GLAAD, an aggressive LGBT lobbying group, hasn’t been following the above act for a while — and nor have plenty of liberals — but its latest campaign is as good an example as any of the Left’s open intolerance for orthodox religion and any dissent from sexual liberation.
TLC is about to show a one-hour reality program on a few Mormon males who say they’re attracted to men but have chosen to marry women and have children.
GLAAD thinks broadcasting these grown men’s choices — and, by all accounts and appearances, happy, healthy lives — is simply too “dangerous,” and “downright irresponsible” of TLC. (You might be hazily thinking, wasn’t there a show about religious people handling lethally poisonous snakes that was broadcast basically without hiccup? Yep, there was.)
The group has found 88,000 ostensibly tolerant liberals also trying to keep the show off the airwaves, who have signed a petition asking TLC “to stop telling America that LGBT people should lie to themselves and to their faith communities about who they are and who they love.”
If you’re thinking these petitioners should stop telling these four random Americans that they’re betraying their faith communities and lying about who they are and whom they love . . . well, good luck explaining that to GLAAD.
“The men featured in this show deserve to be shown compassion and acceptance,” the petition demands — compassion and acceptance here, I guess, defined as “telling a few random strangers their lives and faith are dangerous and dishonest.”
The crux of GLAAD and other organizations’ complaint is that TLC’s show promotes “ex-gay” therapy, to reverse homosexual attractions, because GLAAD, alongside a number of state governments who’ve banned the therapy, thinks it’s dangerous. Oddly, it’s not even clear that is featured in the show, or that these men believe therapy can change their attractions (a scientifically controversial concept). The entire point of the show is that the men say they still have homosexual attractions but choose to live by other values. This, by GLAAD’s lights, is obscene.
Of course, conservatives protest against obscene content, too, because they believe some things are wrong and dangerous, too. We’re just long past time when the cultural Left could begin to claim its opponents were the real orthodox censors, indicting helpless individual heretics. The culture war is two-sided — at best.
And yes, here, GLAAD isn’t trying to wield the power of the state to suppress religion and demean individual conscience. It and its backers have the right to sign all the petitions they want. In fact, maybe they should go right ahead: They’re doing a nice job clearing up where there’s no tolerance to be had these days.
Look, all GLAAD’s asking of these guys: Just keep your true self in the closet. Along with your wife and kids.