By Robert H. Knight, Director of Cultural Studies at the Family Research council in Washington, D.C.

March 1995 – The Advocate front cover of December 13, 1994, asks “Is God Gay?” and depicts Jesus Christ in garish colors as a homosexual, complete with sexual devices around his neck and obscene body-part imagery around and on Him.

Inside the magazine is an even more obscene portrayal: a full-color, full-page picture that includes realistic renderings of male and female genitalia. It accompanies a disingenuous article about the merits of the homosexual-oriented Metropolitan Community Church.

One cannot ever justifiably desecrate the image of God Himself for any reason, much less to make a political point. Not to mention days before one of the most sacred days on the Christian calendar. One cannot do this and claim to be seeking mere “tolerance’’ for all.

The Advocate is not a “fringe” homosexual publication. It is the largest and most respected “mainstream” homosexual periodical in America. However, The Advocate is typical in that, like other  homosexual publications, it markets pornography and sexually explicit materials and personal ads.

The Reisman and Johnson Report, a new study by Drs. Judith Reisman and Charles Johnson subtitled “Partner Solicitation Characteristics as an Expression of Male Sexual Orientation,” compares five years’ worth of personal ads in The Advocate with male heterosexual personal ads in The Washingtonian, a coffee table monthly published in the nation’s capital.

The authors find that 98% of Advocate clients seek casual sex, often through prostitution. By contrast, 87% of Washingtonian clients seek long-term fidelity. A typical Washingtonian ad stresses character traits, while a typical Advocate ad stresses size of body parts, adeptness at certain sexual acts, and such erotica as sadomasochism and fetishes.

Reisman and Johnson conclude, “There is no measured commonality of outcome, purpose, or process between the heterosexual population and the homosexual population under study.”

The report also documents that all homosexual publications contain pornography material, but few “mainstream” publications do so. If anyone is “obsessed,” with the issue of homosexuality, it is male homosexuals seeking lust, not love.

As offensive as The Advocate cover image is to all believing Christians, the choice of a crucifix is particularly odious to Catholics. Homosexual activists believe that if they can get Rome to abandon Biblical teaching on homosexuality, then the rest of the Christian world would eventually follow.

It is not overstatement to observe that The Advocate’s cover image constitutes one of the ugliest attacks on religious freedom in this nation’s history, right up there with Andres Serrano’s photo of a crucifix in urine. America’s pluralism has been protected not so much by abstract law such as the First Amendment, as important as that is, but by a mutual respect for the beliefs of others that preempts attacks like the one in The Advocate.

Some people are struggling with uncertain gender identity and others have given up hope of becoming normal and have openly identified with homosexuality. As individuals, these people are in need of compassion and care, and churches should be reaching out to those who are sexually wounded and who seek the same salvation that all of us, as sinners, are offered. But homosexual activism must be opposed in all its forms, because it is not about tolerance and compassion. It is about compelling others, by government force if necessary, to renounce their most deeply held beliefs. Anyone with any doubts about that should ask the Boy Scouts, who are under attack by homosexual activists in courts all over the country.

As the flagship publication of the homosexual rights movement, The Advocate has unmasked the true agenda of homosexual activists, who have been very careful to hide their actual behaviors by persuading the media to focus only on abstract arguments about civil rights.

The object is to use the media and government power to force us to declare homosexuality as normal and healthy and to live as if traditional moral tenets are now somehow inapplicable or even criminal in their public expression.

In choosing an image that expresses contempt for Christians and for Christ Himself, The Advocate reveals the foundation of homosexual activism: hatred of social norms and hatred of God Himself. After all, it is His moral law that they are trying unsuccessfully to overthrow, and it is He with whom they ultimately have an argument. But they are not behaving very well in that quest.

Many – not all – homosexual activists have shown little regard for civility. Some have marched naked in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York; others have invaded the cathedral to shout obscenities and throw the communion Host on the floor. Still others have attacked opponents by: throwing condoms at parishioners in a Colorado church; trashing the offices of pro-family organizations and at least one ex-gay therapist in California; physically assaulting a newspaper editor for declining to use the word “gay”; attempting to criminalize reparative ex-gay therapy; presenting severely flawed genetic and parenthood studies by homosexual researchers as undisputed “fact’’ and working to suppress other points of view; working to deny parents the means to shield their children from pro-homosexual propaganda in government schools; shouting down, interrupting and otherwise suppressing opponents on television talk shows and in public forums; using the media to denounce as “bigots and haters” any person who opposes or even questions any part of the homosexual agenda; instituting unprecedented, restrictive policies on the medical profession with regard to AIDS; and supporting abortion, pornography and other forces that are tearing apart the traditional family structure.

The Advocate has offered up an insult to Christians, but it also has given us a gift—the gift of truth. No one else could have done so much to reveal the true aims of the homosexual rights movement in a single image.

The rest of the credit goes to Our Lord Himself. Just as Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified 2,000 years ago for our sake, He continues to allow His own crucifixion through shameful imagery in order to shed light on the struggle between light and darkness. God’s love knows no bounds. Should those responsible for this crime against Him repent, He has already forgiven them as He has any sinner who has confessed his sins. Homosexuals are in bondage to a particularly destructive form of sin. But thousands have been brought to wholeness through ex-gay ministries. Those struggling with homosexuality do not need a nonexistent exemption of sin, but rather our prayers that they overcome that sin by kneeling before their Maker – the only posture by which any of us may enter that blessed Door.