| The issue isn’t just morality. It’s freedom.
For a preview from abroad of the social and eventually legal repression of religious free speech rights we’ll face in America if we fail to fight homosexual activists’ so-called “gay rights” agenda, please read the two commentaries below, published in successive weeks last month by a columnist for the London Daily Mail.
Forewarned is forearmed. Be assured that AFA-Michigan will continue to lead the fight in our state to block this impending threat to your family’s religious freedom.
If you think that stand worthy of support, make a tax deductible contribution
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Or by mail to PO Box 1904, Midland, Michigan 48641.
Thank you for standing with us.
Gary Glenn
President
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THE DAILY MAIL
London, England
January 24, 2011
Britain’s new McCarthyites
by Melanie Phillips
Here’s a question shortly coming to an examination paper near you. What have mathematics, geography or science to do with homosexuality?
Nothing at all, you say? Zero marks for you, then.
For, mad as this may seem, schoolchildren are to be bombarded with homosexual references in maths, geography and science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to promote the gay agenda.
In geography, for example, they will be told to consider why homosexuals move from the countryside to cities. In maths, they will be taught statistics through census findings about the number of homosexuals in the population.
In science, they will be directed to animal species such as emperor penguins and sea horses, where the male takes a lead role in raising its young.
Alas, this gay curriculum is no laughing matter. Absurd as it sounds, this is but the latest attempt to brainwash children with propaganda under the camouflage of education. It is an abuse of childhood.
And it’s all part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very concept of normal sexual behaviour.
Not so long ago, an epic political battle raged over teaching children that homosexuality was normal. The fight over Section 28, as it became known, resulted in the repeal of the legal requirement on schools not to promote homosexuality.
As the old joke has it, what was once impermissible first becomes tolerated and then becomes mandatory.
And the other side of that particular coin, as we are now discovering, is that values which were once the moral basis for British society are now deemed to be beyond the pale.
What was once an attempt to end unpleasant attitudes towards a small sexual minority has now become a kind of bigotry in reverse.
Expressing what used to be the moral norm of Western civilisation is now not just socially impermissible, but even turns upstanding people into lawbreakers.
The bed and breakfast hoteliers Peter and Hazelmary Bull — who were recently sued for turning away two homosexuals who wished to share a bedroom — were but the latest religious believers to fall foul of the gay inquisition merely for upholding Christian values.
Catholic adoption agencies were forced to shut down after they refused to place children with same-sex couples. Marriage registrars were forced to step down for refusing to officiate at civil unions.
Christian street preacher Dale McAlpine was charged with making threatening, abusive or insulting remarks for saying homosexuality was a sin to passers-by in Workington, Cumbria. In the event, the case against him was dropped and he won a police apology and compensation.
It seems that just about everything in Britain is now run according to the gay agenda. For in addition to the requirement for gay-friendly hotels, gay adoption and gay mathematics now comes, apparently, gay drugs policy.
Last week, the Government announced the appointment of some new members to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, who included a GP by the name of Hans-Christian Raabe.
Dr Raabe has long maintained a close interest in drug policy, on which he has robustly traditional views. He has spoken out in favour of abstinence-based approaches and criticised the flawed logic behind the claim that it is the illegality of drugs such as cannabis that is the problem.
Considering the unhappy fact that over recent years many on the Advisory Council have taken the ultra-liberal view that treating drug-users is the priority rather than reducing their numbers, Dr Raabe’s membership of the council was very welcome news.
But as soon as his appointment was announced, Dr Raabe was targeted in an astonishing attack.
For he is also a leading member of the Manchester-based Maranatha Community, which is dedicated to re-establishing Christian values in society and which campaigns against gay rights.
It was the BBC’s Home Editor Mark Easton who led the charge. On his BBC News blog, he announced that Dr Raabe’s views on homosexuality were causing such fury among (anonymous) members of the Advisory Council that at least one member was threatening to step down.
Well may you rub your eyes at that. Just what have his views on homosexuality got to do with illegal drugs? Well, according to Easton, more than one member of the council is gay or lesbian.
How extraordinary. Just imagine if the boot were on the other foot and Dr Raabe had refused to serve on the drugs council because some of its members were gay. He would be out on his ear within the hour.
