“This is a very great day in New Jersey’s civil rights history,” intoned Mayor Fred Profeta. “The civil rights achieved today are very important, don’t anyone doubt that.” Fred is a Democrat. He is also a lawyer who takes civil rights cases, so “gay rights” could be good for business. “We have a very sizable gay and lesbian community,” added the mayor of Maplewood, just in case anyone hadn’t already noticed.
The Democratic mayor and the Township Committee had agreed to open Town Hall on a Saturday to accommodate homosexuals who wished to register as domestic partners under New Jersey’s spanking new domestic partnership law. The Democrat governor of New Jersey, Jim McGreevey, had signed the act into law on January 12th, 2004 and the law went into effect at 12:01 on the morning of Saturday, July 10th. The vote was far from unanimous, with 37 representatives voting against it. Thus, by a contentious vote, New Jersey became the fifth state to encourage homosexual cohabitation. In April, the governor of Maine had signed a bill that supported homosexual partnerships, therewith joining California and Hawaii which also dispense gay pair-bonding benefits. Vermont has approved civil unions and Massachusetts has had homosexual marriage imposed upon it by the philosopher kings of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. But even before New Jersey’s governor signed the domestic partnership legislation, Mayor Profeta, at a November 5th, 2003 town meeting had pushed a resolution in support of the domestic partnership bill. Not to be outdone, Mayor William Calabrese of neighboring South Orange, NJ, agreed to keep his Town Hall open at midnight so that South Orange could have the distinction of being the first municipality in New Jersey to register a couple of homosexuals.
The state’s largest newspaper, the Left-leaning Newark Star Ledger, had ballyhooed the coming of domestic partnership in a series of countdown articles with titles such as “Domestic partners awaiting their day” and “Gay pairs set to party as domestic partners.” The paper used its editorials to aggressively promote all-out homosexual wedlock.
According to the Star Ledger, municipalities with large homosexual populations would open their offices two days early to allow couples to register on the first day the law took effect. Joining Maplewood and South Orange were Union Township, Asbury Park, Trenton and Ewing Township. By way of explanation, South Orange Village Clerk Marjorie O. Smith said, “We did it because it’s a memorable day for the gay community.” Would the township extend itself in a similar manner for other splinter-group sexualities? If the state were offering a taxpayer subsidy for shoe fetishists, would the township open its offices at midnight so that shoe sniffers could register early because “it’s a memorable day for the shoe-fetish community”? Who decides whose particular paraphilia gets a loving governmental stroking?
Back in Maplewood, Mayor Profeta was calling his town “a haven” for homosexuals. Said the mayor, “We thought this was an important civil rights event and we wanted to open Township Hall on the first available day. We wanted to do something special, particularly in light of our reputation for being a diverse and tolerant community.” Permissive perhaps, but tolerant? Perhaps the mayor doesn’t read the local newspaper.
The Thursday, July 8th edition of the News Record of Maplewood and South Orange included a pathetic editorial by a thoroughly intimidated editorial staff. The opening paragraph reads: “An advertisement that has appeared in the News-Record during the last several weeks has offended a number of Maplewood and South Orange residents, and we can certainly understand why. It’s an advertisement that characterizes gay marriage as sinful and contrary to God’s law and nature.”
The advertisement was placed by a local evangelist and the editors were quick to distance themselves from him, noting that the advertisement “expresses the view of the organization placing the advertisement, in this case, The Church of Christ.” The intimidated staff informs us that “a group of Maplewood and South Orange residents are not happy with the message, and they’ve been letting us know that – mostly through e-mail, but also some telephone calls to the publisher. They want us to cease and desist publishing the ad, which is scheduled to run through July. Otherwise, one of the callers said, she will organize a boycott of the newspaper and its advertisers.”
When the staff asked the callers if they had contacted the evangelist, they replied that they had not, because “We don’t know him.” The editorial noted that the advertisement had been placed in newspapers in all of the 25 towns that their corporation serves, but the only complaints had come from Maplewood and South Orange. Nonetheless, the editors concluded that the advertisement “targets a group of people by using hurtful and intolerant speech…” By “hurtful” they mean speech the angry readers did not want to hear and did not want others to hear, by “intolerant” they mean in perfect accordance with the traditional teachings of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. In other words, in a public debate about sexual morals one side wants the other side to shut up and they are willing to intimidate a newspaper publisher with threatening phone calls in order to get their way. In this case the publisher collapsed under the intimidation. The final paragraph of the editorial says: “All advertising copy is subject to review for approval. But based on the response we have received to this advertisement, we will increase our evaluation and offer a more vigilant review of the copy in all ads that are submitted to us for publication in the future.” The evangelist’s advertisement that was supposed to run through July was nowhere to be found in the News Record.
