A guard dog that won’t bark at approaching danger is worthless but caged frogs can be worse.
The story of the caged frogs comes from World War I. The Germans planned a secret attack north of Aisne, France on April 25, 1918. The Americans predicted it but the British could see no batteries or even a trace of enemy activity. “Actually, there were nearly four thousand heavy Krupp guns there. You just couldn’t see them. Moving at night and hiding in woods during the days with horses’ hooves wrapped in rags and the sounds of creaking gun carriages masked by cages of croaking frogs, Ludendorff had massed forty-one crack divisions…” (The Last Lion, I, 640). The croaking frogs masked the sound of approaching danger.
My concern is that I be not a croaking frog. The following flyer published for the Department of Energy is one.
LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER
(LGBT) PRIDE
PRIDE 365 – HAVE PRIDE YEAR ROUND
The Department of Energy is celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride. In the spirit of “Continual Learning”, DOE’s ongoing celebration demonstrates how LGBT Americans have strengthened our country, by using their talents and creativity to help move our Nation and the Department forward. This year’s theme is ‘Pride 365 – Have Pride Year Round,’ which encourages LGBT employees to honor a very important part of their identity all year long. DOE strives to maintain a workplace that reflects our commitment to diversity and inclusion, which contributes to success of our agency. As we honor the LGBT community throughout the U.S. and within the DOE workforce, let us remember that our strength is in the inclusion of our differences and that we are all critical to DOE’s mission.
“This Year, we celebrate LGBT Pride at a moment of great hope and progress, recognizing that more needs to be done. Support for LGBT equality is growing, led by a generation which understands that, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’” President Barack Obama, May 31, 2013
The flyer went on to invite DOE staffers to ceremony supporting and commemorating LGBT Pride-365 at a Veterans conference center. It closed with “For more information on this program, please contact DOE’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.” It gave a phone number, so I called.
I spoke with the director of that office and asked for clarification. He said that as blacks, Hispanics, women, and veterans have their months of official recognition so do LGBT’s. I asked did this mean DOE employees were required to participate, endorse, or accept LGBT issues (It’s amazing how fast one adopts an acronym. And acronyms sanitize the profanity, the insanity, and the crudity in anything.)? The DOE official responded, “Absolutely not.” I asked were employees free to express their private opinion on these issues. He said that they were. I then pointed out that I could not during Black History month say that blacks are inferior or I don’t support equal rights for them. But as a Christian I feel compelled to speak against LGBT issues. He said, “As an African-American Christian (and he emphasized the word), I understand exactly what you’re saying. I am not onboard with all these things. We just publish the flyers; people aren’t required to do anything about it.” I asked if we were to the point where someone might say, “I don’t see you as very excited about LGBT pride?” He answered, “Absolutely not. I think we need to be talking about these issues.”
All in all I was surprised at the conversation. Here was a man that was troubled about these issues too, but the force with which these issues have come upon us since the Obama administration legitimatized gays in the military and came out in support of gay marriage, has been as heavy as a Krupp gun. We are reeling. An egregious immorality has become a championed, protected morality over night.
What should we do? Well don’t wrap the hooves of the horses drawing the Krupp gun. Don’t say that the issue isn’t approaching. It’s here. The guns are in our backyard, locked and loaded. Don’t be a croaking caged frog concealing LGBT as a minority issue rather than exposing it as a morality issue.
I’m convinced virtually everyone in the generation below the Baby-boomers has a friend, an acquaintance, a co-worker, or even a dorm mate that is either LGB or T or, a combination thereof. They are being encouraged to think of this issue as if they were Baby-boomers who had a black friend, acquaintance, coworker, or dorm mate in the early 60s.
Wrapping the issue in the “martyred” Martin Luther King, Jr. doesn’t help matters. It’s true as Dr. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” But LGBT isn’t about justice it’s about morality versus immorality. These can’t change by government fiat. When abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court, it didn’t make baby killing moral. Even though the feminist have succeeded in making feminist positions civil rights issues, even they can only promote abortion by hiding the immorality of baby killing under the rights of women. They don’t have Abortion Pride but Pro-Choice Pride or increasingly Women’s Health Initiatives.
Immorality always asks first to be heard, then tolerated, then legalized, then championed, and finally demands to be accepted as the new morality. Let’s at least not wrap the hooves of the horses or be the croaking frogs as the heavy guns promoting the switch move into place.