How reprehensible of the BBC to lend itself to such a partisan attack. Unsurprisingly, Easton’s remarks provoked more advocates of drug liberalisation to join in the blood-sport of baiting Dr Raabe.
Yesterday’s Observer listed among his crimes certain briefing documents he had produced for MPs identifying the benefits of marriage in fighting drug addiction.
He had written, for example, that marriage is associated with greater happiness, less depression, less alcohol abuse and less smoking. But what’s the problem with that? It happens to be true.
The Observer reported that drugs charities and experts expressed surprise that someone of such ‘stringent opinions’ could be appointed to the Advisory Council.
Clearly, ‘stringent opinions’ in favour of drug liberalisation are considered entirely appropriate in such circles; but anyone who goes against the politically-correct grain on homosexuality or who has robust Christian views must be considered a bigot and thus have no place in public life.
In fact, anyone truly concerned to end the scourge of drug abuse should be delighted that at last there is a strong voice for common sense and morality on the Advisory Council.
Penalising religious people for speaking and acting in accordance with their beliefs is neither liberal nor tolerant. It is behaviour more commonly associated with totalitarian dictatorships.
It must be said that many gay people are themselves uneasy or even appalled by this increasingly oppressive use of their cause. Privately, many will say that all they ever want is to live free from discrimination and not to provoke discrimination against others.
After the case of Christian street preacher Dale McAlpine, the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell spoke out in support of the rights of people to express their views against homosexuality — although, by contrast, he also endorsed the lawsuit against B&B owners Peter and Hazelmary Bull on the grounds that the equality laws should apply to all.
Of course, for people such as the Bulls, George Orwell’s famous observation that some are more equal than others is all too painfully true. Indeed, the obsession with equality has now reached ludicrous, as well as oppressive, proportions.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has paid £100,000 for a report into how efforts to boost Britain’s coastal fish stocks would affect minority communities including the Chinese, homosexuals and Welsh speakers.
And the Department for Transport issued a study looking at harassment and discrimination on ships and hovercraft against a range of groups, including transsexuals.
Many different groups are involved in promoting this crazy, upside-down world of the equality agenda. But the seemingly all-powerful gay rights lobby carries all before it. If it isn’t careful, it risks turning gay people from being the victims of prejudice into Britain’s new McCarthyites.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=792
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THE DAILY MAIL
London, England
January 31, 2011
The West’s cultural totalitarians
by Melanie Phillips
One week ago, I suggested on this page that some gay people were in danger of turning into the new McCarthyites by demonising and attempting to silence all who disagreed with the gay rights agenda.
Given the point I was making, it followed that I was expecting a reaction which would amply bear out the truth of what I had written. The response, however, exceeded even my expectations.
For during the past seven days, I have been subjected to an extraordinarily vicious outpouring of hate and incitement to violence, via email, the internet and in the mainstream media, and much worse besides.
In my article, I expressed concern that attempting to bar a Christian GP from the government’s advisory council on drugs because of his views on homosexuality, bombarding the school curriculum with irrelevant gay references, and prosecuting Christian hoteliers for refusing to accommodate gay men in the same bedroom were examples of a frightening intolerance.
The response to this warning against an attempt by the gay lobby to silence dissent? An eruption of tweets on Twitter suggesting that I should be killed. Yes, really.
Apologies if the hideous and obscene language shocks some readers, but examples of such tweets included: ‘Someone just kill Melanie Phillips please’; ‘your homophobic rant equals that which comes out of a dog’s rectum. Kill yourself you ****’; and ‘throw her in the Thames’.
And emails to me included such epithets as ‘vile, poisonous, horrible old woman’, and ‘people like you should be silenced as you insight (sic) bigotry and fear. Go and suck a tail pipe, get cancer, GET RAN OVER BY A TRAIN. I hope your ******* house burns down’.
All this because, having acknowledged the legitimacy of trying to protect gay people from true prejudice and discrimination, I suggested that Christians should not face discrimination against their beliefs!
If the gay lobby had set about trying to prove my point, it could hardly have done a better job. Indeed, the total inability of those who subjected me to such abuse to realise that they are, in fact, spewing out the very hatred, intolerance and incitement to violence of which they are accusing others would be hilarious were it not so terrifying.