What was in that issue of the News Record? Well, on the Lifestyles page there’s a big photo of two lesbians embracing cheek-to-cheek above the title “Londa-Brodsky to register as domestic partners.” One’s a lawyer, the other’s a chiropractor. We are told that “An anticipated wedding to follow upon the successful conclusion of the current pending litigation Lewis v. Harris seeking the right of same-sex couples to marry [in New Jersey].” Then there’s a front-page article alerting everyone that South Orange Town Hall will be open at midnight to accommodate gays who can’t wait to register their partnerships. Inside the paper, there’s a glowing article about the gay congregants of Saint George’s Episcopal Church. The paper informs us that “St. Georges will be among the organizations staffing an information table at the festival in Memorial Park on Valley Street. A survey conducted in the year 2000 showed that at the time, approximately 22 percent of the parish membership identified themselves as gay or lesbian, as do five of the church’s 11 current elected leaders. At least two additional St. George’s couples intend to register as domestic partners in the near future.”
Though the article doesn’t say so, the rector of St. George’s is also gay. He replaced for former rector, Barry Stopfel, who was also gay. With a gay population ten times higher than the general population, Saint George’s is definitely “gay friendly.” The article quotes the rector, Rev. Bernard Poppe, as noting that the Episcopal Church has taken bold steps legitimizing the relationships and ministries of homosexuals, which is exactly what gays are seeking through gay marriage: the legitimization of homosexual behaviors and the mainstreaming of homosexual counterculture values. The remainder of the article is quotations from gays whom I have been acquainted with for years. What is noteworthy is that these same people are quoted in almost every Star Ledger or New York Times article about gays in New Jersey. They are on a call list; liberal reporters can rely on them to provide predictably upbeat quotations that support the reporter’s own liberal bias. In this way the reporters can craft polemics disguised as reporting, with the interviewees lip-syncing the reporter’s own talking points. About half of the gays quoted for a recent Star Ledger article about domestic partnership were gay parishioners of St. George’s Church in Maplewood, though they were not identified as members of a tight friendship group. Readers were left to form the false impression that the interviewees were randomly selected. There are plenty of gays who scoff at the idea of domestic partnership; they think it’s tediously bourgeois. None of them is ever sought out or quoted in the Star Ledger, which has promoted gay marriage with strident militancy.
When the South Orange village clerk accepted the first registration at one minute past midnight, the first gay couple was two guys, ages 41 and 45, who had lobbied for the domestic partnership law. “It is very exciting,” said Marty Finkel. “Mike is my life partner…, I want to marry him when we get the chance.” Mr. Finkel’s two teenage children and his former wife are the hapless victims of Mr. Finkel’s dishonesty and poor judgment. Their joy wasn’t so great. After all the hoopla, only 39 couples registered that evening.
On the morning of July tenth, I grabbed my Nikon, notebook and tape recorder and headed into Maplewood. I wanted to compare this unfolding historical event with the way the press would later report it. My skepticism of the press began decades ago when I participated in a street demonstration to get Soviet armored divisions out of Poland. It was a cold, blustery day in New York City. The script called for speeches by politicians and then we were to move to a nearby park to vent among ourselves. That didn’t happen. This is what happened: the politicians gave their speeches and then the politicians and the press retired to the comfort of a nearby bar. Those of us in the street, hundreds of us, spontaneously decided to march uptown to the Soviet embassy where we could shout our displeasure to the embassy staff. I spent the next hour in the front line of march chanting slogans in newly acquired Polish and beckoning New Yorkers on the sidewalk to join the march. Were they doing anything that cold day that was more important than getting Soviet tanks out of Poland?, I asked each of them.
Here’s my point: every newspaper and radio account of that day said that the demonstrators had gone to the park as planned. But we were not in the park; we were uptown at the Soviet embassy. The reporters had written their stories in the comfort of a barroom! That was my awakening. I haven’t trusted the media from that day to this.
The Maplewood Town Hall faces west toward Memorial Park, just across the two tree-sheltered lanes of Valley Street. As I approached on foot I passed the satellite trucks for News Channel 4 and Eyewitness News 7. The truck for CBS 2 was around the corner.
The crowd of gays, which the Star Ledger had anticipated might reach one thousand, never exceeded a fourth of that number. When I arrived, almost everyone was at the Town Hall steps. The crowd remained about the same size all day long. The air was hot and humid; the mood remained humdrum. It hardly deserved the name “celebration.”
