http://www.cultureandfamily.org/articledisplay.asp?id=2927&department=...&catego
'Sexual Orientation' and American Culture 7/10/2002
By Robert Knight
Some corporations are adopting policies based on flawed reasoning
INTRODUCTION
Beset by homosexual pressure groups, some of America's corporations are
adopting policies based on "sexual orientation." What seems at first like a
fairly easy and painless way to mollify activists inside and outside the
company instead invariably triggers more and more demands.
Caught in a spiraling campaign, companies wind up adopting policies that
defy their self-interest, create a hostile climate for other employees, and
open the firm to government intrusion and lawsuits designed to speed up a
radical transformation of American culture. As homosexual activists
themselves acknowledge, their final objectives are to eliminate company
policies that impart a unique value to marriage and to install a system to
discriminate against people with traditional values.
The strategy is this: Transform morality into a form of bigotry and then use
corporate and government power to eliminate that "bigotry." A case in point
is Lotus Corporation's "Diversity at Work Awareness Program," in which a
fact sheet is distributed that includes this statement: "Myth: Loving people
of the same sex is immoral (sinful). Fact: Many religious denominations do
not believe this. What is universally understood is that intolerance and
hatred is wrong."1
Businesses are a key part of the larger culture's tentative embrace of
"sexual orientation," which is altering America's cultural values. By the
time they have reached the last stage of adopting homosexually-oriented
policies, companies celebrate homosexuality through "gay pride" events and
even finance homosexual activism out of fear of offending newly empowered
homosexual employees.
Adding a formula to make a company more vulnerable to lawsuits and further
activism does not seem to be in the best interests of the company or its
stockholders. Yet many businesses have tried to appease homosexual activists
by incorporating "sexual orientation" into their nondiscrimination policies.
It is then that their troubles begin in earnest.
RECENT HISTORY
Since the dawn of civilization, all successful societies have had rules
regarding sexual behavior. All societies have channeled sex into marriage.
When they failed to do this, they lost creative energy and perished.2
Until the latter decades of the 20th century, America had a
marriage-centered culture and government policies that discouraged sex
outside of marriage.3 Extra-marital and premarital sexual behavior had been
discouraged as immoral as well as destructive to individuals, families and
communities. In 1885, the U.S. Supreme Court, in response to Utah's petition
to enter the Union, declared that to be admitted any state had to have laws
resting on "the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and
springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy
estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in
our civilization, the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the
source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement."4
Ratchet forward to the 1950s: Pent-up demand following World War II pushed
America's marriage rate to sky-high levels.5 Family life and the economy
surged along with the Baby Boom. But as America prospered, the seeds had
already been planted for a radical revision of how Americans viewed marriage
and sexuality. That development took off in the 1960s and is with us still.
Before we look at current trends, it is helpful to take a quick tour of the
socio/psychological history that led to the creation of the term "sexual
orientation" and to the modern-day homosexual activist movement.
THE CREATION OF SEXOLOGY
In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), the "father of experimental psychology,"
opened the first experimental psychology laboratory at the University of
Leipzig in Germany.6 The lab operated on the materialistic premise that the
mind and soul were one, and that psychology was a matter of mechanically
managing the mind. The view that man was responsible for his own behavioral
choices as a matter of right and wrong was giving way to the view that man
was the product of genetics, brain chemistry and environmental forces in
childhood. One of Wundt's disciples was William James, known as the "father
of American psychology." James, who wrote the influential book The Varieties
of Religious Experience in 1902, reduced religion from a matter of truth to
merely a therapeutic tool.
As a biographer of James wrote, the change was quite radical: "Western
society underwent a transformation of the basis for personal and collective
values.. Salvation was now a matter of survival, sin became a sickness, and
such religious rituals as confession, designed to alleviate guilt and atone
for sin, were replaced by individual and group psychotherapeutic
interventions, designed to alleviate the guilt of anxiety neurosis."7
In the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) transformed right and
wrong into the language of "needs," "responses" and id, ego and superego,
with sex as paramount. Psychology eventually grew into the dominant values
reference system among academic elites, displacing morality as a
decision-making framework.
