Republicans Cower Before Big Gay Media

Written by Cliff Kincaid

Robert R. Reilly, author of the highly controversial (and suppressed) book, Making Gay Okay, says the capitulation of the Republicans to the homosexual lobby seemed to begin under President George W. Bush, when General Peter Pace was hung out to dry for expressing his view that homosexuality is immoral. That was in 2007.

Pace, who also condemned adultery at the same time, “was not backed up by anyone in the Bush Administration,” including the president, Reilly noted. Yet, Pace made a statement “that would have been considered standard at any other time in our history,” Reilly added.

Reilly made these comments to me during an interview about his book, which describes the transformation of the homosexual rights movement from a request for tolerance into a cultural conquest. We are now seeing the homosexual lobby on the march in states such as Indiana and Arkansas, where Republican governors are on the defensive, even afraid to offer a vigorous defense of religious freedom in the face of an aggressive gay agenda.

Beyond the Bush administration, Reilly believes that some of the “cultural elites of the Republican Party” have simply decided to push the GOP in the same direction that the Democrats are going. He calls it “the era of unreality,” when what is unnatural is portrayed as morally right.

Before Reilly tackled the topic, the late Alan Stang’s incendiary book, Not Holier Than Thou, examined the presence of influential homosexuals or sympathizers in Republican ranks. He named the names. One of them came forward, in a strange sort of way, when Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho got caught making a sexual advance toward another man in a bathroom.

Stang did not pull his punches. “Government has ruthlessly suppressed smoking because it allegedly promotes lung cancer,” he wrote in his 2007 book. “Now it is talking about doing the same thing to junk food to suppress obesity. Question: Why is it not suppressing sodomy, which…is much more deadly than smoking?”

Reilly, who takes a scholarly and academic approach, taught at the National Defense University, and served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he was Senior Advisor for Information Strategy from 2002 to 2006.

He notes that one of the last people in a prominent political position in the United States to speak about the problem of homosexuality was Rick Santorum when he was a Republican senator from Pennsylvania. “And when he did so, he was badly beaten up…with the instrument of the media,” Reilly notes. This sent a message to other Republicans.

We are seeing history repeated as the Republican governors of Indiana and Arkansas get “beat up” because their legislatures have stood for traditional values and even religious liberty.

What these governors need to do is read Reilly’s book. But what’s particularly distressing, Reilly tells me, is that the conservative press has largely avoided even reviewing his book. He says that National Review, The American Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, and The Weekly Standard all refused to review it.

“Some of them have been Mao-Maoed by what’s called the homosexual mafia,” he says. “They don’t want to take the grief. Or they themselves are complicit to some degree with the arguments [for moral acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle]. Or some of these publications also have been infiltrated.”

He adds, “There is another reason I think: they don’t want to be associated with a losing cause. Their attitude is, ‘Well, we’ve lost this one, so I don’t want to be tainted with a lost cause. Let’s just forget it and move on.’”

Reilly says, “But we can’t because there’s just too much at stake in this.”

In an article in the New Oxford Review, “The Conservative Surrender in the Culture Wars,” Tom Bethell surveyed the censorship of the book in the conservative media. “We would expect liberal publications to ignore Reilly’s book,” he says. “And they have. But conservative journals have followed suit.”

On the other hand, Bethell reports, Making Gay Okay received a number of favorable reviews, almost all from conservative religious sources.

The late conservative commentator and author, M. Stanton Evans, was never afraid to take on the homosexual lobby.  Stan had condemned as “pagan” the campaign “to change societal views of homosexuality—to treat it as an ‘alternative lifestyle,’ as valid in its way as heterosexual conduct.”

In his book, The Theme is Freedom, Stan cited the acceptance of homosexuality in ancient civilizations such as Babylon and noted, “All of this was unequivocally condemned by the religion of the Bible.” He said America’s religious values were the foundation for all of our freedoms.

Stan believed in and defended traditional values. We need more journalists like him at this critical time.

In the tradition of Stan Evans, a young conservative from the Heritage Foundation, Ryan T. Anderson, stepped forward and accepted an invitation to go on the MSNBC show hosted by Ed Schultz to talk about the Indiana religious freedom law and big business opposition to it. Schultz cut his microphone off when Anderson was dominating and winning the debate. “Cut his mic off,” Schultz demanded.

That’s perhaps to be expected when left-wing “progressives” are losing the debate and want to censor the opposition. But why have conservative press organs muzzled a scholar like Reilly and censored his book?

If conservatives get some guts, like Ryan T. Anderson showed on the air, perhaps more Republicans will follow. Reilly’s book describes the stakes for our nation.

This article was originally posted on the Accuracy in Media website.