Gay groups and a friendly media had done their best to pump this event. The Star Ledger had promised “speeches by politicians, entertainment and a ceremony for the first couple to become domestic partners.” Jersey Pride, Inc. said to expect “entertainment, businesses merchants, organizations, food, activities and games for kids of all ages and so much more.” The township website promised clowns and balloon artists. Well,…it was pretty forlorn. The crowd stayed close to Town Hall; they were here on business, filling out forms, presenting documentation and signing in front of a notary public. Those who crossed Valley Street into Memorial Park could best be described as strays. Only the two hot food vendors on the far side of the field drew any customers. A lone soloist sang from a far-away bandstand. What Jersey Pride, Inc. was touting as “a statewide Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Intersexed festival in Maplewood Memorial Park” was curiously abbreviated to “ a Domestic Partnership Celebration and Festival” by the Newark Star Ledger. By any name, as entertainment, it was a dud. Some Asian gay guy within earshot snapped open his cell phone and reported to a far-away friend that there was no excitement here; it was all couples; it had none of the wacky spontaneity and crackling homoerotic tension of a gay pride parade. Too bad.
Back up the hill, couples had queued to draw numbers from a bowl that would determine their place at the registrar’s desk. I photographed the news folk at work; they were easy to spot: perfect hair, perfect makeup. They put the fashion bereft gays to shame. There was not a single lipstick lesbian in the crowd; anything beyond simple hygiene was exceptional.
Several things struck me as noteworthy. First, I was impressed by the number of clergy dressed in black, with stiff white collars, who were sporting buttons bearing the slogan “The Next Step: Marriage Equality.” These people are working within churches to redefine the meaning of marriage. Second, the number of gays and lesbians at Town Hall seemed about even. A Star Ledger reporter made the same observation. This is noteworthy because gays outnumber lesbians by about three-to-one. Therefore, lesbians were over represented at Town Hall by three hundred percent. Third, there seemed to be many children present, even though disproportionately few homosexuals care for children. Fourth, there were far fewer couples at this historic event than were anticipated. Only 250 couples registered in Maplewood and only 39 couples in South Orange, even after the big media blitz. Statewide, the total registration has been revised downward to about 500 couples. That’s tiny. These aren’t marriage ceremonies, after all, it’s just paper shuffling, so registering is easy. It’s so easy that the tiny turnout is indicative of a lack of interest.
According to the latest published census report, there are 16,000 gay couples in New Jersey. That means that statewide only 3.1% of these couples registered when the opportunity arose in those areas of highest gay population density. It’s too early to tell, but we shouldn’t be surprised if domestic partnership turns out to be the chosen path favored by a comparative few “roosting’ homosexuals with children, most of them lesbians.
One thing is crystal clear, gays will never be content with just domestic partnership. Every newspaper is replete with quotations of homosexuals who want nothing less than a full marriage privilege and the complete legitimization of their gay cultural values. The same lesbian lawyer/chiropractor couple who were quoted in the News Record popped up once again in the Star Ledger calling domestic partnership “just one more step in the fight for legal civil marriage,” and declaring that “The wedding cake with two brides on top, the white dresses – that we will save for marriage.”
The same “safe” gays who were interviewed for the News Record article on St. George’s Church were also quoted in the Star Ledger article of July 9, 2004 which appeared a day later. All the quotations included the sentiment that only a full marriage privilege would meet with their satisfaction. So, for those of you who imagined that homosexuals would be “bought off” by a marriage-lite legal stopgap called domestic partnership, now is the time to wake up to reality. The existence of domestic partnership provisions in the law has only weakened the defense of traditional marriage for reasons rooted in human psychology. When people share a goal, but are far from achieving it, they will plod on stoically. But when these same people feel that their goal is near at hand, then any setback or delay becomes a maddening frustration. The very existence of a domestic partnership accommodation in the law has only served to torment homosexuals with a not-quite-satisfied hunger for total social acceptance. It’s driving them to distraction. Many homosexuals entertain the belief that if only they could imitate the social forms of normal heterosexual society, then everyone would become miraculously blinded to the peculiarities of homosexual relationships and their parents would stop feeling disappointed that their offspring were gay. It’s a fantasy that gays hold dear. New Jersey’s new law has only made their longing more intense.
The Evangelist
As I ambled homeward from what might just as well have been called the Homosexual, Sexually Ambivalent, Surgically Restructured and Totally Confused Peoples’ Celebration, my mind drifted back to the evangelist who had gotten the gays in such a flutter. The News Record staff had slyly smeared the man by using the device of quoting “unnamed sources.” The editorial had waxed confidential: “We have dealt before with Harry Persand, the evangelist of The Church of Christ, and have been reprimanded by readers for publishing what many people call nonsense, the rantings of a fanatic.” Well, isn’t that sweet. And who are these “readers”? Do they have a self-serving social agenda? We are not told. They are just “readers.”
