It may have been the last Star Trek movie with the original
cast in which, at the ending, Mr. Sulu received his own starship. As one of my
favorite Star Trek characters, I was quite ready to go with Mr. Sulu on other
adventures where no man has gone before. Mr. Sulu - otherwise known as George
Takei when not in uniform - appeared on the public radio station The World a couple of months ago. The
context of the interview regarded Russia ’s
new “anti-gay” law and the former Enterprise
helmsman, among using other strong words, denounced it as “draconian”. Of
course, he is far from alone in using such an inflammatory accusation - we hear
it implied or directly stated by our media on a daily or near-daily basis – but
it was still disappointing hearing such ignorance or purposeful distortion
coming from the mouth of an actor whom I fondly remembered. Unfortunately, if I
were Mr. Sulu’s commanding officer today I would have to relieve him of duty.
I’ll explain.
During the wonderful opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics, there was one point near the end that vividly exemplified what Russia understands
and the West does not. The performance showing Russia ’s history took a turn at the
end: it stopped looking back and started looking forward. The Western world has
been and will continue to condemn Russia
for its (supposed) hostility toward gays, but Russia ’s “anti-gay” law is not
about gays.
It’s about babies. That’s why all the baby strollers were
brought into the spotlight for all the Olympians and the rest of the world to
see.
Mr. Takei and our media would have us believe by
their rhetoric that homosexuals are hunted down in the streets of Russia Moscow and
St. Petersburg Russia London
recognizes the over-the-top rhetoric of the United States
“The new
legislation is certainly not, as US-based gay rights activists have claimed, "one of the most draconian anti-gay laws on the planet".
Amid the furore, it's easy to overlook some simple facts. Homosexuality in Russia – unlike
more than 40 countries in the Commonwealth and 70 worldwide – is not illegal.
To date, over six months since the law came into force, fewer than a dozen
people have been fined for "gay propaganda". Not a single person has
been jailed. Russian police do not have powers to detain people they suspect of
simply being gay or lesbian, as a New York Times leader erroneously stated last year. If this
were so, then how do we explain the fact that gay clubs are able to advertise
and operate in Moscow
and other big cities?
And, no, gay
people are not, as [Stephen] Fry claims, being beaten to death "while
police stand idly by". If this were the case, would police in Volgograd have arrested and charged three men with murder last year over what investigators called a
homophobic hate crime? Would the men who carried out a brutal homophobic killing in the east of Russia this month have been
sent to penal colonies? Would the thug who attacked a gay rights
activist for unfurling a rainbow flag during an Olympic torch relay in central Russia
have been sentenced to corrective labour? The authorities should and must be far
more vigilant in punishing perpetrators of hate crimes, but these are hardly
the hallmarks of a campaign of state-sponsored terror.”
“If Putin is
indeed waging war on
Russia 's LGBT community,
then why has he not followed the example of Nigeria ,
Africa 's most populous nation, which has just
introduced a new law that stipulates jail sentences of up to 14 years for gay people? Or India ,
the world's largest democracy, where the supreme court recently
reinstated a colonial-era ban on gay sex? If he wants to get really
harsh, of course, Putin could look to Saudi
Arabia , whose habit of executing homosexuals has
done little to break up what Barack Obama has called the "long history of friendship" between
Washington and
Riyadh . This,
of course, is the same Obama who has "no patience" for
Russia 's
gay propaganda law.”
So if what I said above is correct and Russia ’s
anti-gay propaganda law is not really about gays but about babies, why the
desire to limit children’s exposure to the gay lifestyle?
The research is overwhelming that children are more stable
and successful when raised by their biological parents. There is simply no substitute
for the often subtle but dynamic interplay between heterosexual couples in a
healthy relationship and the development of their children. There is a war on
the family coming from multiple fronts and it has been long and devastating.
The sexual revolution in the 60’s took a hammer blow to marriage: which left no
socio-economic group unscathed but absolutely devastated the working class and black
Americans. This has led to single-parent households (the vast majority of whom
are women) who have difficulty escaping from the poverty trap, often have a
succession of partners, and give birth to or abort children from multiple men. Instead
of marrying the mother of their children and providing for them, men have become
boys. They continue acting like adolescents by shirking from their
responsibilities, many of them not getting or keeping stable jobs and having
multiple partners. Interestingly, in recent years many men have been turning to
pornography instead of intimate relations with real women in order to get their
thrills. No matter how you cut it, all this has led to a serious demise of the
stable and functional family. As Mary Eberstadt chronicles in her short book, Adam and Eve after the Pill, the sexual
revolution is largely responsible for this. Ironically, an unintended
consequence of women’s liberation resulted in “those who were once husbands and
fathers and providers [trading in] their ties and insurance cards for video
games and baseball hats worn backwards”…and many of these women hate what men
have become (but they’ll never accept any responsibility for it).
If the trauma of divorce, remarriage, multiple partners,
etc, wasn’t bad enough for kids, another blow to the already weakened family
has come in the form of “alternative family structures” that have sought to
redefine what it means to be a family. Among this group are homosexual couples
who bring their own children into the household or adopt them. Some people have
argued that the interest homosexuals have in marriage is a plus for the
institution since they, unlike so many heterosexuals who just live together,
actually value it.
