Classical Values :: ACLU selects its enemies?

August 29, 2005

ACLU selects its enemies?

While I think a good case can be made for the proposition that there are many problems with the ACLU, couldn't their opponents have found a better author to write this book (The ACLU vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values) than Alan Sears?

The latter is a leading crusader against what he believes are the two most ruinous evils to face America -- pornography and the evil homos -- and he (along with co-author Craig Osten) also wrote The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today -- a tract purporting to document such things as the "connection" between homosexuality and pedophilia (illogical on it's face, except for homosexual pedophiles), and a supposedly monolithic "gay agenda" -- the goals of which are shared by "homosexual activists." The agenda? According to the authors, it's a six point platform articulated by two little-known activists back in the 1980s. While I probably should have read through it by now, it somehow escaped my full attention until today, but I now feel duty-bound to report this agenda to my readers.

So here it is at last; the long awaited Official Homosexual Agenda:

1. Talk about gays and gayness as loudly and often as possible. (Through sheer perseverance the opposition will be worn down)
2. Portray gays as victims, not aggressive challengers.
3. Give homosexual protectors a “just” cause.
4. Make gays look good. (Notice that the media always makes the “gay” character the hero)
5. Make the victimizers look bad.
6. Solicit funds: the buck stops here (i.e., get corporate America and major foundations to financially support the homosexual cause). (p. 18)

Imagine! After all these years, I've finally been given my marching orders -- and from a devout moral conservative. The problem here is that I feel a bit the same way I do when I find myself being accused of being a liberal or a conservative. I don't like the labels. And I don't share the above "agenda." Yet Sears and his ilk would label me as a "promoter" of this "homosexual agenda."

Here's Alan Sears on censorship:

Enforcement of state and federal laws prohibiting the distribution of proscribed forms of pornography is not censorship.

I submit that the largest censorship organization in America is the ACLU and its allies with their long and ongoing effort of fear, intimidation and disinformation against religious liberty. Some radical groups even believe libel and slander should not be "censored." As I often say, "One man's censorship is another man's survival."

Q: How can the Church best combat pornography in the culture through the efforts of both clergy and laity?

Sears: First, as laity, let's first get on our knees and ask God to forgive us for our silence, to forgive us for our sin of omission and to forgive those who exploit others through this evil -- sins of commission.

Then we must get educated, get organized and demand that our state and community have laws as broad as the Constitution permits, and that those laws be promptly and vigorously enforced.

As to non-prosecutable forms of pornography, such as so-called men's magazines -- as if there is something manly about making women and their sacred bodies and gifts into disposable commodities for profit -- demand that your local merchants quit selling them. And be persistent until we make a difference.

Second, the Church itself must first be willing to confront and talk about this devastating issue because it is occurring within its own walls.

We need to ask our leaders to provide leadership and guidance as to God's beautiful plan for men, women and their sexual unity in marriage as well as instruction on the sin of other behaviors and the subject of the use and sale of pornography.

Individual clergy need to clearly present, without compromise, what God has to say on these matters involving personal purity and how, as individuals of faith, the laity can overcome pornography -- or, if needed, how to seek assistance in recovering from such devastating addictions.

Third, Church leaders need to implement focused and responsive small group ministries -- in concert with effective counseling ministries -- in which healthy accountability and confidential, personal care can spring forth, like life-giving water for the souls of each individual that chooses to become an intimate part of a group of people whose goals include moral, spiritual and personal purity.

The time to get involved is now -- before your family is affected, before your children are victimized by the pornographer who has no regard whatsoever for their God-given life or sexuality.

While I do not doubt that Sears really and truly believes that Americans are victims, I don't think most Americans see themselves that way. His goal of imprisoning people for this form of entertainment is anything but mainstream. In fact, I'd be willing to bet he loathes the mainstream. I also think that if he started getting his way and prosecutions of establishments like these (link via InstaPundit) went into full swing, the ACLU would start getting a lot more mainstream money.

Here's more from Sears on pornographic temptations:

In multiple prosecutions of people involved in every level of the pornography trafficking industry, I learned firsthand, many times from hours of conversations with defendants and their counsel, of these individuals' real view of the First Amendment. It was a joke and a smoke screen.

I learned what the profiteering pornographers thought of the homosexual persons who were plied with every manner of video, magazine and appliance. To be blunt, the pornographers had nothing but disgust and ridicule for those who paid them hard cash.

In years of public speaking since that time, I have repeatedly referred to pornography as the "true hate literature" of our age, because of its hatred and exploitation of the human person, regardless of size, shape, color or gender.

It reduces human beings to valueless commodities to be ogled at and disposed of like used tissue. Sadly, many of the individuals whom the pornographers dispose of are vulnerable young men and women who engage in homosexual behavior.