I went to the Maplewood Public Library to flip through back issues of the News Record. (I stopped subscribing long ago.) It was worse than I remembered: the paper is a gushing, uncritical mouthpiece for gay utopians, a suburban echo of the Advocate. I had to dig all the way back to the June 17th issue to find the offending advertisement that was supposed to run “through July.” The advertisement was already banned from the June 24th issue which included a letter from two “readers,” named John and Jason, two shacked-up homosexuals living in Maplewood. They whine to the editor that they are “incensed” by the advertisement titled “Let the Bible Speak.” They insist that “the ad is offensive, hate mongering, and detestable.” The homosexual couple declare that “we are surprised and angered that this publication saw fit to publish such a hateful piece of garbage.” They conclude their pouty missive with the tart and snippy thrust: “We feel that such abhorrent filth has no place in any community and especially not in Maplewood/South Orange. This is akin to running ads with the N-word or swastikas. We hope that printing such an ad was merely a gross oversight on the newspaper’s part and that you will run an apology to all your readers.”
And what was this “hateful piece of garbage”, this “abhorrent filth” that was akin to swastikas? The advertisement measures about six inches on a side. It encourages folks to familiarize themselves with Bible passages “1 Pet. 4:11, Gen. 19:1-29, Lev. 18:22, 20:13, Rom. 1:24-32, 1 Cor. 6:9-10, Gen. 1:27-28, 2:18-24, Psa. 127:3-5, Matt. 19:4-6, Cor. 7:1-4, 1 Cor. 6:11, Rom. 1:16, Act. 2-38, Mk. 16:16, Ju. 8:32, Matt. 16:18, Eph. 5:23. Rom. 16:16.” The ad says straight out that “Gay marriage is contrary to God’s Law and Nature and is SINFUL. Not authorized by God.” The evangelist boldly states his conviction that “It is unnatural for a man to have sexual relations with another man. It is unnatural for a woman to have sexual relations with another woman.” Everyone is invited to Bible study, to Worship Service and to Evening Service. Homosexuals are urged “to be washed, be sanctified, be justified and quit this SINFUL Practice.” Basic Bible studies are free for the asking.
Clearly, the evangelist has read his Bible, he believes in a divine Creator and he believes that homosexuality deviates from the Creator’s plan. But does he hate gays, does he wish them harm? Not at all. He invites them to his church to be sanctified, to return to the narrow path of righteousness. He has taken the Bible, word for word, to be the voice of a loving God. He means well. But as an eighteen-year resident of Maplewood I could have warned the evangelist that Maplewood is a town that warmly welcomes people of every race, religion and sexual orientation so long as they share the same narrow Left-leaning ideology. Anyone who would suggest that the uncritical embrace of the gay counterculture may have troubling consequences for the future of vital American social institutions is immediately branded as a bigot who should be silenced.
The July 15th, 2004 issue of the News Record included a representative sample of Maplewood groupthink. Steve and Rita Shiman wrote the editor to say: “My wife and I read the editorial today in the News Record outlining the newspaper’s defense of publishing a hate advertisement from the Church of Christ directed against a segment of our community. Our response is to immediately cancel our subscription to your newspaper. Please remove our household from your list of subscribers.” I cancelled my subscription because I considered the newspaper to be a shallow pandering rag, but the Shimans want to punish the newspaper for being a forum for a perspective that they don’t share. They go on: “In our view, the right to present a position does not include the right to attack individuals based on religion, gender, or sexual practice.” Well, one person’s “attack” is another person’s critique. Would the Shimans be offended by letters or advertisements that were critical of such time-honored religious practices as arranged child marriages, female genital mutilation, animal sacrifice, or polygamy? Would they consider these criticisms to be offensive attacks on other people’s religions? Would they punish the newspaper by canceling their subscription? Probably not. The Shimans go on: “If this newspaper knew anything about the people of our communities, it would know that we pride ourselves on accepting and embracing diversity.” Right, as long as it’s not a diversity of opinion. These big-hearted liberals conclude: “Legally, we suppose you have the right under the first amendment to publish this material. The residents of this town also have the right to boycott your newspaper. We are among them.” The newspaper heard you Steve and Rita, the evangelist has been banished from the local forum, it’s safe for you to re-subscribe, your delicate sensibilities won’t be offended by anything even approaching genuine diversity. This is Maplewood, after all.
The Domestic Partnership Act
A domestic partnership bill had been kicking around Trenton since 1971, with little hope of passage. In December 2003, the Democrat bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and squeeked through the Assembly by a razor-thin vote 41-28, with nine abstentions, which means it won approval by only one vote. From there it went to the Senate Budget Committee and then to the full Senate.
Opponents said lawmakers were rushing the bill ahead without a thorough analysis of its fiscal consequences. Others said the measure came “dangerously close to sanctioning same-sex marriage,” to quote the Newark Star Ledger. The executive director of the New Jersey Catholic Conference, William Bolan, said of the bill: “It attempts to cast aside marriage as our legal standard of legitimate cohabitation in order to give legitimacy to homosexual and heterosexual cohabitation outside of marriage.” John Tomicki, executive director of the League of American Families, told the Judiciary Committee the bill was unconstitutional because it granted rights to some but ignored others, specifically opposite-sex couples younger than 62 years of age. “You’re setting the grounds for a lawsuit, which we’re prepared to file,” Tomicki added.