Soon, sex was placed under the microscope. In 1919, an entrepreneurial
homosexual, Magnus Hirschfeld, founded the Institute for Sexology in Berlin,
Germany.8 The Institute studied the burgeoning homosexual subculture, which
was challenging traditional family morality in film, stage and in the
increasingly decadent "cabaret" culture of post-World War I Germany. As
historian Paul Johnson notes, "Stage and night-club shows in Berlin were the
least inhibited of any major capital. Plays, novels and even paintings
touched on such themes as homosexuality, sado-masochism, transvestitism and
incest; and it was in Germany that Freud's writings were most fully absorbed
by the intelligentsia and penetrated the widest range of artistic
expression."9 Meanwhile, "the Church, and, above all, the comfortable,
industrious middle classes, were savaged and ridiculed."10 In such an
atmosphere, Adolf Hitler was able to persuade millions of Germans that he
alone could restore decency and order, despite the fact that many of his
earliest supporters in the "Brownshirts" were sexual deviants themselves.11
Amid the growing decadence, Hirschfeld's institute thrived for several years
until the Nazis declared it subversive and closed it along with other avant
garde cultural experiments. But Hirschfeld's ideas traveled across the
Atlantic. In 1931, he toured America, aided by people who later boosted the
career of a young zoologist who was to become one of the most influential
men of the 20th century: Alfred C. Kinsey.12
THE KINSEY PHENOMENON
In 1948, Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, a massive
volume containing page after page of graphs, charts and reams of data that
supposedly provided the first scientific overview of sexuality.13 A willing
news media reported uncritically that "science" had overthrown traditional
mores and that Americans were awash in unorthodox and even bizarre sexual
behavior. Out of the Kinsey research came the idea that fully 10 percent of
the population was homosexual, an estimate that later, more reliable surveys
show to be closer to one percent.14
It didn't matter that Kinsey had faked much of his research, including data
in his 1953 volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.15 It didn't matter
that biographers of Freud and Kinsey both found that the great scientists
had skewed their data in order to validate personal biases (in fact, Kinsey
was even exposed as an outright fraud who made up "findings"16 to justify
his own prodigious appetite for sadistic, homosexual sex).17 Within a few
years, Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner and other pornographers were
citing Kinsey to justify their challenges to America's decency laws. The
drumbeat of "science" and the natural human bent toward vice transformed
cultural values regarding sex. Instead of viewing sex outside marriage as
"sin," Americans increasingly viewed sex as something free of moral
consideration. And with the introduction of the birth control pill in the
early 1960's, sex could now be totally recreational.
As a result of the Freud-Kinsey effect on an increasingly splintered and
individualistic culture, homosexuals in urban centers like New York and Los
Angeles began to work toward permanent, institutionalized change in the way
sexuality was viewed. Their work paid off with a major triumph in 1973.
Introduction
Recent History
The Creation of Sexology
The Kinsey Phenomenon
Takeover at the APA
The Real Meaning
Threats to Freedom
Attacking the Boy Scouts
The Salvation Army
Cracking Down in Canada
Undermining Marriage and Family
A Costly Shift
Conclusion
Endnotes
Appendix
TAKEOVER AT THE APA
By a vote of its House of Delegates, the American Psychiatric Association
removed homosexuality from its list of disordered conditions in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of the
profession. The change came about not because of new research. Scientists
had made no groundbreaking discoveries. No, the change because of a
political coup engineered by homosexual activists, a process documented by
pro-gay writer Ronald Bayer.18
Dr. Charles Socarides, a practicing psychiatrist who witnessed events at APA
conventions, including threats of violence by homosexual activists, said,
"The APA could only take the action it did by disregarding and dismissing
hundreds of psychiatric and psychoanalytic research papers and reports that
had been done on homosexuality over the previous two decades."19 In 1974,
the American Psychological Association followed suit under similar
conditions. Meanwhile, under pressure from homosexual activists, states had
already begun dropping laws against sodomy, thus paving the way for the
free-wheeling, promiscuous "gay" scene that homosexual writer Randy Shilts
chronicled as the prelude to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.20
Shortly thereafter, the term "sexual preference" began to give way to
"sexual orientation" in homosexual publications and then in the psychiatric
and psychological literature. In fact, it began to turn up everywhere, from
magazines to school policy proposals. A seemingly innocuous phrase to
describe everybody's sexual roadmap, "sexual orientation" is much more than
that. The preceding historical overview was intended to show that the term
did not appear in a vacuum but was instead a key and deliberate step in an
unfolding process of securing social, political and economic support for
homosexuality.
THE REAL MEANING OF "SEXUAL ORIENTATION"
Just as many other terms swiftly achieve commonly accepted usage, "sexual
orientation" is rarely challenged or examined. Yet "sexual orientation" as a
concept is a radical challenge to the core beliefs of all major religious
faiths and even to the very notion that sexual behavior has moral
dimensions. While other human activities, such as buying and selling, remain
subject to moral judgments, the concept of "sexual orientation" places sex
outside morality. No other human behavior with such sweeping consequences
has received such a stamp of neutrality. "Sexual orientation" contains the
following chain of assumptions:
People are born with certain sexual desires;
These desires are innate and therefore unchangeable;
Sexual preference is identical to other immutable characteristics such as
ethnicity;
People cannot choose to govern their sexuality any more than they can govern
their skin color;
Sexual activity stemming from these desires is self-validating;
"Sexual orientation" should have special protection in the nation's civil
rights laws and corporate policies;
Religious beliefs about sex and morality are no longer valid;
People who still feel that sexuality has moral consequences are bigots;
Such people must be silenced to achieve corporate harmony.
