"The family as we know it be abolished... That homosexuals be placed in positions of caregivers and permitted to become teachers, clergy, counselors, therapists and social workers. That they be allowed to participate in the rearing and education of children... That children be placed in communal care away from their parents, with boys and girls reared the same and cared for by adults who are under the direction of lesbian women... That children should be reared in a unisex role", etc. (as reported in Gay Is Not Good, pp. 104, 105, Frank M. duMas, Nashville, TN, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1979).

"The Sperm Bank of California... is serving an increasing number of Lesbians, according to its executive director, Barbara Raboy... Of 465 women who reported conception using the bank's services between 1982 and 1991, more than half were Lesbians... The increase is attributable partly to increased access to alternative insemination technology, partly to the increased awareness and acceptance by Lesbians of the possibility of becoming mothers, and partly to the increased acceptance by society of Lesbian mothers."

Gay activists are seeking legitimization of "domestic partnerships" and demanding benefits for "domestic partners" equivalent to those enjoyed by married couples, including the right to adopt children. Again, it is obvious that awarding such status and benefits would result in complex civil rights "snarls." What would logically prevent a homosexual (or heterosexual, for that matter) living with numerous unmarried "domestic partners" from claiming benefits for all live-in parties concerned? Recently, encouraged by a Madison, Wisconsin, special gay advantages ordinance...

"Madison's teachers union wants gay and lesbian couples to qualify for family insurance coverage and other benefits in its new employment contract with the Madison School District. The union's proposal to recognized the `designated family partner' of gay and lesbian teachers, unveiled at Monday's opening round of negotiations with the district, topped an exchange of controversial demands that promise tough and perhaps bitter talks ahead...

"When asked if the term `domestic family partner' also would apply to non-married heterosexual couples in serious, committed relationships, [Madison Teachers Inc. executive director John] Matthews said "we'd have to work out a definition with the district"("Teachers union wants insurance for gay couples," Wisconsin State Journal, September 10, 1991, pp. 1D-2D).

"The most obvious advantage is the hope that society, including but not limited to, our families, schools, and churches, will not only accept our relationships, but, our homosexuality as normal... In addition to societal and religious benefits, we will have all of the tax, insurance, and legal benefits available to `straight' married people. The marital and spousal deductions and diminished inheritance and estate taxes alone would save us millions and maybe even billions" (Quest, February, 1992, "Gay and Lesbian Marriages: To Be Or Not To Be", pg. 20).

Gay extremists try to protest that they're not seeking special advantages and privileges, or to impose acceptance of their lifestyle on anyone; they want only "equal rights."

Yet homosexual activists like Jeffrey Levi, formerly executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, have stated on numerous occasions their desire to see their lifestyle "affirmed" and "recognized in the law." Levi's statement to the National Press Club prior to gay extremists' 1987 "March on Washington" is highly revealing in this regard:

"The demands of the March on Washington reflect what [our] agenda will be in the years ahead. They include passage of the gay and lesbian civil rights bill, an executive order dealing with that branch's discriminatory policies -- from the military to security clearances; passage of similar measures at the state level as well as repeal of sodomy laws.

"But our agenda is becoming broader than that: we are no longer seeking just a right to privacy and a right to protection from wrong. We also have a right -- as heterosexual Americans have already -- to see government and society affirm our lives.

"Now that is a statement that may make our liberal friends queasy. But the truth is, until our relationships are recognized in the law -- through domestic partnership legislation or the definition of beneficiary, for example -- until we are provided with the same financial incentives in tax law and government programs to affirm our family relationships, then we will not have achieved equality in American society" (emphasis added).

In these ways and more, as Don Feder has written, in a January 17, 1992, column: "Legitimizing lifestyles [like homosexuality] further undercuts the family. Providing spousal benefits for homosexuals, condoning cohabitation and removing the stigma from out-of-wedlock births reduce families to the status of a mere preference."

Self-styled "gaylegal" scholar William Eskridge reveals an even more comprehensive perspective -- that of replacing American society's currently operative norms to suit the "gay rights" agenda -- in a recent article in one of America's most presitigious legal journals, The Yale Law Review. No one can tag Eskridge's comments as representing the "lunatic fringe" of the "gay rights" movement:

"...Bisexual, gay, and lesbian activists ought to deny the centrality of heterosexuality, particularly as it has been developed around rituals and taboos of manhood in American society. As Adrienne Rich has suggested, bisexual, gay, and lesbian consciousness can undermine claims that compulsory heterosexuality is the universal norm for our society. Rich challenges Americans to rethink sexuality, not from the assumption that everyone must be heterosexual if at all possible, but from the assumption that people are polymorphously sexual, that there is a `lesbian in us.'

"If Rich's point is true (and I believe it is), then the bisexual, gay, and lesbian community should reject the image that we are a subculture on the margins of mainstream heterosexual culture, for this internalizes the traditional assumption that we are deviants from the norm. Instead, legally as well as culturally, the norm is up for grabs, and as a community we must contribute to the reformulation of the norm.

(The Yale Law Journal, "A Social Constructionist Critique of Posner's Sex and Reason: Steps Toward a Gaylegal Agenda," Volume 102, October 1992, Number 1, pp. 374-375)

Lesbian writer Donna Minkowitz affirms this perspective in her recent Advocate article, "Recruit, recruit, recruit!":

"We [gays] have been on the defensive too long. It's time to affirm that the Right is correct in some of its pronouncements about our movement. Pat Buchanan said there was a `cultural war' going on `for the soul of America' and that gay and lesbian rights were the principal battleground. He was right. Similarly, [homo]'phobes like Pat Robertson are right when they say that we threaten the family, male domination, and the Calvinist ethic of work and grimness that has paralyzed most Americans' search for pleasure.

"Indeed, instead of proclaiming our innocuousness, we ought to advertise our potential to change straight society in radical, beneficial ways. Het[erosexuals] have much to learn from us: first and foremost, the fact that pleasure is possible (and desirable) beyond the sanction of the state. Another fact gleaned from gay experience -- that gender is for all intents and purposes a fiction -- also has the potential to revolutionize straight lives."

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