The so-called "Social Conservatives" are particularly nasty in this respect. In fact, this has been one of the bones I keep picking every time Mr. Boissoin pops up as a commenter on this blog.
The first time he popped up here, he made the usual talking point references to the "Gay Agenda" as if it is some coherent, real thing. When I challenged him to be precise about his use of the term, he shuts up and goes away.
Then, in a more recent dialogue, he tries the same ambiguous kind of debating tactic, and combines it with a marginally related argument about what a gay community activist said regarding HIV/AIDS. (Which semi-anonymous commenter "SB" very nicely put into appropriate context.
We can imagine from a statement like "The scientific evidence suggests that homosexual practices are not healthy but instead physically dangerous." what Mr. Boissoin is talking about, but in fact we don't actually know what he's getting at - which means he can change his meaning at whim. As a reader of that statement, for all I know he may have knowledge or evidence that lesbians are generally known to wrestle with each other in a way that has an increased probability of spinal injury? It's hard to say for sure, isn't it?
The same problem exists with the oft-heard railing against the "Gay Agenda" - the Theo-Con set talks about it, but won't specify what they believe it to be; much less how, or why, it is harmful to anyone. The assertion of harm is made, but nobody ever substantiates that assertion with verifiable evidence.
Consider the following from Boissoin's own website:
Watch these videos and see for yourself. The video, It's Elementary has been used to indoctrinate school children over the last decade. It contains actual classroom footage showing educators imposing pro-homosexual propaganda on children as young as six. They even encourage these children to discuss gay marriage in an obvious attempt to infuse a pro-gay opinion in their highly impressionable minds.
He's referring, of course, to It's Elementary. The movie itself is nothing more than footage of GLBT people going into classrooms and talking about their lives. Little different, in my view, than the myriad of people of different backgrounds that presented vignettes of their lives to us when I was in grade school. The point is simple enough - namely to teach the children that the "Others" in society are in fact little different than the rest of the population when it comes down to it.
The religious set likes to claim that these are attempts to "recruit" people into the GLBT "lifestyle" that they imagine as being so licentious. Movies like "It's Elementary" are not "recruiting" tools of any sort, instead what they do is dispel much of the mythology that surrounds GLBT people's lives. (which, for the most part, the religious conservative set would be quite disappointed to learn how amazingly mundane those lives are)
While there is no empirically clear understanding of the causality of sexual and gender identity, the notion of "recruitment" is a silly derivation to make in the absence of that clarity. GLBT youth often know their identity, often long before they have any discrete knowledge of the terms and concepts related to it. (Even in situations where such information has been actively suppressed by the surrounding community) A lack of scientific clarity does not mean that we can simply deny the reality of their narratives, as I have discussed before in this essay.
In my view, it's rather like getting upset because someone from a non-Christian culture gives a presentation in a classroom. It's unlikely that the person is "recruiting" anyone. We all have stories to tell, and it's not invalid to tell them. Ultimately, it removes the stigma that arises in society from someone being "different".
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