Does Massachusetts Governor William Weld want to “Empower America” or “Empower Queer Nation”? Social conservatives who hold out an inkling of hope that “Empower America” might actually pay attention to their issues should take a closer look at Governor Weld’s promotion of the homosexual agenda in public schools.

On February 10, 1992, Governor Weld “empowered” the public school children of Massachusetts by creating the nation’s first Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. By signing Executive Order 325, and at the swearing-in of commission members on June 11, 1992, Governor Weld stated that there is a “tremendous need to address the difficult issues facing gay and lesbian youth.” He also wants to “abolish the prejudice and isolation” faced by such children. Governor Weld was understandably partisan in naming members of the commission. Many arc homosexuals. In fact, the chairman is David LaFontaine, lobbying director for the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights.

The commission’s Education Report, “Making Schools Safe for Gay and Lesbian Youth,” detailed Weld’s and the gay lobby’s demands: acknowledgment that kids are born homosexual; creation of social clubs for homosexuals; inclusion of homosexual propaganda in school libraries; teaching kids that homosexual sex is normal, natural, and healthy; no-fault parenting support groups; layers of bureaucracy to provide legitimacy and self-justification; an open school door to homosexual activists; “yellow pages” guiding kids to homosexual activities; reprimands for criticizing homosexuality; and taxpayer-funded legal services for homosexuals to agitate on campus.

One wonders if Bill Weld needs to be reminded that what he is talking about is a peculiar form of sex. Homosexuality is defined by a sex act, in this case sodomy. It is clear that a person cannot homo without the sexual any more than a person can hetero without the sexual. But unlike heterosexuality generally, homosexuality involves an obsessive, even pathological, desire for societal approval beyond individual conscience and one’s close circle of friends. So it is no wonder that the homosexual movement’s recommendations in the Education Report all focus on public approval and endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle.

The Education Report relies heavily on a 1989 youth suicide report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for legitimacy. Without a widely recognized social problem, no Weld Commission would be needed. To the homosexual movement, youth suicide is not unlike AIDS, for all practical purposes. Both tragedies have been used for political gain. AIDS has brought millions of state and federal tax dollars flowing into “community-based” homosexual groups, as well as facilitated an ever-expanding propaganda machine with which to influence public opinion, and youth suicide has added an important dimension to their overall goal of public acceptability.

The HHS report was released in three volumes. The third volume included extraneous contributions from various sectors of society. None of these extraneous reports, though published as additional reading on the subject, were deemed official or integral to the HHS report’s recommendations. It was in this volume of extraneous material that a paper titled “Gay Male and Lesbian Youth Suicide” was placed. Of this paper then-HHS Secretary Louis W. Sullivan wrote, “I want to reemphasize that the views expressed in the paper entitled ‘Gay Male and Lesbian Youth Suicide’ do not in any way represent my personal beliefs or the policy of this Department. . . . Federal policies must be crafted with great care so as to strengthen rather than undermine the institution of the family. In my opinion, the views expressed in the paper run contrary to that aim.” This position was seconded by the acting surgeon general.

This extraneous paper was the product of a San Francisco mental health counselor named Paul Gibson, who also happens to be a homosexual. From the way the Education Report relies on his testimony, the reader would think that Mr. Gibson was employed by HHS. One citation in the Education Report, page 10, even reads: “Paul Gibson, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.” This is clearly misleading.

Governor Weld relied on Gibson’s “research” during the swearing-in of commissioners, stating, “nearly 30 percent of youth suicides are committed by gays or lesbians.” The Education Report reiterates and highlights this “fact” time and again. If true, the claim would be significant. Thirty percent of anything nowadays is a substantial force. You could even be elected President of the United States with the vote of 30 percent of the population. Don’t you think that if homosexual youth suicides really comprise a whopping 30 percent of all youth suicides that somebody would pick up on it other than Bill Weld and a handful of homosexuals?

The claim is obviously not true. The figure was cooked by homosexual psychoclinicians in one of many of their “scientific” surveys. There is little need to remind anyone of the fraudulent “10 percent” figure the homosexual movement has used for years to project a grander image. HHS, the very institution the Weld Commission relies upon for inspiration, reported as recently as March 1993 that homosexuality (whether referred to as gay or lesbian or sexual orientation, etc.) is such a small possible co-factor in youth suicides that it is not measurable (“Suicide Facts,” National Institutes of Mental Health, March 1993). The Gallup Poll found the same thing (Teenage Suicidal Study, January 1991).

The pathology of homosexuality has created a fortress of lies and self-justifications from which gays advocate their lifestyle. Themes like “we are everywhere” or “we are 10 percent of the population” or “we are little different than the rest of society” or even “we are 30 percent of all youth suicides” are all examples of the emotional and political insulation they build into their movement to buffer them from injury to their collective psyche. Every public utterance is designed to keep all discussions of their lifestyle away from its central element—a sex act. Any opposing voice which suggests that any of their platitudes are not true is silenced. To suggest that homosexuality is not as widespread or endemic to society as they believe will get you the label “homophobic.” In other words, any opposition is grounded in mental illness. This accusatory posture is merely the psychological projection of a group that has been traditionally labeled mentally ill itself.

