Posted on 05/03/2013 6:24:07 PM PDT by kreitzer
ROME, May 2, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – While pro-family advocates have noted the incredible rate at which the homosexualist movement has gained the political upper hand in the last five years, others are voicing concern about the shrinking “social space” in the public discourse for those who still object to “gay marriage.”
Some pundits on the left and the center-right are warning that as the homosexual movement gains legislative ground, the freedom to object is narrowing and those holding out against it are increasingly under threat. The stunning advances made by the “gay movement” some are saying, is not a triumph for social freedom, but for an increasingly brutally enforced social conformism.
Left-libertarian British journalist Brendan O’Neill warned in a column in Spiked, that in 20 years of writing on political issues, “I have never encountered an issue like gay marriage, an issue in which the space for dissent has shrunk so rapidly, and in which the consensus is not only stifling but choking.”
The change in public opinion, O’Neill added, can best be described as a “conformism, the slow but sure sacrifice of critical thinking and dissenting opinion under pressure to accept that which has been defined as a good by the upper echelons of society: gay marriage.”
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“In truth, the extraordinary rise of gay marriage speaks, not to a new spirit of liberty or equality on a par with the civil-rights movements of the 1960s, but rather to the political and moral conformism of our age; to the weirdly judgmental non-judgmentalism of our PC times; to the way in which, in an uncritical era such as ours, ideas can become dogma with alarming ease and speed; to the difficulty of speaking one’s mind or sticking with one’s beliefs at a time when doubt and disagreement are pathologised.”
Elsewhere, O’Neill described the movement as an “iron fist in a velvet glove,” and denounced the Conservative government’s “authoritarian instinct” in forcing objectors to comply. He said it is the only issue on which, after having argued against it from a “liberal” perspective, he has received death threats.
Christopher Caldwell, a writer for the Weekly Standard, wrote for the Claremont Institute website last month, “The most troubling aspect of the gay-marriage movement is that, more than any social movement in living memory, more than feminism at its bra-burning peak in the 1970s, it aims not to engage in lively debate but to shut it down.”
The internet has made it much easier to shut down this debate, Caldwell added. “Anyone who expresses the slightest misgivings about gay marriage can become the object of boycotts, blacklists, and attempts to get him fired.”
“It is certainly worth asking why, if this is a liberation movement, it should be happening now, in an age not otherwise gaining a reputation as freedom’s heyday.”
“Half the country cannot even fathom the logic of it,” Caldwell said. “Until about a decade ago, the public was nearly unanimous in considering it a joke.”
“In a decade, gay marriage has gone from joke to dogma,” and now both activists in the homosexualist movement and their supporters in governments and media consider “gay marriage” to be a fait accompli and only a matter of time before it is universal throughout the west.
O’Neill quotes polls in the U.S. that found 58 percent of Americans support “gay marriage”, compared with just 37percent a decade ago; and a British poll in which 62percent in support compared to 31percent against 10 years ago.
O’Neill adds that in that time, it has become increasingly dangerous for anyone in politics or elsewhere to object. “Opponents of gay marriage are now treated by the press in the same way queer-rights agitators were in the past: as strange, depraved creatures, whose repenting and surrender to mainstream values we await with bated breath.”
In his review of the book From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage, by Michael J. Klarman, Caldwell notes the effect of the media’s promotion and the changes in law have had on public opinion. He wrote, “A barrage of judicial activism on one issue can soften up voting public’s resistance on others.”
“Marriage litigation has been a bonanza,” he added. “Judicial fiat put a halo of normalcy around gay marriage where none had existed before…When elites rally unanimously to a cause, it can become a kind of common sense.” No one, he said, wants to be seen to be more conservative than his neighbours, and “the elite view thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
O’Neill wrote that while the movement normally gets cast as a continuation of the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, “it’s better understood as a continuation, and intensification, of the modern state’s desire to get a foot in the door of our private lives and to assume sovereignty over our relationships.
“From the get-go, the depiction of the campaign for gay marriage as a liberty-tinged movement for greater equality was questionable to say the least,” he said.
Where “gay marriage” has been installed, it has largely been the result of the deliberate suppression of the democratic process and the work of the judiciary, the “legal elite.”
Caldwell writes, “Never since the Progressive Era has there been a social movement as elite-driven as the one for gay marriage. No issue divides the country more squarely by class. Opponents of California’s anti-marriage Proposition 8 have come to include virtually all of Hollywood, Apple, Google, Amazon, and the White House.”
O’Neill agrees, saying, “Grassroots public protesting for the right of homosexuals to marry was notable by its absence. Instead, this has been a movement led by lawyers and professional activists, backed by the CEOs of hedge-fund corporations and newspapers of record such as The Times.”
