Education

1999 - 2003 University of Texas at Austin, College of Communications

Sex, Marriage, and Other Wastes of Time

In October of 2006, the wonderfully-named Family Research Council held a televised event entitled Liberty Sunday which, although vague in its billing, was supposed to have something to do with homosexuality, and which was consequently expected to draw some high level of attention. As FRC President Tony Perkins put it, with characteristic exactitude, "We've got thousands, literally millions of people with us tonight."

Those thousands, literally millions of people were first treated to a suitably campy video-and-voice-over presentation in which Mr. Perkins waxed nostalgic on the virtues of John Winthrop, the original governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and an apparently fond subject of the Christian dominionist imagination. Perkins quoted Winthrop as having warned his fellow Puritans that "the eyes of all the people are upon us so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world." Winthrop's prescience is truly stunning; the early Puritan colony of Salem did indeed become a "byword" for several things.

But an obvious gift for prophecy notwithstanding, Winthrop is perhaps not the most judicious choice of historical figure upon which to perform rhetorical fellatio at the front end of an event billed as a celebration of popular rule. "If we should change from a mixed aristocracy to mere democracy," Winthrop once wrote, "first we should have no warrant in scripture for it: for there was no such government in Israel." Right he was. He went on to add that "a democracy is, amongst civil nations, accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government," which was certainly true at the time. Furthermore, to allow such a thing would be a "manifest breach" of the Fifth Commandment, which charges us to honor our fathers and mothers, all of whom are presumably monarchists.

Solid as these age-old talking points may have been from a Biblical standpoint – and they seemed solid enough to Biblical literalists ranging from King David to King George to King Saud – it wasn't the intention of Perkins to discuss his buddy Winthrop's anti-democratic sensibilities (of which Perkins is probably unaware anyway, not being a historian or even properly educated); rather, this was meant to establish a narrative of contrasts. On the other side of the Massachusetts time line from Winthrop and his gang of roving Puritan theocrats, as Perkins tells us in slightly different words, we have the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court of the early 21^st century. This far more modern, considerably less blessed body had recently handed down a majority ruling to the effect that the state could not deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as to do so would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Massachusetts constitution. "These four judges discarded 5,000 years of human history when they imposed a new definition of marriage," Perkins said, "not only upon this state, but potentially upon the entire nation." Note that Perkins is here criticizing the judiciary for not giving due consideration to the laws and customs of the ancient Hebrews when interpreting United States law; this will be a useful thing to keep in mind on the dozen or so occasions recorded in this book when Perkins and James Dobson criticize the judiciary for giving due consideration to the laws and customs of other nations that exist right now. It's also worth mentioning that the Founding Fathers discarded those very same "5,000 years of human history" when they broke away from the British crown in order establish a constitutional republic, thus committing that "manifest breach" of the Fifth Commandment which so worried John Winthrop.

But the mangling of history had only just begun; still in voice-over mode, Perkins was now on about Paul Revere. When Revere made his "ride for liberty," the lanterns indicating the manner of British approach ("one if by land, two if by sea") were placed in the belfry of the Old North Church by what Perkins described as a "church employee." This, Perkins pronounced, was an early example of "the church [giving] direction at critical moments in the life of our nation." And here, in the present day, we have the homosexuals laying siege to American life with the public policy equivalent of muskets, ships-o-the-line, and archaic infantry formations. "Once again, people are looking to the church for direction." Because back in 1776, you see, people were literally looking at this particular church for guidance. That's where the signal lanterns were kept. The actual soldiers were kept in whorehouses.

The video clip ended. First up among the live speakers was Dr. Ray Pendleton, senior pastor of the Tremont Temple Baptist Church, Liberty Sunday's storied venue. The good doctor acknowledged that the evening's events had garnered some degree of controversy – they were, after all, holding a hard-right, Evangelical-led gay bashing event in downtown Boston, of all places – but, as Perkins noted, "This church is not foreign to controversy."

