A Truly Amazing 'Race'

By Mike Haley
A homosexual couple that refers to themselves as "married" could be crowned
the winners in tonight's finale of the CBS reality series 'The Amazing Race.' And
that's just what the gay activists are hoping for.
"The Amazing Race," which airs its season finale on CBS tonight, has indeed
been amazing this summer in a way that has had nothing to do with its frantic
travel-around-the-world-before-the-other-guy format. It's been amazing because
two gay contestants still in the running to be crowned the show's champions
Reichen and Chip have proudly declared to America that they are married.
"Why can't they say they're married?" a CBS spokeswoman said when
conservative activists protested the show's premiere. "What's the difference?"
The difference, of course, is that they aren't really married. At least not in any
sense that any U.S. court or state recognizes. Despite Vermont's civil-unions law,
despite some outside-the-mainstream churches that perform "commitment
ceremonies" for gay and lesbian couples, the fact is that honest-to-goodness
marriage remains reserved for one man and one woman in this country.
No one is more aware of this than gay activists. That's why they couldn't be
happier that CBS has let Reichen and Chip call their relationship whatever they
want and that the duo has lasted the entire season in a show fueled by
eliminations. Those activists know that the more Americans hear something,
even when what they're hearing is a lie, the more likely they are to believe it. Gay
lobbyists have used this strategy well through the years. You've heard, no doubt,
that 10 percent of the population is gay or lesbian, right? A fabrication born when
a study by sex researcher Alfred Kinsey was misquoted. In fact, in a brief filed in
the U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, a challenge to the state's
sodomy law, a coalition of 31 pro-gay groups admitted that "the most widely
accepted study of sexual practices in the United States," the National Health and
Social Life Survey, "found that 2.8% of the male, and 1.4% of the female,
population identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual."
So why do gay activists continue to quote the larger number? Ask one of them,
Bruce Voeller, who wrote in his book, "Some Uses and Abuses of the Kinsey
Scale": "After years of our educating those who inform the public and make its
laws, that concept that 10 percent of the population is gay has become generally
accepted as 'fact.' . . . As with so many pieces of knowledge and myth, repeated
telling it made it so."
Will repeated telling it make gay "marriage" so? That's the activists' hope.

They see the polls that indicate a solid majority of Americans, no matter their
view of the morality of homosexuality, oppose expanding the legal definition of
marriage beyond the one that has served society since the dawn of civilization.
They watch as state after state, most recently Texas, passes Defense of
Marriage (DOMA) laws to protect traditional matrimony. They see the efforts of a
diverse network of religious and political leaders to pass a Federal Marriage
Amendment to the Constitution. And they worry because if only one more state
approves a DOMA 37 have thus far it becomes a lot more likely that one of
the requirements for ratification can be met.
So they'll fight with Reichen and Chip, yes, but with more than that, too. They'll
fight with words like "discrimination" and "intolerance," even though when
homosexuals aren't allowed to marry, they suffer no more discrimination than
bigamists or polygamists or cohabiting couples. They'll fight with pleas of being
denied the chance to seal their love, even though if the only prerequisite for
marriage was love, there'd be no logical reason for not letting 10 people marry
each other, or for not gutting requirements like minimum age and blood-relative
status. And they'll fight with more TV shows like "The Amazing Race."
Consider "Boy Meets Boy," currently airing on Bravo. A new take on reality dating
shows, it features a gay man choosing a partner from a group of men a few of
whom are heterosexual. A Bravo spokesman has said the show's goal is that
"both gay and straight viewers will have their assumptions challenged about what
it means to be gay."
But those have hardly been meaningful challenges. There has been no mention
of the lack of monogamy so prevalent in the gay culture. No mention of the
devastating physical consequences that so often accompany such promiscuity.
There have only been lots of good-looking, smiling men embracing the fun and
frolic of the gay lifestyle.
Yet another half-truth crafted to promote a political agenda.
Mike Haley is the manager of the Gender Issues Department at Focus on the
Family.