Back to the Oppressive Future:
Homosexualist Attempts at Suppressing
Rational Debate at Bowdoin College and the Maine “Gay Marriage” Referendum
by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Nov. 3, 2009
For printing use the pdf version
here
My speaking
engagement at Bowdoin College near Portland, Maine, on Friday Oct. 30
presented me with a glimpse into the oppressive future of homosexualist
ascendancy. The talk was attended by about 150 persons, including a large
contingent of “GLBT”
students and staff who, I heard from other students, had been planning how
they might derail my presentation. During the Q&A time after my
presentation the Director of Student Life, a homosexualist activist named
Allen DeLong, called me “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and made an implicit
threat to the Intervarsity staff responsible for bringing me there.
Before I go
into the details, first a little background information. I was invited by
the Intervarsity chapter at Bowdoin to give a presentation on the Bible
and homosexual practice primarily intended for Bowdoin’s Christian
fellowship group but also open to the whole campus. There were pleasant
features about Bowdoin College. I found the Bowdoin campus to be
aesthetically pleasing. Another nice thing about Bowdoin is the presence
of two outstanding Intervarsity staff persons, Robert and Sim-Kuen Chan
Gregory, who have committed their lives to helping the Bowdoin Christian
Fellowship (BCF) over the last five years. They have done so at
considerable financial cost and sacrifice to themselves.
Yet, if you
are thinking of sending your child to Bowdoin, consider this: Bowdoin
suffers from a major inhibitor of free speech. Let’s just say that if you
want to go to a college where homosexualist ideology reigns supreme at the
highest levels, a place where you will be belittled as a homophobic bigot
if you express your conviction that homosexual practice is wrong, then
Bowdoin is the place for you. Bowdoin has not only the usual “Gay and
Lesbian Studies” program but also a special “Resource Center for Sexual
and Gender Diversity,” just recently renamed from the more descriptive “Queer-Trans
Resource Center.” The Center has its own building and full-time
director.
If you go to
Bowdoin’s website, click on “Campus Life,” and scroll halfway down, you
will see a prominent reference to this Center that takes you to “Bowdoin
Queer Web.” Here one finds prominently displayed a statement from the
Bowdoin Student Handbook that forbids “discrimination or harassment of
others because of … sexual orientation” and requires “respect for the
differences of all.” From what I can gather from my own observations, this
statement means: The “GLBT” community can slander at will anybody who
declines to pay homage to the homosexualist agenda, while all others have
to shut up about that agenda or face dire consequences. I have seen
firsthand the very real fear and intimidation that students experience as
regards expressing any criticism of homosexual behavior.
You can link
from the “Bowdoin Queer Web” not only to the “Sexual Diversity” resource
center, but also to the “Bowdoin Queer-Straight Alliance” and to “Faculty-Staff
Advocates.” The latter includes the Director of Student Life, Allen
DeLong (mentioned above), who (the site declares) also
“holds a monthly dinner conversation for Men who Date Men”; the
Director for Career Planning for all students; and, of course, the
Director of the “Queer-Trans” Resource Center. In short, homosexualist
activists at Bowdoin control all student life activities and all use of
career planning resources.
This, then,
is the background for my presentation last Friday night. I should add that
the school had the night before brought over Marvin Ellison to give
“A Christian Defense of Marriage.”
Ellison is a self-professed “gay man” who teaches ethics at Bangor
Theological Seminary and has written a book on “same-sex marriage.”
Ellison was invited in connection with the citizen referendum on “gay
marriage” in Maine, which will be voted on Tuesday, Nov. 3. In talking to
students I discovered that the administration had pressured Bowdoin
Christian Fellowship to co-sponsor Ellison and to consider Ellison their
reliable guide to a proper Christian perspective on homosexuality. In his
own research Ellison has shown little understanding of Scripture in its
historical and literary context, which makes his attempts at hermeneutical
appropriation weak indeed. While wanting an evangelical group to
co-sponsor a homosexualist advocate, homosexual administrators were quite
unhappy with BCF bringing up an expert to explain and defend the position
held by the vast majority of BCF members, namely, the biblical position
for male-female sexual prerequisite.
