Buchanan's New Book Attacks LGBT Rights

Buchanan's Long Crusade Against The LGBT Community

Buchanan Campaigned For President By Smearing LGBTs

*2000 Campaign

*1996 Campaign

*1992 Campaign

Buchanan's New Book Attacks LGBT Rights

Buchanan: Allowing Gays To Serve In Military Is “Indoctrination” Of Soldiers; Same-Sex Marriage Is An “Absurd Notion Of Equality.” From Buchanan's book Suicide of a Superpower:

A nation dedicated to the proposition that all are equal and entitled to equal rewards must end up constantly discriminating against its talented tenth, for that is the only way a free society can guarantee social and economic equality. And consider the costs incurred, the injustices done, the freedoms curtailed--all in the name of equality.

[...]

• Vaughn Walker, a gay federal judge in San Francisco, has ruled that same-sex marriage is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Can anyone believe this absurd notion of equality was intended by or written into the Constitution by the Congress that produced the 14th Amendment?
• Although gay marriage has been rejected in thirty-one states in referenda, judges continue to declare that such unions be treated as marriages. An idea of equality rejected democratically by voters is being imposed dictatorially.

• In December 2010, a repudiated liberal Congress imposed its San Francisco values on the armed forces by ordering homosexuals admitted to all branches of the service. Indoctrination of recruits, soldiers, and officers into an acceptance of the gay life style will transfer authority over the military, the most respected institution in America, to agents of a deeply resented and widely detested managerial state. [Pat Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?, 2011, p. 209-212, via Salon.com]

Buchanan's Long Crusade Against The LGBT Community

Buchanan: “In A Healthy Society, [Homosexuality] Will Be Contained, Segregated, Controlled, And Stigmatized, Carrying Both A Legal And Social Sanction.” From Buchanan's column in 1977:

There is no brief for police harassment or persecution of homosexuals. They have the same right to protection from exploitation as alcoholics, who are, likewise, sick people. As for putting practicing homosexuals in prison, as some state laws mandate, that is like throwing B'rer Rabbit into the briar patch.

Homosexuality, then, is not some civil right. In a healthy society, it will be contained, segregated, controlled, and stigmatized, carrying both a legal and social sanction. As Anita Bryant would say, “How do I know? The Bible Told Me So.”

If that makes me a roaring reactionary, boys, make the most of it. [Pat Buchanan, syndicated column, 6/7/77, via ProQuest]

Buchanan On American Psychiatric Association Dropping “Homosexuality From Its List Of Mental Disorders”: “If A Covey Of Quacks Voted Tomorrow That Masochism, Bestiality, And Incest Were Not Signs Of Personality Disorder, That Don't Necessarily Make It So.” From Buchanan's column in 1977:

The gays may counter that the American Psychiatric Association has, of late, dropped homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. That, however, tells us less about the nature of homosexuals than about the moral courage of the APA. If a covey of quacks voted tomorrow that masochism, bestiality, and incest were not signs of personality disorder, that don't necessarily make it so. One need not be a doctor of philosophy to know that when some 40-year-old male paints his face with rouge and lipstick and prances around in women's clothes, he ain't playing with a full deck. [Pat Buchanan, syndicated column, 6/7/77, via ProQuest]

Buchanan On “Homosexuality”: “Its Rise Almost Always Is Accompanied, As In The Weimar Republic, With A Decay Of Society And A Collapse Of Its Basic Cinder Block, The Family.” From Buchanan's syndicated column in 1977:

Homosexuality is not a civil right. Its rise almost always is accompanied, as in the Weimar Republic, with a decay of society and a collapse of its basic cinder block, the family. [Pat Buchanan, syndicated column, 6/7/77, via ProQuest]

Buchanan: “To Some Of Us, Homosexuality Is An Affliction, Like Alcoholism.” From Buchanan's October 19, 2004 column:

Indeed, whether nature or nurture determines orientation remains a matter of disagreement. When Barney Frank blurted, “It's not as if I had a choice in this matter,” it struck some of us as transparently true. Why would a teenage kid choose to carry this cross through life?

To some of us, homosexuality is an affliction, like alcoholism, and hellishly difficult to control. Why some folks can take or leave alcohol -- while others can enjoy it in moderation, and others cannot stop drinking without help and must swear off it for life or it will kill them -- remains a mystery of nature.