Springing from the psychological literature, "sexual orientation" is often
taken to mean "homosexuality." Given that its inclusion in policies is the
singular work of the homosexual pressure groups, that is a reasonable
deduction. However, the two words constitute an umbrella term for numerous
sexual behaviors, including paraphilias, which are sexual disorders.
According to the therapeutic manual of the American Psychiatric Association,
there are at least 20 distinctive sexual variations of "sexual
orientation,"and perhaps many more.
Few businessmen realize that when they allow the addition of "sexual
orientation" to their nondiscrimination codes, they are tying their own
hands when it comes to objecting to:
A man in a highly visible sales job coming to work in a dress and high
heels;
A woman in a highly visible position coming to work in men's clothes;
A person of indeterminate sex who insists on using either the men's room or
the women's room;21
A person of either sex who indulges a taste for extreme sexual promiscuity
and pornography during working hours despite being charged with representing
the company's tone and character;
A man who frequents prostitutes while on business trips and claims that it
is none of the company's business, regardless of the company's public image.
A partial list of "sexual orientations" from the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, published by the American
Psychiatric Association, are included in an appendix.22 Heterosexuality,
homosexuality and bisexuality are routinely included in broad legal
definitions of "sexual orientation." A fourth "sexual orientation,"
transgenderism, is beginning to be included in such descriptions. Other
categories consist of paraphilias,23 which are defined as sexual disorders.
Note: Some of the descriptions may be offensive to readers' sensibilities.
THREATS TO FREEDOM
When "sexual orientation" is added to a legal or corporate nondiscrimination
code, it is a giant step toward the adoption of policies that discriminate
against people with traditional views of morality.
In companies that have "sexual orientation" in nondiscrimination codes,
employees face pro-homosexual diversity training, and even programs that
openly assail traditional morality. As homosexual "diversity guru" Brian
McNaught writes in his book Gay Issues in the Workplace, "There are people
who believe that homosexual behavior is forbidden by the Bible. This too is
a personal belief."24 McNaught, who frequently consults for AT&T and other
Fortune 500 firms, counsels employers to dispense with any references to
marriage: "[H]eterosexist language can also be changed. We can say, for
instance, partner or significant other rather than spouse. We can say, 'Are
you in a relationship?' rather than, 'Are you married?'"25 As for employees
who decline to go along with the homosexual program, McNaught has this
advice:
"If individuals insist that the company's efforts to create a safe work
environment for gay employees 'discriminates' against the religiously
conservative employee and their values, I would ask them to 1) utilize the
support services, such as counseling, made available to distressed
employees; 2) speak to their supervisors so that they will be aware of their
stress; and 3) do their best to stay focused on the purpose of their time at
work. If the stress is so great that they are unable to function at work, I
would reaffirm the company's policy on discrimination and tell them if they
could not be comfortable with this policy I would understand why they would
feel it necessary to seek employment elsewhere."26
With pressure to conform to the view that "sexual orientation" is a
protected right, some employees have been harassed, lost promotions or even
have been terminated for questioning the premise. Here are a few
illustrative cases:
A San Antonio bank employee, Betty Sabatino, was told to attend a "fair
employment practices" session. During a period of open questions, employees
were told they were in a "safe zone," and that they could ask anything.
After being told that "sexual orientation" was being added to company
policy, Mrs. Sabatino asked why the company would choose to give someone
special consideration based solely on sexual behavior. Later, her boss
expressed concern over her question on two occasions. Less than a month
later, she was terminated. Reason: "Management's loss of confidence with
employee."27
A California software maker was forced to pay a settlement and legal fees
totaling over $1 million because the company did not promote a man who had
come to work dressed as a woman. It did not matter that the company did not
even know the "woman" was a man. The "victim" sued under California's
"sexual orientation" law. As legal fees escalated, the company finally
settled out of court. To pay for the loss, eight employees were laid off,
with the number eventually growing to 20.28
In Hollywood, California, an Orthodox Jew was working at his desk when two
homosexual colleagues stopped nearby. In graphic detail, they discussed
pornographic films that one of them had seen. The Orthodox Jew, who asked
that his name be withheld, asked the men to stop. They refused. He voiced
his concern to the human resources department and was told that he had no
business disapproving of the men's "sexual orientation" and that he was the
one who had better "lighten up."29
ATTACKING THE BOY SCOUTS
Even though they won a U.S. Supreme Court case in June 2000 that affirmed
that the Boy Scouts of America have a right to set their own membership
standards, the Scouts have been under attack in many places for resisting
homosexuals' demands for inclusion. In virtually all cases, critics of the
Scouts point to laws or policies containing the term "sexual orientation."
