[excerpted from: The Six Pillars of Honest Politics: The Power of the Pre-Partisan, © 2008-2011 John C. Rankin]

   In 1994, I wrote a diagnosis of the homosexual-rights movement, summing up an eight-fold agenda which I then discerned, and have tweaked it only slightly in the meantime. It is the relentless agenda of a small core of homosexual-rights activists that will outlast the core of politically defined pro-family activists, unless biblical theology gains ascendancy. Most homosexual persons are not pressing for this agenda – they are oftentimes hurting persons, needing the love of Christ, or persons who want merely to be left alone. But there is a small core, even a core within a shifting core, which consists of those who press the agenda with the help of a willing culture within syncretistic churches, politics, academia and the education establishment, the media, business, professional disciplines and the arts. Here is the agenda:

1. Remove the concept of homosexuality as “sinful,” and remove the concept that homosexual behavior is intrinsically unhealthy.
2. Define homosexual identity and behavior as a “normal” and healthy “variant” within the plurality of the human community, and call for “toleration” of it.
3. Move from “toleration” of it as a “normal variant,” to a full “acceptance” of its intrinsic nature as being equal with that of heterosexuality.
4. Gain ecclesiastical, legal and social “approval” of the personal and social “goodness” of homosexuality, and call it “gay.”
5. Translate this “approval” into leadership positions – especially ordination status in the church and political office in the culture.
6. Redefine “marriage” to include “same-sex” relationships.
7. Elevate “gay” relationships to a place of moral superiority for the wider culture to honor and emulate.
8. Define “homophobia,” “hate speech” and/or “hate crimes” as the cardinal theological and political “sins,” and remove the First Amendment liberties of anyone who disagrees, including those of ministers, rabbis and priests who refuse to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies; and at the extreme, remove the protection of unalienable rights for dissenters to this “new orthodoxy.”  

   Agenda items #1 through #5 are already deeply infused within the culture, and items #6 through #8 continue to be aggressively pursued. As I examine elsewhere, the 2004 Goodridge decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court forced same-sex marriage on the Commonwealth in deep violation of the State Constitution; followed by the attempted California re: Marriage Cases ruling, the Connecticut Kerrigan ruling, and cognate rulings. Namely, they elevated same-sex marriage to the status of a “fundamental” or “basic civil right,” indeed, equal to that of an unalienable right. This reality almost never gains comment, but is the deepest substance of the decision, and its greatest threat to civil life. For if same-sex marriage is an unalienable right, what happens to the historically preceding reality of religious liberty as an unalienable right? And religious liberty is the first freedom from which the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and redress of grievances follow. This conflict percolates in an ever-widening capacity when it comes to the eight-fold agenda.

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