Where have all the liberals gone? Defending the right to speak - selectively.

In late February of this year Pope John Paul II issued a statement in which he condemned the idea of same-sex marriages.

Within a short time American spokespersons for the gay rights movement, to the surprise of absolutely no one, were condemning the pope's statement as "homophobic." More specifically, they were saying that the "homophobic" head of a "homophobic" church was uttering "homophobic" doctrine.

Just a brief pause here for purposes of definition. Homophobia is bigotry against homosexuals and homosexual conduct; a form of bigotry that arises from an irrational fear (or "phobia") of homosexuality.

Keeping this definition in mind, lets analyze what is being said when the pope' s statement is condemned as homophobic. The charge is (a) that the pope is a bigot, (b) that the Catholic church is a bigoted church, and (c) that the ancient Christian teaching on the immorality of homosexuality--a teaching that goes back to the very beginnings of Christianity--is a bigoted teaching.

For purposes of the present discussion, I'm not interested in the question of whether homosexual conduct is or is not immoral. That' s a matter on which Americans will have a variety of opinions, depending on the diversity of their religious and moral views.

No, what I'm interested in today is a question on which Americans really ought to have unanimity of opinion, namely, the question of whether Catholics have a fight to believe that homosexual conduct is immoral and to express this belief publicly.

The traditional answer to this question has of course been Yes. For in expressing their belief in the immorality of such conduct, these Catholics are doing no more than reiterating the traditional teaching of their religion--a religion, by the way, which is not a hole-in-comer or Johnnycome-lately operation, but has been operating in the broad light of day, over a large part of the earth' s surface, for nearly two thousand years now. By the traditional American rules of the game, people have been free to express their religious convictions without being denounced as bigots.

But no more. At least not when it comes to homosexuality. From the point of view of the gay rights movement, Catholics (and other religious believers) are no longer free to express their agreement with the teaching of their church on this subject. If Catholics wish to escape suspicion of bigotry, they will have to make it clear that they are dissidents, that they condemn the deplorable views on same-sex lovemaking held by pope and church.

I was a teen-ager during the Joe McCarthy years, and I remember that era vividly. Old-fashioned liberals of those days used to say things like, "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." They were exaggerating, of course, especially that part about "to the death." But at least they had a clear understanding as to what liberalism meant; they understood what mental freedom was all about.

But those old-fashioned liberals are gone. If they were not, they would have come out of the woodwork a long time ago, defending the fight of Catholics to disapprove of homosexuality, saying, "I may disagree with your religious faith and its moral teachings, but that' s not the point; the point is that I will defend to the death your fight to express this faith and these teachings."

From today's new-style liberal we can expect no such liberality, for new-style liberalism doesn't really believe in freedom of thought. More accurately, it believes in freedom of thought only so long as that thought is of a nonreligious or antireligious nature; but it' s quite a different story when it comes to the expression of religious ideas.

Consider, for example, the question of whether taxpayer money should be spent to fund artistic projects that most taxpayers would consider grossly obscene or flagrantly sacrilegious. One's liberal credentials will be revoked immediately if one views a termination of such taxpayer support as anything other than censorship. From the viewpoint of conventional liberalism, taxpayers have a First Amendment obligation to pay for work they find profoundly offensive. But wild horses won't drag the liberal into condemning the man shouting "Vile homophobe!" at the pope. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that it is often the liberal himself doing the shouting.

"Oh, never mind," somebody will say. "Sticks and stones will break my bones, etc. But so what? What does it really matter if the gay rights crowd calls Catholics bigots?"

The truth is, it matters quite a lot.

For one thing, in a society that celebrates "cultural diversity," it becomes increasingly difficult to agree upon a common moral code, and as a result tolerance or nonjudgmentaiism becomes the ultimate virtue. Correspondingly, intolerance or bigotry becomes the supreme vice. Thus there is hardly a term in the contemporary American lexicon of abuse worse than "bigot." So to say that Catholics who hold traditional views on homosexuality are bigots is to say that they are as bad as bad can be. It is to accuse them of being thoroughly un-American.

For another, the gay fights movement is not some pesky fringe operation, whose attacks no self-respecting party would deign to notice. Quite the contrary, the movement is well-connected and extremely influential. It has many friends in Hollywood, in the White House, and in the editorial board room of the New York Times.

Finally, the gay fights movement is a key element in contemporary secularism's attack on religion, the most sustained and vigorous attack in the hi story of this country. The antireligious attack is never direct, a thrust to the heart. Instead it is a matter of cutting off limbs and appendages: a finger here, a foot there, an arm somewhere else. Thus we rarely in into someone saying, "Down with God!" But everyday we run into people saying, "Up with abortion!" and "Up with gay marriage!" and "Up with condoms in the schools!" and "Let' s force the religiously orthodox to pay for abortions!" and "Let' s stigmatize them as bigots when they refuse to endorse homosexual relations!" In other words, secularsin will be happy to allow Catholics and others to retain possession of their religion, provided they retain only the part that remains after the amputation of all traditional morality. Which is to say: after nothing remains at all except a mutilated corpse.

If we succumb to this intimidation, we will become the faith that dares not speak its name.