In June, 2001, the District of Columbia's Commission on Human Rights fined
the Scouts $100,000 and ordered them to reinstate two openly homosexual
leaders.30
In Broward County, Florida, in March 2001, the Scouts were forced to sue
after county commissioners barred their access to public schools in the fall
of 2000.31
The Ann Arbor, Michigan, City Council cut ties in August 2001 to the local
United Way for its refusal to eject the Scouts from the United Way
program.32
More than two dozen chapters of United Way have cut off the Scouts, and at
least 359 school districts with a total of 4,418 schools in 10 states have
taken action against the Scouts, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight
Education Network.33
Former Vice President Al Gore pledged someday to use the proposed Employment
Non-Discrimination Act, a bill to empower the federal government to ban
discrimination based on "sexual orientation" in all workplaces with 15 or
more employees, to force the Scouts to admit homosexuals. 34
During the week of June 17-23, 2001, PBS aired "Scout's Honor," a one-sided
documentary making the Scouts out to be bigots.35
On June 19, 2001, the American Medical Association's policy-making arm, the
House of Delegates, voted to urge the Scouts to admit homosexuals on the
grounds that exclusion is a medical risk. Ignoring the voluminous data
regarding the health risks of homosexual behavior, delegates aired comments
like this one: "Homophobia is a health hazard," said Dr. Thomas Hicks, a
supporter of the resolution, according to American Medical News.36
Despite all the media-driven attacks, most Americans support the Scouts'
right to set their own moral standards. In an October 2000 Chicago Tribune
poll of Chicago-area residents, "82 percent said the Scouts should be
allowed to meet in schools and other public buildings. Only 10 percent
disagreed, and 7 percent had no opinion."37
GOING AFTER THE SALVATION ARMY
Another organization that has run afoul of laws containing "sexual
orientation" is the Salvation Army, perhaps America's most respected
charity. In 1997, the Salvation Army gave up $3.5 million in San Francisco
city funding rather than submit to an order38 for them to offer "domestic
partner" benefits to homosexual employees.
In Washington, D.C., homosexual D.C. City Councilman David Catania boasted
in crude terms in July 2001 about how he threatened Salvation Army officials
over their policy on "sexual orientation."39
Recalling a conversation with a national Salvation Army official, Catania
related: "I said this faggot [referring to himself] controls federal grants
in the District as well as local and you'll never see another cent as long
as you live. I'll subpoena every one of you mother [expletive]s and I'll
bring you down and I'll turn my chamber into a national circus. Do we
understand each other?"40
Catania had made news on July 11, 2001 when he threatened the Salvation Army
and the Boy Scouts with cutting off city grants in the wake of a Washington
Post report that Salvation Army officials had tried to reach an agreement
with the Bush White House on the faith-based charity initiative. The Post
had reported that Army officials wanted assurances that they would be exempt
from local or state policies mandating special rights for "sexual
orientation." 41
CRACKING DOWN IN CANADA
We need look no farther than our neighbor to the north to see what America's
future may hold as "sexual orientation" policies and laws proliferate.
Unlike the United States, Canada does not have a First Amendment to protect
the freedoms of speech, press, religion and free assembly. But Canadians
share many cultural similarities with Americans, so their experience with
"sexual orientation" contains clues about where the concept eventually
leads.
Section 319 of Canada's Criminal Code banning "public incitement of hatred
and promoting hatred" has been used against people who are critical of
homosexuality.42
Dianne Haskett, the mayor of London, Ontario, was brought before the Ontario
Human Rights Commission for declining to declare "Gay Pride Weekend." The
city was fined a total of $10,000, of which the mayor helped pay half by
stepping down and forfeiting salary for three weeks.43 (Later, in an
election in which her opponent backed "gay" rights, Mayor Haskett prevailed
in a landslide.)44
A Saskatchewan newspaper publisher and a man who bought an ad featuring a
list of five Biblical verses about homosexuality were fined $4,500 each and
warned never to run a similar ad.45
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has warned major U.S. broadcasters
such as Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family
that Canadian stations may carry their programs only after excising any
segment dealing with homosexuality.46 Following a 1997 Focus on the Family
program in which panelists discussed scientific claims about genetic studies
and homosexuality as well as the aims and activities of homosexual pressure
groups, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council issued a statement saying
that Focus on the Family "attributed to the gay movement a false and flimsy
intellectual basis and a malevolent, insidious and conspiratorial purpose,
which, in the view of the Council, constitute abusively discriminatory
comment on the basis of 'sexual orientation.'" 47
HOW "SEXUAL ORIENTATION" UNDERMINES MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
Although homosexual pressure groups contend that they are only seeking
tolerance, many "gay" writers (and their critics) acknowledge that their
gains are already having a radical effect on society.
Writer Frank Browning describes how "gay people have pushed open a social
space through which individuals are searching for new kinds of family roles
and relationships, and that out of the search, some as yet unknowable
traditions will emerge.. Their determination to find a new sort of family
may well provide vital models for the remaking of all families, straight and
gay."48
World magazine culture critic Gene Edward Veith notes that the homosexual
drive to gain marital benefits is destroying the institution of marriage
itself as people abandon commitment and embrace the "gay" notion of serial
monogamy with "sex partners."
