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FIRST-PERSON: Soulforce wants acceptance, not tolerance


ALEXANDRIA, La. (BP)–Homosexual activists, and those who support their cause, contend that all they really want is understanding and tolerance for their lifestyle. Suggest that their true agenda is to force societal acceptance of their behavior as natural and normal, and you will be labeled a homophobic alarmist.

But there is one activist group that makes no bones about the fact that they want every facet of American culture to embrace homosexuality. In fact, this organization’s main target for protest is the church and its related institutions.

Known as Soulforce, this group’s goal, according to its website, “is freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from religious and political oppression.” According to Soulforce, much of the church in America is guilty of “spiritual violence” for having the audacity to maintain the biblical proposition that homosexuality is a sin.

True to form, Soulforce currently is sponsoring Equality Ride, a rolling protest of colleges due to their “homophobic” policies. The Soulforce website describes the demonstration as “thirty-two young adults on a seven-week bus tour from New York to Los Angeles to confront nineteen religious schools and military academies that ban the enrollment of GLBT students.”

With the exception of three institutions, the schools targeted by Equality Ride are private, conservative, religious colleges. Let me repeat, Soulforce is protesting PRIVATE, RELIGIOUS colleges and universities.

And while Soulforce would lead you to believe the schools it is targeting primarily are concerned with homosexual behavior, the colleges have codes of conduct that also prohibit unmarried heterosexual sex. Other behaviors deemed sinful are also covered. Some colleges even regulate what is known as “public display of affection.”

Some will argue that Soulforce is only one small segment of the “gay rights” movement and that the larger body of homosexual activists do not want to force the church to accept their behavior, only to tolerate it. A quick tour of the Soulforce website undermines that argument.

One section of Soulforce’s website is titled “What People Are Saying About Equality Ride,” and provides supportive quotes from prominent homosexual activists.

Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, provides the first quote. NGLTF touts itself as “the first national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights and advocacy organization and remains the movement’s leading voice for freedom, justice, and equality.”

“The call must go out to all segments of American life, including public and private academic institutions: discrimination against gay people is immoral,” Foreman says. “There is no denominational or political affiliation, no theology or ideology, no deeply-held conviction that justifies the evil of homophobia.”

According to Foreman, Soulforce simply is doing what must be done. It is challenging the church and its belief that homosexuality is immoral.

I am weary of the unchallenged rhetoric of homosexual activists. How in the world did belief that a behavior is immoral become a phobia?

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, phobia is defined as “persistent, abnormal, or irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid the feared stimulus.”

Simply because I believe something is wrong does not mean that I am irrationally afraid. I believe that adultery is immoral; does that make me adulterphobic? How about drunkenness? Does my belief that it is wrong make me a drunkaphobic?

Coined in 1969 by clinical psychologist George Weinberg, the term “homophobia” took a person’s reasonable objection to homosexuality and turned it into to a warped psychological malady. In the book, “Society and the Healthy Homosexual,” Weinberg wrote, “I would never consider a patient healthy unless he had overcome his prejudice against homosexuality.”

The term “homophobia” has been so successful that now most of society cowers in fear of being labeled as such.

The goal of homosexual activists is to force the whole of society to accept their behavior as natural and normal. With popular culture now bowing comfortably at the altar of homosexual acceptance, “gay” activists are now targeting the church for a full assault. Soulforce’s Equality Ride is just one aspect of this attack.
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Boggs is editor of the Baptist Message newspaper in Louisiana.

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  • Kelly Boggs