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Linda Tripp, the White House's ghoulish bad conscience
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A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A
Dear Camille:
I am eager to have your opinion on the ad campaigns that suggest
gay and lesbian individuals can change their sexual preference. Because
I am out of the country for the summer, I haven't been able to follow the
controversy completely. However, what's the big idea? If homosexuals
want to change lifestyles shouldn't they be allowed to, in a supportive
environment? These ads appear to be harmless; no one is being forced to
change their sexual preference (although I do admit that the sponsors of
these campaigns have an agenda). What do you think of HRC
spokeswoman Elizabeth Birch's characterization of the ads as "hateful"? If
Julie Cypher and Anne Heche can go from leading relatively straight lives
to alternative ones, isn't it possible for "ex-lesbian" poster child
Anne to do the reverse? You are the only lesbian I have heard say that
homosexuality is not genetic, so I know that you have an insightful and
unbiased opinion on the matter.
-- Conservative in Va.
Dear Conservative:
The July newspaper ads, signed by a coalition of conservative Protestant groups, were apparently inspired by White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry's unfortunate choice of words in responding to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's anti-gay remarks earlier this summer. (I dealt with the Lott flap in my June 23 column.)
"Backward in thinking" is how McCurry put it, with the arrogant elitism for which liberal Democrats have become notorious. Translation: Christians who revere traditional scriptural teaching are ignorant rubes. If you don't swing with the sodomites these days, you're nowheresville with the A-list crowd. The Clintons, who just returned from their party weekend in the glitterati Hamptons, know where the fat checkbooks are buried.
I've warned throughout this decade that the gay activist tactics of derision and intimidation about orthodox Christianity arouse needless animosity without producing fundamental change: Viciously silencing opponents simply guarantees that when the backlash finally comes, it will take massively reactionary form. No authentic dialogue is possible with gay activists, as I know from experience. Their minds are closed: They think in starkly Manichaean terms of good vs. evil, with themselves cast as the angels. Hence they and Christian fundamentalists are made for each other, in a nonstop cyclic melodrama of hysterical mutual torment.
Human Rights Campaign executive director Elizabeth Birch actually seems like a very nice person (send up the fireworks: This may be my first compliment ever to a gay activist). However, as a professional political strategist, she may be in over her head in trying to debate complex religious or psychosexual issues, and her obvious frustration is starting to make things worse.
Yes, as a scholar of sexual history and culture, I think the claims that homosexuality is innate are based on questionable and minuscule evidence (see my July 7 column on this subject). The PC parrots who are squawking that view all over the media don't seem to realize that their vaunted body of data simply suggests thus far that gay men are developmentally defective -- that is, that they were incompletely masculinized in the womb, perhaps because of emotional or environmental stresses on their pregnant mothers. Is this really where we want gay rights to be heading?
Sexual fantasies, rooted in childhood, are always symbolic. They have a mysterious, magical relationship to family, friends and the greater worlds of nature and society -- which is why the famous, grisly fairy tales like "Snow White" or "Hansel and Gretel" have generated so much psychoanalytic commentary. Once overt sexual desire and practice begin to reinforce those mental pathways, it's very difficult to alter them. Habit makes deep neural imprints.
If some or many gays can reexamine their personal and family histories and make a fundamental shift of sexual orientation, more power to them! I respect their will and courage. Neither gay activists nor queer theorists (binge queens for propaganda) show any appetite for self-examination at the moment, so their sweeping statements about psychology are useless.
My philosophy of gay rights is very simple: As a libertarian, I think that government should stay out of people's private lives. I oppose sodomy laws, favor lowering the age of consent to 14 and advocate reexamining all benefits currently extended to married heterosexuals to ensure that gays, who cannot legally marry, are not discriminated against.
Next, I loathe the outrageous way that gay activists routinely conflate the oppression of gays and blacks: There is no basis for comparison in U.S. history, where blacks were systematically and cruelly enslaved. And I am highly skeptical about the actual incidence of gays losing their jobs because they are gay (as opposed, let's say, to them simply being obnoxious, for which straights get fired too).
To conclude, I appeal to the gay activist leadership to focus on practical legal matters and to back off from its doomed high-wire experiments with theology and psychoanalysis. Let religious conservatives say whatever they want and run whatever ads they want. Get real: Entertainment, media and the arts are nonstop advertisements for homosexuality these days. One man's propaganda is another man's poison.
N E X T_P A G E | Was Michelangelo gay?
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