Pro family groups and frothing pulpit mouthpieces have proclaimed it across the land. According to Christian extremist, a dark agenda threatens to erode the arthritic spurs of America’s moral backbone. It’s the gay agenda, promoted by sinners who will stop at nothing to see it come to fruition.

Well by golly, if there’s some insidious agenda afoot, I wanted to find out precisely what it was - and I was in a good position to do so since I had been fraternizing with these evildoers for 25 years. So, I thought back to all the gay people I’ve known and carefully dissected their words, behaviors and actions, but I couldn’t come up with anything, er, bad. But see what you think about some of these gay agendas I discovered:

Make the Academy Awards a national holiday.

Rid North America of every last mullet.

Require every homeowner to landscape.

Forbid all women from wearing peg leg pants and leggings.

Make vodka martinis the national drink.

Appoint Cher to Secretary of State

Doesn’t’ appear that evil does it? Yet, the specially chosen claim that an organized and immoral gay cabal is determined to change long standing societal values to suit their equally immoral lifestyles. (I don’t know what is so long standing about heterosexual sex when people of the same sex have been boinking each other and committing adultery since humans have been walking the planet).

They claim the gay agenda is to erode traditional marriage, make sodomy legal, allow one to be openly gay in the military, pressure corporations and influence teens to submit to the dark lifestyle.

I found they are very angered at gay themed T.V. they feel is used to desensitize their clan to the homosexual threat. What about the plethora of religious programming/brainwashing? With the popularity of “Will and Grace” and the award winning success of “ Brokeback Mountain”, one might consider that maybe the public doesn’t mind a fun poking comedy that makes you laugh for once, or that Hollywood could produce a thought provoking film about a theme that as I said earlier has been going on for thousands of years. What about the films “Desert Hearts”, or “Personal Best” with Mariel Hemmingway? What about “The Hunger”, with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon for crying out loud? Why isn’t anyone complaining about those films? Oh yeah, it’s girl on girl action. Nuff said.

Unlike in the past where social issues were only whispered about or denied, homosexuality - like drug, alcohol and domestic abuse - is talked about in the open. Now that there is discussion and frankness about homosexuality, suddenly it’s an evil agenda. Egads. Run for the hills.

People can argue their sides till the night clubbers home, but when you strip away the religious programming, fear, hatred and the propagandizing that there actually is an agenda, it boils down to one thing; a concept that America has come to symbolize. A right so powerful that millions have fled their homelands when this right was threatened or denied them: the right to live ones life as one chooses and to believe what one chooses to believe. And for millennia, Christians have put a lot of energy in to preventing people from living as they choose with countless wars, bloodshed, uprisings and death being the result. Amanda Lang, PhD, and news editor at opednews.com sums up this intolerant faction bitingly:

Raised among these holy rollers -- who seem never happier than when condemning someone else to hell, damnation, and misery -- one would think that eventually the 'avid' among them would reach some security in their exalted place, position, and views -- gladly leaving the rest of us alone to our sinning ways without having had forced us to join "the gang." I mean, with all their brow-beating and blood-thrust, how different are these extremist Christians and their demands for total submission than the "Cripps" and "Bloods" who are considered menaces to society? More humans have entered mortal combat in the name of Christianity that any other earthly collective.

Like many other groups, gays have been persecuted relentlessly. It can’t be because they are just not turned on by someone of the opposite sex, can it? Why is it that just because someone says so we must have sex with who they say or because their book says so? That’s like telling someone who hates bell peppers to eat bell peppers just because you like them! That’s like telling the Geico gecko not to be what it plainly is: a gecko!

I know gay men who have tried to have sex with drop dead gorgeous women, but simply could not get hard. I know many lesbians who say they’d be a dead fish if in bed with a man. Can it be that in nature’s hugely diverse menagerie, humans are not all alike? What a concept Pat Robertson. But of course, he says they are sinners; children of a lesser God who need to accept “his” savoir and come in to “his” fold.

