Homosexual Inroads

This past June was a bad month for good sex. The Episcopalians got things going. On June 7, the New Hampshire diocese of that body, gathered in convention to choose a new bishop, elected the 56-year-old canon V. Gene Robinson, an avowed homosexual who has cohabited with another man for the past 13 years. The vote was no nail-biter. Robinson won the election by a margin of 96 to 69 among the laity, and a sturdy 58 to 19 among the clergy. Although Robinson is hardly the first active homosexual to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church, he is said to be the first Episcopalian who publicly admitted to the fact before being elected.

Moreover, Robinson did not just happen to be a homosexual, nor, it would seem, was he elected in spite of his homosexuality. On the contrary, there is reason to suppose that his homosexuality, or at least his homosexual activism, partly contributed to his popular appeal. Some of those who voted for Robinson drew attention to his formation of "Concord Outright," a support group for homosexual and otherwise insecure teenagers (in the organization’s own words, "gay/lesbian/questioning"). Others mentioned a sense of "making history" by their vote.

For the past several decades, the Episcopal Church has shown itself increasingly tolerant toward the homosexual vice. Robinson’s episcopal election, however, was not an act of mere tolerance. It appears to have been, rather, the brazen and determined assertion of an ideological program. In placing an active homosexual in its highest available position of honor and executive authority, the Episcopal voters in New Hampshire had in mind to advance the militant homosexual agenda, to approve (in the sense that verb carries in Romans 1:32) of active homosexuality as a habit and way of life. This is certainly how the action of the New Hampshire diocesan convention was interpreted throughout the Anglican Communion, both by those who lamented the election and those who applauded it.

Most Americans, on the other hand, could hardly have cared less. This was just the Episcopal Church, after all, a religious group whose liberal activism, liturgical adventures, and other shenanigans have already cost it roughly one-half of its membership during the past twenty years. Among Americans outside of the Episcopal Church, it is safe to say, there was little concern about what happened in New Hampshire this past June.

But then came the Canadians. On June 10, three days after Robinson’s election, the Ontario Court of Appeal handed down a sixty-page decision that changed the definition of marriage in that province from "the voluntary union for life of one man and one wo-man" to "the voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others."

This legal determination, jointly formulated by the court’s three judges, climaxed a long series of legal and political developments in Ca-nada, which began in August 1981, when the Toronto city council called on the Ontario government to amend its Civil Rights Code to include "sexual orientation" (not activity, mind you, only orientation) among the prohibited grounds of discrimination. From then on, step by step for two decades, various Canadian courts and other governmental agencies, but especially in the Province of Ontario, relentlessly advanced a complete pro-homosexual agenda into law and public opinion. Consequently, this past June’s decision was in some respects no more surprising than the episcopal election in New Hampshire.

Indeed, a good number of folks were obviously prepared for what the Canadian court did. Over the ensuing week, but starting on the very day of the court’s decision, 89 marriage licenses were issued to homosexual couples by the Toronto city council, 49 to male and 40 to female couples. During that same seven days, at least one such "wedding" was performed. There seems to have been a concerted rush to act on the court’s decision right away, as though to preclude its being reversed by Canada’s Supreme Court. One lesbian activist told the Toronto Star, "If scores of us get married, how do they put the horse back in the barn?" (An unconvincing metaphor, if we may say so. In our own limited experience, it is generally rather easy to put a horse back in a barn.)

There was no need for those anxious couples to worry, as it turned out, because Canada’s government had no intention of appealing to the Canadian Supreme Court. On June 17, exactly seven days after the Court of Appeal’s decision, when opinion polls revealed that a slight majority of Canadians agreed with it, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien announced that pertinent legislation would be introduced to permit homosexual marriages throughout the country. His Liberal party saw nothing to be gained by resisting what had become a popular and growing movement.

We should note, furthermore, that Canada’s new policy on same-sex marriages went significantly further than that of Belgium and Holland, two other countries in which the arrangement is legal. Specifically, these latter countries limit same-sex marriage to citizens and residents, whereas there is no such restriction in Canada. This fact, though not explicitly addressed by the court, was made clear immediately, when the website of the Toronto city council, listing its requirements for marriage licenses, noted that "There are no residency or citizenship requirements."