"No, indeed we're not," Pendleton agreed, very much in the manner of a Ronco pitchman who's just been prompted to confirm the utility of a juicer. "From the very beginning, we've been part of concerns for liberty and freedom. We were part of the Underground Railroad, the first integrated church in America." Wild applause. "I think the abolitionist's message is pretty clear." Actually, it was pretty clearly in opposition to the Bible. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, was aware of this, even if Dr. Pendleton is not, and once noted that the peculiar institution of slavery was not peculiar at all, and had in fact had been "established by decree of Almighty God" and furthermore "sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation." Davis was right, of course; and not only is slavery justified in the New Testament book of Ephesians as well as within several books of the Old Testament, but the proper methodology of slave beating is even spelled out in Exodus 21:20-21: "And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall surely be punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his property." Which is to say that one may beat his slave without punishment, assuming that the slave in question does not die from his wounds within the next couple of days. Tough but fair. Never mind all that, though; Pendleton's point was that this church had been opposed to slavery 150 years ago, that it was now opposed to gays with equal vigor, and that we should draw some sort of conclusion from this. My own conclusion was that they were right the first time purely by accident.

Next up was yet another prerecorded video segment, this time featuring some fellow named Peter Marshall who was standing next to Plymouth Rock. "All of us were taught in America that the Pilgrims came here as religious refugees running away from persecution in Europe," Marshall tells us. "That really isn't true; they had no persecution in Holland where they'd spent 12 years before they came here." Marshall is correct; by the Pilgrims' own account, they left Holland not due to persecution directed towards themselves, but rather because they found the free-wheeling and numerous Dutchmen to be difficult targets upon which to direct their own brand of persecution. "The truth," Marshall continues, "is that they" - the Pilgrims, not the fortunate Dutch, who appear to have dodged a bullet - "had a much deeper and broader vision. The Lord Jesus had called them here, as their great chronicler and governor, William Bradford, put it, 'because they had a great hope and an inward zeal of advancing the cause of the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the earth.'" And from this it is clear that the United States was indeed founded upon Christian dominionist rule, particularly if one sets the founding of the United States not in 1776 when the United States was actually founded, but rather in 1620, when a bunch of people suddenly showed up in the general area.

Of course, if the founding of a nation really occurs when people arrive on a parcel of land, as Marshall seems to be implying, and if the characteristics of a nation are really determined by what said arrivals happen to be doing at the time, as Marshall is certainly implying, then the United States was actually founded a few thousand years earlier when Asiatic wanderers crossed the Bering Strait in search of mammoth herds or whatever it is that induces Asiatic types to wander around. By this reckoning, the U.S. was meant to have been characterized by the "Indian" practices of anthropomorphism and the cultivation of maize, rather than the "Pilgrim" practices of Christianity and nearly starving to death because you're a stupid Pilgrim and you don't know how to farm properly.

But there does exist a more profound defense of the Pilgrims and their claim to American authorship, one which Marshall neglects to mention but which I will provide for you in his stead simply because the Pilgrims need all the help they can get. In the early stages of the relationship between saint and savage, God seems to have signaled his displeasure at the practices of the latter, while simultaneously signaling his approval of those of the former. At least, Tony Perkins' boyfriend John Winthrop seems to have thought so. "But for the natives in these parts," Winthrop wrote in regards to what was left of his heathen neighbors, "God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection." Of course, God didn't get around to doing all of this until a group of European colonists brought smallpox to Massachusetts in the first place. Timing is everything.

Back in the present day, our new friend Peter Marshall continued to elucidate on the motivations of our blessed Pilgrim overlords: "The vision was that if they could put the biblical principles of self-government into practice, they could create a Bible-based commonwealth where there would truly be liberty and justice for every soul." Except for the witches among them, who had no souls. "That was the vision that founded America. Morally and spiritually speaking, our nation was really founded here by the Pilgrims and the Puritans who came to Boston about 30 miles up the road."

