The growing homosexualist tyranny

(Note: Ken Hechtman responds to the four cited examples of homosexualist tyranny.)

I wrote on April 9 (and I further explained my position here):

I think that of all the issues that may force conservatives to start looking for ways to secede—literally—from American society, the forced approval of homosexuality and forced association with homosexuals is at the top of the list.

In a further demonstration that existence is mental, the day after I made that remark, the Washington Post, in “Faith Groups Increasingly Lose Gay Rights Fights,” showed how extensively the power of law is already being used in this country to force people to approve of homosexuality and associate with homosexuals, with much worse coming if the homosexual “rights” movement is not stopped:

—A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney’s costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple’s commitment ceremony.

—A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship.

—Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state Supreme Court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment.

—A Christian student group was not recognized at a University of California law school because it denies membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage.

- end of initial entry -

Gintas writes:

I’m sure Ken Hechtman is losing sleep at night, wondering what went wrong and how to correct it.

LA replies:

Interesting point. If Mr. Hechtman found that his multicultural, Islamized, homosexual-marriage, incest-marriage, group-marriage society was turning into a anti-human tyranny, would it bother him? Would he fight it?

Howard Sutherland writes:

You highlight the punishments visited on religious people and groups who have declined to toe the homosexualist line. Bad as the situation is, it is even worse than most people imagine. I think it is now a given that people who resist homosexualism for reasons of faith or conscience will find no support from government—executive, legislative, judicial—at any level. It is also obvious that the Culture, as represented by the entertainment business and the educational establishment, are on the other side as well.

But what makes this situation so bizarre is that most of the social institutions one would expect to stand for a traditional understanding of morality are active—on the homosexualists’ side. In the earlier post you cite, I commented on the “Rev.” Katherine Ragsdale, new president of one the Episcopalians’ most prestigious seminaries, and her militant opposition to allowing doctors and pharmacists any conscientious opt-out of providing abortion and contraceptive “services.” Ragsdale is homosexual herself, and no doubt just as rigidly opposed to any conscientious opt-outs of affirming the homosexualist agenda. One may say that Ragsdale is a radical example—to which I would say that, no, Ragsdale is the new mainstream Christian establishment. We can find people as extreme as her throughout mainstream American Christian denominations, and in the Jewish divisions as well. Such people even exist among Catholics, dare to call themselves Catholic—and, with rare exceptions, are not censured by the Church.

So upside-down has liberalism made Western society—for the disease is hardly confined to the United States. Traditionalist resisters may well be forced into civil disobedience as the only effective resistance, and they can expect to be denounced as bigots from the pulpits of churches and synagogues (if there are pulpits in synagogues) for defending the most basic Christian and Jewish moral teaching.

The Catholic Church needs to put its scandals—usually homosexual—and thoughtless open-borders cheerleading behind it, and take a much more aggressive stand for traditional morals. At least officially, the Catholic Church has not renounced traditional morals. It needs to form tactical alliances with traditional Protestants and Evangelicals in this cause—and that means overcoming our Catholic hierarchy’s reflexive identification with the Democratic Party. I’ll believe my Church is willing to fight when our bishops start announcing the excommunications of nominally Catholic politicians who push the Leftist (or should I simply say Establishment?) agenda.

If the Pope wants to make a strong statement to Americans, I can think of nothing better than announcing the excommunication of Edward Kennedy on the same day Kennedy receives his debased knighthood from Gordon Brown.

April 15

Ken Hechtman writes:

Gintas writes:

I’m sure Ken Hechtman is losing sleep at night, wondering what went wrong and how to correct it.

I’d lose sleep over the first case. [LA notes: that’s the case of a Christian photographer who was forced to pay $6,637 in attorney’s costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple’s commitment ceremony.] It’s an in-person service, it’s a luxury service and there are other photographers in the New Mexico phone book. It’s easier to call one than it is to file a lawsuit and that’s exactly what the court should have told this sue-happy couple.

The next two, I have no problem with. [LA replies: This means Hechtman has no problem with a psychologist being fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship, and he has no problem with a Christian fertility doctor being forced by a court to perform artificial insemination on a lesbian patient. It’s really nice to find out how strongly Ken Hechtman will stand up for individual freedom against the excesses of homosexualist tyranny, after his homosexualist regime has been put in place.] A doctor is supposed to treat the patient in front of him, period. That’s their oath, that’s the law in Canada and that was the law in the U.S. before Roe vs. Wade. This issue is going to heat up in the next few years. George Bush extended the medical conscience exemptions that Nixon created and Obama has promised to get rid of them. And be careful what you ask for on this one, you might get it. Do you want a Mormon doctor refusing to treat lung cancer? Do you want a vegetarian doctor refusing to treat heart disease? We are all better off if the doctor gets down off his soapbox and treats the patient in front of him.