The significance of this clause was not lost on Americans living south of the border, and, risking the SARS infection that menaced Ontario at the time, homosexual couples started heading north to tie the knot (if this is the expression we want). Even by June 17, the day of Chretien’s announcement, the Windsor city council had already issued marriage licenses to three such couples from the United States.

Neither the Episcopalians nor the Canadians, however, quite prepared us for what happened on June 26, when the United States Supreme Court, by a vote of six to three, struck down a Texas law that prohibited sexual actions between members of the same sex. Even the most inveterate of optimists, those bold souls prepared to dismiss the Episcopalians as a fringe church and Canada as a fringe country, were hardly prepared for the likes of this. The judicial determination of June 26, Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, which reversed another Supreme Court decision of 17 years earlier, had the practical effect of overturning similar laws in 12 other states.

This Supreme Court decision, it appears to us, potentially affects the very structure of our society, because of the premises ratified and the reasoning pursued by the High Court in reaching its conclusion. According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote for the majority, the two men who petitioned against the State of Texas were "entitled to respect for their private lives." Kennedy went on to comment, "The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime." This argument, based on a relentless, overriding solicitude for—not to say entitlement of—respect and privacy is very ominous, we believe, for the future of marriage, which is the chief contractual bond on which human social life is structured.

First, with regard to "privacy," there appears to be no logical reason why the Supreme Court’s argument must, or will be, limited to homosexual activity. It seems to us that such a complete and unrelenting right to privacy is equally applicable to other forms of sexual expression, including adultery. For this reason, Touchstone takes issue with the several public commentators who claim that the Court’s ruling will have no effect on laws governing marriage. If homosexual sodomy is protected from legal interference by reason of a sodomite’s right to privacy, why would not an identical right to privacy similarly protect the heterosexual adulterer? Legal prohibitions against adultery, however, exist solely and manifestly for the protection of marriage. In short, we contend that Lawrence and Garner v. Texas constitutes an oblique but no less real assault on the institution of marriage, which is the foundation of the family and, as such, of many other social relationships.

Second, with regard to the "respect" that our Supreme Court seeks to guarantee to homosexuals by its recent decision, we cannot but remark on its distressing similarity to the argument used by Ontario’s Court of Appeal some two weeks earlier, when it ruled in favor of same-sex marriages. In reaching that conclusion, the Canadian court declared that "the dignity of persons in same-sex relationships is violated by the exclusion of same-sex couples from the institution of marriage." For our part, we perceive no significant difference between the "respect" sought by the Court in Washington and the "dignity" demanded by the court in Toronto. To us it appears that the force of the argument employed to keep sodomites out of jail can just as easily oblige society to issue them marriage licenses.

We are not alone in suspecting this to be a logical conclusion. At the very end of June there appeared the July 7 edition of Newsweek, the cover of which asked, "Is Gay Marriage Next?" This question, set over a picture of two young women cuddling, referred to the magazine’s major story, "The War Over Gay Marriage."

Nonetheless, in spite of all the evidence indicating a positive response to that question, Newsweek suggested that the more likely answer is "no." The authors commented that "the stronger movement, at least for now, appears to be in the other direction. Some 37 states—and the federal government—have adopted ‘Defense of Marriage Acts,’ which define marriage as applying only to a man and a woman, and—significantly—bar recognition of same-sex marriage from other states."

It is our hope, of course, that this will continue to be the case, and we offer two considerations, under God, that bolster this hope.

The first may be described as the democratic factor. That is to say, most American citizens strongly disapprove of this kind of thing. Indeed, the physical images associated with homosexual behavior (such as . . . well, never mind) make many voters feel positively ill—what Newsweek called "the ick factor." This democratic response to the thing readily explains why very little of the pro-homosexual agenda has been able to get through legislative processes, which are more closely controlled by the voters. Almost all of the advances recorded by the pro-homosexual movement have been achieved through the courts, which lie less within that democratic control. The pro-homosexual proponents seem to know that their only real chance lies in the courts.