Next up was a series of taped interviews with various American theocrats ranging from the notable to the obscure. C.J. Doyle of the Massachusetts Catholic Action League tells us that "when religious freedom is imperiled, it never begins with a direct frontal assault on the liberty of worship. It always begins with attempts to marginalize the church and to narrow the parameters of the church's educational and charitable activities." The Catholics would be the ones to ask; the "parameters of the church's educational and charitable activities" have indeed been narrowed quite a bit since the days when said parameters encompassed the globe and included the enslavement of the indigenous population of South America, the theocratic dictatorship of as much as Europe as could effectively be controlled, the burning of heretical texts and heretics along with them, several Crusades, scattered Inquisitions, whatever it was that the Jesuits were up to for all those years, and the wholesale persecution of those Protestant religious denominations whose modern-day adherents were now assembled at Liberty Sunday, nodding in sympathy at the plight of Mr. C.J. Doyle and his Church. Of course, Protestants can now afford to let bygones be bygones, as the temporal ambitions of Rome have since been relegated to the feeding, clothing, and molestation of children. Sic transit gloria mundi, indeed.

After a few more brief interview clips with other Catholic hierarchy types, the Popery finally gave way once again to Decent American Protestantism in the person of good ol' Gary Bauer, who related via video clip that "[t]here are two diametrically opposed world views in America. On one side, there are people who think that America is all about just doing whatever you want; different strokes for different folks; if it feels good, do it. On the other side, there are millions of Americans who believe that our country was built on ordered liberty under God." Bauer is basically correct in his contention that his side advocates Democracy with Puritan Characteristics, as Deng Xiaoping might have put it, whereas the opposing side advocates actual human liberty without reference to the degenerate totalitarian customs of the ancient Hebrews. The reader will also note how the "doing whatever you want" crowd is simply made up of "people," whereas Bauer's own Ordered Liberty faction consists of "millions of Americans." Millions, I say! And Americans to boot! This may seem like a cheap rhetorical trick to you or I, but, hey, "if it feels good, do it" has always been my motto, apparently.

This latest round of video clips now thankfully at an end, it was back to the Tremont Temple Baptist Church telecast for Liberty Sunday's unofficial keynote speaker, outgoing Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney would very much like to be president of our Greater Imperial Pilgrim Republic, and so has seen fit slum it with the Evangelicals. He was introduced by his lovely wife, Ann. Incidentally, Mitt Romney has only one wife. And so that we might understand why Romney has only one wife and not a dozen of them, a brief history lesson is probably in order.

***

In 1820, Joseph Smith met Jesus Christ in New York. Smith was a resident; Christ was presumably just passing through. Smith was duly impressed with Christ, and Smith's associates were duly impressed with Smith for having met Him.

Christ is a busy fellow, though, and so Smith's next few supernatural encounters were with His subordinate, the angel Moroni. Before graduating to the rank of angel, Moroni had been a general in the army of the Nephites, one of three Hebrew tribes that had wandered into North America after the Tower of Babylon was knocked over by Elohim (alias Yahweh, alias God, no known tattoos or other identifying marks). Quite a bit had happened before and since that hadn't been recorded by the Ur-Jews of the Middle East, nor by the Byzantines, nor by the Romans, nor even by the Methodists, who are usually up on all the latest gossip. In fact, it would seem that a good chunk of crucial Christian theology had simply not made it into the texts and traditions of Christendom for some reason or another, and so it fell upon Joseph Smith, New Yorker, to record it. To this end, Moroni provided Smith with a pair of golden plates inscribed with the language of the Nephites, and which Smith would be able to translate by use of a magical stone. Of course, no one else would be allowed to see the plates at first, and only a trustworthy select were allowed to see them later. Eventually, Moroni took them back, perhaps because he needed them for something.

Years later, after Smith had attracted a following, it was determined that the State of Missouri was actually Zion, that Jackson Country, Missouri in particular had been given to Smith by divine decree, and that it would be rather neat if everyone were to go there and await the Second Coming. The natives of Missouri disagreed, and, after a series of incidents, Smith changed his mind, apparently right around the time that he and his followers were thrown out of the state. Next it was on to Illinois, where Smith and friends established the town of Nauvoo, with Smith himself as mayor. This proved to be a convenient setup for a nascent religious movement, as Smith could now preach his revelatory vision of polygamy, baptism for the dead, and revisionist North American history without being hassled by The Man. After all, he had become The Man.

