Posted on 05/20/2003 8:14:33 AM PDT by theoverseer
In four Gospels - including the Sermon on the Mount - Jesus neglected to mention the subject of homosexuality. But that hasn’t stopped a handful of self-appointed leaders of the so-called Religious Right from deciding that it is an issue worth the presidency of the United States. In what the Washington Times described as a "stormy session" last week, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, Paul Weyrich, Gary Bauer and eight other "social conservatives" read the riot act to RNC chairman Marc Racicot for meeting with the "Human Rights Campaign," a group promoting legal protections for homosexuals. This indiscretion, they said, "could put Bush’s entire re-election campaign in jeopardy."
According to the Times’ report by Ralph Hallow, the RNC chairman defended himself by saying, "You people don’t want me to meet with other folks, but I meet with anybody and everybody." To this Gary Bauer retorted, "That can’t be true because you surely would not meet with the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan."
Nice analogy Gary. Way to love thy neighbor.
This demand to quarantine a political enemy might have had more credibility if the target – the Campaign for Human Rights -- were busily burning crosses on social conservatives’ lawns. But they aren’t. Moreover, the fact that it is, after all, crosses the Ku Klux Klan burns, might suggest a little more humility on the part of Christians addressing these issues. Just before the launching of the 2000 presidential campaign, George Bush himself was asked about similarly mean-spirited Republican attacks. His response was that politicians like him weren’t elected to pontificate about other people’s morals and that his own faith admonished him to take the beam out of his own eye before obsessing over the mote in someone else’s.
The real issue here is tolerance of differences in a pluralistic society. Tolerance is different from approval, but it is also different from stigmatizing and shunning those with whom we disagree.
I say this as someone who is well aware that Christians are themselves a persecuted community in liberal America, and as one who has stood up for the rights of Christians like Paul Weyrich and Gary Bauer to have their views, even when I have not agreed with some of their agendas. Not long ago, I went out on a public limb to defend Paul Weyrich when he was under attack by the Washington Post and other predictable sources for a remark he had made that was (reasonably) construed as anti-Semitic. I defended Weyrich because I have known him to be a decent man without malice towards Jews and I did not want to see him condemned for a careless remark. I defended him in order to protest the way in which we have become a less tolerant and more mean-spirited culture than we were.
I have this to say to Paul: A delegation to the chairman of the RNC to demand that he have no dialogue with the members of an organization for human rights is itself intolerant, and serves neither your ends nor ours. You told Racicot, "if the perception is out there that the party has accepted the homosexual agenda, the leaders of the pro-family community will be unable to help turn out the pro-family voters. It won’t matter what we say; people will leave in droves."
This is disingenuous, since you are a community leader and share the attitude you describe. In other words, what you are really saying is that if the mere perception is that the Republican Party has accepted the "homosexual agenda," you will tell your followers to defect with the disastrous consequences that may follow. As a fellow conservative, I do not understand how in good conscience you can do this. Are you prepared to have President Howard Dean or President John Kerry preside over our nation’s security? Do you think a liberal in the White House is going to advance the agendas of social conservatives? What can you be thinking?
In the second place, the very term "homosexual agenda," is an expression of intolerance as well. Since when do all homosexuals think alike? In fact, thirty percent of the gay population voted Republican in the last presidential election. This is a greater percentage than blacks, Hispanics or Jews. Were these homosexuals simply deluded into thinking that George Bush shared their agendas? Or do they perhaps have agendas that are as complex, diverse and separable from their sexuality as women, gun owners or Christians, for that matter?
In your confusion on these matters, you have fallen into the trap set for you by your enemies on the left. It is the left that insists its radical agendas are the agendas of blacks and women and gays. Are you ready to make this concession -- that the left speaks for these groups, for minorities and "the oppressed?" Isn’t it the heart of the conservative argument that liberalism (or, as I would call it, leftism) is bad doctrine for all humanity, not just white Christian males?
If the President’s party – or conservatism itself -- is to prevail in the political wars, it must address the concerns of all Americans and seek to win their hearts and minds. It is conservative values that forge our community and create our coalition, and neither you nor anyone else has - or should have - a monopoly in determining what those values are.
He said nothing about pedophilia, necrophilia, or sado-masochism either. Do you suppose he approved of these abuses of the human body that he created? Use your God-given sense of reason, Horowitz.
Your essay is worthy only a *flush* and nothing more.
Thank you. The communitarian ideal lies at the heart of the Western way, from the Athens of the Greeks ("Man is by nature a political animal' -- Aristotle) to the Church of Christ ("And all who believed were together and had all things in common" -- Acts 2:44; "Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common" - Acts 4:32, et al). To reject the God-centered communitarian idea is to set every man against every other man in a brutal Darwinistic battle, which leads inevitably to chaos and communism -- the false "community" of the soviet, where the State takes the place of God.
The silly idea of atomistic individualism is a product of the rational egoism of the so-called enlightenment, not of Christian civilization; it also flies in the face of common sense. As a conservative, I reject individualist, humanist libertarianism and hold to the traditional Western concept of man as an organic part of his community, posessed of individual dignity and sacred duty, and responsible to God, his superiors, and his fellow man for his actions.
Oh David ... ONLY 1-3% of the population is gay so 30% of, let's be generous, 3% will not make or break ANYONES chances to win.
Proof of how small the gap % is, is here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/910022/posts?page=2
Poor David is so blinded by his hatred of Christians he's can't think straight.
Really? There are about 214 million voting-age adults in this country - 3% of that is 6,420,000 votes, and 30% of that is slightly more than 1.9 million potiential votes. Even if you assume that they will actually vote at the same rate as the general population - about 50% - that's still more than 850,000 votes nationwide. Considering that the current president lost the popular vote by somewhat more than 500,000 votes, it seems unwise to simply dismiss such a large and potentially sympathetic group of voters...
From link:
"Socially segregated from women, Arab men succumb to homosexual behavior. But, interestingly enough, there is no word for "homosexual" in their culture in the modern Western sense."
How disgusting! No wonder the WTC creeps couldn't get enough of women in bikinis. It's no wonder they use women as sexual objects and hate them so.
Just one of them,
The Poisoned Stream "Gay" Influence in Human History. Volume One. Germany 1890-1945. View as HTML
should be enough to OPEN THEIR EYES!
His emotional defense of homos has me wondering ... is he a closet homosexual too chicken to come out? Or a carefree bisexual? I don't remember if he's married or dating a woman. Perhaps it is men that he is sexually pursuing.
I don’t think he's obsessed with “gays” as much as he is here to fight against those things that undermine a society based on traditional values. Do you accuse others who fervently speak out against abortion, atheism, prostitution, drug-use, euthanasia, incest…or other negative influences on a society as being “obsessed”??? Or are you just a hypocrite protecting your own pet perversion?
Are you gay? Bisexual? If not, what exactly is your problem?
Actually in Matthew 10:15 Jesus speaks directly to the condemnation of the sin of Sodom. So it looks like Horowitz has been reading the homosexual porpaganda scriptures.
Bisexuals are homosexuals...there are no part time pathologies. tpaine is a sodomite regardless of his "orientation."
I made my case using a number of supporting documents and you simply ignore everything I say and dismiss the links as propaganda. Again, your lack of interest in the facts is obvious. Your lack of arguments, obfuscation and misdirection in response to what I've presented is even more telling.
Do you have anything other than obfuscation?
Hehehe....in depth? Ummm…exit polls are NOT random samples. Plus they are biased depending on the area don’t ya think? What do you think the exit polls look like in San Francisco?
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