For this is nothing less than a totalitarian mindset which turns truth, justice and rationality inside out. In the Independent, gay columnist Johann Hari furiously demanded why I thought it was ‘wrong to protect gay children’ from bullying. Eh? What on earth was he talking about?
What I actually wrote about was the grossly inappropriate flooding of school subjects such as maths or science with irrelevant gay references. Yet he accused me, in effect, not only of being indifferent to the bullying of gay children but of fomenting attitudes which cause them to be bullied.
But there is nothing to suggest that anything I have ever written has had anything to do with the victimisation of a gay child — let alone other supposed crimes Hari hurled my way (if he’d had a kitchen sink to hand, doubtless he’d have hurled that, too).
If anything incites hatred, this vicious attack is surely it — a graphic advertisement of the totalitarianism of which I was warning. For such libellous and Orwellian distortions help create the witch-hunt atmosphere (indeed, in several messages I was actually called a ‘witch’) that leads directly to the open incitement to violence and murder on such appalling display during the past week.
The key distinction I have always made is between gay people — against whom I have no harsh feelings — and the gay political agenda. (And I seem to recall that once upon a time Hari himself paid tribute to me for making just such a distinction.)
I am firmly against all bullying and prejudice. It has always seemed to me quite wrong that people should become targets of prejudice or discrimination on account of their private sexual behaviour.
After all, it is the essence of a liberal society that people can behave as they wish in private — so long as others are not hurt by it.
The key word, however, is ‘private’. And the problem with the gay agenda, it has always seemed to me, is that it has sought instead to commandeer the public sphere by dictating a profound change in the moral norms of our society — indeed, to destroy the very idea of moral norms at all.
It is this view that has produced the foaming hysteria. ‘How dare you say we are trying to destroy the idea that heterosexuality is normal — of course, gays are just as normal,’ goes the cry.
But, of course, once again they are merely making my point for me. What they also fail to acknowledge is that I have exactly the same concern about other aspects of ‘victim culture’, such as family lifestyle choices, multiculturalism or militant feminism.
Whether it is dealing with lone parents, women or gays, ‘victim culture’ holds that all these groups are entitled to exactly the same outcomes in life — children, promotion, equal pay or marriage benefits — as anyone else, regardless of the fact that their circumstances may be very different.
Because this thinking starts from the premise that such groups are the victims of those with power — whether these are men or heterosexuals — their members are therefore deemed to do no wrong, while the so-called ‘victimisers’ can do no right.
By definition, therefore, victim culture and the ‘rights agenda’ that fuels it turns truth and lies, victim and aggressor, fairness and injustice upside down.
To oppose the gay rights agenda no more means that one is anti-gay than to oppose multicuturalism or extreme feminism means one is anti-black or anti-woman.
What really alarms me, and the reason why I bang on about the dangers of these different rights agendas, is that they are eroding the bedrock values that underpin our free, tolerant and liberal society.
By overturning moral norms and hijacking language in this way, they are hollowing out our culture. More frightening still, as has been so graphically demonstrated by the reaction to my article, they are also rendering people increasingly incapable of rational thought.
And that makes our society intensely vulnerable to the radical Islamists whose inroads, for very similar reasons, we are also not allowed to discuss without being tarred and feathered as ‘Islamophobes’.
But here’s the really awful irony in all this. Gay people are dreadfully persecuted under fundamentalist Islam, which dictates that they should be killed.
Arguably more than any other British journalist, I have repeatedly warned against the lethal threat that radical Islam poses to the life and liberty of gay people, among many others.
The tragic fact is that, through their undermining of the moral codes of Western society, the gay lobby is making it more likely that this society will not have the wherewithal to defend itself against Islamisation — and if that becomes the case, the likes of Hari and the Twitter mob would finally understand what true anti-gay bigotry looks like.
Gratifyingly, I also received in the past week many messages of support. Clearly, there remain millions of tolerant folk who have not severed their links with reality — and who are sickened by having their fair-mindedness thrown in their own faces as ‘bigotry’.
Well, I have news for the bullies of the victim culture. Their attempts to silence those who defend truth, justice and decency will not succeed.
The more they attempt to do so, the more they open everyone else’s eyes to what they actually are — the West’s new cultural totalitarians.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=793 |
