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Robert H. Knight (born April 23, 1951) [1] is an American conservative writer and activist. He was a draftsman of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which barred federal recognition of same-sex marriage. DOMA was invalidated by the Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor (2013). [2] He is senior fellow of the American Civil Rights Union and a regular columnist for The Washington Times . [3] He was senior writer for Coral Ridge Ministries (now D. James Kennedy Ministries) and director of the Culture and Media Institute, a project founded in 2006 by the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia. [4] Knight has also served as director of the Culture & Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America. [2]
Knight worked as an editor and writer for the Los Angeles Times and was a 1989–1990 media fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He was a senior fellow for cultural policy studies at The Heritage Foundation before becoming director of cultural studies at the Family Research Council. [5]
Knight is a social conservative. [6] He is an outspoken opponent on same-sex marriage and civil partnerships and has written prolifically on that topic. He believes that recognizing same-sex couples "will destroy marriage" [7] and "would threaten families, children, and ultimately civilization." [8] In 1995, Knight accused the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of gay Republicans, of being a "small group trying to harness government power to force affirmation of unhealthy, immoral and destructive behavior." [6] Knight has stated: "The end goal of gay activism is the criminalization of Christianity" and has accused gays of advocating pedophilia and attempting to recruit youth. [9] He has referred to abortion, pornography, and gay rights as part of an "iron triangle." [9] In the aftermath of the 1998 torture and murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student, Knight denounced the murder but opposed proposals to extend hate crime laws, [10] believing them to be "the precursor toward thought crimes." [9]
In a 1995 interview, Knight asserted that, "Lesbianism is the animating principle of feminism. Because feminism, at the core, is at war with motherhood, femininity, family, and God. And lesbians are at war with all these things." [11]
Knight is on the advisory board of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, which promotes abstinence-only sex education. [12]
His 2018 manifesto, A Nation Worth Fighting For: 10 Steps to Restore Freedom, calls upon Evangelical Christians to "go on offense against the darkness, not cower in our church buildings, hoping it will go away." [13]
He has a B.S. in 1973 and M.S. in 1975 in political science from American University in Washington, D.C. [3] In 1981, he married his wife Barbara, with whom he now lives in the Washington, D.C. area. [2]
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Within Christianity, there are a variety of views on sexual orientation and homosexuality. The view that various Bible passages speak of homosexuality as immoral or sinful emerged in the first millennium AD, and have since become entrenched in many Christian denominations through church doctrine and the wording of various translations of the Bible.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements are social movements that advocate for LGBT people in society. Although there is not a primary or an overarching central organization that represents all LGBT people and their interests, numerous LGBT rights organizations are active worldwide. The first organization to promote LGBT rights was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, founded in 1897 in Berlin.
James Clayton Dobson Jr. (born April 21, 1936) is an American evangelical Christian author, psychologist, and founder of Focus on the Family (FotF), which he led from 1977 until 2010. In the 1980s he was ranked as one of the most influential spokesmen for conservative social positions in American public life. Although never an ordained minister, he was called "the nation's most influential evangelical leader" by The New York Times while Slate portrayed him as a successor to evangelical leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
The Family Research Council (FRC) is an American evangelical activist group and think-tank with an affiliated lobbying organization. FRC promotes what it considers to be family values. It opposes and lobbies against: access to pornography, embryonic stem-cell research, abortion, divorce, and LGBT rights—such as anti-discrimination laws, same-sex marriage, same-sex civil unions, and LGBT adoption. The FRC has been criticized by media sources and professional organizations such as the American Sociological Association for using "anti-gay pseudoscience" to falsely conflate homosexuality and pedophilia, and falsely to claim that the children of same-sex parents suffer from more mental health problems.
Societal attitudes toward homosexuality vary greatly across different cultures and historical periods, as do attitudes toward sexual desire, activity and relationships in general. All cultures have their own values regarding appropriate and inappropriate sexuality; some sanction same-sex love and sexuality, while others may disapprove of such activities in part. As with heterosexual behaviour, different sets of prescriptions and proscriptions may be given to individuals according to their gender, age, social status or social class.
Former Republican U.S. Senator and 2012 and 2016 U.S. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is opposed to homosexuality, seeing it as antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family. Santorum does not believe the right to privacy under the United States Constitution covers sexual acts, and criticized the US Supreme Court ruling in the case of Lawrence v. Texas that ruled to the contrary. Santorum has stated that the U.S. military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, which ended in 2011, should be reinstated and has voiced his opposition to same-sex parenting. Santorum's views provoked criticism from Democratic politicians and other groups, but have been supported by some conservative Christians.
