HOMOSEXUALITY - A friend's non sequitur gay apologetic!

I am providing here the complete post from a friend's blog (The Fargus Report) ... I just couldn't allow his non sequitur and moral equivalency to go unchallenged. I mean no offense to Fargus but I believe his blogger's exuberance and personal bias got the better of him on this one.

The long Fourth of July weekend interfered with being able to respond in a timely fashion, for that I apologize.

"Thursday, June 30, 2005 Love Won Out

Psychology is under assault from all sorts of crazies lately, isn't it? First Tom Cruise's bizarre diatribe about its history on The Today Show, and now the religious right is getting into the act. Well, "getting into the act" implies that this is a new thing, which it's not. But they're certainly always stepping up their assertion that homosexuality is a psychological disorder to be cured. How do they know this? Were they gay, and cured of it? Of course not! Never speak of it!

God told them that it's a sin, and as such, it must be a choice. As a choice it must be something that can be reversed. Voila. On the foundation of the Bible, Dobson and his cronies are able to dismiss years of mental health science as irrelevant simply because they don't agree with it.

Disgusting."

Some things just can't be allowed to slide; so here are a few things I noticed in my friend's post ...

1. Moral Equivalency Most egregious is the effort to make "Tom Cruise's bizarre diatribe" morally equivalent with the extremely sensitive efforts of the religious right (not just evangelicals but Mormons, Jews, Catholics, and Muslims) to speak out on a prominent cultural issue of our day. The public rant by an entertainment icon is hardly similar to an organized effort by cultural activists whether they be religious or otherwise; to attempt to make them so is illogical, to attempt to single out a religious conspiracy when none exists is disingenuous and borders on bigotry.
   
2. Factual Support Another is the failure to support facts claimed: e.g., "Psychology is under assault from all sorts of crazies lately" (who, where, why, when??); a link to Cruise's outburst on "The Today Show" would have been helpful for the reader; and the fact that homosexuality was for years classified as a psychological disorder by the APA itself, should have been mentioned but wasn't.
3. Exaggeration "How do they know this? Were they gay, and cured of it? Of course not! Never speak of it!" Fargus, my young friend this simply is not true. For at least a dozen years we've (the "gays can change" crowd) presented case after case of homosexuals who've been cured (we were and are ignored by the secular and gay communities; in this case cases were provided in the MSNBC report cited in your own post). We've written books (ignored), provided testimonies (ignored), and established ministries to support those suffering under gay bondage (ignored). The truth is - it is the homosexual community and its supporters who've not provided evidence of it being a genetic phenomena.
4. Dissimulation "On the foundation of the Bible, Dobson and his cronies are able to dismiss years of mental health science as irrelevant simply because they don't agree with it." Now this is amazing. Fargus, on the basis of "years of mental health science" you dismiss six millenia of biblical science (studies) as irrelevant simply because you "don't agree with it"! Now friends that is known as projection by the APA.
5. Hyperbole "Disgusting." Fargus, before you use words such as this in your writing, you best be sure what you point to is truly what you say it is, else you come off looking foolish.

Look, in all fairness, Fargus is a good guy with strong feelings and opinions ... most of which I don't agree with ... but I'd recommend you go to his site if you have any interest in reading the views of a twenty-something liberal, with a generally reasonable and always liberal approach to things in his writing.