"This sort of reductionism - a spouse is nothing more than a sex partner, so
a sex partner is the same as a spouse - misses the point of what marriage is
and what its role in society amounts to," Veith writes ". So far,
governments are resisting same-sex marriages. But instead, marriage is being
defined down. As marriage becomes unnecessary-not just for job benefits but
for adopting children, inheriting property, and being socially
acceptable-the whole nation will be 'living in sin.'"49
Indeed, homosexual writer Michelangelo Signorile boasts, "Rather than being
transformed by the institution of marriage, gay men - some of whom have
raised the concept of the 'open relationship' to an art form - could simply
transform the institution itself, making it more sexually open, even
influencing their heterosexual counterparts."50
Homosexual editor Chris Crain openly boasts that the drive for "gay"
domestic partner benefits has fueled a dramatic erosion in respect for
marriage.
"In the English-speaking world, the faux marriages have been called
'domestic partnerships.' In France, they're called Pacte civil de
solidarité, or 'PACS.' .
"The effect on 'traditional marriage' has been dramatic. In France, where
PACS first became available in 1999, some 14,000 couples signed up the first
year, and almost half of them heterosexual. .
"Back in the States, many heterosexual couples are also choosing domestic
partnership [DP] over marriage for many of the same reasons. In almost every
jurisdiction where DP status is available, straight couples far outnumber
gay couples on the sign-up sheet, even taking into account that there are
more of them out there generally than there are of us. .
"The threat to 'traditional marriage' from quick and dirty domestic
partnerships comes at the same time some states are purposefully making it
harder to enter and exit that venerable institution. .These ineffectual
attempts at bucking up traditional marriage are losing the battle to a
popular and easier alternative [that] is increasingly available. There's
your threat to traditional marriage.
"That may well be a good thing, but it is ironic that the short-term
resistance from some quarters to recognition of gay marriage has contributed
significantly to the very harm that our foes fear the most - the piecemeal
destruction of traditional marriage."51
Homosexual writer Andrew Sullivan, in his book Virtually Normal, argues that
homosexual relationships might even be superior to husband-wife marriage
because of the homosexuals' capacity to understand the need for "outside
relationships."52
In 1997, the New York Times reported on a growing phenomenon called
"polyluv," in which three or more people form sexual relationships. Because
jealousy is still a problem, organizations devoted to group sex such as
Loving More use exercises "in which you practice feeling glad that your mate
is with another.. Some have even 'married,' with as many as six figures on
the wedding cake."53
As homosexuality becomes more accepted, so too is the trend toward
homosexuals acquiring children through adoption. Although many experts
quoted in the media continue to repeat the idea that: "Children with two
parents of the same gender are as well adjusted as children with one of each
kind,"54 there is no solid science to back this view. In a look at 49
studies about children in homosexual households, Robert Lerner, Ph.D. and
Althea Nagai, Ph.D. found that all had fatal flaws, such as tiny sample
size, skewed selection of subjects, and built-in biases of the
researchers.55 A study in the April 2000 edition of American Sociological
Review by pro-homosexual researchers also refutes the idea that research
proves that children are unaffected by living in "gay" households.56
Culture critic Michael Bronski summarizes:
"Whereas the original studies found that lesbian parents do not produce a
higher percentage of gay or lesbian children than heterosexual parents, the
reality, as Stacey and Biblarz point out, is a little more complicated. In
one of the original studies, 25 percent of adults raised by lesbians (six of
25) reported having a homoerotic relationship, as compared to none of those
(out of 20 surveyed) with heterosexual parents. In another study, 64 percent
of the adults with lesbian parents (14 of 22) reported that they would
consider having a same-sex relationship, as opposed to just 17 percent of
those with heterosexual parents (three of 1
.
"It's true that the people raised by lesbian parents were not more likely to
be gay in the sense of identifying themselves as homosexuals in adulthood.
