Vice President Al Gore stepped up the national dialogue over civil rights protection for homosexuals in a November news conference, saying God creates homosexuals and that God is grieved at their mistreatment.
Meeting with local reporters in his home state of Tennessee, Gore was asked about comments a month earlier in Beverly Hills, Calif., in which he praised Hollywood producers for forcing Americans to "look at sexual orientation in a more open light" with openly homosexual television characters.
God would have never made homosexuals if He knew they would be mistreated, Gore said, according to The (Nashville) Tennessean Nov. 16.
"I do not believe that God intended them to suffer persecution and discrimination throughout their lives here on earth. I do not believe God would have created them as He has and intend for them to be mistreated," Gore said.
The head of the Southern Baptist's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission quickly disagreed with Gore. Richard Land said the debate over homosexuality has never been about "persecution" and discrimination, "but rather about whether as a society we are going to normalize deviant and abhorrent sexual behavior and stigmatize those who follow the Bible in condemning such behavior."
Saying Christians are to separate the sin from the sinner and to detest only the sin, Land continued, "Vice President Gore evidently wants to redefine the sin out of existence."
In middle Tennessee for a fund-raising dinner for the state Democratic party, Gore said the movement for civil rights for homosexuals mirrors the drive for civil rights based on race three decades ago, according to The Tennessean report.
Gore's comments came just a week after President Clinton's groundbreaking appearance at a dinner hosted by the Human Rights Campaign, reportedly the homosexual movement's largest political organization. The dinner was expected to raise $300,000 for the organization and featured the star of Ellen, Ellen DeGeneres, receiving a civil rights award from the group.
At the event Clinton said discrimination based on "sexual orientation" is "wrong, and it should be illegal." He said the equality espoused in the Declaration of Independence has evolved in its definition and should include homosexuals.
The president expressed his belief that the Employment Non-discrimination Act, which would grant homosexuals the same workplace protection now provided to classifications as race, gender, age, and disability, would become law. The bill, which failed to pass the Senate by only one vote, 50-49, in 1996, was expected to be out of the committee by January or early February.
