Homosexuality in Pop Culture

Cher’s Daughter and the New Push
(by Daniel Mann)

Have you noticed how the media is promoting the news that Cher Bono’s daughter is publicly claiming that she’s a man stuck in a woman’s body and is pursuing a sex change? This no longer shocks us—not at least in a society where “choice” has become enshrined as an unalienable right. However, let’s step back for a moment and consider what all this involves.

Choice places privileges above responsibilities. Choice says, “It’s all about me and not about the family that nurtured me or the family that I’m supposed to nurture.” Former Gov. Jim McGreavy famously declared that he is a “gay American.” He could just as easily have said that he is a “governor, husband and father.” However, in choosing his gay identity, he condemned both wife and children to a second rate status. He placed his gay relationship above his vows and family responsibilities. The benefits of traditional marriage to children are so undeniable, they hardly require mentioning. However, I will cite one statistic from The Case for Marriage by Linda Watts and Maggie Gallagher:

A preschooler living with one biological parent and one step-parent was forty times more likely to be sexually abused than one living with two natural parents. (159)

Choice elevates sex and desire above truth, values and commitments. This communicates the message to our youth that it’s all about our feelings and fulfilling our desires and not about responsibility to community and family. It opens up for our children a world of confusion and instability where there are no standards or basis for judgment. Everything becomes OK, flat and bland—whatever feels right for the moment.

The religion of choice therefore makes it impossible to judge pedophilia, adultery, polygamy, pornography or any other form of abuse. After all, how can anyone say that their feelings or proclivities are any more valid than the next guy’s or gal’s? Of course, the gay community will respond, “It’s all OK unless we’re hurting others.” But that’s just the point. Our God gives us teachings to protect us against destructive behaviors, whether adultery or homosexuality. LifesiteNews.com reports (March 10, 2009) the even Gens Hellquist, the executive director of the Canadian Rainbow Health Coalition, explained,

We [gays] have one of the poorest health statuses in this country ... Health issues affecting queer Canadians includes lower life expectancy than the average Canadian, suicide, higher rates of substance abuse, depression, inadequate access to care and HIV/AIDS.

There are all kinds of health issues that are endemic to our community. We have higher rates of anal cancer in the gay male community, lesbians have higher rates of breast cancer ... the reality is there is (sic) more GLBT people in this country who die of suicide each year than die from AIDS, there are more who die early deaths from substance abuse than die of HIV/AIDS.

Here are some of the statistics that Hellquist cites:

Life expectancy of gay/bisexual men in Canada is 20 years less than the average; that is 55 years.· GLB people commit suicide at rates from 2 to 13.9 times more often than average.· GLB people have smoking rates 1.3 to 3 times higher than average.· GLB people have rates of alcoholism 1.4 to 7 times higher than average.· GLB people have rates of illicit drug use 1.6 to 19 times higher than average.· GLB people show rates of depression 1.8 to 3 times higher than average.· Gay and bisexual men (MSM) comprise 76.1% of AIDS cases.· Gay and bisexual men (MSM) comprise 54% of new HIV infections each year.· If one uses Statistics Canada figure of 1.7% of GLB becoming infected, that is 26 times higher than average.· GLB people are at a higher risk for anal cancers.

Alternative sexualities are clearly self-destructive. However, these are what our choice-crazed society is actually promoting. LifeSiteNews.com (June 11, 2009) reports about Kevin Jennings, the assistant deputy secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools inside the Department of Education and cofounder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN):

GLSEN regularly holds workshops that present tools for changing curricula at schools from kindergarten to high school, including “Inclusive Kindergarten,” “Inclusive Elementary School Curriculum,” and “Re-envisioning High School Literature.”

GLSEN leaders believe that to win the battle for “homosexual rights,” they must redefine the next generation’s view of homosexuality, beginning at kindergarten. Activist Jaki Williams has said that during kindergarten children are “developing their superego,” and “that’s when the saturation process needs to begin.”

“I don’t want to be tolerated. I don’t want to be put up with. I want to be ... celebrated,” said Stephen Glassman, a GLSEN chapter board member.

Indeed, it’s not enough for GLSEN to celebrate it in the bedrooms and the streets. They insist that it must be celebrated in the elementary schools, regardless of the parents’ “choice.”

We may be in error about what’s good for us. While many who buy lottery tickets believe that hitting-it-big will change their lives for the better, the facts show the opposite. Anita and I met a woman on Amtrak, who confided that she was in a married lesbian relationship with the “woman” of her dreams. However, as the story unfolded, we learned that this “woman” had been a man who had received a sex-change before meeting his/her beloved wife. He had irreversibly (?) traded in his male organs to find that he now needed them.

