NEW BLACKLIST

National Post - March 30, 2000
http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary.asp?s2=columnists&s3=steyn&f=000330/245927.html
Hollywood's new blacklist
Unfortunately for Dr. Laura, standard Judaeo-Christian morality is now 'hate speech'
Mark Steyn

If there's one thing Hollywood's against, it's censorship. And blacklisting. And leaning on studio executives to end someone's career because of his or her views. And making people answer questions like "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?"

But, when it comes to "Are you now or have you ever been a member of a traditional Judaeo-Christian religion?", that's another question entirely. Hollywood is currently up in arms over Paramount's plans to launch a TV show with Dr. Laura, America's second most popular radio host and a biggish presence in Canada, too. (I listen to her on CJAD in Quebec.)

A believer in what we now call "traditional" morality, Dr. Laura thinks abortion is wrong, and that pregnant teens should give up their babies for adoption, and that women shouldn't agree to be some guy's little "shack-up honey," and that divorce is mostly a bad thing unless he's an abuser - all of which may be frightfully boorish and even neanderthal but wouldn't have got her into trouble had she not also, from time to time, expressed a view on the political agenda of the "gay rights" movement.

Because of this last transgression, the gay writers of the sitcom Frasier and various other colossi of the Hollywood establishment are now demanding that Paramount cancel the TV show and pressuring sponsors to pull out of her radio show. The somnolent presidential candidate, Bill Bradley, briefly woke up to insist that Dr. Laura's "homophobia" justified her expulsion from the airwaves. Advertisements have been taken out in The New York Times calling her "The Queen of Hate Radio."

Show business is show business and Dr. Laura's show does terrific business: 20 million people listen to her advice on moral questions, her books are best-sellers, there's even a Dr. Laura board game. But the agitated gays are insisting that those 20 million count for nought and that the First Amendment, on freedom of expression, counts for less. (Incidentally, just because Blame Canada was intended as a parody doesn't mean it's not true: The subordination of First Amendment rights to group-identity obsessions is, alas, part of the remorseless Canadianization of the great republic to our south.)

As the San Francisco Board of Supervisors put it, "At what point do her words become the equivalent of yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theatre?" - or, in this instance, yelling "Robert Mugabe!" in a crowded bathhouse. And just what is this "hate speech" that she's peddling? Well, The Advocate, America's leading gay newspaper, has fished out a couple of damning quotes about homosexuals being "biological errors" who engage in "deviant behaviour." But, otherwise, Dr. Laura, an orthodox Jew, is no harder on gays than she is on single moms, cheating husbands, drunken wives, and children who aren't respectful to their grandparents. Unfortunately for her, standard Judaeo-Christian morality is now, according to those gay guys at Frasier, "hate speech."

If you're an aged survivor of McCarthyism who's unrepentant about being an apologist for a totalitarian system that murdered untold millions, Hollywood lefties will be relaxed and, indeed, supportive. But, if you happen to think that gay marriage is not such a great idea, then getting the major TV studios, networks and affiliates to blacklist you is in the public interest.

Thirty years ago, in the early days of gay liberation, most of us assumed we were being asked to live and let live - that if a couple of fellows in the apartment upstairs wanted to sodomize the hell out of each other every night of the week, we should ignore the wobbling chandelier, turn up Lawrence Welk, and be "tolerant." But, throughout the Western world, "tolerance" has become remarkably intolerant.

In New Zealand, an appeals court has upheld a nationwide ban on importing a U.S. Christian video Gay Rights/Special Rights: Inside The Homosexual Agenda. In Toronto, the human rights commission, not content with fining Scott Brockie and ordering him to print up the gay activist materials he'd politely declined, also made clear to him that, as far as the state's concerned, his rights as an evangelical Christian don't extend beyond the front door of his house: A great religion whose precepts have informed the societal structures of the West for a thousand years has officially shrivelled away in Ontario to some weird, kinky practice you're allowed to do in the privacy of your own room.

On the other hand, "gayness" is now an entire philosophy and moral code that informs and infuses every aspect of society and culture. This is an amazing turnabout for a creed which, for most of the last two millennia, had no ambitions beyond whacking its penis up another guy's butt. By the way, you kinky Christians, don't assume you're safe in your private rooms and disgusting clubs - not if you happen to be in an Alberta religious college Delwin Vriend takes a fancy to.

Gay groups like to talk about "civil rights," even though, unlike American blacks, they've always had the right to vote, the right to own property, etc. So, in practice, as David Frum noted the other day, what they're after is a quite separate set of rights - the right to be exempt from Canada's obscenity laws, Britain's prohibitions on sex in public toilets, etc.

The casual observer might regard this as more of a crusade for highly uncivil rights, but apparently sex in municipal cemeteries is more integral to gay culture than to straight culture, and hardcore S&M, though degrading and dehumanizing in a heterosexual context, is affirming and supportive in a gay context.

"Deviant behaviour," in Dr. Laura's phrase, is (according to Webster's) behaviour that departs from established norms. In the courts and legislatures, "gay community" spokesgays are arguing that their behaviour departs from established norms in several crucial respects and that, therefore, the established norms require extensive amendment. It seems "deviant behaviour" is a bigoted slur when it's used on a California radio show but a compelling legal argument when deployed in the Supreme Court of Canada.

Even the most eloquent crusaders for "gay marriage" require, even as they're applying to join the club, that the rules must be changed. Rather than trying to constrain the "varied and complicated lives" of gay men within a "single, moralistic model," says Andrew Sullivan, the former editor of The New Republic, homosexual marriage should promote the "openness of the contract," which would be sympathetic of gay men's need for "extramarital outlets." Just because the priest's pronounced you man and husband doesn't mean you need to give up cruising the shrubbery on Mount Royal.

Well, live and let live. The question is: If I can live with the occasional rustle from the undergrowth as I'm strolling through a condom-strewn park, why can't gays live with the occasional expression of disapproval? You guys on Frasier don't like Dr. Laura referring to your "deviant behaviour"? Big deal. Stop being such a wimp. Get a grip on yourself, instead of the pert-buttocked houseboy. Dr. Laura is expressing an opinion when she calls you a "biological error." Stockwell Day, Alberta's great white hope, also disagrees with the good Doctor - he thinks homosexuality isn't "biological" but, as he said on the radio the other day, a "choice." Unlike the Hollywood crowd, Stock isn't demanding Dr. Laura be silenced for having the temerity to disagree with him.

But gay activists have figured that, instead of trying to persuade people to change their opinions, it's easier just to get them banned. Under the new intolerant "tolerance," expressions of moral traditionalism must be driven from public life. If the gays scuttle Dr. Laura, a devotion to conventional Judaeo-Christian teachings will be the love that dare not speak its name.