NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/soc/motss/48122

Text File | 1992-11-17 | 5.4 KB | 113 lines

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From: Bryan J. Blumberg <[e-mail]>
Subject: PHOBE ALERT:  American Family Assn comments on Schlafly outing
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LIBERALS GIVE HOMOSEXUALS SILENT APPROVAL
By Joseph Sobran, Universal Press Syndicate

This article was taken from the November/December 1992 issue
of the Journal of the American Family Association.

Address:  P.O. Drawer 2440
          Tupelo, MS  38803
Phone:    [phone]
Subscription Rate:  $15 per year

     I recently mentioned the great silence of liberal opinion on the
subject of "outing"--the malicious exposure of homosexuals by gay
militants.  You'd think people who are still warning us against
McCarthyism, 40 years later, would feel moral qualms about a current
form of political blackmail.

     Well, take a look at the September 28 issue of Newsweek.  An
unsigned article cackles about the newly revealed fact that John
Schlafly, son of the conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, is a
homosexual.  The anonymous author tells us gleefully that "[Mrs.]
Schlafly's own family life has been something less than the Ozzie and
Harriet ideal so righteously extolled by conservatives."

     If I wrote like that, I wouldn't sign it either.  (And to think
Newsweek used to bill itself "the one news weekly that separates fact
from opinion.")  I'm getting the feeling that Ozzie and Harriet have
become the liberals' Willie Horton.

     What's the point?  That you can't uphold an ideal unless you and
your whole family exemplify it perfectly?  Few ideals of any kind can
meet that test.  Most of us do things we wouldn't want considered
normative; or if we don't, some of our relatives are sure to.  Mrs.
Schlafly rejects the political demands and moral claims of the gay
lobby, and it's totally irrelevant that her son is homosexual.  As he
would agree.  You don't shift your principles because someone close to
you doesn't observe them.

     The article does mention in passing that Mr. Schlafly was "outed"
by QW, "a New York-based gay weekly."  But it sees nothing amiss in this
naked attempt to hurt his mother by hurting him.  No, the whole story is
just an opportunity for some cowardly fun at Mrs. Schlafly's expense.
Someone ought to "out" the writer who did it.  Or would that be a
violation of privacy?

     The columnist Richard Cohen likewise berates Mrs. Schlafly for what
he calls her "silence."  She "runs with an ugly crowd" and gives her
"silent approval" to gay-bashing, he asserts, without specifics or
evidence.  Mr. Cohen seems to write on the assumption that he was born
on the Moral High Ground, and that the only reason others disagree with
him is that they are less decent than he is.  If so, his attack on Mrs.
Schlafly makes a sorry case for his superior virtue.

     In the course of that attack, he puts out a fascinating fact:  "A
gay publication, New York's QW, had done a story [on John Schlafly], and
certain journalists, myself included, had been sent anonymous
announcements."

     Really!  An anonymous announcement!  And why didn't this favored
recipient write one of his patented jeremiads against the scurrilous
tactic he was privy to?  He was in a position to expose the exposers.
But he said nothing.  His own silence implies that it was all right by
him.

     Thanks for the moral guidance, Mr. Cohen.  You're an accessory
after the fact to this operation.

     Liberals did express a few misgivings a few years ago when Barney
Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, hinted that he would expose a few
closet homosexuals in the House who weren't voting his way on gay
issues.  Under fire, he quickly said he hadn't really meant it the way
it sounded.

     But the tactic is now widely used by gay militants, and the
liberals who used to yak about "privacy" don't seem to mind.  The gay
militants have become a kind of vice squad against the common enemy.
And the eligible targets now include close relatives of political foes.

     Let's be very clear about what this means.  In the national debate
over gay rights, one side can argue its case only under the standing
threat of "outing."  Anyone who has a vulnerable child now has to think
twice about opposing gay demands.

     This is the latest twist in the increasingly nasty politics of
group victimhood.  Self-pity can breed viciousness.  People who claim to
be oppressed often manage to convince themselves that anything they do
for the cause is somehow licit.  Demanding rights for themselves, they
come to feel that their opponents have no rights.  Eventually they
decide that their opponents' next of kin have no rights either, and may
in fact make useful hostages.

     The very purpose of outing, and especially outing relatives, is to
intimidate opposition.  What else?  People who treasure free speech and
civil conversation don't do things like this.  And they don't tacitly
encourage it by their silent approval.

========================================
Bryan  J. Blumberg, The MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation
815 Colorado Boulevard, Los Angeles, California  90041-1777
[phone], [e-mail]