It represents a perversion from the perfect. Several years back, Barbara Walter had a heart-rending special on children who were convinced that they were given the wrong body. They seemed to be so assured that a tragic mistake had been made which they were confident they could “correct.” It reminded me of a similar program about people who were convinced that they also were in the wrong body—bodies with legs. They were so sure that they were never intended to have legs that they put them in dry ice until they rotted and were taken to the ER to have them amputated. If the latter instance is a perversion, why not the former also?

As a probation supervisor, I supervised a unit of officers who were given the sex abuse cases. It was my duty to read all the cases that came to us. It became abundantly apparent that perverted sex had a psychological (not a biological) root. For instance, I found repeatedly that those who had been abused when they were eight became abusers of eight year olds. I found this type of thing in 90-95% of the cases. Therefore, what these children require is wise counseling, not sex change.

Social Costs of Transgenderism and Alternative Sexualities. Setting up maleàfemale and femaleàmale bathrooms, medical and psychotherapeutic costs, and the resulting array of expensive custody battles and are hardly worth mentioning when compared with the other ills. When I was a parole officer in the State of Ohio, I supervised parolees from a former coal town. The mines closed and the town was now heavily dependent upon welfare. It also had more bars per capita than any other town in the state and produced some of the most violent parolees. It was a forbidding place, but not according to its residents. Many spontaneously informed me that they could never conceive of living anywhere else or even marrying someone who lived beyond its borders. They couldn’t stop telling me about how proud they were of their town.

The “pride” associated with alternative sexualities seems to come from a similar source. It betrays an inner awareness that something is terribly wrong, along with a rigid and militant denial of this awareness, and a desperate attempt to overcompensate with effusive expressions of pride, sometimes overflowing into violence and intimidation. However, real self-acceptance promotes peace and contentment, not violence.

LifeSiteNews.com (June 11, 2009) reports about the intimidation associated with a Washington State “Protect Marriage” initiative.

In an echo of tactics employed against true marriage supporters in California and elsewhere, a Washington state homosexualist website is threatening to publish the names and addresses of individuals signing a referendum to overturn a new homosexual civil unions law.

Although the gay justification for this is to promote of transparency and dialogue, something more threatening apparently lurks behind it. Brian Murphy, the creator of WhoSigned.org. explained,

If you want to sign [the “Protect Marriage” Referendum], you have the right to sign that, but be aware there are probably people who live near you, people you know, who would want to come and talk to you about what that means to them.

If this sounds intimidating, it is! It’s a reference to what happened to people who financially supported the same referendum in California which passed with 53% of the vote. LifeSiteNews refers to the warning that had gone out in California prior to the vote there:

"We want to make sure that our millions of friends and allies throughout the United States know exactly who contributed vast sums of money against us," said Californians Against Hate on their website. "If these individuals, businesses, and organizations are so adamant in their desire to turn back the clock and take away our civil rights, then the gay community, our families and our friends will fight back."

And they did fight back, and with such vehemence that they forced some supporters to beg for mercy. The costs for engaging in alternative sexualities are high for the participants but also high for the society, so high that they threaten our freedoms of speech, religion and even our democracy. In the hope of finding their elusive peace of conscience, they hope to stifle any voice to the contrary, thinking that they will gain self-acceptance this way.

This is beginning to hit home. At Washington Square Park on Friday, a self-confessed gay alcoholic approached me menacingly. “What right do you have denying me my equal rights to marry my partner! You’re an evil hate monger.” I assured him that I wasn’t. On the contrary, as a Christian, I had a duty to love him. Instead, it was he who abused me with his speech for an hour.

Several times, he apologized for the way he was yelling, but it would rise to even greater excesses as he recalled how the Christian community was “oppressing” him. At times, I felt threatened. As I packed up, he warned, “I’m going to shut you down.” He repeated this threat with greater volume and conviction, as a baritone bringing the opera to its crashing crescendo. I had to remind myself that our battle isn’t against flesh and blood. He also reminded me of what Jesus had warned:

They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. (John 16:2)

Sadly, his isn’t an isolated case. The agenda of many gay groups, like Act-Up, is to shut us down. Even now, there is a hate crimes bill in Congress that may criminalize the proclamation of sin and the Gospel. However, even this will not give the gay community the peace and self-acceptance that they so desperately crave, a peace that is only available through Christ and His forgiveness. Other varieties are mere imitations, relying on our well-practiced skills of denial.