Ann Fisher commentary: Gay-rights foes will be minority before long

A state lawmaker from New Albany backed a bill this year that would give employment and housing protection to Ohio's gays and transsexuals.

That took some courage because the Senate leaders of his party, the Republicans, have no patience for the legislation. And similar bills never have received much attention in Ohio, let alone on-the-record hearings.

But Sen. David Goodman said his active endorsement of Senate Bill 305 was a no-brainer after a conversation in March with his father, a prominent Harvard-trained lawyer. That day, he reminded his son why Jewish law firms first opened in Columbus: No one else would hire Jewish lawyers at the time.

Later that day in March, Goodman received a call from a friend who is pushing for Senate Bill 305 and House Bill 502, companion measures that were introduced that month. His friend asked him to co-sponsor the Senate bill.

"How could I say 'No' after what my father had told me about my own family's past?" Goodman said.

Gay-rights opponents still carry the day in Ohio, so those of us on the other side still celebrate even a few Senate hearings on the bill. But those days might be numbered.

Another generation of voters -- and the people they elect to represent them -- will be taking over in a few years. If the polls are any indication, they won't tolerate intolerance.

Research and exit-poll data studied by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement suggest that youth support for equal protections for gay people crosses partisan, ideological and religious lines.

The same data indicate that, across the board, at least 85 percent of people ages 15-25 support equal protection in housing and employment.

State Rep. Dan Stewart, a Columbus Democrat, has worked on this issue since he was a Senate legislative aide a decade ago. Now sponsor of the House bill, Stewart said the hearings are a good sign because they "advance the education and the cause."

His colleagues are getting smarter and better educated about the issue, and better prepared to respond to the form letters sent by those who say that equal protection is somehow a "special status" when it comes to gays and transsexuals.

And those who say that such laws will bring a flood of lawsuits are just plain wrong, according to a 2002 report on 13 states by the U.S. General Accounting Office.

In the end, the only valid opposition is personal. No one, for example, can change the mind of the angry older man who called to criticize me for my support of gay rights, calling me an embarrassment to journalism.

He'll take that hate with him to the grave. And tolerance will bloom in his wake.

Ann Fisher is a Dispatch Metro columnist. She can be reached at 614-461-8759 or by e-mail. Check out her blog Furthermore… at blog.dispatch.com/ann/.

When the rhetoric gets to this point I know that hope is in sight.... for the freaking collapse of this insanity.

First, the homosexual advocates try to conflate their perversion with race and then attempt to claim the mantle of race civil rights. People who can think critically have never accepted that argument. Eventually, even most of those who were fooled by the false comparison initially, have come to reject it.

No one else would hire Jewish lawyers at the time. That sort of discrimination is illegal now in Ohio -- unless you're gay.

Now, these advocates want to equate homosexual behavior with an ethnicity and a religion.

Of course, this begs the question, of “conversion.” That is to say, one can, by choice of will, “convert” from one religion to another. Therefore, if the comparison is to hold, then homosexuals must allow that one can “convert,” by choice of will, from being “gay” to being “ex-gay.”

Such a concession from the homosexual activists skewers the “born gay” position. Beyond “skewering” this admission is a complete repudiation of the “born gay” assertion. The only conclusion left is that homosexual behavior is purely a choice.

Logically, if homosexual behavior is a choice that is to be equivalent to religion, then where are “commandments,” the behavior codes, the formally stated value propositions, metaphysical principles, etc.? If there were formally enunciated statements that were congruent with observed homosexual behavior, the majority of the public would reject such out pure revulsion.

You original observation is apparently correct.

Unfortunately fellow freepers, the liberal horde is right about this one. Gay marriage is inevitable. So is gay adoption, pedophilia, polygamy and all other forms of sodomy.

Unfortunately, there is no constitutional place for either marriage, family, gender, ‘childhood’ or any other form of pro-civilization condition. They are not based on law but on tradition, custom and the rather rational notion that surviving is a good thing and these things have proven to continue the species and prevent its decay.

The only thing which keeps gay marriage off the books and makes marriage a legal right is public opinion. The only thing which makes the drinking age 21 is public opinion. The only thing which makes having sex with children illegal is public opinion (in California, its 18 years but in Texas is can be 14 and in some other states even lower as an age of ‘consent’).

Public opinion continues to be on our side and it will be through this current generation. But atheist, socialist judges hate us. They despite our ‘holier than thou’ views of religion and society. They know that they are not numerous enough to challenge us electorally. But the courts are mostly appointed and those appointments are not always made by responsible people (think Florida Supreme Court).

The Supreme Court of California constructed a bizarre two rail bank shot to mandate gay marriage into the CA Constitution despite specific wording in the ACTUAL constitution of the State of California stating that marriage is NOT between two same-sex citizens. They simply replaced the Constitution with their personal will. This is, legal terms, judicial fiat.

This is now the third time that a state supreme court has decided that the gay marriage is ‘too important’ to be left to the legislatures or the people. Only in Hawaii did the people prevent their electors from enacting gay marriage. In MA and CA, the courts were wise to the mistake of Hawaii and did not order the legislature to correct the problem by passing a law. These courts simply established the law themselves and then ordered the state legislators to clean up the details within the rest of the states statutes.

Expect before the end of this decade that at least a handful of other states will have Supreme Courts trump the voters, legislators and constitutions to establish gay marriage in their state. The lawsuits which were the vehicles for this judicial activism were filed back in the 1990s mostly and the others were filed immediately after the US Supreme Court created the mythical constitutional right to sodomy. Queer groups knew immediately that their path to a US Supreme Court decision mandating gay marriage was only a few more appeals away.

This is incredibly bad news for America. And therefore, incredibly bad news for civilization. It is a sign of the ultimate decay of American culture and a hastening of our slide into oblivion just as Greece and Rome did before us when their wealth and success granted them the ‘luxury’ of social liberalism and thus the end of their societal foundation.

We need to keep fighting this if only for the reason that we need to have a reason to exist as a political party (if the GOP ends up remaining our primary home). But it is a losing battle because the law is not on our side.

Marriage, gender, age or family are not Constitutional tenets. The basically do not exist. Rights under our constitution are granted to the individual. We are, legally, just a large group of individual citizens with rights. The queer groups know that ultimately they have to break down not only the family but also the concept of age, gender and morality in order to reach full ‘acceptance’ of their perverse activities. And that is exactly what they have been doing for the last 20 or so years in the courts.

They know that 5 members of a state Supreme Court are more important than 61% of a population of 40 million. And how long it takes for them to completely destroy out entire societal structure depends upon who we elect president, governor or district/superior judges.

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