Things were going swimmingly until a group of disgruntled ex-followers set up a newspaper whose editorial stance was in opposition to Smith's teachings in general and to Smith's person in particular. After the first issue, Smith and his city council had the paper shut down and its printing press destroyed. This didn't go over well in the county seat (which is called Carthage, amusingly enough), where Smith was charged with wholesale tomfoolery and unconstitutional hanky-panky. Smith surrendered to the authorities and was held in the second floor of the county prison for his own protection. The precaution proved inadequate; a mob of angry Illinoisans stormed the prison and fired on him and his friends – one of whom, John Taylor, later described what happened next: "Joseph leaped from the window, and was shot dead in the attempt, exclaiming: O Lord my God!"

In a purely romantic sense, Smith's martyrdom by gunfire and window-leaping ranks pretty low on the prophet-death totem poll, sitting below not only Jesus Christ (crucifixion) but also David Koresh (misunderstanding with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) and even Marshall Applewhite (applesauce with phenobarbital).

Unlike those of Koresh and Applewhite, though, Smith's vision lived on; Brigham Young, head of the Quorum of the Twelve, became the Mormon movement's second prophet, and prudently moved the flock westward to Mexican territory. Here, in the Salt Lake Valley, Young and his cohorts were free to live Mormon life to its fullest – none more so than Young, who eventually took on a total of 52 wives. Even Joseph Smith himself had married no more than 33.

It wasn't long before the Mormon communities were absorbed into the United States by way of one of our nation's celebrated real estate grabs, and it wasn't long after that before the Mormons started to go all political. Young himself began to lobby Washington for the creation of the State of Deseret, as the Mormons had taken to calling their holdings; instead, a smaller state called Utah was formed with Young as its governor. It was a rough transition, and at one point, federal officials sent an expeditionary force to replace Young after a difference of opinion over the exact nature of American federalism; the Mormon army held the Yankees off for a while, but eventually Young decided it would be more prudent to just step down, and he did so, but was eventually pardoned.

Treason, theocracy, and militarized resistance against the federal government was one thing, but a more serious problem had also been in the making. It seemed that the folks back east didn't much care for polygamy, whereas the Mormons cared for it quite a bit and even considered it a sacred duty. In 1882, when a Mormon leader was consequently prevented from taking his seat in the House of Representatives, the issue was suddenly nationalized. A number of bills were passed in the wake of the controversy, including one which made it a crime not only to practice polygamy, but even to profess one's belief in it. This was clearly unconstitutional, though not so clearly unconstitutional that anyone seemed to notice or care (aside from the Mormons, of course). Then, in 1887, the Edwards-Tucker Act provided for federal seizure of all church property.

And so the Mormon belief in polygamy had been beaten in the political arena, and three years later, the then-leader of the Mormons was suddenly informed by God Himself that plural marriage had never been that big of a deal anyway and that the church should render unto Caesar what was Caesar's, so to speak. In 1890, the Mormons decided that the sacred and inviolable practice of plural marriage consisting of a single man and several women was not so sacred and inviolable after all.

***

Back at Liberty Sunday, former Mormon bishop Mitt Romney, a graduate of Brigham Young University, was introduced by his Mormon wife Ann, another graduate of Brigham Young University. Romney, of course, was here to speak about why traditional marriage is a sacred and inviolable practice consisting of a single man and a single woman.

After Ann Romney had announced to wild applause that she herself was a direct descendant of the splendid William Bradford, Mitt Romney took the podium to say his piece. The nation's values, he said, were under attack. "Today there are some people who are trying to establish one religion: the religion of secularism." Unfortunately, the religion of secularism's operations have yet to be declared tax exempt, which is why I can't write off all of my Gore Vidal novels, tweed jackets, and imported coffee.

A bit into his speech, Romney went off-message when he noted that "our fight for children, then, should focus on the needs of children, not the rights of adults," thus admitting that the point of all of this was to limit rights, rather than to protect them. But if our Mormon friend went on to elaborate regarding his advocacy of federalized social engineering, I wasn't able to catch it, and neither were the "thousands, literally millions" of others watching via the telecast; the transmission broke up in mid-sentence, and didn't resume until after Romney had finished speaking. Apparently, Yahweh does not approve of his True Church being rendered unclean by the presence of Mormons, who believe, among other things, that Jesus and Satan are actually brothers. A message from the Family Research Council came up asking me to "click stop on my media player. Then restart it," and to repeat this. Not a word about prayer. Later on, after the transmission had been fixed, Tony Perkins took the stage and said something about someone having pulled a power cord. Never fret, though: "We know where the real power comes from!" Then there was applause, presumably for the engineer who plugged the cord back in.

