1/17/2013—There are a lot of things said by Giglio in the anti-gay sermon from the mid-1990’s that led to his resignation from involvement in President Obama’s Inauguration. I don’t agree with much of it—that homosexuality is a sin, that it can be reversed through Jesus and so forth.
But what about this quote from the sermon that everyone cites as a large part of the problem with Giglio? “We must lovingly but firmly respond to the aggressive agenda of not all, but of many in the homosexual community. … Underneath this issue is a very powerful and aggressive moment. That movement is not a benevolent movement, it is a movement to seize by any means necessary the feeling and the mood of the day, to the point where the homosexual lifestyle becomes accepted as a norm in our society and is given full standing as any other lifestyle, as it relates to family.”
I hope that the gay rights movement is powerful and aggressive and is seizing the mood of the day by any means necessary so that homosexuality is given full standing as it relates to family. Isn’t that exactly what the gay rights movement and its straight allies are striving for? Full and complete acceptance of gays as citizens with the rights of all other citizens.
I know of course that Giglio meant what he said negatively, as something to be defeated. But at least this part of his sermon was not prejudice—it was acknowledgment of the stakes of the struggle over gay rights.
But those are the stakes. If you give gays an inch—overturning anti-sodomy laws, let’s say—they will take a mile—insisting on full equality. That is why Justice Scalia counseled keeping the anti-sodomy laws. But when our opponents claim that the goal of the gay rights movement is not just tolerance and acceptance, but full and equal rights, they are not being insulting, they are correctly describing the situation.
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