Religious right suffers from sense of false entitlement

Linda Harvey

One of the biggest lies told by religious right groups and their spokespeople is that they are merely defending their personal religious beliefs and that they want to promote fairness by interjecting their opinion into the talk about sexual orientation.

Recent comments uttered by two leaders of religious right groups contradict that argument.

Linda Harvey from Mission America - a minor yet influential person in religious right circles - said that the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, shouldn't apply to gays:

Why should the equal protection argument be made in favor of homosexual behavior, which is changeable?  People are not naturally homosexual, so the definition of "person" in the Fourteenth Amendment is being twisted to make this assumption.

"Person" should be understood based on historic, beneficial, or at least neutral and fact-based traits; it should not be twisted to incorporate behavior that most religions and most cultures have said a firm "no" to.

It's also behavior for which there's no recognized science demonstrating a genetic or hormonal origin.  And it's also not beneficial and does not stand the definition of marriage, used for millenia - that is, the act of consummation. It's another sad fact of homosexual behavior that two men or two women can never consummate a marriage; they can never conceive children together.

Peter LaBarbera

Before you can even attempt to wrap your head around that nonsense, Peter LaBarbera from the group Americans for Truth - who is always lurking around religious right circles like the hyenas in The Lion King - issued this forewarning of a "shocking" meeting sponsored by the federal government:

I’m writing you from Oklahoma, having just attended a pro-homosexual conference funded with YOUR tax dollars and sponsored by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a branch of HHS.  We will have a full report on this one-day conference, which not only was devoid of pro-family advocates but featured speakers who were explicitly anti-biblical in their ideology, e.g., claiming that Romans 1 does NOT proscribe homosexual acts as sinful.

Here’s an excerpt from a conference flier titled, “What does the bible say about homosexuality?” passed out by presenter Kathy McCallie, in a session called “Spiritual Wellness in BGLT (sic) Communities, a Primer”:

“[The Apostle] Paul had no inkling that for some persons, a same-sex orientation might be natural, that is, part of who they are created to be. If he had known this, he would have had to argue that, for such persons, heterosexual acts would be unnatural.”

Whatever happened to liberal demands for “Separation of Church and State” (which is actually a twisting of the First Amendment)?! Here we have Americans’ tax dollars being used to assault historic biblical teaching against homosexuality as sinful.

 . . . the Oklahoma conference, although supposedly focusing on substance abuse, devoted much energy to promoting gender confusion and homosexuality. Can you imagine comparing gender-confused men who believe they are “women” but are denied use of the ladies’ restroom to Blacks suffering under official Jim Crow racism — as male-to-female trans “woman” Celeste Flemming did? The very first speaker at the conference, Randy Roberts Potts – the openly homosexual grandson of the late Oral Roberts – maligned my friend and Oklahoma St. Rep. Sally Kern, accusing her of being “hateful” toward homosexuals and going on a “witch-hunt” against them.  Stay tuned to this story, which also sheds like on the Obama administration’s radical use of the federal bureaucracy to promote the homosexualist agenda across America.

I fail to see the problem here. So what if  SAMHSA conducted an all-day conference devoted to gay health? That's a good thing. SAMSHA seeks to provide education regarding the needs of the lgbt community. When there is a problem with substance abuse in the gay community, one of the root causes happens to be homophobia - like the homophobia expressed by LaBarbera in his statement, i. e. the vicious attack on Ms. Flemming and the transgender community at large.

And what if at this conference folks posed a different interpretation of the Bible's view of homosexuality? Is that against the law? Is LaBarbera's interpretation the only one which should be allowed? What in the world gives him the right dictate how people interpret the Bible? Even the title of his piece is offensive - Federally-funded 'LGBT' conference in Oklahoma Undermines Scripture

And don't even get me started on LaBarbera's attempt to "defend" the Civil Rights Movement."

The main point I am trying to make is this - some members of religious right groups seem to have a feeling of entitlement in regards to the gay community. They feel that they entitled to dictate our lives and whether or not tax dollars should be used in the advancement of our well-being.

It's only a feeling, guys. It's not fact. And that's something that people like Harvey and LaBarbera had better get used to.