On Tuesday November 11 Dan Savage was on the Colbert Report to defend the gay rights movement‘s protests of Proposition 8. I don’t think this interview was great PR for the gay rights movement. I was surprised that Dan Savage made so many references to his desire to perform sexually perverted acts on boys and young men, and that he also said that gays were going to outlive and outsmart the bigots in the same breath.  So apparently you are now a bigot if you want to prevent someone like Dan from getting married or adopting young children.  It is disturbing that Dan doesn’t realize that the casualness with which Dan discusses sexually assaulting “boys” is what is motivating religious traditionalists to vote to “take away his rights.”

There is talk that the gay rights movement wants to destroy the brand of Utah and the brand of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but there is no talk about how the homosexual brand is inherently self-destructive. The gay rights movement has done a good job of constructing the moral paradigm from which the current backlash against the passage of Proposition 8 is being portrayed in the media. The paradigm that they are operating from paints the desire for the right of homosexual marriage as the innocent, logical fulfillment of two people falling in love. Ultimately, in the quest for “equal rights” the gay rights movement is saying that their experience is “equal” or similar to the experience of heterosexuals. No one is challenging this paradigm, because if you do you are labeled an intolerant, hateful bigot.

As successful as the gay rights movement has been in distancing itself from the moral and sexual perversion that is the foundation, the buttresses, and the keystone of the gay rights edifice, religious christians and traditionalists are at least seeing through the facade.

I went to Florida a few years ago because I was invited to present a paper at the ALA Symposium of Jewish American Literature and the Holocaust (sorry godlesslibhomo who commented on my blog, I actually have strong connections to people in the Jewish-American community who understand the holocaust in far more profound ways than you ever will.  They don’t think I am anti-semitic). During some of our free time we decided to go to Key West to tour the home of Ernest Hemingway. We had no idea that it was the annual Key West Fantasy Fest. Entirely by accident, I and a group of fellow BYU students stumbled into a sado-masochist pride parade. You can call me an intolerant, hateful bigot, but the activities that I witnessed at this event didn’t reflect a moral paradigm from within which two people innocently fall in love and want to get married and spend the rest of their lives together and raise children. I can’t remember anyone that I encountered at the Key West Fantasy Fest who didn’t seem to be deeply troubled on a psychological level. I have never looked into so many hopeless, empty eyes. I guess I just don’t see how granting rights of same-sex marriage is going to help a guy who deals with his personal insecurities by dressing up in a Santa suit, strapping on a 2 foot long dildo and walking around in public. I also don’t see why people are so upset that I don’t want guys like this and Dan Savage raising children.

I did some research in google scholar to see what kind of academic social studies I could find that investigate the influence of homosexual parenting on children. Not suprisingly, I found a bunch of articles published in The Journal of Homosexuality saying that homosexual parenting is fine.  (Translation for those who aren’t familiar with academia: a bunch of advocates for homosexual rights started a journal to publish biased information in an “academic journal” to give their beliefs academic credibility. You can pretty much start an academic journal about anything. 90% of academic journals are filled with crap published by graduate students and associate professors who are trying to advance their academic careers – not trying to produce legitimate knowledge using verifiable methods of scientific research).  Even though I found a bunch of articles with favorable views of homosexual parenting, I also found No Basis: What the Studies Don’t Tell Us about Same-Sex Parenting. This book length study provides a substantial review of all the major studies on homosexual parenting and the following was found:

It is routinely asserted in courts, journals and the media that it makes ‘no difference’ whether a child has a mother and a father, two fathers, or two mothers. Reference is often made to social-scientific studies that are claimed to have ‘demonstrated’ this. 

An objective analysis, however, demonstrates that there is no basis for this assertion. The studies on which such claims are based are all gravely deficient.

I also found the following gem: Homosexual parents: a comparative forensic study of character and harms to children.  The author of this article compares the cases from custody court battles involving homosexual and heterosexual parents.  The Following passage is taken from the abstract with my emphasis added:

Each case involving homosexual vs heterosexual claimants was examined for recorded information about (1) the character of the homosexual parent, the associates of the homosexual parent, the heterosexual parent, and the associates of the heterosexual parent, (2) the effects, particularly harms, upon the child(ren), and (3) psychiatric opinion. 82% of the homosexual vs 18% of the heterosexual parents and 54% of the homosexual’s associates vs 19% of the heterosexuals’ associates were recorded as having poor character in cases involving a homosexual claimant. Of the 66 recorded harms, e.g., molestation, physical abuse, to the 73 children, homosexual persons accounted for 64 (97%).

Now I know that advocates from the gay rights movement will claim that I am being unfair by using a few pieces of evidence of negative behavior within the gay community as a justification for denying the whole group the right to marry.  To which I reply that sexual perversion is part of the gay brand.  If anyone who is sympathetic to the gay movement disagrees with me, then they should seriously rethink the passive acceptance of Dan Savage as a national spokesperson.  If gay rights activists want religious traditionalists to take their desire to get married more seriously, then they shouldn’t let perverts like Dan Savage joke around about sexually assaulting young men and boys on national television.  Just as Scott Eckern was forced to resign from his post of Sacramento Theater Director for supporting Propostion 8, Dan Savage should also lose his job at The Stranger, where he is an advice columnist, for tarnishing the homosexual brand by suggesting that homosexuals enjoy sexually assaulting boys.  In a country where religious traditionalists still have a large enough majority to win ballot initiatives, the gay rights movement would do better to try and convince religious christians and traditionalists that the homosexual lifestyle isn’t grounded in sexual perversion and moral deviance.  If this is the case, Dan Savage is a bigger enemy to gay rights than Scott Eckern.