The second consideration we will call the biological principle. Believing the homosexual impulse, whatever its origin, to be not only psychologically aberrant but dangerously at odds with the structure of human physiognomy, we are convinced that its expression faces a force radically unfavorable to its future. That kind of behavior just ain’t normal, and the empirical experience of our race suggests that the odds do not favor the pursuit of abnormality.

the dignity of persons in same-sex relationships

First, men having sex with men are practicing anal intercourse, or sodomy. The anus and rectum are not suited to receive the penis. The anus functions to control emission of gases and expulsion of feces from the intestine. The ring of muscles called the anal sphincter serves as a valve, meant to direct one-way expulsion. The excretory system carries waste, putrefying matter, and live disease captured and expelled by the body¹s defenses. These organs are designed wondrously for expulsion, not penetration. When penetrated by the penis, the anus and rectum reflexively contract. But neither of these organs secrete any lubrication, as does the female vagina. Anal intercourse results in minute tears and lesions deep in these delicate interior tissues, causing bleeding and giving disease germs and virus return access to the man¹s bloodstream. Sharing Disease is Not a Civil Right

In line with traditional psychiatric opinion, violence goes hand-in-hand with the ‘gay’ lifestyle. Almost all the exposure by homosexuals to violence and disease is encountered in the gay subculture. Most of the murderers in the lifespan study whose sexual orientation could be determined were also homosexual. While violence toward homosexuals is deplorable, most violence involving gays is self-induced (and the gay subculture may export more violence than it absorbs from without).Violence and Homosexuality

I ask what he will do if he finds out one day that he has succeeded in being infected -- ending the fun of being a bug chaser. He stops, then says he might move on to being a gift giver: "If I know that he's negative and I'm f**king him, it sort of gets me off. I'm murdering him in a sense, killing him slowly, and that's sort of, as sick as it sounds, exciting to me."RollingStone.com: News: Bug Chasers

Major Scientific Study Examines Domestic Violence Among Gay Men The conclusion arrived at by the researchers, based upon these figures, is that the rate of abuse between urban homosexual men in intimate relationships "is a very serious public health problem." The complete study may be found at http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/92/12/1964.

Compared with their heterosexual peers, homosexual men were at greater risk for psychiatric disorders, including mood and anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, and simple phobia. ---Theo G. M. Sandfort, Archives of General Psychiatry Vol. 58, Number . , 2001. Page(s) 85-91.
Relationship violence was found to be a significant problem for homosexuals. Forty-four (44) percent of the gay men reported having experienced violence in their relationships; 13 percent reported sexual violence and 83 percent reported emotional abuse. Levels of abuse ran even higher among lesbians: 55 percent reported physical violence in their relationships, 14 percent reported sexual abuse, and 84 percent reported emotional abuse. Susan C. Turrell,Journal of Family Violence Vol. 13, Number . , 2000. Page(s) 281-293.

SPRINGFIELD (Missouri) Police are trying to correct what they call a neighborhood problem in Phelps Grove Park. They say they’ve had complaints about homosexual men asking for sex in the park.

Police say neighbors, joggers, even groundskeepers have complained that they’ve been followed or approached by men looking to trade sexual favors. Most of the neighbors to whom we talked say it’s not a problem. But a couple of them said they’ve seen men parking or driving around trying to pick up other men. And under a city ordinance, that’s against the law.

