Ben Shapiro: Jada Pinkett Smith Angers Harvard's BGLTSA

The radical homosexual agenda and the destruction of standards

Ben Shapiro (archive)
March 9, 2005

The Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) of Harvard University is fighting mad. Last week, actress Jada Pinkett Smith won an award from the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations. During her acceptance speech, she told women in the audience, "you can have it all -- a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career … To my men, open your mind, open your eyes to new ideas." Rather sweet, no? Not to the BGLTSA, which called for an apology from the organizers of the Cultural Rhythms show, explaining that Smith's statements were "extremely heteronormative."

"Heteronormative," for those who don't speak the radical homosexual lingo, may be defined as the viewpoint that heterosexual relationships are normal, and others are not. The organizers immediately complied with the BGLTSA's demand, issuing a mea culpa stating, "She wasn't trying to be offensive. But some felt she was taking a narrow view, and some people felt left out." The Foundation also pledged to "take responsibility to inform future speakers that they will be speaking to an audience diverse in race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender and class."

The BGLTSA, as a wing of the radical homosexual movement, is looking to broaden the definition of normality to include deviant behavior. They're not looking for passive tolerance. They're looking for active acceptance. Now, ignoring homosexuality is no longer allowable; we must instead champion it, equating it with heterosexuality. In fact, homosexuality must be prized over heterosexuality; an open homosexual may proclaim to his heart's content that "dreams can come true -- you can find a same-sex partner," but an open heterosexual may not state that marriage constitutes "having it all."

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted such a broad societal trend toward normalizing the deviant as early as 1993, when he coined the term "defining deviancy down." He posited that "the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can 'afford to recognize' and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the 'normal' level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard."

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer pointed out that alongside the movement to "define deviancy down," there was a concurrent movement to "define deviancy up": "As part of the vast social project of moral leveling, it is not enough for the deviant to be normalized," Krauthammer wrote. "The normal must be found to be deviant." One of the agendas of the "defining deviancy up" movement, Krauthammer noted, was promoting "an underlying ideology about the inherent aberrancy of all heterosexual relationships."

The Moynihan-Krauthammer prediction has come to pass. Straight men and women may no longer consider themselves normal, unless they also consider homosexuality normal. The rage against "heteronormalism" is rage against traditional societal standards as a whole. Exclusive morality has always offended the immoral. The only difference is that now offensiveness receives a stiffer societal sentence than blatant immorality. This is what political correctness -- the "live and let live" societal model -- has wrought.

The rise of the homosexual movement is a textbook example of societal amorality devolving into societal immorality. The rationale behind societal amorality is the myopic question: "How does my immoral behavior hurt you?" The answer is: It may not, in the short term. But when society sanctions your immoral behavior, that does hurt me. If millions of people accept the deviant as normal, that reshapes society in vastly destructive ways. Your moral self-destruction may have no consequences for me, but destruction of societal standards always has consequences.

When the stigma left single motherhood, society felt the sting in rising rates of single motherhood and juvenile crime. When the stigma left sexual licentiousness, society felt the sting in rising rates of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, emotional emptiness and nihilism. Your immoral personal behavior may not affect me, but exempting your immoral behavior from societal scrutiny certainly does. A society without standards is an unhappy, unhealthy society -- a society with no future. And all of us have to live in that society.

The BGLTSA isn't asking for tolerance on a person-to-person level. Instead, they're asking us to continue lowering societal standards. If we must choose between alienating the immoral and ravaging societal standards for the personal comfort of the immoral, then choosing the former is the only rational decision.

©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

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