PrintMay 25, 2011
Closets and Christians
CNN host Don Lemon recently became the latest in a string of high profile individuals to "come out of the closet" and inform everyone who would listen that he enjoys practicing homosexuality. Every time this occurs, and we are treated to the seemingly endless litany of interviews that applaud the recently outed individual's courage and fortitude; I'm left scratching my head.
First, why do the very people that constantly tell us that what a person does in their bedroom is no one else's business, simultaneously find it necessary to inform everyone of what they do in their bedroom? If this is a private matter, Don, then let's keep it private. Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way, but frankly, I don't care to know what kind of sex the evening news anchor is into. Beyond it being remarkably irrelevant to the dissemination of news, it's just kind of creepy that these proponents of sexual anarchy feel it is their civic duty to incessantly shove their unconventional behavior in front of our children's faces.
But beyond that, let me be blunt: there is absolutely no courage to be found in following what has become an alarming fad amongst the entertainment glitterati by joining the LGBT crowd. Does anyone actually think that in the politically correct world of American media there was any chance Don Lemon was going to be publicly criticized amongst his peers for such a declaration? Lemon's home network of CNN has become notorious for their one-sided reporting of the emerging face-off between homosexual rights claims of sexual anarchists on the left and the rights of conscience for the traditional morality crowd on the right.
Homophobia has become a buzzword that is ceaselessly applied to anyone with moral objections to homosexuality. In her celebratory interview with Lemon, congratulating him for telling everyone who he enjoys having sex with, über-leftist Joy Behar demonstrated this very truth. She asked Lemon, "And so you're going to have people sit there with you like Rick Santorum, who seems like a big homophobe...how do you feel that you'll be able to handle that easily?"
Gee, Joy, maybe like every Christian feels when they sit down to talk with a Christophobe like you? And that's the point: far from eliminating discrimination and prejudice, these homosexual rights champions that dominate the press and entertainment world are advocating their own version of bigotry towards those who espouse Biblical morality.
If Lemon really wanted to demonstrate courage, let's see him "come out" in the media as a Bible believing, born-again follower of Jesus Christ whose faith teaches him that homosexuality is morally improper. Rather than basking in the glow of the entertainment crowd's unyielding affection, he would be immediately tarred and feathered for his draconian allegiance to discriminatory and prejudicial fairy tales coming from an ancient, bigoted book.
He would watch his convictions be publicly twisted as nothing more than masked hatred. He would see his entire career and livelihood threatened as a result of his supposedly backwards beliefs. Think I'm exaggerating? Ask two-time gymnastics gold medal winner Peter Vidmar who just this month was forced to resign from his position as head of the 2012 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team simply because he donated $2,000 to support traditional marriage in California. Far from being hailed as a hero or courageous for standing up for who he was and what he believed, the homosexual crowd vilified Vidmar, as outed figure skater Johnny Weir labeled his convictions, "disgraceful."
In our pop culture, courage is apparently a one way street. This reality was further demonstrated by former NBA star turned social commentator Charles Barkley's recent comments to Washington Post columnist Mike Wise. Praising Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts for his courage in announcing -- what else -- that he was "gay," Barkley opined, "The first people who whine and complain is them Bible-thumpers, who are supposed to be non-judgmental, who rail against them. Hey, may, I don't worry about what other people do."
In case you're wondering, no, Charles didn't notice the irony of claiming he doesn't care about what people do the sentence right after he viciously condemned "Bible-thumping" people for what they do. Perhaps I'm expecting too much intellectual integrity from a man whose most famous contribution to his profession was spitting on opposing fans in the crowd. But Barkley's glaring hypocrisy is reflective of a systemic problem of inconsistency on the left.
That inconsistency is what leads us to a culture where someone as genial and pleasant as Dr. James Dobson is branded a hater, while someone as vile and perverted as Lady Gaga is hailed as a courageous trailblazer.
In the end, it's not the presence of decadence in our culture that is the issue. Free societies will always produce the occasional oddball, and embracing liberty means securing the basic rights of those who are different. But what we're experiencing is a move on the part of the oddballs not to secure their own rights, but to deny and disparage the rights of others to disagree with them and their choices. If outlawing decadence is bigoted, codifying it is even worse.
Peter is a public high school government teacher and radio talk show host in central Indiana. Email peter@peterheck.com, visit www.peterheck.com, or like him on Facebook.
