Sunday, August 21, 2011

Social Conservatives Will Defeat The Gay Agenda By Inventing New Words

For as long as I can remember, social conservatives have been at war with the "gay agenda" -- whatever that is. Probably just the notion that members of the LGBT community are actual human beings, or something.

Over time, however, they've been losing this fight. As it stands, a majority of Americans "say it should be legal for gays and lesbians to marry," according to a recent poll from ABC News and the Washington Post. Even self-styled opponents of gay marriage are meeting gay people for the first time in their lives and realizing that they aren't monsters. And Republicans are starting to edge toward favoring this position, themselves. Why, there's even an openly gay Republican running for President of these United States.

So, social conservatives are asking themselves, how do we reverse these trends? Honestly, the only way to accomplish that would be by making very old Americans immortal while simultaneously preventing new Americans from being born.

Absent the ability to do that, why not just start using some different words? Here's Sofia Resnick of the American Independent, reporting on this cunning new stratagem:

The first step for Christian conservatives to win the war against the gay movement is to rebrand the terms, said a few panelists at this weekend's The Awakening conference at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.

"'Gay' is a left-wing socio-political construct designed to create grounds for fundamental rights [based on] whimsical capricious desires," said Ryan Sorba, chairman of the Young Conservatives of California. "Gay identity does not exist."

So the trick here is to invent a new term that steals away from the positive connotations of the word "gay," I guess. We pretty much already know the word they'd like to use, if they had their druthers. But this is all about "rebranding," so here are some of the proposed terms these panelists think might hit all four quadrants:

Sorba proposed alternatives to the word "gay," which received approval by a unanimous show of hands by the 40-some audience members:

- "Same-sex attraction"
- "Same-sex intercourse"
- "Sodomy"
- "Unnatural vice"

Later in the discussion, it was suggested that gays should also be referred to as "anti-Christian."

Of course, these new terms are rife with semantic difficulties. "Same-sex attraction" and "same-sex intercourse" are basically clinical descriptors that aren't loaded with negative connotations. "Sodomy" is a term that, when used, also catches most of your skilled heterosexuals up into the same net. "Anti-Christian" may as well be a term for everything this group already stridently opposes. And I, for one, am only too curious to find out what a room of social conservatives considers to be a "natural vice."

But hey, this group is in desperate need of some sort of game-changer, because they're all still talking about their beef with homosexuality in the same way they have for decades. "If you had all the facts, you wouldn't choose to be gay," said Greg Quinlan, an "ex-gay" who serves as the president of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (the acronym for which is, oddly enough, PFOX).

Hey, you know, based on the facts I have at my disposal, I wouldn't choose to have an egg allergy -- huevos rancheros look delicious! -- but here's the thing: I don't actually have a choice in the matter.

Anyway, go read the whole report. I especially love the guy who says that "promoting gays in the military presents a national threat" because it all "comes down to the soldier who 'has your back or the one who wants to rub it.'" This only reinforces my belief that the best military-themed slashfic is written by homophobes.

No comments: