No journal or school of medicine has ever reported the discovery of any sort of “homosexual gene.”

No parent has ever been able to say, when a child is born, “I’ve just given birth to a healthy little homosexual.”

These classifications can only be made much later and not even for certain on the basis of observed behavior.

On grounds this tenuous, why not grant protected status to other alleged sharers or cravers of pleasurable physical behaviors?

Regulating behavior is the very heart of America’s legal system.

Even behaviors that are not illegal are subject to legal sanctions when engaged in to excess or in a manner that is distressing to others.

Even sexual behaviors involving “mutual consent” are subject to society’s sanctions.

To say that the “homosexual rights” agenda should be legally immune from criticism under “gay rights” laws is to subvert the essential nature of civil rights legislation and to provide “special status” for only one type of behavior.

It is absurd to say that society has no right to withhold special class protection from certain behaviors or phenomena even if they are “innate” or occur frequently in nature.

Do we argue that because snakebites are natural people ought to take no steps to protect themselves?

Students of human behavior theorize that criminals may be born with faulty chromosome structures.

Should we award legal protection to sociopaths?

It would be patently ridiculous to award ethnic status and special privileges on the basis of how some people gratify their sexual appetites.

Lately, gay militants have attempted to take homosexual behavior out of the gay special advantages debate by saying, “We’re not asking for protection for our behavior; we’re asking merely that our sexual ‘orientations’ or ‘status’ be protected.”

In other words, they are asking that an entire new edifice of civil rights protections be based solely on what kinds of sexual desires a group of people claims to experience.

As we shall see, no rational basis can possibly exist on which to build the kinds of protections gay extremists are now asking for.

It is vital that Americans understand these parameters of the issue we’re discussing: Gay militants want to be awarded ethnic-equivalent, protected class status based only on how they SAY they want to have sex.

Unless we understand the unprecedented, tenuous nature of gay militants’ claim to protected class status, we will not recognize the extraordinary, unprecedented request gay militants are making.

Let’s keep this understanding in mind.

Timothy Kelly

Waterloo