The Homosexual Network: Private Lives and Public Policy by Enrique T. Rueda (Devin Adair, 1982, 680 pp.)
by Dr. Ralph Blair
This book is a catalog of what a Right-wing Roman Catholic priest says are the sins of others. The “others” are homosexuals and “liberal” allies, i.e., “The Homosexual Subculture”. To Rueda, it’s a monolith into which he places all homosexuality. Not that there is no sin in the so-called homosexual “Subculture”, but what Rueda does here is like picturing every form of heterosexual abuse as typical of all heterosexuality. To Rueda, symbols of these self-accepting gays are dog collars, kiddie-porn, dolls with “fully stimulated genitals”, and gay tie tacks and brooches. He says: “The baths are probably the single most typical establishment of the homosexual subculture”. But he lists only 168 baths which we are to believe accommodate America’s millions of homosexuals. According to Rueda, acceptance of one’s homosexuality requires “centering one’s life on one’s sexual peculiarities” and thus it is no wonder that he thinks that only “some” homosexuals “hold jobs and pay taxes”. He says that, to decry homophobia is to “promote the value of homosexuality” – thus imputing promotion of homosexuality to antigay evangelicals who denounce homophobia as a sin. Along with his ‘50s and ‘60s predecessors, he believes “civil rights” is a code word for governmental favoritism. He faults gay people for changing word meanings but he himself does so: e.g., “holy union” and “commitment” for gay couples, he says, mean only “consistent sexual intercourse” which is “a form of cancer” and, he says, “love” between gay people means merely “sexual favors”. He tries to scare his readers into thinking that sexually transmitted diseases in “the homosexual community can be accurately described as a reservoir of infection for the rest of society”. Then, ironically, he objects to government funding of gay VD treatment centers. Using discredited reports, he says “ex-gay” testimonies “abound”, but he says the question as to whether anybody really changes to heterosexuality is not the issue. He slanders by asserting: “Prostitution [is] an integral part of the homosexual subculture”. He unfairly introduces a man on the fringe of an activist movement for pederasty, as one who “proclaims the ultimate aim of the homosexual movement: … ‘freedom of sexual expression for young people and children’.” Yet Rueda’s own footnote shows that his spokesman “for” the gay movement made his statement as an appeal from within his own tiny pederast group to the gay movement because it overwhelmingly opposes his pederast agenda. Surprisingly, Rueda asserts that he does “not advocate anything”, though he admits that he “may appear as biased to others” and that this is not “a negative feature”. But, along the lines of double standard, he also says that, “One can easily call into question the use of Dr. Ralph Blair, president of the prohomosexual group, Evangelicals Concerned, as author of the chapter on homosexuality for an new medical textbook”. Rueda says he is not attacking persons as such, but he argues that the “better suited” word for them is “queer”, a word he acknowledges to be “a derogatory term”.
Right-wing reviewers have made much of Rueda’s outlandish figure of $245,625,000 as funding the gay movement. But Rueda never clearly explains how he arrived at the figure and admits that it is based on “assumption” and “is an approximation at best”. Some “approximation”! Contrasted with the mere $213,000,000 combined budget of the ministries of Falwell, Roberts, Graham, The 700 Club and PTL combined, one must conclude that gay dollars don’t go as far as straight dollars. Since most gay groups are college student groups, counterculture groups or struggling little religious caucuses, it’s ludicrous for Rueda to claim that the average “small” gay organization budget is $20,000 a year. (Most gay groups have no paid staff. The CPA audit of the nation’s major gay rights organization – The National Gay Task Force – shows its budget for the year before Rueda’s copyright date was only $37,895.) Rueda inflates his “approximation” by including government grants for placement of gay Cuban refugees (Rueda is a Cuban refugee), CETA funds for gay VD and alcohol abuse counseling, scholarly research, and IRS tax exemption benefit. Ignoring the fact that gays – many of them single – pay a high share of taxes, he seems to favor taxation without representation.
Rueda’s book, funded by a New Right foundation, is such a caldron of misinformation, innuendo and doubletalk that I might not have reviewed it but for Harold Lindsell’s (editor emeritus of Christianity Today) repeatedly urging me to do so, saying that “unless it can be shown to be in error it is devastating”. But while Lindsell and other Rightists rally around Rueda, they should note that they too are victims of his sloppy work. Writing on the “Relationships Between Religious Organizations and the Homosexual Movement”, Rueda labels an alliance that includes The National Association of Evangelicals as a “liberal coalition” that “support[s] the homosexual movement” and is “incompatible with traditional Christian principles”. He suggests that other “leftist” groups are Bread for the World, Sojourners Fellowship and The Salvation Army!
Long ago, Luther said: “The widespread vice of slandering and of harping on the sins of others comes close to being the most miserable sin on earth”. Following Paul, he saw that, “If I act rashly, judging and passing sentence … I fall into a sin that is greater than [my neighbor’s]”. Incidentally, Rueda does cite “the temptation to be judgmental” (Rom 2:1) and Jesus’ statements about the “speck in one’s neighbor’s eye and the plank in one’s own” (Matt 7:3-5). He does so as a warning to those who might hold it against the Roman church for harboring the “pro-gay” individuals and groups he is condemning.