By BRIAN CLOWES
(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For electronic copies of previous articles on homosexual “marriage,” the special rights agenda, and the role of homosexuality in the Church crisis, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)
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“Feminists and political liberals have argued for decades now that a woman should have an unrestricted right to an abortion, for any cause or for no stated cause at all. How can they now complain if women decide to abort fetuses identified as homosexual? This question involves both abortion and gay rights — the perfect moral storm of our times” — Rev. Albert Mohler.
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Since before Roe v. Wade, pro-abortionists have found many of their strongest supporters among organized homosexual groups. Many pro-lifers who have picketed and sidewalk counseled outside abortion mills have noticed the frequent presence of “gays” and lesbians acting as clinic escorts.
All of the major national homosexual groups fully support all of the elements of the pro-abortion agenda.
For example, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) has demanded full funding for all abortions; was a sponsor of the 2004 pro-abortion “March for Women’s Lives” in Washington, D.C.; demands the elimination of all abortion clinic health standards; agitates for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and United States ratification of the pro-abortion CEDAW; fully supports the most explicit possible sex education and works for the complete abolition of abstinence programs; demands the enactment of severe anti-terrorism laws against all pro-life activities; and even fought against the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PreNDA), which would have outlawed sex-selection abortions overwhelmingly directed against preborn girls.
Matt Foreman, executive director of the NGLTF, says that “reproductive freedom and gay rights are inextricably intertwined. Do we support a woman’s right to choose? Damn right. Always have. Always will. No apologies. No regrets.”
Even homosexual clergy from liberal churches support the abortion agenda. As just one of many examples, openly homosexual Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson was the keynote speaker at Planned Parenthood’s “prayer breakfast” for its 2005 annual national conference. At this event, he declared himself “pro-choice” and described pro-life Episcopalians as being “off the deep end.”
The flow of support is mutual between pro-abortionists and homosexual activists. One of the most virulently pro-abortion groups in the world, the National Organization for Women, supports all of the facets of the “gay rights” agenda, including same-sex “marriage,” Draconian hate-crime laws, mandatory homosexual clubs in every school, and relentless persecution of the Boy Scouts until they not only accept, but celebrate, homosexuality.
Some pro-lifers ask, “Why are homosexuals concerned with abortion, since they can’t reproduce?”
This is a very good question, and the best way to answer it is to look at the history of the Culture of Death and its activist groups.
Many pro-lifers are concerned about homosexuality because they see its pernicious influence on society and recognize it as just one element of a wide-ranging attack on faith and family by groups promoting other practices such as explicit sex education, population control, cloning, and euthanasia. A handful of pro-lifers even recognized as far back as the 1950s and 1960s that acceptance of contraception, which discarded the procreative aspect of matrimony, would pave the way to the acceptance of same-sex “marriage.”
After all, if the sole foundation of marriage is an ill-defined “love” between man and woman, why can it not also mean “love” between two men or two women? Once marriage was no longer centered on the conception and nurturing of children, there was no longer any reason to define it as an exclusive union between a man and a woman.
We lost the fight against same-sex “marriage” the moment we accepted birth control.
Pro-lifers tend to look at the big picture, at all of the attacks on faith and family. Fundamentally, in general our mission is to make the flourishing of the human person possible from the moment of fertilization to the instant of natural death, something it can only do if it cooperates with the laws of God and His natural law.
By contrast, homosexuals see little use for anything that does not advance total sexual freedom. “Gay rights” has become a very powerful symbol of the sexual liberation movement — freedom from sexual boundaries and even freedom from the restrictions of sexual identity. As such, it has joined abortion, considered by feminists to be the original powerful symbol of freedom from the “shackles of childbearing.”
Why Should “Gay”
Activists Be Pro-Life?
When it comes to genocide, Hitler was just a promising rookie.
It took 86 years to lynch 3,500 blacks in the United States between Reconstruction (1882) and the year 1968. It takes only 86 hours to kill that many black babies with abortion.
There used to be hundreds of thousands of Down syndrome children and adults integrated into society. Now, 90 to 95 percent of these babies are aborted after an “unfavorable” prenatal diagnosis. Many people cannot remember the last time they saw a person with Down syndrome.
Abortion is the perfect tool for eliminating entire classes of “undesirable” human beings, whether these people are black, female, or handicapped. After decades of its implementation, most people have become accustomed to this program of negative eugenics. Currently, it is considered acceptable to abort a preborn baby right up until the moment of birth simply because he or she is disabled.
Almost all pro-abortion groups embrace sex-selection abortion, even though the vast majority of such abortions are directed against preborn baby girls.
As we look to the future, we might see a society that accepts homosexuality on every level — in public. But what if scientists find that homosexuality really is genetic, and also design a prenatal test for “gayness”? Those parents who simply do not want to raise a “gay” child with all of the accompanying trouble and drama will have no trouble with privately exercising the ultimate form of “homophobia” — abortion.
No less an authority than Dr. James Watson, director of the Human Genome Project, has said:
“If you could find the gene which determines sexuality and a woman decides she doesn’t want a homosexual child, well, let her [have an abortion]. We already accept that most couples don’t want a Down syndrome child. You would be crazy to say you wanted one, because that child has no future.”
Philip Arcidi, former president of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians (PLAGAL), has said:
“If, as recent scientific discoveries suggest, homosexuality has a genetic basis, the day is not far off when doctors will be able to determine if a child in the womb is predisposed to be gay. At this point, it will be possible to do by legal surgery what all the homophobes throughout history have tried and failed to do — eliminate lesbians and gays once and for all.”
Conservatives won’t be spared from the implications of this dilemma. As a writer for the liberal magazine Radar said, “Conservatives opposed to both abortion and homosexuality will have to ask themselves whether the public shame of having a gay child outweighs the private sin of terminating a pregnancy.”
Conclusion
If science finds that homosexuality is genetic, many will consider “gayness” to be a type of birth defect. And we all know what usually happens to unborn children who have birth defects.
It is certainly not in the best interests of the homosexual movement to support abortion. “Gay” groups have advocated for their own rights for decades because they claim that they were persecuted and killed. What sense does it make to continue to advocate a practice that could potentially wipe out a large percentage of the homosexual population?
This paradox does not spare pro-life activists. We absolutely must fight for the right of all children to be born, regardless of race, creed, disability, sex, or any other trait. If a pro-life husband and wife use some future prenatal diagnosis and find out that their preborn child is “gay,” they must love that child just as they would a heterosexual one. God demands no less of us.
We conservatives must also recognize that we are battling a powerful alliance of the homosexual “special rights” movement and pro-abortionism in order to have a more comprehensive and accurate view of the battlefield between the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death.
Finally, it is fascinating to witness the Culture of Death progressively define its hierarchy of rights. We have already seen that environmentalists are willing to accept the tremendous damage done to our rivers and streams by the hormones in birth control pills for the sake of sexual freedom. It will be interesting (and entertaining) to see how pro-abortionists deal with a possible future proposed ban on the abortion of homosexual preborn children.
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