Editor, The Tribune
July 15, 2003 |
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| Since the recent Supreme Court decision regarding “privacy
rights” of Gays, I have witnessed a stream of articles
and letters regarding homosexuals as they ratchet up their
efforts to secure special rights and legal protections, including
the right to “marry” as seen on the front page
of the Tribune today.
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| The homosexual movement uses the catchphrase “gay rights”
as more then just a pervasive marketing tool of “live
and let live” philosophy. As used by homosexual activist,
“gay rights” means special legal privileges for
a class of people whose only common denominator is that they
choose to engage in homosexual acts. |
| We hardly seem to notice that gay rights means heterosexuals
have to give up their rights – like the right to consider
character when renting one’s house or when hiring the
church secretary; or like the right of parents to keep their
children from being taught that homosexual couples are just
as acceptable as mommie and daddy. |
| Those of us who oppose gay rights are being put on the defensive.
We are having to defend traditional family values when such
fundamental values should never have to be defended in the first
place. In the eyes of a value-relative baby-boomer generation,
right has become wrong and wrong has become right. It is very
difficult to do battle in such a moral minefield. |
| In giving public recognition to gay rights, it is only at
great personal and national peril, as we lose our ability to
discriminate between right and wrong. While the most egregious
and detailed description of perverse acts is well left in darkness,
society needs to know which kind of behavior it is being asked
to accept as socially legitimate. It should be obvious that
gays are masters at the art of political wordpower. Look how
successfully they have hijacked the word gay to replace the
more repugnant sounding homosexual. Look at the mileage they
have gotten out of homophobia! With just two words they have
both given themselves respectability and effectively impugned
those who would champion morality. |
| Isaiah reminds us that it comes with the territory, calling
good evil and evil good: |
| Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness
for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and
sweet for bitter. (Isaiah 5:20) |
| All the legal maneuvering in the world to make homosexual
conduct a fundamental legal right is never going to be the sexy
issue that will capture America’s attention like the issue
of privacy. |
| Would you want the government to tell you what you can and
cannot do in the privacy of your own home? Then why should it
be different for gays? It is a legitimate question. This, in
fact, is the demarcation line between two opposing forces engaged
in this all-out cultural war. The privacy I am talking about
has little to do with bathhouses or bedrooms because what goes
on there is almost never the subject of government interference.
What we need to remember is that the U.S. Constitution gives
no absolute right of privacy in any place or location. There
is almost an endless list of criminal offenses that can be punished
even if they happen to take place in the privacy of one’s
one home or office (forgery, rape, murder, etc.) |
| If gays could assure us that they would shrink back into the
shadows of the privacy for which they demand a legal right,
then the existence of individual state sodomy laws would have
taken on less significance. As long as they keep their homosexual
behavior off the streets, out of the office, out of the classroom,
out of the courtrooms and legislatures of America, then gays
could avoid most all anti-gay sentiment from the public and
answer only to God for their sin. |
| But, that has no appeal for gays. It would mean not being
able to flaunt their gay lifestyle, not being able to make appeals
for special legislation, and not being able to insist that the
rest of us acknowledge their immoral lifestyle. |
| To gays it needs to be said: If it’s privacy you want,
then keep it private! Most of us were not the ones who insisted
that you come out of the closet. |
| The best way to keep the public out of one’s business
is to keep from telling the whole world what you do. (i.e. -
Tempe’s Mayor Giuliano) By their actions, gays show that
they don’t have a clue what “live and let live”
really means. If they don’t want people to throw stones
at glass houses, then they ought to have the decency to draw
the curtains! The public nature of the gay movement is itself
the strongest possible evidence that the great “right
of privacy” issue has almost nothing to do with privacy
and virtually everything to do with the free, open, and unrestricted
exercise of immorality. |
| Whatever else you may do, open your eyes fully to the spiritual
battle that is taking place in our homes, schools, businesses,
legislative halls, and even the White House. Gay rights is not
just another political issue. Nor is it another moral issue.
Gay rights presents us with the ultimate issue of our time:
because if militant gays win the battle for America’s
hearts and minds, our nation may have crossed the Rubicon, never
again to honor God. |
| Representative Karen S. Johnson District 18 |
