EO Pursues a Sneaky Policy

EO director Ad de Boer regularly expresses his sympathy for gay people in his weblog posts. No problem there. What I object to, however, is the suggestive vagueness he always wraps it in. The EO has always maintained that homosexual behavior is sinful. The EO has not officially abandoned that position, but they no longer say it out loud. How brave of them. This week (August, 2004), as a “regular reader of his weblog,” I put considerable pressure on De Boer (he himself wrote: “with a gun to my chest”) to show his true colors and speak plainly. He said he considered the question of whether gay people are allowed to ‘do it’ a shibboleth question and therefore did not want to answer it. Very clever. By not saying YES, he keeps opponents of homosexuality on his side, and by not saying NO, gay people within the EO are (cautiously, of course) given some room. I call that sneaky, because a fundamental policy change is taking place here through strategic silence.

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