IF THERE'S ONE ARTICLE OF FAITH THE RELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT CAN AGREE ON WHEN IT COMES TO HOMSEXUALITY, it's that such is "unnatural," "perverted," "sexually deviant" and "undermines the morals and decency of children and the vulnerable."

On the issue of homosexuality posing moral harm to children, consider the following recent item off People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch blog:

The governor of Texas has written a new book about the Boy Scouts, but parents expecting a positive, civic-minded story about personal development will be disappointed: instead, Rick Perry has apparently taken up a defense of the youth organization's anti-gay policy.

Perry, like the Scouts, has made banning gays and atheists the Maginot Line of what he calls the "culture war" against the "virus of secularism." In a condensed interview with the New York Times Magazine's Deborah Solomon, the governor lays out his explanation of why excluding gays is so important to scouting:

Let's talk about your new book, "On My Honor," which draws on your experience as an Eagle Scout and champions the values of the Boy Scouts of America, to whom you are donating your royalties. Yes, to their legal-defense fund.

Which has been fighting the A.C.L.U., to keep gays out of the scouts. Why do you see that as a worthy cause? I am pretty clear about this one. Scouting ought to be about building character, not about sex. Period. Precious few parents enroll their boys in the Scouts to get a crash course in sexual orientation.

Why do you think a homosexual would be more likely to bring the subject of sex into a conversation than a heterosexual? Well, the ban in scouting applies to scout leaders. When you have a clearly open homosexual scout leader, the scouts are going to talk about it. And they're not there to learn about that. They're there to learn about what it means to be loyal and trustworthy and thrifty.

But don't you think that homosexuals might also be interested in being loyal and thrifty? The argument that gets made is that homosexuality is about sex. Do you agree?

No. Well, then why don't they call it something else?

If scouting is "not about sex," then why must the group interrogate its participants' sexuality? If someone is gay, says the governor, then everything they do is sexual.

UPDATE (2/27/08): Boy Scouts of American spokesman Bob Bork, Jr. (son of the rejected Supreme Court nominee) praises Perry and echoes the same paradoxical logic:

"Since its inception in 1910, the Boy Scouts has believed that open homosexuality is inconsistent with the values it wants to communicate through its leaders," Bork notes. "Scouting parents and sponsoring organizations share that belief--and the Boy Scouts of America has a constitutional right to provide a youth organization for families who share those values."…

Scouting is about camping out and having fun, says Bork, and not the appropriate place to delve into the issue of sexuality.

But then again, on the other hand, there's always the possibility that homosexuals may first become aware of their "deviance" in the Boy Scouts; has Governor Perry and the Boy Scouts' defenders ever considered that possibility?

And let's not forget where Nazi Germany required membership in the Hitler Jugend (HJ; "Hitler Youth") among all youth in the name of "character development" serving the Nazi regime, the "Thousand-Year Reich" and the "Aryan Master Race"--even if it meant narking on their parents and closest friends; in Nazi thought, children were essentially State property as can be used @ the State's will and for the State's ends and purposes.

Including participation in what were basically deliberate orgies involving Bund Deutscher Madel (BDM; "League of German Maidens") units under the guise of "campouts" for the Greater Glory of Germany and the Master Race. Unprotected. And with all involved not expected to have even a basic knowledge of the "facts of life," instead expected to "serve their national and racial duty," no questions asked.

And with the ensuing births regarded as "legitimate," marriage being seen in Nazi thought as among "outdated and antiquated concepts***endangering the Nazi agenda" of "racially pure" Germans reclaiming Germany, and taking perverse pride in same--only to have such offspring (eventually becoming known as "Lebensborn children," as in the Nazi regime's initiative to increase both quality and quantity of a "racially pure" stock as would carry forward Hitler's agenda and teachings) face difficult lives in postwar Europe, what with authorities in affected areas not recognising Nazi-issued birth certificates as legitimate records, eventually growing up in orphanages and foster care and all the more unable to find work because of the birth records being (officially) less than credible ... in turn winding up on State welfare and more than likely becoming alcoholics or emotionally unstable.

In fact, an especial area of attention and concern in postwar de-Nazification campaigns by the Four Allied Powers occupying Germany (the United States, Great Britain, France and the then-Soviet Union) was children, especially such who were in the HJ and BDM and were, in essence, brainwashed into blindly accepting the Nazi agenda without question or reservation through these youth programmes. (Baldur von Schirach, who led the HJ, was named as a co-defendent in the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials; found guilty of Crimes Against Humanity, he would be sentenced to 15 years in prison.)

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WHICH, IN ANY CASE, BEGS THE ORIGINAL QUESTION of whether factual evidence exists (as opposed to highly-anecdotal "friend-of-a-friend" stories) of children who, in having contacts with homosexuals in schools and youth organisations, wound up becoming homosexuals themselves by "picking up homosexual germs" (cf. the "schizophrenic germs" scare story common for years against the mentally- and emotionally-ill) "unwittingly."

Let alone the Religiopolitical Right's homophobic department reviving the Nazi regime's mandate that homosexuals be required, "for easier identification" among the public, to wear the pink triangle as a badge of shame and revulsion (cf. the yellow Star of David which Jews were required by the Nazis to wear--again, "for easier identification" among the public), in effect setting up homosexuals for sadistic rozzrezzing and tolchocking and generally sadisto abuse--with those involved receiving leniency all the while.

No wonder the Christian Right wants their children homeschooled, with ensuing and enforced social isolation in the process....