An enthusiastic supporter of the bill was Senator Nia Gill, a liberal Democrat from Essex County. She said the Domestic Partnership Act was a natural legal step toward granting rights to members of minority groups such as women and blacks. How she got it into her head that women were a minority group is anyone’s guess. Her implication that blacks were the moral equivalent of homosexuals was not flattering to black folks. Lumping homosexuals in with traditional minorities, those defined by race, or religion or ethnicity, is also problematic. Homosexualities, male and female, are same-sex attractions rooted in anomalous neurologies that result from genetic mutations (gays) or exposure to testosterone during fetal development (lesbians). The expressive behaviors of these homosexualities are paraphilias, or “strange loves.” An intense erotic attraction to shoes is another example of a paraphilia.
An item in the New York Post tells us that “an Ohio weirdo” was arrested after he “allegedly” grabbed a nine-year-old boy, pulled him behind a department store, and stripped the boy of his socks. “Cops say Maurice Teague, 28, of Columbus, confessed to having a foot fetish, admitting he has a collection of more than 500 pairs of kids’ socks.” Surely there are more people like Maurice. If they all gang together and become some Democrat’s constituency are we then obligated to re-imagine them as a minority “just like black people”? Must we enact legislation that will allow them handsome deductions on their income tax returns for sock purchases in recognition of the “special relationship” they have to socks? Surely this particular paraphilia has a long and honorable tradition dating back to the sandal sniffers of the Golden Age of Pericles. It is wrong and bigoted to chuckle at sock fondlers. We must enact speech codes to protect the feelings of those who lust after socks, sling backs, “fuck me” eight-inch stiletto heels and mules (the shoe, not the animal; that’s a whole other paraphilia).
Remember, until recently the mental health professions openly defined homosexuality as a paraphilia. The only reason it is no longer openly defined that way is because gay activists intimidated the hell out of some influential mental health professionals, who then crafted a bogus by-mail vote which only one-quarter of the members of the American Psychiatric Association even bothered to mail back. It was on the basis of this vote that the APA dropped homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Many APA members later said that they would have voted differently had they known that the wording of the ballot and the funding for this lobbying effort flowed from radical gay activist groups, a fact that the APA leadership had concealed from APA members. A later tally of APA membership opinion, conducted without the sanction of the APA, revealed solid majority support for retaining homosexuality on the APA’s list of disturbed mental states.
None of this would sway liberal politicians such as N.J. Sen. Nia Gill. “I don’t see this as a violation of the Constitution,” Gill declared of the Domestic Partnership Act. “I see it as an evolution of the Constitution.” Haven’t we heard this jabber about the Constitution being an “evolving document” before? It’s liberal-speak for “let’s be trendy.” It’s the “progressive” impulse that gave us the Lawrence vs. Texas decision that threatens to undermine all morals legislation in America. Once the United States Supreme Court justices started quoting the decisions of European courts in the rulings they impose on Americans, we were all on a downhill rocket sled headed for Gomorrah.
The Domestic Partnership Act was passed by the New Jersey Senate on January 8th, 2004 by a vote of 23-9 after a frantic last-minute push by its Democrat sponsors and the governor’s office. After signing the bill, Governor McGreevey singled out Michael Blake, president of New Jersey Stonewall Democrats, for his efforts.
Opponents of the law protested that it would have far-reaching and negative social and legal consequences. They were also displeased that it was being rammed through a lame-duck session without public debate or legislative hearings. The assembly had earlier approved the measure by a single vote on December 11th, 2003.
John Tomicki of the League of American Families was not pleased: “The bill is already in the hands of the attorneys, the constitutional scholars. They are very confident that it’s a classic open-and-shut [case]. It’s going to be stricken down in court.” Well, maybe.
Speaking of the DP Act, Susan Goldfarb, a professor of family law at Rutgers School of Law in Camden said: “The symbolism is enormous. New Jersey is now the fifth state that on a state level recognized same-sex couples as having some legitimacy.” There’s that word again.
New Jersey’s scandal-ridden governor, James McGreevey, (McGreedy to the locals), desperately needs the support of homosexuals. After signing the Domestic Partnership Act, he raised his arms and shouted “Great victory!” He said the law illustrates that “the promise of this democracy is always evolving, always stretching.” Got that? All constitutions are now elastic documents open to broad interpretation and must be interpreted in light of the latest “progressive” social fashions. This season gays are definitely “in.” Next season, when the Democrats need to expand their constituent base once again, perhaps the shoe sniffers will get their shot at respectability and “equality.”