I've met young homosexual men and women who were struggling with the issue of pornography and the various forms of sex trade outlets. These included the so-called gay bars, many of which we learned were often owned or controlled by exploitive heterosexuals and even criminal enterprises. These manipulative individuals and organizations just wanted to "make a buck" off the weaknesses of others.

I had the opportunity to talk with these men and women in depth about their pain, their heart needs and the role that this material played in their formation and their sexual behavior. Based on these years of experience with those trapped in homosexual behavior, I must continue to express real outrage at the merciless exploitation of those with homosexual urges and temptations.

This Alan Sears makes me want to send in a check to the ACLU today. (I say this, of course, as the former owner of a "so-called gay bar" -- a "criminal enterprise" which I, in my capacity as a "manipulative individual," ran for the sole purpose of "making a buck off the weaknesses of others.")

I haven't sent the ACLU money for a while -- mainly because I abhor the ACLU's inconsistent failure to support the Second Amendment (as fundamental a liberty as those they do support), as well as their tendency to support radical Islamists. They're a bit shrill where it comes to certain leftist causes ("overly partisan in recent years" as Glenn put it).

But I think they may be getting some inadvertent help from Alan Sears. If the ACLU wanted to play Karl Rove for a day and select an enemy most likely to produce a pro-ACLU backlash, they'd have been hard pressed to do better.

(Well, there's always Fred Phelps. But I'm not sure he's literate enough or credible enough. Politics remains the art of the possible.)

UPDATE: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post. Welcome all!

MORE: A commenter below drew my attention to some highly critical, insulting comments directed at Eugene Volokh (left at these posts) accusing him of anti-gay bigotry. That kind of thing is at least as appalling as the nonsense spouted by Sears. I had written two posts attempting to grapple with the conversion issues Professor Volokh raised, but I think calling him "homophobic" for his honest speculations is beyond the pale.

Am I alone in thinking that it's getting harder and harder to just think whatever it is you think -- without being slammed by various thought police for ideological errors?

(I still try to think of the blogosphere as a place where reasoned disagreement is possible.)

UPDATE (08/30/05): Follow up post here.

posted by Eric on 08.29.05 at 02:30 PM

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Comments

OK! Here we are finally. After the election last year when President Bush was re-elected, with Republicans now dominating both the House and the Senate, and in a position to appoint the next Supreme Court Justices -- I was wondering why the entire media and the entire blogosphere were acting as though Kerry and his Democrats had won. We have, for several months, amused ourselves with swatting various and sundry insignificant flies and gnats of the Left (i.e., the lower quadrant of the left on my 2-dimensional spectrum): Michael Moore (a.k.a. Lord Pork Pork), Ward Eichmann, Noam Chomsky, John Kerry (who, by the way, lost the election), Hillary Clinton (who has not yet even been nominated much less elected), Cindy Sheehan, etc., etc., every shallow pragmatist, Marxist, nihilist, collectivist, One-Worlder, etc., on the lower Port side or quadrant of a spectrum -- as if they mattered.

Now, at long last, we are facing a far more deadly enemy, the moral collectivists on the lower Right quadrant of my spectrum, i.e., those who
1) recognize that the most important realm of all is the moral, spiritual, sexual-religious realm, the realm of the body and of the soul, of the most fundamental ideas, rather than merely of economics, (and in this they are right),
but who 2) want to control this realm, collectively, through government, through censorship, "obscenity" laws, "sodomy" laws, etc., who hate the very concept of individual autonomy or "deviation", who want to rule the body and soul of every man and woman, (and in this they are wrong, morally wrong, viciously, vilely evil). They are spiritual totalitarians. They are my enemies and I must deal with them as such.

They. like their predecessors, have chosen a scapegoast, a tangible minority to hate, smear, and persecute in order to gain the control they want. This time, it is homosexuals (both androsexual men and gynosexual women). I have posted this link before, and I find it necessary for me to post it once again here and now, in this crucial context, for The Ominous Parallels to that earlier movement are all too ominous and too obvious, just too Peikoff-obvious, to be ignored.

I must fight this most deadly Enemy within on their own plane, on their own field of battle, in that above-named realm of the moral, the spiritual, the sexual-religious, of the most fundamental ideas, of my deepest and highest values, of the body and the soul, integrated, of every man and woman, in the name of that total integration of body and soul, the self, with the Divine, the total passion for the total height, the Ego in the Infinite -- Polytheistic Godliness, Selfishness, Sexiness -- Conservative Lesbian Individualist Theology. In the name of my Most High Goddess, the Queen of Heaven. Holy. Holy. Holy. Holy.

Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · August 29, 2005 06:45 PM

I myself haven't found any 'homosexual agenda' except the shrill and explosive reaction that the 'gay community' has to any criticism whatsoever. Read some of the scathing comments accusing Eugene Volokh of homophobia for merely questioning the party line:

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_08_21-2005_08_27.shtml#1124903922
http://volokh.com/posts/1124903922.shtml

Please note that the comments don't quite degernate into DU or LGF-style flaming, but that is ONLY because the conspiracy has much more vigilant control over posting... read what he's actually being accused of, and it becomes clear that the long knives are being drawn.

We aren't talking about people bashing Pat Robertson or Alan Sears... we are talking about radicals exploding in fury over even reasonable criticism or analysis from levelheaded people, and being accused of being closet homophobes.

Perhaps they aren't all that different in that respect from some other far-far-left groups, but it does establish that that the gay community is a proud member of the unhinged.

Ryan Waxx · August 29, 2005 10:52 PM

I thought Eugene Volokh's piece was quite thoughtful, even if I didn't completely agree on definitions. His inspired me to write two posts (here and here) on the issue of conversion. "Homophobia" or an anti-gay animus would be the last thing I'd accuse him of.

If in fact the "long knives" are being drawn against him, it's shameful. There's far too much of that going around, and people are losing their ability to think for themselves.

Eric Scheie · August 29, 2005 11:16 PM

Ryan,

Just read through as many of the comments to Volokh's post as I could stand.

Gay Stalinism always sickens me.

Eric Scheie · August 29, 2005 11:21 PM

I wrote a piece on the ACLU, and the trend toward corruption within institutions we once routinely considered benign. (And I didn't even include our biggest local-area scandal.)

Much of this is the result of a misguided concept: The kind of people who run charities aren't the kind of people who lose their way. Are they? Turns out, they are, and need to be monitored like anyone else. Probably the very lack of oversight attracts the sort of person who, well, doesn't want to be watched too closely.

Scandal and incompetence. They're not just for government anymore.

Mr. Snitch · August 29, 2005 11:49 PM

I think that the homosexual agenda the author refers to IS the gay stalinism that you abhor. In fact, it's plain stalinism, and the only thing 'gay' about it is that they're using homosexuals as a front. They've done the same with environmentalists, feminists, blacks, hispanics, you name it.

Some progressive causes in America are necessary *some* of the time. But once they achieve their goals, they don't stop do they? No, because then the activists who run the causes might have to get REAL jobs...

João · August 30, 2005 01:41 AM

Am I alone in thinking that it's getting harder and harder to just think whatever it is you think -- without being slammed by various thought police for ideological errors?

The internet always encourages radical behavior. Being safe behind a monitor and not talking face-to-face makes it easier to go nuts!

Frank J. · August 30, 2005 08:48 AM

But going nuts is fun, Frank. Maybe I should count my blessings. Thank YOU for making it easier to go nuts.

Eric Scheie · August 30, 2005 04:07 PM

João, you have a point, but I think it's a bit more complicated, because the author wants to imprison people for pornography, he attacks bar owners as criminal, manipulative exploiters, and by falsely attributing this "gay agenda" to people who disagree with him, he's engaged in similar tactics himself.

Eric Scheie · August 30, 2005 04:10 PM

"I think that the homosexual agenda the author refers to IS the gay stalinism that you abhor. In fact, it's plain stalinism, and the only thing 'gay' about it is that they're using homosexuals as a front. They've done the same with environmentalists, feminists, blacks, hispanics, you name it."

True. The collectivist Left uses and then discards Jews, Negroes, women, homosexuals, you name it, as they find convenient to "the Party" at any particular time. The collectivist Right persecutes Jews, Negroes, "uppity" women, homosexuals, depending on what they can get away with at any particular time. The smallest minority of all is the individual, whom all collectivists, by definition, hate. Which means they hate themselves.

"Some progressive causes in America are necessary *some* of the time. But once they achieve their goals, they don't stop do they? No, because then the activists who run the causes might have to get REAL jobs..."

Very true. With the end of government-imposed segregation in the early 1960s, Negro civil rights organizations have lost their legitimate raison d'etre as far as politics is concerned. Same with feminist organizations now that women have full legal equality. When homosexuals have the right to serve honestly in the military and to marry, their organizations will likwise have no legitimate political purpose. All most of these groups do now is squabble over shares of the "pie" of government money and privileges. I'm against that.

"João, you have a point, but I think it's a bit more complicated, because the author wants to imprison people for pornography, he attacks bar owners as criminal, manipulative exploiters, and by falsely attributing this "gay agenda" to people who disagree with him, he's engaged in similar tactics himself."

Absolutely true. This Alan Sears, like his comrades such as Paul Cameron, Lou Shaldon, Robert Knight, etc., are as collectivist as their counterparts on the Left. The collectivist Left would confiscate and imprison in the name of equality. The collectivist Right would confiscate and imprison in the name of "morality". I'm against both. I am an individualist.

Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · August 31, 2005 12:03 AM