Homosexuality seems to be like that. Sumner Welles, one of FDR's most trusted confidantes, saw his career destroyed after he propositioned a porter on a train. LBJ's closest White House aide killed his career during the 1964 campaign when caught in a sting operation in a YMCA men's room, a block from the White House.

A contemporary of this writer and rising conservative star in the House, with a wonderful family, lost it all when caught trolling D.C.'s tenderloin district for teenage boys. Catholic priests have dishonored the church to which they have dedicated entire lives and disgraced themselves by abusing altar boys.

In such cases, the behavior seems almost suicidal. Clearly, there is a compulsion here that is, at times, terribly difficult to resist, a sexual compulsion that seems far more rare among normal men. [Pat Buchanan, syndicated column, 10/19/04]

Buchanan: “Homosexuality Involves Sexual Acts Most Men Consider Not Only Immoral, But Filthy.” From Buchanan's syndicated column in 1989:

Homosexuality involves sexual acts most men consider not only immoral, but filthy. The reason public men rarely say aloud what most say privately is they are fearful of being branded 'bigots' by an intolerant liberal orthodoxy that holds, against all evidence and experience, that homosexuality is a normal, healthy lifestyle. [Pat Buchanan, syndicated column, 9/4/89]

Buchanan: “Where Is The Successful Society Where Homosexual Marriage Was Normal?” From Buchanan's syndicated column in July:

What is the moral basis of the argument that homosexuality is normal, natural and healthy? In recent years, it has been associated with high levels of AIDS and enteric diseases, and from obits in gay newspapers, early death. Where is the successful society where homosexual marriage was normal?

Not until the Stonewall riots at a gay bar in Greenwich Village in 1969 was the case broadly made by anyone but the Mattachines of Frank Kameny that homosexuality deserved to be treated as a natural and normal expression of love.

[...]

As Albert Einstein observed, “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.” By 14, most boys have learned on the playground there is something disordered about boys sexually attracted to other boys.

Hence the need for politically correct universities to purge such ideas from young minds and indoctrinate them in the new truths of modernity.

[...]

In our new society from which traditionalists are seceding, many ruling ideas are rooted in an ideology that is at war with Burke's “general prejudices.”

High among them is that homosexuality is natural and normal. That abortion is a woman's right. That all voluntary sexual relations are morally equal. That women and men are equal, and if the former are not equally represented at the apex of academic, military and political life, this can only be the result of invidious discrimination that the law must correct. That all races, religions and ethnic groups are equal and all must have equal rewards.

Once a nation synonymous with freedom, the new America worships at the altar of equality. [Pat Buchanan, syndicated column, 7/1/11]

Buchanan: “Promiscuous Homosexuals Appear Literally Hell-Bent On Satanism And Suicide.” Jake Tapper reported of Buchanan: “In 1990, Buchanan spewed out another hate-filled sound bite: 'With 80,000 dead of AIDS, 3,000 more buried each month, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide.'” [Salon.com, 9/4/99]

Buchanan Referred To Gays As “Sodomites” And “The Pederast Proletariat.” From a 1992 Washington Post profile:

But more arresting than his biography is his public image as a man who will say and write things that regularly result in charges of bigotry and prejudice -- charges that Buchanan angrily denies.

Many conservatives praise “traditional family values.” Few have joined Buchanan in referring to gay people as “sodomites” and “the pederast proletariat” and in calling feminists “the Butch Brigade.”

Many criticize U.S. immigration policy. Buchanan cast the choice as a decision over whether “Englishmen” or “Zulus” would be easier to assimilate. [Washington Post, 2/15/92]

Buchanan: “If The Gay Community Practiced [Catholic] Teaching, We Wouldn't Have An AIDS Problem In The First Place.” From CNN's Crossfire in March 1990:

MIKE KINSLEY: Charity or public relations? The Archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger Mahoney, sent a letter to his priests and nuns asking them to volunteer to be injected with an experimental AIDS vaccine. The vaccine was developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, the legendary inventor of the polio vaccine. This one could be another historical breakthrough, but there is also a small risk that the volunteers could get AIDS.

That's not what the fuss is about, however. The fuss is over charges by some AIDS activists that the Church is not motivated solely by the spirit of compassion. They say this gesture is an attempt to distract attention from the Church's policy on homosexuality, sex education and birth control, policies they say that have aggravated the AIDS plague and the suffering of its victims.

[on camera] Pat.

PAT BUCHANAN: Martin Delaney, the Church is asking for religious volunteers, or, more accurately, I guess, inviting religious volunteers to be injected with this vaccine. Why, in heaven's name, should that set you off?

