Armstrong Williams
Monday, Nov. 15, 2004

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  Clinton knew that the vast majority of Americans did not support the homosexual agenda. He knew that large pluralities of the populace would vote Republican solely on that issue. And like all great populists, Clinton knew that in a democracy, political leaders have to ingrain themselves in the popular culture. It’s how they draw their legitimacy as a voice for the people. He could also see that the Democrats were on the verge of losing that legitimacy with their stubborn support of a gay marriage amendment.

Plainly, gay marriage is not an issue that Americans support. Despite the rhetoric that you hear from the homosexual cosa nostra, the lack of support for the gay marriage amendment has nothing to do with prejudice. It’s not about trying to dictate to adults what they should do in the privacy of their own home. Let’s be clear about that.

Opposition to the gay marriage amendment isn’t about disallowing homosexuals the same basic rights we extend to every other group in this country.

It is about recognizing that marriage between man and woman is the bedrock of our society. It is about the citizens of this country saying, en masse, that they are unwilling to deconstruct certain basic and essential norms in our culture and society.

Rightly so. Heterosexual marriage is deeply ingrained in our Western value system. To abruptly break form those values would have a disastrous effect upon our society.

For starters, it would speed along the breakdown of family and society. Pushing the homosexual agenda into the mainstream would also would inevitably legitimize homosexual adoption. This is truly frightening. A child requires emotional consistency, gender stability and self-esteem.

To abruptly break with social conventions by placing children in homosexual households, would create for these children the sort of gender confusion and social scrutiny that ignites a lifetime of emotional confusion.

I am unwilling to martyr a generation of children just to make a political statement about homosexual rights. Nor am I willing to trash the most fundamental values of our culture — of Western culture. Most Americans feel the same.

Somehow, though, the Democrats don’t get this. They hang on to the gay marriage amendment with mind numbing intransigence. They say that homosexual unions cannot be disallowed simply because the state deems it immoral.

Well guess what; the state can enforce a moral consensus.

Otherwise this would be a land where pornography, drugs and prostitution would be unregulated, where women would be allowed to have abortions at any time during their pregnancy. If you accept that the state cannot enforce shared moral values, then you’re saying that the state has no voice in any of these issues. Obviously, that’s just not the case.

At bottom, most Americans simply do not agree with the homosexual agenda. So why do the Democrats continue to cram the gay marriage issue down our throats? There is no pragmatic answer to that question. After all, gay people tend to reflexively vote Democrat. So the liberals have that vote locked up regardless of whether they support gay marriages.

The rest of the country, however, is staunchly opposed to homosexual unions. Many voters admitted to supporting President Bush in the last election, based on that single issue. The major implication: the only thing that the Democrats accomplish by digging their heels in support of homosexual unions is the widespread alienation of mainstream voters.

Ironically, homosexual unions aren’t even a mainstream issue for the Democratic Party. Their chief concerns are welfare and a strong national government.

Yet, if you ask voters what the Democrats are all about, they often say that the Democrats are about gay rights, separation of church and state, and making our culture more relativistic. The Democrats inflexibility on homosexual unions has alienated a large portion of the voting populace.

And this is what President Clinton was trying to tell the Democrats in the months leading up to the election: if you have a political party that is viewed as fundamentally hostile to American culture and values, Americans won't be interested in listening to them.

The Democrats will never be a long term, stabile governing body until they get that through their heads.

www.armstrongwilliams.com.