For the student group, it depends. [LA notes: That’s the case in which a Christian student group was not recognized at a law school because it denied membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage.] Can Christians join the campus gay group? A lot of schools now have the policy that only groups that are theoretically open to 100 percent of the student body are eligible for official club status. Concordia University in Montreal (the infamous “Concordestine”) has that policy on the books. I used to joke that since Hillel (the Zionist club) had just 200 members, we ought to get the 300 members of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, the 800 members of the Muslim Student Association and the thousand-odd members of various white lefty splinter groups to sign cards and then put One State Solution to a vote.

Ken Hechtman continues:

I’ll go further on the first one. How to correct it is you get rid of the Human Rights Commissions and Civil Rights Commissions and whatever-all-else. Either your problem is serious enough to rate the attention of a real court or it isn’t and this one clearly isn’t. I don’t like any specialized courts or tribunals, not family courts or drug courts or anything. They’re conviction machines because they don’t have any perspective on what real crimes are. I want a judge to see a little bit of arson, rape and bloody murder in his caseload so when he gets a domestic dispute or a pot-dealer or in this case “someone hurt my feelings on my special day,” he can laugh it out of court.

James P. writes:

Mr. Hechtman says, in the case of the photographer:

It’s an in-person service, it’s a luxury service and there are other photographers in the New Mexico phone book. It’s easier to call one than it is to file a lawsuit and that’s exactly what the court should have told this sue-happy couple.

Then he says, about the other cases:

A doctor is supposed to treat the patient in front of him, period.

But the exact same logic applies to the psychologist and the doctor as Hechtman applied to the photographer! Psychological counseling and artificial insemination are both in-person services, they are both luxury services, and there are other psychologists and fertility doctors available. [LA quibbles: I don’t think psychological counseling would be considered a luxury service; and for couples unable to conceive a baby, I don’t think fertility services would be considered a luxury either. Elective is not the same as luxury.] It’s not like the need for artificial insemination is a life-threatening condition; I see no reason why any doctor shouldn’t be able to refuse to conduct an elective procedure on anyone for any reason. The psychological counseling for a lesbian was probably not life-threatening, either (somehow I doubt this was suicide prevention), and I see no reason why any psychologist shouldn’t be able to refuse to treat anyone for any reason. In all these cases the “victim” should just have swallowed their indignation and gone elsewhere.

Then he says,

Do you want a Mormon doctor refusing to treat lung cancer? Do you want a vegetarian doctor refusing to treat heart disease?

These life-threatening conditions are not analogous to artificially inseminating or counseling a lesbian.

LA replies:

How refreshing and inspiring it is to hear these words:

“I see no reason why any doctor shouldn’t be able to refuse to conduct an elective procedure on anyone for any reason…. I see no reason why any psychologist shouldn’t be able to refuse to treat anyone for any reason.”

That’s the voice of true freedom, of which the left has no conception.

Lydia McGrew (here is her page at What’s Wrong with the World) writes:

Re your discussions with Ken Hechtman, I wanted to point something out about the psychologist and the lesbian: He could have “treated the patient in front of him” by counseling her about her same-sex attraction disorder and about how she should get out of her lesbian relationship. That would have been “treating the patient in front of him,” and it probably would have squared with what he actually believed was in the patient’s best interests—getting her help for her actual psychological problem. The trouble, of course, was that he wasn’t allowed to do this. Same-sex attraction has now been politically redefined (and don’t doubt that this was a political rather than a scientific process) to be _not_ a disorder. Hence, the “counseling” the psychologist was required to give was counseling the lesbian in how to _continue in_ her objectively disordered and unhealthy relationship. I think far too often people don’t come out and say in these discussions about professionalism that going along with what the left wants is actually not in the best interests of the patient or the person seeking the service. Something similar is true of abortion. The idea that a doctor is failing to “treat the patient in front of him,” for example, by refusing to perform an abortion or to refer the patient for an abortion, rules out without discussion the possibility that abortion is not only murdering the child but also is bad for the woman, making her complicit in the murder of her child. Hence it is a _violation_ of professional ethics for the doctor to be complicit in abortion, both because he is complicit in killing one of the “patients in front of him” and also because it is not good for the mother, the other “patient in front of him.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 14, 2009 11:15 AM | Send