The Soul-Crushing Scorched-Earth Battle for Gay Marriage

Robert Oscar Lopez, writing at American Thinker, observes that the gay activist movement has finally run off the rails - and for a bisexual man who grew up with (surprise, surprise) no father, but a lesbian mother and her partner - one assumes he speaks from a position of authority:

The gay movement is not a random assortment of motley rebels.  It is highly organized, with major nerve centers in places like the Human Rights Coalition.  The movement has its prominent generals, such as Dan Savage and Wayne Besen.

In other words, this is a movement equipped to pick its battles.  In 1999, history was made because Vermont’s high court legalized same-sex civil unions.  The battle plan then could have been to focus on civil unions, forging a new model of romantic commitment in a nation where the old notion of “marriage” had long suffered from stasis.

The war could have been won and over by now.  In polls that break down three choices for respondents—(1) no recognition of same-sex couples, (2) civil unions, or (3) marriage—civil unions tend to get the highest support.  By using civil unions as the framework, gays and lesbians could have redefined the concept of gay family to encompass new forms of cooperative foster care, for instance, rather than trying to erase the role of biological fatherhood and motherhood.

But then Lopez went off the reservation:

In the 1990s, I watched many gay men who had become surrogate father and surrogate mother figures to me die.  One by one, repeating the tragedy of my mother, they disappeared.  They were all alone except, in many cases, for me.  The gay community treated them with shame even as they were the only sense of family I thought I’d have left.

In my late twenties, I finally lost my virginity to the woman who would bear me a child and become my wife.  So bingo, I was suddenly “bisexual.”  (My wife knows everything, and I do not plan on hiding my past.)  I realized soon enough that bisexuals aren’t very popular among the gays.  “You’re lying,” “you’re a wacko ex-gay,” and “those pictures are going to destroy you!” were all subtle ways of gay friends telling me they weren’t going to invite me to parties anymore.

There’s more, but I’ll stop with the autobiography there.  The point is this: if gay marriage is a solution without a problem, I am the gay community’s problem without a solution.  I don’t fit any of their narratives.  Through no fault of my own, I explode every one of their myths, from the narrative of idyllic same-sex couple parenting to the supposed fabulousness of post-Stonewall New York to the insistence that gay people are born a certain way and sexual orientation can never change.

I feel like walking around with a sign on my chest saying, “Dear Gays, Please Forgive Me For Existing.”  Their instinct would be to do what they usually do, which is ignore me.  Anyway, I am conservative. That makes me Satan.

After defending a study that contradicted the “consensus” that children raised by gay parents were just as mentally healthy and well-adjusted as those raised by straight parents, Lopez became a target of the movement:

Since my article came out, I have been through far worse than I ever thought would happen.  My job is at risk, and worst of all, my coworkers received an e-mail from a gay rights organization with the title “COMPLAINT AGAINST CSUN’S ROBERT LOPEZ: GAY BASHER.”  Soon I got e-mails from administrators.  People really investigate claims like this.

Gay basher?

What the heck has this movement come to?

For God’s sake, I am a bisexual raised by a lesbian couple, who helped countless people dying of AIDS.  I’ve spent my life cleaning up the messes left by gay politics.  I wrote an honest essay.  That’s bashing?

The gay marriage movement has finally crossed the line into insanity.  They must burn their own villages to save them from their phantasmal bullies.  All the real things that gays could do to improve their real problems are right before their eyes: be humane to one another, forgive others, care for their most needy, and most of all, pick their battles.  Support pro-life politicians and adopt foster kids saved from abortion. Vote for Republicans who believe in school vouchers, get bullied gays into safer schools…  But they choose not to.  They have dedicated themselves to a scorched-earth campaign for gay marriage. And when that war is won, they will have conquered a wasteland.