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Massachusetts Begins Reform
We
officially burst onto the scene in January 1999 when all the TV
stations in Boston arrived on my doorstep one afternoon. Chet
Curtis announced on Channel 5 that night that we had created a “firestorm
of controversy across the state.” The people on Channel 7 said we
were their “Top Story” of the night. What
had we done? We
had merely published a pamphlet about what is being taught in our
schools. We called for “An Intelligent Discussion about Homosexuality.
Will Massachusetts Listen?” (We had only an Internet site and did
not have a print paper at the time.) We
did indeed ignite a “firestorm” and we immediately faced a strong
attack from the establishment which tried to dismiss us as a one-issue
newspaper. This
all occurred because the daily newspaper in New Bedford (which is
part of a chain owned by the Wall Street Journal) had published
a diatribe with the headline, “The long sorry history of Christian
bigotry continues unabated.” Although
I had been a staunch believer in God for most of my adult life,
I had never been a leader in any church. But this hate and bigotry
got my attention. The
article was even worse than the headline. It attempted to blame
the murder of the homosexual youth in Wyoming, Matthew Shepard,
on Christians when he had actually been killed by two psychopaths.
They had even returned to the bar where they had found him and then
attacked two straight men. They stopped only when one psychopath
was hit with a stick and suffered a skull fracture. After
neither the New Bedford paper nor its owner responded to friendly,
polite letters, I reluctantly investigated to discover for myself
whether there was any truth to what they had said. Like
most people, this is not a topic I would willingly think about.
There are so many wonderful things in the world to discover that
no one would want to spend time on the unfortunate people who have
tripped into this foolish behavior. I
did some research to see if the Christian community was truly attacking
homosexuals. The answers to my many questions came quickly. After
about a month, many things were clear.
But
the shock came when I found what we were teaching the children in
all the Massachusetts schools. We were telling them that casual
sex is the norm that everyone should follow and homosexual sex is
just a matter of choice, like Coke or Pepsi. In
other words, the schools were encouraging the children to be sexually
active in any way they wished. It
became abundantly clear a few months later that the people of our
state would not support this encouragement of casual sex if they
knew about it. When we did a telephone poll of 600 people across
the state and asked whether teenagers should be encouraged to be
sexually active, we were amazed that 92% said “No.” This poll talked
to all sexes and ages. Even those who identified themselves as liberals
responded with 91% saying “No.” There
were a large number of people out there waiting to be very angry
when they discovered what was happening. Most
people agreed with that first article in January 1999. We had hit
a “nerve.” But most were reluctant to get “involved.” They wished
that the subject would just “go away” without bothering their lives.
Some resented that we had awakened them to the problem. But
most were supportive. One anonymous telephone message was, “Most
people don’t know what the children are being taught. Thanks for
making other parents aware. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” But
the caller never told us who she was. It
became clear that no one in the establishment was going to engage
in an “Intelligent Discussion” at any level. No one in the press,
in the schools, or in politics would even discuss the issue. They
went for the personal attack against me. But it was difficult for
them. Here they had a respected, intelligent lawyer and leader in
the legal community. It was difficult to find anything in my newspaper
or in my personal life that they could attack. The
town of Newton even had an official rally against “hate mail” and
me. The Mayor, the Superintendent of Schools, state Senator Creem
and many other dignitaries and teachers attended but very few citizens
showed up except for many homosexual activists from around the state.
It was after this rally that we decided we would never be allowed
to have a discussion in this state unless we started our own print
newspaper, which began in June 1999. One
other event that will be forever etched in my memory is of a meeting
where a teenage boy came up to me and my wife with tears in his
eyes after outing himself to cheers from homosexual activists. “I
don’t want to be different, I don’t want to be different,” were
the words that he used. But our schools had pushed him into the
hands of homosexual activists and into that lifestyle instead of
helping him so that he would not feel “different.” The female principal
of the high school had been unable to control the school and so
when anyone taunted this boy, she would call the police! He told
us this had happened twelve times! Talk about making this poor boy
“different” from the rest of his peers. What a burden of guilt all
of us have in this society.
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