American Family Association

“Touch my prick and I’ll tell my dad and he will kill you,” the nauseating child is reputed to have said for all to hear, but I can’t help wondering how many pricks daddy might have touched in his lifetime. Yes, I’m back on the subject I swore I would never write about again. Why then, you ask, am I back with it? Well, the answer is quite simple, it is back with me. I can’t open a newspaper or download the news but there is more often or not a gay article. There are the boys in Iraq who are perceived to be gay and in consequence murdered; the so-called Emo killings. The creation of a group to campaign for gay rights in Liberia has led to a fierce backlash - a house rented by the mother of a campaigner has been burnt down and even the president - last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner - has waded in to say she will never support laws recognising homosexual rights and the campaigners have had to seek police protection from the mob. A Ugandan cabinet minister has raided a workshop for gay activists and tried to arrest the organizer, a Ugandan paper and UK-based rights group have said. ‘Minister for Ethics and Integrity’(!) Simon Lokodo said the gathering was "illegal" and ordered delegates out of the hotel near the capital. It comes days after an MP retabled a controversial anti-gay bill. It proposes increasing the penalties in Uganda for homosexual acts, which are illegal, from 14 years in jail to life which, considering the amount of homosexuality that takes place in prison, is totally ridiculous if only they could take the blinkers off and see it. David Bahati, the MP behind the proposed legislation, says a clause proposing the death penalty will be dropped. It originally said those found guilty of "aggravated homosexuality" - defined as when one of the participants is a minor, HIV-positive, disabled(!) or a "serial offender" - would face the death penalty. I haven’t had any news recently of the proposed St. Petersburg bill putting a silencer on any mention of the subject but occasionally, only occasionally, you do get something positive like a group of leading Anglicans saying the Church of England has "nothing to fear" from the prospect of gay marriage and it  should be a cause for rejoicing. In a letter to The Times prominent figures including five former bishops say statements by church leaders give a false impression of popular feeling. "We believe the Church has nothing to fear from civil marriage for same-sex couples," it says, and now Obama has come off the fence and endorsed same-sex marriage. But now we come to the latest from America – Dominic Dieter, a bigheaded DJ with a popular rock station in Cleveland, Ohio advised a listener, who found his daughter kissing another girl, that he should get one of his friends to “screw her straight.” Think of the message that sends out. Huge headlines – ‘Gay Romney spokesman resigns amid conservative backlash.’ Richard Grenell previously worked as a spokesman for the UN mission under President George W. Bush.  An openly gay spokesman for presidential candidate Mitt Romney he quit on his first official day of work amid criticism by anti-gay conservatives. Bryan Fischer, director of “issues analysis for the American Family Association,” a group opposed to homosexuality, wrote a Blog posted on 20 April attacking Mr. Romney's choice, saying it sent a "message to the pro-family community: drop dead". Did it really? Well let us for a moment discuss the family. Where do they believe gays come from? Do they drop from trees? Do they sprout up out of the ground? No, for goodness sake, they are created by heterosexual couplings, they are born out of heterosexual marriages, they are, or were, themselves members of families, even American mom’s apple-pie family, even Ugandan and Liberian families. If you want to eradicate gays then stop having sex and breeding, that is the only way: sons, daughters, cousins, uncles, aunts, even fathers and mothers can be included as having some gay experience, even if only emotionally, which brings me back to why I ask how many pricks may that child’s father have touched?

An opinion in Gay Community News in 1980 by John Lauretsen reads - Human males are powerfully attracted to other males – erotically and emotionally. This attraction is not the product of peculiar life experiences of any sort, nor of hormonal imbalance, nor of genetic aberrations, nor of any other such etiological foolishness. The male capacity to love another male is inborn, a phylogenetic characteristic of our species. If a man has any libido at all – he is not a total eunuch – his libido has a homosexual element. Homosexual desire is universal. A gay man recognises this desire; a straight man consciously or unconsciously does not.

Finally here is a scenario for members of the American Family Association to mull over: a same sex couple adopt a child, protect and nurture it with all the love, consideration, and respect it deserves as a human being. A straight couple neglect their child, deprive it of love, abuse it, and in some instances actually kill it (Baby Peter for example). Which child reaps the most benefit? Which child has the better start in life, the better family? I really do not believe the answer can be in any doubt except possibly by the American Family Association and others of a similar blinkered, ignorant, fearful state of mind.