From Baltimore Gay Life

Blood Libel and Homophobia

by Dan Furmansky

Friday, November 10, 2006

I never thought I would have anything in common with Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. Mark Foley changed that. Like Hastert, I don't want to hear, think, or know about Foley. After all, no gay person wants to be associated with a disgraced Congressman who resigned for sending sexually explicit messages to teenage pages. We all knew the minute that first instant message was revealed that this scandal would be red meat for the homophobes who love nothing more than to link child sexual abuse to sexual orientation.

Did any of us doubt that the pedophile tag would be resurrected by such civil rights luminaries as Pat Buchanan, and Peter Sprigg of the Family “Research” Council?

The Wall Street Journal editorial board jumped on the bandwagon too:

“In retrospect, barring [Foley from] contact with pages would have been wise. But in today’s politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert’s head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts’ decision to ban gay scoutmasters?”

There’s more. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Jay Leno joked that GOP now stands for “Gay Old Pedophile,” and Ben Stein wrote in the American Spectator, “I hope it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys.”

As a Jew who has studied anti-Semitism, I have often found great parallels between the rhetoric used to deny the emancipation of Jews in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries and the rhetoric used to deny gays equal civil rights today. If Jews would only “convert,” they’d be acceptable; gays should embrace Jesus to overcome their homosexuality. Jews are polluting societal values with their control of the media; gays are creating a “Brokeback Mountain” society to force acceptance of their “lifestyle.” Jews are bound on global domination; gays are bullying the country into their “radical agenda.”

I was thrilled to see Frank Rich, a New York Times Op-Ed columnist, pick up on the connection: “The moment Mr. Foley's e-mails became known, we saw that brand of fear-mongering and bigotry at full tilt: Bush administration allies exploited the former Congressman’s predatory history to spread the grotesque canard that homosexuality is a direct path to pedophilia. It's the kind of blood libel that in another era was spread about Jews.”

The blood libel refers to the belief, held from the Middle Ages to even today, that Jews kill Christian children to drink their blood. Some variations say the blood is used to make matzoh for Passover. In other parts of the world, there is nothing outrageous about this belief. State-sponsored media of a number of Arab and Muslim nations, their television shows and websites, perpetuate this myth. The phenomenon has spread underground in parts of Europe as well. In the United States, thankfully, no one could go on national television and say that Jews are prone to preying upon Christian children, murdering them for their blood. Yet those who claim that gay people are prone to emotionally and psychologically raping children are given free reign of the airwaves whenever they please.

Pat Buchanan has called Hitler “an individual of great courage” and said, during the height of the AIDS crisis in the gay community, that “our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide.”

He is currently a political analyst on the MSNBC cable network and a regular on The McLaughlin Group. On October 3rd, on MSNBC’s Hardball, Buchanan said, “Why do you think they keep them out of Boy Scouts?” In a Town Hall article, he wrote: “But to have the party of gay rights [the Democratic Party], many of whose leaders have marched in gay pride parades alongside the pedophiles of NAMBLA, acting “shocked, shocked” at GOP torpor in outing and ousting its flaming gay member is, to put it mildly, unconvincing.”

Never mind that psychiatric organizations uniformly agree that pedophilia and homosexuality have nothing to do with one another, and that the majority of pedophiles prey on members of the opposite sex. People like Pat Buchanan and his friends at the Family Research council don’t care about facts. They use the “protection of children” argument to pass constitutional amendments banning equal marriage rights, even though every mainstream psychological, psychiatric, medical, and child social welfare organization has stated that children raised by same-sex couples fare just as well as children raised by opposite-sex couples.

These folks offer interesting excuses to oppose hate crimes laws inclusive of LGBT protections. In my mind, if they truly believe that every gay person is just one instant message or Boy Scout camping trip away from molesting a young child, it makes sense they’d resist any attempts to curb violence towards the “flamers,” as Buchanan calls us. Maybe they think such violence against us is justified, if it saves a child.

When the pedophile charge rears its ugly head, I wait for straight moral leaders to speak out with the strongest force. Where are the Rev. Jesse Jackson and President Jimmy Carter with their well-honed righteous indignations? Why don't Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain call for a public quarantine of the hate-mongering Buchanan? The answer is simple: it’s still acceptable in a large part of society to smear gays with the worst possible accusation, short of saying we want to kill young boys for their blood.

During Rosh Hashanah services this fall, the rabbi of the synagogue I attended sermonized on growing global anti-Semitism reminiscent of the 1930s. “What does this mean?” he said. “Primarily, it means that there is an enemy, a force out there, that is intent on evil and destruction. And we, the Jewish people, are the target. What does it mean for you and me? Each of us must realize what is at stake; each of us must realize that we have a role to play. If we live again in the 1930s, then we must be vigilant, scrutinize everything, and when necessary, react against real or even developing threats against us, even if in some cases, we later learn we have overreacted.”

We in the LGBT commuity must heed these words as well. We cannot afford to let our guard down for one moment. We can’t think there will be a clear warning before the opportunity arises for the homophobes to take their brand of hatred one step further.

“Be vigilant, scrutinize everything."

Indeed, Rabbi.

“As for Mr. Foley, he is no more representative of gay men, whatever their political orientation, than Joey Buttafuoco is of straight men.”  — National Hero Frank Rich