They don’t. The push is only for full recognition and
acceptance of their lifestyle. The ultimate goal is for a complete deconstruction
of marriage. But this essay isn’t about that. This essay is about babies and
what Russia understands and
the United States and Europe does not. It’s also about why I would need to
remove Mr. Sulu from his command as a starship captain.
The homosexual lifestyle, like that of the broken family,
competes with the “traditional” family dynamic. Gay unions can not, and can
never be, families. It can not succeed where the broken family has failed, and
it can’t replace what nature and God have given us in the complimentarity of
male and female. And because it competes with the family in promoting an
artificial - and ultimately destructive - construct of the family unit, it can
not be promoted or viewed as an alternative. There are no alternatives to the male-female
law of our biological, physiological, psychological, and physical natures.
Any threat to the natural order of the union of man with
woman and their offspring needs to be acknowledged, confronted, and rejected no
matter what form it takes. Grasping the fundamental truth that the family only
exhibits one nature is challenging in a society that is actively dismantling
our longstanding ethical and moral norms and their supporting philosophical
framework, but we must if we wish to remain a strong nation and one that continues
to have religious freedom, for religious freedom is incompatible with a society
that blesses alternative family structures. Just ask the Christian owners of a
business who declined to photograph a gay wedding and another that refused to
make a wedding cake for a gay couple. That the family exhibits one nature - and
one nature alone - and any competing constructs of the family should be readily
rejected is reason enough for the validity of Russia ’s anti-gay propaganda law,
but it will not be enough to convince people who are on the other side of the
ideological divide from me. In truth, very little will convince them since they
believe in advancing their cause no manner how damning the evidence against it;
but one must confront such a flawed ideology in the hopes a few might
understand. Since it is the West that is obsessed with their concept of
“equality” and “gay rights” and attempt to force their constructs on whomever
they feel they can bully, it is the West that must face the facts of what
“equal rights” and “marriage equality” is doing: and the evidence will make any
reasonable person pause long and hard before mindlessly following the rainbow
flag.
Some of the facts regarding homosexuality as they pertain to
children are these:
- Child molestation: Sexual abuse of boys by adult men is many times more common than consensual sex between adult men, and most of those engaging in such molestation identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual.
- Pedophiles are invariably males
- A significant number of victims are males
- Many pedophiles consider themselves to be homosexual – “eighty-six percent of offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual” (Archives of Sexual Behavior)
- Homosexual men are approximately ten times more likely to molest children than heterosexual men
- There is a homosexual subculture among men that openly celebrates the idea of sexual relationships between adult men and underage boys
- Homosexuals are less likely to enter into a committed relationship, less likely to be faithful to a partner, and less likely to remain committed for a lifetime, than are heterosexuals.
- Homosexuals experience higher rates of domestic violence than heterosexual married couples
- Homosexuals experience considerably higher levels of mental illness and substance abuse than heterosexuals.
The argument has been made that
many of these issues stem from homosexuals being marginalized by society.
However, a study in the Netherlands – perhaps the most “gay-friendly” country
in the world – showed “a higher prevalence of substance use disorders in
homosexual women and a higher prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders on
homosexual men.”
All of the above data is from a booklet produced by the
Family Research Council (FRC) called The
Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality and is heavily cited. When it comes to
sexual abuse of minors the booklet is very clear in stating that, “This does not mean that all homosexuals are child
molesters – no one has ever claimed that. It dos not even mean that most homosexuals are child molesters – there is
no evidence to support that. But there is
evidence that the relative rate of
child sexual abuse among homosexuals is far higher than it is among
heterosexuals.” Some might recall that this is the same organization in which an
armed gunman entered their headquarters some time ago and wounded a security
guard before he was subdued. He was reportedly gay, influenced by information
on FRC from the Southern Poverty Law Center, and had many Chic-Filet sandwiches
that he was going to leave by the body of each person he killed (Chic-Filet
came under a lot of heat during that time for their support of “traditional”
marriage).
As a starship captain and a free man, Mr. Sulu is welcome to
his own opinion, but not his own facts. If I were Mr. Sulu’s superior officer I
would relieve from duty due to a compromised judgment, unwillingness (or
inability) to acknowledge or seek out facts, and a conflict of interest. Call
me out of touch, but I didn’t realize George Takei came out of the closet nine
years ago and has been a gay activist ever since: even “marrying” his “husband”
in 2008. The Chevrolet commercial now airing during the Olympics should make
Takei proud. He and his “husband” could even have been in it as it shows two
homosexuals marrying: the ad tells us that they are part of a “new family”.
Starship captains must do what is best for their entire crew
and not bend to the will of a small subculture that demands what is not in the
power of the captain to give and which is at odds with the unity of the entire
crew. The captain is the government, and the crew the citizens: they must work together
with minimal disruptions to achieve the goal of a healthy and stable society. Reassigning
crew members to do jobs they have no competency in will have the same effect as
redefining and dismantling what it means to be a family - the starship and the
family will crash.
And the family is crashing. And it is burning. And the
greatest casualties are children.
