It’s OK to Be “Anti-Gay,” as Long as You Don’t Hate People

By Peter LaBarbera

Born “gay”? Oscar host and very “out” lesbian Ellen DeGeneres
revealed that she was molested by her stepdad as a teenager.

It’s OK to be “anti-gay,” as long as you don’t hate people. That is, as long as you understand that “gay” is not an innocuous, inborn trait but an adjective describing wrong and destructive behavior.

Sexual revolutionaries stole the real meaning of “gay” (merry, exuberant, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary) decades ago, and it’s long gone now. So let’s try to redeem it by making some sense of what “gay” is and what it is not:

“Gay” is not an unchangeable trait like skin color and it has a moral component – unlike being left-handed or having blue eyes (to name two spurious analogies used by homosexual activists).

Nor is “being gay” “who you are,” as homosexual activists claim, but rather “what you do.” Even the word homosexual –– a Greek-Latin hybrid that dates back only to 1869 –– should be used only as an adjective, not a noun, as my friend and AFA-Michigan leader Gary Glenn reminds us (this is very hard to do, by the way).

The great news is that nobody has to be “gay.” Homosexuality need not be permanent in a person’s life, as proved by the thousands of former homosexuals living contented lives today. There are no ex-Blacks or ex-Latinos, while there are lots of ex-“gays” –– a fact that by itself should negate “gayness” as a civil rights category. (Strangely, many of the same liberals who lecture us about respecting “gays” either ignore or ridicule ex-“gays.”)

Nobody “happens to be gay,” either (another “gay” shibboleth). Environment plays a big role. Many “gay” men and lesbian women testify to dysfunctional or abusive childhoods and broken relationships with one or both parents. Ellen DeGeneres, a very public lesbian and host of the upcoming Academy Awards, has revealed that her stepfather molested her as a teenager. She is just one of countless homosexuals who testify to abuse in their past. Yet the media robotically parrot the “born gay” line as if it were just days away from becoming a scientific fact.

The semantic struggle that conservatives and Christians face is that there is no neat, positive equivalent to “pro-life” in the debate over homosexuality. Pro-normal? Pro-hetero? Nothing seems to work, hence we are left with the rather vague pro-family to avoid the negative-sounding, condemnatory anti-gay.

The evil genius of ‘gay’
Words have tremendous power. The evil genius of America’s homosexual activist movement is that it took a taboo behavior that was universally regarded as an unspeakable sin until a few short decades ago –– and redefined it as “gay.” In doing so, it created America’s “queerest” minority, at least until the homosexuals’ cross-dressing, “transgendered” allies came onto the scene using copycat tactics.

“Gay” activists succeeded in personalizing a destructive impulse to make it sound like a harmless identity, or trait.

Now the same movement is busily working, with media in tow, to shift the tables on shame: more and more we will see the phrase admitted homosexuals be replaced by admitted homophobes –– a sign of our decaying culture if there ever was one. It is shameful to practice homosexuality, not to oppose it.

Hating bad behavior is OK
Hatred of individuals is wrong and unproductive, which is why we joined others in condemning former NBA star Tim Hardaway’s comment, “I hate gay people.” But I won’t knock Hardaway for strongly opposing, or even hating, homosexual behavior, which even many liberals privately admit they find repulsive. (The Catch-22 of our struggle is that it’s near impossible to discuss homo-sexual behavior because it grosses everyone out — the “ick factor” — so the debate defaults to “gay”-preferred euphemisms like “discrimination,” “equality,” and “sexual orientation.”)

I hate racism, communism, and Playboy’s counterfeit brand of masculinity. Tree-hugging environmentalists hate Caterpillar tractors and Hummer vehicles. PETA hates MacDonalds, and many “gay” zealots hate me — sending a steady stream of nasty e-mails our way.

In the same sense, millions of conservatives — most religious, some not — deeply oppose, even hate, “proud” homosexuality as the ultimate rebellion against God and nature. For their part, Christians are called to go beyond that by loving people enough to share with them the hopeful Gospel message that people can “come out” of homosexuality by repenting and turning to Jesus Christ.

Homosexual activists despise the “Love the sinner, hate the sin” formula, but it best encapsulates the correct Christian approach on this issue.