I decided to
focus my presentation on the witness of Jesus. I began, however, by
quoting two non-Christian, homosex-affirming psychologists, J. Michael
Bailey of Northwestern University and Brian Mustanski of Indiana
University, who admit that “no clear conclusions about the morality of a
behavior can be made from the mere fact of biological causation, because
all behavior is biologically caused.” Then I talked about why we disagree
so strongly in the church about this issue. Opposing sides in the church
now operate with diametrically opposed “hermeneutical scales”: one side
continues with the historic priority of Scripture, followed by
philosophical reason, scientific reason, and experience; the other has
experience at the top and Scripture last (go
here, pp. 19-25, for the argument).
I rounded off the introduction by citing Augustine’s phrase “Love, and do
what you want,” which Augustine interprets to mean that one can, in love,
discipline as a means to turning someone away from sin. “Love not in the
person his error, but the person; for the person God made, the error the
person himself made” (Augustine).
From that
point on I focused on Jesus. I showed how in Mark 10 and Matthew 19 Jesus’
restriction of the number of persons in a sexual union to two and only two
persons, whether concurrently or serially, was predicated on the
foundation of a male-female prerequisite to marriage in Gen 1:27 (“male
and female he made them”) and 2:24 (“for this reason a man … shall become
joined to his woman/wife and the two shall become one flesh”). I noted the
comparable example of the Essenes at Qumran, who likewise rejected
polygamy on the grounds of Gen 1:27, adding also the Noah’s ark narrative
where “male and female” is glossed with “two by two.”
I showed how
the New Testament’s prohibition of polygyny (multiple wives) was thus
extrapolated from the self-contained duality or twoness of the sexes in
complementary union. As an aside, I explained that the rationale in
Leviticus 18:6 for rejecting even adult-consensual forms of incest (i.e.,
sex with someone who is already one’s own “flesh” and thus too much of a
structural same on the level of kinship) is analogically related to the
reason behind Scripture’s absolute rejection of homosexual practice (i.e.,
sex with someone who is too much of an embodied “like” or “same” on the
deeper level of sex or gender). I followed up the assessment of Jesus’
views with a brief presentation of nine other arguments from Jesus’
teaching and the historical context to show the historical impossibility
of a Jesus open to homosexual practice.
In an effort
to give a full-orbed discussion of Jesus’ ministry, I then examined Jesus’
loving outreach to the biggest violators of God’s ethical demands (tax
collectors and sexual sinners) and Jesus’ interpretation of the love
commandment. I recalled an important event in my own life when I learned,
as in the story of the prodigal son, what it meant to be an “older
brother” who did not want to forgive a returning sibling. I showed how
love meant for Jesus focusing his ministry on those most likely not to
inherit the very Kingdom that he proclaimed. Rather than validating the
behavior that leads to exclusion from God’s kingdom, Jesus called
violators to repentance and threw a party for those who responded
positively to his message.
I also noted
Jesus’ expansive call to discipleship: not an affirmation of our innate
biological urges but instead a demand for nothing less than taking up our
cross, denying ourselves, and losing our life. (For further study of the
witness of Jesus go
here, p. 1, and
here, pp. 56-62.)
I added briefly that the Greco-Roman milieu was well aware of the
existence of non-exploitative homosexual unions and even floated a number
of theories akin to our modern notions of “homosexual orientation,” making
alleged “new knowledge” arguments for dismissing the witness of Scripture
not so new after all. I repeatedly emphasized that
Scripture’s opposition to
homosexual practice, as recast by Jesus and the apostolic witness to him,
was not about hate but about the
true meaning of love, the kind of love that parents have when their young
child is about to touch a hot stove.
