Fishwrapper - Gays never threatened my clan

I’m going to navigate this column on a meandering and hazard-strewn course that will touch on sodomy, unemployment statistics, our military and veterans, vacations and Boy Scouts. My prime meridian — that line that defines a relationship among those disparate topics — is the family.

The sacrosanct family, you see, is the most under-attack institution in America. Who exactly is waging the assault is unclear.

Unclear, that is, if you heed Republican posturing such as that by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who is trumpeting a plan that purportedly would save the family by inserting an anti-same-sex-marriage provision into the U.S. Constitution.

Unclear if you listen to Stupidity Radio, where mega-ultra-moron Michael Savage (who recently got the bum’s rush from MSNBC for telling a gay caller to “get AIDS and die”) shuffles among homosexuals, blacks, Hispanics and liberals in selecting a scapegoat for the decline of the family and, in general, all of Western civilization.

Unclear, especially, if you read Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in the June 26 Supreme Court ruling that kicked government out of our bedrooms. The decision voided a Texas law that banned sodomy between homosexuals — and struck down similar prohibitions in the 13 states of the Anti-Oral-and-Anal-Sex Belt. Not surprisingly, denying rights is an old game in the no-sodomy states — 10 once embraced slavery, and all backed George Bush in 2000 (well, Florida probably did not go for Bush, but he ended up purloining the state’s electoral votes).

Scalia — who also has informally opined that government’s power should not be questioned because it derives from God, and that the most civil liberties are not constitutionally protected — concluded that the court’s majority was embracing the “homosexual agenda.” He fumed over what he prophesies will be an impending “massive disruption of the current social order.” He fretted that there will no longer be any “morals legislation” and that the court’s decision would open the door to unrestrained “bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity.”

Sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it? But let’s calm down for a moment. What the court did was to say that consenting adults have the right to engage in private sex. The court didn’t say people had to engage in homosexual acts. It didn’t say people had to change their beliefs. The justices merely ruled that the Thought Police need to stay out of our bedrooms. That shouldn’t be a big deal in a free society.

Scalia chose to evoke scare tactics and cite acts that have gone on through the ages — notably, when gays and sodomy have been persecuted. He refuses to see the inanity of his own argument. Keeping gays down happened during the period when what he claims to fear most occurred. Gays are no more likely to be pedophiles than heteros. We don’t need to buy a chastity belt for Fido. One correlation that is true — but that Scalia and the Morality Gestapo don’t mention — is that sexual crimes decrease in societies where sexual repression is lessened.

His language is most reminiscent of the claims of earlier bigots that impending mayhem would follow the end of segregation. Scalia, however, isn’t willing to accord gays “separate but equal” treatment — as the Supreme Court did to blacks with the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. Scalia and the Taliban wing of the Republican Party are dead set against allowing “normal” and “homosexual” to coexist in the same sentence.

It is, of course, completely illogical to conclude that the gay “agenda” threatens marriage. The war against holy wedlock has been waged by heterosexuals. I know. I’ve got battle scars.

On very rare occasions, a spouse leaves a marriage because he or she has acknowledged homosexuality. But over-over-overwhelmingly, it’s straight spouses who cheat, who beat each other, who walk away from commitments. Adultery, probably the top reason marriages explode, is wholly a hetero province — since, by law, gays can’t be married and therefore are ineligible to commit legal infidelity.

And the one factor that’s absent in the breakup of marriages — or in the indifference to marriage by many straight people — is society’s growing acceptance of homosexuals as just plain folks who deserve the same protections and rights as everyone else.

Logic would say that if, as Scalia implies, there is a link between anything to do with homosexuals and the disintegration of the family, then the solution is to welcome gays into society’s mainstream. After all, treating gays as less than normal coincides with the degeneration of marriage.

Another piece of supreme foolishness: The right wingnuts support marriage because stable family units are best for society. I agree. So, then, why prohibit a large minority in society from having stabilizing relationships?

The reason is that the GOP and the religious right, like any movement toward theocracy or totalitarianism, need to demonize someone. Unless the religious zealots and the Bushies can crank up two minutes of hate each day against some group, why, we might figure out who is really screwing — or politically sodomizing — us.