MARTIN DELANEY, Catholic AIDS Activist, Project Inform: Well, I think because it avoids the real issue here. It's a rather minor point that 10 volunteers might be asked to come forward. The big issue here is that the Church is undertaking activities across a number of fronts that are harming the efforts to prevent the spread of AIDS, and I think it would be far more important to address those issues than to put so much attention, time and media coverage on this rather small item.

BUCHANAN: Well, let's address a couple of them. As you know, as an ex-seminarian for nine years, the Church's teaching on homosexuality, on all sex outside of marriage has been fairly consistent for 2,000 years. I mean, why do the- does the gay community want the Church to change its basic teaching when, if the gay community practiced that teaching, we wouldn't have an AIDS problem in the first place? [CNN, Crossfire, 3/19/90, via Nexis]

Buchanan: “The Poor Homosexuals -- They Have Declared War Upon Nature And Now Nature Is Extracting An Awful Retribution.” Conservative columnist James Pinkerton wrote of a 1983 Buchanan column:

Both the ideological right and left were quick to seize upon the deadly disease to underscore contrapuntal arguments about everything from public health to personal morality. Yet, AIDS is ultimately not political; it is viral. It is subject to the laws of nature, not human society. And so, while AIDS may someday be cured, the Darwinian reality underscoring all natural phenomena will continue to flummox both liberals and conservatives.

At the onset of AIDS, when it seemed mostly a gay malady, some right-wingers could barely contain their glee. Columnist Pat Buchanan wrote in 1983: ''The poor homosexuals -- they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution.'' [Newsday, 6/7/01]

Buchanan: “The Holy Father Did Not Invent The Fact That Homosexuality Was An Intrinsic Disorder. It Is An Intrinsic Disorder.” From a 2005 MSNBC discussion about whether the Catholic Church should be discussing issues like gays:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Pat Buchanan, should the church -- should the church be doing that? Should the church the pope be doing that?

BUCHANAN: Well, the church and the Holy Father should be telling the truth about what is moral and what is an immoral life. And the church -- the Holy Father did not invent the fact that homosexuality was an intrinsic disorder.

It is an intrinsic disorder. And the church has taught this for 2,000 years. The pope simply expressed himself.

Now, with regard to the United States of America -- and we got all the condoms in the world available and very much AIDS was very much begun here in the homosexual community and among those who use illicit drugs through dirty needles.

Now, the point is and the point Bill Donahue was making is, if the folks in the bathhouses follow the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, they would not have the problem. Secondly, if they`re in the bathhouses, they`re probably not listening to the pope anyway. [MSNBC, Scarborough Country, 4/11/05, via Nexis]

Buchanan: “Homosexual Sex Is Unnatural And Immoral.” From MSNBC in 2003:

PAT BUCHANAN: This is Rick Santorum, senator from Pennsylvania, leader of the Republican Conference in the Senate, has said that if the Supreme Court, Bill, legalizes homosexual conduct, it knocks down the law there, it will just be like saying it is open season. You can -- for bigamy and for incest and for adultery. They're all basically the same.

I think he has got a basically sound statement. I think he ought to stick by it. As a practical matter, homosexual sex is unnatural and immoral. There's nothing wrong with saying so.

BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: I think it is outrageous. Didn't this guy learn anything from Trent Lott about keeping his big mouth shut? Let me tell you, there's a big difference. Bigamy is a crime. Polygamy is a crime. Incest is a crime. Homosexuality is not a crime.

BUCHANAN: It is now in Texas.

PRESS: You know what, Pat? Dick Cheney...

BUCHANAN: It is in Texas.

PRESS: Well, that's what is in front of the Supreme Court.

BUCHANAN: Well, that's what he saying. If you legalize one, you legalize them all. [MSNBC, Buchanan & Press, 4/22/03, via Nexis]

Buchanan Campaigned For President By Smearing LGBTs

2000 Campaign

Buchanan: “Homosexuality Is A Disorder”; “Homosexual” Or “Homosexual Rights” Advocates Won't Be In My Cabinet. The AP reported of Buchanan in 2000:

Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan ruled out picking a homosexual or gay rights advocate as a running mate or Cabinet officer, saying Thursday that such sexual orientation is “a disorder.”

