The Gay Agenda Exposed

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Ann Woolner is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.

Truth Behind the `Homosexual Agenda' Exposed: Ann Woolner

July 7 (Bloomberg)

-- Over dinner with a gay friend this week, I asked to see his copy of the Homosexual Agenda.

I've been trying to find one ever since Justice Antonin Scalia complained two weeks ago that the U.S. Supreme Court had ``signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda'' when it struck down Texas' law against gay sex.

My friend claimed he had never actually seen it himself. Yeah, right. He's spent his career working in public schools, perfectly placed to troll for recruits and poison young minds. How could Agenda distributors have missed him?

In any case, it turns out that the best sources for the Homosexual Agenda are not homosexuals but anti-homosexuals.

```Gay' activists target America's children and seek their help in their quest of `tolerance' and `acceptance,''' says an article posted on the American Family Association's Agenda page.

``Sodomites have infiltrated every level of government and society and are now demanding legitimization of their sinful lifestyle,'' says a Homosexual Agenda article posted on the fundamentalist Jeremiah Project's site.

Actually, the anti-homosexuals are onto something. Call around to the so-called gay-rights groups and you'll discover they openly admit their ``quest for `tolerance' and `acceptance.'''

And they, like Scalia, say the Texas case gives a huge boost for that cause, indeed.

``It ushers in an entirely new era,'' says Leslie Cooper, a lawyer for the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Uh-oh. Look out!

Bedroom Privacy

The court said the Constitution protects bedroom privacy, even for homosexuals. It threw out its 1986 decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, which allowed states to criminalize gay sex.

The Bowers decision has been used to deny homosexuals jobs, to refuse parents custody of their own children, to keep gay- straight alliances from meeting on school grounds, to deny loved ones inheritance from their partners.

The new ruling in Lawrence v. Texas shows the high court's capitulated to the Agenda. Get this: Gays and lesbians ``are entitled to respect for their private lives,'' Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority.

With this decision, the Homosexual Agenda will swing into action like never before.

Army Discharge

Just this past Monday, former Lieutenant Colonel Loren Loomis sued in Washington because the Army discharged him eight days before his retirement for having sex with men.

Loomis's service in Vietnam didn't matter, nor did his two Bronze Stars for valor, the Purple Heart for his combat wound, the promotion that had been approved. You have to ignore a lot about a person to define him by his sexual conduct.

Loomis had kept his private life secret throughout 20 years in the Army, a secret broken when an ex-lover set fire to his house, where arson investigators found incriminating videotapes.

With Lawrence-like arguments, Loomis hopes to strike down military policy that reserves special punishment for gays.

Likewise, gay-rights lawyers hope the Lawrence case will help overturn Florida's ban on adoptions by homosexuals in a case a federal appeals court is pondering.

Steve Lofton and Roger Croteau became foster parents to an HIV-positive infant, ``Bert,'' 11 years ago in Miami. They're so good at parenting that a Miami placement agency, Children's Home Society, named an award after them. But that hasn't helped their quest to adopt Bert. Maybe Lawrence will.

Love and Marriage

As for the biggest bugaboo -- homosexual marriage -- it's not the least bit clear that decriminalizing same sex unions requires states to bless them.

Still, anti-homosexual activists are gearing up.

Allowing same-sex couples entry would ``destroy traditional marriage,'' says the Traditional Values Coalition, and ``would cheapen marriage,'' says the Southern Baptist Convention.

Frankly, heterosexuals have done a pretty good job of that already. Half of all first marriages end in divorce, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

While many sincere people hold deep beliefs that marriage should be reserved for opposite sex couples, some of their most visible representatives have cheapened the institution.

The lead House sponsor of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 was then-Representative Robert Barr, a Georgia Republican who sequentially promised three women that he'd be with each until death do them part.

And then there's Georgia's former attorney general, Michael Bowers, whose defense of Georgia's anti-sodomy law embedded his name in the 1986 decision.

Moral Standards

While Bowers was arguing for the state's right to set moral standards, he was cheating on his wife, as he later admitted. He was carrying on the same affair in 1991, when he withdrew a job offer from a lawyer because she was openly planning a wedding ceremony with another woman.

``Mr. Bowers, who has essentially been a bigamist, felt morally authorized to fire me for having this marriage ceremony,'' says Robin Shahar, now a lawyer for the city of Atlanta.

That's what happens when nothing but sexual orientation counts.

Shahar says she's still in the same ``loving, committed, monogamous relationship,'' one ``far closer to what society's trying to protect than the marriage he's involved with.''

The Homosexual Agenda contains no item proposing the destruction of marriage, insists Jon Davidson, senior counsel at Lambda legal, a so-called gay-rights group. All it says is, ``Please let us in.''

At last! A homosexual who admits the Agenda exists.

``There definitely is a gay agenda,'' said Davidson. ``The gay agenda is about equality. That's it.''

And that's what scares so many people.

Last Updated: July 11, 2003 10:30 EDT

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