Tolerance, It Seems, Cuts One Way
There still are Christians at Harvard, and some of them thought that National Coming Out Day, when homosexuality is celebrated and “closeted” gays are urged to reveal themselves, might be a good moment to communicate a contrary message. So the student organization Society for Law, Life & Religion at Harvard Law School scheduled a panel discussion to mark “National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day” - to offer, in its words, “a message of compassion and hope for those homosexuals who desperately seek a way to leave the lifestyle of self-destruction behind.”
The Society for Law, Life & Religion comprises traditional Christians who hold the traditional Judeo-Christian view that homosexual behavior is sinful and unhealthy. They also maintain the traditional Judeo-Christian distinction - recently underscored in a pastoral letter from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops - between having a homosexual orientation, which is usually not freely chosen and therefore not sinful, and engaging in homosexual activity, which is a matter of free will.
Young people who feel the orientation are often deeply conflicted about engaging in the activity; it was to them that the Society for Law, Life & Religion directed its message.
“For those struggling with homosexuality, there is hope in the truth,” it announced in posters tacked up all over campus. “You can walk away.” The posters gave the time and place of the National Coming Out of Homosexuality presentation, noted that it was “sponsored by the HLS Society for Law, Life & Religion,” and added: “Open to the entire Harvard community. (Harvard ID will be required for admission.)” Within 24 hours, most of the SLLR posters were torn down or mutilated. In their place appeared new posters, identically laid out but bearing different words.
“For those struggling with Judaism, there is hope in the truth. You can walk away. (To the gas chambers.) The National Coming Out of Diversity Day. Sponsored by the HLS Society for Law, Loathing & Hate.”
There was more. “Open to the entire Harvard community,” the forged posters read. “Except you. Yes, the Jewish-looking kid. Or you Black and Asian guys. Or you, wearing the pink triangle. No, on second thought, keep wearing the pink triangle. (American Nazi Party ID will be required for admission. Non-Aryans will be required to present proof of non-mongrel ancestry for at least four generations.) Bring your own rope.”
It would be soothing to think that this vicious mockery was an aberration. But in bastions of the left from Harvard to Hollywood, it is routine. Dare to suggest that homosexuality may not be something to celebrate, and instantly you are a Nazi, a hatemonger, a gas chamber operator. Offer to share your teachings of Christianity or Judaism with students “struggling with homosexuality,” and you become as vile as a Ku Kluxer, as despicable as David Duke. Decline to esteem homosexuality as a key aspect of human “diversity” and you become the object of vitriolic name-calling and fury.
When the Harvard Coming Out of Homosexuality event took place, gay activists thronged the entrance, many wearing T-shirts or holding signs demanding, “Stop the hate!” But why is it hate to propose that people “struggling with homosexuality” may be able, with the help of friends and religious faith, to live a non-homosexual life? “Because it isn’t possible!” shout the activists.
It is possible.
One of the speakers at Harvard was Michael Johnston, president of Kerusso Ministries in Newport News, Va. Much of his story sounds like a typical coming-out experience. Growing up in Alaska, he was shy and a late bloomer. He went through adolescence never quite feeling that he fit in with other boys, yearning to get his confused emotions sorted out. In college, he was drawn to a group of theater students, in whose company he felt comfortable enough to experiment with sex. “A friend introduced me to homosexuality,” he says. Attracted by the pleasure of the experience, he spent 11 years as an out and active gay man.
If Johnston’s tale ended there, gay activists would embrace him today as one more stripe in the rainbow of human sexual diversity. But it continues. In 1986, he learned he was HIV positive. “That really caused me to stop and reevaluate my life. I kept thinking about the Christianity of my childhood. Eventually, I decided I could not live as a Christian and be an active homosexual.” In 1988, Johnston rejected the sexual identity he had previously embraced. “Today, I can tell you I am not the man I was in 1986.”
There is no hate in Johnston’s story. He doesn’t berate gays, or mock them, or demand that they renounce homosexuality. He knows that many gays are content and happy with their lives. He also knows that many are not.
“All I say is: ‘Here’s my story. This is what happened to me. It may be something you’d like to hear.”’ Some questions: How was inviting this man to speak at Harvard analogous to sending Jews to gas chambers? Isn’t his experience also an element of human “diversity?” What does it say about gay advocates, who so loudly champion tolerance and freedom of sexual choice, that they are so poisonously intolerant of people who make a choice different from theirs?
xxxx