Why should we care? Natural abhorrence must not prevent Americans from facing homosexuality's threat to the sanctity of our families, the freedom of our beliefs, and the foundation of our society. (Cover Story: Culture War).

"Senators, my opponent has the advantage of me," commented the Roman orator Cicero in one of his speeches condemning Marcus Antonius. "He has done things a gentleman cannot discuss in public." A similar reluctance sometimes seizes decent people regarding the topic of homosexuality, inspired partly by the sense that any public discussion of the practice -- even to condemn it -- abets the effort to undermine our society. And indeed, as the previous article documents, homosexual activists encourage widespread discussion of their chosen vice to help desensitize the public.

Another reason morally committed Americans recoil from discussing homosexuality is the belief that as long as the practice remains private, it should be ignored. It is true that there is relatively little that government can properly do to combat homosexuality in the private sphere (as opposed to discouraging or punishing its practice in institutions such as the military). But advocates of limited government make a potentially fatal error in assuming that homosexual revolutionaries share this principled reluctance to use state power. In fact, leaders of the Lavender Revolution are quite candid about their intention to use governmental power, and any leverage they obtain within private institutions, to force normal society to embrace homosexuality. This would mean reconstructing all human associations and institutions to accommodate people whose sense of identity is defined by a dysgenic, self-destructive vice.

To understand the innate evil of homosexuality, one should first recognize that the practices grouped under that term do not constitute "sex" -- the physical union of male and female. A married couple deriving sensual gratification from physical intimacy experiences what Aristotle called a good of "second intent" -- something that is worthwhile, but derivative of a much greater good. It is the family built around the nucleus of the husband and wife that is the good of "first intent." This is why stable societies, both in the Judeo-Christian and pagan worlds, have sought to preserve the marital bond against the ravages of promiscuity -- including homosexuality.

That homosexual practices stimulate and gratify certain people is as indisputable as it is mystifying. But those practices are utterly sterile, representing the emancipated appetite in one of its most abhorrent forms: The heedless pursuit of orgasm at the expense of every other consideration -- even self-preservation.

"Were Ito discover that my only possibility of happiness lay in excessive perpetration of the most atrocious crimes, without a qualm I'd enact every last one of them this very instant," wrote the Marquis de Sade, the prophet of the pleasure principle. According to the debauched man from whose name derives the word "sadism," "the foremost of the laws Nature decrees to me is to enjoy myself, no matter at whose expense." The homosexual underworld is the social petri dish in which AIDS and numerous other lethal diseases -- including syphilis, gonorrhea, and hepatitis B -- have flourished. But even the prospect of horrible death at a young age has not deterred many homosexuals from servicing their appetites.

In a recent essay entitled "Gay Sluts Are Back," veteran homosexual activist Simon Sheppard celebrated the fact that more than two decades after AIDS burst on the scene, homosexual promiscuity is enjoying a revival. Nostalgically recalling San Francisco in the 1970s, when the effects of a night of homosexual indulgence "could be undone by a good night's rest and maybe a visit to the clap clinic," Sheppard lamented that with the advent of AIDS, "the Edenic orgy came crashing down, straight into a swamp of viral death." But for homosexuals, he pointed out, "even death can't stop desire. Despite ongoing troubles with AIDS, and the queer community's love affair with respectability, gay sex is back." This unfortunate renaissance has been greatly aided by the Lavender Lobby's cultural assault: "What was once unspeakable is now just more fodder for talk shows."

Larry Kramer, a militant homosexual activist who founded the homosexual terrorist group ACT-UP, offered a strikingly different perspective. In an essay entitled "Sex and Sensibility," in the May 27, 1997 issue of The Advocate, Kramer foretold and lamented the wholesale plunge into promiscuity celebrated by Sheppard. "Nature always extracts a price for sexual promiscuity," says Kramer, in condemning homosexuals' "obsession with our [genitalia] and what we do with them."

In ironic fashion, Kramer was echoing the God-breathed wisdom of the Apostle Paul, who described those "who worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator," and consequently surrendered "to vile affections...." (Romans 1:25-26). Elsewhere St. Paul warned that destruction awaits those "whose God is their belly" -- that is, unchecked appetites of all kinds, including sexual passions.

Paul's warnings proved prophetic of ancient Rome, one of several civilizations to learn -- too late -- that neither freedom nor social stability can endure without moral limits on human behavior. America is no exception to this eternal principle.