The talk
lasted about an hour-and-a-half. The Q&A time that followed lasted about
45 minutes. The questions/comments were almost entirely from the
aggressive “GLBT” side of the audience. I think the evangelical Christians
were, for the most part, too intimidated to say anything. Throughout my
presentation and responses in Q&A there were many from the “GLBT”
contingent who behaved rudely: eye-rolling, turning to talk to others
while I was speaking, some abortive attempts at ridicule. I think that
matters would have been much worse had I shown that I was susceptible to
their intimidation or responded in an unintelligent fashion. To be sure,
there were other students who acted respectfully. Some attempted to
lecture me about the historical and literary context of certain texts,
although that stopped when in my responses I was able to show how they had
misconstrued that context. There was not a single question or comment the
entire evening that posed any problem for what I had presented.
However,
that made the Director of Student Life, Allen DeLong, mad. Instead of
setting an example for students as regards rational argumentation and
civil discourse, DeLong launched into an ad hominem tirade. In a
blustery manner he said words to the effect of the following: “This really
isn’t a question for Dr. Gagnon or about Dr. Gagnon but a statement to the
Intervarsity staff. What does it say about the character of the
Intervarsity staff to bring this wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing here?”
DeLong went on to rail against me for comparing homosexual unions to
incest and polyamory and to intimate that the Student Association Handbook
had been violated by having me come speak. I took his comments to the
Intervarsity staff as an implicit threat that the latter would be made to
recant my teaching and invitation or else be thrown off the campus. We
shall see in the next few days whether that interpretation is accurate.
The charge
of me being “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” was absurd. There was certainly
nothing deceptive about my presentation. I was very straightforward about
what I thought Scripture said about homosexual practice, read responsibly
in its context and interpreted responsibly for our own day. Apparently,
DeLong was worried that reasonable arguments that I was putting forward
were beguiling the audience to think (horror of horrors!) that I might not
be an irrational, hateful bigot. My sheep’s clothing was apparently my
genuinely rational, caring, and civil manner of discussing the issue.
I reminded
DeLong that my analogies were not to adult-child incest and
promiscuous polyamory but rather to adult-committed forms of incest
and polyamory. When I challenged DeLong to give me a rationale argument
why these were not the best analogues to homosexual practice, he attempted
repeatedly to switch the subject. DeLong realized that if it could be
shown that adult-committed homosexual unions were more like
adult-committed incestuous or polyamorous unions than like heterosexual
unions, then support for “gay marriage” and the tarring of opponents with
“homophobic bigotry” would quickly evaporate (go
here for further discussion of this point).
When I
repeated my request that DeLong answer my question, he had no comeback.
Nothing. Ironically, I found out later that Prof. Ellison, in his talk the
previous night, had been asked during Q&A if there was anything wrong with
close kin or three or more persons entering into a committed sexual union.
Ellison responded that he had no problem with such relationships. Indeed,
in his book on same-sex marriage Ellison explicitly opened the door to
committed sexual unions involving three or more persons concurrently, so
long as patriarchal practices were excluded.
Since DeLong was strongly supportive of Ellison’s coming, apparently
DeLong’s problem with me was not that I made a comparison with
adult-committed incest and polyamory but rather that I regarded
adult-committed incest and polyamory as bad things.
The
oppressive homosexualist environment at Bowdoin is a good example of why
people should oppose “gay marriage” and other “sexual orientation” and
“gender identity” laws. Such laws end up treating those who believe in a
male-female prerequisite for sexual unions as the moral equivalent of
racists, subject to severe societal ridicule, ostracism, and ultimately
termination from employment and criminal prosecution. A recent case in
point is the firing of a Massachusetts man because he could not support a
co-worker’s lesbian wedding. Here is how the organization MassResistance
reports it:
Massachusetts man fired from corporation over Christian belief in
traditional marriage
"Same-sex marriage is the law" he was
told
POSTED: October 30, 2009
A Massachusetts man was fired from a
national retail corporation because of his traditional beliefs on same-sex
marriage. Peter Vadala was formally dismissed from his job as second
deputy manager of the Brookstone store at Boston’s Logan Airport on August
12, 2009, after a supervisor reported him to Human Resources regarding an
incident two days earlier.
