Family Leader

Last week, after an international forum on families concluded, I found myself seated at a dinner next to a United Nations Ambassador from a European country. The Ambassador had not participated in any of the discussions on controversial family issues. I asked his permission to discuss these topics. He eagerly agreed. 

When we broached the topic of same sex marriage he stopped me. “I am certain I will be on the opposite side of the question,” he said. “I believe in allowing people the right to do as they wish and not forcing my values upon them. I may not think homosexual relations are innately good [he was a family man with five children], but that doesn’t mean I have the right to take away the rights of others and force them to conform to my value system.”  

I responded, “Suppose you had the power to decide this question for your country once and for all, what would your decision be?” He hesitated, looked very uncomfortable, and finally responded that he would legalize same sex marriage.  I then challenged, “You now have 10 seconds to either legalize or ban same sex adoption.” After a much longer pause, he said he would ban gay adoption.  

I then asked upon what legal basis he would ban same sex adoption since he had just legalized same sex marriage. He looked perplexed. He had not thought through the issue. He believed it was perfectly justifiable to legalize gay marriage, but not gay adoption, yet he could not come up with any legal basis to ban gay adoption in our hypothetical world.  

Personal Freedom vs. the Homosexual Agenda 

It is one thing to allow others the right to engage in self-destructive behavior. (Individual personal freedom is a basic tenet of most faiths.) But allowing and even granting those same individuals the right to introduce this behavior as normal and healthy to society at large, especially to children, is a very different proposition. This is why we have laws that prohibit sexual acts such as incest, sexual abuse, and rape as well as drug dealing, assaults, and other crimes. 

At first glance, consensual homosexual sex seems to fit solely within the first category (i.e., self-destructive behavior). Gay activists, however, are bent on not just allowing men to have sex with men and women to have sex with women (let’s call it what it is). They want to force all of society to validate legally and ethically their sexual behavior and relationships, and enact laws that allow them to promote it to our children (and their adopted children), as healthy, normal and even desirable. The homosexual agenda is a worldwide attempt to justify behavior that is inherently destructive to both society and to the individual.  

Homosexual activists marching in a Gay Pride parade in San Francisco sported t-shirts declaring, “My bedroom, My business.” If people would confine their sexual activism to the bedroom then maybe it wouldn’t be our business. The problem with the homosexual agenda is that it is not only out of the closet, but in your face, and it is being spoon fed to our children through the media (see the most recent lineup of NBC shows promoting homosexuality) and the school systems, and is now being foisted upon the American people by activist judges.  

Our Children 

Several years ago, the California legislature enacted Assembly Bill (AB) 537. The bill revised the Education Code to prohibit harassment, discrimination, and hate-motivated behavior that is “directed at students who may be or are perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender individuals.”  

Subsequent to the passage of the bill, an advisory task force was established to determine how best to implement the bill in public schools. Twelve recommendations devised by the task force called for lifestyle proclivity instruction to students in California. Textbooks, videos, guest speakers, and other presentations are required to carry positive messages that embrace the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender lifestyles. School districts are to “create positive, grade-appropriate visual images that include all sexual orientations and gender identities for use in school common areas throughout the school year.”  

Other task force recommendations require schools to:

Homosexual Facts and Myths 

While many, through no fault of their own, struggle with same sex attraction, homosexuality is a choice. It is a sexual behavior that is unhealthy and harmful physically and mentally, with implications far beyond the bedroom. Last year the U.S. government spent billions of dollars on AIDS treatment, research and programs. AIDS in the U.S. is largely a homosexual disease stemming from unhealthy sexual practices. 

Those who hold moral views that maintain homosexuality is not healthy are being blamed by the homosexual community for many of their homosexual related problems. Deviant behavior causes psychological and physical ailments. Condoning the behavior will never make the consequences–both physical and psychological–magically go away.

In an article recently published in The Advocate, a homosexual online magazine, the author (Sue Rochman) explores the mental health issue of homosexuals within their cultural contexts. She cites recent research showing that gay men and women suffer from higher rates of depression and other mental illnesses than heterosexuals. Rochman suggests that the real cure for their maladies lies in “realigning society’s values to accept the homosexual lifestyle as normal.” Although Rochman recognizes that a disproportionate number of gays suffer from “minority stress,” which she attributes to the prejudice of other people, she recognizes that even gays living in supportive environments still suffer high levels of stress. Braden Berkey, Director of Behavioral Health Services at Chicago’s Howard Brown Health Center, states that what we need to emphasize is that “there is nothing inherent about being GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual or transsexual] that makes you more likely to be mentally ill. It is something about being GLBT in our society.”

Something is inherently wrong with this logic but the public is buying it hook, line and sinker. The same logic applied to adult/child sexual relationships (pedophilia) would allow us to rationalize that pedophilia is only harmful to the extent that society makes pedophiles and children feel like it is wrong. (And by the way, that logic has been promoted in scientific journals). According to this philosophy, it is society that decides what is good or bad, right or wrong. There are no absolutes and morality is simply a set of societal values that can be changed by the majority will (or by activist judges) with no detrimental consequences.

We are not doing those who engage in homosexual behavior any favors by supporting laws and programs that allow them to perpetuate the false notion that their behavior is healthy, normal, and inevitable and carries no negative consequences.

