding.
This is not to suggest that homosexuals should be harmed, discriminated against, or belittled because they are homosexual. Great lawyers, dentists, composers, writers, poets, musicians, artists, conductors, teachers, politicians, philosophers, leaders have all been "gay," and the phenomenon will continue. Shouldn't even have to point it out.
But I'll tell you this: I wouldn't hire anyone who advocates "fisting," or other such profoundly demented sexual activities. For any job (except, possibly, plumbing.) For that matter, I don't think anyone -- homosexual or heterosexual -- has any business promoting their sexual preferences in a classroom, Boy Scout troop, Girl Scout troop, house of worship, or garage sale.
Which brings up the crux of the whole problem, really: that many "gays" -- at least the very vocal faction -- seem to define themselves foremost not by their life achievement, or character, but by their sexual behavior. How banal! Ever see a "Gay Pride" parade? Participants vulgarly flaunt their sexuality, revel in it, and thumb their noses at anyone who is repulsed. You'd think that sex is their whole life's focus. Naysayers are automatically branded "homophobes" or repressed "straights," to borrow the (slyly pejorative) slang favored by the "gay" community in describing heterosexuals. Or the openly contemptuous put-down, "breeder."
This does not serve their cause any better than Schlessinger using the word, "error."
It all leaves me with the same feeling I have whenever I hear all the PC rhetoric about, as Democratic veep nominee Joe Lieberman put it, celebrating our differences:
What about celebrating commonalties?
I still cling naively to the idealistic notion that identity should not be principally wrapped up in ethnic background, sexual preference, religion -- but rather in being human.
These days, this is a deviant concept.
Rip Rense is writer and columnist whose work has appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Emmy Magazine, TV Guide, and Free China Review.
(Originally published on WorldNetDaily.com, USA, August 30, 2000, worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_rense/20000830_xcrre_the_sad_ga.shtml , expired link)
