by Chris Hedges
“When we follow God’s blueprint for how we’re supposed to live, things usually work out the way they’re supposed to,” Maier says. “But when we defy God, when we live in ways that are contrary to God’s design for us, we often reap a harvest of pain and suffering in our lives.” He warns that “if we redefine marriage in one way, there is no logical reason for us to not redefine it in other ways,” leading to the legalization of “polygamy or group marriage.” This opens up the possibility, he says, of fathers marrying their daughters. “They say, ‘Well, if marriage can be redefined to include two men or two women, what’s to stop us from redefining it to allow marriage between a man and four women, or a group of six or seven adults and their various children?’ ”
The danger of same-sex marriage is that it “will also teach our children that the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ and ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are simply meaningless social constructs.”
Melissa Fryrear, who says she used to be a lesbian, blames abusive parental relationships for “same-sex attraction.”
“For those who have been abused by a male, oftentimes that tremendous rage, that hurt, can go underground, if you will, and it can begin to emerge later in life, perhaps in rejecting your female identity or the fact that you look like a woman,” she says. “When I lived homosexually, I was very butch and very mannish. I still have some work to do”—a comment that elicits laughter—“but I’ve covered some bases, too. I looked mannish and I looked masculine because it was a liability to be a woman. Because it meant that I could be hurt, it meant that I could be victimized, and it was my suit of armor to keep me safe. So [it was a] rejection of that female identity. It can be a fleeing from men.”
Many in the church take notes in the space provided in their conference booklets. Many cry softly when speakers mention giving up their lives to God and being cured of “same-sex attraction.” And periodically, especially during the testimonies, there are shouts of “amen.”
The speakers accuse gays of controlling television, radio and Hollywood. The gay movement, they say, is more politically active and powerful than other movements. Gays are attacked as diseased and part of the criminal class. But the bedrock of the attack is that homosexuality is against God’s ordained natural order, that what gay men and women do is perverted and pathological. They are not only a threat to children, but a threat to Christians. Gays, those at tonight’s conference are told, hate them and want to destroy them.
“Religion is treated as irrelevant or downright evil,” Robert H. Knight writes in The Homosexual Agenda in Schools, distributed by Dobson’s Family Research Council. “Homosexual books, magazines and newspapers are filled with bitter and often obscene denunciations of religion in general and Christianity in particular. One activist calls for the outlawing of churches that disapprove of homosexual conduct. Another carefully outlines an advertising campaign that equates Christian clergy with Nazis and Klansmen. Homosexual stage performers dress up in clerical garb and commit obscene acts. A gay-rights cartoonist depicts Christ having anal intercourse with His cross. These are not isolated examples from an otherwise gentle and loving literature. The attitude pervades the homosexual movement.”6
Gays and lesbians within the church, seeking desperately to deny their sexuality and remain in the Christian collective, suffer severe depression and blows to their self-esteem. The U.S. Surgeon General’s office has published data indicating those who are young and gay are two to three times more likely to commit suicide.7 Those who are able to conform, no matter what the personal cost, will find acceptance. Those who remain militant, who stand up for another way of being, are condemned. The tactics that will finally remove them and their supporters from a future Christian America are left unmentioned, but the rhetoric makes it plain that there will not be a place for them. And these preachers warn that if America does not act soon to repress the lifestyles of gays and lesbians, God will punish the nation.
When Pat Robertson was asked by Jerry Falwell if God had allowed the attacks on September 11, both the question and its answer stoked this fear of divine wrath and apocalyptic judgment:
I believe that the protection, the covering of God that has been on this great land of ours for so many years, had lifted on September 11, and allowed this thing to happen. God apparently had good reasons for exposing the U.S.A. to such destruction, given the many sins that Americans have committed ever since the Roe versus Wade court case and the Supreme Court’s decision to keep God out of the schools. In fact, American infidelity goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, to situational ethics and notions of cultural relativity, along with a flirtation with communism at the highest levels of government. The point is not just that Americans have been bad and forfeited their entitlements. It is that unless they reform themselves in a hurry, something far worse may happen to them.8
Should another catastrophic attack occur, what will prevent these preachers from calling for the punishment, detention and quarantining of gays and lesbians—as well as abortionists, Muslims and other nonbelievers—to safeguard the nation? What will stanch the hate crimes and physical attacks against those deemed immoral by fearful and angry Christians, those condemned by these preachers as responsible for the nation’s abandonment by God? How will the nation function rationally if homeland security depends on an elusive piety as interpreted by the Christian Right? And most ominously, the fringe groups of the Christian Right believe they have been mandated by God to carry out Christian terrorism, anointed to murder doctors who perform abortions and godless Muslims in Iraq. In a time of anxiety and chaos, of overwhelming fear and uncertainty, how many more will be prodded by this talk of divine vengeance to join the ranks of these Christian extremists?
