PCUSA: Word games, part 2
[This second part was delayed by the news that the PCUSA had gone into the conspiracy business and by my reading of the Schori interview in Time magazine. I hasten to add that I read the interview in the dentist’s office. I do not subscribe to Time.]
Click here for Part 1.
So why did the 217th General Assembly ignore the constitutional process? First, we must look at the long-standing battle waged by homosexual activists for acceptance by society. There is no question that one objective of this fight was basic human rights – economic freedom, freedom from violence, and so on. The ultimate goal, however was – and is – much more than that. It was nothing less than to have their lifestyle and sexual practices considered normal, even noble or desirable.
The most rudimentary examination of human anatomy reveals that we are constructed for heterosexual relations. It is hard to make the case that homosexual relations are in any sense natural or likely to be considered the norm. The activists understood that when you want to impose a new social structure or attitude that is contrary to human nature, you have to capture key institutions. Since medicine considered homosexuality a disorder and a largely church-going culture considered it immoral, the targets were obvious – medicine, the church, and popular culture.
Medical societies and mainline Protestant denominations were particularly appealing because they are hierarchical in varying degrees and because they base their behaviors on established bodies of knowledge. (The assault on a pop culture lacking these characteristics is not relevant here.) Hierarchies were attractive because they provide a concentration of powerful and influential leaders to be lobbied. Reliance on an established body of knowledge is the perfect playground for – what else? – word games. If the literature can be made ambiguous, re-interpreted, or otherwise manipulated, new “knowledge” can be manufactured and used as a new foundation for a new structure or attitude.
Through a systematic campaign of lobbying members of the American Psychiatric Association and disrupting their meetings, homosexual activists conquered the medical establishment by winning a word game. In 1973, they convinced the APA’s Committee on Nomenclature to abandon 70 years of science and declare a change of wording in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual. With no new data, no new studies, no scientific basis at all, the committee caved in to purely political pressure and declared that homosexual behavior was not evidence of a psychiatric disorder. The members (the motivated one-third who voted) followed suit and two years later the American Psychological Association fell into line.
It is worth noting that four years after the activists’ political victory, a survey revealed that fully 68 percent of psychiatrists still considered homosexuality a disorder. See Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D. for a detailed history of these events.
In Part 3, we will examine the political forces that led the PCUSA to abandon its own constitution and theology in order to achieve the same political result within the church.
Click here for Part 3.
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