If it was indeed Yahweh who knocked Romney off the air in the first place, then He was simply anticipating the views of a large portion of Americans and an even larger portion of Evangelicals. According to a Rasmussen poll released a month after Liberty Sunday, 43 percent of those polled would refrain from voting for a Mormon presidential candidate. Among Evangelicals, that number was 53 percent. As a participant in religious bigotry, Romney is hit-or-miss, but as its victim, he's a real success.

James Dobson appeared via a recorded tape. He was in Tennessee on that particular evening. "Tennessee has an open senate seat," he explained. Fair enough. Dobson cited some scripture, as well he might. "'For this cause,'" he quoted, referring to the cause of matrimony, "'a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.'" It certainly sounds as if Yahweh has stated His opposition to letting the in-laws move in. Judeo-Christianity is not without its charms.

"More than 1,000 scientific studies conducted in secular universities and research centers have demonstrated conclusively that children do best when they're raised by a mother and father who are committed to each other," Dobson noted. In his 2004 book Marriage Under Fire: Why We Must Win This Battle, Dobson had written something similar: "More than ten thousand studies have concluded that kids do best when they are raised by loving and committed mothers and fathers." How that figure managed to shrink from ten thousand to one thousand in the space of two years would be an interesting question for a theoretical mathematician or quantum theorist. How do 9,000 things go from existing to not having ever existed at all? Actually, this is a trick question. The trick answer is that those 9,000 things never existed in the first place, and it's doubtful that even 1,000 did, either. The liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America once tried to figure out exactly how Dobson had arrived at his oft-stated "more than ten thousand" figure, which has since been cited by a couple of politicos on the lesser cable news programs. It seems that Dobson was referencing some books and articles to the effect that children are at a disadvantage when raised by a single mother, although none of the studies cited dealt with the question of whether or not "mothers and fathers" were necessarily preferable to two mothers, two fathers, or a mother and a grandmother (I myself was mostly raised in this last fashion, and I don't believe I'm the worse for it, but, then again, I'd never thought to ask James Dobson). But even aside from Dobson's slight misrepresentations regarding the nature of the studies that actually do exist, the 10,000 figure is ludicrous anyway; as Media Matters put it, such a number could only be possible "if a new study reaching that conclusion had been released every day for the past 27 years." This does not appear to be the case. Nonetheless, Dobson was back to citing the 10,000 figure just a few months later.

Eventually, Dobson was called out on this particular instance of nonsense by two researchers whose work he referenced in a December 2006 essay that was published in Time and cutely entitled "Two Mommies is Too Many ." Until this point, neither of the researchers in question had been aware that Dobson was running around citing their work in support of his contention that gay marriage was the pits; they had, in fact, no reason to expect this, as their work supported no such contention. New York University educational psychologist Carol Gilligan requested that Dobson "cease and desist" from referencing her work, and Professor Kyle Pruett of the Yale School of Medicine wrote him the following letter which was reprinted on the gay advocacy website Truth Wins Out:

Dr. Dobson,

I was startled and disappointed to see my work referenced in the current Time Magazine piece in which you opined that social science, such as mine, supports your convictions opposing lesbian and gay parenthood. I write now to insist that you not quote from my research in your media campaigns, personal or corporate, without previously securing my permission.

You cherry-picked a phrase to shore up highly (in my view) discriminatory purposes. This practice is condemned in real science, common though it may be in pseudo-science circles. There is nothing in my longitudinal research or any of my writings to support such conclusions. On page 134 of the book you cite in your piece, I wrote, "What we do know is that there is no reason for concern about the development or psychological competence of children living with gay fathers. It is love that binds relationships, not sex."