That was the question the original studies asked. But their sexual
identities do seem more open-ended. And the new study does seem to show
that, as Barnard women's-studies professor Ann Pelligrini says, "queer
families are going to produce queer kids. By 'queer,' I mean kids who can
resist thinking in cultural norms. Kids with a sense of difference who have
the capacity to be critical of 'common-sense notions' of what families
should be.."57
Cultural analyst Patrick Fagan notes that the homosexual push for acceptance
became possible only because marriage itself had already fallen into a sorry
state: "Most of heterosexual America is now very close in its attitudes
about sexuality to the heart of the homosexual affective disorder: the
inversion into the self. These attitudes have created for children a culture
of rejection that is incapable of providing the antidote to the demands of
the homosexual movement."58
In summary, the growing acceptance of homosexuality cannot help but to
undermine societal support for marriage and family. Christopher Wolfe,
professor of political science at Marquette University, puts it this way:
"The most significant harm of legitimizing active homosexuality - the way it
would harm the family most - would be the educative impact on the formation
of people's ideas regarding the nature and purpose of sex, marriage and
family. Most important, the legitimization of active homosexuality would be
the most straightforward and comprehensive attempt to separate the essential
connection between sex and children that society has ever proclaimed. In so
doing, society would be undermining one of its most fundamental
institutions, marriage."59
A COSTLY SHIFT
When marriage is undermined, entire communities suffer. Fagan notes that
broken households increase the risk for children of:
health problems;
retarded cognitive, especially verbal, development;
low educational attainment;
behavior problems;
low impulse control;
warped social development;
physical and sexual abuse;
crime in the local community.60
The breakdown in marriage even leads to shorter lives. A study in the
American Journal of Sociology found that "for both sexes, the hazard of
dying falls significantly with marital duration, suggesting a cumulation of
the benefits of marriage over time."61
Contrast this with studies showing that homosexual men die far younger than
heterosexuals as a whole and many years younger than married men. An Oxford
University study showed that homosexual men lose seven to 20 years off their
lives,62 and an obituary study from gay newspapers in Omega: The Journal of
Death and Dying, revealed that homosexual men's average age of death, at
least for the group represented in urban gay publications, is 42 for all
causes, and 39 for AIDS.63
Corporations that accord nonmarital relationships the same status and
benefits of marriage are helping to undermine society's ability to produce
productive, honest, hard-working employees. What might appear to be a
concession to a relatively few employees actually constitutes a frontal
attack on the institutions of marriage and family. Not only is the incentive
to marry reduced, but the temptation to attain marital benefits outside of
wedlock reinforces extramarital sex, with all its consequent problems of
out-of-wedlock pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and risk of
domestic abuse. Domestic partner policies also send an indelible, socially
dangerous message to young people: Marriage is no longer important.
As social analyst Robert Rector has long contended, the surest road out of
poverty is threefold: get a high school diploma, get married and find a
job.64 Very few people who do this fall into poverty and become problems for
others. While people in the upper income brackets can temporarily weather
the abandonment of marriage, people on the poverty line cannot afford to do
so. Eventually, the loss of marital energy saps entire communities when the
unmarried household rate reaches 30 percent.65 Crime increases, along with
taxes, making such communities unattractive for business.
Marriage-based family life is the organizing principle behind all civilized
cultures. Marriage brings the sexes together in a unique legal, social,
economic and spiritual union. Because it is indispensable, societies have
accorded it various protections and privileges not granted to other types of
relationships. No other relationship transforms young men and women into
more productive, less selfish and more mature husbands and wives, and
fathers and mothers. No other relationship affords children the best
economic, emotional and psychological environment.
"Marriage-based kinship is essential to stability and continuity. A man is
far more apt to sacrifice himself to help a bona fide son-in-law than some
unrelated man (or woman) who lives with his daughter. Kinship imparts family
names, heritage and property, secures the identity and commitment of fathers
for the sake of the children, and entails mutual obligations to the
community. Same-sex relations are a negation of the ties that bind, which
are the continuation of kinship through the procreation of children."66 But
even without children, marriage is a societal good, as the two sexes
complement each other and provide stability to communities.
CONCLUSION
The acceptance of "sexual orientation" as a civil right is having profound
effects on businesses and on American society as a whole. As the drive for
acceptance of homosexuality increases, societal support for marriage and
family decreases, with predictable negative consequences. One of them is a
loss of freedom for people who believe in traditional morality. Another is a
loss of stability in communities, with a rise in crime, sexually transmitted
diseases and other social pathologies. Still another is a shortage of
employable, stable people.
The stakes are very high: Absent a marriage-based culture, can America
continue to function as a self-governing republic? History indicates that
the chances are slim.
America's best hope is to reverse the trend away from traditional morality
and to bolster the institutions of marriage and family, the surest producer
of stable, productive citizens.
***
Robert H. Knight, a former editor and writer for the Los Angeles Times and
former Hoover Institution Media Fellow, is Director of the Culture and
Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America. He is the
author of The Age of Consent: The Rise of Relativism and the Corruption of
Popular Culture (Spence Publishing, 1998, 2000).
END NOTES
Warren J. Blumenfeld, From Homophobia - How We All Pay the Price (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1992), p. 38, as quoted in the Lotus Diversity At Work
Awareness Program.
Joseph Daniel Unwin, Ph.D., Sexual Regulations and Cultural Behaviour, an
address given March 27, 1935 to the Medical Section of the British
Psychological Society, Oxford University Press, reprinted in 1969 by Frank
M. Darrow. Also, Pitirim A. Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age: The Social and
Cultural Outlook (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1941), and Pitirim A.
Sorokin, The American Sex Revolution, (Boston: Porter Sargent Publisher,
1956).
Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 (New York:
Basic Books, 1984).
Murphy v. Ramsey, 114 U.S. 15, 45 (1885).
Murray, supra.
The Concord Desk Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, (New York: Time, Inc.), p. 1297.
