11/8/98
After digesting the election results from South Portland and
Ogunquit, do opponents of gay rights need any further evidence
that the Religious Right's politics of disgust are a prescription
for disaster?
Think about it: Paul Volle and his Christian Coalition of Maine
were the only organized opposition to the South Portland
gay-rights ballot question. Volle & Co. grabbed headlines
with their 16-page tabloid attacking gays as sexual predators and
pedophiles who ingest the urine and feces of their partners. With
voter turnout significantly higher than the state as a whole,
South Portland voted to affirm the local gay-rights ordinance.
The same voters on the same day elected a conservative Republican
challenger opposed to gay rights to a seat in the Maine House of
Representatives.
In Ogunquit, a seaside tourist town noted for its large gay and
lesbian population, voters rejected a municipal gay-rights
ordinance. Again, the 65% voter turnout was well above the state
average. Volle and his associates stayed out of the Ogunquit
campaign because they assumed, based on the town's reputation as
a "gay-friendly" community, that voters there would
support the local ordinance.
We should all be thankful that Volle stayed away from the
Ogunquit contest. His involvement there would have surely
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Volle's explanation for the South Portland loss is that he got
started too late, just weeks before the election. Actually, Paul,
you got started too early. You should have waited till the day
after the election to dump your rag on voters' doorsteps. Timing
is everything in politics, you know.
When will religious conservatives wake up and smell the toast
burning? Moral condemnation of gay sexual behavior has no place
in a public-policy debate about granting minority-equivalent
status based on sexual orientation. Behavior-based arguments
demonize the entire gay community for the civil-rights fraud of a
tiny minority within that community. In any case, "sexual
orientation," under statute and case law, is not defined in
terms of behavior, but rather as a "preference" or
being perceived as having a particular "preference." In
other words, one can claim a gay "sexual orientation"
and never have engaged in any gay sex.
The Achilles heel of the gay-rights movement is not homosexual
sex. The Gay Left's vulnerability is rooted in the wholesale
fraud and deception of its claim that gays and lesbians are an
oppressed minority group entitled to the same legal status and
benefits as disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities. The
evidence is overwhelming that homosexuals in Maine and America
are anything but disadvantaged. In fact, their levels of income,
education, and political influence rank them far above the
national average.
While gay activists are spending millions of dollars to prove how
poor and powerless they are, the Volle brigade squandered
precious resources trying to convince voters that there's no
difference between gays and gay activists.
Volle and editor Mark Finks titled their tabloid "The Gay
Agenda." Of course, there is no "gay agenda," any
more than there is a "heterosexual agenda." But there
surely is a radical gay-activist agenda that Volle and Finks
failed to address in any credible way.
Volle's inflammatory tabloid was in many respects the mirror
image of gay-activist propaganda. These factions are
"perfect enemies." Both the Religious Right and the Gay
Left persist in perpetuating the falsehood that the terms
"gay" and "gay activist" are interchangeable.
The truth is that many gays and lesbians detest the activists and
in fact oppose their extremist agenda. Didn't the results in
Ogunquit make this point crystal clear for all but the willfully
blind? Presuming, as Volle and the Gay Left do, that gay
activists speak for the entire gay population is ludicrous. Such
presumptions play right into the hands of hard-core Gay Left
activists such as Dale McCormick, Betsy Sweet, and Alan Stearns.
When they whine about "hate" and "bigotry"
encouraged by the Religious Right, gay activists are really
saying, "Please don‚t throw me in the briar
patch!"
You don‚' need to persuade voters that homosexuality is
immoral to win their support for opposition to
minority-equivalent status based on claimed "sexual
orientation." Appeal to swing voters‚ sense of basic
fairness and equality, and you will have no problem building an
electoral majority opposed to any counterfeit minority
masquerading as a new victim class.
The Washington state referendum on gay rights in November of 1997
was a largely ignored example of how principled opposition to
gay-rights fraud can succeed in a socially liberal state. With
high voter turnout in a general election, opponents of gay rights
prevailed because they stayed focused on showing that:
(1) gays and lesbians as an entire class are anything but disadvantaged, and thus do not qualify for victim status, and
(2) that granting such status would put a club in the hands of gay-activists. Most importantly, the Beltway Big Right played no more than a marginal role in the campaign.
It's clear in the aftermath of the referendum elections in
Ogunquit and South Portland on November 3, 1998, that Maine's
special election last February -- the Peoples' Veto of a
gay-rights bill passed by the Legislature -- was an anomaly.
Volle mobilized his numerically small base of religious
conservatives, about 15 to 18 percent of voters, for a mid-winter
special election in which voter turnout was just 30 percent. He
also benefited from the solid foundation of principled opposition
to gay rights in Maine established during the 1995 campaign for
ballot Question One -- which Volle strongly opposed in an
interview published in a gay-activist newspaper.
It is terminally irrational to suppose that sanctimonious,
impertinent lectures about "sexual sin" will convince a
majority of voters to vote against gay rights in a high-turnout,
statewide general election.
Ultimately, this struggle has profound legal and social
implications far beyond the narrow question of whether our
Legislature and Congress should make "sexual
orientation" the legal equivalent of race and skin color.
Once it achieves minority status and a critical mass of momentum,
the Gay Left moves quickly into positions of power and influence
in the regulatory bureaucracy, most notably in the coercive
enforcement machinery of state and local "human-rights"
commissions.
The implied threat of expensive litigation is enough to force
most targets of gay-activist bullying to roll over without a
fight when hit with a discrimination complaint, even one that's
dubious or trumped up. First Amendment guarantees of free speech,
freedom of association, and religious liberty will be no match
for the Gay Left's swarms of taxpayer-funded litigious locusts.
We're at the crossroads, folks. Will we do our homework and learn
from our mistakes, or will social conservatives remain mired in
the politics of disgust?
Lawrence Lockman is chairman of Concerned Maine Families PAC. Email ldlockman@telplus.net |