To qualify for domestic partner status all that is necessary is to demonstrate some minimal financial entanglement. For example, if two gays can show that they are sharing the rent, then they are halfway there. The second piece of documentation could be a will naming the other partner as a beneficiary, even if the will is merely symbolic. Neither domestic partner would have any legal obligations to any child born to the other partner.
Here’s the fun part: two heterosexual men, or two heterosexual women could also form domestic partnerships, which would allow roommates to share health insurance benefits and to make life-altering medical decisions for one another. Isn’t that exactly what you’d want for your eighteen-year-old son or daughter? Roommates could also claim an additional exemption on their state income tax returns. Each could inherit the other’s property without paying inheritance taxes.
A four-page handout from the N.J. Department of Health and Senior Services includes a helpful 12-paragraph guide to “Terminating a Domestic Partnership.” Among the grounds for scuttling a domestic partnership is “voluntary sexual intercourse between a person who is in a domestic partnership and an individual other than the person’s domestic partner.” This is not adultery because a domestic partnership is not a marriage.
Given the demonstrated fact that homosexuals, on average, form and dissolve many more romantic relationships than do heterosexuals, and given the near universal practice among gay males of cruising for anonymous recreational sex, and the fact that the average gay male will already have had hundreds of anonymous sexual experiences before entering a domestic partnership, this “infidelity” escape clause should get an excellent workout before the Superior Court of New Jersey.
Another escape hatch is “extreme cruelty, which is defined as including any physical or mental cruelty that endangers the safety or health of the plaintiff or makes it improper or unreasonable to expect the plaintiff to continue to cohabit with the defendant…” Given what we know about gay sexual practices, would even whip marks or a lacerated sphincter be convincing evidence of cruelty?
According to websites devoted to gay people’s health, about one in every three gay relationships is already a hotbed of domestic violence. Violence against gay partners often increases after they reveal that they are infected with the AIDS virus. The cherished liberal myth that gays are more socially insightful, more empathetic, more evolved, is about suffer an overdue deflation as “gay divorce” cases swell court dockets.
Yet another reason to dissolve a domestic partnership is “voluntary induced addiction or habituation to any narcotic drug, as defined in the ‘New Jersey Controlled Dangerous Substances Act’ or the ‘Comprehensive Drug Reform Act of 1987’, or habitual drunkenness for a period of 12 or more consecutive months subsequent to the establishment of the domestic partnership…” Given the higher than normal rates of alcoholism among both gays and lesbians, this clause should also get lots of exercise in the New Jersey courts. The epidemic abuse of methamphetamine by homosexuals, who use it as a sexual performance enhancer, is responsible for the current spike of sexually transmitted disease among gays. Meth use makes a person irrational. Meth users can’t be bothered with condoms. . . or fidelity. Contracting an STD, such as syphilis, increases the likelihood of also contracting AIDS tenfold because STD lesions are an open door to the AIDS virus. So there is already a well established drug abuse dynamic in place that will undermine gay domestic partnerships.
In the long run, domestic partnership will probably remain a distinctly minority taste among the 2% of the general population who are homosexual. The long-standing domestic partnership programs in Scandinavian countries have produced an underwhelming number of officially recognized gay partnerships. As gay activists explained after the acrimonious campaign to establish gay partnerships in Scandinavian law: we weren’t really seeking gay marriage; we were seeking legitimacy. The lukewarm response of Canadian gays to the availability of a full-blown gay marriage privilege reinforces this insight. So does the modest turnout in Maplewood, NJ when gays could, “at last,” sign up for domestic partnerships.
In every case, lesbians are wildly over represented among this nesting fragment of the “gay community.” They want to be proper; they crave legitimacy, they hunger for the approval of the straight world, of their families. The larger population of gays, most of whom wouldn’t be caught dead in any sort of legally binding relationship, is pushing for the legalization of domestic partnership and gay marriage because these things are stepping stones to the legitimization of the entire constellation of homosexual behaviors. Gay marriage is a pry bar with which gays can crack open traditionally heterosexual-friendly social institutions and leave them vulnerable to a full-scale colonization by homosexuals and the infiltration of gay perspectives and gay-friendly restructurings.
Once they get their hands on the pry bar of gay marriage or any marriage-lite facsimile of marriage, the gays and their fawning liberal friends will push to expand the gay comfort zone. After gay marriage comes the rainbow gay curriculum in every public school. With the encouragement of homosexual parenthood you can expect a renewed assault on the Boy Scouts of America. The first gay assault on the Scouts ended abruptly after the Catholic bishop’s report on homosexual priest abuses made it crystal clear to the public that everything gays had been saying about the innocuous nature of gay males was a sham. Even decades later, perhaps a hundred thousand male victims of the gay male’s toxic touch are still struggling with the consequences of the emotional damage that was done to them. But when public memory has dimmed, the gay quest for the Boy Scout trophy will resume. Gay parents will be the Trojan Horse at the gate.
