Someone please send me an application blank to join the Great Conspiracy!

You make a good point. Teens have a hard enough job “becoming adults” as it is, and being gay makes the job an order of magnitude more difficult. “Rightwingnuts” are always pointing to studies (mostly of teens) that show that gays have more psychological problems than people in general. They use these to “prove” that gays in their thirties should not be allowed to adopt children, for example.

Yet we find that the safe schools initiative and including gays in anti-bullying programs has led to a dramatic reduction in these problems. The RR is against such programs since they reduce the problems that they would use against gays in other venues later.

The last thing they want are the happy, well-adjusted, openly gay people you mention.

I hate to say this, but do such figures really need to be invented?

You can find that chapter somewhere in the back, I think…

If this increases book sales, so much the better. Has “The Last Temptation of Christ” come out on DVD yet? ;-)

Yes, it’s true, there really is a “homosexual agenda.” No, not the one(s) ascribed to gays and lesbians by those threatened by them. Rather, the homosexual agenda revolves around three concepts: (1) tolerance, (2) inclusion, and (3) equality. Nope, that’s it! There is no “other” homosexual agenda. Just those three.

Now, mind you, tolerance, inclusion, and equality are “Enlightenment” concepts, concepts developed in the course of “human events” and history that argued such fundamental concepts are intrinsic to any pluralistic liberal democracy, like the one our Founders tried to create. Yes, the United States was founded on principles of the European Enlightenment by such disparate writers like Hobbes, Rousseau, Hume, Locke, Milton, and even Kant. It may seem strange in today’s environment that the concepts of tolerance, inclusion, and equality have not always been the case. Why did it take 2,500 years of Western Civilization to alight onto to these ideas; weren’t they “obvious” to everyone?

Well, no! Indeed, these concepts were truly radical in their time and place. Kings and autocratic rule were the norm, the Church-controlled State a necessary subsidiary, and something akin to Christianity had been their justification. Not that Jesus had anything to say about such things, but Christianity had pretty much determined that the divine right of kings to rule autocratically was from God himself, that subservience and obedience to a master was established in Christian Scripture, and that the jealous and wrathful Yahweh that was Jesus’s Father had prescribed this order, and any deviation from it would cause Yahweh’s condemnation, fires, earthquakes, and other destructions. Fearing anihilation, most people simply submitted. People like Joan of Arc, Copernicus, and Kepler, not to mention all of Europe’s royalty, towed the party line.

But then a miracle occurred. It wasn’t a “Christian” miracle in the biblical sense, it was a miracle in the humanistic sense. While people acknowledged their “debt” to Christianity’s civilizing properties, they reached “beyond” revelation as provided in the Bible and came up with the idea of PLURALISM. Highly unironically, Christianity’s own Protestant Reformation was the impetus. People were encouraged to “think” and “believe” for themselves, and now that Guttenburg had discovered moveable type, everyman could have access to God’s revelation, and everyman could think and believe for himself. Several major thinkers and writers dared even to think “outside” the Bible and came up with ideas that seemed natural, intrinsic, rational, and divinely-instituted. Well that kind of thought changed the world forever.

These “enlightened” thinkers, of which our own Founders were inheritants, saw new possibilities given the new range of ideas that the “liberty of thought” permitted. And among those thoughts, “rights” came to become a feature. Initially understood, “rights” were fundamentally “negative” claims AGAINST the State, claims which the State could not exercise under any circumstance. The State certainly had a role to play in human affairs, but that role expanded “beyond” the Bible, but also had its limits; and even if those “rights” and “limits” contradicted the Bible, so these men were certain that the concepts of tolerance, inclusion, and equality had their own ring of truth to them, regardless of what the Bible said. This “enlightenment” occurred in spite of, despite, and in contradiction to Christian Scripture of strict obedience to one’s superiors. Imagine that?

It took hundreds of years for these ideas to gestate throughout European and American societies, but once the genie was out, no one wanted, much less could, put the genie back into the bottle. The pluralistic concepts of tolerance, inclusion, and equality would take several hundred more years before becoming realized, and indeed, these ideas are still fought virulently by those who insist that the Bible, not intuition and reason, remained the standard. Slavery would not be abolished for nearly another century; women’s suffrage would take another. But once the genie was out, there was no way to go “back.”

And part-and-parcel of that evolutionary spirit of PLURALISM, now come gays and lesbians demanding tolerance, inclusion, and equality, just like the African-descendents had, and a century later women had. If just one is not included, tolerated, and equal, then no one is. Imagine such a revolutionary idea?

Sadly, except for Anglicanism, “pluralism” is a perjorative among Christians. According to Christians, Yahweh “revealed” the natural order of things according to his divine will. Women are to submit to their husbands, slaves are to obey their masters, and heaven forbids any woman speaking to other Christians as would a man. After all, all of it is in the Bible. Of course, there are a lot of things in the Bible that many choose to ignore, such as divorce, eating shellfish or pork, mixing two different fabrics, or men lying with men like men lie with women. All of this is forbidden in God’s literal and inerrant Word, especially the part about men lying with other men. A whole verse in the entire Old Testament states so. Therefore, according to these fanatics, Yahweh will rain down fire, hail, and brimstone on all societies that permit such aberrant behavior. (What Yahweh will do about those “other” things no one cares to guess.)

