The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has been on its best behavior since early December, when it was forced to explain several posts it promoted that linked homosexuality to child molestation. For the past month, the organization has stuck to covering the Iowa primary, asking its supporters for donations, and even commenting on Katy Perry’s divorce.
On Wednesday, however, the organization reverted to its anti-gay ways. In a January 5 blog post, NOM’s Ruth Institute promoted a column written by Douglas Farrow, Professor of Christian Thought at McGill University in Montreal. Farrow’s column, titled “Why Fight Same-Sex Marriage?,” is riddled with ridiculous claims about the consequences of legalizing gay marriage: marriage equality will lead to “the bastardization of the citizenry,” cause “the sexualization of our children,” leave behind a “moral wasteland,” etc.
A large portion of Farrow’s column, though, is devoted to rehashing one of NOM’s most extreme talking points – marriage equality will pave the way for the normalization of pedophilia:
Pedophilia, for example, is an orientation, or so the psychologists tell us. And orientations are now constitutionally protected, not to say politically celebrated. How then can we continue discriminating against pedophiles, which clearly we do? […]
[W]e cannot then avoid the implication that there exists no inviolable right to sexual self-expression or indeed to public approval of a so-called orientation. And if that is true for pedophiles—perhaps for consistency we should call them pedosexuals—it is true
also for homosexuals and heterosexuals. There may be, or arise, real and present dangers to society that justify repression of one or both of the latter, as of the former; and the same is true for any other tendency or orientation. […]Some attack the second premise only from the perimeter, so to speak, arguing for a narrower construal of the word “children,” that is, for a lowering of the age of consent; but that only postpones the problem rather than solving it. Others attack it at its core. Children, they say, may benefit from sex with adults; it depends how the pedophile handles the child in question.
This view is certainly not new, but today it is voiced much more openly than ever it was, because it is the only view that is actually consonant with the unfolding logic of our jurisprudence and legislation. It is the only alternative to admission of error. Nevertheless, it generates profound discomfort, and even meets with firm resistance, because it penetrates to the very bedrock of natural law. Bringing into view the problem of pedophilia, hidden in the coils of the term “orientation,” is an uncomfortable reminder that we can and do tell people how to love. [emphasis added]
In other words, Farrow’s claim is that treating gay relationships as normal and equal inevitably results in treating pedophilia as normal and acceptable because homosexuality, like pedophilia, is a sexual orientation that violates natural law.
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NOM has promoted several variations of this argument on multiple occasions, despite the group’s insistence that its “battle is not with an orientation.”
Along with Farrow’s column, NOM’s blog post included links to several other articles posted on the Touchstone website, including a post that called homosexuality a “moral error” and another that compared homosexuality to necrophilia and incest, as well as pedophilia.
Never thought I’d miss a Katy Perry post.
Reprinted by permission.
