Weekly Column
In a self-righteous, moralizing speech in Michigan last week, right wing radio personality Linda Harvey blithely offered this gem when questioned about discrimination against LGBT partners who want to marry.
“They can still marry someone of the opposite gender,” Harvey said.
This flippant response was not surprising. Self-styled “family values” activists have long turned a blind eye to the destruction caused by such “arranged” marriages. There are support groups, such as The Straight Spouse Network and Gay Husbands/Straight Wives, to pick up the pieces after these unions implode.
In her propaganda-laced presentation, Harvey (pictured) portrayed gay men as living an unhealthy existence. She cherry-picked medical data while blithely ignoring the positive affect marriage would have on the health of LGBT people. In the New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks wrote about what social science has to say about the affects of marriage:
“According to another [study] being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year,” writes Brooks. “If you have a successful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy.”
If Harvey and others of her ilk were genuinely concerned about the health of LGBT couples, they would be in favor of allowing them to marry. Instead, such hypocrites smugly mask their contempt with transparently saccharine professions of concern. They even offer “help” for LGBT people who are unhappy — while simultaneously working to undermine relationships that might bring joy. Is this not a conflict of interest?
Today’s New York Times science section has an article, “No Matter What, We Pay For Others’ Bad Habits”, that highlights a plethora of factors that determine health:
“Unhealthy habits are one factor in disease, but so are social status, income, family dynamics, education and genetics.”
Homosexuality is not a habit, of course, while homophobia is. Indeed, this preoccupation with prejudice by religious extremists directly affects several of these key measures of health. Every time an LGBT person is rejected from his or her house of worship, this has a tangible impact on their social status. When gay and lesbian couples are taxed at discriminatory rates it affects income.
Gay youth who drop out of school because they are bullied or kicked out of their homes have both their education and family dynamics torn apart. San Francisco State researcher Caitlin Ryan found that, LGBT “Teens who experienced negative feedback [when they came out] were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use.”
One would think that priggish proselytizers such as Harvey would read these alarming statistics and oppose bullying in schools. Instead, her organization, Mission America, is dedicated to attacking the “Day of Silence,” an annual event where students remain quiet for a day to show their support for LGBT peers.
Instead of insightful views from a faith perspective on Mission America’s website, Harvey’ organization offers manipulative questions designed to incite students against their LGBT classmates. These include:
- Is there any room for finding homosexuality‚Äîdare we say it‚Äîrepulsive? Or is that response now going to be viewed as “hate”?
- Is a student allowed to say a firm “no” to a homosexual advance?
- Is the Day of Silence really a back-door way to silence valid criticism and gain approval for questionable lifestyles?
So, the unctuous Harvey is concerned for our health, but portrays LGBT teenagers as repulsive predators with a furtive political agenda. I’d hate to see what Harvey is capable of saying if she did not love us so much.
Harvey also prattled on in her presentation, and website, about the supposed dangers of homosexuality – particularly contracting HIV. Not surprisingly, Harvey actively promotes abstinence-only “education” in schools, which is proven to be ineffective. She recklessly presents HIV as a gay disease — when it can be contracted by anyone who fails to take adequate precautions.
It is important to note that even if a gay man contracted HIV today, he still might outlive judgmental religious extremists who are so quick to condemn. Bible-Belt states are generally the fattest, have the highest concentration of smokers, have the most divorces and are even more likely to have traffic accidents due to aggressive driving.
While these busybodies worry about our hearts and happiness, their own children may one-day die prematurely of heart attacks by inhaling Happy Meals. In conservative areas, the fast food drive-thru might as well be a drive-by-shooting.
Isn’t it time our foes stopped obsessing about narrow-minded “morality” and spent more time addressing their own mortality caused by gluttonous and destructive lifestyles? Averting their obsessive gaze from the gays to focus on their own families is quintessentially a “pro-life” position.