Kyle Pruett, M.D.
Yale School of Medicine

To its credit, Time later published a response to Dobson's essay, entitled (almost as cutely) "Two Mommies or Two Daddies Will Do Just Fine, Thanks."

Back at Liberty Sunday, Dobson had more concrete matters about which to be livid. It seems that there's a book called King and King floating around the nation's public schools. The plot concerns "a prince who decides to marry another man," Dobson tells us, and then, visibly disgusted, adds, "It ends with a celebration and a kiss." Dobson thinks this to be very bad form, and, for once, I agree with him. I wouldn't want my children being taught that the institution of hereditary monarchy is some sort of acceptable "alternative lifestyle," either. If I caught my kid reading any of that smut by John Winthrop, for instance, I'd beat him with a sack of oranges until my arm got tired. I'm just kidding. I don't have any kids. Yet.

Dobson's list of grievances went on. A school in Lexington, Massachusetts, had sent students home with a "diversity bag" which included some materials to the effect that homosexuals exist and are people. In response to the inevitable parental complaint, the district superintendent had said, "We couldn't run a public school system if every parent who feels some topic is objectionable to them for moral or religious reasons decides their child should be removed." Dobson read the quote and then delivered the following pithy retort: "Well, maybe, sir, you have no business running a school system in the first place!"

Tony Perkins had gone into some more depth regarding the Lexington Diversity Bag Heresy in a recent e-mail newsletter. "You may remember us reporting last year on David Parker, the Lexington, Massachusetts father who was arrested because of insistence on being notified by school officials anytime homosexual topics were discussed in his son's classroom," Perkins wrote at the time. "He made this reasonable request after his six-year-old kindergartener came home from school with a 'diversity' book bag and a book discussing homosexual relationships." Obviously, Mr. Parker wasn't arrested because of his "insistence" on anything; he was arrested on a charge of trespassing after refusing to leave the school office, even after having been asked several times by the principal as well as by police. And Mr. Parker had indeed been "notified" about the bags, along with all of the other parents, twice. A sample had even been displayed at a PTA meeting at the beginning of the year, where it was made clear that children were not required to accept them. But, hey, whatever.

Dobson had another one. "And did you hear two weeks ago that a 13-year-old girl at Prince George's County Middle School was silently reading her Bible at lunch time, when a vice principal told her she was violating school policy and would be suspended if she didn't stop?" This actually did happen; the vice principal apparently didn't understand school policy, which clearly states that students may read religious texts. They can also start religious clubs. The problem seemed to be that the vice principal in question mistakenly believed otherwise, perhaps because Evangelicals like James Dobson (and Catholics like William Bennett) are always running around claiming that it's illegal to pray in public schools.

Then, all of a sudden and apropos of nothing, Dobson warned us that "our country is in great danger from the radical Islamic fundamentalism, which is telling us now that they plan to destroy the United States and Israel, and I'm convinced they mean it." Really puts that diversity book bag thing into perspective, huh?

The video ended and it was back to the Liberty Sunday live feed. Perkins noted that the DVD version of the event could be ordered from the FRC website, and that it included bonus material.

A bit later, Massachusetts Family Institute president Kris Mineau came on. "The leadership of this state is beholden to the homosexual lobbyists," he said. "Homosexual money is flooding into this state to deny the citizens the right to vote, to deny our freedom of speech." The homosexual money in question was apparently too limp-wristed and faggy to actually accomplish any of this, though, seeing as how Mineau was exercising his freedom of speech at that very moment and the 2006 mid-terms had yet to be canceled by the Homosexual Agenda Electoral Commission.

Wellington Boone took the stage. This made me very happy. Boone is a black Charismatic preacher with a penchant for shooting his mouth off about "faggots" and "sissies," as he had done at the recent Values Voter summit, explaining at that event that he is "from the ghetto, so sometimes it does come out a little bit." The crackers in attendance had eaten this up with a spoon.