A gay marriage privilege, glamorously promoted by all the related wedding/catering business associations, will pressure the clergy to accept gay ceremonies. These churches will then be used to leverage other churches, and so forth. The wedding magazines already encourage brides-to-be to shop around for churches with stunning interiors in which to showcase their weddings, while ignoring altogether the community that is the living heart of that church and ignoring what its congregants hold dear as their faith. Many churches endure the insult of these hit-and-run ceremonies because they need the cash. Will they also allow gay marriages in their churches because they “need the cash”?
The consequence of this future transformation, for the 98% of us who are not homosexual, is that we and our children will be confronted at every turn by mocking parodies of marriage and frustratingly useless mutations of our formerly supportive social institutions. And why will we be suffering this indignity? For this reason alone: the liberal enthusiasm to expand the comfort zone of that microscopic part of our population that wants to pose as grownups while simultaneously deviating wildly from our culture’s time-honored definitions of what constitutes a man or a woman. Liberals want society to suddenly accommodate a third and fourth gender, gay and lesbian, neither of which comports with society’s definitions of man and woman.
Our accepted models of manhood and womanhood are neither genetically mutated (gays) nor hormonally restructured (lesbians), they are unaltered males and females who, among other attributes, seek their biological complements. This complementary relationship is the ultimate Ur relationship, the one that lies at the center of every human society, even down to the most primitive hunter/gatherer group. This relationship is the nucleus of every civilization, the grain of sand at the center of the pearl, around which all other social institutions are formed. It is the primary social model that is best left intact.
Homosexuality, by contrast, is a socially useless psychological fixation, a biological dead end, a catch basket of folks with splinter-group sexual appetites. Homosexual parenthood is a crime against the spirit of a child. To consciously deprive a child of a mother or a father is immoral and surpassingly selfish. Any homosexual who creates a child by defrauding a heterosexual into a bogus marriage should be the target of lifelong public distain. Homosexuals who travel to foreign countries, where adoption by homosexuals is illegal, and who nonetheless return to America with tiny humans, should be the targets of pointed interrogations about just how it was that they acquired these children. My town of Maplewood is awash with homosexuals displaying their trophy children from Asia, India and the Catholic countries of Latin America. These kids-without-moms and kids-without-dads were on full display at the big Maplewood celebration for homosexuals, bisexuals, the transgendered, the intersexed, etc. New Jersey’s domestic partnership law is just an after-the-fact attempt to bring some order to the social chaos that the unrestrained selfishness these homosexuals has imposed on society. It’s a move in the wrong direction. The taxpayers of New Jersey should not be subsidizing homosexual cohabitation or gay parenthood.
The Expanding Gay Comfort Zone
I left the gay, bisexual, transgendered and intersexed “celebration” with a bagful of handouts, brochures and propaganda. I read it all. A folder from the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services helpfully explained to same-sex teenaged couples how they could enter into domestic partnerships that were not so easy to get out of. The cost: $28, the same price as a marriage license.
A sheet from the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety informed homosexuals that any homeowner who advertised a room for rent in their home must accept homosexuals. If homosexuals needed a lawyer to pursue a reluctant homeowner, then one would gladly be provided at the taxpayers’ expense. Gays were informed that the penalty for a first violation might be $10,000 and $25,000 for a second violation. A third violation could bring a penalty of $50,000. Deeply religious people who did not want to live under the same roof with fornicating habitués of mutual rectal exploration could sell their homes to pay the penalties imposed on them by the jack-booted governmental defenders of the ever-expanding homosexual comfort zone.
The New Jersey Division of Civil Rights provides private training workshops throughout the state. These workshops are available to schools, attorneys, and advocacy groups. We are told that their “dedicated and experienced training staff is made up of experts in all facets of the NJ Law Against Discrimination…” and that “the mission of the Division is the eradication of illegal discrimination in employment, public accommodations and housing, based on” among other things “affectional or sexual orientation.” It’s an amazing mandate. The term “affectional orientation” embraces every imaginable paraphilia, among them exhibitionism, sadism, masochism, pedophilia, voyeurism, necrophilia, necrozoophilia (sexual attraction to animal corpses), frotteurism (sexual arousal from rubbing against unsuspecting strangers), telephone scatologia (sexual arousal by making obscene phone calls), zoophilia (bestiality, hide your pets), urolagnia (sexual attraction to urine), biastophilia (sexual pleasure from committing rape) and lust murder. All these things could be called “affectional orientations.” The list might also include fetishisms for leather, fur, rubber, panties, shoes, spandex, and balloons, to name a few. In New Jersey you could be compelled to rent a room in your home to flamboyant cross dressers, or to people with powerful sexual attractions to excrement (coprophilia), vomit (emetophilia), human milk (galactophilia), old people (gerontophilia), blood (hematolagnia), enemas (klismaphilia), stuffed toys (plushophilia), foul decaying material (mysophilia) or wood (xylophilia), to name only a few. Americans used to call these folks perverts; now they must call them tenants, or face financial ruin. That’s the problem with undiscriminating anti-discrimination: if you accommodate one paraphilia, such as homosexuality, then you must also accommodate every paraphilia.
