Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 2005 | Page 91

America’s New McCarthyism 87 After a few hours of reading Marriage: Studies in Emotional Conflict and Growth [edited by Lily Pincus; Methuen, 1960] it becomes obvious that the only really effective way of putting down homosexuality [as a perceived aberration] is marriage. (69) Nevertheless, despite medical knowledge and social history, the Christian Right (particularly Louis Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition—a “grassroots” Christian lobbying group and media empire that claims to be “empowering people of faith through knowledge”) have resurrected the stereotype of gay men as crazed child molesters recruiting America’s youth and used it in their campaign to deny gay Americans equal rights, particularly the civil right to enter into the civil union called “marriage.” On July 31,2004, TVC’s web site featured their “Top Ten Reports”: 1. 2. 3. Homosexuals Recruit Public School Children Homosexuality 101: A Primer Homosexual Propaganda Campaign Based on Hitler’s ‘Big Lie’ Technique 4. A Gender Identity Disorder Goes Mainstream 5. Homosexual Behavior Fuels AIDS and STD Epidemic 6. Homosexual Sex = Death from HIV Infection 7. Traditional Values Coalition Exposes Homosexual Agenda 8. Judicial Tyranny 9. Homosexual Child Molesters 10. Federal AIDS Dollars Fund Homosexual Proms and Fisting Seminars What’s clear from this malodorous list of titles is TVC’s obsession with using stereotypes, myths and the distortions they demand in order to demean, smear, and stigmatize in any way possible gay and lesbian Americans. The goal is also self-evident: deny those American citizens anything resembling equal civil rights or equal protection under the law. Combined, those means and that end define McCarthyism. The titles and the often hysterical (determined by the number and frequency of multiple exclamation points used) articles they represent illuminate the threadbare tapestry of stereotypes and myths TVC uses in its assaults. Specifically, they deploy the recruiting molester stereotype fused with the stereotype of gay people as nothing more than HTV incubators waiting to strike and the myth that inevitably “Homosexual Sex = Death from HIV Infection,” all topped off with an assault on “judicial tyranny” packaged with “Traditional Values Coalition Exposes” self-aggrandizing ego, and wrapped up in the fanciful notion that homosexuals are mentally ill and can be “cured.”