Tags: David Brooks, Day of Silence, Day of Truth, fat, HIV, hypocrites, Linda Harvey, Mission America, Straight Spouse Network, The New York Times, Wayne Besen5 Comments »
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what about all the dead animals many conservative xians eat…thats been documented medically to have a negative effect on the body.
what about that high risk behavior of hunting, just as dick cheneys friend how risky it can be.
id say, seeing as there are more gun totting animal eaters than gays, they are most likely the ones doing the most damage and costing the most money for us all.
the cost alone of breeding and giving birth of just one child could make a family bankrupt, thanks to insurance and all the gays, this is another behavior the heteros get paid for.
id actually call it welfare….what they hate the most.
distribution of wealth is what it is….ohhh socialist nazi pigs…(cynical…i am a socialist actually)
Comment by Corey Mondello — March 30, 2010 @ 3:49 pm
Yes, I was aware about the divorce stats, but the others are a nice surprise too. Are there any other negative conservative Christian stats that could be useful- are they more liable to engage in child battery than normal people? Are they more likely to undertake other risktaking behaviour out of some weird sense of ‘divine providence’…?
Comment by Craig Young — March 30, 2010 @ 5:39 pm
I have seen what the whole “they have the right to marry someone of the opposite sex” lie leads to. It leads to living a lie, possibly cheating, eventually to unhappy spouses, and if the gay or lesbian party is having normal (for them) sex on the side, the straight spouse can end up shattered to realise that the gay or lesbian partner was never really attracted to or in love with them. Of course, if there are children, an unhappy or broken marriage will impact them as well. All this to maintain the lie that if GLBT people want to do so badly enough, “teh gay” can be prayed away and just getting married will make you straight. Yeah, right. Tell that to Mel White’s ex-wife or the thousands of other former spouses of gays or lesbians. I’m as lesbian as they come but I cannot for the life of me justify using another human being in that way. I was in a marriage like that in the 1970s. The only difference is that I was honest with my then-husband and he knew of my relationships. We divorced amicably in 1979 and remained good friends until his death in 1995. Would I ever do this again? Absolutely not. My ex-husband deserved a spouse who could be faithful to him and who was in love with him. I deserved to be able to marry a woman to whom I was truly attracted and with whom I was really in love.
Linda Harvey does not know what she is talking about. A gay or lesbian marrying someone of the opposite sex is a disaster waiting to happen. The other party, who usually either knows nothing about the other person’s orientation, or who thinks that the person has “turned straight”, is in for some major hurt when it comes out that their spouse is still gay or lesbian–usually this situation ends in divorce, with subsequent harm to any children there may be. Why would anyone with a shred of decency want someone to go through this?
Linda Harvey claims to be so pro-family. How can something like this be pro-family? Answer: it’s not pro-family. It is prompted by a deep hatred for GLBT people and a callous lack of concern for anyone who might end up marrying a spouse who would be better-served by being permitted to have a same-sex spouse. In the end it boils down to a selfish desire not to have their comfor zone disturbed.
This woman is absolutely repulsive. You can see the hatred in her face, and if the eyes are the mirror of the soul, hers is a very ugly one, motivated by two things: hatred and selfishness.
Comment by Merlyn — March 30, 2010 @ 7:46 pm
Linda Harvey – I am far more likely to get HIV from a man than from my spouse (another woman).
Your “logic” is ridiculous. You’d be better off just being honest and saying you just think we’re icky.
Comment by Christine — April 1, 2010 @ 2:12 pm
I find offense in these people sitting around a room “thinking” about how I have sex. The tables could so EASILY be turned around. I work and live near-exclusively with straight men so, I KNOW they pine for, lust after and crave anal sex with their wives. They BEG for it! Could this be nothing more than the straight men angry because we’re getting what they want so desperately AND, their women angry because they don’t WANT to have anal sex? I’m saying this has more to do with THEM than us and we’re being scapegoated.
What they need to understand is that for the other 23 hours of our day when we aren’t sexually engaged, we live, love and hope EXACTLY as they do. Focus on that, you nutjobs! What to talk about homosexuals then bring your conversations out of your coloring book Sunday school fantasies and into the real world where real lives are at state. And maybe, just maybe, you Anal Retentive Bitch…if you’d give up the booty once in a while, your husbands would stop coming over to my house, lying to me and messing up my damn hopes for happiness! “C’mon baby…I do care about you. If you love me…” OOOWWW! Sick of it. Now go and take care of your own business and keep your men out of our bedrooms!
Comment by Merr?©ll Barry O'Brian — April 2, 2010 @ 8:27 am