"It can be debated, but from a law enforcement standpoint, it’s against the law and the community wants us to enforce it," said David Millsap, the public information office for the Springfield Police Department. MSNBC, September 23, 1998

Virginia park now taken over by gay sex

Forty years ago, families, church groups and Boy Scout troops would gather and play at Conway Robinson State Forest in Prince William County, now notorious for homosexual trysts.
"There'd be 20 to 30 cars in there, kids running around and parents cooking out," said a Gainesville woman in her late 50s who asked to be identified only as Betty.
"We used to go down there and cook hamburgers and hot dogs, having a good old time. It's gorgeous back there," she said. "Now I don't even want to go back there. They completely ruined it."Homosexuals take over park for sex

In early May, Portland Police received a complaint (one, that is) that gay men were meeting to have sex in the park. Concerned about so-called deviant behavior, predatory males and community safety at large, police have "stepped up their monitoring efforts" at the park, according to Asst. Chief Mark Paresi--which basically means that they just patrol more often (da-dum, da-dum, enter the theme from "Jaws"). As yet, there have not been any arrests. The Portland Mercury: Crime Scene (06/15/00)

Homosexual activity increasingly goes hand in hand with public sexual activity. A recent article on a Canadian gay web site states that anyone cruising "in a park knows it can be a sexually exciting experience and tons of fun." It goes on to acknowledge that this activity "comes naturally." Dr. Tom Coates, director of the USCF AIDS Research Institute further states, "The whole idea of gay liberation is having sex with whom you want to have sex." But the CDC sees anonymous homosexual activity as a major concern in the spread of HIV/AIDS and views it as a public health risk.

Increasingly across Pennsylvania and in other parts of the nation homosexual public sex has become a problem. Earlier this year 11 gay men were arrested for engaging in public sex in a restroom at Strawbridge Department store in Philadelphia. There have also been problems at Camp Hill Mall in Camp Hill, the Upper Main Line YMCA, Schenley Park in Pittsburgh and Scott Park in Erie to name only a few locations. AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA

Dr. Steven Wexner of the Cleveland Clinic in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, chronicled the diseases in 1990. "Up to 55 percent of homosexual men with anorectal complaints have gonorrhea; 80 percent of the patients with syphilis are homosexuals," he wrote. "Chlamydia is found in 15 percent of asymptomatic homosexual men, and up to one third of homosexuals have active anorectal herpes simplex virus." He went on to point out, "In addition, a host of parasites, bacterial, viral, and protozoan are rampant in the homosexual population." ²

Wexner is not alone in his observations. Dr. Selma Dritz wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, "Oral and Anal intercourse present physicians with surgical as well as medical problems, ranging from anal fissures and impaction of foreign bodies in the rectum to major diagnostic dilemmas."³ Dr. Marlys Witte et al. noted in The International Journal of Dermatology, that homosexual male practices such as "receptive anal and oral intercourse and oral-anal contact, recurrent rectal trauma associated with 'fisting,'" and venereal and parasitic infections, lead to many medical problems including tissue inflammation, "... intense angiogenesis, and progressive fibrosis." ⁴ And Dr. Christina M. Surawicz et al. noted Homosexually active men have frequent intestinal and rectal symptoms resulting from sexually acquired gastrointestinal infections." ⁵SODOMY Health and Homosexuality

"I gave my lover everything including HIV. I didn't mean to. We made a mistake. Maybe deep down we felt it would be better if we both had it..."The American Journal of Public Health Highlights Risks of Homosexual Practices

The prestigious Journal of the American Public Health Association has devoted a substantial portion of its latest edition (AJPH -- Table of Contents (June 1 2003, 93 [6]).) to the risks associated with homosexual practices.

Sodomy is an efficient method of transmitting STDs. And regardless of the reason, same-sex sodomy is far more effective in spreading STDs than opposite-sex sodomy. Multiple studies have estimated that 40 percent or more of men who practice anal sex acquire STDs. In fact, same-sex sodomy has resulted in the transformation of diseases previously transmitted only through fecally contaminated food and water into sexually caused diseases primarily among those who practice same-sex sodomy. Supreme Court of the United States

Since the first federal resources were made available to state and local health agencies for AIDS prevention in 1985, federal funding, which now includes money for research, treatment, and housing, has skyrocketed to $13 billion for fiscal 2003. As a result of the work of highly mobilized lobbying forces, more is spent per patient on AIDS than on any other disease, though it does not even currently rank among the top 15 causes of death in the United States. In one year, 1998, heart disease, the nation's leading cause of death, killed 724,859 Americans only 6.8 percent less than the 774,767 who have contracted AIDS in the last 20 years.² Of those 774,767 total AIDS cases, 462,766 have died. During that same period, 14 million Americans 30 times more have died of heart disease. Citizens Against Government Waste

An excerpt from Culture of Vice:

"The homosexual movement's rationalization is far more widely advanced in its claims. According to Jeffrey Levi, former executive director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, "We (homosexuals)_ are no longer seeking just a right to privacy and a right to protection from wrong. We have a right - as heterosexuals have already - to see government and society affirm our lives." Since only the act of sodomy differentiates an active homosexual from a heterosexual, homosexuals want "government and society" to affirm that sodomy is morally equivalent to the marital act. "Coming out of the closet" can only mean an assent on the level of moral principle to what would otherwise be considered morally disordered.

And so it must be. If you are going to center your public life on the private act of sodomy, you had better transform sodomy into a highly moral act. If sodomy is a moral disorder, it cannot be legitimately advanced on the legal or civil level. On the other hand, if it is a highly moral act, it should serve as the basis for marriage, family (adoption), and community. As a moral act, sodomy should be normative. If it is normative, it should be taught in our schools as a standard. In fact, homosexuality should be hieratic: active homosexuals should be ordained as priests. All of this is happening. It was predictable. The homosexual cause moved naturally from a plea for tolerance to cultural conquest. How successful that conquest has been can be seen in the poverty of the rhetoric of its opponents. In supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, the best one congressman could do was to say, "America is not yet ready for homosexual marriage," as if we simply need a decent interval to adjust ourselves to its inevitable arrival.

The homosexual rationalization is so successful that even the campaign against AIDS is part of it, with its message that "everyone is at risk." If everyone is at risk, the disease cannot be related to specific behavior. Yet homosexual acts are the single greatest risk factor in catching AIDS. This unpleasant fact invites unwelcome attention to the nature of homosexual acts, so it must be ignored." 37 posted on 09/29/2003 3:54 PM CDT by EdReform (Support Free Republic - Become a Monthly Donor)

Almost all of the advances recorded by the pro-homosexual movement have been achieved through the courts, which lie less within that democratic control.

Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct. LAWRENCE et al. v. TEXAS - Scalia

be no logical reason why the Supreme Court’s argument must, or will be, limited to homosexual activity.

"Should These Conditions Be Normalized?" American Psychiatric Association Symposium Debates Whether Pedophilia, Gender-Identity Disorder, Sexual Sadism Should Remain Mental Illnesses

SODOMYThe American Journal of Public Health Highlights Risks of Homosexual Practices

There was a letter to the editor in my paper this weekend, written by an episcopal priest and addressing the election of a gay bishop. According to the writer, the Bible is just a book of morals, but not the only book on morals. Apparently, we can interpret the scriptures in the light of our "modern" culture.

My local fishwrap ran the follwing editorial.

September 28, 2003

Accepting gays in the church

I'm proud of the tolerance shown by Episcopalians with the appointment of an openly gay bishop.

