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Never enough


DALLAS (BP)–Some people get sick of talking about the homosexual agenda. But we have to.

The politics of sexual orientation is changing. If not for President Bush’s veto pen, two pieces of legislation, long sought by the homosexual lobby — the hate crimes law and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) — soon could be enshrined in our body of law.

Both chambers of Congress recently passed hate crimes legislation that directly addresses violent crime, but taken to its logical conclusion, could be used to clamp down on religious speech and instruction against homosexuality.

ENDA, which has passed the House, would prevent employers from firing or refusing to hire or promote someone because of their sexual orientation. Yet the homosexual lobby’s 15-plus-year quest to pass this legislation almost disintegrated from within. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass), was accused of “throwing transgenders under the bus” when he made a realistic political calculation to change his bill to omit them from the protections afforded by the bill. It seems some freshman Democrats didn’t want to go to the mat for cross-dresser rights, in which employers would have to allow bathroom privileges to employees based on their stated current perceptions of their gender identity. (In other words, it wouldn’t necessarily be just women using the women’s restroom.)

Nevertheless, the inclusion of transgenders in the debate reveals a fatal flaw in the civil rights argument, injecting a gender fluidity that refutes the idea of a hard-wired sexual orientation that can’t be changed. It also injects a “bizarre factor” into a quest that actually was gaining acceptance. Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio found that 77 percent of Republicans don’t think businesses should have the right to fire someone based on their sexual orientation. Still, President Bush promised a veto based upon very real threats to the religious freedom of employers.

Enacting ENDA and the hate crimes legislation won’t save many lives or jobs. States are doing just fine prosecuting criminals without the federal government getting involved in determining motive. And, there is no epidemic of gay firings.

In fact, corporations are stumbling over themselves to offer benefits aimed at attracting and retaining homosexual workers. These laws will, however, achieve the homosexual lobby’s long-sought goal: bestowing protected status upon people based on their sexual behavior. And with “gender identity” included in these protections, a whole class of law will arise to accommodate certain confused people who decide their sex is not the one “assigned at birth.”

President Bush is correct in his understanding that this type of tolerant-sounding legislation is actually intolerant of the views of religious Americans. Homosexual behavior, once universally defined as sin, now is identified with a group demanding protections for that sin. These activists also want rights based upon that sin, and incentives to continue in that sin.

This goes way beyond accommodation. It will bring cultural and moral transformation. Society will no longer conform to a biblical moral framework, but to a sinful one. We who call it sin will do so at our own risk. All rights of disagreement or condemnation, especially if based on religious doctrines, will be legislated away, criminalized.

No longer, will we be able to call sin, sin. It’s too late to say this criminalization of Christianity won’t happen. There is a growing number of cases against Christians in countries where this process is more advanced and a body of evidence that is expanding even here in America.

Most homosexual activists who say they only want “equality” won’t even realize the havoc their “gains” have wrought on the culture. The homosexual advocacy groups will declare victory, but not contentment. Their declaration of their “second class” status will only grow stronger as it did in Vermont, when civil unions were established. Demands for new protections, other affirmations, even celebrations of perversion will take the country all the way to redefining marriage if we let it.

A recent column in the homosexual newspaper Washington Blade (“Building a house from the roof down”) argues that homosexual leaders have had the wrong goals — namely their obsession with “gay marriage.” The column says the movement should concentrate on more easily obtainable goals, including the passage of the hate crimes bill, ENDA and the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But, readers are warned to keep the real goals close to the vest:

“Through this, marriage and civil unions should remain silent issues — at least silent to the straight public. Tactics and strategies can be formed behind closed doors, while focusing our primary efforts on the passable issues. When all the various above issues have been resolved, think of all the money that would be freed up to focus on marriage. We can lobby the president and Congress on repealing DOMA, (the Defense of Marriage Act) while targeting the weakest states to repeal their ‘one man, one woman’ amendments.”

With the more easily obtained laws in place, it will be easier to legalize “gay marriage,” the columnist argued.

“You don’t build a house upside down,” the column said. “… Why is it so difficult for our ‘managers’ to understand this?”

Why address the advancing homosexual agenda again and again? Obviously, the effort to derail and defeat the demands of the homosexual lobby does not preclude love of and outreach to individuals caught in the lifestyle. But homosexual activists and their allies demand radical policy and cultural change which must be opposed more relentlessly than it is promoted. Failing that, we will lose the right to speak the truth about it.
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Penna Dexter is a board of trustee member with the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, a conservative activist and an announcer on the syndicated radio program “Life on the Line” (information available at www.lifeontheline.com). She currently serves as a consultant for KMA Direct Communications in Plano, Texas, and as a co-host of “Jerry Johnson Live,” a production of Criswell Communications. She formerly was a co-host of Marlin Maddoux’s “Point of View” syndicated radio program.

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  • Penna Dexter