So homosexuals, because Yahweh rejects them, are NOT allowed tolerance, inclusion, and equality. Of course, divorcees are “another” matter, and mixing cotton with polyester is yet another matter, not to mention the shellfish problem. Yahweh must be mighty mad about “those” things too, but it’s the man lying with man that stirs Yahweh’s indignation. Why? Because the Bible tells us so. So, now, that homosexuals are on the verge of being included in this experiment in the “Enlightenment,” the biblical fundamentalists are on a true Crusade to thwart their every move. No equality. No tolerance. No inclusion. Indeed, contrary to all known evidence, we Christian fundamentalists have a particular mission towards these perverts: We’ll make them “ex-gay” heterosexuals. If, and when, these homosexuals submit to Yahweh’s Word, and become true heterosexuals as Yahweh intended, then all will be well with America, maybe even the world. Until the time when all homosexuals are “cured” of their sickness, not only are tolerance, inclusion, and equality prohibited to homosexuals, they should not even be allowed to work, live, cohabitate, or act uncriminally. We, Christian fundamentalists, acting as Yahweh’s surrogates, have pronounced judgment; homosexuals are to be pilloried.

Returning to the real world, that isn’t exactly how the Enlightenment saw it, and it sure isn’t the way America’s Founders saw it. In America, according to the Founders, everyone is “free” to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. And, because we all perceive this pursuit differently, the State is prohibited from establishing any “one” way as the only way. Some call it the State’s “neutrality” toward individual ends, others call it “pluralism” toward different means. The promise of American liberty is that each individual is “free” to seek out his own ends and means, without the State dictating what those might be. That is the promise of a pluralistic liberal democracy: STATE NEUTRALITY. As long as no one harms another, each person is free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness as HE or SHE sees fit, not as the STATE sees fit. And because human nature is so highly varied, people will seek these means and ends in very different ways; this is what we mean by PLURALISM. The Catholic, Quaker, Lutheran, Jew, Muslim, and atheist get to decide these matters for themselves, not because the State approves or disapproves any of them, but because the individual alone gets to make these choices.

Excuse me? How is it then that heterosexual marriages obtain over 1,100 special dispensations from the government by virtue of their heterosexual marriage, but everyone else, specifically homosexuals, are excluded? How is THAT neutral? How is THAT pluralistic? Did America’s founding promise change? The obvious answer is, Yes. Not only with respect to homosexuals, but now even certain corporations get to feed off the public trough, while individuals can’t. But only SOME corporations, others are excluded. Individuals are different from corporations, so the claimants insist, and thus deserve “special” treatment. And because heterosexuals are different from homosexuals, thus heterosexuals benefit from America’s “neutrality,” while homosexuals languish, waiting for the fulfilment of the promise about tolerance, inclusion, and equality.

This country, amazingly, got off on the right foot with good intentions (not dealing with slavery and women’s suffrages are two enormous strikes against the Founders). And like slavery and women’s suffrage that had to fight against the biblical yoke that has held each of them back, so now homosexuals are making the next fight in America’s evolution to obtain America’s promise. All that the “homosexual agenda” asks is that they receive equal treatment under the law. That the Enlightenment principle of tolerance for differences be restored. And, that equality is true of everyone, or it is true for no one. That seems to have been America’s agenda at one time; it’s now needed more than ever to restore American self-worth, dignity, and enterprise to ALL its citizens, not just those who claim Yahweh’s special dispenstions.

That said, while the gay community may be unaware of the book, After the Ball, it seems to be rather accurate. While things are far from perfect, acceptance of homosexuals is very widespread and growing. Support for the LGBT community is huge and more and more people are supporting absolute equality. And I think the bulk of the progress was made in the 90’s.

I read After the Ball when it first came out in paperback in the fall of 1990. I see from the copyright page that I have a first printing. While the blurb on the cover says “National Bestseller”, I remember it mostly as a flash in the pan. How funny to hear it’s now fodder for right-wing nutjobs whose tiny penises shrivel up at the thought of the lavender menace.

Some of the comments about After the Ball that I recall from back then centered around its perceived political incorrectness. The authors were blunt about submerging gay & lesbian diversity in the interests of presenting a more appealing package. It really was all about marketing. I’ve dug out the one thing I particularly remember from the book. There’s a picture on p. 232 of a newspaper advertisement sponsored by the Alexandria Gay Community Association. It featured a pair of middle-aged lesbians gazing soulfully at each other (one is holding the other’s pigtail in her hand). The caption is “Is it a Crime to Love?” On p. 233, Kirk & Madsen give their unsparing analysis: “[I]t showcases a couple that reinforces an unappealing stereotype–suggesting, perhaps, two leathery old dykes from tobacco road who bark at each other with gin-cracked voices, and who first met at a motorcycle roundup.”

Yeah, I get it: Cute, young, lipstick lesbians are what you want when you “product-place” gay people in visual images for the masses. No wonder After the Ball had to go underground. It was just too radical.

Well, I’ll bet “Gas Gouging: How Gay Activists Secretly Manipulate Oil Prices to Enrich Themslves and Destroy the Family” would be a bestseller. I’d better get right to work!