Being Christian, supporting marriage does not equal hate

The Dallas Morning News, rapidly headed out of business, ran an execrable article today in their free “Briefing” edition.  See, I stopped subscribing to DMN about 3 years ago, when the leftist became too much.  But to make their publication numbers look better, they actually distribute a free version – whether you want it or not, apparently – which is loaded with ads but does have 8-10 pages of actual news, or such as passes for ‘news’ today.

This piece was not real news, it was an opinion piece published in the news section.  It had all the damnable aspects of “new journalism,” a trend in journalism developed in the 60s to push progressive/marxist views as respectable “news.”  Most of the piece is behind the subscriber wall on their website, but I have the paper copy, and will share some of the laughably biased, trite, and already-tired content with you.  I hope you can come to see how the media uses images and biased content to push a specific agenda.

First of all – find a sympathetic subject.  The Dallas Morning News found the most attractive, sympathetic looking girl they could.  Don’t use a man, men don’t arouse nearly as much sympathy as women, especially young, attractive women.  Using a different subject, such as that on the right, would not arouse nearly so much sympathy.  It helps to have a local connection – the subject in this case was originally from Flower Mound, or so they say, but has lived in New York (go figure) for some time.

Next, paint the subject as a victim.  The article opens with the subject, Carly McGehee, describing how she hated herself in junior high because the Christian School she attended ostensibly taught that gays went to hell.  Now, I find that unlikely – it’s possible, but I bet the presentation was more nuanced than that, if the subject was broached at all (I don’t recall such being taught in any of the protestant programs I was in as a kid – I don’t recall the subject even being mentioned).  Whatever the case, now we have our victim.

Having presented our sympathetic victim as the subject of unreasonable treatment, now we get to the agenda.  The agenda is this – that opposition to gay marriage equals hate.  Not once, not twice, but four times – once in the reporter’s own text and thrice in quotes from the victim-subject, support for traditional marriage and/or opposition to gay marriage is presented as the equivalent of hate.

Now, this person is a political activist. She is one of the lead organizers of this staged media event. She is traveling back to Dallas to help arrange their little “kiss-in” at a Dallas Chick-Fil-A, scheduled to take place at 7pm tonight.  This “kiss-in” will not be attended by a fraction of as many people who supported traditional marriage Wednesday, but the media will be there in full force, taking carefully shot photographs purporting to show “massive support,” which won’t be.  Even the Facebook sign up page for this staged, astro-turf event (astro-turf because many if not most of the participants are paid activists), has only 13,000 people planning to attend, vice the nearly 800,000 who signed up to attend Chick-Fil-A appreciation day and the millions who actually participated.

There is so much about this that is just fake and wrong.  At that Facebook page, there are numerous photoshops of historical photographs, trying to establish a false equivalence between this current radical gay-agenda movement to simulate marriage and the historical black civil rights movement.  Funny thing is, most of the African American community is strongly opposed to gay marriage, as a large group of black pastors announced this week.  There is no equivalency here – the original civil rights movement was about race, a characteristic nobody chooses and no one can change.  But homosexuality is far from an unchanging, unchosen characteristic – it is a behavior.  Yes, some claim to be “born that way,” (for which there is no real evidence), but many self-identified gays actually have heterosexual relationships at various stages of their life.  Almost half of women who at one time identify as gay have a very long term heterosexual relationship later in life.  Another aspect that hasn’t been examined is the role excessive masturbation plays in developing same-sex attraction – I strongly suspect this plays  a major role.

It is extremely interesting to me that this “opposition to gay marriage = hate” meme has suddenly exploded in usage since Obama announced a few months ago that he was changing his view on marriage.  Now it’s a major plank in the demonrat party platform.  This is not accidental.  And I share with Mark Steyn the concern that the tactics the democrats are using in this gay marriage issue, which is nothing more than a wedge issue and a way to attract monetary support from a tiny but very well funded minority, could one day be used against the gays just as savagely as they are being used against Christians today.  Should radical muslims become more important to the democrats one day than the gay movement, watch out.

That’s the really frightening thing. The tactics that are being used assault not only marriage, which goes without saying, but the very notion of Christian conscience.  They undermine the very rights the gay movement is taking advantage of to push this desire for gay marriage.  But if you read comments on the “kiss-in” Facebook page, they don’t care a whit about what you or I believe, and think we should be forced not to believe it, especially publicly.  This small but vocal movement is all about using the power of the state to force others to bend to their will.  It’s about specifically attacking Christianity, which again is funny because the real threat to homosexuals is islam.

Enough.  We are in the darkest of times, when virtue is attacked as vice and the gravest of vices promoted as wonderful, good, even holy.  In many sects, Christianity has been turned upside down from a religion of self-denial and spiritual growth to a religion of worldly focus and libertine behaviors.  Even many in the Church behave in this manner.  The lights are going out all over the world.  Cling to Christ and His Vicar on earth.  Run from the worldlings and their diabolical “wisdom.”  Pray.