Unfortunately, the notion to “live and let live”, which Christian right wing thinking refuses to honor, has been under attack by our government as well and they do this by outlawing the individual's rights to engage in certain lifestyle choices and activities that do no specific harm to others except than to themselves. They are called “consensual” or “behavioral” crimes and examples are: anti-smoking laws, anti-drug laws, sodomy laws, helmet laws etc. To reiterate, the government punishes behavior that is deemed a crime, even though all those involved give their consent and no un-consenting parties suffer as a direct result, i.e., sodomy.

It doesn’t sound like fun to me - but with the basic understanding that not everyone is like me - if some guy wants to have his testicles clamped in a vice, hung from the ceiling in a sling and be ravaged by some other guy, I really don’t care. I would care very much if there were an un-consenting adult, child or animal involved. Consensual crimes is one of the four essential characteristics of a totalitarian system by the way, where behavioral type laws can be obtained through intimidation of the public by means of using false statistics, myths and hype to influence the public into accepting them in the name of “the public good.” There is no public good I’m sad to say. We have corporations and lobbyists instead.

Peter McWilliams’ book, Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do - The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Country”, can be ordered, read or downloaded for free here: www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/toc. I highly suggest it for further insight and to understand the monetary costs involved in enforcing and punishing lifestyle behaviors.

Famous blues singer Billie Holiday was widely known for the popular song “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do”. Here’s a sampling of lyrics from this classic:

There ain't nothing I can do
Or nothing I can say
That folks don't criticize me
But I'm going to do
Just as I want to anyway
And don't care just what people say
If I should take a notion
To jump into the ocean
Ain’t nobody’s business if I do

If I go to church on Sunday
Then cabaret all day Monday
Ain’t nobody’s business if I do
If my man ain't got no money
And I say "take all mine, honey"
Ain’t nobody’s business if I do
If I give him my last nickel
And it leaves me in a pickle
Ain’t nobody’s business if I do

So, Miss Holiday is telling us she will do whatever silly things she damn well pleases and she could give a hoot what anyone thinks. Right on sister. She also chose to partake in heroin and was jailed on numerous occasions. Her choice to use heroin cost her her life when she overdosed, but the point is, it was her choice. She suffered the consequences of her behavioral “crime”; not you; not me. Why should anyone be punished and persecuted for choosing to rub their plumbing against someone who wants to rub their plumbing against them? Isn’t that their business?

This brings me to a very important point. If you chose to have sex with someone of any gender, there will be, as all choice provides, consequences. And depending on what you do, they will be negative or positive. Simple heh? Yet, we see the fundamentalists widely advertise the dark side of the homosexual lifestyle that they wrongly assume every homosexual engages in. They are absolutely correct in that there are some very negative aspects to a gay lifestyle for those out of control, but to say that it is any worse than what hets do is just fear mongering, bigotry and elitist “you sinner” mentality. Both gays and heterosexuals get sexually transmitted diseases, abuse drugs and alcohol, use sex toys, engage in perverse sex acts and commit adultery. We are talking about humans here for Pete’s sake. Humans will do what they will do, and het or gay, there will be consequences. The only difference with gays is that you don’t have the rituals of having to court or schmooze women and all the complications that go with it just to get laid; you can just get laid, no questions asked.

Many anti-gay mouthpieces have suffered the consequences of their own hypocritical actions by getting busted for drugs, porn, incest, rape of a minor, adultery, DUI, murder, fraud, tax evasion, racketeering, etc. The holier-than-thou stance of the religious right believes it allows them to preach about their superior morals while personally engaging in corrupt, immoral and illegal activities. Some are terribly concerned with homosexuals ruining the sanctity of marriage, while cheating on their own spouses or molesting children, including their own.

I don’t have room to list the hundreds of hypocrites in action, but here are just a few to provide a glimpse of some who have gotten caught. We can safely assume there are more out there:

Rev. Lonnie Latham, a member of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention and senior pastor of the South Tulsa First Baptist Church, was arrested for offering to engage in "an act of lewdness" with a male undercover police officer. Rev. Latham has been an outspoken opponent of equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. In recent years the Southern Baptist Convention the nation's largest Protestant denomination has become increasingly homophobic and aligned itself with the worst elements of the far right in working to stop marriage equality for gay people. Rev. Latham supported a directive urging its churches to befriend gays and lesbians and try to convince them that they can become heterosexual "if they accept Jesus Christ as their savior and reject their 'sinful, destructive lifestyle.'