As Peter described the incident (see video above), he
came to work on August 10 and began his day normally. A female manager
from another store was in the store and began talking to Peter about her
upcoming marriage. When Peter asked “where is he taking you for the
honeymoon,” she corrected him and said she was not getting married to "he"
but to another woman.
Peter did not immediately react, but when the manager
sensed Peter’s discomfort with the subject of same-sex “marriage”, the
woman apparently continued bringing it up to Peter throughout the day,
reiterating that she was getting married to another woman. Finally, after
the fourth or fifth time she brought it up, Peter remarked that his
Christian beliefs did not accept same-sex marriage. At that point the
woman became very angry and bluntly told Peter that he needed to “get over
it” and said that she would be immediately contacting the Human Resources
department.
A few hours later Peter was notified by a Human
Resources representative that he was suspended from work without pay,
effective immediately. Two days later, on August 12, after some further
interaction with the Human Resources department, he was formally notified
that he was terminated from the company.
Brookstone’s termination letter to Peter
states that “in the State of Massachusetts, same-sex marriage is legal.”
It goes on to describe Peter’s actions as constituting “harassment” and
that his comments were “inappropriate and unprofessional.” It further
accuses him of “imposing” his beliefs upon others.
In addition, the letter curiously quotes another
employee who did not witness the incident, but who says Peter told her
that he considers homosexual lifestyle to be “deviant”. Peter strongly
denies ever having said that to that to the other employee.
Peter also described one of Brookstone’s
required diversity training films (see video above) that gave the
clear message that even any informal discussion uncomplimentary of
homosexual behavior would be considered “offensive” by the company.
For picture and video, go
here.
Another case in point occurred in Maine. The
Alliance Defense Fund
reports:
Maine counselor's career threatened for
support of marriage
ADF attorneys representing man reported to
licensing board say complaint is attempt to shut down free speech, silence
opposition
Friday, October 30, 2009
AUGUSTA, Maine — A high school counselor who
supports marriage between one man and one woman has been reported to a
Maine licensing board because of his views. Attorneys with the Alliance
Defense Fund represent Donald Mendell, the subject of a complaint filed
with the Board of Social Worker Licensure by a co-worker because he
expressed support for marriage and the "Vote Yes on One" campaign.
"No one should have their livelihood placed in jeopardy because they
believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman," said ADF Senior Legal
Counsel Austin R. Nimocks. "This threat to Don, his family, and his
career makes clear that those in favor of redefining marriage also want to
penalize and silence those who don't agree with them. So, the definition
of marriage is not the only thing at issue here. Free speech, freedom of
conscience, and religious liberty are also in danger."
The
complaint attacking Mendell, a licensed counselor at Nokomis Regional
High School, accuses him of violating the state's code of ethics for
social workers because of his expressed position on marriage.
The complaint cites his appearance in a
"Vote Yes on One" television ad that encourages citizens to vote in
favor of Ballot Question 1, which would allow Mainers to repeal a recent
law that imposed a redefinition of marriage on the people. The complaint
fails to mention that the ad was created in response to a
"Vote No on One" ad that featured a Nokomis teacher encouraging a "no"
vote on Question 1 from a classroom at the high school itself. The
complaint is not critical of that ad or the teacher featured in it.
Mendell has 30 days from the date he received a copy of the complaint to
respond to it.
Are these the kind of things that you want to
happen to you or to others? This is what “sexual orientation” and “gay
marriage” laws inevitably bring.
Bowdoin College gave me a glimpse of the
oppressive future coming from legal support for homosexualist ideologies.
The example, along with many other examples of homosexualist oppression
(go
here and
here for more),
shows how insane it is for anyone who believes homosexual practice to be
immoral to support, or fail to vote against, “sexual orientation” laws and
“gay marriage,” or even to keep in office those who support such agendas.
In effect, such a person would be voting for his or her own cultural and
civil oppression.