The drive to ban same-sex marriages in the 2004 election was just one step in a campaign to strip gays and lesbians of civil rights. A 1996 federal law already defines marriage as a union occurring between a man and a woman. Currently 19 states have written prohibitions on same-sex marriage into their state constitutions. As of this writing the latest were passed in Kansas and Texas in 2005; 13 states adopted constitutional bans on gay marriage in 2004, while four had previous bans. At least seven states will hold statewide votes on same-sex marriage bans in 2006.9 These referendums fan the fires of fear and hatred. Bans have to be passed, believers are told, so “activist judges” will not overturn the laws forbidding same-sex marriages. The Christian Right, with its constant need for scapegoats and satanic enemies to be defeated, use the state referendums to mobilize and energize followers, even as the most pressing social ills of the country are ignored.
Any relationships outside the rigid, traditional model of male and female threaten the hierarchical male power structure vital to the movement. Women who do not depend on men for their identity and their sexuality, who live outside a male power relationship, challenge the cult of masculinity, as do men who find tenderness and love with men as equals. The lifestyle of gays and lesbians is intolerable to the Christian Right because their existence is a threat to the movement’s chain of command, one its leaders insist was ordained by God.
The Reverend Dr. Mel White, who produced films and worked with most of the prominent leaders within the Christian Right, came out as a gay man in 1993 in his installation as dean at the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches Cathedral of Hope church in Dallas. Like many gay men in the church, he struggled until late in life with his homosexuality, condemning himself for feelings and inclinations he could not control.
“Conservative Christians shaped the very core of my faith and passed on to me my love for Jesus, the Bible, and the church,” White wrote in his autobiography, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America. “But all through those wonderful days of childhood and early adolescence, a heavy layer of clouds floated between me and the heavens. In spite of their many gifts to me, those same conservative Christians remained silent about the secret longings of my heart. And though I was surrounded by their loving presence, that
same silence left me feeling increasingly isolated and lonely. In the days of my gay childhood, there was no one who even tried to help clear up my growing confusion, guilt, and fear.”10
White’s grandmother was a tent revival preacher, traveling around the country on trains to preach and set up storefront churches. When White was 12 years old, she told him that she had given up sex with her husband to “work for the Kingdom.” “Jesus is coming soon,” she told White. “Don’t be distracted by anything.”11
White was a model Christian youth. He worked to save the souls of his friends and classmates. He was the student body president at his high school.
“In those early years, I thought for certain that my secret longings were a sign that my Creator had abandoned me,” White wrote.12
White would lie awake, “begging God to heal me, to take away the feelings I could not understand, to make me like the rest of them once and for all. It was a prayer I had prayed hundreds of times before. I prayed it in my junior high gym when we showered together and I was terrified by my involuntary physical response to the other naked boys. I prayed it at the beach when I lay with my fellow surfers in the sand and was aroused by their bodies. I prayed it when I was alone in my room at night, cutting out ads from bodybuilding magazines and hiding them under my bed.”13
In high school, White began to date Lyla Lee Loehr, whom he had known since seventh grade. White took Loehr, for their first date, to a Youth for Christ rally. He knew he could never bring her home to his parents—she wasn’t saved. But after a few weeks of spending time together at White’s church, she accepted Christ into her life.
White struggled to conform to a “heterosexual lifestyle.” His new girlfriend was the ticket out of sin.
“By then I had memorized the Old Testament lines from Leviticus that say a man who sleeps with another man is an abomination and should be killed,” he wrote. “Although I thought that God still loved me, I wasn’t certain how far God’s love would go if I ever ‘gave in’ to my ‘evil passions.’ ”14
White married Loehr and raised two children. He had a successful career in the church. He watched passively, however, as colleagues in the church struggled with homosexuality, suffered mental breakdowns or committed suicide. One such troubled man cut off his testicles.
When White’s younger brother was struck and killed by a car while riding his bicycle, White wondered if this was a message from God.
“There were desperate, irrational times when I thought maybe God was punishing me for my homosexual thoughts by letting my brother die,” he wrote.15
White, like many in the church, saw a series of Christian psychologists and psychiatrists. The first told him he needed to tell his wife. He did. Lyla agreed to help. White wanted to keep his family and career. He wanted to conquer his homosexuality.
“For the next years, I read and memorized biblical texts on faith. I fasted and prayed for healing. I believed that God had ‘healed me’ or was ‘in the process of healing me.’ But over the long haul, my sexual orientation didn’t change. My natural attraction to other men never lessened. After months of trying, my psychiatrist implied that I wasn’t really cooperating with the Spirit of God. After that, my guilt and fear just escalated.”16
In 1977, White began his first relationship with another homosexual man. The relationship lasted for a year, but the secrecy caused emotional strain. At the same time, he began ghostwriting for Francis Schaeffer, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, Pat Robertson and other Christian Right leaders.
