NOT ON THE A LIST

There's HOPE for the World
Homosexuals Opposed to Pride Extremism
hopenow@hotmail.com  
August 2003  
If you don't swing with the Sodomites, you're nowheresville on the A-list

Last weekend's attack on the Gay Pride Parade in Stockholm Sweden and the infantile  spray painting of 'shame' on the sidewalk in front of St Michael's Cathedral is a sad  warning of how ugly and vicious the battle between the so-called right and left could  become.

My activist brothers and sisters in concert with the judicial elite, the cowed  politicians and the liberal media have seriously jeopardized decades of work to ensure  tolerance and privacy, because of their greedy, relentless pursuit of lifestyle affirmation.  It's as easy as eating an ice-cream cone to deconstuct same-sex marriage without  the slightest reference to Scripture or church doctrine.

Although I hate dogma in  in any form - be it religious or gay activist - I recognize the universal truth that no  major world religion has ever endorsed homosexuality which can be openly practised  only in peaceful, affluent and cosmopolitan times. Even in classical antiquity,  homosexuality was controversial, and despite the exaggerated claims of todays  partisans, there was no place or period where it flourished in complete freedom  from moral opprobrium.  Instead of excoriating the Vatican and misquoting Bishop Henry, the 'choice and  diversity' crowd would do well to read the gay press, which normally tows the  activist party-line, but which has long been replete with articles, editorials and  letters lambasting and lampooning the whole idea of same-sex nuptials.

Clearly,  a substantial majority of us neither need nor want gay marriage. Lesbian authors,  Jane Rule and Camille Paglia, drag queen, Sky Gilbert and the late pioneer activist,  Harry Hay are among the numerous prominent opponents of this forced parity.  We neither need nor want the state in our bedrooms. We neither need nor want to be shackled by rules, regulations or paperwork. We've already won the same-sex  benefits battle, so there's no longer concern over matters of pensions or estates.  Let the straights keep marriage. We need to be liberated from the mainstream,  homogeneous, egalitarian mindset that is destroying what is left of gay culture.  

Even the January 14, 2001 gay wedding spectacle at Toronto's Metropolitan  Community Church, although treated as the social event of the season by a  delirious media circus, was shunned and scoffed at by the gay community.  Better to stay at home and clean out the fridge when your public image is so  embarrassingly represented by such maudlin specimens of martyrdom, who  fancy themselves as pioneers and revolutionaries, but who simply reinforce  reinforce every prejudice against us.  

As an openly gay male, I have no problem conceding that heterosexuality is and will always be the great human norm. But I have no time for the  modern, feel-good, pop-culture mentality that facilely equates homosexuality  with heterosexuality and asks no deep questions about human psychology  beyond the the superficial liberal-vs-conservative, freedom-vs-oppression  dichotomy. And I have even less time for the unsatiable demands and  infantile caterwauling of my radical brothers and sisters who want to make  the whole world their closet.  

So, I formed HOPE (Homosexuals Opposed to Pride Extremism) in 1997 to  

a) expose the lies, myths, distortions and propaganda of modern gay activism,  

b) deconstruct the oppression and victimology politics,

c) give a credible voice  to happy, successful and independent gays and lesbians who don't wake up  every day finding "hate, bigotry and discrimination" under the bed and who  don't go running to the courts, the governments or the human rights commissions for a lifetime of therapeutic preferences.

Over the past six years, my supposedly  controversial stance has brought me considerable media attention, writing articles  or being written about in both the gay and mainstream press, and participating in  radio and television interviews and debates. In April of 2001, I was asked to  prepare an affidavit on behalf of the respondents in the same-sex marriage cases  being heard in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.  

Most Canadians believe that gays and lesbians should be able to pursue any  brand of consensual sex as we see fit and form whatever relationships that  make us happy. But I'm sick and tired of the activist mantra that my dignity  and my relationships are devalued because the state will not codify same-sex  marriage. And I'm not so insecure and so selfish to demand that marriage be  redefined for everyone else.