The Weld Commission’s Education Report is chock-full of false premises, misrepresentations, twisted reasonings, and self-justifications. One glaring example is the report’s presumption of the fundamental existence of gay and lesbian youth. Indeed, just the use of the term “gay and lesbian youth” is an effort to imply their physiological existence. The Weld Commission knows that there is large disagreement in several communities (i.e., scientific, medical, religious, etc.) over the existence of homosexual orientation and that this argument revolves around whether homosexuals are born gay. There is no scientific proof—replicable scientific proof—that homosexuals are born this way. Of course, just because someone is born with a certain condition is not a license to do whatever he or she feels compelled to do. For instance, a person born with a chemical imbalance, and hence unmanageable, is viewed as ill or abnormal and is routinely treated to correct the problem. Society does not justify antisocial or self-destructive behavior simply because of the imbalance, even though people may have sympathy for the sufferer.

Common sense sheds further light on this subject. Consider an infant. Homosexual mythology would have us believe that this infant has a compulsive desire for anal or oral sex, in other words, homosexuality. Such a notion is, of course, ludicrous. That infant has no more desire or inclination for homosexual sex than it does for heterosexual sex or any kind of sexual experience. The child’s developmental behavior is determined by its nurturing and environment. By the time puberty kicks in, a child has established patterns of behavior based on how he or she has been raised. An abusive early childhood can and does manifest itself in varying degrees of antisocial or self-destructive behavior. Alcoholism, substance abuse, violence, reclusion, and sexual promiscuity are all evidence of earlier problems. They can also be evidence of current problems created by liberal destruction of social norms or even familial abuses. All of this is common sense. No one has ever needed a special degree to figure this out.

There truly is no such thing as homosexual youth per se. There are confused youth, abused youth, molested youth, selfish youth, indulged youth, and rejected youth. But to say that kids are homosexual by birth is nonsense and has never been proved by either science or medicine. The Weld Commission is grasping for a legitimacy that simply does not exist.

The queerest of all ironies pronounced by the Weld Commission is perhaps the self-flagellation in their report, which stands contrary to the movement’s image of “Gay Pride.” Traditionally, self-worth and pride have been independent of external pressures and opinions. Millions of Americans each day trudge through life managing to keep their chin up despite many personal struggles and obstacles. While outside support and love are helpful, certainly very few healthy people ultimately rest their entire happiness and emotional well-being on the opinions of others. When they do and fall into depression they are viewed as “not well.” Culpability has traditionally been with the individual not someone else.

Americans are increasingly shifting blame and accountability for their own actions to that catch-all “society,” and the homosexual pathology of finding oneself in others, or non-accountability, is just a small ripple in this rising tide. What sets the homosexual pathology apart from the rest of society is that it rests its entire emotional well-being on what others think. This is what causes homosexuals to be discontent with keeping their sexuality private. They have proven themselves obsessively compelled to seek public approbation for their behavior.

Great American men and women, people of creative genius and invention, have always been fiercely independent souls. Successful entrepreneurship is practically defined by going against conventional wisdom and peer pressure. Why, then, is such a seemingly independent movement so rigidly tied to what other people think of them? Successful minorities have always persevered despite popular opinions. Why not homosexuality? The answer is obvious. The pathological roots of homosexuality are abuse, dysfunction, and indulgence. These are not things to be proud of. No honest person can muster an ounce of inner strength in their defense. This is why “society” is the salvation of the homosexual movement. The only emotional support available to determined homosexuals is external. The more people in society affirm what defines the homosexual existence, namely a sex act, the greater the chance that the internal suffering can be drowned out.

Along these lines, the Weld Commission insists that homosexual youth need a special kind of support. The claim begs the question, what kind of support are we talking about? One request is for a large contingent of homosexual adult role models. In any other corner of the education community such provincialism is considered socially unhealthy. Parents are continually told that their kids should be exposed to diverse elements in the population. In fact, this is just what the homosexual movement claims. And yet here are the same homosexuals suggesting that the only adults who understand these special youth are homosexuals themselves. The Weld Commission makes crystal clear in its report that supportive adult heterosexuals can help protect a school environment from violence or bigotry but that it is the homosexual teacher who can best meet the needs of students pursuing a homosexual lifestyle. No doubt.

This raises a question about what these role models are to do. Unfortunately, despite the fact that as a community homosexuals excel quite nicely in the economy, not many popular homosexual role models exist who are not dying or have died from AIDS. A disease-ridden culture is a testimony against such role models. Providing adult homosexuals to bridge the gap for youths to enter comfortably this disease-ridden lifestyle is unconscionable. It amounts to nothing more than recruiting.

The kind of support for youth the Weld Commission is seeking is an infrastructure of acceptance for homosexual sodomy. The gay lobby’s raison d’etre involves neither skin color nor gender, nationality nor religion. It exists to promote a particular kind of sex act. Without it they are literally nothing in their own minds. In fact, homosexuals claim they would just as soon die without it. That is the pathology that the Weld Commission is asking the public to support.

Dozens of recent studies show that revising one’s image of the family and the several roles to be played out within the family does not turn a grave situation bright. For decades liberal pundits and ideologues have attempted, and managed, to establish a new social conscience in which the liberation of the individual away from the family is exalted. Women were encouraged to leave small children in favor of a career, parents were encouraged to place their small children in daycare, divorce was given a liberating quality, and sexual prowess was elevated to new heights of acceptability. The traditional family was pronounced evil and detrimental to a progressive society. The opposite remains a proven truth.

Governor Weld’s support of homosexuality detracts from the effectiveness of the traditional family—and the traditional family unit is the keystone to social, economic, and moral well-being. As a part of “Empower America,” Governor Weld has isolated the family from social conservatives. And no amount of water can be carried by Bill Bennett to assuage them. The true test of their loyalty is to denounce Governor Weld’s support of the homosexual agenda as dangerous and foolhardy.