United Families International has gathered all the social science data we can find on homosexual issues, and there is not one credible study that shows long term benefits either to society or to the individuals engaged in these relationships. The data shows overwhelmingly negative outcomes for society and individuals. Click here to see excerpts from the draft section of United Families’ Guide to Family Issues-Sexual Orientation 

Judicial Activism and the Unraveling of the U.S. Constitution 

As a result of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, consensual homosexual sex conducted in private by adults is now equal to heterosexual sex and cannot be prosecuted under U.S. law. (See Lawrence v. Texas, Opinion No. 02-102 (June 26, 2003)). Indeed, gays have a constitutional right to engage in such self-destructive behavior. In holding that Texas could not prosecute homosexuals engaged in sodomy, the decision does no,t at first glance, appear to be monumental. The reasoning underlying the decision, however, is so broad as to leave little legal basis, if any, on which to prohibit gay marriage and eventually homosexual adoption of children.  

Notably, a majority of the Supreme Court Justices made it clear that “the fact the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice.” Rather, the Court’s obligation is to “define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.” The choice of engaging in a homosexual lifestyle, according to the Court, is “central to personal dignity and autonomy,” which is “central to the liberty protected by the fourteenth amendment.” A very similar broad interpretation of this right to liberty by a liberal Supreme Court years ago in Roe v. Wade resulted in the right to abort live fetuses. We have never recovered from that decision.  

So, after Lawrence, will a state still be able to prohibit same-sex marriage? Probably not. As the dissenting opinion by Justice Scalia remarked, the Court’s reasoning “leaves on pretty shaky grounds State laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.” Indeed, the Court’s progression of thought is revealed in two points made in the majority’s opinion: (1) emphasis on the constitutional protections afforded to “personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing and education,” and (2) its declaration that “persons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual persons do.” Note also the Court’s inclusion of family relationships and child rearing in the list of constitutional protections it believes are afforded homosexuals, both of which could include a right for homosexual couples to adopt children. Moreover, it is telling that the Court made no distinction between now unconstitutional anti-sodomy criminal laws and laws against bigamy, adult incest, prostitution, fornication and bestiality. 

How did the Court get to this point from its stance in 1986 when the Court affirmed a State’s ability to prohibit sodomy? According to Justice Scalia, the majority has “largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda” advanced by law professors and other academicians. This agenda, as noted earlier, is much broader than being free to engage in homosexual sex. In addition to U.S. academicians, the majority opinion also looked to how other foreign governments have handled this agenda. The decision cited an amicus brief submitted to the Court by a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, which referred to precedence established by the European Union Court of Human Rights and United Nations documents as justification for the U.S. to legalize homosexual sex. She claimed that the U.S. would lose potential global allies if we did not conform to alleged world opinion on this issue, even though the actual UN treaties signed by member states that she referred to do not mention sexual orientation or a right to homosexual sex.  

The Supreme Court’s decision referenced an action by the European Union Court of Human Rights related to homosexual “rights.”  This is one reason why United Families International has been fighting diligently at the United Nations to ensure that dangerous language is not included in UN documents, and other international documents, including wording which promotes homosexuality. We do not want UN treaties to provide additional precedent for judicial activism in the U.S. We, along with other members of the pro-family coalition, have been quite successful in this regard (much to the chagrin of the opposition). But this is an ongoing struggle that could further affect our Supreme Court’s jurisprudence.  

What’s Next? 

We predict that same sex marriage will be the most divisive issue of our time. The Massachusetts ruling, which is expected any day, likely will legalize gay marriage in that state and precipitate the war to legalize same sex marriage throughout the U.S. Same sex marriage likely will be a wedge issue in the upcoming election. The liberal media will continue to vilify anyone (like Justice Scalia and Senator Santorum) who believes that marriage should be between a man and woman. We may even become like Canada where individuals can be legally prosecuted if their expressed views on these issues don’t conform to the “tolerance/diversity” (homosexual) movement.  

The call for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution defining marriage is a radical approach, but may be the only remedy in response to our radical Supreme Court justices taking power unto themselves. An amendment to the U.S. Constitution can only be justified by looking at the alternative–same sex marriage as a constitutional right, which would lead to same sex adoption, the mainstreaming of the homosexual lifestyle in society and our schools, and the public vilifying and legally attacking any person, group, business or church who gets in the way of this agenda. Such a scenario, if not stopped, will lead to the destruction of current moral restraints on sexual activity and cause utter chaos in our society.  

We are like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled to death without realizing that the heat is being turned up ever so gradually. At any given point we could jump out but we are lulled into complacency as we become accustomed to the gradual increase in temperature.  

It is time we jump out of the pot! We must organize a grassroots, widespread effort to protect marriage. It is time for Americans to say that marriage in the United States is between a man and a woman only. It is time to take this issue to the people and remove it from the hands of activist judges willing to overrule centuries of wisdom and culture that protects marriage between a man and a woman. 

What can we do?

United Families International invites you to join in the defense of marriage by doing the following:

• Keep informed. Visit our website at www.unitedfamilies.org    and sign up for our free email updates on family issues including marriage.
• Visit www.defendmarriage.org   and sign up for free email updates on marriage issues. United Families International is forging alliances with groups like Defend Marriage to more effectively fight this battle.  
• Be prepared to act personally to support marriage and the family by doing such things as writing your congressman and senators, sign a petition to support a federal amendment to the United States Constitution, and other actions.  (We will suggest these and other opportunities to act at the appropriate times.)
• Make a financial contribution to United Families International to help us launch our campaign to save marriage.
• Stay informed as the political landscape changes.

We need your help with our ongoing grassroots effort at the state and federal level to protect marriage and the family. Please join with us as we organize concerned citizens and government officials to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.