Clarence J. Karier, Scientists of the Mind (Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1986), p. 28, quoted in Bruce Wiseman, Psychiatry: The Ultimate
Betrayal (Los Angeles: Freedom Publishing), 1995, p. 10, 11.
Judith A. Reisman, Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences (Arlington, Va.: The
Institute for Media Education, Inc., 1998, 2000), p 21.
Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Eighties (New
York: Harper & Row, Publishers), 1983, pp 114-115.
Ibid, p. 115.
William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi
Germany (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), p. 38.
Reisman, Kinsey, Crimes and Consequences, p. 22.
Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in
the Human Male, (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Co., 1948).
E.O. Laumann, J.H.Gagnon, R.T.Michal, & S. Michaels, The Social Organization
of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States, (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994); D. Forman & C. Chilvers, "Sexual Behavior of Young and
Middle-Aged Men in England and Wales," British Medical Journal, 298, 1989:
1137-1142; G. Remafedi, et al., "Demography of Sexual Orientation in
Adolescents," Pediatrics, 89, 1992: 714-21.
Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell H. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, Paul H. Gebhard,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders and
Company, 1953).
Judith A. Reisman, Edward W. Eichel, Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: The
Indoctrination of a People, John H. Court and J. Gordon Muir, editors
(Lafayette, La.: Huntington House/Lochinvar, 1990); and Judith A. Reisman,
Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences.
James H. Jones, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life (New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1997).
Robert Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of
Diagnosis (New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 102, cited in Jeffrey Satinover,
Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Bookhouse, 1996), pp. 31-35.
Dr. Charles Socarides, Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far; A Psychoanalyst
Answers 1000 Questions About Causes and Cure and the Impact of the Gay
Rights Movement on American Society (Phoenix: Adam Margrave Books, 1995),
pp. 73-74.
Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987).
A recent example involved a male employee who allegedly perceived himself as
a female. When the Minnesota employer instructed him not to use the women's
restroom, he sued-and won-under the "sexual orientation" provision of the
Minnesota Human Rights law. Goins v. West Group, 619 N.W.2d 424 (Minn. App.
2001).
"Paraphilias," Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth
Edition, Text Revision (Washington: American Psychiatric Association, 2000),
pp. 566-582.
Ibid, p.566. "The essential features of a Paraphilia are recurrent, intense
sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors generally involving
1) nonhuman objects, 2) the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's
partner, 3) children or other nonconsenting persons that occur over a period
of at least 6 months.. The diagnosis is made if the behavior, sexual urges,
or fantasies cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social,
occupational, or other important areas of functioning."
Brian McNaught, Gay Issues in the Workplace (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1993), p. 10.
Ibid, p.50. Italics in original.
Ibid, pp. 100-101.
Robert H. Knight and Kenneth L. Ervin II, "Can I question homosexuality?
Don't bank on it," in The Other Side of Tolerance: Victims of Homosexual
Activism, Family Research Council, 1997, p. 8.
Based on confidential interviews with the author on Feb. 18, 1997. The
incident was related in "Computer Soft-Wear," in The Other Side of
Tolerance, p. 12.
"Privacy as a One-Way Street," in The Other Side of Tolerance, p. 9.
Matthew Cella, "Panel orders gay Scout leaders reinstated," The Washington
Times, June 22, 2001.
Author's interview with national Scout spokesman Phil Bevins, March 15,
2001.
Associated Press, "Ann Arbor City Council Votes to Withdraw from United Way
Campaign," August 20, 2001.
As cited in George Archibald, "Senate approves president's blueprint for
education: Helms amendment on Boy Scouts sparks debate," The Washington
Times, June 15, 2001, p. A-1 at A-22.
Interview with Charles Gibson on ABC's Good Morning America, Oct. 26, 2000.
Peter J. LaBarbera, "PBS' 'Scout's Honor' Dishonors Scouts and Journalistic
Integrity," Culture and Family Report, Culture and Family Institute, June
22, 2001.
Victoria Stagg Elliott, "AMA Recognizes Bullying as Public Health Problem,"
American Medical News, online edition (amednews.com), June 9-16, 2001.
Lisa Black, "Voters Back Scouts' Ban on Gay Leaders," Chicago Tribune,
Oct.18, 2000, reporting on a Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll taken Oct. 6-9,
2000, of 900 registered voters.
Based on San Francisco city ordinance #461-96, pp. 3-4, 10-11. See also
"City demands benefits for 'partners,' unwed couples, mostly same-sex," The
Washington Times, Dec. 30, 1996, p. A-3.
The statement was in a posting on the pro-homosexual Liberty Education Forum
Web site. David Catania is quoted during a "Redefining the Gay Agenda" panel
at the Liberty for All National Leadership Conference, held July 21, 2001,
in Chicago. Log Cabin President Rich Tafel moderated the panel, which
included reporter Bo Roehr, and "gay youth" advocate Verna Eggleston. United
Airlines was featured prominently as corporate sponsor and "the official and
exclusive airline of the Liberty Education Forum."
