about church "scandals" and "witch hunts" is that when we sit and munch popcorn over the sordid lives of the putatively powerful among the so-called "anti-gay set" is that we play right into the hands of those who want, not to eliminate homosexuality, but to ensure society continues to see homosexuality as dirty and shameful.
It seems I have said this, again and again and again. Until I make myself hoarse.
The anti-gay right has, and has never had, the intention of eliminating homosexuality or indeed any gender/sexual variance from our society. They don't care about that. And I wish some here on this blog and elsewhere, even in the gay community, would get their heads screwed on straight about the nefarious goals and methods of the homophobic (among other things) Right.
Right now, as diaries are being written reveling in the further disgrace of Haggard, a young man or a young woman is trembling in fear about telling his or her mother or father that he or she is gay.
(Note: I am not going to abundandly link and footnote this article, because I don't have to - the only thing that is required is a basic appeal to common knowledge and common sense).
I care nothing about Ted Haggard, now that he is "disgraced" and not among this powerful anti-gay cabal. And this diary is an attempt to explain why. But more than that, what the goals and endpoints are, and that we liberals do not help these anti-gay powerful in their mission.
The further disgrace of the already disgraced regarding gay calumny is going to do nothing to make that young man or young woman less afraid, less likely to come out. Less likely to live life as a happy and well adjusted gay or lesbian person.
Supposedly, the liberal left is "pro-gay". To the degree I will take issue with this is the degree to which it sees hypocrisy in the putative stance of the anti-gay right that homosexuality is evil. The degree to which they react to the public stance as opposed to the subtext goal and thinks this somehow makes a difference.
When you look at the actual goal, as opposed to the stated goals of the anti-gay right, however, the hypocrisy vanishes.
The so-called anti-gay right knows it cannot, and is not trying, to remove TEH GAY from society. What they are instead trying to do is to keep the lid on social change. More importantly, they do not see "gays" or GLBT as their enemy. They see OUT, OPEN AND PROUD GLBT's as their enemy.
The anti-gay right is not being hypocritical. The anti-gay right is LYING.
Do not help them.
Where is my evidence for this? It's all around you, every day, but look:
Embedded in the appeal against same sex marriage equality is the appeal to so-called tradition. When you see people like Rick Warren talk about marriage having been a certain way for 5000 years, he is bullshitting you, but the thought itself is not a lie, inasmuch as it may be wrapped in lies. The thought is to keep as many GLB people as possible from marrying. (I didn't include "T" in this one because the means of suppression of transgendereds is different if no less oppressive and insidious).
They want to keep you from SEEING happy and well adjusted homosexual couples. The anti-gay right cares nothing about whether there are such couples or whether they're happy or well adjusted or not. They just want the rest of the American public not to SEE or COUNT them.
But ok, let's move from marriage to the military. DADT -- which stands for Don't Ask Don't Tell but was originally supposed to be DADTDP (Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue).
That policy makes no pretense of either eliminating gays from the military or eliminating TEH GAY from any individual servicemember. The goal is quite open. The goal is to silence GLB individuals. The witch hunts find gay people who are very quiet about it but the real goal is to find servicemembers who have expressed their sexuality in any way. The open goal inhibits many things not least of which is the counting of gay, lesbian or bisexual individuals.
The census -- the census does not count GLBT individuals. At one time it counted individuals in a domestic partnership with someone of the same sex. (Note, under the Bush administration regulation changes, even this counting is not supposed to be done in the next census). But that is another way of making same sex oriented people tiny in numbers (especially in that homosexual couples are actively discouraged from forming such unions in the first place).
Hate crimes laws -- prohibiting among other things requiring States to report to the FBI how many anti-gay hate crimes occurred in the states that do not wish to do such counting, to not set any standards for states that do count, and so on. This keeps the number of anti-gay hate crimes reported artificially low. (I may be a little off on the exact details of this, but we do not have a national hate crimes law, why?)
Gay Straight Alliances in schools. Why prohibit or care about the formation of such "alliances" and not simply persecute openly everyone involved in them? If the immediate goal of the anti-gay right were to eliminate GLBT people, they would seemingly want such alliances to be formed, so they could identify the people involved.
The talk of "recruiting our nation's vulnerable youth into the ways of homosexuality" -- The anti-gay right would have you believe there are no homosexual or gender variant youth. Their goal is to maintain a skein of innocence, to posit that it is only the presence or influence of a corrupt older gay individual that makes a young person GLBT. The anti-gay right, though, has no illusions that young gay people exist and arrived at conclusions about their sexuality on their own. However, they want to pretend they don't exist which explains the particular viciousness with which GLBT youth are treated.
Or let's look at the open doctrine of the Catholic Church -- the stance that homosexual attraction is not in and of itself "sinful", but simply the open expression of homosexual attraction. And note that while the doctrine simply says homosexual SEX is sinful, same sex AFFECTION to the degree it would indicate sexual behavior may be occurring is just as persecuted.
Now let's look at transgendereds -- the repetitive and vile bathroom debate. Does anyone think that a man who was not transgendered could not simply enter a woman's bathroom and molest girls or harass women? Why the refusal of drugs to permit transgendered people to continue their transitions in prisons, if they are convicted of crimes? Here, the debate is a bit different and I don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs of it, but some of the "elimination from open presence in society" is here too.
Note the pattern in all the above phenomena here? The pattern is not one of trying to get society to eliminate gay people per se.
No, the goal is to continue to keep open homosexuality a shameful thing.
Would many people in the New Life Church have been shocked (and might have even come forward) were they to have privately discovered Ted Haggard's homosexuality, before it became a public matter? Of that I have no doubt.
But keep in mind I'm not talking about the followers and the flocks here, I am talking about the leadership.
If you look at the leadership, though, of the Republican Party, the anti-gay Protestant Right, the Catholic Church, the anti-gay enforcement in the Military (and the leadership therein) all evidence is they don't give a flying hoot about private homosexual behavior until and unless they have a score to settle, or it can be used as leverage against an individual, or the homosexuality can and needs to be used as some other excuse. But the overriding social goal is clear.
Ted Haggard is disgraced, and ought to remain disgraced. But not for the reason many people even on the left seem to think. He is and ought to be disgraced as a quisling, a willing pawn in this destruction of a whole group of people by the tool of silencing us.
So when the left sees and excoriates hypocrisy, it's important to remember that the inner goals of the anti-gay right are not hypocritical at all. To the degree that the left fails, it is in using the same tools and techniques of the right when a right wing individual can be destroyed. And it's not about that particular right wing individual being destroyed -- it's about missing the target, and perpetuating the very social phenomenon one is lambasting.