| Broadcasting from the Minneapolis affiliate of my radio show
last week, I was treated to a Minnesota Twins game. Having become accustomed
to baseball games at home in Los Angeles, I observed many differences at the
Metrodome. Among them was an absence of foul language from the fans -- I
felt I had taken a time machine to the 1950s, so family-friendly was the
atmosphere. I also appreciated the lack of instant replay on the stadium
video screen. Apparently, the Twins management has the rare attitude that
fans come to a baseball game to watch the game live, not on a TV screen.
But the Twins feature that most intrigued me was the "kiss cam."
A couple of times between innings, a stadium camera focused on
couples, who, when they saw themselves on the large stadium monitor inside a
big red heart, gave each other a kiss. It was all quite innocent. I know
because I did not feel at all uncomfortable with my 9-year-old son, and I am
zealous about guarding his innocence in the jaded culture America gives its
children. Indeed, as often as not, the couples were in their later years,
and when they kissed each other, we all felt good. Who isn't happy to see
romance flourish in older couples?
And then a thought occurred to me: Wasn't the Metrodome engaging
in discrimination? Surely, there were some same-sex couples at the ball
game. Why weren't any of them shown kissing on the "kiss cam"? How could it
be that in the state of libertarian Gov. Jesse Ventura and Sen. Paul
Wellstone, perhaps the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, such
discrimination could take place?
I raised this question on my radio show, and Minneapolis callers
were unanimous in responding that whether Democrat or Republican, liberal or
conservative, the vast majority of people attending a Twins game would not
accept a "kiss cam" depicting two men or two women kissing each other.
If these callers were right -- and I suspect they were -- it
means that even liberal and libertarian Minnesotans do not want to be
confronted by public displays of homosexual affection, especially when
children are present. But how can that be?
The answer is that many liberals engage in self-deception
regarding homosexuality. Their rhetoric of "tolerance" and "diversity" has
trapped them into losing touch with their own deepest values and intuitions.
Liberals boycott the Boy Scouts because the Boy Scouts want to provide
heterosexual scoutmasters as models for their boys. But when actually
confronted with homosexuality, most liberals do not react with the
acceptance they seek to impose on others.
A writer in a major gay journal noted the phenomenon years
ago -- how even his most liberal straight friends do not want him to kiss
his boyfriends in front of their children.
In the depths of the consciences and hearts of the vast majority
of heterosexual liberals, there is a voice that says that male-male or
female-female sexual bonding is not quite the same as male-female sexual
bonding, and that while the homosexual is every bit as lovable as the
heterosexual, homosexual sex is not what we wish for our children. And not
because there exists social discrimination against gays but because we truly
want our children to love a member of the opposite sex and to sexually bond
with that person.
It is almost impossible for heterosexual liberals, who have
redefined tolerance to mean acceptance, to admit all this, but the Twins
game made it abundantly clear. That is why the "kiss cam" at the Minneapolis
Metrodome will only show heterosexual kissers for the foreseeable future,
even as most Minneapolis liberals, like liberals all over America, continue
to defame the Boy Scouts and anyone else who holds the same ideal for their
children that these liberals hold for theirs.
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