Responsible ‘homophobia’
There is a lot of confusion these days, especially among cultural elites, about being “anti-gay” or its sinister twin, “homophobic.” The latter comes from “homophobia,” a term made up by psychologist George Weinberg in 1971 as a catchy sound-bite to advance the “gay” cause. (Are you feeling manipulated yet?)

Based on the reckless way it gets tossed around, homophobia now includes mere opposition to homosexuality. Calling people “homophobes” is the new pastime for smug liberals –– useful as it is to avoid a serious debate on the issue and to intimidate decent people into silence.

Don’t let yourself to be cowed by the Left’s gay-speak. We don’t fear homosexuals. We disagree with them. Should we call liberals “morality-phobes” because they promote abortion, homosexuality, and sex outside marriage?

Is it wrong for parents to be “anti-gay” when it comes to fighting the promotion of unhealthy sexual behaviors and “queer” identities to children in schools? No, that’s called responsible parenting. Is it “homophobic” when parents refuse to sit back and allow their children to be indoctrinated with pro-“gay” pabulum? If so, then I say: bring on more homophobia.

It is actually our duty to be anti-“gay” –– agenda, that is. In the saner parts of America, being pro-homosexual is still controversial, but the media is working on that. They love to champion famous people like DeGeneres who “come out of the closet” as “gay” (a false metaphor of finding light and truth by embracing deviance). But we must ask: what is so special about this particular aberration that merits its celebration? Why are the media treating unnatural sex and gender confusion as the new civil rights?

February is “Black History Month.” Brace yourself for media and school celebrations of “Gay and Lesbian History Month” if we don’t turn back this assault on normalcy and Judeo-Christian tradition.

Onward Christian pacifists?
We’re accustomed to liberals getting on their respective high horses to lecture us for not joining the pro-“gay” chorus. What’s new is that some Christian leaders, too, are now preoccupied with not appearing “anti-gay.” Some naively mimic homosexual activists by denying that there is a “gay agenda,” while others argue that criticism of homosexuality per se should be avoided in the national battle to preserve marriage as one-man, one-woman. Stay positive, they counsel us, their eyes nervously watching opinion polls.

Insofar as “soft” evangelicals undermine much-needed efforts to “re-stigmatize” homosexuality in the culture — or when they go farther by implicitly sanctioning “gay” relationships or denying that (all) homosexuals can change — they are unwittingly helping to advance the Gay Revolution. Faithful Christians simply cannot stand for expanding “civil rights” to include behavior that God considers an egregious sin.

I find myself wondering more and more if Christians can lead in this Culture War. (Where are all those men who are “wild at heart,” anyway?) Ministry to homosexuals is wonderful, but it should not come at the expense of determined resistance to the “gay” juggernaut that is corrupting children and threatens, literally, to criminalize Christianity and healthy moral values.

Not so “gay” after all
Of course, “gay” sexual behavior is nothing to be “gay” (merry, exuberant) about. Nature and human anatomy discriminate against homosexuality: one “gay” writer, Jack Hart, admits that “some practices common among gays — especially rimming [oral-anal “sex”] and anal intercourse — are highly efficient ways of transmitting disease” (Gay Sex: A Manual for Men Who Love Men, Alyson Books, 1998, p. 213).

Society no longer promotes smoking, so why are we promoting this deadly lifestyle – especially to impressionable youth? The “gay liberation” movement (for men) culminated in a level of promiscuity and easy sex without precedent in history, and simply unimaginable to most people. This served as a catalyst for the modern plague of HIV/AIDS. In his book, And the Band Played On, “gay” San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts (who himself died of AIDS at 42) describes the role of homosexual bathhouse orgies in San Francisco in spreading the disease –– yet, incredibly, such bathhouses are enjoying a comeback today.

A few months ago I got a call from a straight, libertarian man who was irked at our call to close down the “gay” bathhouses in Chicago. He asked angrily: “Why don’t you just let the gays do whatever they want and they’ll kill themselves off?”

I answered that “We don’t want them to die,” because we don’t hate homosexual men. Call us old-fashioned, but we want them to find freedom through Christ and to stop practicing bad behavior.

Yes, it’s OK to be “anti-gay,” as long as you don’t hate people. We should respect individual persons, but not as “gays.” Put another way, we need to try to love people like Jesus did (“Go now and leave your life of sin”—John 8:11) –– enough to tell them the truth, even when they don’t want to hear it.