“If someone is an out-of-the-closet homosexual, he's not going to be my running mate, and if someone advocates the homosexual rights agenda publicly they're not going to be in my Cabinet,” Buchanan said during a lunch with reporters. “I believe that homosexuality is a disorder. It's a wrong orientation.”

Such remarks about homosexuals combined with Buchanan's effort to force his way into the fall presidential debates are in part aimed at denting Republican George W. Bush's conservative base, which could end up hurting Bush in a close race against Democrat Al Gore.

But the debates also would shed light on the Buchanan he says the public hasn't seen the one who doesn't “believe in persecuting anybody” and would accept gays who live “a good life.”

“In order to de-demonize yourself for the whole American people, you've got to be seen directly by the American people,” he said. “And that's what makes the debates so important.” [Associated Press, 5/5/00]

Buchanan Claimed Gays “Have Used Religious Groups To Successfully Treat The Problem.” From Hearst Newspapers:

However, Buchanan reiterated his opposition to gay rights. And he said that Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the all-but-certain GOP presidential nominee, made a mistake when he met last month with members of the Log Cabin Republicans, a national gay organization. “He is signaling that the issue of gay rights is an open debate in the Republican Party,” Buchanan said.

Buchanan called homosexuality a “disorder” that can be handled with therapy. “I know that people have used religious groups to successfully help treat the problem,” he said. [Hearst Newspapers, 5/5/00]

1996 Campaign

Buchanan Says He Wouldn't Want A Qualified, Openly Gay Cabinet Member “To Reflect Discredit” On His Administration. From a CNN interview in February 1996:

FRANK SESNO: If you had a very qualified person for Secretary of Labor, let's say, and somebody came to you and said, 'Mr. Buchanan, we've just found out,' or, 'this person has just told us they're gay,' would they be disqualified from the job?

PATRICK BUCHANAN: If the guy is- Well, here's the thing. I've worked with people in the Nixon White House who were gay - none who were openly gay - but I worked with them who were gay. They were loyal, tough, they stood with Nixon to the end. They're good people in a lot of ways, and I would have no hesitation of having folks like that, but I don't believe their lifestyle should be such as to reflect discredit on an administration. In other words, Robert Achtenberg [sp], no.

FRANK SESNO: But, you would-

PATRICK BUCHANAN: I would not look- The FBI does those investigations, I don't do them as president.

FRANK SESNO: Pat Buchanan, thanks very much. [CNN, 2/19/96, via Nexis]

AP: “Buchanan's Fund-Raising Letters Are Bluntly Pitched To Those Who Fear Recognition For Gays.” From a February 1996 Associated Press article:

Pat Buchanan's fund-raising letters are bluntly pitched to those who fear recognition for gays, “renegade” federal judges, illegal immigrants - and government itself.

In one of his many direct-mail letters of this campaign, Buchanan sounded dire warnings for the Republican Party.

There's “a bloody assault” on the GOP's stand against abortion, and “liberals in our party are already demanding the addition of a homosexual rights plank in the next Republican platform,” the former commentator wrote three months ago.

That letter offered believers an opportunity to fill out a petition called the “1996 Republican Platform Demand” and send it in along with $ 10 or $ 15, of course.

Unlike many of the GOP presidential suitors who raise large sums of money at $ 1,000-a-plate dinners, Buchanan has relied mostly on a direct mail fund-raising operation that in years past helped raised huge sums of money for fellow conservatives like Oliver North.

Scott B. Mackenzie, Buchanan's treasurer, was out of town and unavailable for comment, the campaign said Sunday.

The Associated Press reviewed a dozen direct-mail letters sent out by Buchanan during this campaign. They included appeals to parents that they were losing control of their children's education to a liberal, intrusive government.

One letter decried “the social radicals and gay rights activists who wish to indoctrinate America's children in 'positive attitudes' toward homosexuality, using as propaganda tools, books for first-graders like 'Daddy's Roommate' and 'Heather Has Two Mommies.”' [Associated Press, 2/26/96]

1992 Campaign

Buchanan Calls AIDS “Nature's Retribution” Against Gays. The San Francisco Chronicle reported of Buchanan:

Buchanan is fighting to keep his challenge to President Bush alive with a strong showing in Georgia, which he calls ''the New Hampshire of the South,'' by pushing political hot buttons and denouncing the gay lifestyle, pornography and abortion with fiery rhetoric and newly released political ads.

''AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature in many ways. I think the promiscuous homosexual lifestyle is not only wrong, but it is medically ruinous. And I think it is socially destructive,'' Buchanan told the talk radio audience, as he warmed to a question about AIDS.

