Re: “Clinton on gay rights” (1/12/12)

Kudos to Russell Shaw for taking on the sensitive issue of gay rights and drawing some important distinctions in his recent column.

Shaw favors the defense of LGBT people. While he does not define "defense," he probably means that in a free country, people should be able to live without fear of discrimination, harassment and assault — something true Americans would support.

He's also against homosexual indoctrination in the schools. If by indoctrination Shaw means students being subtlety encouraged to engage in promiscuous homosexual behavior, than he's right again. And most Americans would agree that promiscuous homosexual behavior (not to mention promiscuous heterosexuality) is wrong.

But his commentary loses strength when it mentions the Obama administration's LGBT agenda. He does not cite examples of whether the administration has been pursuing a radical gay agenda. Instead, Shaw warns against the coercive power of the state. But coercion cuts both ways. Unfortunately, coercion through the federal courts may be necessary to undo the presumptive HHS contraception coverage mandate and to overturn Roe v. Wade, both just causes. So while coercion isn't ideal, it may be necessary in some situations.

Instead of ending with a warning about the coercive power of the state, Shaw should have talked about the best power of all, the golden rule (i.e., treat others as you would want to be treated). If someone has a homosexual orientation, they would not want society to make assumptions about whether they are engaged in immoral sexual activity. Would heterosexual oriented people want others to make assumptions about them? By the same token, a gay person, if he or she were a decent American, would no less want to see the homosexual indoctrination of children at school then they would want to see themselves coerced into dating members of the opposite sex while they were high school or college students.

And if Americans embraced the golden rule regarding conscience rights, then the HHS mandate and Roe v. Wade would not be issues either. If we all get it right with the golden rule in our families, work places, communities and who we elect to public office, then the power of government would be out of coercion business.

Carl Varner

Herndon