Spending Power to Spare
Even real estate is not immune. “When real estate companies realized that the gay consumer had disposable income, that was when things started to change,” said Adam Thompson, managing broker at Rainbow Realty Corporation in Elmhurst, Illinois, which specializes in working with gay clients. In fact, the gay community has substantial power in terms of disposable income when compared to other minority groups. “The projected spending power of the gay and lesbian segment of the population — about 15 million people — for 2003 is $485 billion,” said Stephanie Blackwood, a New York marketing executive. “That's compared to the Hispanic segment, which is $653 billion, but gays and lesbians are nearly a third the size of the Hispanic segment.”
As one reporter keenly remarked about the gay rights clamor in the industry, “in real estate, though, the issue of gay rights is more akin to an age-old business practice: follow the money.”
That same corporate philosophy is found in the abortion and contraception industries. Pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars on contraceptive pills and devices at the expense of broken marriages, broken lives, and, with the advent of abortifacient pills, the broken bodies of dead women.
Follow the Money
Closer to home in North America, the current debates raging around sexuality are predicated on the so-called “right to privacy” which was further advanced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. The “right to privacy” certainly had an unassuming and harmless ring to it outside of the abortion controversy, but as we are now discovering, it is becoming quite universally ferocious and lethal. Indeed, the “right to privacy” has become a toxic euphemism for an imposed sexual anarchy — an anarchy which is leading to the demand for submission to and acceptance of debased sexual behavior. Those who resist will face the consequences.
While the clamor for human rights and imposition of the gay and pro-abort lifestyle will no doubt continue, it is important to understand that the real power and establishment of our cultural denouement does not rest with a fervent yet misguided philosophy. The battle in the culture of death is not really about human rights or morality or even religion.
It is about money and profit.
It is about the corporate pimps who profit from the promotion of the gay lifestyle at the expense of not only society at large but the gay community in particular. The great irony in this façade is that while the gay agenda tries to push the human rights card to gain legitimacy, “straight” sex hustlers are making a mint from their target market while concurrently watching AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases decimate a whole segment of society. They are unconcerned about gays and human rights or even human beings. They want gay money, and they’re willing to sacrifice their patrons in order to get to it. Here is a testimony of a formerly active gay man who confirms this indictment:
Let me begin with a few thoughts on the gay world, one of the progressive leftwing’s hobbyhorses, and something I know a great deal about. The gay world is something I once energetically and enthusiastically supported and even helped to build…. A movement that once served to emancipate people has now turned on its own, and through a combination of bald-faced hypocrisy and utter denial is literally killing hundreds of thousands. The AIDS crisis, just in North America alone, has now killed over a half-million gays. That's more than the total number of American GIs killed in all of WWII, all theaters combined. In fact, the crisis is one of almost genocidal proportions.
Of the 20 or so people who once formed my entourage back in the early 80s 15 have died. And the statistics bear this out: gays have shorter life spans than their straight counterparts, they have higher rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide and venereal disease. That's the real, honest story of the gay world, a story few care to recount. Now what is the reaction of gay advocacy groups, some of whom I used to work for, when faced with these facts? Their reaction is one of intense hostility and an even more intense denial. Let me explain why this is so.
The gay community is a very wealthy constituency. We've got money to burn and whole industries have grown up around us because there are just gazillions of dollars up for grabs. But how does one market to gays? The answer is easy: one attaches “sex” to every product and service aimed at the community. Trust me on this one; the gay world is absolutely inundated with sex. Bars, restaurants, nightclubs, saunas, pubs, taverns — all are marketed through sex. Now if this gigantic economic machinery is to continue turning, sex has to be promoted and even exalted. It’s crucial, if profits are to be maximized, to never allow people to question or to even debate the role of sex in the gay community.
It is not difficult to connect the dots mapped out by this testimony, and see that it does indeed draw a fairly accurate picture of the gay sexual revolution. Disney, for instance, has been front and center in cashing in on “gay rights” with their infamous “Gay Days.” Does anyone really believe that Disney is concerned with “human rights” of gays? Disney is a multi-billion dollar business which caters to constituencies that have larger disposable income. One of those constituencies is gay couples who typically are well educated, well paid, and have no children. In fact, almost every industry whose products rely on targeting persons with high disposal income would be remiss, from a financial point of view, to ignore the gay community. That is why over the past decade, beer companies, the entertainment world, clothing companies, and other industries have developed whole divisions with the express purpose of raking in gay money.
Abortion Clinics Oil the Wheels of Congress
Just recently a former Republican counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Manuel Miranda, related how the recent filibustering by Democratic Senators to disrupt Presidential judicial nominations was not about a euphemistic “woman’s right to choose” at all. It was all about money and abortion profits:
“The axis of profits that undergirds the fight in the Judiciary Committee is the axis between trial lawyers — who want particular types of judges who rule in particular ways on their cases — and, not the 'abortion rights' lobby, but the abortion clinics lobby. “The 'abortion rights' lobby is just a front for something much worse, which is the abortion clinics' lobby, represented by the National Abortion Federation.”
According to Miranda, abortion clinics make $1,000 profit for every abortion they perform so the commonly-believed idea that there is no “big money” behind the Democrat motivation is a misconception: “The abortion clinics' lobby is an industry as large as any industry that lobbies in Washington…the enormity of the money that is behind the Democratic push is astounding and shocking.”
An evil culture cannot grow unless there are major players making a profit off of it. Money and power fuel a wicked culture. The majority of corporations who enter into the arena of “human rights” do so because it serves their bottom line. And this is aptly demonstrated in the issues of gay and abortion “rights.” Successful businesses use popular human rights campaigns to serve their corporate interest, but in this case, what is “good for business” destroys their clients’ lives. Little wonder that St. Paul lists the greedy right along with the immoral among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God (cf. 1 Cor 6: 9, 10).
(John Pacheco is a Financial Analyst and a Catholic apologist who writes from Ottawa, Canada, where he lives with his wife and three daughters. He is the founder and editor of Catholic-Legate.com, a Canadian lay apostolate of Catholic apologetics.)