The gay haters want us to believe that marriage is for procreation, a thesis that certainly must astound millions of decidedly childless couples. Gays make excellent parents in about the same proportion as heteros — and with the throngs of children in foster homes, we should welcome adoptions by any worthy, caring adult.

In short, the opposition against the gay “agenda” — specifically, wedlock — isn’t rooted in defense of marriage. It’s necessary in order to ensure that gays remain outside walls of acceptable society. And, being on the other side of the ramparts, they’re useful for despising and reviling.

I do applaud Scalia for one thing: He is right on top, so to speak, of one of the great, dreaded evils facing American society — masturbation. I’m going to go home and kick in the doors of my sons’ bedrooms.

If the gays aren’t killing marriage — and they’re not — then who is? One hint was in the news earlier this month. The jobless rate surged to 6.4 percent — the highest in nine years.

The reason is obvious. America’s jobs are being shipped overseas. Goods from sweatshops — or, more egregiously, from China’s prisons — are flooding our markets. For many American families, the only job opportunities are fast-food restaurants and as Wal-Mart greeters. Their only hopes for a few luxuries are multiple jobs and overtime — and Bush wants to eliminate the need for companies to pay overtime to many employees.

The cult of “free trade” and Republican economics has had this result: In the 1970s, the top fifth of Americans controlled about 30 times more wealth than the bottom fifth; today the richest 20 percent have increased the disparity to about 70 times what the bottom tier has.

Those are just abstract numbers. The reality is measured in the thousands of families that dissolve each year due to the crumbling economy. One breadwinner could easily support a middle-class family when I was a teenager; now two adults with jobs struggle to keep families afloat.

So, Bush wants to “bring them on.” Macho guy, that George. He’s a’rearin’ for a fight. Er, he won’t personally do the fighting. After all, this is the guy who went AWOL from the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, providing other young Americans with excellent opportunities to get killed in his place.

Bush wants the image of a fighter — the strategically well-padded flight suit he donned to land on USS Abraham Lincoln, a little campaign photo staging that you, the taxpayers, paid dearly for.

And, W wants you to know that he supports our men and women in uniform, and their families.

That “support” includes:

- Opposing an increase in the meager subsidy ($6,000) paid to families of troops who die on active duty.

- Seeking to cut monthly dangerous duty pay from $225 to $150.

- Cutting family-separation allowance from $250 to $100 a month.

- Slashing $1.5 billion that would have replaced substandard housing for military families.

- Whacking $200 million from funds to educate the children of military personnel.

I’m a member of a family. We’re not threatened by any gay agenda. But we definitely have a lot to fear from Bush’s schemes for our nation.

Preserving families is a lot of work. You do what you can and hope it’s enough. I occasionally catch heat from liberal pals because my three sons and I are active in Boy Scouts, a well-known paramilitary outfit. The controversies that have beset Scouting — over gays and atheism — bother me. But, frankly, those are subjects that never come up among the Scouts I know. And I think Scouting will get past those hurdles.

More important is that the values embodied in Scouting — and in many other of America’s institutions — are paramount for kids to learn. Where the media pushes violence and degradation to kids, someone needs to talk about decency and kindness (and that those qualities have nothing to do with sexual orientation). When government leaders repeatedly and routinely deceive and business bosses steal billions — we urgently need people who still value being trustworthy.

To defend my family, I’m taking time off to take my boys to Scout camp. And then the whole family — two parents, my brother-in-law, five teen kids and Basil the Wondermutt — are heading out west. My great-great granddad led two wagon trains out West. I’d like to follow his trail and show our children this great land. With two trucks and a camper, we’ll look a little like our own wagon train.

I want my kids to witness the land of Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie. Of William Jennings Bryan, Mark Twain, Eugene Debs and Teddy Roosevelt. Of Cesar Chavez, Joan Baez, Abe Lincoln, Crazy Horse and John Steinbeck. Of Willie Mays, Walt Whitman and many, many other Americans.

I’ll be back — but not for a month or so. Maybe I’ll write from the road. God (the One who doesn’t condone killing thousands for political ends) bless you.

Senior Editor John Sugg can’t be reached. Forget it. He is receiving telepathic messages on his trek to the Wild West.