The assault on marriage: the God-ordained institution of marriage is a fundamental pillar of ordered liberty and civilization. Will the Lavender Lobby be allowed to destroy it?

When the American War for Independence came to an end at Yorktown, the British, stunned at their defeat, stacked arms while a band played "The World Turned Upside Down." At the time, the musical selection must have seemed particularly apt. After all, who could have predicted the defeat of the world's foremost naval and military power by the band of rag-tag citizen soldiers fielded by the Colonies? The American success was an astounding turn of events when considered from a military and political perspective. But socially and culturally speaking, neither the newly free states of America nor the British Empire suffered any revolutionary change.

In recent decades, however, the social landscape has been altered dramatically. A long-term effort to undermine the institution of marriage has begun to have a striking effect. At the behest of the aggressive and subversive homosexual lobby, the institution, considered sacred for millennia, now stands on the verge of being redefined out of existence. In an alarming commentary on the significance of the threat to the traditional concept of marriage, a U.S. president has found it necessary to make an appearance of a public defense of marriage against the depredations of the anti-family homosexual lobby. We have certainly come a long way since the days of George Washington, who may have been amused by the music the British band chose to play at Yorktown. Bat Washington, who defeated the mighty British Empire on the battlefield, was not only a great general but a great statesman and moralist. And so one wonders what Washington would think of the culture wars ravaging present-day America. Truly, if any era has witnessed the world turned upside down, ours is it.

How have we come to this, a time when those who support the traditional understanding of marriage and family are now viewed suspiciously by left-wing elites and their allies in academe, the media and industry as borderline bigots? How is it that marriage, from time immemorial a fundamental building block of civilization, has come to stand on the verge of dissolution? Though this turn of events seems to have come upon the nation suddenly and without warning, it is a revolution that has been decades in the making.

Marching Through the Institutions

Revolutionary change has long been the program of the Left. Nevertheless, armed revolution of the sort advocated by Lenin and the other early revolutionaries proved to be an inadequate method for subverting the Judeo-Christian roots of classical Western culture. This point was not lost on Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci. After a stint in the Soviet Union, Gramsci returned to Italy when it became apparent that Stalin was more dangerous than Mussolini. The Italian Communist soon angered the Fascist regime, and Gramsci was imprisoned. While there he wrote voluminously on revolutionary strategy. From this work came what his German disciple, Rudi Dutschke, referred to as "the long march through the institutions"--that is, the gradual subversion of the existing structures of Western civilization by the application of various forms of dialectical materialist theory. As there is no more fundamental institution than marriage, it stands to reason that this critical element of Western culture would find itself in the cross hairs of radical leftists, among whom can be counted the agents of the homosexual revolution.

The organized homosexual assault on traditional values began in earnest in the early years of the 1970s. According to prohomosexual author Toby Marota, writing in his 1981 book The Politics of Homosexuality, that decade was of particular value as a formative era for the homosexual movement. "When the history of twentieth-century America is written," Marota argues, "the 1970s will be recorded as the decade in which gay life won legitimacy. People with homosexual feelings more easily, openly, and enthusiastically engaged in homosexual behavior, defined themselves as lesbian and gay, participated in the lesbian and gay male subculture, and insisted that their ways of expressing themselves sexually be respected by the people around them and by society at large." This change was given a huge boost by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973, when that body removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. The decision was instrumental in beginning the process of sanitizing homosexual behavior.

The homosexual lobby, though, had much more in mind than just polishing the image of homosexuals. In fact, a key component of the lobby has always been its effort to change and subvert the existing structures of society. In 1972, for instance, the National Coalition of Gay Organizations adopted a "Gay Rights Platform" containing a variety of subversive policy goals. Among them:

* "Amend all Civil Rights laws to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation";

* "Permit homosexuals to serve in the Armed Forces";

* "Decriminalize private sexual acts between consenting 'persons'";

* "Repeal any legal restrictions on the sex or number of persons entering into a 'marriage unit.'"

* "Federal encouragement and support for pro-homosexual sex education courses in the public schools";

* "Repeal all laws governing the age of consent";

* "Federal funding for homosexual advocacy groups";

* "Immediate release of all sexual offenders now incarcerated for crimes relating to sexual orientation";

* "Allow the immigration and naturalization of homosexual aliens";

Thirty-two years ago, those goals would have seemed outrageously unattainable to the average American. Now in 2004, it is painfully obvious that the Lavender Lobby has achieved some of those goals, has partially fulfilled others, and is pressing forward with the remainder.

According to a recent edition of USA Today, in a typical display of media disinformation, the homosexual effort to legitimize homosexual "marriage" has "had more to do with happenstance than coordinated strategy." Contrary to that, as the 1972 "Gay Rights Platform" clearly shows, the effort, in fact, has been long in the making.

