Hating Gays
I was reading the Nov. 10th post at First Things, about hypocrisy as shown in the example of Ted Haggard, ... I came to this part below and the mean-spiritedness of it made my skin crawl ...
... Another oddity is that gay and gay-friendly commentators assume that any publicity involving homosexuality—whether Ted Haggard or the Florida congressman who flirted with male pages—works to the benefit of their cause. This strikes me as highly doubtful. A congressional predator or Haggard’s liaisons with a male prostitute hardly enhances the public image of gayness. Of course, there are adult men who prey on girls and there are plenty of female prostitutes. But most Americans live in a heterosexual world where such deviance is recognized as deviance. Almost all the people they know do not prey on girls or patronize prostitutes.
But what they do know about the gay world? Largely the sleaze that comes to the surface in public scandals. There was an op-ed in Wednesday’s New York Times asserting that 70 percent of Americans personally know someone who is gay. That seems statistically improbable. Somewhere between 2 and 4 percent of American males identify themselves as gay. (The figure is much lower for women.) Most of them are congregated in cities, and in those parts of cities known to be gay-friendly. Chelsea and the West Village, along with the Castro district of San Francisco and counterparts in other larger cities, are not America. Gays live in such places precisely because they are not America.
Admittedly, young people in college, or at least in most colleges, do know personally people who are gay; and some of them they count as friends. Most campuses have special-interest LGBT groups, and students are indoctrinated in gay ideology under the rubric of opposing “homophobia.” At one Ivy League college, faculty members told me over dinner that one-third of the male students were at least “experimenting” with homosexuality. Among the women, there were also a large number of “LUGS” (Lesbian Until Graduation). Whether such developments will significantly increase the percentage of adults identifying themselves as gay or lesbian will, I suppose, be discovered in due course. Apart from an intuition for the natural built into human beings, there are all kinds of incentives and pressures militating against such a significant increase.
What most Americans know about being gay is distinctively unattractive and, in their view, morally repugnant ...
Boy, am I glad I'm not gay/lesbian ... I'd have to haunt a gay ghetto-town like San Francisco (one of those places not really America), slithering out from under my rock only to socialize with the incredibly small number of other perverts, sandwiching in a few college courses between my visits to prostitutes ... the shame of sharing my repugnant self with "most Americans" would be too much to bear.
This First Things post was written on the subject of "hypocrisy" - one definition of a hypocrit might be a professed Christian who hates others.
... Another oddity is that gay and gay-friendly commentators assume that any publicity involving homosexuality—whether Ted Haggard or the Florida congressman who flirted with male pages—works to the benefit of their cause. This strikes me as highly doubtful. A congressional predator or Haggard’s liaisons with a male prostitute hardly enhances the public image of gayness. Of course, there are adult men who prey on girls and there are plenty of female prostitutes. But most Americans live in a heterosexual world where such deviance is recognized as deviance. Almost all the people they know do not prey on girls or patronize prostitutes.
But what they do know about the gay world? Largely the sleaze that comes to the surface in public scandals. There was an op-ed in Wednesday’s New York Times asserting that 70 percent of Americans personally know someone who is gay. That seems statistically improbable. Somewhere between 2 and 4 percent of American males identify themselves as gay. (The figure is much lower for women.) Most of them are congregated in cities, and in those parts of cities known to be gay-friendly. Chelsea and the West Village, along with the Castro district of San Francisco and counterparts in other larger cities, are not America. Gays live in such places precisely because they are not America.
Admittedly, young people in college, or at least in most colleges, do know personally people who are gay; and some of them they count as friends. Most campuses have special-interest LGBT groups, and students are indoctrinated in gay ideology under the rubric of opposing “homophobia.” At one Ivy League college, faculty members told me over dinner that one-third of the male students were at least “experimenting” with homosexuality. Among the women, there were also a large number of “LUGS” (Lesbian Until Graduation). Whether such developments will significantly increase the percentage of adults identifying themselves as gay or lesbian will, I suppose, be discovered in due course. Apart from an intuition for the natural built into human beings, there are all kinds of incentives and pressures militating against such a significant increase.
What most Americans know about being gay is distinctively unattractive and, in their view, morally repugnant ...
Boy, am I glad I'm not gay/lesbian ... I'd have to haunt a gay ghetto-town like San Francisco (one of those places not really America), slithering out from under my rock only to socialize with the incredibly small number of other perverts, sandwiching in a few college courses between my visits to prostitutes ... the shame of sharing my repugnant self with "most Americans" would be too much to bear.
This First Things post was written on the subject of "hypocrisy" - one definition of a hypocrit might be a professed Christian who hates others.
posted by crystal | 1:38 AM
4 Comments:
You know, I've moved over the years from being somewhat of a fan to real distaste for what I've seen coming from Fr. Neuhaus lately and from George Weigel as well. I've eliminated their links from my blog.
Perhaps 70 percent of people say they know a gay person because most of those ghettoized gays have extended families.
Hi Jeff - I knew First Things was conservative, but I was surprised by this hateful quality of this post.
Hi Rick and Gary - thanks for commenting. The writer of the post seems to be so appalled by gays that the thought of them having families didn't occur to him. It's creepy to see such a mean and negatively biased post in a well thought of magazine.
Wait, New York and San Francisco aren't really America? Bummer. They're two of my favorite cities! I wonder what IS actually America?
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