The Religious Right’s Culture of Death

Linda_HarveyLinda Harvey, according to her bio, “president and founder of Mission America and host of a radio talk show 880 AM WRFD (Columbus)” and “author of the book, Maybe He’s Not Gay: Another View on Homosexuality,” opposes healthcare for millions of Americans. But particularly for gay people.

The best thing self-identifying gay people can do, she says, is keep their naughty bits to themselves and admit they’re really heterosexuals engaging in sexual perversion for the sheer joy of it. Oh, and the government should get behind her brilliant insight, and no doubt put her in charge of teaching everybody to sit on their hands.

Writing at Matt Barber’s BarbWire yesterday, Linda Harvey complained that efforts by the CDC to prevent HIV with Truvada, a PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) drug, will lead to racial cleansing. This is no doubt true in the same way that flushing your toilet three times in a row, very fast, will make your Teddy Bear come alive.

Harvey is opposed to such treatments:

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Which teens are these? While the details are still emerging, it’s most likely to be those identified as “LGBT” and sexually active.

But wait, you say. There are no such inborn identities and no teen should be encouraged in premature intimacy, nor given unnecessary medications.

Yes, Harvey is saying what you think she is saying: there are no real homosexuals. As she wrote in January at World Net Daily (look, no one respectable is going to publish her stuff):

Remember that Nobel Prize winner, the scientist who discovered the “gay” gene? I’m having trouble coming up with the name.

It’s because there is no such researcher, since nothing like a “gay gene” has been found. Surely, with the Western elites’ affection for “gay rights,” a Nobel Prize would be the reward if such a discovery were on record. If Barack Obama can get one for doing nothing, this mythical researcher would be a shoe-in.

According to Harvey, everyone is a heterosexual. Homosexuality is, for her, simple sexual perversion, a behavior that is willingly engaged in and which can be set aside. While scientists point to genetics, Harvey points to choice: “It’s totally possible,” she says, “to leave it all in the past, as the world’s many ex-homosexuals have done.” Self-identifying homosexuals are just confused and need a “reality check.”

This is a pretty much the same thing that has happened with climate change. Scientists say its real, religious nuts say it isn’t and point to a lack of science despite 99 percent of scientists saying it’s real. I mean, “nature’s law” does not permit such aberrant behavior as homosexuality, despite the fact that literally thousands of animal species engage in homosexual behavior.

We’re supposed to ignore science, but embrace the idea that “gay animal demons” are somehow responsible. You know, something you can study under a microscope. Wait, you mean you haven’t seen gay animal demons under a microscope?

Which leads us to genetics and things you can study under a microscope.

Scientist Dean Hamer, in a study performed at the U.S. National Cancer Institute in 1993, said that there is “99.5 percent certainty that there is a gene (or genes) in this area of the X chromosome that predisposes a male to become a heterosexual.”

The International Business Times reported just this morning that,

Male sexual orientation may be influenced by genetics, a new study suggests.

The findings, shared at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago, revealed that in a study that tested the DNA of 409 gay men, at least two chromosomes may affect a man’s sexual orientation.

“Sexual orientation has nothing to do with choice. Our findings suggest there may be genes at play, and we found evidence for two sets that affect whether a man is gay or straight,” said Michael Bailey of Northwestern University, who carried out the research.

And no gay gene? Bailey’s partner in the study, Alan Sanders, associate Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern University, says,

When people say there’s a gay gene, it’s an oversimplification. There’s more than one gene, and genetics is not the whole story. Whatever gene contributes to sexual orientation, you can think of it as much as contributing to heterosexuality as much as you can think of it contributing to homosexuality. It contributes to a variation in the trait.

Uh oh. Gay genes, plural. According to the Daily Mail,

Qazi Rhaman, a King’s College London psychologist, said that genes are thought account for up to 40 per cent of a person’s sexual orientation is governed by genes, and that it is likely that many genes are involved.

The Telegraph reported in February, that,

Researchers at the University of California believe that homosexuality can be explained by the presence of epi-marks — temporary switches that control how our genes are expressed during gestation and after birth.

Daryl Bem, a social psychologist at Cornell University, has suggested that the influence of biological factors on sexual orientation may be mediated by experiences in childhood.

You know how we often remark that raging homophobia in conservatives is often evidence that they are themselves gay? Harvey wants to turn that around by claiming that those who defend homosexuality the most are actually trying to cover up the fact that they are heterosexuals:

But try to tell that to the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and the various self-important “gay” bloggers. With claws and teeth exposed, the monster purveyors of “tolerance” try to come off as noble moralists, but confront them with the truth and the artifice falls. Their reactions are violent for a simple reason: fear.

They wonder if they might actually be heterosexuals after all.

Yes, I’m sure that’s it.

So having turned our shared reality on its head, Harvey comes to the only conclusion possible:

Again, our country’s most well-educated professionals will subvert common sense, the results of research, and any inclination to do what’s objectively right, to political correctness. Abstinence is off the table.

She writes,

And the joke is on us, the adults, because we are sacrificing our precious children as a result. Especially at risk from a protocol like PrEP are young minority homosexual males, since they now contract HIV at a disproportionately higher rate. Some of these kids, let’s face it, are prostituting their bodies for money and/or drugs, and little is being done to stop it except hand them condoms. Many on the left support their conduct and call it “sex work,” kind of like having a summer job.

Don’t you dare think of the obvious term for this: racial cleansing. Margaret Sanger would nod approvingly. Such cleansing is already happening to unborn minority babies whose mothers disproportionately visit Planned Parenthood clinics. Actually, Planned Parenthood may get a new lease on life as they become centers for youth (as well as adults) to receive their “PrEP” shots, which will qualify for reimbursement under Title X federal funding.

Completely immune, like most conservatives, to hypocrisy and irony, Harvey goes on to conclude,

There’s another answer, of course: launch a nationwide campaign that is pro-marriage ( the authentic man/woman kind), that emphasizes respect, responsibility, and restraint, with no “gay” or heterosexual hook-up sex. When are we going to see programs from our tax dollars that preserve, extend and enhance life instead of enabling disease and death?

This from the woman opposed to making healthcare available to millions of Americans.

There’s just a wee problem with her proposal: abstinence doesn’t work. As reported by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2004,

Federally funded abstinence-only programs use curricula that contain “false, misleading or distorted information about reproductive health,” according to a 2004 congressional study prepared for Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-CA).1 Abstinence-only (or abstinence-only-until-marriage) classes teach teenagers only about abstinence and not about any other ways of protecting themselves against sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.

Worse yet,

[R]esearch that indicates “virginity pledgers” are no less likely to engage in premarital sex than their peers. Pledgers have rates of sexually transmitted diseases similar to other teens, and are less likely to use contraception in the event that they do engage in sexual intercourse.

Harvey would rather teach them abstinence, which doesn’t work, than give people doctors and medicine, which does. And she says she’s pro-life? That people who want to prevent and treat disease are guilty of racial cleansing? How, exactly, does that work?

Sounds like Harvey is the one in need of a reality check.



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