As a newcomer to the Episcopal Church almost two years ago, I believed I had found a faith that was welcoming, non-judgmental and inclusive.
Those were qualities that fit with what I believed a religion should offer and traits I wanted to pass on to my children. They were qualities that I have seen in people from all backgrounds and faiths but had not experienced fully in an organized religious setting.
The Aug. 5 confirmation of the first openly gay bishop in the church's history, Gene Robinson, made me proud to be Episcopalian. I saw the move as a further indication of this religion's progression and its embracing of all people. Robinson, a divorced father of two, has been in a committed homosexual relationship for more than a dozen years - longer than many heterosexual marriages I know.
But, as expected, the decision was not applauded by all, and opponents warned that the appointment of an openly gay man could split the 2.3-million-member U.S. church. Evidence of that split was apparent Tuesday night at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in Corpus Christi, where area Episcopalians met to hear from the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas, James Folts. And while the Episcopal church is in the spotlight on this issue now, it is a debate that crosses denominations.
Folts spoke for about an hour Tuesday, explaining that he opposed the confirmation not because of Robinson's sexual orientation but because of his "lifestyle behavior choices. . . . I do not believe (Robinson) is a wholesome example to the flock of Jesus Christ."
Folts then took questions from the more than 350 people in the audience, some of whom apparently had formed their own opinions based on some incorrect information. One man asked how the church could possibly ordain a man who had abandoned his wife and children to live with another man. In fact, the split between Robinson and his wife had been amicable and occurred almost two years before he met his partner, Mark Andrew.
Just days before the hearing about his election last month in Minneapolis, Robinson answered very personal questions in a public meeting. He debunked the misinformation that he had left his family to join a male lover.
"Over a period of years, my wife and I came to believe that I needed to claim who I was as a gay man," Christianity Today reported Robinson as saying. "I didn't meet Mark (Andrew) until two months after my ex-wife remarried."
Robinson had told his ex-wife before they married that his relationships had been with men, Christianity Today reported, and he tried to live as a heterosexual, including fathering two daughters.
One of Robinson's daughters attended the meeting in August, and she distributed a statement from her mother, Isabella McDaniel, in support of Robinson.
"It is my most sincere hope that my former husband, Gene Robinson, receives the consent of the people of this General Convention," McDaniel wrote. "He is strong and smart. He firmly believes in God and the importance of organized religion for today's people.
"Gene Robinson is a good man, a good priest, a good husband and partner, and a good father. I am proud to have been married to him," McDaniel added. "I am proud to have him as the father of my daughters. I am proud to be associated with him. Mostly, I will be proud to have him be the bishop here in New Hampshire and in the Episcopal Church."
Others aren't so proud.
In comments after the vote in Minneapolis, Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, Pa., spoke for those opposed to Robinson's approval, saying they were "filled with sorrow" and feel a "grief too deep for words."
"This body has denied the plain teaching of Scripture and the moral consensus of the church throughout the ages," Duncan was quoted by CNN.com. "This body has divided itself from millions of Anglican Christians throughout the world.
"May God have mercy on his church."
Former Corpus Christi resident the Rev. Katherine "Kitty" Megee Lehman, who is one of 12 potential nominees for bishop coadjutor in the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas and whose father was assistant rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, offered her thoughts on the subject in this way:
"It's worth remembering that the Ten Commandments, so much in the news recently, address the heterosexual transgression of adultery and the male heterosexual transgression of coveting a neighbor's wife or slave, both then presumed to be sexual property, a view most of us find abhorrent today," Lehman said in a written statement posted on the diocese's website.
"It's also worth remembering the great commandment and summary of the law by Jesus in the gospels: Love God above all and neighbor as self."
Following Tuesday's meeting at St. Bartholomew's, 15-year-old Elizabeth Ruth put it even more simply for Caller-Times religion writer Venessa Santos-Garza:
"Isn't loving God enough?"
Libby Averyt can be reached at 886-3681 or by e-mail at averytl@ caller.com.

They aren't "normal" to most people, but they aren't "normal" to most homosexuals either.

Read your comment and then think about it. What is "normal" about sodomy? What is normal about same-sex acts? What is normal about eating feces?

Compared with their heterosexual peers, homosexual men were at greater risk for psychiatric disorders, including mood and anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, and simple phobia. ---Theo G. M. Sandfort, Archives of General Psychiatry Vol. 58, Number . , 2001. Page(s) 85-91.
Relationship violence was found to be a significant problem for homosexuals. Forty-four (44) percent of the gay men reported having experienced violence in their relationships; 13 percent reported sexual violence and 83 percent reported emotional abuse. Levels of abuse ran even higher among lesbians: 55 percent reported physical violence in their relationships, 14 percent reported sexual abuse, and 84 percent reported emotional abuse. Susan C. Turrell,Journal of Family Violence Vol. 13, Number . , 2000. Page(s) 281-293.

SPRINGFIELD (Missouri) Police are trying to correct what they call a neighborhood problem in Phelps Grove Park. They say they’ve had complaints about homosexual men asking for sex in the park.

Virginia park now taken over by gay sex

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