Say that I invite you to my house for a special occasion, to acknowledge your achievements. I am especially keen to acknowledge your tenacity and dignified stand for the truth. You have held tight to the truth despite unceasing criticism and harassment from activists who are fighting this truth. They have, for years, very publicly misrepresented, vilified and denigrated you.
I am going to create a special award; let’s call it “Dignitarian of the year”- you are to be the very first recipient. A great idea, right? Except that, once you are in my house, I am going to allow those who have vilified you to come in, also to partake in the ‘celebration’ of your achievements. After all, who am I to deny them the ‘right’ to follow you, even into my house?
As nonsensical as this proposition might sound, it mirrors something that actually happened recently. MercatorNet awarded its first ‘Dignitarian of the Year’ award to Dr Mark Regnerus. It chose Dr Regnerus from a short list of five persons and on the 19th of December 2014 announced him the winner on its website. The award was apparently granted to Dr Regnerus because, “[a]gainst vehement opposition, he has courageously defended the intact biological family as the best place to raise children.” Unbelievably, the publication then promptly allowed homosexualists to inundate the commentary thread with the same sort of vituperative attacks, misrepresentations and personal insults which they have leveled at Dr Regnerus for two years.
Dr Regnerus is a sociologist who specialises in the sociology of the family. In 2012, he published a peer-reviewed paper in the 41st issue of the academic journal Social Science Research. The paper’s title is “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study”. It immediately triggered widespread shrieking of protest from homosexualists, who accused Dr Regnerus of scientific misconduct and subjected him to some of the foulest public-display bullying that a person could be subjected to. This continued despite the fact that Dr Regnerus was exonerated by his university, and the paper is still in publication as an obvious indication that the scholarship it represents is sound, and so stands.
When I left as a regular visitor of MercatorNet, a few months ago, I was convinced that it could not be capable of disappointing further as a willing platform of homosexualist propaganda. However, when a friend said that the publication shortlisted Dr Regnerus for its new annual award, I thought that maybe I had been hasty. Perhaps MercatorNet has matured enough to understand that it is being used by homosexualists and is finally taking measures to protect the space it has created on the internet from homosexualist propagandism? After all, MercatorNet couldn't possibly honour a person that homosexualists have publicly demonised and harassed, only to then allow them to extend those activities on the very web page that lauded his stoicism? Crazy, right? But this is exactly what MercatorNet did.
In my view, MercatorNet has demonstrated that it is not capable of understanding the strategies employed by homosexualists. Curiously, it fails to grasp the simple fact that the internet makes information available in certain ways – and that homosexualists employ particular tactics that take advantage of this. A principal strategy which they employ is to have a presence, or to ‘be here’ – regardless of whether they’re welcome or not. It is a way to let those who stand against the homosexualisation of society know,"We're Here! We're Queer! Get used to it!". The idea is to occupy all heterosexual spaces, and especially the Christian ones. In this way, they proceed to associate everyone and everything they stand against with negative statements and put-downs – the idea is to continuously question the credibility of a group, organisation or publication. Thus, their comments emulate the uninvited activist’s placard, held in the background of a live TV presentation. Their activities also serve to populate websites with certain searchable terms and statements, which web and social media campaigns can take advantage of – just do a deep search into the online activities of the HRC, for instance, to see what I mean.
So what can be done? Maybe we should also generate an annual award, to recognise an online publication which has achieved the most for the homosexualist cause, despite claiming that it disagrees with it. Shall we choose a particular thing that it has done, which stands out, and call the award “Most perfidious act”, or some such? It would befit the 'celebration' of particularly noteworthy outcomes, like the way in which Dr Regnerus was treated. However, these are rhetorical musings – it would be silly to go down this path, obviously. Instead, I think it would be more constructive to turn our back on this sort of publication. There are plenty other online sources of writings and social critique, Christian and secular, which refuse to naively act as homosexualist propaganda platforms. They are vastly more deserving of our patronage, not least because they respect their supporters enough to provide online spaces that are free from the bilious attacks of some of the nastiest activists infesting the web.
As nonsensical as this proposition might sound, it mirrors something that actually happened recently. MercatorNet awarded its first ‘Dignitarian of the Year’ award to Dr Mark Regnerus. It chose Dr Regnerus from a short list of five persons and on the 19th of December 2014 announced him the winner on its website. The award was apparently granted to Dr Regnerus because, “[a]gainst vehement opposition, he has courageously defended the intact biological family as the best place to raise children.” Unbelievably, the publication then promptly allowed homosexualists to inundate the commentary thread with the same sort of vituperative attacks, misrepresentations and personal insults which they have leveled at Dr Regnerus for two years.
Dr Regnerus is a sociologist who specialises in the sociology of the family. In 2012, he published a peer-reviewed paper in the 41st issue of the academic journal Social Science Research. The paper’s title is “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study”. It immediately triggered widespread shrieking of protest from homosexualists, who accused Dr Regnerus of scientific misconduct and subjected him to some of the foulest public-display bullying that a person could be subjected to. This continued despite the fact that Dr Regnerus was exonerated by his university, and the paper is still in publication as an obvious indication that the scholarship it represents is sound, and so stands.
When I left as a regular visitor of MercatorNet, a few months ago, I was convinced that it could not be capable of disappointing further as a willing platform of homosexualist propaganda. However, when a friend said that the publication shortlisted Dr Regnerus for its new annual award, I thought that maybe I had been hasty. Perhaps MercatorNet has matured enough to understand that it is being used by homosexualists and is finally taking measures to protect the space it has created on the internet from homosexualist propagandism? After all, MercatorNet couldn't possibly honour a person that homosexualists have publicly demonised and harassed, only to then allow them to extend those activities on the very web page that lauded his stoicism? Crazy, right? But this is exactly what MercatorNet did.
In my view, MercatorNet has demonstrated that it is not capable of understanding the strategies employed by homosexualists. Curiously, it fails to grasp the simple fact that the internet makes information available in certain ways – and that homosexualists employ particular tactics that take advantage of this. A principal strategy which they employ is to have a presence, or to ‘be here’ – regardless of whether they’re welcome or not. It is a way to let those who stand against the homosexualisation of society know,"We're Here! We're Queer! Get used to it!". The idea is to occupy all heterosexual spaces, and especially the Christian ones. In this way, they proceed to associate everyone and everything they stand against with negative statements and put-downs – the idea is to continuously question the credibility of a group, organisation or publication. Thus, their comments emulate the uninvited activist’s placard, held in the background of a live TV presentation. Their activities also serve to populate websites with certain searchable terms and statements, which web and social media campaigns can take advantage of – just do a deep search into the online activities of the HRC, for instance, to see what I mean.
So what can be done? Maybe we should also generate an annual award, to recognise an online publication which has achieved the most for the homosexualist cause, despite claiming that it disagrees with it. Shall we choose a particular thing that it has done, which stands out, and call the award “Most perfidious act”, or some such? It would befit the 'celebration' of particularly noteworthy outcomes, like the way in which Dr Regnerus was treated. However, these are rhetorical musings – it would be silly to go down this path, obviously. Instead, I think it would be more constructive to turn our back on this sort of publication. There are plenty other online sources of writings and social critique, Christian and secular, which refuse to naively act as homosexualist propaganda platforms. They are vastly more deserving of our patronage, not least because they respect their supporters enough to provide online spaces that are free from the bilious attacks of some of the nastiest activists infesting the web.
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