Marriage is not an arbitrary convention and is not  meant to change with the times. We're not talking about music, fashion or art.  We're talking about an institution whose 4 prohibitions - you can only marry  one person at a time, only someone of the opposite sex, never someone beneath  a certain age, and not a close blood relative - have been grounded in morality  and in law for millennia. Humankind yearns for these stabilizing factors in our  kaleidoscopic world and if we abandon these standards, then everything becomes legal and everything becomes moral.

If gay marriages are permitted (a prerogrative of the most decadent Roman emperors), why not polygamy? Why not brother and sister or parent and child?  One does not have to be a "fanatical, right-wing, religious fundamentalist" to  oppose gay marriage. It is significant to note that an interfaith coalition of Roman Catholics, Sikhs, Muslims, Anglicans and Evangelicals intervened in the court challenges to the Marriage Act and continue to fight this nihilism to the bitter end.  

That such a diverse body of religious organizations, all of whom have numerous disagreements in matters of doctrine, theology and practice, are unanimous in  their defence of marriage, clearly shows a universal pressing concern for this issue.  

So gays need to stop bitching about sincere Christians, Jews and Muslims who are merely exercising their constitutional rights to free speech about homosexuality  and whose vast philosophical perspective easily triumphs over the provincialism and amorality of the gay world. Indeed, their position is far more credible and  honest than the tortuous casuistry of self-interested clerics who take the path of  least resistance by creating their own church, tailor-made to affirm their Rainbow  philosophy.  

Gay activists and their ever-willing accomplices in the media, relentlessly drive  through our skulls that homosexuality is "not a choice", because no one would  choose to be gay in a homophobic society.

Firstly, there is an element of choice in all behavior, sexual or otherwise.

Secondly, despite public fanfare and trendy  hypotheses, there is no conclusive scientific evidence as to the biological, genetic, psychological and sociological influences on sexual orientation.

The modern change  in opinion concerning homosexuality, though presented as a scientific advance, is  contradicted rather than supported by science. It is a transformation of public morals consistent with widespread abandonment of the Judeo-Christian ethics upon which our civilization is based. Though hailed as "progress", it is really a reversion to ancient pagan practices supported by a counter-culture restatement of gnostic moral relativism.  

It is well documented that long term relationships and fidelity are extremely rare in the gay world. From Hollywood Boy Parties to Fire Island, from Gay Pride to  Gay Games, homosexual men are relentlessly searching for "Mecca" - even if it's  just for a weekend. Even at the Annual Global Conference on AIDS, the nightlife is more noteworthy than the daytime activities. Every night the discos are packed with gay doctors, nurses, activists and researchers shamelessly cruising one another.  Likewise the bathhouses do land-office business.

In spite of the solemnity and  tragedy in dealing dealing with a wasteful and fatal disease, the hedonistic,  promiscuous, sex-carnival atmosphere never lets up.  One of the most popular and essential resource guides for gays who travel, are  those which reverently chronicle cruising areas for anonymous gay sex, from  bathhouses, parks, public washrooms, rural highways to big-city bus stations.  

Anyone who, thinks that same-sex marriage will quell the gay male compulsion  for libidinal excess, is either naive or disingenuous.

Recently, Xtra, Canada's gay and lesbian bi-weekly, ran a feature entitled "How to Stay Married and Still  Be a Slut", which, at first glance, seems satirical, but which is actually a serious guideline on how to have one's cake and eat it too.

Another article in the same  journal, spoke of the perverse irony that the right to marry is being fought by those who are already hitched, their youth gone, their kids growing or grown, and their parents shrinking before their very eyes.  In its affidavit in support of same-sex marriage, EGALE (Equality for Gays and  Lesbians Everywhere) contends that if gays and lesbians are excluded from  that which is available to the rest of society, we will always remain marginalized and stigmatized. Rubbish!

Gay activism has always been naive in its belligerent confidence that "homophobia" will disappear with massive and forced education  of the benighted. But such relentless indoctrination cannot be achieved without fascist obliteration of all freedoms. And since freedom always trumps diversity  and tolerance, you can rest assured that any perceived threat to freedom will result in a societal backlash which will guarantee oppression of all homosexuals.  