Like most Charismatic types, Boone comes from the Arbitrary Implementation of Vague Biblical Terminology school of ministerial presentation, whereby a preacher selects an apparently random verse or even just a phrase of the Old Testament and then ascribes to it some sort of special significance, mystical as well as practical. The most popular item of fodder for such a sermon is "the sowing of seeds," which invariably entails that the sermon-goer should give the preacher a hundred bucks, because God will totally pay back him or her (usually her) at a rate of return that makes a Reagan-era share of Apple look like a Roosevelt-era Victory Bond. In a way, "the sowing of seeds" was also the subject of tonight's presentation, insomuch as that everyone had gathered to advocate the supremacy of vaginal intercourse over its lesser, non-child-yielding counterparts.

Boone was right out of the gate, noting that "God does not play concerning righteousness" and that "the prophets of Baal" have to be stopped. Baal was a Carthaginian deity who reached the height of his popularity 3,000 years ago among people who believed in gods and whose past worship is now apparently to be laid at the feet of people who do not believe in any gods at all, as well at the more stylishly-clad feet of the nation's gays and the considerably less-stylishly clad feet of its lesbians. Baal was also associated with a myriad of fertility rituals, and is thus sort of an odd deity to bring up in the context of homosexuality, which had yet to be slandered as being too heavily concerned with fertility until Wellington Boone came along to do this.

"We know what a family is," continued Boone. "My wife said to me this morning, she said, 'Well, okay, then. It's sodomites because they're not gays; it's a misnomer. They're sodomites.'" That's a pretty clever thing to say, and thus it's understandable why Boone would be sure to relate this to everyone.

"There were sodomy laws in this country all over from [the] 1600s and it was [at] one time a capital offense," he went on. "How could we make it a capital offense? Because most lawyers studied from William Blackstone, who was the foundation of – it was a foundation book that helped those lawyers get a clue as to how they should govern and how they should practice law. Where did he get it from? The Bible. The Bible was the book." It sure was. It was a foundation book.

Then came what I consider to be the best moment of the evening. "So if this is just a small matter, I'll tell you what – let two women go on an island and a whole bunch of – all women, if you're sodomites, go on an island, stay by yourself, all women, put all the men on another island – this is my wife talking to me this morning – let them stay. I'll tell you what: 'We'll come back and see you in a hundred years.'" There was total silence in the auditorium, as opposed to the approving laughter that Boone had no doubt come to expect from his wife's anecdotes. The problem, he seemed to have thought, was that the subtlety of the joke had gone over the audience's collective head, and so, like any good comedian, he explained the punchline: "Do you get it? Because a man and a man and a woman and a woman will not make a child."

Though a failure at comedy, Boone's real function for the evening was to provide cover for the event's anti-homosexual sentiment by showing everyone that he himself, as a member of a group that has been persecuted, was more than willing to lend his support to the persecution of yet another group, and that this modern-day persecution was, ipso facto, hardly akin to the earlier persecution of blacks to which he himself had obviously been opposed and to which most of the crackers assembled were pretending to be opposed as well. To this end, Boone noted the various ways in which blacks had been persecuted over the years. "Now, if you tell me your issue is the same as that issue," he said, addressing any gays who might have been watching the anti-gay event, "I'll say you better get a clue. Get out of here. You're not getting over here." There was wild applause. "And you're not getting on that. You're not getting any of that. No sir." Perhaps Boone has a point. If so, he refrained from making it. If I was making a speech about gays, and if I was planning to spend the fifth minute of said speech claiming that gays have no license to compare their struggles to that of the blacks, I would probably have refrained from spending the third minute pointing out that gays used to be executed on the basis of Biblical law and that I thought this was a swell thing, as Boone had done, nor would I have menacingly added, "If you're in the closet, come out of the closet and let God deal with you and let the nation deal with you and don't hide out," as Boone also did. If you're a homosexual, don't listen to Boone. It sounds like a trap. Stay in the closet with a shotgun.

Boone was also upset that Condoleeza Rice and Laura Bush had recently presided over the induction ceremony of the new, gay Global AIDS Initiative director Dr. Mark S. Dybul, was particularly peeved that Dybul was sworn in with his hand on a Bible held by his homosexual partner, and was quite unhappy indeed that Rice had referred to Dybul's partner's mother as Dybul's "mother-in-law" during the ceremony. Boone had "a real problem with that." As he explained a bit later, "That ain't no family!"