Ibid.
The Washington Post, July 11.
See Peter LaBarbera, "Focus Bristles at Canadian 'Censorship,'"
CultureFacts, Family Research Council, Sept. 9, 1998, Vol. 1, No. 32, and
Charles W. Moore, "Free Speech challenge based on biblical passages,"
Calgary (Alberta) Herald, August 1998, p. A-11.
John Miner, "Haskett shocker: The mayor steps down for three weeks until
election day," The London (Ontario) Free Press, Oct. 22, 1997, p. A-1.
Deborah Van Brenk, "Haskett landslide," The London Free Press, Nov. 11,
1997. The mayor received 61,908 votes to her opponent's 30,207.
Joanne Laucius, "Bible had role in exposing gays to hatred," The Ottawa
Citizen Online, June 20, 2001.
Author's interviews with producers from The Dr. Laura Show during 1999 and
2000 and a conversation with Dr. James Dobson during a taping of Focus on
the Family on August 31, 2001.
Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, Prairie Regional Council, CKRD re:
Focus on the Family, CBSC Decision 96/97-0155, decided Dec. 16, 1997.
Frank Browning, The Culture of Desire: Paradox and Perversity in Gay Lives
Today (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1993), pp. 155, 157.
Gene Edward Veith, "Wages for sin: Marriage benefits are starting to go to
those who are shacking up," World magazine, Aug. 18, 2001, Vol. 16, No. 31.
Michelangelo Signorile, "Bridal Wave," OUT magazine, December/January 1994,
p. 32.
New York Blade Executive Editor Chris Crain in his August 3, 2001 editorial,
"Gays May Ruin 'Traditional Marriage.'"
Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (New
York: Vintage Books, 1995, 1996).
"They Call it Polyluv," The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 16, 1997, Section
6, p. 15.
J.R. Harris, The nurture assumption: why children turn out the way they do
(New York: Free Press, 1998), p. 51, quoted in Robert Lerner, Ph.D. and
Althea K. Nagai, Ph.D., No Basis: What the Studies Don't Tell Us About
Same-Sex Parenting (Washington: Marriage Law Project, 2001).
No Basis, op. cit.
Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz, "Does the 'Sexual Orientation' of
Parents Matter?"American Sociological Review,Vol. 66, April, pp. 159-183.
Michael Bronski, "Queer as Your Folks," Boston Phoenix, August 8, 2001,
concerning the article "Does the 'Sexual Orientation' of Parents Matter?" in
American Sociological Review. University of Southern California professors
Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz found that, contrary to claims that
"gay parenting" studies show that children are no different in "gay"
households, the same studies actually indicate that children of lesbian
parents are more likely to experiment with and identify with homosexuality
than children raised in normal households.
Patrick Fagan, "The Inversion of Heterosexual Sex," in Same-Sex Matters: The
Challenge of Homosexuality, edited by Christopher Wolfe (Dallas: Spence
Publishing Company, 2000), p. 45.
Christopher Wolfe, quoted in Lawrence Burtoft, "A Rhetoric of Hope," in
Same-Sex Matters, p. 53.
Fagan, op. cit, p. 34. Also, see the compendium of more than 100 family
studies in Digital Archive, March 1987 to July 1996 from New Research, The
Family in America (Rockford, Illinois: The Rockford Institute, 1996).
Lee A. Lillard and Linda J. Waite, "'Til Death Do Us Part': Marital
Disruption and Mortality," American Journal of Sociology 100, 1995, pp.
1131-1156, cited in "Living Longer, New Research," The Family in America,
July 1995.
R.S. Hogg, S.A. Strathdee, K.J. Craib, M.V. O'Shaughnessy, J.S. Montaner and
M.T. Schecter, "Modeling the impact of HIV disease on mortality in gay and
bisexual men," International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 26, 1997, pp.
657-661.
P. Cameron, W. Playfair, & S. Wellum, "The longevity of homosexuals: Before
and after the AIDS epidemic," Omega: The Journal of Death and Dying, Vol.
29, No. 3, 1994, pp. 249-272.
Author's conversations with Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation,
1990-1991. Author served as Heritage's Senior Fellow for Cultural Policy
Studies in 1990-1991.
Charles Murray, as cited in Fagan, op. cit., p. 34.
Robert H. Knight, "The Importance of Families and Marriage," Testimony
before the Senate Health, Education and Social Services Committee, State of
Alaska, regarding SB 308, which would amend the state's marriage statute,
March 18, 1996.
'Sexual Orientation' and American Culture 7/10/2002
--
Atheism teaches that there is no God, hence no God-given rights. That
ideology coupled with a system that believed in the superiority of the state
at the expense of the individual was murderously synergistic.
--
It [charity] encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world
to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others;
which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of
human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that
are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to
render them to a menacing degree dominant [emphasis added].11
Margaret Sanger
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