As I wrote in a recent column, I don’t get offended very often. But, for the second time this summer, I was deeply offended by something written to me in response to one of my missives. It took the form of a gay reader claiming I had offended him by a prank I was involved in on a college campus. He reminded – or, tried to remind - me that gays are involved in a civil rights struggle, not unlike the one blacks faced in the sixties. That’s when I got offended.

Homosexuals on the campus of UNC-Wilmington cannot be said to be involved in a civil rights struggle comparable to what blacks faced in the sixties because these homosexuals are, quite simply, not involved in a civil rights struggle at all. In fact, at my university, they enjoy special privileges that place their opponents in a position of struggling for civil rights. In other words, the homosexual reader – and self-proclaimed civil rights leader - has formed a backwards view of the situation.

The prank of hanging 1000 posters of two gay men engaged in sodomy cannot be said to be offensive to gays because the poster came from a gay magazine funded by the university at the request of campus gay activists. When we hung those posters, we were attempting to show the parents just how far out the diversity movement had become. The student who hung most of the posters was denied a position as an orientation leader at UNCW after he expressed his religious opposition to homosexuality. He wondered why the person(s) in charge of picking the orientation leaders would bring up such a private and irrelevant matter.

But the answer to that question is simple: Gays believe (and the administration agrees) that they have a constitutional right to be free from discomfort. This right trumps the religious rights of any student who opposes any aspect of the gay agenda. This is another way of saying that my pompous bosses think their diversity manuals trump the U.S. Constitution.

The now infamous “1000 poster prank” was meant to show parents – on Parent’s Weekend, no less – that university officials are lying when they say they want to protect students from being offended. In truth, they want to protect gays from offense while simultaneously funding their graphic speech – no matter how offensive it is to Christians. That is the point my gay readers miss - or, perhaps, pretend to miss – on a regular basis.

And, of course, let us not underestimate the importance of the employees’ response of immediately rushing to pull the 1000 posters down. It shows that deep down inside they are ashamed of the graphic nature of the gay “civil rights struggle,” too. They simply cannot defend to the general public the things they are doing privately with public funds.

Our civil rights struggle to engage in protest against the excesses of the gay “civil rights” movement is about more than the freedom to petition our government for a redress of grievances. It is also about our deeply held religious conviction that expressing opposition to homosexuality is love speech, not “hate speech.” The Word of God to Ezekiel (33:8,9) is illustrative:

If I announce that some wicked people are sure to die and you fail to tell them to change their ways, then they will die in their sins, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. But if you warn them to repent and they don’t repent, they will die in their sins, but you will have saved yourself.

So, as one can clearly see - if one simply opens his eyes and his heart – the true Christian views the phrase “it’s OK to be gay” to be a form of hate speech. In the view of those who are true followers of Christ, it is a refrain no more hostile than the suggestion that the homosexual simply “go to hell.”

And, so, I submit that those of us who criticize the excesses of the false gay “civil rights” struggle are the ones involved in the true civil rights struggle on America’s campuses. Nonetheless, as I think back to the days when one of my relatives kept a loaded .357 magnum behind the counter of his business - to chase out the brave young blacks who battled segregation - I am cautious with my constitutionally protected speech. I would never succumb to the temptation to compare our struggle to the one Martin Luther King, Jr. led in the sixties.

But, unfortunately, gays are seldom able to do anything in moderation. By yielding to the temptation to compare themselves to the likes of Dr. King, they damage their own credibility and magnify their infinite condescension and arrogance.