The incident had riled up a good portion of the Evangelical hornet's nest for a variety of reasons; a few days before Liberty Sunday, an FRC spokesman had told the media that "[w]e have to face the fact that putting a homosexual in charge of AIDS policy is a bit like putting the fox in charge of the hen house," because, I suppose, gay people like to eat AIDS, presumably for brunch.

This is not to say that each and every homosexual AIDS-eater is beyond salvation; quite the contrary. And to drive the point home, Liberty Sunday's final speaker was Alan Chambers, founder and president of the ex-gay reform organization Exodus International. Chambers is notable in that he's managed to put aside his past enthusiasm for homosexual activity in favor of his current enthusiasm for heterosexual activity. He got a big round of applause for this, which is more than I've ever gotten for getting up in front of a group of strangers and explaining that I like to fuck chicks.

Things could have been different for Mr. Chambers, though. "If it wasn't for the outstretched arms of a little church in Orlando, Florida called Discovery Church," Chambers told the crowd, "and people there who called sin, sin, and didn't look at my sin as worse than theirs, I wouldn't be here tonight." This was kind of an odd thing to say. Neither the Family Research Council nor Focus on the Family nor Mitt Romney nor Wellington Boone nor Gary Bauer nor the Massachusetts Catholic Action League had ever before taken part in a major event dedicated to stamping out the practice of neighbor-object-coveting or the violation of Sabbath labor restrictions (in fact, Perkins had arguably failed to keep the Sabbath holy when he got up on stage to pitch DVDs). The whole point of the evening's activities had seemed to be that the Biblical sin of homosexuality was really the only thing worth worrying about.

Is it possible that Alan Chambers was being sarcastic, or at least trying to make the night's only subtle point? Could he have realized that, whatever the virtues of the Florida church that had refrained from looking upon his sin "as worse than theirs," the assembled delegates at this particular church had instead spent the evening doing very much the opposite, and in some cases even advocating the age-old death penalty for the act of sodomy? Could Chambers have made this obvious connection?

If not, then the salvation of Alan Chambers so many years ago has been a complete success. Truly, he was now an Evangelical leader.

***

Alan Chambers claims to have been converted from homosexuality to heterosexuality by way of the same methods now implemented by his Exodus International group. If this is truly the case, he may be the only person in human history who has managed to do this. Exodus doesn't seem to keep records concerning its success rate, much less publish them, and even if it did, these would likely be about as kosher as James Dobson's Incredible Shrinking Ten Thousand Studies. And besides the fact that Exodus is basically a referral organization which delegates the actual work of gay-straightening to smaller, associate churches and would thus not be in much of a position to collect useful records anyway, the business of keeping tabs on the fags has always been an unreliable one; closeted gay men are notoriously reluctant to admit that they've been secretly hitting the warehouse district, particularly if they've been doing it behind the back of the new wife.

Like any movement that can't seem to get methodology on its side, Exodus has been forced to rely on anecdotal evidence, such as the fact that Alan Chambers has managed to impregnate his wife several times and has yet to be caught hanging out by the docks or even eating sushi. Unfortunately, the anecdotal evidence has never been good to Exodus, either. Within three years of the organization's founding by five men in 1976, one of these founders had already run off with a volunteer; the two of them eventually underwent a commitment ceremony and were still together years later.

Then there was John Paulk, a gay man who had worked as a drag queen named "Candi" (note the "i" at the end), a male escort, a restaurant manager and a chef. After his conversion process (half of which, I'd imagine, was spent convincing him to stop replacing y's with i's), Paulk became a literal poster boy of Exodus in particular and the ex-gay movement in general, serving as head of Focus on the Family's "Love Won Out" conference, acting as chairman of the board for Exodus International North America, and appearing on the cover of Newsweek as well as on a series of full-page newspaper ads. Paul had gone from the stereotypical gay career to the stereotypical ex-gay career. The only thing left was to go the way of the stereotypical ex-ex-gay, which he promptly did.

In 2000, Paulk was seen at a Washington D.C. gay bar, where he used a false name and introduced himself to other patrons as a gay man. When these reports made it back to his various new C