LGBT rights opposition is the opposition to legal rights, proposed or enacted, for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Laws that LGBT rights opponents may be opposed to include civil unions or partnerships, LGBT parenting and adoption, military service, access to assisted reproductive technology, and access to sex reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy for transgender individuals.
"Gay agenda" or "homosexual agenda" is a term used by sectors of the Christian religious right as a disparaging way to describe the advocacy of cultural acceptance and normalization of non-heterosexual sexual orientations and relationships. The term originated among social conservatives in the United States and has been adopted in nations with active anti-LGBT movements such as Hungary and Uganda.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights in the United States rank among the most advanced in the world, with public opinion and jurisprudence changing significantly since the late 1980s.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) rights in Cuba significantly advanced in the 21st century. Following the 2022 Cuban Family Code referendum, there is legal recognition of the right to marriage, unions between people of the same sex, same-sex adoption and non-commercial surrogacy as part of one of the most progressive Family Codes in Latin America. Until the 1990s, the LGBT community was marginalized on the basis of heteronormativity, traditional gender roles, politics and strict criteria for moralism. It was not until the 21st century that the attitudes and acceptance towards LGBT people changed to be more tolerant.
Letha Dawson Scanzoni is an American independent scholar, writer, and freelance editor. She has authored or coauthored nine books, the most well-known of which are All We're Meant to Be and Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? Scanzoni specializes in the intersection between religion and social issues.
This article addresses the history of lesbianism in the United States. Unless otherwise noted, the members of same-sex female couples discussed here are not known to be lesbian, but they are mentioned as part of discussing the practice of lesbianism—that is, same-sex female sexual and romantic behavior.
John Frank Corvino is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy and the dean of the Honors College at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan and the author of several books, with a focus on the morality of homosexuality. Corvino is sometimes referred to as "The Gay Moralist", a sobriquet he assumed while writing a column of the same name.
A same-sex relationship is a romantic or sexual relationship between people of the same sex. Same-sex marriage refers to the institutionalized recognition of such relationships in the form of a marriage; civil unions may exist in countries where same-sex marriage does not.
Many views are held or have been expressed by religious organisation in relation to same-sex marriage. Arguments both in favor of and in opposition to same-sex marriage are often made on religious grounds and/or formulated in terms of religious doctrine. Although many of the world's religions are opposed to same-sex marriage, the number of religious denominations that are conducting same-sex marriages have been increasing since 2010. Religious views on same-sex marriage are closely related to religious views on homosexuality.
The ordination of lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) clergy who are open about their sexuality or gender identity; are sexually active if lesbian, gay, or bisexual; or are in committed same-sex relationships is a debated practice within some contemporary Christian denominations.
LGBT conservatism refers to LGBT individuals with conservative political views. It is an umbrella term used for what is bifurcated into two specific sub-categories, each with its own term and meaning. The first sub-categorical term, Pre-Stonewall LGBT Conservatism, refers to LGBT individuals embracing and promoting the ideology of a traditional (anti-gay) conservatism in either a general or specifically-LGBT social context or environment. The second sub-categorical term, Post-Stonewall LGBT Conservatism, refers to self-affirming LGBT persons with fiscally, culturally, and politically conservative views. These post-Stonewall conservatives' social views, though generally conservative too, at the same time reflect a self-determination-stemmed and more recent socio-historical "gay-affirmation" on issues like marriage equality for same-sex couples, gay family recognition, civic equality generally for LGBT people in society, and also a positive role for (gay-affirming) religion in LGBT life, though there is not complete unanimity of opinion among them on all issues, especially those regarding the dynamics and politics of the closet and "identity management," and various legal and political issues The first term can include LGBT people who are actually opposed to same-sex marriage or other LGBTQ rights while the second term, contrastingly, usually refers to self-affirming gay people who unequivocally favor marriage as a legal institution for both heterosexuals and gays and who simultaneously prefer economic and political conservatism more generally. The number of self-affirming LGBT advocates for conservative ideas and policies became more apparent only after the advent of the modern LGBT civil rights movement in the 1970s even as many gay conservatives then did remain closeted in areas where socially conservative politicians led the most organized opposition to LGBT rights. The Realpolitik and ideology situations for LGBT conservatives today vary by their own self-definition, and each country's sociopolitical, cultural, and legal LGBT rights landscape.
In the United States, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people have a long history, including vibrant subcultures and advocacy battles for social and religious acceptance and legal rights.
LGBT history in the United States spans the contributions and struggles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, as well as the LGBT social movements they have built.
