First, those who were “oriented” toward sexual relations with others having the same genitalia came “out of the closet” and demanded that they be “left alone” and/or “allowed” to “be themselves.” OK, said most Americans. Yawn. Now please leave me alone so I can hear Walter Cronkite tell me how many Americans were killed in Vietnam today.
Then, we were informed that laws were on the books in most states that made sexual intercourse between persons of the same gender a crime. Most Americans were surprised to learn this because of the dearth of arrests for the crime. But then police in Texas responding to a false claim of gun violence-threats happened upon two men engaging in anal and oral sex. Having been called out on a false claim by a jealous lover and then subjected to verbal abuse, the police charged them with the sodomy misdemeanor on the books. The U.S. Supreme Court used the occasion of the appeal to strike down such sodomy laws, and in the process undermine laws making adultery a crime.
OK, said most Americans. Yawn. Now please leave me alone so I can hear Dan Rather tell me why Usama bin Laden hates Americans’ “lifestyle”.
Last week an America that hadn’t been reminded of the “suffering” of gays and lesbians by the tunnel vision, one-issue-at-a-time-ad-nauseum-media since WAY BACK in June when the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the restriction of the federal government’s definition of “spouse” and “marriage” to opposite-sex unions; and required any federal legal consequence of such definitions to apply equally to any spouse or marriage as defined under state laws.
Americans were still yawning this past week, in between reports of cancelled health insurance policies, when A&E suspended the star of the number one reality show on cable-TV because he dared quote the Bible’s admonishment against sins including drunkenness, slander, swindling, adultery and, egad…wait for it…homosexual prostitution and other such offenses.
Of course, A&E has the right, unless the War-and-Peace-length Obamacare law has a provision that we still haven’t been apprised of, to hire and fire whom they please and for most any reason; as they should. So, technically, since there exists no law, yet, making it a crime to quote the Bible, the First Amendment rights of Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson were not violated. Liberal Democrats would have you believe that this fact ends the story. As usual, they are wrong.
NRO’s Mark Steyn reminded us in his latest that a few states have made it a crime for private businesses to refuse to bake cakes or take photographs for gay and lesbian weddings. That’s right, the refusal to expend labor for profit (reminds of the Obamacare law making it illegal NOT to buy health insurance) at such gatherings is being treated as equivalent to motels and restaurants that refused to serve Blacks before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. For this, Steyn has been accused of insulting people by one of his own NRO editors. This comes on the heels of Steyn having been publicly denounced in Canada by its human rights commission for “Islamophobia.”
In Canada and the U.K., laws are on the books that make it a crime to quote the Bible’s condemnations of homosexual sodomy.
It may well be time for Christians and all Americans that value not only legal Free Speech, but also a culture that is more rational in what gets treated as taboo, violations of which lead to Scarlet Letter-branding and public exile; to come off the sidelines of the Culture War.
Steyn, who btw we hope runs for the U.S. Senate in the Live Free or Die state (see video below), also reminded us of a prescient quote from Bob Hope:
[T]ouring the world in the year or so after the passage of the 1975 Consenting Adult Sex Bill:
“I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.”
Folks, there is a reason that liberals use the term “lifestyle” to describe homosexual orientation for the purpose of conferring victim status and special affirmative action rights instead of the more accurate word that describes how some people choose to define themselves.
That word, of course, is sodomy. But no one, apparently, wants to say the word in public. Why is that, do you suppose? Could it be that everyone knows how pathetic it is to define oneself in so limiting a fashion and for an act of personal gratification? I think so.
Were closets really so bad after all? I’m asking. But I’m also holding my breath for the next group that claims victimization for other such trifling “orientations”. Will adulterers, nose-pickers, drunks, slanderers and swindlers soon hold pride parades? What of George Michael’s butt?
Who will be their Martin Luther King? And how long will Blacks remain mute while voting en mass for a Democratic Party that keeps them poor, equates their treatment based upon skin color under Jim Crow laws with sodomy, and slanders the cause of America’s civil rights heroes.
And before DeVine Law is attacked as a “homophobe”, let me remind that I roomed with a gay friend in college, have represented gays in court on discrimination claims, and helped draft legislation to protect gays from discrimination, albeit via individual rights rather than the amorphous “orientation” construct that leaves the operation of law up to the daily whims of an individual to declare and un-declare their “status” on a day-to-day basis.
Mike DeVine Law