Roy Cohn, famous right wing attorney, continually condemned gays and gay rights. He was a closeted gay who died of AIDS.

Neal Horsley, anti-abortion activist, called for the arrest of all homosexuals. He admitted on a Fox News radio show, that he's had sex with mules, put photographs on his web site of naked men engaging in homosexual acts and a nude woman engaging in bestiality amid shots of grotesquely maimed fetuses. He’s a drug dealer convicted of possession of hashish with intent to sell. He calls for "the establishment of a new government, one that can obey God's plan for government."

Ed Schrock, two-term republican congressman, with a 92% approval rating from the Christian Coalition. Co-sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, consistently opposed gay rights. Married, with wife and kids. Withdrew his candidacy for a third term after tapes of him soliciting for gay sex were circulated.

Keith Westmoreland, a Tennessee state representative (R), was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to minors under 16.

Stephen White, Republican preacher, was arrested after allegedly offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.

Mike Hintz, a First Assembly of God youth pastor, introduced by Bush on the campaign trail, and promoted his policies and Bush values. Two months later, this married father of four turned himself into police, charged with the sexual exploitation of a child

Here’s what Billy Holliday would sing about these sick hypocrites:

If I preach in church on Sunday
Then rape a minor on Monday
Ain’t nobody’s business if I do

If I buy myself a blow job

Then condemn you with my God

Ain’t nobody’s business if I do

I hardly think Christian fundamentalists can blame gays for a perverse sexual lifestyle, when it appears to be a more generally a human behavior verses primarily a gay behavior.

Pro family groups, family advocates and the religious right spend time threatening and boycotting companies such as Disney, Ford, Bridgestone and Home Depot for being “gay friendly” and thus promoting the gay agenda. People. Listen to me. Companies don’t care that you think you have the one and only true God. They don’t care about your “us-them thinking”. They are corporations. They are pathological. Look that word up in your dictionary - if you have one - and put it in your pipe and smoke it. They only care about one thing: profit. And they know very well there is a lot of it to be made from hard working, tax paying, home decorating gays.

You know what? The dark agenda I found was not a gay agenda at all, but rather, the Christian right wing continuing to impose its beliefs, fear and programming on to others despite the fact that billions don’t believe in their particular deity or book. Thank goodness not all Christians buy in to the hate that excludes gays from the compassionate teachings of the master Jesus and that many Christians know and love gay people - and how fortunate I feel to know some.

But wait. There’s more to their agenda: spend billions in tax payer money to support Zionism so their lord will return and brutally kill off Jews that don’t convert along with gays and other nonbelievers - and all to the absolute thrill of Christian “Left Behind” readers. Nice.

The agenda demands much of their followers, such as lambasting divorce while countless women stay subservient in relationships that are harmful to mind and body, but good for the Christian patriarchy. Yup.

It imposes control systems to provoke hatred between peoples who worship different aspects of the overall monotheistic theology while discouraging independent thought and critical thinking, and if any actual thinking is done, it’s black and white, us and them. Brilliant.

It demands submission to its dogma where sinners have no rights and are punished. Wonderful. One would think they’d be happy with all the sinners out there, as wouldn’t that mean more room for their kind in heaven?

Holding these two agendas side by side, I can only see what an overwhelmingly negative impact to human life the Christian extremist one produces, while the gay agenda is just a common goal of all living beings: the freedom to “be”, and humans will never stop striving for it.

Other than achieving the basic right to live as one chooses, I did find one other gay agenda: Love; the desire to love, to be loved and to share this love with others. How glorious to love who and what you choose. How magnificent to stand up and be who and what you are, live the life you want to live in full sunlight; to be love itself; love of self. If that is an evil agenda, call me a sinner any day. Now where’s that vodka martini?