“I wasn’t wise enough to anticipate where all this talk of ‘cleansing the nation’ might lead. I didn’t foresee that one day those same religious media personalities and the political groups they would organize could become a dangerous threat to me, to my gay brothers and lesbian sisters, and to all persons who might disagree with their political, religious and social agenda for our country.”17
He contemplated suicide while scuba diving in Hawaii and later atop a bridge. He saw more Christian counselors, and in despair slashed his wrists with a coat hanger as his wife screamed at him to stop. It was the end of their marriage. White met his partner, Gary Nixon, who sang in the church choir. He walked away from one world and into another. It became his mission to document the hate talk of his former employers and organize gay and lesbian Christians to denounce the bigotry of the Christian Right.
“This is a black and white world,” White says. “It is between good and evil. It is not a natural political conflict where people of good will can disagree, and they’re playing the political game beautifully. They pretend that it’s a political game, whereas in fact it’s a fight between God and Satan. They don’t ever say that. So they have taken the political process, and used it fairly against us. They’ve won the Congress and the presidency, and they’re about to win the courts because of their Congress and the president. They’ve won state houses across the country and precincts everywhere by the political process. So they have done what we didn’t do. They have a system to throw democracy out the window.
“They want to end homosexuality in America,” he says, “ . . . one step at a time, first the federal marriage amendment, and then comes no adoption, no service in the military, the reinstatement of the sodomy laws and driving us back into our closets, or worse. They do not want to compromise, but they begin with compromise after compromise after compromise.”
The advance, White says, is demoralizing the gay community, which he warns “is losing the will to fight.
“It’s safer back in the closet anyway, and since we can pass, or the gay leaders can pass, the ones who wear suits and have good jobs and have plenty of money, they will go underground,” he says. “It is the gay people out there in the hinterlands who have no options. They are being rejected by their families, discarded by their parents, kicked out of their jobs, harassed, outed and killed. The gay leaders don’t have a clue about this suffering.
“There are no fountains or cafeterias or bus stations we can integrate,” White says. “There are no symbols that we can attack. Marriage, the one great act of defiance, in San Francisco and Massachusetts showed to the country gay couples lined up to get married. This is something they didn’t like. The faces looked normal. They had children. These pictures were killing the caricatures. That, for me, is one of the great things we’ve done, just go to get married no matter what.
“What frightens me most are gay people who don’t understand what’s happening and who are unwilling to take a stand,” he says. “Once they take away our rights they’re going to start wanting to register us because we’re the ones who have the most sexually transmitted diseases. They’re going to say, ‘We want to register you so we can give you special medical attention.’ Quarantine comes next, along with taking away our children, the children we’ve adopted. They will take away the partnership rights the corporations put in place, because they can put pressure on the corporations. My bleakest description is that we’ll not only be driven back into our closets, but we’ll have to leave the country. Right now, we have to leave the state of Virginia, because of the law that says we can’t have any agreements, or any contracts, or any powers of attorney that represent marriage. So every gay person who has a business here lives in fear.”
The attack against gays and lesbians seeks to paint homosexual behavior as a form of barbarity, one step above bestiality. Gays and lesbians, like other enemies of Christ, are not fully human; they are “unnatural.” And in this assault there is often lurid fascination with the grittier details of homosexual encounters. Peter LaBarbera is the executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, based in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and a speaker who uses this rhetoric to depict gays as depraved. He denies the possibility of loving, committed relationships between gays and lesbians. He brands the lifestyle as one of “extreme promiscuity,” saying that “when homosexuals call it monogamy, it’s not real monogamy.” And sexual relations itself between gays and lesbians is, he insists, “gross, unnatural and dangerous
behavior.”
He warns about what he calls “the totalitarian impulse of a gay man.” He viciously attacks National Gay and Lesbian Task Force director Matt Foreman, who has criticized ex-gay therapies and the role some members of the clergy play in pushing gay men to these ex-gay groups.
LaBarbera calls on the crowd to “stop backing up in the face of homosexual cultural aggression.” It is time to fight, he insists. And then he hints ominously at what he would like to see happen, how he would like to see Christians battle in ways, perhaps outside the law, that are no longer “nice,” how he would like to take this war to the streets.
“We need a good cop, bad cop strategy. . . . ” he says. “We’ve been too nice. We need to have some people go over and do the tough things, like the other side does.”
CHAPTER SIX
The War on Truth
Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations. The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda—before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone’s disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world—lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world.