Capturing the Culture

If the 1970s were the formative years for the homosexual revolution, the late 1990s and the first years of the 21st century have witnessed the movement's coming of age. Having coalesced and grown like an abscess on the soul of the culture, the revolution was now prepared to make a concentrated push into the mainstream arena. The primary vehicle for this effort has been television.

Television is a remarkable medium. Unlike other means of communication, TV is innately passive. While written forms of communication require an active interaction between the text and the audience, television, even more so than radio, encourages passivity. The audience, rather than engaging the content, is simply a passive recipient and is not nearly as likely to view that content critically as would be expected with a textual document. This is particularly the case when a propagandistic message is masked as entertainment. Moreover, despite the proliferation of cable television stations, there is very little variation in content from one station to the next. This is largely due to the fact that only a handful of major media conglomerates control most of the networks and their content. Consequently, television can serve as an immensely powerful tool of enculturation. And this tool has been used effectively to indoctrinate millions upon millions of Americans with pro-homosexual propaganda.

In 1997, one of the most publicized events in recent television history occurred when Ellen DeGeneres publicly acknowledged on her self-titled sitcom, Ellen, that she was a lesbian. Numerous television media outlets, including 20/20, ABC World News, Prime Time Live, and Oprah heavily promoted the episode. The stunt largely backfired at the time, and the Ellen show, once popular, was soon off the air.

Ellen, though, was just the first in a growing wave of programming touting the homosexual movement. More recent network offerings following in the footsteps of Ellen include the sitcom Will & Grace, the popular show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (the premise of which is that homosexual men are more civilized than their heterosexual counterparts), and the Fox network's "reality TV" show Playing It Straight. This last program features a group of men, some heterosexual and some homosexual, and a single young lady named Jackie. According to the program's promotional materials, available on the Fox website, "The men will vie for Jackie's affections by participating in group activities and one-on-one dates that will simultaneously tempt her heart and test her 'gaydar.'" The premise of this show is that homosexual men will behave in the same manner as heterosexual men.

All three of these programs, combined with pro-homosexual themes in other shows and movies, contribute to the effort to acculturate, or accustom, the population at large to homosexuality. It is a strategy sketched out in detail by homosexual activists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen in their 1989 book, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s. The authors, in fact, called for the homosexual movement to use the media to promote homosexuality to the public. With the explosion of homosexual propaganda in the media in recent years, it seems obvious that the Kirk-Madsen strategy has been put into high gear.

A Radical Threat

The homosexual enculturation of the nation is well underway, particularly among the young, who are heavily influenced not only by pop culture but by what they are taught in the classroom. According to a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, 47 percent of individuals aged 18 to 29 support same sex "marriage," with 34 percent of those aged 30 to 49 in agreement. It is worth noting, however, that this survey consulted only 1,005 adults or, termed an other way, only .00036 percent of the nation's 293-million population.

Though these findings may very well be skewed to support the homosexual agenda, there is no doubt that the cultural subverters are trying to create the appearance of popular support to justify the new immoral order and to discourage opposition. The recent rulings in Massachusetts and elsewhere legitimizing homosexual "marriages," sudden as they may have seemed, have simply been enabled by the long-term strategy of enculturation carried out by the homosexual lobby.

This is something that should concern all Americans interested in the continuation of the United States as a free nation and in the perpetuation of Western civilization. As acclaimed science fiction writer Orson Scott Card has recently argued in a persuasive essay, traditional marriage "is by far the most effective foundation for a civilization." From this foundation, Card points out, children can he reared in a stable environment where they can learn the sex-roles that are so necessary to ensure future generations.

Card also notes that the perpetuation of civilization requires civilized behavior among individuals. Such behavior requires the suppression of tendencies that would be harmful to social order. Children in traditional families learn this behavior by witnessing their parents engage in the civilized behavior necessary to a successful marriage.

For all these reasons, and for many others, the God-ordained institution of marriage is a bulwark and an essential component of civilization. Now, as Card remarks, all of this is threatened. He argues, "homosexual 'marriage' is an ... attempt to eliminate an), special preference for marriage in society--to erase the protected status of marriage." He added, "Just because you give legal sanction to a homosexual couple and call their contract a 'marriage' does not make it a marriage. It simply removes marriage as a legitimate word for the real thing." This is exactly what the homosexual lobby has done to the word "gay."

The radical march through the institutions has now brought the most fundamental institution of all, marriage, within the grasp of the radical homosexual lobby. Divinely approved marriage is a fundamental and irreplaceable pillar of Western civilization. Will Americans idly stand by and watch while a handful of perverted cultural demolitionists knock this pillar over?