''If you go out to San Francisco, . . . it's not only AIDS that's pandemic, it's hepatitis and other diseases. It's hard to argue this is not a violation of human nature.'' [San Francisco Chronicle, 2/28/92]

Buchanan Ad In 1992: Paired With “Scenes Of Undressed Gay Black Men,” Ad Denounced “So-called Art [That Has] Glorified Homosexuality.” The AP reported of a campaign ad Buchanan ran against George H.W. Bush in 1992:

Text: "In the last 3 years the Bush administration has invested our tax dollars in pornographic and blasphemous art too shocking to show.

This so-called art has glorified homosexuality, exploited children and perverted the image of Jesus Christ. Even after good people protested, Bush continued to fund this kind of art. Send Bush a message. We need a leader who will fight for what WE believe in. Vote Pat Buchanan for president."

Key Images:

Scenes of undressed gay black men from a Public Broadcasting System documentary “Tongues Untied” that was partially subsidized by the National Endowment of the Arts.

Goals: To portray Bush as favoring public funding of art that Buchanan claims offends conservative values.

Analysis: Buchanan has made the National Endowment of the Arts a major target as he campaigns in the conservative South, calling it the “upholstered playpen of the eastern liberal establishment.” He has taken credit for the forced resignation last week of John Frohnmayer as Bush's NEA director. However, the ad declares that Bush “continued to fund this kind of art,” which is inaccurate since funding comes from Congress not the White House. Buchanan has said that, as president, the organization would be “shut down, padlocked and fumigated.” [Associated Press, 2/27/92, via Nexis]

LA Times: Buchanan Sought “To Exploit More Regional Forms Of Conservative Dissatisfaction” By Attacking Gays. The Times reported of Buchanan's Republican primary strategy:

So now, after visits to four other Southern states in the last week, Buchanan is back in Georgia, seeking to exploit more regional forms of conservative dissatisfaction by attacking racial quotas, homosexual art and, as he put it in one speech, Republican “Yankee wimps” in Washington.

Typifying his new approach is a TV ad his campaign unveiled Wednesday that features scenes from a PBS documentary in which gay black men are in various stages of undress. The ad blasts Bush for allowing federal funding of the program and other forms “of so-called art.”

Continuing his new focus on social issues, Buchanan called AIDS “nature's form of retribution” against homosexuals during a radio talk show on Thursday.

[...]

“In New Hampshire, the economy was the only thing voters were interested in,” the Buchanan adviser said. “In the South, the quota issue and the emphasis on traditional morality clearly go over better.”

Buchanan's current strategy is straightforward: He wants the South to rise again by supporting him against Bush in Tuesday's Georgia primary. And he is hoping a strong showing will serve as a springboard for the Super Tuesday primaries on March 10, when voters in seven Southern or border states go to the polls. [Los Angeles Times, 2/28/92]

Buchanan: “I Do Not Take Back One Word” Of Calling Gays “Sodomites” And Claiming AIDS Is Nature's Revenge. From a CNN interview in February 1992:

ELEANOR CLIFT: Pat, as a commentator, you've made caustic remarks about a number of groups. For example, you've called gays sodomites and suggested that AIDS is nature's revenge. Now that you're running for president of all the people, do you regret those kinds of remarks?

Mr. BUCHANAN: Of course not. I was a good commentator, Eleanor, and I wrote good columns and that's why I'm being quoted, I think, long, long after those columns have been forgotten and now being dredged up. With regard to AIDS, anybody that has AIDS ought to be treated the same way as someone who has cancer or a killing cancer, with care and compassion. But with regard to this practice of promiscuous homosexuality, I will tell you flat-out, it is my deep-felt belief that it is morally wrong, that it is socially ruinous, that it is medically destructive, and I do not take back one word of that statement. [CNN, 2/23/92, via Nexis]

In Primetime Convention Speech, Buchanan Denounced “Homosexual Rights.” In what was dubbed his “culture war” speech, Buchanan -- after he stopped his presidential campaign -- lambasted “homosexual rights” as something the country could not afford:

BUCHANAN: The agenda that Clinton and Clinton would impose on America: abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units. That's change, all right, but that's not the kind of change America needs, it's not the kind of change America wants, and it's not the kind of change we can abide in a nation we still call God's country. [Republican National Convention, 8/17/92]

For more on the bigotry of Pat Buchanan, SEE HERE.