Ramesh has a very good piece on homosexuals and the Right. He addresses one of my longstanding peeves: thee myth that there’s no such thing as a gay agenda. Apparently David Horowitz complains about the term because it suggests that the lefty gay rights groups speak for all gays. Fine, fine if that’s your beef. But as Ramesh notes, it’s usually liberals who complain about the phrase for strategic reasons one of which is to make conservatives who talk about the gay agenda sound paranoid and homophobic. Here’s an excerpt from a piece I did on the subject for the now-defunct Brill’s Content:

Take the gay agenda. Not “the so-called” gay agenda or “what some people refer to as the gay-agenda,” but the real thing. Time and again, journalists relentlessly yet subtly ridicule the notion that an agenda exists. “That concern plays to the arguments of those who believe there is a ‘gay agenda’ …” writes a typical reporter for USA Today. The authors of an article about parents seeking to ban a gay club at their local high school write, “In so doing, the trustees dodged a lawsuit threat from a group of parents opposed to what they call the ‘gay agenda’ in public schools.”
As always, NY Times editorialist Brent Staples serves the purpose of saying outright what more wimpy liberals only imply. “Republicans began … demonizing homosexuals for political gain. But in the race for 2000, the most prominent candidates … say that they would hire gay workers as long as they refrained from pressing ‘a gay agenda’ — a code phrase for keeping quiet about issues of same-sex intimacy, up to and including marriage.”
There’s only one problem. “Gay agenda,” unlike “alternative lifestyle,” is not a code phrase. It means pretty much exactly what the dictionary says it should. “Gay” refers to organized, political homosexuals and the people they aim to represent. “Agenda” means – you guessed it – the stuff they want: gay marriage and adoption, hate crime laws, open service in the military etc. Gay writers and journalists seem far more likely to be honest about this fact. In books and periodicals, they have open, honest discussions about what gays should be fighting for. The only people who think using this plain language is an ominous “code phrase” are straight liberals in the media who are terrified of sounding “homophobic.”