Meaning and Connotation
"Homosexual recruitment" and similar terms refer to the allegation that LGBTQ people engage in a concerted effort to indoctrinate children into being LGBTQ as well, and becoming, according to social conservatives and Christian right groups, part of a "lifestyle that can kill them." Supporters of recruitment allegations point at "deviant" and "prurient" sex education as evidence. They express concern that anti-bullying efforts teach that "homosexuality is normal, and that students shouldn't harass their classmates because they're gay", suggesting recruitment as the primary motivation.
Supporters of this theory cite the inability for same-sex couples to reproduce offspring as a motivation for recruitment.
Critics of the term describe it as an anti-gay myth, and a fear-inducing bogeyman. Many critics believes the term promotes the myth of homosexuals as pedophiles.
In a 1990 New York Times piece, David Leavitt criticized the term stating, "Of course, to any gay person who, as a frightened and confused teenager, searched desperately for books or films or television shows that offered even a mention of homosexual experience to latch on to, the idea of gay "recruitment" is laughable. It is also profoundly insulting."
Read more about this topic: Homosexual Recruitment
Famous quotes containing the words meaning and, meaning and/or connotation:
“I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverently that most precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every ale-house and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same.”
—Henry VIII (14911547)
“Tis good to give a stranger a meal or a nights lodging. Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“The intension of a proposition comprises whatever the proposition entails: and it includes nothing else.... The connotation or intension of a function comprises all that attribution of this predicate to anything entails as also predicable to that thing.”
—Clarence Lewis (18831964)