Caldwell quotes research that found public support for gay marriage has been increasing by four points a year since 2009. “Public opinion does not change this fast in free societies. Either opinion is not changing as fast as it appears to be, or society is not as free,” he concludes.
“Homosexual marriage” law is designed to force the citizens into supporting and servicing homosexual behavior.
If it shrinks to just me I will still be against same sex marriage, and the rest of the world can KMA.
Shouldn’t be long now and a ‘cure’ will be available for concerned parents.
Amen!
It won’t be just you.
One in six of the Bamster’s high dollar bundlers is an out-of-the closet militant homosexual. The “phenominal gains” made by homos in the last four years is absolute propaganda pushed by the treasonous media whores.
There will be a backlash to the homo activist movement and, as they raise the stakes, it promises to be brutal.
This is right and worse is yet to come. Already in Sweden which was one of the earliest to fall to the gay activists you see the fruits of the dogma in radical gender nonconformist policy where even boys are denied the ability to play with toy cars for fear that they may gender conform to being a typical boy and its not as if the desire in the progressive community is not there to achieve a similar situation in the US. Already in many states grade school kids are being versed in “multiple sexualities” and encourage to experiment and consider that they may like to marry a member of the same sex. One grade school boy came home to tell his parents that he had “married” his best friend another boy in a mock wedding suggested by his teacher. Young girls were told to share a same sex kiss during a demonstration. Kids are being shown graphic examples of animal gonads and versed in animal sexuality as a model for human sexuality. Those that don’t believe there is danger in this are just naïve or they want this radical gender nonconformity to rule.
The fascinating thing about the issue (at least to me) is that gays actually want to “marry”. Or do they? Lesbian couples shack up for the very long term, gain enormous amounts of weight, stop being intimate, and generally let themselves go. Homo guys live in a youth-centered culture of hooking up, entering into and out of relationships pretty rapidly, with rampant cheating. Why do they need marriage? If it’s for the 20% of them who feel the need for the state to memorialize their relationship, it seems to be an awful lot of trouble. 20% of 4% isn’t very many people.
I admit that I’m guessing at one of those numbers, but it could actually be even lower. I also admit to engaging in stereotypes; a/k/a Common Sense.
I agree. There is not a real shift in the sense that most people even the young really have embraced gay marriage. However they wont dare speak out against because they fear being called a hater/bigot and that is enough. Even conservative politicians and even some pastors walk on egg shells when approaching this issue. We need to forcibly push back at this political correctness by casting it in terms such as “thought police” etc. This can be effectively fought. All it takes is brave and thoughtful people who have thick skin.
It won’t be just you.
Nicely stated.
Communist Goals (1963) Congressional Record—Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963
#26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
http://rense.com/general32/americ.htm
It is the Marxist move (Bolshevik/were all sodomites as are the Brownshirts and the Freemason NWO types-—they want the boys)
it is to eliminate God and Christian Ethics to collapse civil society—so they can force the NWO where there are no Mothers and Fathers forming “ethics” in their children (the State becomes god)-—like in Brave New World-—where the idea of “mother” makes one vomit.
Men and women have to be interchangeable for the maternal instinct to be killed-—and mothers removed from babies and give them up to the State or convinced to kill their own offspring (abortion) to eliminate Natural tendencies.
Homosexual marriage is for the “culture” -—the indoctrination and worldview of kids who will have sodomy completely normalized in one generation. Kids who will grow up like the little boys in Afghanistan, think sodomy is good. Whatever kids are exposed to can become “normalized” in their minds.
It ejects Reason and Logic and Christianity in one swoop so the children will believe all the lies when they are adults-—since their foundational knowledge is irrational and Vice is Good—— just like Winston——”Slavery is Freedom”.
Flipping ethics-—to where sodomizing others is “Good” will erase Christian morality which is their goal. Christianity/God is dangerous to a totalitarian state.
They do it to destroy religious freedom.
Once homosexuality is normalized, Christianity will be criminalized.
Oh, fear not - they have plenty of others in the wings. Gay marriage is just a test case.
It is interesting that pro-lifers have been “allowed” to continue dissent for 40 years without losing their livelihoods or being shunned. For the most part, people don’t track down those that disagree and try to ruin their lives or businesses. But for the gay agenda, there is a viciousness toward dissenters that has effectively shut down protest. In France, at least traditional family supporters are free to protest in the streets. Here you would risk losing life and limb, or your career.
It’s not about wanting to marry, it’s about punishing and being able to keep punishing those who will never buy into ‘gay marriage.’
I think that’s 10/50 states + our damn capital in 9 years. Minn. voted down their amendment last year. In 1983 any state having ‘gay marriage’ was unthinkable. In 2003 there were no states with ‘gay marriage’, Mass. was 2004. In 2023? 2033?
Fregeards
In 2033 we’ll be a Stalinist-state Caliphate and the official language will be Spanish.
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