Book Review: Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Changes Everything

In January of 1973 some may have assumed that the Supreme Court’s decision Roe v. Wade settled the issue of abortion; however, four decades later the issue still divides the country. Some believe that Donald Trump’s promise to appoint pro-life judges may have tipped the election in his favor. While some may believe or hope that the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision has settled forever of the definition of marriage in favor of those who believe that two persons of the same sex can marry, the conflict has just moved into a new phrase. The law may have changed, but the opinions of many and teaching of religions have not.

Robert Reilly’s book Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Changes Everything meticulously reviews the history of the campaign to normalize homosexual behavior. He offers a comprehensive review of how we arrived at this point and offers suggestions for more effective future strategies. In order to move forward it is necessary to look at where the defenders of marriage failed to make their case and to understand why the truth about marriage failed to convince activist justices.

Early in the struggle to pass state referenda defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, the defenders of marriage focused on the positive aspects of marriage and essentially ignoring the problems inherent in the gay and lesbian lifestyle. Reilly views this strategy as seriously flawed;

Unfortunately, the pro-natural family movement largely forswore pressing the ‘hard, ugly realities’ of homosexual behavior on the conscience of the American people. Now the current retreat to the position of defending religious freedom means that the issue of the immorality of sodomy and other homosexual acts has most likely been abandoned for good. This is, and was a terrible substantive and strategic error. It basically gives the whole issue away—because if sodomy is not wrong, then not allowing it to serve as the basis of marriage must be bigotry.

Reilly’s book is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the radical philosophical change in judicial reasoning from decisions based on protected inalienable rights founded on the laws of Nature and Nature’s God, to a judicial system under which everyone has a right to make up their own morality. Reilly reviews the Supreme Court decisions that paved the way for the undermining of the foundation of the Constitution. In the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court discovered a right to privacy. This invented right became the foundation for series of radical decisions: Eisenstaedt v. Baird (1972), Roe v. Wade (1973), and Lawrence v. Texas (2003). In the 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey decision, the majority opinion stated, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence of the meaning of the universe, and of the mystery of life.” This statement highlights the shift in judicial philosophy from one based on natural law to one based on radical autonomy. Reilly also points out that it is not enough to defend marriage, it is also important to challenge the claim of judges to have a “divine right” to ignore the plain meaning of the Constitution.

Reilly points out that the law must be based on a shared belief that some things are right and some are wrong. In case after case, activist judges have chipped away at the idea of rights are based on the laws of Nature and Nature’s God. If, as most societies have held, homosexual acts are wrong, then, according to Reilly, such acts cannot be the basis for the contract of marriage.

The second half of the book deals with the effect of the gay agenda on children, science, education, the military, and foreign policy. When arguing before courts and legislatures for legal protection, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists insisted that they were victims and acceding to their demands would protect them from abuse, and would not negatively affect anyone else, Reilly catalogues how, as the title of his book claims, making gay okay and rationalizing homosexual behavior changes everything and not for the better.

The LGBT activists argued that, when it came to sexual ethics, one group should not be allowed to impose their morality on others. However, nature abhors a vacuum. The moment the LGBT activists obtained the right to legally marry, they sought to impose their moral vision on others, insisting that it was immoral not to accept their right to marry. They demanded that everyone not only accept their pseudo marriages, but that Christian-owned businesses service LGBT wedding rituals. The LGBT activists now insist that, because persons identified as LGBT have suffered discrimination in the past, hurting their feelings is a hate crime. According to LGBT’s new morality, religion does not allow you to discriminate.

Unfortunately the LGBT morality is based on a denial of reality. Surgery and cosmetics cannot make a man into a woman. A birth certificate naming two women as parents does not change the reality that every child has a biological mother and father. Two persons of the same sex cannot complete the only act that consummates a marriage. The problem caused by the legal acceptance of the LGBT agenda is that the denial of reality is never partial. The LGBT activists label all those who do not accept their agenda as homophobic and transphobic bigots, who need to be reeducated, punished, or silenced.

Reilly traces the shameful history of how the American Psychiatric Association (APA) was manipulated by gay activists, surrendered to protesters and allowed a rigged referendum. The LGBT activists had targeted the APA, because as homosexual activist Franklin Kameny explained, “I feel that the entire homophile movement…is going to stand or fall upon the question of whether or not homosexuality is a sickness” (119). The decision to remove homosexuality from the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual was not based on well-designed published studies. None were cited. Since then numerous large well-designed studies have found that persons who self-identified as LGBT are more likely to experience psychological disorders, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse problems. The APA ignored the massive evidence that the LGBT were not born that way and some of those who sought therapy could change.

While Reilly presents an excellent review of the real dangers of the LGBT agenda, one has to question whether his solution—namely focusing the sinfulness and unnaturalness of sodomy (anal inter-course)—is the answer. He touches on what may be a better strategy, stressing that the LGBT are not born that way and change is possible. Those who might question these claims would do well to read the very well-documented special report in a recent issue of The New Atlantis journal titled “Sexuality and Gender” by Lawrence Mayer and Paul McHugh. The article references numerous well-designed studies, which show that the LGBT claims are not supported by scientific evidence.