Pat Boone

I remember him from my youth. The fresh-faced, clean-cut, squeaky clean guy whose kiss of Ann Margaret at the end of 1962's State Fair caused such a stir because he was married and had said he would never kiss anybody but his wife, even on screen. (Or at least that's what I remember of the controversy over that very chaste kiss.) He had earlier refused to kiss Shirley Jones in the movie Young Love because she was married and to kiss a married woman went against his values. (As I said, I may have these memories wrong--but there was controversy about a kiss somewhere, on moral grounds!)

We haven't heard much of Pat Boone lately, but he's made headlines again, in an article for World Net Daily, by comparing the protests following the Prop 8 vote to the recent bombings in Mumbai. He reminds readers of hostage taking, exploding bombs systematic murder and chaotic conditions of carnage. In it, he asserts that marriage is a biblically ordained institution, which the government has no part in defining. He then states that equal rights for women, blacks and slavery were not "obtained by threats and violent demonstrations and civil disruption" but rather through due process. He concludes by warning that unless they're checked, the "hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of homegrown sexual jihadists will escalate into acts vile, violent and destructive."

Oh, I know the homosexual "rights" demonstrations haven't reached the same level of violence, but I'm referring to the anger, the vehemence, the total disregard for law and order and the supposed rights of their fellow citizens. I'm referring to the intolerance, the hate seething in the words, faces and actions of those who didn't get their way in a democratic election, and who proclaim loudly that they will get their way, no matter what the electorate wants!

I first heard of this on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last night and I was dumbfounded. As I started to do some research I discovered that Boone's homophobia is nothing new for him. He wrote a fairy tale about a prince who was seduced by a dwarf, got AIDS and then overdosed on drugs. He also campaigned against Steve Beshear, running for governor of Kentucky. because he felt Beshear would "support every homosexual cause" and asked if voters wanted Kentucky to be "another San Francisco."

(Hey--what's wrong with my home town???)

It's interesting that he refers to "total disregard for law and order and the supposed rights of their fellow citizens." Isn't that what the Prop 8 people did? Total disregard for the law and the rights of their fellow gay citizens.

My thoughts on this subject have been stated ad nauseam and I'll try not to repeat myself, but Olbermann's report just made me very sad and I had to ask myself: what is it about the existence of homosexuals that inspires such hatred in people. I once had someone tell me that the existence of homosexuals was a threat to her family. She didn't know gay people, she didn't have gay neighbors, but somehow the very existence of gay people in the world was a threat to her family.

How? It had something to do with her having to explain an abomination to her children or some such thing.

But it's hard to understand how you can be hated simply for existing. But then Jews, Blacks, Catholics, and other groups through the ages have known such irrational hatred. What's odd is that people who believe so strongly in God can't seem to accept that God made some of his creatures straight and some of his creatures gay.

It's hard to imagine Pat Boone and Steve Schalchlin sitting together discussing music without Boone liking the guy. Steve's a very likeable person. Would that budding friendship turn to instant hate once he learned Steve's sexual orientation?

Everyone seems so up in arms about the backlash to the passage of Prop 8. But what did anybody expect? Put yourself in the position of the gay community who had been told, earlier this year, that the law says that they are equal to everyone else. After years of fighting to get the right to marry, the Supreme Court, acting like Glinda the Good Witch of the North, tells them that they didn't need to fight for that right after all, that it was right there in the constitution all along.

General rejoycing, tapping ruby slippers together, and heading over the rainbow to the nearest county clerk's office to get married and live happily ever after.

Then along come people who decide that this group of people does not DESERVE the rights that the constitution had already given them. That they need to have those rights taken away from them. That they need to be told they are different from everyone else.

How would you feel if a group of gay people came along and told you that you no longer had the right to marry? That your marriage is not valid. That you can't love the person you love? Would you just shrug your shoulders and say "Oh--OK." and crawl back in a closet somewhere? Of course not. You'd be pissed. You'd take to the streets to proclaim "I am just as good as the rest of you. I deserve the same rights that you do." You might even act a little angry about it.

Straight people ran ads for weeks talking about the threat Prop 8 was to children (it never was), to churches (it never was), and then when the No on 8 people ran an ad claiming Mormons were behind the campaign to strip gay people of their rights (they were), they threatened to sue. How DARE they attack a church?

The latest threat comes from the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the national Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which has sent a message to the California State Supreme Court saying

You will see a mobilized group like you have never seen in the state of California. There are grounds for a recall. We saw that with Gray Davis. We have an oligarchy, an oligarchy in judges' role in the state of California.

In other words, if California Supreme Court judges decide to uphold the principles of the state Constitution and grant equal rights to all people, they will face recall.

Pat Boone talks about "the hate seething in the words, faces and actions of those who didn't get their way..." Isn't that what we saw in the people who brought Prop 8 to being in the first place? The judges interpreted the law, saw that the law gave equal rights to all people, and in their hatred they scared straight people into taking away the rights of gay people--and then complained when the gay people were upset about it.

Pat Boone calls gay people terrorists, Hispanic Christians threaten to dismiss judges who attempt to uphold the law.

I just don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. How can gay people engender that much irrational hatred....?












Pat Boone, American Music Awards, 1997