Brody's Notes... Anti-Gay Forces Claim They Are Victims Of Gay Rights Bullies

By Brody Levesque | WASHINGTON DC -- Associated Press National Writer and Senior Editor, David Crary, in his article this past Sunday, noted that as LGBTQ Equality Rights advances ground gaining acceptance with both the public and lawmakers, the anti-gay coalition is angrily denouncing the LGBTQ movement as applying reverse discriminatory practises against them.

Crary writes:

"The gay-rights groups have shown their fangs," wrote Chuck Colson, the Watergate figure turned born-again Christian who helped launch the Manhattan Declaration. "They want to silence, yes, destroy those who don't agree with their agenda."

However, some gay-rights supporters see the public opinion shift as reason to be more magnanimous."The turn we now need to execute will be the hardest maneuver the movement has ever had to make, because it will require us to deliberately leave room for homophobia," Jonathan Rauch, a writer and guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, wrote recently in The Advocate, a gay-oriented news magazine."Incidents of rage against 'haters,' verbal abuse of opponents, boycotts of small-business owners, absolutist enforcement of anti-discrimination laws: Those and other 'zero-tolerance' tactics play into the 'homosexual bullies' narrative," Rauch wrote. "The other side, in short, is counting on us to hand them the victimhood weapon. Our task is to deny it to them."

Fred Sainz, the Human Rights Campaign's vice president for communication says that the culture war in many respects has been narrowed down to battling those who will not negotiate nor accept any resolution other than application of so-called Christian values or religious based principles in law citing the ongoing same-sex marriage fights in states like New York and Minnesota as prime examples. 

Sainz told Crary that it  was critical that LGBTQ activists chose their targets carefully.

"We understand there are goodhearted Americans in the middle who are still struggling with these issues," Sainz said. "Different activists have different ways of getting to the same end, and some of those are bound to make certain people feel uncomfortable."

Though same-sex marriage is legal in only five states, it has for the first time gained the support of a majority of Americans, according to a series of recent national opinion polls. 

More problematic is protection of the constitutional first amendment rights of both religious liberties and free speech. Crary notes that the American Civil liberties Union has found itself caught between the two opposing viewpoints on numerous issues. He points out- the ACLU is confronted with a delicate balancing act. Its national gay rights project battles aggressively against anti-gay discrimination, but, as a longtime defender of free speech, the ACLU also is expected to intervene sometimes on behalf of anti-gay expression.

For example, the ACLU pressed a lawsuit on behalf of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, which has outraged mourning communities by picketing service members' funerals with crudely worded signs condemning homosexuality. The ACLU said the Missouri state law banning such picketing infringes on religious freedom and free speech.

Some critics — such as Wendy Kaminer — have contended that the ACLU now tilts too much toward espousing gay rights, at the expense of a more vigorous defense of anti-gay free speech.

However, James Esseks, director of the ACLU's gay rights project, said the First Amendment protection of free speech only comes into play when a government entity is seen as curtailing speech rights.

"What we have there is simply the push and pull in public policy discourse ... which is sometimes rough and tumble," Esseks said. "Being stigmatized for expressing unpopular views is part of being in a free society. There's nothing wrong with that."

Read David Crary's complete article here: [ Link ] 

David Crary

David Crary is a journalist with The Associated Press, currently based in New York City with a beat covering national social issues.

A native of New Haven, Conn., he is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He joined the AP in 1976, and worked in Jackson, Miss., and Denver, Colo., before a stint as an editor on AP’s foreign desk in New York.

He headed overseas in 1985, covering East Africa from a base in Nairobi, Kenya, and then moving to Johannesburg to cover South Africa from 1987 to 1990, coordinating AP’s coverage of anti-apartheid unrest and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.

He served as AP’s news editor in Paris from 1990-95, a period during which he served eight tours of duty in Sarajevo while the Bosnian capital was under siege. He was AP’s bureau chief in Canada from 1995-99 before transferring back to New York to become a national writer.

Among his current areas of coverage are the child-welfare system, gay rights and same-sex marriage, military families, abortion, adoption and gender issues. He’s also been part of AP’s coverage team at six Olympic Games and at the recent soccer World Cup in South Africa.

David can be reached at http://twitter.com/CraryAP