Gay males, especially, are forever on the edge of a precipice, because in a political cataclysm we are always the first to be purged.  Another spurious contention from EGALE is that "gender purity" is tantamount  to "racial purity". This is not only intellectually dishonest, but is insultingly disrespectful to Blacks, Jews and other ethnic minorities.

Lesbian author and  professor of humanities, Camille Paglia, succinctly states: " The gay activist  establishment has been stupid and narrow in the way it has conducted its civil  rights campaign. There is no gay leader remotely near the stature of Martin  Luther King, because black activism has drawn on the profound spiritual  traditions of the church, to which gay political rhetoric is childishly hostile.  

The parallel claimed by gay leaders between blacks and gays as oppressed  minorities has always been questionable, and many African-Americans  have angrily rejected it. Indeed, discrimination against skin color is not  wholly comparable to the complicated resistance of virtually all societies to open homosexuality, which involves thorny questions of morality and  psychology. Most gays can 'pass' whenever they want - an option available  to few blacks." (Vamps and Tramps, 1994)  

Whatever society teaches or doesn't teach about homosexuality, no gay or  lesbian, surrounded overwhelmingly by heterosexuals, will feel at home in his or her sexual and emotional world, even in the most tolerant of cultures.  At a young age we learn the rituals of deceit, impersonation and appearance, and anyone who believes political, social or even cultural revolution will change this fundamentally is denying reality.

The unhappy truth is that male  homosexuality will never be fully accepted by the heterosexual majority, who are obeying the dictates not of "bigoted" society or religion, but of procreative  nature. Yet this desperation deepens our artistic insight and allows us to create civilization. Undoubtedly, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Tchaikovsky,  Somerset Maugham, Gore Vidal, et al experienced hardship and alienation.  But look what they gave to the world.  Look how they advanced the cultural heritage. They were too cultivated, creative and cosmopolitan to be concerned with the trivialities of sexual pride, queer studies or diversity. One of them  glorified God and Church by painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, despite the Vatican's unequivocal denunciation of homosexuality.  

By far, the scariest and most insidious corollary to same-sex marriage is same-sex adoption (already legal in some jurisdictions). This is blatant child abuse. Children need a biological mother and father. We know this is not always possible, even in the context of opposite-sex marriage, but  we don't solve the problem or alleviate the inconsistency by augmenting it.  Children are not meant to be guinea pigs for social engineering experiments.  Self-interested partisans will manufacture statistics to support ther specious claims that children of gay marriages fare as well as those of traditional  families. But the phenomenon of same-sex parenting doesn't have the longevity needed for such conclusive evidence, whereas the experience of  single-parent families has not always, but often shown detriment to the development of the offspring.  

When society allows men to marry men and women to marry women, it perpetuates the alienation of the sexes and contributes to the ever-increasing crisis in the sex roles. Before Stonewall, gays and lesbians mixed socially and in the clubs with a pretty good understanding of and appreciation for  one another. But as gay liberation took hold, gay males, feeling ebullient from their new-found freedom, descended into a bacchanalia of narcissism and promiscuity. Segregated bars, orgy rooms and bathhouses exploded in number and luxury.

Strange parasitic diseases soon began appearing, and by 1981, a "gay cancer" was identified as AIDS. We must honestly admit that even gay men's attempt to create a world without women failed catastrophically.  

Unfortunately, most people's sense of history begins the day they were born, which means all that precedes is outmoded and irrelevant and all that follows is enlightened and progressive. However, we cannot and must not ignore the  lessons of history and natural law.  Again and again, it has been shown that  whenever humankind fails to protect time-honored political, moral and social institutions, whenever humankind attempts to embrace pride as a virtue and  mainstream behavior that contravenes natural law, and whenever humankind becomes arrogant, autonomous, egalitarian, nihilistic and foolish, civilization fails - always and without exception.

So, here we are repeating the cycle and getting ready to crash and burn one more time.

John McKellar  
President, HOPE  Toronto, ON, Canada