An eight-page handout from the New Jersey Lesbian and Gay Coalition, “serving NJ’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, intersexed and HIV/AIDS community,” includes articles with titles such as “Show Your Pride”. The eight display ads inside include two ads for lawyers and five ads for psychotherapists.
The slickest presentations came from Lamda Legal: sixteen-page self promotions printed on coated stock. “When Lamda Legal began our work, even we couldn’t imagine that we would accomplish so much with our persistent and aggressive legal strategies.” Says Lamda Legal: “We’re making an honest man of right-wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
“When Lamda Legal won the most significant court victory ever for lesbian and gay Americans one year ago – in our landmark case striking down Texas’s antigay sodomy law – Justice Scalia wrote a scathing dissenting opinion. He said that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling ‘leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples’ and predicted that it could lay the groundwork for allowing same-sex couples to marry.
“Indeed, that’s the plan. In just the last few months, we’ve moved light-years forward toward securing full marriage for same-sex couples….”
“While ‘impact litigation’ can sometimes sound abstract, our historic progress on marriage equality is a clear example of Lamda Legal’s uniquely effective formula. Our U.S. Supreme Court victory in Lawrence v. Texas lit a fuse….From that lit fuse we’re able to build additional victories that say states cannot deny same-sex couples legal access to marriage.
“As you’ll read in this issue of the Update, Lamda Legal is now litigating four major lawsuits seeking full marriage that are expected to be the next big breakthroughs in securing real equality. Two of those cases – in New Jersey and Washington State – could reach supreme courts by the end of 2004. This unprecedented, unparalleled commitment is part of Lamda Legal’s decade-long state-by-state strategy for same-sex couples.”
Afterthoughts
The liberal media put the biggest happy face possible Maplewood domestic-partnership “celebration”. The smaller-than-expected turnout was described as “hundreds” of couples. The 39 couples who registered in South Orange were just one couple short of being described as “scores of couples,” so they were called “dozens” of couples.” Only those gays who were enthusiastic about domestic partnership were quoted by any media outlet; gays who scoffed at domesticity were rendered invisible by the media talking heads.
As I write these words, Missouri is preparing to vote on a constitutional amendment to ban homosexual wedlock. This will be the first such vote in the nation since Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage. Gay activists are watching Missouri to see which campaign strategies work best. They are testing the system, and learning, and testing the system again.
Between nine and twelve states will vote on similar state constitutional amendments this year. Four states have already banned gay marriage. The proposed amendment in Missouri has prompted gay activists to lavish more than $100,000 on the local organization that is resisting the defensive amendment. They are expected to spend millions more around the country. For this wealthy splinter group it’s a small price to pay to get their hands on the pry bar of gay marriage. That pry bar is their key to the kingdom, their passport to the colonization of all American social institutions.
Postscript
This morning’s newspaper brings the news that Missouri voters have overwhelmingly approved of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The amendment garnered 72 percent of the vote with 58 precincts reporting.
Missouri and 37 other states already have laws defining marriage as a bond between a man and a woman, but supporters of the amendment were motivated by their anticipation that some future visionary jurist would toss aside the will of the people of Missouri and impose gay marriage by judicial fiat. They believed their social institutions would be better defended if a ban on gay marriage were black-letter constitutional law.
“What happens in Missouri will be looked at by people across the country,” said Seth Kilbourn, the national field director of the gay-activist Human Rights Campaign, which poured more than $100,000 into a television advertising blitz, banks of telephone callers and polling. Opponents of the proposed amendment spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to expand the gay comfort zone, far outspending their traditionalist opponents. Voter turnout was high, despite heavy thunderstorms.
Gay activists, predictably, declared that a constitutional amendment was “unnecessary.” Said gay activist Doug Gray, campaign manager for the gay-friendly Constitution Defense League, “We’re already reaching out to these other states, sharing with them what we learned, what worked, what didn’t work, and we’ll move on. Ultimately we’re right and they’re simply wrong.” Louisiana residents are to vote on a marriage amendment on September 18th. Doug, no doubt, would call their vote “unnecessary.”
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Thomas Clough
Copyright 2004
August 4, 2004.